In a press conference last Monday President Barack Obama announced the national deficit would be increased to a record 1.6 trillion dollars in 2010 up from the 2009 deficit of 1.4 trillion. In the press conference Obama stated he was going to be fiscally responsible and that ""It's time to hold Washington to the same standards families and businesses hold themselves."" Conservatives like me wholeheartedly agree. We need to live within our means and work together to solve our country's problems.
Yet the rhetoric coming out of Washington seems to be more in tune with the very politics that the Democrats promised to erase when they were elected in 2006 and 2008. The tired rhetoric of ""blame Bush"" is wearing thin with the American people. Broken promises, soaring deficits, and a 10 percent unemployment rate are causing many to lose faith in the same Democrats that claimed they would change the business as usual attitude and fix the economy when they took office.
The woes the Democrats face have presented conservatives with a tremendous opportunity to share their own message. This however, brings up a fundamental question:What exactly is their message? The past year has given conservatives time to cultivate and generate new ideas. After being routed in 2008, many in the media were asking, ‘Who will lead conservatives forward?' A better question might have been ‘What ideas will lead conservatives forward?' Conservatism has never been about a person, but rather an idea.
It is the idea that power lies with the people, not the government. It is the idea that prosperity comes through the free market, not through the government agency. It is the idea that individual responsibility is not trumped by centralized authority. It is the idea that the hand of the citizen reaches out farther than the hand of the government to those in need. It is the idea that no matter the color of your skin, the creed you profess, or the background from which you come, we all have the chance to earn prosperity.
It is these principles that conservatives have been cultivating and refining. For years many conservatives began to forget those very principles that they once stood for. After the 2008 election, conservatives were able to take a step back and look to see where they went wrong. Now almost a year and half later, they have become the coalition of solutions and ideas.
Organizations like American Solutions, The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Health Transformation have been leading the way in coming up with solutions to the problems facing our country today. Solutions like achieveing health-care coverage for all Americans without the federal government creating another bureaucracy. These organizations have come up with solutions to fixing our economy that stimulate growth through empowering business and the consumer through tax cuts and tax incentives. They have proposed ideas for cleaning up the environment without costing the average family over $1,000 as the proposed cap-and-trade bill does. They have proposed solutions to education, job creation and national security all while empowering the individual instead of government.
Although conservatives are coming up with new ideas and new solutions, they are constantly belittled and marginalized by the left as mindless, thoughtless, bigots who wish to do nothing but see Obama fail. The new tagline coming from the left is that Republicans are the ‘party of no.' While it's true that conservatives do see many of the policies coming out of Washington as bad for our country, they are not opposing Democrats simply because they themselves have no alternative solutions. Conservatives instead see a better way of solving the challenges confronting our nation. No amount of disparaging rhetoric will change that. Conservatives have regrouped and are ready to tackle the issues that face America today.
While the left will continue to marginalize them as brainless, fear-mongering, Glenn Beck watching bigots, their hateful, venomous words will soon be drowned out by ideas and solutions that conservatives have to fix the problems this country faces. Conservatives will continue to be the loyal opposition and fight for values that empower individuality and personal responsibility, not an inefficient federal government.
Matt Payne is a sophomore intending to major in Chinese and economics. Please send all responses at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
