I wish that instead of arguing for tax cuts, conservatives would argue for restoration of a free-market economy, across-the-board. First of all, they have nothing to lose.
Liberalism is on the rise, though only by default, and even the Republican Party, long associated with conservatism, is now headed by a reluctant conservative-come-lately. Arguing for an across-the-board free market would also associate conservatism with a positive, overreaching idea. Leaders are supposed to see above and beyond the moment. They’re supposed to see beyond, “You need health care? I’ll give it to you, for free. You need lower mortgage rates? Vote me in, and I’ll assign that power to the President, on Day One.” Leaders are supposed to tell you how it is, not what they’ll do for you regardless of how it is. In a free country, in fact, leaders are supposed to help ensure that you are left alone–both by government and common criminals. True leaders do not promise to give you things for free that they steal from others by taxing and otherwise unjustly regulating them. Conservatives, in arguing for an across-the-board return to a free-market economy, ought to relentlessly remind voters: “He (or She) who promises to give you things for free via theft from others reserves the right to steal from you, at a later date.” The sort of debate and heat THIS sort of thinking would generate is surely the kind of change that many could be persuaded to believe in, rather than the hollow bromides of a “rock star” candidate who only wants to impose more of the same–much more of the same.