As the history of our country's two-party system (one that I disagree with, but that's another topic for another day) shows, historically the two parties' ideals were sort of switched. Historically, Republicans represented more truly liberal ideals...smaller government, bigger liberties for Americans. The party stood for economic and social liberalism. You were a Republican if you believed that the government's involvement with your life should be as minimal as possible. In today's world, a traditional Republican would stand for the lowest taxes possible as well as for limited government intervention in social affairs, such as gay marriage, abortion and other morally debatable issues.
The democratic party, on the other hand, stood for bigger government. Government charging higher taxes to provide our country with more. Economically--as a business owner under a Republican government, you could either become as wealthy as possible without any government interference or begin a business that goes down in flames costing you everything, and not have the government to fall back on. Under a democratic government, if your business was wildly successful you would be held accountable by the government to give back to your country a portion of the wealth you have accumulated, and if your business goes down in flames costing you everything you have your government to fall back on and to take care of you. That's traditionally the purpose of a Democratic-led government...to have the government to take care of you/to hold you accountable for giving back to your country.
My confusion comes in here: at whatever point in time it was that the Republican party also became the party of social conservatives. I suppose there's really no way they could fit into the Democratic party, but why the Republican party? How is it that Mike Huckabee can stand up at the RNC and proclaim that his party asks only for smaller government and minutes later rant about how women shouldn't have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies? Why can what you do with your body or your choice to marry whoever you want be the business of our government but how much you have in the bank cannot? Why do Republicans feel that American citizens should NOT be accountable for sharing the immense wealth they may make as business owners with struggling single mothers without access to affordable healthcare, but feel that they should be forced by the government to follow their moral values? The moral values that may have put that struggling single mother in the place she is in the first place.
This has always been my primary example of how much sense the GOP party doesn't make: Republicans oppose abortion, but also oppose paying the taxes to support all those struggling mothers forced to have their children young and uneducated. They oppose abortion and then also tend to oppose teaching sex education in school. It's perplexing. But here I am digressing a bit.
I'm just wondering where and how the Republicans adopted the conservatives and why it makes any sense. A conservative Republican...looking at it historically, this is the oxy moron to end all oxy morons.
I will never forget the day I realized that, traditionally speaking, I would probably be a Republican. A student in one of my PolSci classes proclaimed himself to be Republican. He stated that he supports gay marriage, he supports abortion, he supports people doing whatever they want and the government keeping its nose out of the peoples' asses. What happened to you, Republicans? What happened to the days you could call yourselves the Grand Ol' Party and really deserve it?
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