As the presidential campaign for 2012 gets under way, conservatives, libertarians, and others typically disposed to vote for Republican candidates would do themselves a good turn to bear a few things in mind as we enter the next election cycle.<\/p>\n
Every candidate in the Republican primaries is going to exhaust themselves trying to convince voters of the impeccability of their \u201cconservative\u201d credentials.\u00a0 And in the run up to the general election, the GOP nominee will continue to insist upon his or her unqualified commitment to \u201climited government,\u201d \u201cthe Constitution,\u201d \u201cindividualism,\u201d \u201cthe free market,\u201d and the like.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of this, of course, is to be expected.\u00a0 Just as expected, though, is that during neither the primaries nor any time prior <\/em>to election day will we hear a peep from any of the candidates on the need for, say, \u201ccompromise\u201d or \u201cbi-partisanship.\u201d\u00a0 We will not be treated to lectures of the kind to which condescending Republicans have been subjecting us since this last November when Republicans reacquired control of the House.\u00a0 Since then, we have been \u201creminded\u201d endlessly of the need to recognize that Republicans still only occupy \u201cone half of one-third\u201d of the government.\u00a0 But worry not: no more cautionary notes of this sort will be issued from this point forward\u2014until after the election, of course.<\/p>\n This is one consideration to which the voter should attend, for perhaps he can spend this time both recalling for the candidates the excuses that House Republicans have given for failing to execute their pledges since they took office in November and <\/em>pressing them to specify details as to how <\/em>they will follow through with their promises in the event that they meet formidable Democratic resistance.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There is another consideration that deserves the voter\u2019s focus.<\/p>\n Talk radio and FOX News personalities styling themselves the guardians of \u201cconservative\u201d orthodoxy will debate amongst themselves as to which of the candidates within the field are and are not truly \u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 As the voter beholds these discussions, he should pay meticulous attention to the criteria by which the pundits evaluate the \u201cconservatism\u201d of the candidates.\u00a0 What he discovers may surprise him.<\/p>\n By the lights of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and most of their colleagues in the so-called \u201calternative media,\u201d a genuine \u201cconservative\u201d is, first and foremost, a proponent of \u201cstrong national defense.\u201d\u00a0 Now, if you are wondering what is distinctively, much less uniquely, \u201cconservative\u201d about such a position, you should be<\/em>, for this is a bumper sticker slogan plain and simple, a pep rally expression just as vapid as the plethora of such expressions that Republicans routinely bandy about to distinguish their party from that of their opponents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside of anarchists, and maybe not even then, no one <\/em>disfavors a \u201cstrong national defense.\u201d\u00a0 But the \u201cnational defense\u201d of which the pundits on the right speak, it is crucial to realize, isn\u2019t the same thing that the average person has in mind when he hears this phrase.\u00a0 For the average person, national defense consists simply in the government\u2019s pursuing the one engagement that everyone expects for it to pursue: the protection of the citizens of the United States.\u00a0 For the average person, this in turn means that the government must defend <\/em>the country from those who would seek to undermine it.\u00a0<\/p>\n This, though, is not what \u201cthe conservative\u201d means when he talks of \u201cnational defense.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, his episodic explosions of indignation over our porous southern border\u2014which only seem to occur when the government\u2019s agents begin their push for amnesty\u2014put into question whether he is even all that concerned about border patrol. No, when the guardian of \u201cconservative values\u201d demands a \u201cstrong national defense,\u201d what he demands is an ever larger military to involve itself in an ever greater number of countries throughout the world.<\/p>\n Although one wouldn\u2019t know it given all of his criticism of the pro-lifer for allegedly being a \u201cone issue\u201d voter, it is the establishment Republican \u201cconservative\u201d who judges candidates on the basis of whether they endorse his foreign policy vision.\u00a0 A real <\/em>conservative, as far as he is concerned, believes that it is America\u2019s mission to export \u201cDemocratic\u201d values to the world\u2014even if this means, as it usually means, deploying the United States military to do so.<\/p>\n Two comments are in order here, the one an observation, the other its implication.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, with the sole exception of Ron Paul, it appears that every <\/em>Republican presidential candidate, actual and potential, is committed to promoting a \u201cDemocratic Revolution\u201d the globe over.\u00a0 Their affirmation of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism,\u201d \u201cHuman Rights,\u201d \u201cthe War on Terror,\u201d and so forth, is exactly an affirmation of this commitment.<\/p>\n Second, because the punditry class defines \u201cconservatism\u201d primarily in terms of this foreign policy position, and because all of the candidates\u2014again, with the exception of Ron Paul\u2014endorse this position, it follows that the \u201cdebates\u201d that will ensue between Republicans over the candidates\u2019 strengths and weaknesses vis-\u00e0-vis \u201cconservatism\u201d are, in a word, contrived.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n That the debates are, for the most part, scripted, is seen by the manner in which Ron Paul\u2019s rejection of the script is treated.\u00a0 Paul, the voter will note, is never, ever <\/em>characterized as a \u201cconservative\u201d by Republican pundits and office holders.\u00a0 Granted, it isn\u2019t that he is necessarily always derided and mocked; but the \u201cconservative\u201d commentator will be sure to call him a \u201clibertarian.\u201d The idea here is that anyone who rejects the GOP\u2019s robust, militaristic foreign policy, however devout a Christian he may be, or however resolved he may be to honoring\u2014and restoring\u2014the Constitution, such a person might be any number of things, but he is no conservative.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The right-leaning voter should be mindful of these truths so that he may avoid being taken for the same sucker for which the Republican Party has taken him for far too long.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the presidential campaign for 2012 gets under way, conservatives, libertarians, and others typically disposed to vote for Republican candidates would do themselves a good turn to bear a few things in mind as we enter the next election cycle. Every candidate in the Republican primaries is going to exhaust themselves trying to convince voters…<\/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-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n