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Conservatives Feel Forsaken By Party, Not Defeated

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 9, 2008

Even after a painful pounding in the polls, the conservative philosophy of small government remains very much alive and definitely kicking.

And it's kicking its own leaders, especially President Bush. Many conservative voices are urging the party to find new leadership and return to principles that give voters a clear choice between left and right.

That's not how liberals see it. The Huffington Post said Tuesday's "landslide rebuke of Republican policies will leave the party of Lincoln wandering in the wilderness for years to come." The flaw in that analysis is that the Republican brand under President Bush came to represent the very policies long unpopular with conservative voters: big spending, costly foreign interventions, government involvement in markets and financial uncertainty.

For many voters, it was the Democratic Party under president-elect Obama that stood for personal responsibility, peace and prosperity. A coalition of conservative activists called the American Issues Project polled voters in Florida, Colorado, Ohio and Virginia and made a surprising discovery.

Asked which party would keep government spending under control and reduce the deficit, more voters identified Democrats than Republicans. Asked which party would cut taxes for the middle class, voters named Democrats over Republicans almost two to one.

The candidate who won Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation notes, promised to cut taxes for 95 percent of workers, to expand the Army and Marines, to cut federal spending, all core conservative beliefs. The conservative think tank correctly concludes that someone who says the election marks the end of conservatism "simply was not paying attention to the campaign."

A key question is whether it is conservatives who have abandoned their principles or Republican leaders who have abandoned their conservative supporters.

Clearly it is some of both. Many self-described conservatives in business and defense lobby hard for all the government aid they can get. Newest in line are bankers and automakers. And many Republican politicians gladly preside over generous handouts and favors.

Bush's version of conservatism is "big government cronyism," says James Galbraith, author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too." He argues that, "apart from slogans, essentially nothing remains (of free-market economics)."

The harshest Bush critics these days are conservatives themselves. Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum, blames Bush for the election defeat saying, "I guess it turned out that he was not a conservative after all. He was a big government, big spending, globalist, New World Order-type of Republican."

The last straw for many swing voters was the partial nationalization of the financial industry, a tax expense that Paul Blair in Capitalism Magazine says makes the welfare programs of Democrats seem like a drop in the bucket.

And it's not just how much is spent, but how it is spent that irritates true conservatives, says Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and a party maverick who opposes wasteful spending.

"The proliferation of earmarks is largely a product of the Gingrich-DeLay years, and it's no surprise that some of the most ardent practitioners were earmarked by the voters for retirement," Flake says.

Conservatives are successfully distancing themselves from the excesses and mistakes made by Republicans in Congress and the White House, but the Republican image remains tarnished.

How long it will take to revive the brand depends in large part on whether Obama governs as he campaigned or whether he too forsakes the conservative themes that helped him win.

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