The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as a party based upon the conservative principles of personal liberty, smaller government and economic freedom. The terms “Republican” and “conservative” have been held as synonymous in common political thought for generations.
These ideals, however, have become neglected by the core of the Republican leadership. In the past 35 years, the U.S. has had three Republican presidents: Reagan and Bushes elder and younger. All three, hailed by Republican voters and the establishment alike, have overseen dramatic increases in the size of the federal government in personnel, spending and power.
First, to clarify, Reagan and the Bushes are not conservatives in the true sense. They are “neoconservatives,” or, according to Merriam-Webster, “conservative(s) who advocate the assertive promotion of democracy and United States national interest in international affairs including through military means.”
Through these men, the Republican Party has simply become an organization that touts conservatism through rhetoric, but in reality advocates for the same exorbitant amounts of deficit spending as liberal Democrats, except with more of an emphasis on national defense.
Conservatism by definition calls for smaller government and fiscal responsibility; only in recent times have the neoconservatives brought on this notion of interventionism and militarism. High levels of military spending and interventionism were once the policies of progressives; it was liberal Democratic presidents who advocated for the U.S. entrance into both World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, while the conservative, old Republican administrations that followed often reigned in the spending resulting from those conflicts. The neoconservative Republican administrations of the last 30 years reversed this, completely violating conservative values.
Reagan’s administration was fiscally irresponsible, with high levels of deficit spending for entitlements and a new focus on the military, which before Reagan’s tenure was at its lowest portion of the GDP since 1962. His policies added over a trillion dollars to the national debt.
The next Republican presidents, the Bushes, brought the U.S. into arguably unnecessary wars with Iraq that, especially the second time around, wrought the government with even more massive debt. They also refused to significantly cut entitlement spending, and, in fact, oversaw continued increases in its proportional spending to the federal budget.
Along with the emphasis on national defense came a neoconservative Republican interest in surveillance, beginning with Reagan’s executive order 12333, which created the loopholes in surveillance which have allowed intelligence agencies like the NSA to collect American’s phone and internet data.
This continued with the Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, which brought on further intrusion by the federal government by expanding warrantless surveillance through wire-tapping and bulk data collection.
In its 1856 platform, the early Republican Party listed in its grievances “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, has been violated.” Yet, over a century and a half later, the Republican Party goes back on its own support of personal liberty and establishes programs which violate it.
Economic freedom, perhaps the most recognized symbol of conservatism, has also seen a decline at the hands of the neoconservatives. While Reagan actually did promote deregulation, the burden he placed on the economy with his deficit spending was deplorable.
Worse, however, was President George W. Bush’s administration, which added billions in new regulations and rule changes to established codes. Under George W. Bush, the U.S. economy could actually be considered less free and more regulated than under his democratic predecessor.
The Republican Party was once a bastion of liberty, smaller government, fiscal responsibility and economic freedom. Gone are the days of the party being the balancing factor in American politics along with a fiscally responsible guiding hand and the most influential protector of the Founding Fathers’ will.
The future of the Republican Party does not appear appealing to conservatives either; the frontrunner of the 2016 nomination is an authoritarian populist, and the Republican-led Congress has done little to stem the tide of runaway spending.
The greatly divided Republican Party has created many uncertainties, but, rest assured, the neoconservatives have established fiscal irresponsibility and interventionism to the party’s reality. Through Reagan and the Bushes, the Republican Party establishment has become yet another complement to larger government and less liberty.
The Republican Party has betrayed conservatives; perhaps it is time for conservatives to betray the Republican Party.