The Republican conceives of his party as the party of conservatism, the Constitution, and \u201climited government.\u201d\u00a0 For this reason, he loathes the so-called \u201cRINO\u201d (Republican In Name Only), the faux conservative who comes like a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing.\u00a0 At the same time, however, on those all too rare occasions when a genuine conservative, Constitutionalist comes along, the \u201cconservative\u201d Republican refuses to support that for which he claimed to ardently wish.<\/p>\n
There are two current, mutually reinforcing illustrations of this paradox.\u00a0 The first is the response on the part of Republicans to Newt Gingrich\u2019s latest remarks.\u00a0 The second is the response of those same Republicans to Ron Paul\u2019s presidential candidacy. We shall look at them in this order.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, while on Meet the Press, <\/em>Gingrich not only refused to endorse Paul Ryan\u2019s plan to reform Medicare; he explicitly and unequivocally rejected it.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,\u201d the former Speaker of the House asserted. Whether \u201cradical change\u201d is imposed via \u201cObamacare\u201d or courtesy of plans authored by a \u201cconservative\u201d like Ryan, Gingrich is equally opposed to both.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m opposed to Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative proposing radical change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As if this wasn\u2019t enough to convince the GOP faithful that Gingrich is no conservative, he then turned around to advocate a \u201cvariation,\u201d as he characterized it, of the controversial \u201cindividual mandate\u201d that is among the most salient of the constitutionally dubious aspects of the much dreaded \u201cObamacare.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The swiftness with which legions of the Republican Party faithful have declared Gingrich a faux conservative is a puzzling phenomenon, for many of the same \u201cconservative\u201d voters who are now slamming Gingrich have supported and continue to support Republicans\u2014whether George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, etc.\u2014whose political differences with Gingrich are, for all practical purposes, negligible.\u00a0 We have no reason for believing that a President Gingrich would govern any less\u2014and any more\u2014\u201cconservatively\u201d than a President Bush, President McCain, President Santorum, President Huckabee, President Romney, or President Palin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each will be just as enthusiastic as all of the others to grow the military ever more for the sake of furthering the crusade to export \u201cDemocracy\u201d to the Middle East and beyond. And when it comes to domestic policy, none will express any enthusiasm in the least over the prospect of truly weakening the federal government by eliminating<\/em> the leviathan of entitlements and bureaucracies of which it consists.<\/p>\n There is another reason why the Republican voter\u2019s demand for truly <\/em>\u201cconservative\u201d candidates can\u2019t but engage the intellectually curious.\u00a0 This brings us to Ron Paul. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul is the one presidential candidate in the current Republican field who most certainly does promise to govern more <\/em>conservatively\u2014and dramatically so\u2014than all of the rest, for he is the only person resolved to honor the Constitution and its original <\/em>design for America. That is, he is the only person with the determination to bring about the restoration <\/em>of the old Constitutional Republic that \u201cconservatives\u201d claim<\/em> they desire.<\/p>\n Moreover, Paul has been billed \u201cthe Godfather\u201d <\/em>of the very Tea Party movement with which the Republican Party has labored tirelessly to align itself ever since it first emerged but two years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Paul may or may not be the sole or even primary progenitor of the Tea Party movement that some have depicted him as being, there are few who would be comfortable denying that he is <\/em>indeed among the sources of inspiration from which it arose.\u00a0 And there is no one who can credibly deny that the ideas for which Paul argued a few years ago and for which he was roundly ridiculed by his Republican colleagues are <\/em>for the most part the ideas that define the Tea Party and the whole political climate today.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simply put, there is no one in the Republican primaries whose vision of the Constitution and the Republic whose terms it delineates approximates more closely than Paul\u2019s that of the Founders.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In spite of this, it is a virtual certainty that he will not <\/em>receive the GOP\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n So, what accounts for this paradox that is all too seldom unpacked?<\/p>\n The truth is that the \u201cconservative\u201d Republican suffers an identity-crisis\u2014and Paul, perhaps even involuntarily, draws his attention to it.<\/p>\n Effortlessly, Paul at once exposes two dirty little secrets about his fellow partisans.\u00a0 The first is that they are virtually interchangeable with one another<\/em> with respect to domestic and foreign policy issues.\u00a0 The second is that they are virtually interchangeable with Democrats <\/em>when it comes to these same issues.<\/p>\n In short, Paul puts the lie to the Republican fiction that the Republican Party is America\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d party. \u00a0<\/p>\n Someone like Paul makes many Republicans uncomfortable with themselves.\u00a0 He beckons them to revisit their identity as \u201cconservatives.\u201d\u00a0 But introspection is hard work and most people prefer to avoid it.\u00a0 Thus, they would rather attack, ridicule, and otherwise marginalize those who challenge them.\u00a0 Conversely, they would prefer to associate with those who reinforce the myths that they have come to accept about themselves.<\/p>\n This, <\/em>I surmise, is why Republicans reject a political conservative or \u201cconstitutionalist\u201d like Paul when they have the opportunity to endorse him.\u00a0 It is this <\/em>that accounts for why they fool themselves and one another into believing that there are gradations of \u201cconservatism\u201d among candidates who for all intents and purposes are indistinguishable from one another\u2014and their Democratic rivals. \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Republican conceives of his party as the party of conservatism, the Constitution, and \u201climited government.\u201d\u00a0 For this reason, he loathes the so-called \u201cRINO\u201d (Republican In Name Only), the faux conservative who comes like a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing.\u00a0 At the same time, however, on those all too rare occasions when a genuine conservative, Constitutionalist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n