Conservatism at a cross-roads

[JackSwift]

Most conservatives, now that they control all three branches of the federal government, have abandoned the principles of conservativism in favor of retining raw power. They encouage corporate lawlessness, destroy public resources, and continue the costly military industrial complex and launch wars of adventure, all the while hiding the policy making process behind reflexive secrecy. Having come into majority status by gerrymandering they seem unprepared to enact their agenda, but rather seem intent on proving that they were projecting their ugly id's on their opponents. While Democrats certainly did commit sins and make their share of mistakes, Republicans criticized those mistakes and then unconsciously enshrined them as policy. Many of us are old enough to remember a generation of Republicans criticizing a generation of Democrats for running budget deficits. Every peacetime Democratic presidency has seen budgets increasingly brought under control. Every Republican administation has seen annual increases in deficits. And even though the Bush II administation is facing a war at a billion dollars a week, and an economic slowdown (technically not a recession despite President Bush's confusion on the issue), the deficits should not be over $100 billion a year. The huge federal borrowing sucks all capital out of the economy, strangling investment growth: Bush has given huge tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy, only to suck it all back up in federal debt.

The current conservatism in Washington cannot last. It's unconscious and pervasive incompetence is finally frustrating its corporate sponsors, its religious fanatics and conservative true believers. They have almost come to the conclusion that they need to clean up their act: to eliminate the lacadasical incompetence. While liberals have long mocked Republicans as the party that believes government cannot work and then prove it when they get elected, it is a truism that stings. When you believe that government is lazy and inept, you may come by that belief honestly, through your experience.

Look for a struggle between those in power and traditional conservative activists. Reality is where the rubber hits the road, and running the largest government the world has ever seen is incredibly hard to do. Propaganda cannot fool a majority of the people indefinitely in a free society.

[Homer12]

1. Well Said..

.... "While liberals have long mocked Republicans as the party that believes government cannot work and then prove it when they get elected, it is a truism that stings."



Even wihtout this, most conservatives (not all) have let their agenda rule their ethics when it comes to political discourse and just plain respect.


I still believe that real change with the current situation will come from the real conservatives that want to take their party back from the PLutocratic BUSHCO aristocratic minority that stole their party from teh blue blood elite that was so easily deposed?

[JackSwift]

2. As a liberal

I detest the level to which professional conservatism has sunk. They have abandoned principle and sunk to the gutter, preferring the excitement of the gutter to actually winning their points. There was a time when Democrats did not accept that budgets must, could and should be balanced except for good reasons. Now they have turned into their own worst nightmare.