You are invited to read the latest commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

american independence party

“Could you do me a favor with your next article...? I request that you write about the future conservative party and how it and its people will not look like the people in the current conservative party. Our current conservative will need to be on the look-out for future leaders that embody the current… age, but they will possess the ethics their parents and grandparents had and be apart of the silent revival taking place within our churches.” Daniel Freer

My son’s request is his father’s command. In truth I have wanted to revisit the article I wrote some seven months ago on the “Party of the Open Door” That phraseology comes from the Rules of the Republican Party and was done in response to a request from a good friend of mine who has been a Republican National Committeeman for many years. The rule from which it is drawn continues: “Ours is the party of liberty, the party of equality of opportunity for all and favoritism for none.” Those few words must remain the focus of who we are to return to leadership of our country.

Because of my many years of work in the Republican vineyard and my emotional attachment to friends who remain active in the party, I was happy to agree to his request and ran the resulting draft by several close friends of mine running for higher office in other states. While voicing general approval, they provided a couple of suggestions that would have drawn me back into the thicket of the social issues eating at the Party’s inclusiveness, and I ultimately didn’t use them.

In sum the earlier article emphasized the back half of the rule. At its very first convention in 1856, The Republican platform, in part provided: “Resolved: That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution are essential to the preservation of our republican institutions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved.”

Those principles should not change. At its core, it must remain the party of fiscal prudence and guardians of our country’s founding documents. Our forefathers are alive in it and those sacred values for which they fought. These values are enshrined in these documents and are the focus of our political struggle. In recent years, the party has strayed by giving only lip service where dedication is required. It must reclaim the trust it has lost by making it clear that if it is permitted national responsibility in the future, its office holders will act in a manner consistent with its founding values.

Republicans need also to stand for robust commerce and small business, assuring that the opportunity to achieve the American dream shall be fully available to those who are willing to work for it; that it will not be stolen from them through confiscatory taxes and that our citizens may look forward to achieving their goals by consistent attention to those values of hard work and honest exchange that have paved the way to the undreamed of wealth that has been secured by the great majority of Americans. Going forward the Party must be generous to those who need a hand up, and insist upon quality schools for all to ensure that everyone gets the same chance to achieve success through their own efforts. The party has succeeded in the past and will succeed in the future when it is true to its core principles. Polls support the notion, as well, that the Party is preferred in the national security arena to protect us from a complex and threatening world beyond our shores.

It is a prime directive of our republic that “Our Constitution is meant for a moral and religious people. It is unfit for any other.” (John Adams). While that is a statement of fact, it also has no place in a political platform. Moral virtue must be in the bones of the electorate, and no amount of speeches can put it there or elicit votes if it is not. We can and should expect our political leaders to meet this standard, but it is not a substitute for programs and policies the electorate can identify. The Republican Party’s traditional identification with moral behavior of candidates sets it apart as exclusive and morally superior. Quite frankly the public expects Republicans to be morally superior, but the strength of this identification of the party with moral issues makes it all the more damaging when, as is inevitable, one of its standard bearers is found to have feet of clay.

Both laughter and pointing fingers on the one side and anguished howls of frustration on the other greet any moral lapse by a Republican but are ignored as to Democrats. Deviation from the moral high ground by Republicans implicates its core values, but Democrats are united, if on anything, on pillaging of the federal purse for one benefit or another and pay little attention to private conduct by its standard bearers so long as they expand the flow of largesse from Uncle Sam. Private enterprise is to be exploited but not respected.

This focus by Democrats on what government can do for them sweeps along many of those who would otherwise vote Republican but for a feeling that its airs of moral superiority serve as a barrier to inclusiveness. In this regard, our first national standard bearer said, “God must have loved the common people; he made so many of them.” “Them” is the electoral majority Republicans are so sorely missing.

What then is lacking? Nina Easton on Fox noted what was lacking was “big, bold new ideas.” The party is losing its relevance to the mainstream voter, uneducated in the trials of our ancestors and the rewards of sticking to the enduring values that have made us great. It is also failing to show a proper concern for what Americans of all stripes fear most of all, a government that intrudes too heavily into its private lives. Justice Louis Brandeis, writing in 1928 in Olmstead v. U.S. wrote of, "The right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people."

Privacy, “The right to be left alone” is very much on the minds of the electorate. It is an unexploited political issue that conservatives need to make their own, but before doing so, they must come to terms with how such social issues as abortion and gay marriage create fissures in the public’s midst. A clear majority of voters support some right of the unborn, but the struggle ongoing in society regarding what rights and at what point in gestation the public’s interest trumps personal privacy makes it an unsuitable issue for a political party to ride to victory. It is in that zone where an aroused public is going to punish anyone who appears to be sticking his nose into issues of personal privacy. Similarly, as to civil unions, a majority agrees with traditional notions of marriage as being between a man and a woman, but with passage of so called “gay marriage” statutes in just a few more states, it will be difficult for the Supreme Court to deny the “equal protection” under full faith and credit requirements of the Constitution to those individuals when they travel and settle in other states.

The conservative majority can only be assembled by making the party the guardian of the home and its prerogatives. Conservatives must do a better job of assuring the voter that it is their party, a party that identifies with how hard they work, their love of family and their stake in a system of free enterprise with minimal interference from government that is there for them. Such a party would assure that labor and risk both are fairly rewarded and secure in a financial system that does not permit the public purse or the private sector to be held hostage by the risk taking of a small number of firms that have irresponsibly leveraged the assets entrusted to them.

Such a party will safeguard labor and imaginative risk takers by assuring that government protects the efforts of a lifetime from the destructive behavior of those who would break the law. Such a party will respect the sanctity and privacy of individual effort recognizing that it is the free efforts of a free people working to secure their own future that is in the highest interest of all. It is my hope that Republicans will realize all this before the designation of american independence party is initiated with capital letters.

Copyright © 2009 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.