Liberty – What a Concept!
November 8, 2008
I came up with the title of my blog after reading a column on Forbes.com written by Claudia Rosette that managed to open my eyes, more or less due to the simple elegance of its ideas.
The concern that many who typically support the GOP is how they are going to win back the millions of voters that either stayed home last Tuesday due to apathy, or switched over and voted for Obama. Now again, I don’t want to give the impression that I want to start a GOP cheering section, but since I don’t see a viable third party developing in the foreseeable future, and my greater concern for fiscal issues over social ones means I probably won’t be a strong supporter of the Democrats anytime soon, my best bet to find some satisfaction probably lies with the GOP.
Some ideas that I continue to hear include “moving back further right to the ‘base’”, and the “base” is typically strict social conservatives or evangelicals. Others say that the GOP needs to continue moving to center to try to appeal to the moderates that flocked to Obama during this election cycle. In the end, Rosette hit a basic and fundamental idea, yet one that is continually missed.
During the primaries, a certain politician managed to mobilize a very large group of followers with an average age that seemed to be quite a bit younger than any other candidate, Barack Obama included. Now I hesitate to mention his name on this blog because his most devout followers can tend to be a bit unrelenting and rabid in the comments of blogs that talk about him, so let’s just call him “Pon Raul”. I happen to find “Raul” to be a bit of a kook. Okay, I understate the situation by only saying a “bit”, but moving on to my point, “Raul” proved that a message of personal liberty, low taxes, and small government can be packaged in a way that inspires the younger generations of voters that the rest of the GOP so covets. The other interesting point about these young “Pon Raul” supporters is that they generally seemed to dislike the rest of the GOP candidates, and predominately gave their support to Obama last week. Some of this may have to do with anti-war sentiments amongst this group, though the fact that this message of liberty brought in a ton of young voters, who eventually went on to vote for one of the most liberal candidates in recent memory should scare the GOP, or at least make clear how the rest of its candidates are viewed.
Try it out, GOP. Make sure that it’s clear that “Compassionate Conservatism” (or rather Compassionate Big Government Spending) and the K Street Project are ideas of the past. Give up on all the pork. Start fighting once again for personal liberty. If you must make social issues a primary emphasis, at leat push for a federalist approach to the issue. Stick to your principles, and get this message out, and I think that young supporters and moderates may start coming back and the idea of Liberty will no longer seem so antiquated.
