conservatism

It doesn't take a DC insider to know that conservatives are in a battle for the soul for the Republican Party. It is a battle for the future of fiscal responsibility in America. It's a battle between the George W. Bush wing of the Republican Party and the Reagan/Goldwater conservatism that made our nation the strongest, most prosperous and freest in the world.  

We constantly hear that only moderate centrist Republicans can win in some places. And that is true. But what kind of moderate?  

First Read today mentioned the fight between Palinism and McDonellism. This will be a journalistic trope for a while, so it's worth noting what a false choice it should be. First, if we accept the terms for the sake of argument, Palin was a McDonnellite before McDonnell, since her success in Alaska was based on addressing practical issues of governance with a common-sense conservatism that appealed to the right and the center.  

Sometimes I wonder whether "getting the government out of our bedrooms" (supposedly accomplished by Lawrence v. Texas) wasn't just a ruse so people could imagine they were more free. Yeah, I know that women are free to destroy their fetuses too. Getting the government out of wombs is also marketed as another ultimate form of freedom (based on "privacy"), but what I've never been able to understand is this: if "privacy" gives the woman a right to have a scalpel inserted into her body to cut out her fetus  

THE Right Honourable Michael Howard QC MP was the guest speaker at this year's Sutton Coldfield Conservative Association annual dinner which took place on Thursday November 12 at Sutton's Town Hall. The former leader of the party told the town's Tories: "The country needs a General Election and a fresh start." The event was attended by nearly 200 people from Sutton Coldfield and nearby associations. Also attending the event were Sutton councillors, local members and Birmingham City Council leader Mi  

The same is true of polls asking people about their party affiliation — more and more people polled by Rasmussen and Gallup are swinging to the GOP. I think this switch is one of the reasons that the Democrats are making this incredible health-care push now. If Obama and company can create a huge, new middle-class entitlement of the kind they're pushing over the objections of the majority of the American people, I suspect they think they can create a base that will not desert them for decades.  

The ballot opened yesterday for the General Secretary post in the PCS - civil servants union. Voting continues until 12 noon on 17th December. Mark has done an excellent job so far, in very challenging times.  

The 19th century American writer Henry Adams said the descent of American presidents from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant was enough to discredit the theory of evolution. The same could be said of the pantheon of conservative political heroes, which in the last half-century has gone from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin. That refutation may be agreeable to Palin, who doesn't put much stock in Darwin anyway.  

"My Government intends to stuff the Tories come election day and a jolly good thing, too!" the Queen told Parliament. Well, not quite. But as near as dammit is to swearing, as my mother would have said.