Conservatives in Washington, D.C., need to make some changes to get the government back on track, according to Steve Moore, senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal.
Moore delivered the address, “How Conservatives Can Get Their Mojo Back,” during a John Locke Foundation Headliner event in Winston-Salem.
Moore says the first area that needs attention is pretty obvious:
That is with respect to believing in small government. If you go back to the party of Goldwater and Reagan, it was always a party based on the very premise that government should be very limited in its function, and we should follow the Constitution in terms of the rights and responsibilities of the government.
What we’ve seen over the course of the last five years especially — but I would argue this actually goes back almost to the start of the ‘Republican Revolution’ that happened with Newt Gingrich — is that the longer the Republicans have been in power, and they’re now in their 11th year of power controlling Congress, the more they have become comfortable with government and comfortable with Washington.
There’s an old joke. We used to say this joke about liberals, that liberals would come to Washington to do good, and they would end up doing well. And that’s actually what’s happened — in my opinion — to a lot of conservatives.
Moore says he would like to see the Republican Party move back to its traditional support of limited government.
He also outlined a three-pronged approach to immigration reform. First, support a robust flow of legal immigrants (“We should keep our golden gates open to those who want to come”) — while taking steps to secure the borders and fight illegal immigration.
Second, conservatives should use concerns about immigrants’ impact on welfare programs as a new basis for attacking the welfare state itself, Moore said. Third, he urged government leaders to push for greater assimilation of immigrants within American society.
Conservatives should also respond more vigorously to liberals’ class warfare, Moore said.
I’ve always believed that our movement — the conservative movement — is about expanding the size of the pie, and the Left’s vision is cutting up the pie in as many slices as they can.
Moore says the conservatives’ support of growth will trump liberals’ support of redistribution.
