Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on the GOP's Troubled Relationship with Lady Liberty

The GOP is suffering from a massive existential crisis about whether it should become more Big Tent or more "pure" to repair its badly damaged brand after eight awful Bush years. Over at Forbes.com, Shikha Dalmia, debuting her bi-weekly column, says that Republicans could do both by becoming the Party of Liberty and throwing out the label "conservative."

"America's institutions are built on principles of liberty, they (conservatives) claim, therefore defending them means defending liberty," she notes. "But labels shape self-understanding—and the term conservatism shifts the emphasis from defending America because it is the land of liberty to defending liberty because it is American."

Whole column here.