Taxation With Representation: How Conservative Angst is Preventing Constructive Political Debate

I was recently having a conversation with a fellow student, and we were talking about the debate in Texas about whether or not students should be allowed to carry concealed guns on campus. This student and I happen to share the same view that concealed guns should not be allowed on campus, and this view happens to be one of the few that we have in common. I am a liberal, and he is a conservative. I vote Democrat, and he votes Republican.

This fellow student then recounted a story to me about a conversation he had with one of his professors on the subject of concealed guns on campus. When he told this professor that he was against allowing students to carry concealed guns on college campuses the professor asked him if he was a liberal. The student told the professor that he was a conservative and a Republican, but that he was pro gun control and pro choice. “You’re a conservative Democrat.”

This story perfectly illustrates one of the fundamental problems with the current Republican Party; it is a basic misunderstanding of the fact that elections (and the minds of the voters) are won in the middle. The rhetoric that is coming from the Republicans is not unlike what came from the Democrats in the early 1980s and to a lesser extent in the early part of this decade. As the Republican Party has moved further to the right they have lost the moderate and independent voters, however, the ironic thing is if you ask a typical conservative why the believe any given Republican lost an election they will tell you that they where not conservative enough.

Today “conservatives” are participating manufactured dissent; they are apparently protesting taxation with representation. These Astroturf protests, which have been organized by Freedomworks and promoted by Fox News, are a symptom of a problem within the conservative movement. The problem with the conservative movement is a lack of new ideas, or the ability to package the fundamental ideas of the conservative movement in a new way.

The very idea of reenacting the Tea Party protest is perplexing. The Boston Tea Party was because colonist where upset about the fact that taxes had been levied by the British government without colonist beyond allowed to vote on those taxes. The people that are protesting today voted in November and their elected representatives have been casting their votes since January.

There are conservative activist will say that they are protesting the spending or that they believe that we are essentially taxing future generations. Others will use words like “socialism,” “totalitarianism,” and “fascism.” The only central idea or them that the protest have in common is that they are angry, and that they feel that their views are not being represented. The problem is that their views are being represented, and they are angry because their views are no longer in the majority.

However, this is not revolution. This is frustration, frustration which is allowing only the most conservative voices to be heard, because they are the only ones that are speaking. The ironic part is that because the Democratic Party has made such gains in Congress the only Republicans that remain are from dark red districts and states, and thus the rhetoric and policy positions is a dark shade of red. Until a leader stands up and says that the Republican Party is open to new ideas and to different view points, and that those who would rather shout from the outside are only divisive the Republican Party is going to continue to find itself on the outside looking in.

Although I may be experiencing schadenfreude while the Republican Party implodes, I do not believe that a weak Republican Party is in the long run good for America. I believe that when you have two great political parties the clash of ideas produces better ideas and policies, which is good for America. The political debate in America should not be the demagoguery of talk radio or the incoherent shouting on cable news. It should be a conversation between two people with different ideas about politics and policy over a cup of coffee, or even tea.