CEI's Fred Smith/Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds to GOP: Don't be Dems-Lite

The irrepressible Fred Smith of Competitive Enterprise Institute talks with Instapundit Glenn Reynolds about the need for Republicans to find a spine, global warming alarmism, and more. Click above to watch. About 11 minutes.

Comments

[Agent Provacateur]

Despit the cool Predicta image I hate PJTV video.

[John C. Randolph]

The GOP's problem isn't that they're trying to be "Democrat lite", it's that the Whigs have been winning the internal power struggle lately.

The GOP has been moving more and more towards the Bush/Rockefeller/Wilson/"progressive"/"let's wield all the power we can grab to line our pockets at taxpayer expense" kind of mind-set, ever since they got caught napping by Ronald Reagan.

The GOP today might as well be the Whigs. The original anti-slavery roots of the party show up from time to time, only to be denounced by the Democrats as racists.

-jcr

[Random Dude]

But if you had map the Whig vs. Democratic-Republican parties of old to the modern parties.... which would be the most appropriate comparison?

The authoritarian impulses of the Hamiltonian Whigs definitely are more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic left these days.

As you say, the GOP might as well be the Whigs; this implies the GOP might as well be the Democrats.

[John C. Randolph]

Well, the two franchises of the Ruling Party morphed and adapted over the decades in the process of becoming interchangeably useless. I would say that today, the Democrats are primarily about gaining power by buying votes from poor people with tax money, while the Republicans are mainly about gaining power by buying votes through pork-barrel projects.

They each look for opportunities to smear the others. The democrats' favorite smear is to paint the republicans as racists, and the republicans favorite smear is to paint the democrats as, well.... socialists. Ok, that's accurate, but still.

-jcr

[John A. Roark]

The Republican party of today needs to be hijacked and transformed into the Republican party of Jefferson's day.

[John C. Randolph]

There was no republican party in Jefferson's day. Jefferson's party was the "Democratic Republican Party", which degenerated into todays Democrats.

-jcr

[Random Dude]

I disagree jcr. The party was not considered half Democrat half Republican. The 'democratic' descriptor was used as an adjective referring to the form of governance, namely, 'republican.'

Both Madison and Jefferson constantly referred to their party as the 'republican' party.

[Gregor Samsa]

If transformation is in play, may I recommend the giant vermin?

[John A. Roark]

The whole focus of the conservative movement needs to be a fight directly against the main problem, BIG GOV'T. So we hijack the Republican Party and instill REPEAL as the prime objective. Rid the books of excessive legislation, roll back salaries and perks and get serious about term limits.

[Brandybuck]

Conservatives may want a smaller government, but only in some areas. Talk to a lot of the Tea Partiers, and they start to sound very libertarian... until they get to foreign policy, or the military, or terrorism.

[JB]

The Republicans have been Democrat-lite since they caved into Bill Clinton on the budget.

Give people a real choice between big-spending liberals and fiscal conservatives.

[Michael Ejercito]

The public blamed Republicans for shutting down the government.

[MJ]

In part, because the media frames it this way. When Bush threatened vetoing the budget because it spent too during his term he was charged with shutting down government, when Clinton threatened vetoing the budget for not spending enough, the GOP Congress was blamed. The Dems are always in the right and the spending rathcet must only crank one way.

[Charlie]

I guess the folks that fund Reason have decided it should embrace the pro-torture, pro-war wing of libertarianism typified by Glenn Reynolds and his ilk. Good luck with that.