Finally, on the GOP side it’s all over except for the shouting. John McCain has won each major primary contest save Iowa and Michigan and picked up key endorsements from Rudy Giuliani and Florida’s popular GOP Governor (watch for him to be a top GOP VP contender). At this point, I don’t see how Mitt Romney comes back to beat him for the GOP nod at this point in the race. As a moderate I can breathe a sigh of relief that I won’t have to be subject to Romney’s flip-flopping anymore on every issue from Iraq, to Tax relief, to Health Care reform. There is nothing sadder in my opinion that to see someone who is at his core a moderate–attempt to show how conservative he can become by changing his beliefs to win votes. That is what I have watched Governor Romney do and it is why I gave up supporting him back in 2007.
Now, here is my concern as a moderate black republican woman who is seriously leaning (as I have said many times) in the Obama direction should he get the democratic nomination. I have been in the GOP since I was 18 years old. I was attracted to the party by moderates like former U.S. Senator & California Gov. Pete Wilson, NJ Gov. Christie Whitman, the late Rep. Jennifer Dunn and some sensible conservatives like Jack Kemp.
Yet, I must tell you I have been deeply disappointed by the way in which the party has been in my opinion hijacked by so-called conservatives. The truth of the matter is that these so-called Conservatives are not really that at all. What do I mean? Well, let’s start with the basics and then I will get back to what I know first-hand from an insider’s perspective.
Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system, but rather a way of looking at the civil order. This is what has become of the GOP ever since Ronald Reagan won the GOP nomination in 1980. The GOP has become a party of moral, Christian, values policing the “civil order”versus, focusing on real “limited” government which is at the core of any conservative philosophy or movement. Keep in mind that America is a Republic. Thus, our aim as envisioned by our founders should be as follows: No excessive burdensome taxes, the right to bear arms, freedom of religion, a strong national defense, shared co-equal powers of the 3 branches of government, we have a President not a Monarch, we allow the individual states that make up the “union” to make their own laws as long as they do not usurp the power of the federal government, we preach equal treatment of all men under the law, and the freedom of the individual to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
If we adhere to the aforementioned principles that should mean that Americans should have the right to have a safe, legal abortion or not (based on their individual freedom of choice), to send their kids to public or private schools (those who are poor should have vouchers as an option if the quality of public education their children are getting is substandard), and to be free to pursue their hopes and dreams while not being limited or stifled by race, gender, or class. That is in a nutshell what America is supposed to be about.
Notice that nowhere in our founder’s vision or in our early founding documents do we tell Americans that we sanction pushing our individual religious or social views on the majority as a way of running our politics and government. Quite the contrary.
As I outlined in detail in my first BLOG post, the GOP changed dramatically politically after the 1960 campaign. It is almost as if the two major political parties switched personalities. Southern democrats who opposed the sweeping Civil Rights and Women’s Rights gains of the 1960s and 1970s, fled to the GOP which seemed to embrace this ideology with Barry Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964 and Nixon’s southern strategy which began in earnest in the 1972 campaign. This is very important to put into context as we look at our modern day 21st century politics.
Senator McCain if you truly study his voting record is both a moderate and a conservative. He is pro-life (again this is a new distinction based on civil order and values not politics), he has voted against many of the key Civil Rights legislative issues of our time (he opposed the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday for example and is not a supporter of affirmative action), and he is a devoted hawk on issues of national defense. However, McCain is also a pragmatist and that is what I like about him. He knows how to build coalitions (McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, etc.) and work across the aisle, something we have not seen in politics probably since the days of LBJ. This will be an important skill set for our next President to have in my opinion. Look at the lack of success that our current President has had because of the biting partisanship in Washington, D.C.
Governor Romney says he is a Washington outsider but the presence of very influential lobbyists like Ron Kaufman, Ben Ginsberg, Vin Weber, and my former boss Barbara Comstock as his campaign advisors says that he is very much a Washington insider. So there is no choice between Romney and McCain. They are in many respects the same on the critical issues we will face in 2009.
The Conservatives need to back down and get on the McCain train. It is either McCain or Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama. Those are their options. period. If they stay home, the democrat candidate will win. How will that help further their cause? I am so tired of hearing about the so-called conservatives and their wants, their demands, their issues, etc. I am tired of the red states versus the blue ones. I am tired of conservative versus moderates, black versus white, woman versus man. The truth is conservatives make up the base of the GOP but that is only about 20% of the voters in the general election. Senator McCain can reach across independents, democrats and the like and bring those voters to the GOP fold. Romney cannot.
In the final analysis, I agree with Senator Obama, we are the “united states of America” not the “conservative states of America” and the GOP candidate–now front runner John McCain should pick up very quickly that mantle and make it his own.