Thursday, September 02, 2004
A Goldwater Revival
A Goldwater Revival (washingtonpost.com):
I have no problem with Guiliani or Arnold being in the party. In fact, I'm proud of it. I may agree with the social conservative strain, since I'm evangelical myself, but libertarian strains don't fundamentally offend me. If it supports federalism and lets states determine if they want to have conservative policies, I can live with that. The only reason conservatism has to institute national policies is because courts have been preventing federalism from being allowed to flourish.
If the Republican party has a litmus test (the dems seem to have many, like national candidates must be for abortion), than it should be a strong American foreign policy that makes it safe. That, after all, is the most important issue. Domestic issues are very contingent on domestic safety--one can't live their life in America and discuss what freedoms come with that life if they're being attacked by villains.
Guiliani and Arnold support a strong America, and I can proudly stand with them as both a Republican and an American.
Four decades after a Republican convention in San Francisco nominated Sen. Goldwater, sealing the ascendancy of conservatism in the party, his kind of conservatism made a comeback at the convention here. That conservatism -- muscular foreign policy backing unapologetic nationalism; economic policies of low taxation and light regulation; a libertarian inclination regarding cultural questions -- is not fully ascendant in the party. But the prominent display and rapturous reception of Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated that such conservatism is not an insurmountable impediment to a person's reaching the party's highest echelons.
...
The reemergence into Republican respectability of conservatism with a socially libertarian cast -- Goldwaterism -- is a development with a large potential to discomfort the Democratic Party. The reemergence can make the Republican Party more appealing to many young and suburban voters, two cohorts in which Democrats have recently made substantial gains.
...
The Republican Party's challenge is to keep its old fissures closed while relaxing the stringency of its social issues catechism. Republicans can derive encouragement from a long-lived coalition that was composed of elements far more discordant than a Republican Party that includes John Ashcroft as well as Giuliani and Schwarzenegger. FDR's "Roosevelt Coalition," which was born with the New Deal and did not crumble for four decades, balanced Northern liberals, intellectuals, organized labor and Southern segregationists.
...
The Republican Party remains firmly on the side of the pro-life and religiously motivated social conservatives. But here this week the party began in earnest the task of making others not only more comfortable within the party but eligible to rank among its leaders.
Goldwater was, in a way, the first angry man of the angry '60s. But he actually smiled far more than he scowled. In his last years some conservatives excommunicated him because of his support for abortion rights and his relaxed views regarding homosexuality. However, this week his spirit is smiling broadly.
I have no problem with Guiliani or Arnold being in the party. In fact, I'm proud of it. I may agree with the social conservative strain, since I'm evangelical myself, but libertarian strains don't fundamentally offend me. If it supports federalism and lets states determine if they want to have conservative policies, I can live with that. The only reason conservatism has to institute national policies is because courts have been preventing federalism from being allowed to flourish.
If the Republican party has a litmus test (the dems seem to have many, like national candidates must be for abortion), than it should be a strong American foreign policy that makes it safe. That, after all, is the most important issue. Domestic issues are very contingent on domestic safety--one can't live their life in America and discuss what freedoms come with that life if they're being attacked by villains.
Guiliani and Arnold support a strong America, and I can proudly stand with them as both a Republican and an American.
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