Moving Right

by William Palumbo, New York YRs

The Republican Party should shift significantly more conservative for two important and complementary reasons.

First is the matter of statecraft. The once great Democratic Party is intellectually bankrupt and has morphed into a party of false promises and handouts – more government jobs, economically unsustainable environmental and healthcare programs, and unrestrained immorality.

The American people are smart enough to sniff out this bunk; we know that government possesses no magical powers capable of solving life’s problems and alleviating personal guilt.

The Democratic candidate poses little threat to an articulate, conservative Republican.

Republicans lost this election partially because of a cycle, but more so because our rhetoric. Even when it was clearly articulated by a largely inarticulate John McCain, it rang hollow when matched with our past actions.

Over the last eight years, the size of government expanded rather than contracted. Yes, government expansion is a threat to our economy, but more gravely its threat is existential in nature. We must reverse course or our nation will assuredly suffer decline; perhaps not with this generation, but the lessons of history foretell inevitability. Republicans must start acting as statesmen and -women and less like Democrat-lites. This is of monumental importance.

Second, while bolstering the statecraft argument, social conservatism wins elections. To say nothing of her politics, consider Ayn Rand’s refusal to support the Libertarian Party because she believed political campaigns cannot educate the public. Aside from my belief that socially conservative values, arising from the organic family, form the bedrock of a society hostile to government encroachment, they are also electorally popular. There should continue to be sufficient wiggle room for local and state candidates, but the national Republican Party must remain the party for socially conservative voters, both because of their aggression towards government growth and for practical matters of winning.

Moreover, some Republicans have taken this loss as evidence that the country has shifted leftward. Exit polls suggest otherwise. What has happened is that Republicans have shifted leftward, leaving voters with an unfortunate choice between a gradual decline in freedoms, or a swift one, camouflaged in the vagaries of hope and change. Given the choice between Republican sorrow for a once-free nation ambling slowly down the road to socialism, and a promised socialist utopia, is it any surprise whom the voters chose?

Republicans need to find a charismatic, conservative leader, well-versed in the dangers of big government and learned in the institutions and values that underpin a free and democratic society. Perhaps in four years we will have this in Sarah Palin. If not, look elsewhere. No nation, not even a great one, can exist under the insatiable demands of a government that long ago burst free from its fundamental constraints.

This election was a wake up call. Yes, we lost. But let’s not lose our way.

William Palumbo is the Publications Chair of the New York Young Republican Club.