Next Conservatism

"In one of the early columns in this series, I pointed out that, if we look back over the last thirty or forty years, we see that the Left won the culture war while we conservatives won politically. It is true that we won politically, in the sense of winning elections. Republicans now control the White House and both Houses of Congress, something we could not have even dreamed about forty years ago. But to assess where conservatives are in politics today, we have to look beyond just winning elections."

"The question is do we have power? Not power for ourselves but power for the common good. I would venture that while we have influence, we often lack power. And as my old colleague Howard Phillips used to teach there is a profound difference."

This is an article from a Conservative site that expresses dismay at not being able to advance the cause of Conservatism, even though they control the White House and both Houses of Congress.

The problem is that Bush is not only not a true Republican Conservative, but he has a different agenda altogether. He's not really interested in advancing the mainstream conservative cause, but favors that of the so-called Neo-Conservatives, who couldn't care less about the Republican aganda. Arguably, these 'neo-cons' shouldn't even be considered Republican or Conservative, but Imperialists. Their agenda is in the global arena. They're interested in making the world subservient to American power, via the Project for a New American Century. To this end, they've employed tactics to gain contol of the government that are now resulting in investigations and prosecutions. The implementation of the neo-con policies have resulted in Republicans begining to distance themselves from the President in an effort to save their own political skins, because many don't believe they can survive the elections of 2006, being too closely allied with an administration racked by corruption and extremely low approval ratings.

I care as little for much of the main Republican agenda as I do the Democratic one, but if the Republicans do maintain a hold on Congress, and even win the next White House, I sincerely hope by then they've purged themselves of this neo-con pestilence, shoving them back to the fascist fringes where they belong. If they don't, the Republic is in mortal danger.