The dilution of today's conservatism

The new Tea Party-infused Republican majority in the House of Representatives has already fallen prey to a classic Republican Party ploy. The elite party establishment is forcing these angry, eager, and politically extreme novices to water down their true beliefs in order to garner votes for the 2012 election cycle. In trying to appease future voters, restraint and moderation are gutting the heart of what the Tea Party movement is all about. Republicans need to hold true to their core beliefs of limited government, rather than compromising with Democrats to create a more palatable form of big government.

The budgetary slashes that promised to restore our fiscal responsibility turned out to be farces worth only a few billion dollars, a mere rounding error when compared to the trillions our country owes. The much-heralded frugal approach to spending went out the window as Republicans acquiesced to the Democratic demand for extended unemployment benefits in exchange for a temporary two-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts. It seemed like the party was back to its old games, regardless of the lessons learned from both the Tea Party and the last few years.

The main problem is that these new members were compelled to accept proposals straight from the Republican Party playbook, a set of ideals that has been increasingly diluted to bland moderation. This illustrates the frightening trend that outspokenly conservative viewpoints are being stifled in the party’s legislation. By accepting a politically safe platform in the hopes of beating the Democrats, the reinvigorated Republican Party is compromising traditional conservative ideals. This convenient, though neutralizing, popularity ploy is a version of political appeasement that the whole Republican Party has been guilty of since the dawn of the FDR era and the New Deal.

A prime example of the loss of conservative ideals can be found in the Bush administration. The No Child Left Behind Act was a sham “conservative” approach to education reform that completely missed the mark. While the idea of setting academic standards in the federal regulation of education is traditionally seen as a right-wing ideal, Bush and the Republican Party used a leftist vehicle to carry out conservative principles, implicitly accepting that the federal government has a role in education. A true conservative approach would have severely limited or abolished the Department of Education, restoring the responsibility of educational achievements to local governments and individuals.

The same underlying current was still in play in the Republican platform of 2010, as illustrated by the sorry excuse for conservative ideals in “A Pledge to America.” For example, Republicans planned on making “decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs for today’s seniors and future generations,” when their goal should have been to abolish these unnecessary and unconstitutional creations. Rather than working with interest groups, such as organized labor and senior citizen lobbies, Republicans succumbed to fear of the public’s wrath. Instead, Republicans need to take a strong, simple, and clear stance on what their policies ought to be: abolishing welfare programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, privatizing Social Security, curtailing unemployment benefits, and reeling in the excessive military budget.

In order for the Republican Party to harness its traditional intentions and become a party of real conservatives for the 2012 election, it needs to escape the liberal paradigm and not just appear “conservative” when compared to the extremist left. Republicans and Democrats need to be reminded that there is room for intense conservatism and that the political continuum doesn’t end at “moderately liberal,” but at proper laissez-faire libertarianism.

The authors are first-years in Columbia College.