Conservatives will find that millennials, often identified as a dependable source of support for President Obama and the left, can become a large part of the conservative movement.
Cruz is succeeding in plugging a vacuum of meaningful, and more importantly intelligent, conservative activism both in the Senate chamber and in US politics as a whole.
Right now the GOP is losing the middle class, Hispanics, women, and millennials like water through a sieve, and for good reason. By changing their messaging, they can stymie the flow and decrease the influence of extremism on the party.
The Grand Old Party's fundamental problem is not outreach. It is policy. As long as the GOP is dedicated to being more conservative today than it was yesterday, then its minority outreach is doomed to failure.
Do people's politics really say that much about who they are, though? Certainly, political affiliation is related to people's beliefs about social issues and the role of government in people's lives. But, does political affiliation predict other aspect of people's behavior?
As the Republican Party girds itself for the consequences of sequestration, prepares for the coming rounds of budget battles, and continues to lay the...
Can we please stop referring to Republican "conservatism" and call the party's philosophy and actions what they truly are? I vote for "destructionism," a mix of obstructing and dismantling.
Kansas has become the caricature of the starkly red state the nation always thought it was. Only it wasn't. Until now.
Philosophical conservatism is not a panacea to our nation's problems -- it can be too stuffy, too trusting of tradition, and too attached to visions of a mythical past. But it is a vital component of a healthy political system.
For most of the past four decades, "liberals" have been in retreat. In many quarters, the word "liberal" has become a pejorative. Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe.
If the only places conservatives can get their news bias-free are sources committed to their own cause, there is no need to face up to "reality" as such. It's an endless loop of victimization and self-justification.
Lobbyists and other moneyed interests have taken over the conservative movement and have refused to draw a line between their own personal enrichment and the policies they profess for the rest of us.
What might the world have lost if, instead of letting memorable women in literature stand on their own two feet, we'd been given forgettable titles like Anna Karenina: The Bureaucrat's Wife.
That Republicans failed to capitalize on such an advantageous political landscape, should be cause for honest reflection, not illogical scapegoating. Blaming the wrong thing will only guarantee similar failures in the future.
The enormity of last week's super-storm is just beginning to sink into political consciousness. Hurricane Sandy should transform what Americans expect from their government, and give the party of government activism new force. As soon as the election is behind us, the country faces a major struggle over what the super-storm portends and requires. But that struggle will be as much within the Democratic Party as between Democrats and the right, because of the deadweight of austerity politics. If the fix is in for a budget deal that precludes government's ability to spend serious money on climate remediation, flood protection, and a shift to a non-carbon economy, the United States of America is just plain screwed. Few presidents get a do over. Let's see whether Obama grasps the challenge and the possibilities.
To repair its economy, the U.S. urgently needs finely-tuned macroeconomic policies and institutional changes. For this challenge, a rational voter would not rely on the Republican pseudoconservative political stance that, after helping to bring about the Great Recession, has foundered in self-contradiction.
The polarized politics of our time, joined with an appetite for pigeonholing, exert pressure on everyone to categorize themselves. Sometimes people declare themselves for "isms" that they have not plumbed. An example in point is conservatism. The politicians who now travel under the banner of "conservatism" happen to espouse views and methods that are incompatible with the philosophy bearing that name. Meanwhile members of the opposing political party have imbibed a dose of the wisdom conveyed by conservatism. This includes a cautious disposition to welcome expert reasoning about economic policy, reasoning of the sort desperately needed for recovery. When the details of this are made clear, so are voters' alternatives in the forthcoming election.
The problem is not, as David Brooks postulates, that "Republicans like Romney often rely on an economic language that seems corporate and alien to people who do not define themselves in economic terms." The problem is that the GOP now represents those who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor.
Conservatism has lost half of its intellectual firepower. Republicans need to recover traditional conservatism or risk becoming irrelevant....
There is no reason to choose between progressive and conservative thought. Progressivism allows for purposive change from an unacceptable status quo; conservatism introduces caution. The mature country would embrace both.
The real danger of right-wing extremism today is not necessarily the medieval views advanced by party advocates.
When conservatives celebrate the small, self-made business owner or invoke the views of the American Founders, they are really appealing to independence, not individualism.
Both conservatism and liberalism are built on moral insights of one kind or another, and no one rational can fail to see that moral flaws like greed and dishonesty exist all along the political spectrum. The problem is that on the right, irrationality and opposition to moral values are not merely personal flaws. They are policy.
Addressing the 2011 gathering of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, University of Virginia psychological scientist Jonathan Haidt asked those who considered themselves politically conservative to raise their hands. In an audience of more than 1,000, three hands went up.
If your political philosophy is directly contrary to your faith and equally dismissive of the best substantive ideas conservative thinkers have offered, is it little surprise that the Romney/Ryan ticket is seen as without substantive idea.
