In one of the wittiest columns written by a conservative on the state of the Republican Party, P.J. O’Rourke argues for The Weekly Standard that conservatives’ main mistake in the last couple of years, nay decades even, was that they did not implement conservative policies and forgot what true conservatism is all about.

Instead of realizing that tax cuts are a tool or a result of conservative principles, ‘tax cuts’ became a goal. Cutting taxes was good, always, the argument seemed to go.

But that is not why conservatives tend to favor cutting taxes, O’Rourke correctly explains, because they value the right of property, individual freedom and believe in fiscal responsible behavior. Tax cuts are not an end, they are a means. 

And the same goes for the debate about abortion: increasingly, conservatives have argued a 100% anti-abortion policy. But this is not going to work. Society has changed, limited abortion has become more acceptable. Instead, then, of arguing for an overthrow of Roe v. Wade as such, O’Rourke says, conservatives should aim at limiting the damage. 

Pro-life, O’Rourke continues, also means that immigrants have to be accepted and even welcomed. They are now risking their lives in order to get into “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” while conservatives increasingly advocate tough laws and even guarding the border themselves, by carrying guns around and shooting immigrants as they try to cross the border. If conservatives value life so much, the witty O’Rourke writes, why don’t they treat illegal immigrants with a bit more respect?

Lastly, O’Rourke says, conservatives will have to articulate the core message of their ideology again:

 

Conservatives should never say to voters, “We can lower your taxes.” Conservatives should say to voters, “You can raise spending. You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs. But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs. We have three ways to pay.

“We can inflate the currency, destroying your ability to plan for the future, wrecking the nation’s culture of thrift and common sense, and giving free rein to scallywags to borrow money for worthless scams and pay it back 10 cents on the dollar.

“We can raise taxes. If the taxes are levied across the board, money will be taken from everyone’s pocket, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and least advantaged will be harmed the most. If the taxes are levied only on the wealthy, money will be taken from wealthy people’s pockets, hampering their capacity to make loans and investments, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and the least advantaged will be harmed the most.

“And we can borrow, building up a massive national debt. This will cause all of the above things to happen plus it will fund Red Chinese nuclear submarines that will be popping up in San Francisco Bay to get some decent Szechwan take-out.”

Yes, this would make for longer and less pithy stump speeches. But we’d be showing ourselves to be men and women of principle…

 

He concludes:

 

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That’s not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. “Jeeze, 230 pounds!” But you can’t pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters–all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs–think so too.

We, the conservatives, who do understand the free market, had the responsibility to–as it were–foreclose upon this mess. The market is a measurement, but that measuring does not work to the advantage of a nation or its citizens unless the assessments of volume, circumference, and weight are conducted with transparency and under the rule of law. We’ve had the rule of law largely in our hands since 1980. Where is the transparency? It’s one more job we botched.

 

O’Rourke’s column is a long read, but I strongly advise you to read it.

Although I do not agree (neither does my good friend Jules Crittenden) with him on every point his main message is correct.