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February 10, 2012
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February 7, 2012
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
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Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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January 30, 2012
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Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
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Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
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Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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January 13, 2012
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
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David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
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Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Oct. 31, 2007
/ 19 Mar-Cheshvan 5768
Small-tent conservatives
By
Tony Blankley
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
My goodness, professional conservative activists and commentators certainly are busy these days trying to put up a pup (rather than a three-ring) tent for the GOP. A few weeks ago, it was social conservatives reading Giuliani out of the party. Now, in an almost Sicilian revenge pattern, several free-market, low-tax conservatives are coming after Mike Huckabee with baseball bats or perhaps with badminton rackets (given the elite Eastern origins of the attackers.)
One prominent conservative commentator last week, whose writing and judgment I usually admire, warned us that Huckabee was yet another in a long line of "Southern Poor-boy Populist Demagogue(s).
"Think Huey Long or George Wallace, James K. Vardaman or 'Pitchfork' Ben Tillman, to name the most salient examples of this genus. … Even so canny a politician as Franklin Roosevelt feared Huey Long, for Long's motivational skills among a huge segment of the Roosevelt Coalition."
Forgive me, but while I never met Huey Long, I have met, sat down, broken bread and talked with Mike Huckabee. He is no more like Huey Long than our pet kitten "Tiger" is like his jungle beast namesake. Huey Long's use of his state police to bully Louisiana politicians and businesses (as well as his vicious demagogic rhetoric) earned him the dubious place he has in our history. As far as I can tell, Huckabee's worst sins are refusing to sign Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge and expressing in word and policy some limited sympathy for the working poor of Arkansas.
While I support Norquist's pledge and hold a hard-line position on illegals, it is absurd to consign Huckabee to some ideologically dangerous, nondemocratic, political zombie graveyard. Free-market, low-tax conservatives may point with alarm at Huckabee's policies if they wish. But what is it in the conservative drinking water recently that gives rise to such bilious language and such excluding ways of thinking?
It would behoove those of us who have been conservative Washington voices for some decades now to exercise a little modesty and humility when it comes to defining what will constitute the new, winning, principled conservatism for the next generation. National conservatism has won more elections than it has lost in the past quarter-century. But in the absence of a completely dysfunctional Democratic Party, we are not likely to continue to do so in the future with exactly the same talking points and programs we have held in the past.
Once before, conservatism had to change: before we gained national support. When I entered conservative politics in 1963, conservatism opposed, for example, federal aid to education, the proposed Medicare program and the Voting Rights Act. Today, there are few, if any, elected conservatives who would vote to outright repeal Medicare, the Voting Rights Act or cut off all federally subsidized college loans.
Similarly, today the conservative GOP unconditionally opposes any limitations on free trade despite the rise of China and India, the lowering of our wage growth rates, the hollowing out of our industrial base and the reduction of U.S. economic dominance in the world. And it opposes any tax increase for any reason.
I am not prepared to abandon our vigorous free trade policies or support a tax increase. I have yet to see a convincing argument against low taxes and free markets. But neither am I prepared to consign to beyond the pale my fellow conservatives who no longer see unadulterated free trade in the national interest. Nor will I categorically write off those who sense that even conservative voters may, under some circumstances, be prepared to pay with taxes for wanted government programs (such as transportation at the state and local levels.)
As a Burkean conservative, I believe in the organic development of our institutions and methods. It has always been the left that, with the unjustified intellectual pride of the atheist, attempts to impose man-made party ideologies on his fellow man rather than let our civilization slowly unfold through the fuller play out of our character, institutions and values.
But Burke also wrote, "A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation." So too, conservatism needs the means for change.
And yet today, it is many of my fellow conservatives both social and economic who insist on an ideological and programmatic purity, even as a baffling and fast-changing world has only just begun to humble the conceit of the overconfident and certain.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. Comment by clicking here.
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