...parliament since 1974, or the end of the Labour Party’s unprecedented 13 years in power, or, quite possible, both of the above, there is good reason to concur with Cameron’s assessment. Although The Economist deemed that the Conservatives held a “comfortable lead” over Labour in March, it has ebbed away in recent weeks. Britain’s political commentators are increasingly predicting that although the Conservatives will still win the most seats, “no...
...lican perspective, Obamacare’s requirement to buy health insurance. As I was putting the data together, many fellow students were surprised that such a straightforward conservative case could be made to support a bill today’s conservatives seem to abhor. The trick, of course, is to recognize the difference between 1993 conservatives and 2009 conservatives. The Republican Party is a collection of many varied conservatisms, all somewhat at odds wit...
After a summer of intense partisan political protests and a series of bold, left-leaning initiatives pushed by the new president, it comes as no surprise that conservatism has united to gain traction in recent months. With a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate, it may be a surprise then that a June 2009 Gallup Poll showed that conservatives are currently the single largest ideological group in the United States: with 40 percent of th...
...ked him in Iowa and Florida, from becoming the nominee. The longer this race goes on, the greater the chance that President Obama wins reelection. The GOP candidates keep pushing themselves to the Right to appeal to religious conservatives and Tea Partiers, but in doing so they are alienating the moderates and independents that will decide the election in November. Romney still remains the assumed nominee, but as he is forced to placate social co...
...in an almost deterministic manner. Jonathan Haidt, the University of Virginia psychologist, proposes a “moral foundations theory” to explain this. In his now-famous TED talk, Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, he claims that each side evaluates care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation differently. For example, both liberals and conservatives ostensibly value fair...
...s infamous flip-flops, he needs a conservative favorite on the ticket with him come November to ensure that the right wing of the Republican Party does not just stay home on Election Day. This is not a huge problem, since all conservatives are fiercely united with the desire to remove Obama from office, but pacifying conservatives will allow Romney to go after the independents instead of having to campaign in Republican strongholds. Rubio fits th...
...he topic prevents the left from speaking out on a pro-poverty platform, focusing instead on rhetoric aimed exclusively at the middle class. This sensitivity to being caught speaking on the issue can easily be seen both in how conservatives have tried to label the Democratic Party a welfare party, and how Democrats have tried to distance themselves from this notion. When President Obama announced that states could apply to replace certain work req...
...n’t include AmeriCorps. “That was his signal to the GOP leadership, ‘I’m not going to fight for this.’ And then over the next year it sort of got creamed by Congress.” It got creamed, specifically, by a contingent of hardcore conservatives who came of age fighting Bill Clinton tooth and nail, and who see in AmeriCorps the worst kind of Clintonesque big-government do-gooderism. It’s useful to recall the rhetoric these politicians and their ideolog...
...rable enough to ensure any sort of uncompromised sustainability. The victories of Senators-elect Jim Webb (D-VA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) reinforce the idea that the Democrats had to go right to go big. After all, both are social conservatives, and Webb even served as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan Administration. But at the same time, liberals like Senators-elect Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) also defeated their incu...
...le Care Act. Without understanding the ruling, response to the Court’s decision should run along party lines: The Democrats were victorious. Paradoxically, however, the Supreme Court’s opinion is still a “sleeper victory” for conservatives. In the oral arguments for NFIB v. Sebelius, the government claimed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was protected under Congress’ right to regulate commerce. Yet, if a citizen had not entered into any insurance,...
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