Listening to President Bush deliver his State of the Union speech reconfirmed to me that conservatism is dead within the national Republican Party. Of course, most Americans realize conservatism died within the Democratic Party years ago, but now it's time to face the fact that conservatism is also dead within the Republican Party.
If I had closed my eyes, I could have concluded that it was Bill Clinton instead of G.W. Bush speaking before Congress last Tuesday. His speech was laced with calls for increased federal spending, increased federal power, and increased federal bureaucracy.
Compare Bush's call for bigger and bigger government to the words of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater said, "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden."
Goldwater continued, "I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Not since Ronald Reagan have the American people heard anything resembling true conservative convictions emanating from the lips of any prominent Republican. Sadly, Bush I and Bush II have turned the Republican Party into a pale image of the Democratic Party. As a result, genuine conservatism no longer exists within either major party in Washington, D.C.
If voters truly want to vote for historic conservative principles, they will be forced to vote for an independent ticket this November. My choice is the Constitution Party, but one thing is certain: a vote for President Bush is not a vote for conservatism. It is a vote for bigger and more intrusive government. From a conservative perspective, a vote for Bush is a wasted vote!
It's time that conservatives awaken to the reality that political parties come and go, that they are merely political vehicles through which principles may be transported into public policy. Whenever a political party abandons the principles people believe in, it is the duty of people to abandon the party for a more reliable form of transportation.
Therefore, since the national Republican Party is obviously a broken down jalopy, it needs to be traded in for a new model, one that has the internal combustion to transport conservative principles back to Washington, D.C.
© Chuck Baldwin
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