I think it was Ronald Reagan who said that someone who was eighty (80) percent a conservative’s friend is a friend.

Mitt Romney is eighty (80) percent a small “c” conservative’s friend.  The number goes higher when we exclude the things that the next President is not going to actually influence.

On taxes, he is for lowering them to some degree.

On spending, he is for reducing it. He can reduce government by five (5) percent of GDP and still be a big government guy.

On marriage, he supports the traditional definition.

On judges, he is for moving towards a bit more constitutionalism.

On the military, he is for strengthening.

On foreign affairs, he is for the internationalist with strength paradigm that has been the majority view since Reagan in the party.

On trade, he is for more free trade.

On economics, he does not appear to be as Keynesian as either President Bush or President Obama.  He seems to be for more restraint on devaluing the dollar.

On family values, he believes in them.  He does not want to change the current legislation, but he lives them.

On business, he wants to create a business friendly policy.

On immigration, he wants an enforcement first policy.

He wants to keep and improve the system that we have.  You can be a libertarian and want a revolution.  You can be a progressive and want a revolution.  Conservatives by definition are not revolutionaries.  Conservatives keep what is good about the past while trying to improve it.  Conservatives are for stability.  The past for most people is not the historical past.  It is the past of their experience.

Mitt is inherently conservative in the classical sense.  He wants to keep what has been his world for most of his life.  His answer on contraception is emblematic.  “Contraception is working just fine.  Leave it alone.”

The issue is that many here on Red State are not conservative.  They want revolution (me too). Radical reduction in the size of government, while a great thing, is revolutionary.  Reducing the government’s role in the markets significantly is a big change.  Creating a judiciary that is constitutional requires remaking a judicial system that has been in place since the “switch in time that saved nine” seventy (70) years ago.  The sad truth for those who want radical change is that Mitt Romney is representative of most of the conservatives in the Republican Party.  They want to keep the New Deal.  They want to keep the Great Society.  They are not keen to change Roe.  They just want to make them a little less intrusive and a little more solvent.

Mitt’s failing is not that he is not conservative. Mitt’s failing is that he does not see the need for radical change and a revolution that will change the New Deal/Great Society consensus in Washington.  Constitutionalism, small government, historical values, pro-lifetime monogamy, abstinence before marriage, pro-individual responsibility, and personhood for fetuses are all radical positions for the majority of voters who grew up during or after the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Conservative for them is keeping the system that they know.  Mitt joins them.

In absolute and literal terms, Mitt is too much a small “c” conservative.  He wants to keep a failing, corrupt and immoral system and reduce it a little to make it more efficient.

But I will still vote for him over a reactionary Obama administration that wants to preserve and expand this same system.

Please rate the Republicans from most conservative to most liberal….

Eisenhower

Nixon (1960 version)

Goldwater

Nixon (1968-1974 version)

Ford

Reagan

Bush 41

Dole

Bush 43

Romney (probably)

You can include Bill Clinton as a benchmark for laughs if you like.

Thanks for playing.

Walter Russell Mead has a great article (link here)on classical liberalism that defines liberalism much like they do in Europe which properly defines today’s Democrats as the reactionary keepers of a failed blue model. Mead also takes a look at today’s conservative movement as focused on a return to the good government practices of Calvin Coolidge.  Mead rightly asserts that neither the solutions of 1900 nor the solutions of 1938 or 1968 will suffice to meet the challenges of the world today.  Today’s Republican party needs to be the party of innovation that creates new solutions to existing problems instead of constantly harkening back to a glorious past in1922 (or 1980).  It was glorious, but it was also 92 (or 32) years ago.

Gringrich captures that spirit even if he does not get every answer right.  Gingrich is gaining support when he should not in any way be polling over 5% in a Republican primary because he is looking for the next big idea.  Voters understand that the current system will not stand under the intense weight of an evolving world and intuitively understand that the voters in 1932 rejected the politics of Coolidge because they no longer fit that (or this) world.  I would have been a proud supporter of Coolidge in his day, but not in this one.  Gingrich is the only person who is not trying to go back to a previous model that no longer apply to today’s realities.  We are arguing over long dead economists who created models before the international flows of capital and information were as prevalent as they are today. Where are the models that account for extremely fluid capital markets, free floating currencies, and increasingly open trade barriers?  I have not heard of them in our current debate.

Some republican voters get that our leadership needs to form a new paradigm for the 21st century that challenges the power structures of the past that encroach on people’s freedoms today while advocating a positive role for an appropriately sized government that accounts for 21st century realities.  Gingrich is not finding many of the right answers, but at least he is asking the questions.