Looking backward

I am not someone who usually attends College Republicans meetings.

I was lured to last week’s call-out by the chance to see Todd Young, a Bloomington attorney planning to seek the Republican nomination for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. I was also curious to see the response of young conservatives to a tough electoral defeat.

Todd Young wants to try his luck at unseating Democratic Rep. Baron Hill in 2010. He was critical of the (currently flawed) stimulus bill. At one point he channeled Thomas Jefferson, referring to passing on debt from the stimulus to the next generation as “an egregious moral act.”

Young’s focus on the budget deficit is not surprising – he founded a political organization called NOPIGS to point out perceived government pork. However, speaking briefly, he had few interesting things to say about the stimulus or the recession. Like many in his party, he challenged his listeners to rediscover core Republican values. 

Turnout was impressive, even accounting for the guest speakers and free food. The audience of eager conservatives watching the meeting’s presentation on the “Seven Principles of the American Republic” seemed roughly twice as large as the group that assembled for last semester’s call-out.

If I was impressed with the motivation of campus conservatives, I was a little skeptical about the emphasis on revisiting founding principles. Calls to return to Republican roots sometimes seem like calls to do nothing.

It’s not that a history lesson doesn’t hold some merit. One of the principles discussed was a “free market economy.” Yet a closer look at the past would show that Republicans, far from being free-market martyrs,  have usually resorted to populist calls for tax cuts at the expense of tougher sells like free trade.

Two of the other principles mentioned were “ordered liberty” and “limited government.” The “ordered” must be emphasized. When in power, conservatives have consistently engaged in their own kinds of social engineering on issues from sex to science.

Republicans were beaten back last November due to anxiety over the economic downturn and, to a much lesser extent, frustrations with Iraq. In other words, they failed to deal with new problems.

Republicans choose to frame the war on terror like a new Cold War, mostly to reap political benefit. Conservatives have generally been right about school vouchers when it comes to education, as well as removing the preferential treatment of employer-provided insurance in favor of tax rebates to individuals when it comes to health care. Unfortunately, they have shown little commitment to either issue.

Republicans need to show a little moral humility. They also need to realize they aren’t fighting the bloated government bureaucracies, suffocating regulation and failed price controls of the 1960s and ’70s anymore. Until then, the GOP will mostly be useful only as a check on Democratic overreach.

At the meeting, plans were made to discuss the seven mentioned principles in greater detail throughout the semester. I hope IU’s Republicans are a little more reflective than their older counterparts.

It would be a shame if the next generation of conservatives came to the conclusion that Republicans only lost in November because President George W. Bush expanded prescription drug benefits.