Response: What happened to the GOP (circa 2007)

OK Eleua, a few thoughts follow. Feel free to rebut my rebuttal.
1. You claim that The GOP lost its base and is proud of it and If you stray from the mold of the perfect Republican, you are not wanted, nor are you needed. I agree. Evidence follows. First, we had a fine GOP candidate for president in 2000, John McCain. He was soundly rejected by “the base” as being too moderate. In his place we got Bush junior. This was the new “base” voicing contempt for moderate views. The 2008 election was McCain redux. Having learned his lesson in 2000, McCain selected Sarah Palin for the sole purpose of appealing to the base. She did shore up the base, but also ensured that many moderate members of the GOP voted Obama or sat out the election. After Obama’s win (and let’s face it, after Bush/Cheney no GOP candidate had a chance) the prescription for the GOP by talking heads like Rush Limbaugh was to move farther right rather than recoup the moderate middle. Senator Arlen Specter was forced out of the GOP in 2009 for being too moderate. The congressional election in district 23 in New York went to a democrat due to right wing GOP meddling. Why? The initial GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was too moderate. The democratic candidate won and the base rejoiced at its new purity, in spite of losing a seat in congress. So, which “base” are you talking about? Is it the uncompromising ultra-right wing base or the independent folks in the middle? It sounds like you’re saying that the GOP lost you (it certainly did me) by rejecting everyone that was not the perfect Republican. That means not conservative enough, which brings me to….
2. What are the qualifications for being “conservative?” You list how you qualify as a great Republican. Let’s see if I can recap it properly: You’re a white guy with a family, pro-life, pro-guns, anti-immigrant, and anti-affirmative action. The only thing you left out was putting God into politics and you could’ve won the GOP blue ribbon. That oversight notwithstanding, I agree, these do seem to be the current qualifications for being a “conservative” in today’s GOP. These are also the reasons I think the GOP has a limited life—a foundation of exclusion. My GOP qualifications are nearly identical. On the issues, however, I’m a bad Republican. I too am pro-life, like every person I’ve ever met, but I don’t think that a bunch of powerful white guys should make procreation decisions for every woman in the land. (I’m incensed by the pro-life label because the implication is that everyone else—exclusion again—somehow gleefully desires the ending of a pregnancy. I’ve never met a pro-abortion person, but I have met many people who don’t think that they should decide this issue for all women.) This single issue represents one of the fatal pitfalls of the conservative base—it has become the issue for the base, to the neglect of almost all others. (See What’s the Matter with Kansas by Tom Franks for a complete discussion of this phenomenon.) I’m also ‘wrong’ on the immigration debate. Illegal immigrants are here, and keep coming, because businesses seeking cheap labor employ them. Again, look at the incentive. Illegals wouldn’t come if there wasn’t a place for them to work and improve their lives. My real problem with the immigrant issue is that it is often ill-disguised racism. I think there are some serious issues with illegal immigration (think Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations), but I do not support an “us against them” mentality. We’ll explore this topic more in depth in the future.
3. In years past, I would have been a great Republican. Not so in the Neo-conservative movement. I’m not sure the Neo-con movement is the correct label for what has happened to the GOP. In general, the neo-cons provide the intellectual backstop for foreign policy and the wielding of American power. I’m talking about Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Richard Pearle, Paul Wohlfowitz, and company. I’ve actually been looking into this phenomenon for several years now—how a neo-con (neo=new and con=conservative) can embrace essentially liberal ideals of globalized meddling and call it “conservative.” I don’t believe that there is anything conservative about the neo-cons. Conservative thoughts on power are to have enough of it, but keep it home and ready until called upon to unleash a overwhelming can of whoop-ass. I’ll address this topic in greater detail in a full post later. In the meantime, check out The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama by Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman.
4. With regard to our politicians’ being cozy in bed with Wall Street and embracing globalization with open arms and frenzied breathing, I completely agree. That's what I don't understand about the modern GOP, you say. I’m right there with you, but I think we can understand it. My method of truth in these days of nothing-but-spin-and-talking-points media “news” coverage is to rely on logic. My brain, and those of my fellow Americans, still works. A lot of our brains are rusty, but clean off the cobwebs and lubricate the creaky joints and we’ll all be better off for it. That is the purpose of this blog—to incite people to think for themselves. My simple method is to ask who has the incentive to take what action? So, we all agree that politicians are in bed with money. That’s their incentive and makes perfect sense (and it also won’t go away until money is taken out of politics—perhaps the only action that can save our sinking democracy. More on that in a later post.) So we know what the politicians will do each and every time—they’ll act in favor of those who have bought and paid for them. (For a fun intellectual exercise, go to http://www.opensecrets.org and see who owns your politician. Then, check their voting record to see how closely it matches the interests of those who own them. It’s an eye opener….) The business side of the equation is equally simple to assess. The incentive is profit (for the company/shareholders and the CEO/management). It follows that they want the freedom to increase their bottom line. This entails everything from keeping workers’ wages as low as possible (Wal-Mart), to moving money off shore in tax shelters that their politicians provide for them, to moving production (assuming that anyone produces material goods in America these days) to a poor country where wages are dirt cheap, thus taking care of the pesky workers’ wages problem once and for all. This is a serious issue and deserves its own post later. For now, however, interested parties can reference The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman. I have serious issues with his analysis, but he has been the major voice trumpeting the grandness and inevitability of globalization. It seems to be the paradigm of our time, but I fear that we’ve embraced it prematurely and are reaping some negative repercussions as a result of this headlong rush into the unknown. As you point out, there is an impact on American jobs, our economic base, and the future prosperity (or poverty) of our country.