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What Are Your GOP Core Values?

Submitted by GOP_Rebel on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 21:41
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Updated - One of the tangible benefits to readers of this site who want to move the party forward is that Peggy Noonan's article provides examples of the following GOP Core Values:  Optimism, Liberty, Equal Opportunity, Reform, Respect for our Opposing Party and Love for American Democracy to name a few.  If you'd like to participate in creating the GOP that represents you in addition to a GOP voter turnout machine (which we seem to agree cannot be our only tool in the toolbox), please read, and then respond with the Core Values of your GOP.  

Ever since I read Jon's post congratulating Barack Obama for his historic and remarkable victory, I've been at a loss as to how to process this development. I knew the Democratic primary had to end at some point, but a part of me wished it would just go on and on so that we wouldn't have to face the relentless Battle of the Titans this summer. 

But then, today, Peggy Noonan put it all into perspective for me in that moving and generous-spirited way that made her a master wordsmith of the Reagan era.

It was the night Mr. Obama won Alabama. My friend was watching on TV, in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, looked, saw "Obama Wins" and "Alabama." She said, "Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school." She said, "That's where they used the hoses." Suddenly my friend saw it new. That's the place they used the water hoses on the civil rights marchers crossing the bridge. And now look. The black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

What kind of place makes a change like this? Only a great nation. We should love it tenderly every day of our lives.

Peggy provides more illumination to this event:

Mrs. Clinton would have been a disaster as president. Mr. Obama may prove a disaster, and John McCain may, but she would be. Mr. Obama may lie, and Mr. McCain may lie, but she would lie. And she would have brought the whole rattling caravan of Clintonism with her—the scandal-making that is compulsive, the drama that is unending, the sheer, daily madness that is her, and him.

We have been spared this. Those who did it deserve to be thanked. May I rise in a toast to the Democratic Party.

I'd never have thought of it this way, not on my own.  I'm too caught up in my disdain for Obama's liberal policies to see the absolute greatness of the country that spawned his opportunity.  There's a wonderful optimism combined with a deeply spiritual center behind someone who writes with this kind of appreciation and gratitude over an event that, frankly, just left me feeling queasy.  And yet deep down, I know that Peggy gets it.  Her gift to conservatives is to show us what this whole fragile American experiment is really about,  much greater it is than most of us probably imagine. 

 

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Not GOP core values, just core values

Submitted by jwatson on Sat, 06/07/2008 - 14:24.

I've been a voter since the late 70's, which probably puts me in a minority age demo on this site.

I was registered Independent for many years and my son, while quite conservative compared to many of his 20-something contemporaries, has followed suit.  The GOP gets my vote more often than not because the Democrat party (and most of its candidates) seem to live in a world that I left behind in the "ivory tower" a long time ago.

I am not idealistic when it comes to politics, which is after all "the art of the possible". I sometimes vote for a candidate because they are the lesser of evils, not because I agree with them wholeheartedly.

I frankly have a very jaundiced view of government. I now work in the private sector, but I  worked with the public sector for many years and having seen its inner workings, I believe very strongly in limited government at all levels.

The public sector needs to focus doing a few things on time, within budget, and with quality, specifically maintaining a strong military, keeping the peace, and establishing infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.) Government nowadays suffers badly from "scope creep", which is a malady which afficts any enterprise which can't stop itself  from adding "just one more" item to the agenda or objective to the mission.

A corollary to this is that the public sector needs to stay out of private matters. I am very conservative in my personal values, but I do not want the government enforcing those values, or anyone else's, for that matter. "Hate crime"' legislation sets my teeth on edge; it smacks strongly of Orwell's "thoughtcrime"  and I am amazed that so many so-called liberals are more than happy to have it in place. Similarly, any party which does not visibly and vocally defend rights to property and to privacy will not get my vote.

In my view, the American dream is not a house, or two cars in the garage, or even just "a chicken in every pot". The American dream is liberty. People want to come here and to stay here because of liberty. I have lived abroad and it is amazing what happens to a citizenry when the government begins to take away their liberty in some area. They may adjust, some may even applaud, but others begin to look for the exits. The US has always offered that dream: that someone, anyone, can come here (legally) and work hard and be successful without the government taking away the fruits of that success.  

I will work to elect public officials, regardless of labels, who advocate these values and who act accordingly.