GOP Chairman: “Bushes Derailed Party, Need Return to Values”

In his new book, GOP head Michael Steele offered some candid and much needed advice to a party that has spent the last few years on the ropes.

The Republican party, he argued, lost its way after Reagan and has managed to frustrate both base supporters and moderate independents. Much of this is due to the political ineptitude of the two Bush presidents, who allowed and at times even aided Democratic excess in big government spending.

Steele cited George H.W. Bush’s early 1990s tax hike, his son George W. Bush’s refusal to veto a single Democratic spending bill in 5 years of presidency, and the wasteful pork-barrel spending of the latter Bush’s TARP fund, which he likened to a massive government kickback.

By caving into Democratic policy, Steele, argued, not only did the GOP frustrate its base of conservative support but gave independents little reason to vote Republican.
The fact is Steele is 100% right, and a biting critique is just what the party needs. Over the last 20 years the party has strayed from its ideological roots, leaving it nothing more than a watered-down version of the Democratic party. This is the reason for the GOPs decline, and this is reason for the country’s left turn in 2008, electing its most grossly socialist president ever.

The Republican party needs to return to its conservative roots if it wants to survive. The neo-conservatism (which is nothing more than a fancy term for a fiscal liberal in Republican’s clothing) of GW Bush needs to be replaced with the classical and honest conservative ideology of William Buckley, the builder of the modern Republican party.