A simple, sincere appeal for your opinion... Why should Conservatives stay in the Republican Party?

A simple question. No tricks, no distortions, no 'steering', and no bullshit.

What reason(s) are there for Conservatives to remain members of the Republican Party?

I have been a life-long member of the Republican Party, and my proudest moments were those leading up to, and during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. What reason do I have to remain in today's 'RINO' Party, where at least half of "Republicans" routinely sh*t all over every Conservative principle I have lived by all my life?

The reality -- we can't even get rid of something as full of lies, fraud, and imminent insolvency as Obamacare.... If we "Republicans" can't even do something as intuitive and simple as THAT, then what hope or what use is there for this political party?

I am keenly interested in your opinions, and your reasoning, both from the Left and the Right. Thank you.

 

I think the problem is you guys don't understand the function of conservatism. Progressivism is inevitable. All societies change and progress forward. Always. Conservatives only function is to prevent too much progress too quickly. That's it.

So, with each passing generation, hard line conservatives get left behind as irrelevant, because things have progressed. A new generation of conservatives rise and perform their function of preventing too much change.


What you are feeling is the passing of your era.

And I don't mean that in any derogatory fashion. You and I don't agree on anything at all, but I respect you and your beliefs.

 

Other than tradition, I can't think of a good reason. I think now, more than ever, the time is ripe for a third party, and, in a sense, we have already gotten that with Trump. He seems like a third party candidate that borrowed the Republican label for name recognition.

 

Real simple. I'll answer it in a question: would you rather the government follow your views 30% of the time or 0% of the time? Seems a pretty obvious choice to me.

 

The reason you can't is because you can't seem to do anything that does uninsure tens of millions of people or cause chaos in the health insurance markets. Maybe Obamacare isn't so bad after all.

 

Your problem is that the republican party has been highjacked by a bunch of intransigent, paranoid extremists who forget that politics is the art of consensus.
The biggest ******* on conservative principles is trump.
He demeans everything that he touches.

 

It seems to me that too many Republicans put their own self interests, the interests of their big-money donors, and the interests of big government itself above that of the country, above that of their so-called "principles", and above that of their own grass-roots constituents.

In the minds of the RINOs, that's how elections are won; you just try to be a little bit less corrupt, and a little bit less socialist than the corrupt socialist left. So until that dynamic changes, conservatives will remain a frustrated majority within their own party, because it only takes a few RINOs to sabotage the efforts of every conservative within the party.

 

You might find this article interesting...at least I did.

Donald Trump Is Buckley’s Rightful Heir

Excerpts

The fundamental insight of conservatism is the belief that the values of the past are better than those of the present, and thus, that society should return to the values of the past. This idea — that we’re living in the aftermath of fallen but restorable greatness — is a sort of nostalgia that has been the basic premise behind an increasingly powerful political movement, so it’s obviously an emotion that many people find satisfying.

But the dangers of constructing an intellectual movement on an emotional foundation are obvious: if people find a path to the satisfying emotion that doesn’t run through the intellect, the entire edifice could come toppling down. Early conservatives could’ve addressed this danger head-on by trying to bolt their movement firmly to its emotional foundation, so that conservatism and its core insight could never be separated. They didn’t.

It’s not because conservatives failed to ask the right questions. Buckley wrote in a major essay that “the question that must always be before [conservatives] is, what shape should the world take, given modern realities?” It was quite perceptive of Buckley to frame the fundamental tension of his movement as between would-be conservative shapers of the world and the modern realities that oppose them. And it couldn’t have escaped Buckley’s notice that the people most attached to modern realities tend to be those for whom the recent past was rife with segregation and slavery, disenfranchisement and sexism, or racial, religious, or sexual pariahhood, or some mixture of the above.

This naturally spawns other questions. If you believe that the past was better than the present, is it possible to enact what was good about the past without harming the people who were worse off back then? Can you even be sure that the past seemed good for reasons other than people like you enjoying privileges that directly resulted from the systematic oppression of other groups?
...
Which returns us to the largely unexamined premise of the whole movement: “standing athwart history.” That’s exactly what Donald Trump is calling for. Restoring fallen greatness is his campaign’s central promise; it’s literally on the hats. Conservatives have had sixty years to come up with an intellectually compelling reason why yelling “stop” in a Phillips Exeter patois while observing debate-club decorum is somehow intellectually superior to doing so at a modern-day Nuremberg Rally. Besides pointing out that their discourse doesn’t openly aim to offend, they’ve come up with few distinctions between the values held by conservative intellectuals and Trump-following conservative populists.

Even the preeminent conservative historian, George Nash, has no answers; he’s left grasping at the platitudes like “freedom, virtue, and safety” to answer the basic questions of “What do conservatives want? What should they want?” Despite having decades to fashion a bulwark against an exclusionary populist usurpation of their core insight, no one within the movement can point to a philosophical reason why the entire intellectual enterprise of the conservative movement is necessary.

...

That movement conservatives should clash with a man like Trump is not simply a matter of vocabulary. Strauss defined the dreaded vulgarian in opposition to the movement’s self-image — unlike the noble, truth-seeking Jamesian gentleman-scholar, the vulgar man is essentially a profiteer, “concerned exclusively with calculations of success” and “blind to the nobility of effort.” Sounds an awful lot like the Republican nominee.

...
The fact that “he’s vulgar!” is the only meaningful defense that conservatives can level against the massive threat that Donald Trump’s candidacy poses to their movement is a result of their failure, by choice, to engage in any meaningful way with the implications of bringing the present back to the past. And it exposes a devastating truth about the conservative movement: its only claim to the moral high ground is its manners.

​

Personally, I always thought the congeniality of traditional conservatism was far more workable, but that too is obviously an appeal to a past that is long gone.

​

 

The real challenge IMO for traditional conservatives is, 'what does it mean to them personally?'

Is it longing for a time gone by?

Is it to be "standing athwart history" as Buckley proclaimed?

Is it an economic belief?

It is just to be an antagonist, mindlessly opposing ideas because of their actual or perceived origins on an imaginary political scale?

 

I came of age during Reagan which means that you are as old if not older than I. As a member of Gen X, my generation is less conservative than the Baby Boomers but more conservative that the Millennials. From my POV our country is progressive thus what conservatism is to you or I may be different than what a conservative is to a millennial. I am afraid that we are getting old, antiquated and soon to be replaced by a millennial majority by 2025.

 

Hugo Chavez was a Progressive. Fidel Castro was a Progressive. Those forward thinkers tried to drag their respective countries into the future. The Soviet Union was the Progressives' definition of the future. Bernie Sanders showed us what the future is about, just like Hugo, Fidel, Stalin, Khrushchev, etc. before him. Sending your minions to kill those who oppose his policies is so Progressive.

 

I'm of the opinion that political parties are quickly becoming a thing of the past. The two legitimate candidates this last cycle, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, were not true members of the party whose banner they ran under. There is a new populist streak running through today's politics which both Trump and Sanders tapped into. I believe this tendency will only grow. Another data point? The fastest growing segment of the electorate in places like the state I currently reside in, California, is NPP ("No Party Preference"); it's how I'm registered, and it's how a good many (and growing number) of Californians are choosing to participate in the political system. Finally, people are beginning to equate partisanship with the BS that we've been seeing in Washington these last several years where our elected "representatives" are more interested in seeing to remaining in office than they are in working for the people who sent them to Washington to represent them. In short, I think we're going to continue to see I move away from traditional party line affiliations, more and more blurring of the "traditional" associations we've seen in the past, and a healthy shift towards a more populist, more centrist view of what people would like to see politicians take up. Trump represents the initial indication of this shift. We'll see what 2018 and 2020 bring, but I won't be surprised if it's more of the same.

 

Where would real conservatives go?

 

The system is rigged for the two parties. They can keep doing the status quo, be a third party spoiler sometimes, or not vote at all. Those are your options.

I'm a proud third party, sometimes spoiler.

 

As one other poster (pol meister) already said, conservatives vote for their own self interest first, and principles second.

Trump promised jobs for many voters who are struggling financially and are in danger of job loss. They voted for him based on that promise, as well as the promise of covering everybody with health care, and not cutting SS.

Now, that health care is on the chopping block, conservatives are getting cold feet, because it could be them losing out on coverage. Remember, self interest first, even if it means keeping coverage through the dreaded Obamacare.

 

Lovely way you make up your own definitions there. None of your examples are even remotely accurate, but the diversion and derailment is duly noted.

 

In practice you're correct. "Conservatives" today defend the liberal policies of yesterday.

 

I was with you till you got to the end where the train just went completely off the rails.

Populism, pandering to people's paranoia and bigotry, is what this Trump era represents...and it is doomed to fail!

 

Actually, I would really like to see those of you who consider yourself to be conservative answer this...and the questions I posed earlier. I really do believe it is important to have, if you will, a ying-yang in politics. What conservatism has become is no longer this.

 

So, is globalism. Have a point?

 

Populism, as I see it, is having the American government look after American citizens and American interests. Nothing more, nothing less. Those on the left wish to paint it as pandering to people's paranoia and bigotry. Well, if you'd like to make a case for open borders, trade agreements that promote the transfer of jobs to other countries, etc. that's your prerogative, I just don't think the electorate is going to choose to go in that direction anytime soon. But hey, I could be completely off base -- if so, it won't be the first time that's happened...

 

I think the topic is worthwhile but you are more than likely going to be disappointed in almost any answer.

First, you have to define what is conservatism, because a dozen conservatives will give you a dozen answers. Pat Buchanan and Jonah Goldberg would give you wildly different answers to that question, as nearly all conservative "thought leaders." In case there is any question, I'm using that term ironically. The left doesn't have that problem. They are all going in the same direction. The just disagree on the methods and speed.

Second, I think you may be thinking of a more contemporary issue; the inability of a GOP controlled Congress to do the ONE THING they all agreed on for the past 7 years, repealing and replacing Obamacare. Well, they're frauds, what can I tell you. Particularly if you saw Eric Cantor's recent interview, where he admitted he lied about repealing Obamacare. He knew it was never going to happen but told his constituents otherwise.

But they revealed themselves as frauds in the beginning of 2015 with their Omnibus Budget bill. That bill I think was the beginning of the fracture and civil war in the Republican Party that lead to Trump. It's a civil war that is still going on.

As far as your question as to why should conservatives should stay in the GOP, that really depends on what type of conservative you are. George Will and Joe Scarborough are already gone, and the staff writers at National Review and The Weekly Standard are probably not far behind if "Trumpism" becomes a permanent fixture of the Republican Party.
I'm sticking with the party for now, because as a Burkean-Chesterton America First Conservative, my interests are with Trumpism, regardless of what happens with Trump the man, and that's who staged a coup of the GOP and took over the party. But many purges are going to be required to clean up the garbage.

 

So the left's march towards Balkanization of the US, or it's fight against free speech is considered progress in your book, huh?

 

And what do you believe "globalism" is?

Way back in the 90's, I got caught up big time in the whole conspiracy thing. I read up on everything about the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefellers, the Bilderbergs, et al....and then reality set in. No group of people could ever be smart enough, or united enough, to create such a global encompassing secret cabal in which no one would ever be able to escape and spill the beans. It is physically impossible. Yet most every aspect of our modern lives has a weird Butterfly Effect. It is not so much that a small cabal is planning everything, it is that we have created elaborate self-sustaining systems, not only of computer networks which is obvious, but of institutions and their corporate cultures driven by only one goal -- profit.

To believe that one can be against "globalization" one would have to be against the foundation of capitalism, which is profit. If this Trump era is truly against globalization, then ergo it is secretly against profit. It is no wonder that Trump could be the champion of this because it's not that he's against profit, it's that he only thinks of his own personal profit. Trump does not come from this corporate culture, but he certainly has filled his White House with plenty of alumnis from the greatest of all Universities in corporate greed, Goldman Sachs.

To honestly believe Trump will end or thwart globalization is the greatest of all his deceptions. The rubes are in for a serious wake up call.

 

I always considered myself a Goldwater conservative, not a religious right conservative or a social conservative. A fiscal conservative, you bet. By that I mean being fiscal responsible, not just low taxes. But having spending matching revenue. Not spending more than one takes in.

I also believe in small government, in keeping government out of a citizens private business and lives. Not using government to force your social views on others. I also think we should keep out nose out of other countries business unless our national security is threaten. No need to be the policeman of the world.

Over the years the Republican Party has drifted away from those ideals, call it traditional conservative ideals into a religious conservative party for quite awhile. Being a Georgia boy, I usually voted Democratic at the state and local level while voting Republican for the presidency, that is except Jimmy Carter, a home boy. That came to an end in the 90's. I switch to voting Republican at the state and local level and mostly third party for the presidency. Perot twice, Browne twice, McCain and then Johnson twice.

I think Reagan was responsible for the fall and breakup of the USSR, but he also was a president who had no fiscal responsibility. Traditional conservatism, ala Goldwater conservatism is dead. Now you have neo-conservatives, social conservatives, religious conservatives, but no real conservatism.

Trump is no conservative. Look at his lifelong held believes and they are pretty liberal. Sure he change a few to run as a Republican, but time will tell if he really takes those changes to heart. Even his supporters call him a populace, a nationalist, a nativist, but not a conservative.

Are there any real conservatives left? Is conservative just a name given to the Republican Party even though they left the values and ideals of conservatism many decades ago? Who in Washington, who in the GOP outside of perhaps Rand Paul believes in being fiscal responsible, in keeping government out of people's lives and business, not getting involved in foreign entanglements or wars unless our national security is threaten?

Far as I'm concerned, real, true, traditional conservatism died a long time ago.