The next presidential race will occur in a political context very different from that in which the last transpired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although it has only been slightly over two years since Barack Obama was elected president, matters have changed quite dramatically since that time.\u00a0 Those of us to the right of center appear to have enjoyed a decisive reversal of misfortunes, a turn of events for which we have none other than President Obama and his Democratic colleagues to thank.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, legions of American voters converged to complete the task of divesting Republicans of power, a mission upon which they first embarked two years prior to that.\u00a0 Now, as last November\u2019s mid-term elections amply demonstrate, comparable numbers of those same voters have set their sights upon the Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But unless this turn of events is read as something other than a mere change in the partisan sympathies of the electorate, its significance will be lost\u2014as will be the winds to which the GOP has now set its sails.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The intensity of the consciousness of the threat that the federal government poses to his time-honored liberties is rivaled only by the intensity of the American voter\u2019s resolve to resist those threats.\u00a0 Although its\u2019 formal membership consists in a minority of Americans, there can be no denying that the existence of the TEA Party movement emblematizes this sentiment.<\/p>\n
What this means is that for the first time in a long time, there is a substantial segment of the Republicans\u2019 constituency that is no less intolerant of their abuses than it is those of Democrats. And what this in turn suggests is that the days when GOP rhetoric of \u201climited government,\u201d \u201cindividual liberty,\u201d \u201cfiscal responsibility\u201d and the like didn\u2019t need to coincide with conduct are over. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Such days expired along with the completion of George W. Bush\u2019s second term.\u00a0 Republicans claimed to have learned this lesson.\u00a0 But what voters deserve to know is, what exactly have they learned?<\/em><\/p>\n The Republican Party against which the American voter cast his vote in \u201906 and \u201908 is<\/em> the party of George W. Bush, the party of \u201cCompassionate Conservatism.\u201d\u00a0 It is incumbent upon Republicans generally, and the next Republican presidential candidate specifically, to account for why a vote for the Republican presidential challenger in 2012 will not <\/em>be a vote for \u201canother four years of Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n Bush\u2019s vision of \u201cconservatism\u201d is by now anything but illegible. It would serve us well to revisit it at this critical juncture when the Republican Party is rising from the ashes and eyes are beginning to turn toward 2012.<\/p>\n First, from very early on in his first term, Bush, let us not forget, distinguished himself as the first American president to endorse federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.\u00a0 This was only weeks prior to 9\/11, so no sooner than the controversy began did it end; but it is remarkable that it wasn\u2019t a president in the mold of a Barack Obama that took this unprecedented step, but a self-avowed champion of \u201clife.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Second, Bush is the author of \u201cNo Child Left Behind.\u201d\u00a0 Both the utopian aspirations of this law as well as its assignation of an ever expansive role to the federal government in the sphere of public education establish beyond a doubt that it could only be anathema to minds touched with even the faintest of conservative and\/or libertarian sensibilities.<\/p>\n Third, if not for Bush, we wouldn\u2019t have witnessed the largest expansion of prescription drug benefits since Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s \u201cGreat Society.\u201d<\/p>\n Fourth, both before and after the attacks of 9\/11, Bush promoted \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform,\u201d what many of his legions of critics\u2014almost all of whom belonged to his own party\u2014correctly recognized as a de facto <\/em>amnesty.<\/p>\n Fifth, our last \u201cconservative\u201d president determined that the United States\u2019 goal would be to \u201crid the world of evil.\u201d\u00a0 To this end, he simultaneously launched two wars (or should they be understood as \u201cbattles\u201d in \u201cthe War <\/em>on Terror?\u201d).\u00a0 While Bush\u2019s defenders have argued that our excursions into Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary responses to 9\/11, means by which the government fulfilled its commitment to \u201cnational security,\u201d it doesn\u2019t require much thought to discern the weakness of this counter-objection.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNational security\u201d is an open-ended concept. That a course of action is undertaken in the name of \u201cnational security\u201d no more justifies it than the fact that an action is done in the name of \u201clove\u201d justifies it<\/em>: \u201cnational security\u201d and \u201clove\u201d are compatible with unjust and foolish deeds no less so than with those that are just and wise.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have no doubts that Bush sincerely believes that it is in the long-range interests of the United States and the planet to deliver \u201cdemocracy\u201d to the Islamic world; but it is precisely this <\/em>belief that betrays his commitment to a political-philosophical orientation that is not only alien, but antithetical, to the conservative temperament.\u00a0 Whether the project to \u201cdemocratize\u201d Islamic peoples in Islamic lands is just, I won\u2019t say; that it is folly, however, I expect all enemies of Utopian politics to unabashedly affirm.<\/p>\n Sixth, Bush promoted what he called his \u201cHome Ownership Society.\u201d\u00a0 This sounds wonderful, but to bring this order to fruition, he continued the tradition, beginning with Carter, of using the resources of the federal government to pressure lending institutions to waive standard mortgage loan criteria.\u00a0 This, as we now know, contributed in no small measure to \u201cthe sub-prime mortgage crisis\u201d and \u201cthe economic crisis\u201d that helped catapult Obama to the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seventh, when the said \u201ccrisis\u201d became a reality, Bush threw every ounce of his support behind the unprecedented bank \u201cbailouts,\u201d even going so far as to make a televised appearance in which he attempted to convince Americans that unless they too provided their immediate support of this massive expenditure of their monies, their economic system would collapse within days.\u00a0<\/p>\n These are just some of the highlights of the Bush presidency and the era of \u201cCompassionate Conservatism.\u201d\u00a0 TEA Partiers and others need to demand of these repentant Republicans and the presidential contenders in particular to inform the rest of us, in no uncertain terms, which of these positions they now reject.\u00a0<\/p>\n Only then will we know whether they have truly <\/em>amended their ways. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The next presidential race will occur in a political context very different from that in which the last transpired.\u00a0 Although it has only been slightly over two years since Barack Obama was elected president, matters have changed quite dramatically since that time.\u00a0 Those of us to the right of center appear to have enjoyed a…<\/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-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n