By Grant Reid | Vote out the Republicans who failed their party's values.
It’s all over except the voting. And frankly, the past few weeks have made the election itself a formality. Barring a cataclysmic collapse, Senator Barack Obama will be elected the 44th President of the United States. Conservatives should not lament this outcome, however inevitable it may be. In fact, we should welcome it.
In more ways than one, this election marks the end of an era. The conservative movement ushered in by President Reagan has finally reached its coda. The Republican Party is out of ideas, and will soon be out of power. The past eight years, marked by tragedies and tragically lost opportunities have done more to discredit the conservative movement and the creation of new conservative ideas than anything the Democratic Party has done over that same period. John McCain, for all his qualities, can do nothing to change this. As Francis Fukuyama wrote recently, “one gets the sense that [Sen. McCain] hasn’t fully made up his mind what kind of Republican he is, or what principles should define the new America.” A vote for McCain is a vote for an uncertain future when the country and conservative movement can least afford it.
Not withstanding, the election of Barack Obama and Democratic ascendancy over all branches of government are problems created by Republican mismanagement of conservative ideals and the country as a whole. Enlarging the government by the greatest amount since the Great Society, initiating and presiding over a war of questionable value and condoning outright torture are not conservative. No truly conservative voter should reward the same politicians who refuse to own up to those mistakes with their vote this November.
An honorable defeat is not entirely bad. A painful stint in the minority will allow Republicans and conservatives of all stripes to reassess what both the conservative movement and the Republican Party stand for in the 21st century. After being in some sort of power for so long, these discussions have been deferred well beyond their needed date. The election of John McCain will only forestall this necessary recalibration.
Interestingly, as the general election campaign has progressed, Sen. Obama has begun to appear as the safer, more temperamentally conservative candidate in some respects. While he is likely the most liberal and inexperienced candidate ever nominated for President of the United States, his first-rate intelligence and demeanor will lend a steady hand to the executive branch in a time of crisis.
Sen. McCain, for his part, has been as erratic and gimmicky as Obama has been calm and collected. Conservatives can and should disagree with Sen. Obama’s views, but given how unpredictable Sen. McCain can be, there is no guarantee that he would be any more ideologically acceptable than his opponent. Attempts to maintain party unity behind a McCain administration would force Republicans to swallow and accept policies they do not agree with and cannot logically defend. After years of doing the same for the Bush administration, Republicans ought to know how difficult and self-destructive this process can be.
As illogical as it may seem, there is reason to believe that a vote for Obama is the best vote for a strong Republican future. Despite briefly flirting with calls for “hope” and “change,” Democrats have spent the past eight years becoming consumed with blinding anger and despair, from the Daily Show to Daily Kos. As such, the Democratic Party has made very little headway in crafting an ideological worldview any different from the same tax-and-spend tripe it has tried to force on the American people for the past 50 years. Once the Republicans can put enough distance between themselves and their own tax-and-spend ways, they can justifiably criticize this excess once again.
The Democrat-controlled Congress, which has the lowest Congressional approval rating in history, is a textbook study in incompetence. Despite facing a potential economic catastrophe, it could not manage to pass what its leaders claimed was an essential bailout package without adding over $150 billion in wasteful spending. With a rubber-stamp president, the Democrats will face their reckoning from a center-right electorate faster than they believe.
Republicans still left standing in Congress can do their best to stop the most egregious excesses, while allowing Democrats to dig their own graves. The history of the 1994 election is still fresh enough to act as a prescient example for a Republican comeback. Taking the next few years to develop a new, compelling agenda will give Republicans the chance to reclaim the mantle of being the “party of ideas” and eventually electoral majorities.
Ultimately, the party that stresses personal responsibility and government accountability has no duty voting to extend the worst of the Bush Administration’s policies for another four years. Extending the Bush tax cuts without accompanying spending cuts is a recipe for a fiscal calamity. Promising to continue torturing terrorist detainees is not only deeply immoral, but illegal. Proposing more than three times the amount of new federal spending as a liberal opponent is neither conservative nor responsible.
Voting for Barack Obama is not any conservative’s first option, but ultimately is the last bitter pill to be swallowed before embarking on the reconstruction of the conservative ideas necessary to rebuild the Republican Party and conservatism for the next generation, long after Obama has left office.
Mr. Reid is a senior majoring in History.
Comments