I was 18 in 1988 and looking forward to casting my first vote for George Bush. Then I watched the convention, and apart from Bill Weld, I have not cast a Republican vote in my lifetime, nor will I in the foreseeable future.

Frankly, big tent or no, any party that would gladly make room for people like Pat Robertson is not a party I would ever support. I grew up in New England, which, though it has come to be defined by our colorful fringe liberals, has been a small-c conservative region since the first buckled shoe hit the beaches of Plymouth. I cannot reconcile the concept of small government with allowing religious extremists to push government into the most utterly personal areas of my life. Hold that against a Democrat who reformed welfare and produced budget surpluses, and you come to understand why an entire generation of young professionals like myself are voting against their economic interests: I am the Democratic version of Kansas--I vote to raise my own taxes because the social agenda of the other party is anathema.

Pat Robertson and his ilk may have secured for the GOP the deep south and unpopulous midwest (which they already had, by and large), but it cost them people like the aforementioned Bill Weld, as well as Lincoln Chafee, Jim Jeffords, and now the last holdout congressman, Chris Shays. This surely played out in similar fashion in other suddenly dark blue states.

Had the John McCain of 2000 run in 2008, the "agents of intolerance" McCain, alongside someone like the estimable Governor Whitman instead of the loathesome, cretinous Governor Palin, you may be having a very different conversation today.

I see your point, and although I'm a little older than you (I was 25 in 1988), I don't necessarily disagree. The marriage of the conservative movement ot the religious right was essential, however, as it wasn't going to win elections without such a marriage.

For my part, I too am "Kansas." I can't vote for a political party that I don't think respects the Constitution's limits on the scope of government -- which basically means that I'm opposed to the social agend of the Democratic party especially when it comes to issues such as "universal health care" (a euphemism for socialized medicine). I don't want to see us become an England in which only one-half the nation works and the other half is on the dole. You worry about the "theocracy" of the right. I worry about the socialism of the left, as I think it will ultimately affect my individual freedom (You can't smoke that cigar! It's bad for the universal health care system).

The McCain of 2000 wasn't electable in either 2000 or 2008 -- he could never have mobilized the conservative base because of his "compromises" on issues like immigration and gun control that are key to many conservatives. He had to move right to have even the slim chance he had this year. If he'd run the campaign you suggest, Obama would have won by an even larger margin as we'd have had two sets of differing degrees of liberals running, and no conservatives at all.

There are good things in the conservative viewpoint, as you acknowledge. I acknowledge there are appealing things in the liberal viewpoint, too. What is absent in the political discourse is compromise. Over the next four years I expect small government afficianados, such as myself, are going to see an expansion of federal power without any changes to the Constitution to authorize that expansion. This is just as bad a violation of the principles of the country as is the unauthorized wire tapping of the current administration.

It's the difference between real conservatism - New England's Yankee self-reliance, willingness to stay out of their neighbors' private lives but willingness to work together to get through winter hard times - and fake conservatism, which is southern religiosity and bigotry, smiling nicely while figuring out how to cut their neighbors down a peg or two.

The GOP is not conservative, it is radically rightwing. And the radical right is just as subversive as the radical left was in the 1960s. The radical left wanted to overthrow the government from the streets. The radical right wants to destroy the constitution and the government from within. Deregulate government agencies which help protect our air and water and natural resources so that fatcat businessmen can make backroom deals to mine, ranch, deforest and pollute for profit. Deregulate industry so that certain business families can benefit by putting all the competition out of business, leaving much of the US with the equivalent of the GUM department stores. The more powerful the families, the more they can buy political seats in order to write legislation favoring themselves.

Take away rights and deny rights to all but those who can afford them. That is not conservative, that is righwing. I wonder if Dick Cheney's daughter wants to get married? Barry Goldwater paid for an illegal abortion for his daughter while his party railed against abortion. It wasn't until 1992 that Goldwater took an active stand in favor of a woman's right to choose. He voted against abortion in the 1970s and signed an anti-abortion GOP statement in 1980, waiting until his wife (a founder of AZ's Planned Parenthood) left the house before he signed.

George HW Bush bought his son an undeserved seat in the Air National Guard during Vietnam, trading political favors for a jump to the top of the waiting list. Meanwhile, GHW was a war hawk at the very moment he was getting other men bumped off the National Guard list in order to ensconse his manly-man son in a cushy part-time stateside position while those other guys went off to war.

These are rightwing tactics, familiar to people from banana republics where the wealthy families buy their rights and the non-wealthy have to figure out how to steal theirs. When they non-wealthy get caught, it's jail, ruin or death. When the wealthy get caught - well, they mostly don't. They pay off enough people to keep their secrets.

That is what the GOP in the US wants. They rail against Darwinism being taught in schools, but they are its biggest champions in the political world. They are not politically conservative at all. They don't want to improve the US educational system, they want to destroy it. They want to pay for their kids to have the best and screw those who weren't smart enough to inherit a fortune so they too could buy the best. They want to express their personal hubris politically and make everyone bow down to their personal high opinion of themselves..

Outstanding synopsis of the GOP that I've witnessed in my 60 years on the planet. Thank you, Guylinder.

Guylinder: Not all southerners are bigots, and most church goers are pretty nice people uninterested in cutting anyone down. One of the strikes against the liberals in this country, in my book, is their constant state of arrogant smug -- "We know what's best for you and yours better than you do," expressed in such statements as "southern religiosity and bigotry" (and no, I'm not from the deep South. I'm from Missouri).

The GOP may not be truly conservative. What alternative does a conservative voter have? He can vote for the GOP candidate, who at least pays lip service to conservatism, and who has a chance of being elected, or he can vote for the Libertarian candidate who has no chance of being elected, or he can vote for the Democratic candidate who doesn't share his conservative values. Not much of a choice there, is there?

I don't see the GOP as trying to destroy the Constitution from within any worse than the Democratic party is trying to do. The Constitution doesn't call for, and only narrowly authorizes, the regulatory agencies that help protect air and water (those regulations are thinly authorized under the aegis of the commerce clause). The Constitution always encouraged businesses and U.S. laws favor mining, logging, ranching and other agribusinesses -- and businesses are run for profit ("profit" isn't a dirty word). Those laws date to the 19th century. Change them if you have political power, but don't blame them on the current incarnation of the Republican Party, anymore than you give the current GOP credit for the Emancipation Proclamation.

If you want to know how come businesses are leaving, look at the prices these existing regulations put on their production. They still might have stayed, but Clinton signed NAFTA into law, and made China a most-favored-nation in trade. Of course businesses are going where production costs less.

I'm not certain I see where you see rights beeing taken away by the GOP. The wire taps? I addressed that above. I'll venture to say that four years from now my right (and it is a right, both by 200 years of tradition and under a SCOTUS ruling) to own a gun will be either severely limited or taken away. Who wants to limit rights again? Will I be able to opt out of the socialized medical plan as I can with my own insurance -- oops, I seem to have lost freedom of choice (where are my rights?).

I almost hesitate to address GWB's Air Guard service, but bottom line your allegation that GHWB "bought" him a place there, and that the place was undeserved, has never been proven. The one proof offered was a forgery -- and I don't care whose son you are, the Air Force won't let you fly jets as GWB did unless you're qualified to fly them. He missed some Guard drills -- big deal. These accusations usually come from someone who has never worn a U.S. military uniform and we veterans find that somewhat annoying.

"Hubris" comes in many forms. Liberals always seem to want to interfere more in my day-to-day existence more than Conservatives do. Conservatives mostly want the government to leave them alone so they can get on with their own lives and livelihoods. But I suppose that's "bigotry and religiosity."

jbtowers, very good post. One thing I take issue with is the characterization of voting for higher taxes as voting against one's own economic self-interest. Government needs to do some things, and while you can argue about what it should do, there should be no argument that government should be able to pay its bills. That means budgets should be balanced and at least part of the public debt needs to be paid back. It is no good to let debt pile up like this.

"Hubris" comes in many forms. Liberals always seem to want to interfere more in my day-to-day existence more than Conservatives do. Conservatives mostly want the government to leave them alone so they can get on with their own lives and livelihoods. But I suppose that's "bigotry and religiosity."

If government lets business do what it wants, you would get industrial disasters even more regularly than is already the case. Think S&L, LTCM, Enron, WorldCom, the dot-com bust and the financial meltdown.

Business is run for the profit of the controlling officers, who are playing with other people's money. As conservatives always point out, this is a recipe for waste. More importantly, it is a recipe for risky behaviour.

The biggest difference between 19th century businesses and 21st century businesses (aside from the separation between ownership and control) is that you only have to be succesful in business for a few years, and then you have more money than you can spend in the rest of your life. The Founding Fathers could never have foreseen just how rewarding it would become to take risks at the expense of others.

Thanks, Trapdoor, for your thoughtful reply. I agree to some extent that the accomodation of the religious right was politically expedient in the short-term, but I think in the long term it has purged moderates from the GOP in two ways.

First, my own example demonstrates how the GOP has narrowed its appeal to younger voters, and we (rather, "they," at this point) age into other demos and higher income brackets, you see the fundraising edge go more often not just to Dems but to the Move Ons of the world. I think Free Republic and Drudge and Town Hall and other sites show that the right can work the internet just as well as the left, yet the first internet generation is trending left and/or indifferent. Maybe that's always true of the age group; maybe it's indicative of a broader pattern. Regardless, where is the next generation of conservatives going to come from? Those inspired by the Bush years? Fans of Kelsey Grammer (probably a mistake to use the plural there)?

Second, it forces make-up votes, by which I mean people in the Northeast vote against people in the Southeast in federal elections. We feel compelled to offer up a nearly fully blue slate to counteract the effects of the very red states embracing social conservatives. If the GOP is the anti-choice, pro-gun, megachurch party, then blue states will feel they can't afford to elect a moderate Republican lest the balance tip. Further, both 2006 and yesterday show that the Democrats can undercut the value of the religious right by offering up a mirror-image of someone like Bill Weld: a socially conservative, fiscally moderate candidate. Now your southern "Kansas" voter no longer sees a dilemma in voting Democrat, as Ms. Dole discovered.

I also agree with the broader notion that moderates have to pick their poison one way or the other in the current two-party system, but, well, I'm not a smoker and I don't care for handguns--when paternalism takes the form of public health and welfare rather than mala prohibita, it has a more rational appeal, in my view.

On McCain, I disagree that turning his back on social conservatives would have widened Obama's margin, or that it would have made him a second liberal candidate. What I think is true is that it may have cost him primary votes in a lot of states, but again, that's short-term thinking. Obama and McCain both moved right during the general election, which made Obama more appealing to moderates, and McCain less.

Finally, speaking as an attorney, the Constitution is not the place to make a last stand on anything. It is now and ever was as malleable a document as you'll find. It's a very broad outline of rights; it's specifics are mechanical. What conservatives mean when they say "judicial activism" is, judges doing what judges have always done and coming out with a decision they don't like, whereas "strict constructionism" means judges doing the exact same thing and coming out with a decision they do like. I learned this in the Federalist Society, which (hearkening back to my conservative roots) I joined in law school then soon quit when it became clear that they couldn't care less about the Constitution or federalism unless it supported their agenda: at that time, examining the contents of Clinton's boxers. On actual Constitutional issues, I have more respect for a guy like Bob Barr (his interest in Clinton's nethers notwithstanding), who joins with the ACLU in response to the Patriot Act.

JB: The tragic fact is MOST people will always fall in that "indifferent" category -- which is one reason conservatives get up in arms over the apparent bias in favor of Democrats in most of the media outlets -- indifferent people believe what they hear in the media and vote accordingly.

I was discussing George W. Bush with my own mother, who is politically indifferent, and she said these exact words, "Well, he never showed up for his National Guard duty." That isn't a true picture of Bush's Guard service -- in which he served and even showed up for his "drills" for most of the time he was in uniform, but he apparently missed most of the drills of his last year of service. My mother merely listened to the media and formed an opinion -- and that opinion was that he never showed up at all. I'm not saying his service was in any way stellar -- but an accurate picture of it wasn't provided to "the indifferent." You had to dig to find the reality.

Younger people have always voted liberal, and it isn't just a phenomena unique to the United States. Winston Churchill said, "A young person who isn't a liberal has no heart. An old person who isn't a conservative has no brains." (that's a paraphrase, not an exact quote, but close).

Which socially conservative and fiscally moderate candidate did the Dems offer this time? You're not referring to Obama, are you? He's socially liberal, and fiscally liberal as near as I can tell.

I also agree with the broader notion that moderates have to pick their poison one way or the other in the current two-party system, but, well, I'm not a smoker and I don't care for handguns--when paternalism takes the form of public health and welfare rather than mala prohibita, it has a more rational appeal, in my view.

And this is my big disagreement with liberalism in general. I ask not to be protected from myself -- I'm an adult, I'll take care of myself. I don't need to be told not to smoke (and I, too, am a nonsmoker), or what objects I can and can't own because they might be unsafe. The risks are mine, not "society's" to manage. It doesn't matter how "rational" the appeal, it's unappealing to be treated as a child.

McCain would simply have re-alienated a conservative coalition that already considered him a "hold-your-nose" vote by being more liberal.

Finally, speaking as an attorney, the Constitution is not the place to make a last stand on anything. It is now and ever was as malleable a document as you'll find.

Again we disagree. And while I'm not a lawyer, I'm a rather good student of the Constitution and its history, and even the court cases regarding a number of questionable constitutional authorities. Strict constructionism merely means if it says the government has no right to illegal searches and seizures, then the government doesn't have that right. Without this interpretation, the document can't provide the limits on governmental authority it was designed to provide. If it can willi-nilli be reinterpreted to mean new things, then it is meaningless. If you were once in the Federalist Society, then you have to be aware of what Hamilton wrote in Federalist 84 about not needing a bill of rights, becuase there was no need to prohibit the government from actions it was never authorized to take -- it could take only authorized actions and no bill of rights was necessary. The Constitution is only as malleable as the amendment process. You can amend it to expand the government's authority to do almost anything -- but without such an amendement, the government doesn't have that authority. On that, the document is, and should be, as hard as adamantine.

For what it's worth, I'm no fan of the Patriot Act, either. But I'm also no fan of socialized medicine, and I think that "the government governs best which governs least." (H.D. Thoreau)

"Conservative by the time you're 35"
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"

Damon2: Thanks for that -- I was quoting secondhand in any case. But yes, I think Winston would have made a disparaging point about his political opponents, even if they included Clemmie. He never conflated the political with the personal outside himself.

Trapdoor -- I think we can mostly agree to agree about where we disagree. One brief rebuttal... I understand the differences in Constitutional Theory (the fact that I capitalize the words should confer no endorsement of the concept), and this is a whole other discussion, but, let me explain what I mean about judges judging, using your example.

The Fourth Amendment reads, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Now imagine any set of facts you want where someone might be searched. In order to measure it against the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, you need to define almost every word that appears other than articles and prepositions, and not just the obvious ones like "unreasonable" and "probable." Who defines those words? If I am pulled over for a broken tail light, can a locked suitcase inside my trunk be searched? Is that reasonable, or does it depend on the circumstances? What if it appears to be a rifle case and there was a sniper attack on the other side of the state a week ago with a car similar to mine reported by a pathological lying crack addict witness as speeding away from the scene?

A judge has to decide all of those questions, and sometimes the plain meaning of a word--especially one like "reasonable"--is subject to a debate. So again, if he comes down on the side of the police, he's probably a strict constructionist; if he comes down on the side of the suspect, he's probably a judicial activist.

This oversimplifies the issue, and law professors make big bucks coming up with better examples, but you get the idea. Anyway, thanks for your response.

JB: I understand what you're saying, but most of the big constitutional issues aren't like the 4th amendment one you described.

If you believe in the concept of enumerated powers (which I thought officers of the court were constrained to do), then the government has only those powers that are named in the Constitution. We can quibble over whether a search is reasonable or unreasonable, but bottom line, most of the time you need a warrant to do a search -- but searches themselves ARE authorized powers..

There isn't much room to quibble about a specific power that isn't named in the document. If it isn't named,it doesn't exist and the federal government doesn't have that power -- it falls among those powers that belong to "the states or the people" under the 10th Amendment.

I don't see authority for socialized medicine.

Trapdoor,

Excellent and well reasoned posts. I follow the issue regarding the Constitution with interest as I also believe the Feds have overstepped their bounds in many areas, mostly since the New Deal, the court packing threat and the depression.

Among the problems is the imprecise nature of language. The liberal approach to a "living" document is exemplified by President Clinton's remark about "It depends on the meaning of 'is'."

Those who wish the Constitution to be a piece of putty, perhaps firm putty, but putty nevertheless; and as you say, therefore meaningless, have language on their side. Taking just a few simple clauses - i.e. the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause, they have managed to ignore the enumerated powers clause and essentially do what they want. They prefer to sidestep the mechanisms for change set out in the document itself and have their way through judicial fiat or just definitional frauds.

While the populous remains mostly ignorant on the Constitution (credit our educational system) government feels unfettered in their revisionist mode.

Regarding where a moderate goes to find a home, I suggest what I think Plato had to say about the subject of government: Those who don't wish to get involved are destined to be governed by their inferiors. I'm sure I've take great liberty with the exact quote but the meaning is clear. A moderate has one of three choices, join the R's or D's and try to moderate them or start an independent third party. None very appealing, but then our democracy was designed to be messy.

Thank you Trapdoor and jbtowers for such an interesting discussion. I must quibble with Trapdoor on the statement below.

“Liberals always seem to want to interfere more in my day-to-day existence more than Conservatives do. Conservatives mostly want the government to leave them alone so they can get on with their own lives and livelihoods.”

As a fiscal conservative, I voted Republican (generally) for years. Now there is no way in hell. To me true conservatism is, as you say, leave me the hell alone but the Repubs have become no better than the Dems in this regard. Repubs will leave me alone except in regards to controlling my ovaries and uterus, the manner in which I die if I have a terminal condition, the use of effective medication (I’m talking about medical marijuana here), what goes on in the privacy of my home, which gender I share my bed with, etc.