Posted by
Conservative Youth on Sunday, March 01, 2009 11:30:31 PM
An interesting question, to be sure. After a fairly devastating defeat for the Grand Old Party in the last election, Republicans are faced with the giant task of building up a party who's last leader was an extremely unpopular president. Don't get me wrong... i liked George W. Bush. It's the fact that most others didn't that has momentarily doomed us as a political party. However, we can return! The question is this: what do Republicans, and conservatives in general, need to do to take back the hearts and minds of the American people? Some say that they must change the values and ideas of the Republican Party. I disagree. I say they change the people in and leaders of the Republican Party. Why? Because the real problem lies with them. The first thing the Republican Party must do is shed the elitist, individualistic, and don't-care-for -the-poor mantle that has tagged online for so many years. We want people to understand that we care for the poor, the downtrodden, the American people as a whole (not just big business), but we have very different ways of seeing those people taken care of. So, when sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal columnist David Brooks says that we should get rid of the minimal government mantle that Reagan and Goldwater believed in because it is out of date and not useful, he is suggesting the Republicans change a major tenet of belief. And that's unacceptable. We're not here to make deals about what we believe. We are here to make sure that we are listened to, and that our ideas are at least considered while Democrats are in charge. But to get back into power we have to change the people we look up to, not the ideas that make us who we are. We're here to make change, and we can do that by restocking Republican leadership with true conservatives, common sensical conservatives, caring conservatives... one might say "compassionate conservatives...."
The question is this: are conservatives ready to fight and to stand up for true Republican principles, like small government? Or are they going to back down... change their values because they want to adapt to culture? Who knows... let's hope not.