While spending the weekend in Ottawa getting up to speed on the Canadian conservative movement, I was heartened to read this article today about the evolution of the conservative movement south of the border.
Apparently Tea Partiers have decided to focus on economic issues and eschew social conservatism as the basis of their movement. They are crafting a “Contract from America”, modeled on the Republican Contract With America, which successfully advanced a number of conservative reforms, including welfare reform, when the GOP controlled Congress in the 1990’s.
“We should be creating the biggest tent possible around the economic conservative issue,” said Ryan Hecker, the organizer behind the Contract From America. “I think social issues may matter to particular individuals, but at the end of the day, the movement should be agnostic about it. This is a movement that rose largely because of the Republican Party failing to deliver on being representative of the economic conservative ideology. To include social issues would be beside the point.”
Don’t know what this will mean for Sarah Palin, but it is heartening to those who feel that fiscal prudence, not hot button moral issues, should be at the core of rebuilding the American right.
Some of the Contract’s planks include:
- Doing away with earmarks
- Limiting the growth of federal spending to inflation plus the percentage of population growth
- Requiring a two-thirds majority for any tax increase
- Scrapping the tax code and replacing it with one no longer than 4,543 words (a number chosen to match the length of the Constitution, unamended. I wish them luck on that one.)
While social conservative issues are still being discussed, they are not dominating the agenda as they have been in the Republican Party. A survey of 50 leaders of the movement revealed that none of them put social issues as the Party’s number one priority. Most named the “budget” or “economy/jobs”.
Continue reading at the National Post…
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I don’t like watering the goals down so much… I think social issues matter as well. Should we be concentrating on economic issues right now? Yes, but we should never abandon the social issues… they are extremely important!!
Finally! I have long been a fiscally conservative, limited government person that believes in state rights, freedom and liberty above all..yet I have had issues with considering the Republican party or Tea Party movement due to moral social issues. We cannot take the normal Right Wing path by stating the federal government should be limited UNLESS, it concerns abortion, gay marriage, drug policy, etc. IF the Tea-party movement truly embraces the principle of being about limited federal government involvement, fiscal conservatism and True Liberty for ALL….you can count me in!
This a rallying cry to vote against every Democrat, progressive, and RINO that voted for Obamacare. The reason there no transparency is because there were at least 5 or more lobbyist firms who wrote the bill not our Congress. The health care bill still has a Doctor fix and many doctors won’t take any more medicare or medicaid patients! No we are going to hire 15,000 IRS agents to enforce Obamacare. This is sickening.
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