Is Republican Conservatism Finished?

I wrote my college history thesis on the foundings of the modern conservative movement in the United States. I found the study fascinating as conservatives built themselves into a hardened political voting block that helped to elect Republican presidencies and congresses. So when I awoke and read The Washington Post this morning, I was very interested in a column on the future of conservatism in American politics.

In today's Washington Post, political columnist E.J.Dionne questions the future of conservatism as a political force in the United States. Dionne distinguishes the fragile link between social conservatives and libertarians who have worked in unison to dominate the political scene for the past forty years.

In this article, Dionne notes recent developments that have brought the conservative movement to the brink of fragmentation. Run-away spending, stem cell research, and the war in Iraq have worked to divide social and libertarian conservatives in a way similar to the split seen in the 1992 Presidential election, the last time a schism within conservative circles gave way to massive Democratic gains across the United States.

It is in the final piece of the article that I want to dedicate my comments. Dionne argues that political movements suffer and decline when they lose self-confidence. Liberalism crumbled as an electoral coaltition after the 1968 election. With the fall of the liberal order, conservatives forged a coalition of voters between southern Democrats, midwestern union workers, and business friendly groups and enacted systematic changes to New Deal programs at all levels of government.

As Dionne argues, the decline of conservatism leaves a vaccum in American politics. I caution Democrats who may feel this vaccum can be absorbed by shifting existing policies to big-government sollutions. Each political shift is defined by the socio-economic condition of the country. The progressive shift after the Great Depression reflected the need for an activist government. The post-1968 conservative shift reflected the nation's concern of the counterculture, high taxes, and government social engineering.

Today, our country is defined by the information aged economy. People create wealth through their own ingenuity. I believe the vaccum described by Dionne will be filled by the party who understands that Americans need a government who protects them from the evils of big business and big government, provides security to domestic and foreign enemies, and promotes entreprenurial growth. The next political movement will be won by the party who can offer pension protections, personal information protections, a real national security plan, a new approach to helath care, incentives for technological innovations, and encourages investments (both public and private) in our countries businesses and neighborhoods.

Both parties have an opportunity to forge a new coalition. The party who can shake the grip of existing special interests to write a new platform of ideas will be the party that governs in the future.

I have included a link to Dionne's column below. Click on it to read more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301259.html