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The Nation's Pulse
A 2012 Conservative Case for America’s Future
In other words, it’s a make or break year for constitutional conservatism.
The United States is at a fork in the road regarding which way we will go as a people. The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime, and conservative leaders have reached a consensus on how to channel the energy and concerns of the American people to realize historic change this year.
The status quo will not survive the year. Our debt and spending have reached catastrophic proportions in the context of global financial difficulties and political upheaval. Consequently, by the end of 2012, America will either have taken a decisive step toward socialistic collectivism in the name of “equality” and “social justice,” where businesses and owners are punitively taxed to “pay their fair share,” or America will take a major step in the direction of returning to our Founders’ constitutional government, restoring the rule of law, federalism, free enterprise, and individual initiative and responsibility.
The American people will decide which path to take in the 2012 elections, not only in the general election on November 6 but also in the nominating process in primaries over the next several months for all major offices, including the presidency. Conservatives must act in a concerted and informed fashion in all of these contests to shape the public dialogue and thoroughly vet the candidates.
To achieve these ends, top conservative leaders acting under the umbrella of the Conservative Action Project have released “A Conservative Consensus for 2012” announcing agreement on major policies. These issues span all three wings of the conservative movement: economic, social, and national security.
The Conservative Consensus speaks to economic issues of fundamental tax reform, Obamacare, overhauling regulation, and energy production. It tackles social issues of strengthening families and advocating traditional values and religious liberty. And it covers defense issues of protecting the homeland, military superiority, and national sovereignty.
This document also advocates specific issues all conservatives must regard as essential. America needs a strong Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that caps federal spending. Immediate and drastic cuts to the federal budget. No corporate bailouts. The Second Amendment right to bear arms is a fundamental right, as is voting, so the ballot box must be protected from fraud and corruption. Because voting is also a citizen’s duty, reasonable conditions must be enacted to safeguard our democratic process. And none of these can succeed unless the right people are appointed as judges to our federal courts.
Achieving these goals is a tremendous challenge, and true constitutional conservatives must relentlessly pursue building a true coalition between the three wings of the conservative movement.
This means that true conservatives must not allow anyone to redefine conservatism as only about fiscal issues and the reach of government. Constitutional conservatives understand that strong families are the essential foundation for long-term economic prosperity. The demographic reality is that declining birth rates and rampant abortion creates a devastating loss of human capital that cannot sustain our entitlement systems or economic growth, and also result in millions of unfilled job positions that become a magnet for illegal immigration.
Fortunately most conservatives understand that national security is crucial to America’s success. But some wrongheaded individuals seek to silence or marginalize social issues, oblivious to the profound reality — proven throughout history — that where families crumble there is an unstoppable public outcry for government to fill the void with massive entitlements and programs. Government always grows when families fail.
Some economic leaders with libertarian or liberal beliefs fail to grasp this simple fact, and so pervert the concept of freedom to mean that individuals are free to do whatever they like, free of any concept of right-and-wrong or of personal responsibility or self-control. They willfully ignore our Founding Fathers, who believed that limited government only endures when individuals govern themselves.
Some social conservative leaders are making the same mistake. They were right to reject an unrealistic “truce” on social issues. But some are essentially calling for a truce on economic issues, supporting candidates who stand for traditional values but are not reliably conservative on limiting the size, scope, and cost of government.
While both social and economic issues are indispensable, and both move votes, the reality is that fiscal issues are moving more swing votes in this cycle than value issues. Social conservatives will overreach if they force voters to choose between the two by insisting on traditionalist candidates who are not also warriors for free markets, federalism, fundamental entitlement reform, and a strong Balanced Budget Amendment. Social conservatives must demand equal standing, not superior standing.
A perfect example where all three branches of conservatism can join forces is our national debt. America is now $15 trillion in debt, an unprecedented level exceeding 100% of our Gross Domestic Product. The only time we even approached such a proportion was the end of World War II, where we were in a global war that threatened our very survival as a nation. Instead of a temporary military emergency, our current debt is being fueled by deficits of over $1 trillion every year Barack Obama has been president.
In addition to an economic issue, this debt is a social issue. Our profligate spending is intergenerational theft, saddling each member of the next generation with over $120,000 in debt once they become taxpayers. That’s a mortgage on a house, with no house.
It is also a defense issue. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said our national debt is the single greatest threat to national security. We are on track to be paying $600 billion per year just in interest on the national debt, more than our entire military and security budget. This hamstrings our ability to defend our nation today while developing weapons and systems to protect us tomorrow.
About the Author
Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio is Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Platform Committee. He also serves on the boards of the Club For Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.
About the Author
Ken Klukowski is a fellow with the American Civil Rights Union and is on faculty at Liberty University School of Law.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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Alan Brooks| 1.4.12 @ 6:41AM
"The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime,"
What a Platitude.
Actually, the last important election was '84.
emo| 1.4.12 @ 9:58PM
your posts are pointless nonsequitors, as opposed to nonsequitors with points.
Moe Blotz| 1.4.12 @ 7:49AM
A famous catcher for the New York Yankees once said,"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Tim the Enchanter| 1.4.12 @ 12:54PM
That was Yogi Berra. That's the first line I thought of when I started reading this article.
Indy| 1.4.12 @ 4:57PM
Indeed, Yogi has some great quotes
http://www.yogiberra.com/yogi-isms.html
" The future ain't what it used to be " How true...
irish19| 1.4.12 @ 9:57PM
Thanks for that link.
Nancy in NC| 1.4.12 @ 8:43AM
I thought this was an excellent article, noting the real differences between what our choices are for 2012.
We better get this right, folks, or the fat lady will sing...a swan song for what was once a great country.
VonMisesJr| 1.4.12 @ 9:07AM
Our Constitution is already in exile.
ObamaCare repeals our "unalienable right to life and liberty." Dodd Frank infringes on our right to "pursuit of happiness" giving DC access to your finances. The central government owns some 90% of mortages and is the sole issuer of student loans. The EPA decides what you can do with your property and now NDAA gives the government the ability to use the military to detain Americans.
And we have socialist morons that will sell their children's future for a handout, not realizing that they are selling their own souls and freedom.
TrueBlue | 1.5.12 @ 12:14PM
Ah, but it's not THEIR freedom they are selling. After all, by the time those things are fully implemented, they'll already be dead. So they get to live life to the fullest, and to hell with everyone else.
Indy| 1.4.12 @ 9:22AM
McConnell and Boehner will continue to damage Conservatives in 2012, there is much work to do to educate voters. GOP leadership is weak an unwilling to take on the Left by playing offense, they constantly place not to lose and what happens, Lucy pulls the football.
Good article, here's another on the proper role of government
http://forloveofgodandcountry......overnment/
Educating voters on the role of government is key and it will not be easy, unless voters understand why America loses if we continue on the path to increased government dependency, Our Republic is gone. My children see their parents doing what we can to make a difference, we want them to know you cannot sit on the sidelines and do nothing. I know others here are doing the same, we must stay engaged no matter how steep the hill.
Al Adab| 1.4.12 @ 10:35AM
Faced with this knowledge, the GOP is attempting to nominate a technocrat who can manage the metastatic federal government better than the Dems. Is there a point in that? Our goal as Conservatives should be to make it smaller not manage it better. Is there a candidate who proposes that?
Timothy L. Pennell| 1.4.12 @ 11:17AM
The ONLY reason, this election isn't over, already, is the Black Community.
They've got AT LEAST, a 17% Unemployment Rate among Adults, and 50% for Black teens and twenty somethings. This President took away the School Vouchers from the Poor Black Children, in D.C. Forcing them in to the same D.C. Public Schools that he said: "Do not meet my Daughters' Standards".
For 60 YEARS, Black America has Sat On it's Ass, waiting for a Welfare Check, from the Liberals. Every other Ethnic Group has run rings around them, in every possible endeavor, with the exception of Being Thrown In PRISON.
I don't know if it's that they have grow ACCUSTOMED to living in a Terrarium, and being hand fed by the State? I don't know if it's like the Bell Curve, says, and they're just STUPID? Or, if like in Darwins' Origin Of Species: They have just EVOLVED in to a Race that can't fend for itself, and needs to be taken care of.
Think - COWS.
They're gonna vote for him for ONE Reason, and ONE Reason only. And they will do it, DESPITE Martin Luther King's Dream, and his Sacrifice.
And, when it's all done, they'll go back to being Fat and Lazy, and sleeping til Noon. Unless, of course, there's a New Michael Jordan Sneaker, on sale at the Mall, whereby, they'll get up early -11:00 - and go down there and try to punch someone in the face, for the things they want. Why WORK, when you can Knock the B*tch Out, and take her Sh*t. That's what I'm talkin about, yo.
Is it Racist?
I don't care.
IT'S TRUE?
And, they will be the Death of this Country, yet.
PJ| 1.4.12 @ 5:21PM
Sadly, the Black community is becoming more & more irrelevant for this country: not enough eligible voters to make a difference on a national level. The Black community is aborting babies faster than birthing them, the men are uneducated & ignorant (not stupid) & dying from gunshot wounds or drugs, & decent women can not find decent men to marry, thus remain childless. ----------> a prescription for a death of a race.
9thID| 1.4.12 @ 11:34AM
Ken & Ken: EXCELLENT article!
This will surely set the Libertine Paulbots off on a new rant. I can already hear Capo Clint's head exploding in the distance...
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - Adams
Slacker| 1.4.12 @ 1:17PM
I disagree. Too many conservatives, including the authors, cannot make sense of the reality that they lost the culture wars. While it is sort of endearing to see some continue the fight, the war is lost. Cultural conservatives remind me of the Japanese soldier who was never told WWII was over and finally surrendered in 1972.
So bash the libertarians if it makes you happy but, the brand of conservatism envisioned by the authors is basically dead.
9thID| 1.4.12 @ 5:20PM
I think 2012 will reveal whether America begins to see a restoration of its Judeo-Christian Founding heritage & revival as we caught a glimpse of in the rise of the Tea Party, or as you make the case for -- a death spiral into a French Revolution and anarchy. I hope you are wrong as secular humanist Europe is a harbinger of what's coming our way...
Petronius| 1.4.12 @ 12:07PM
A full 2/3 of the electorate is too infantile for words. They elected Obama and will do so again because they are the Occupiers who want government to be their mommy, hold their hands, change their dirty diapers, and put them down to watch American Idol until they breathe their last. We Conservatives are to be dispossessed and slaughtered in the liberal version of the Final Solution so that the Government of the Trash, by the Trash, and For the Trash shall not perish from the earth. The Dark Ages are back and here to stay because the lowlife in our midst cannot tolerate even one individual who is better than Them. Their world is an ant hill built of pedestrian mediocrity, mendacity, narcissism, vandalism, and hate. Such people cannot be defeated politically. Our America is already a memory.
Al Adab| 1.4.12 @ 1:13PM
Petronius:
I indeed fear that your vision may be all to real. As T. Jefferson (of all Deists) said, "Indeed I tremble fotr my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
dcd| 1.5.12 @ 4:12AM
The electorate probably will vote for Obama again. Not because they are infantile but because, as the authors make abundantaly clear, conservatives have absolutely no intention of representing their interests.
Conservatives can condemn enviromentalists, choice, science, welfare, gays, secularism, etc all they want and the electorate will vote accordingly.
Yeah democracy, the system everyone can hate.
emo| 1.4.12 @ 9:57PM
""The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime,""
Guess what...2008 was the most important election of our lifetime. As was 2004 and 2000 and 1992 for that matter. 2016 will also be the most important election of our lifetime as well. Why? We have, in the USA, a political party devoted to the destruction of the USA as a constitutional republic. So long as that remains the case, EVERY election will be the most important of our lifetime.
TrueBlue | 1.5.12 @ 12:18PM
Truth.
Brian| 1.4.12 @ 10:15PM
Yes, it's all so clear to me now. Our only hope is to elect cultural marxists, homosexualists, and abortionists. And since they won't have the votes to even touch spending they'll go whole hog after passing their social agenda.
POST American| 1.5.12 @ 7:48AM
"---Understand folks, unless we realize the
unthinkable has already been done to us
---we're finished."
The 4 decades underway,
Globalist RED China world sellout,
TREASON and EUGENICS OP
is the ONLY issue this election
----in fact, this century.
----------MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT-----------