Am I a Republican?

I want an answer because increasingly, in this election cycle, I find myself disheartened in a way. This man that everyone keeps talking about, he doesn’t represent my party, or my beliefs. We have nothing in common. His opinions are not mine. Donald Trump is no Republican, and I am certainly not the first to say it. If you look at Mr. Trump’s stance on fundamental issues such as gay rights, the minimum wage, abortion, they simply don’t align with conservative ideals. Not even remotely. But don’t take my word for it. I encourage you to do your own research. Because when you attack this man with facts and logic, I want you to know that you are not attacking my beliefs; you are not laying waste to my morals. Mona Charen, a conservative and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C., asked, “Is Trump a liberal? Who knows? He played one for decades — donating to liberal causes and politicians (including Al Sharpton) and inviting Hillary Clinton to his (third) wedding. Maybe it was all a game, but voters who care about conservative ideas and principles must ask whether his recent impersonation of a conservative is just another role he’s playing.”

Truth be told, I agree with Charen. Yet, I must concede some credit to Mr. Trump. He is good at what he does for a living: lying. The man is a phenomenal actor. He has swept the nation with promises of change, promises of something new, something different from the “rotting establishment,” and he has done so convincingly. His method isn’t new, but it’s surely effective. Trump divides. He puts clear-cut labels on people. He strikes fear into the hearts of the masses, convincing them of dangers that often times don’t exist–the same masses who are scared of the unknown, ones who have been historically susceptible to manipulation through their fear. It’s brilliant, and right now it has Trump sitting atop of 744 delegates, which at the moment, is more than the next two closest candidates combined. Some say that it can’t be. How can a liberal posing as a conservative be leading the Republican polls? The answer is pretty simple. Think of a glass of water. Think of the Republican Party as the glass and conservative principles as the water. The glass holds the water and without it, it would just be another empty glass. Similarly, the Republican Party harbors conservative principles and without them, the party would just be another interest group. The twist is this: the glass doesn’t need to be filled with water in order to quench someone’s thirst; it can just as easily be filled with Gatorade, or orange juice. In other words, the party doesn’t need to be backed by conservative ideas in order to fill seats in Congress. It can just as easily build a new platform every election cycle depending on the candidate running. In reality, all the party needs is popularity. So come this July, Donald Trump may very well be a Republican, but he most definitely will not be a conservative.

So what does it mean to be a conservative? Honestly I haven’t given it much thought until this point, and to be perfectly blunt, I’m not even really sure that there’s a definitive answer. So, let’s start from the very beginning. Conservatism was coined in the 19th century by European politicians who wanted to undo the work of Napoleon. Ok, maybe not that far back. Fast forward a few decades and we find ourselves in a destitute world economy after the market collapse of 1929. It was widely agreed upon that the best solution for this issue would be the creation of welfare states; we saw this in places like the US and the UK. These were states that were highly involved in their citizens’ lives, states that funded massive public works projects to create jobs and stimulate their economies. And it worked. Well, maybe. We can never really know for certain because the emergence of WWII played an enormous role in their economies, and that arguably got most nations out of the Depression. That’s beside the point, which is that these new welfare states were something that the world had never seen before. This brought to light a question. “What now?” In 1953, with the election of an old white war hero, it seemed like the United States had made up its mind. It wanted out of welfare. Actually, that’s not true. It took another eight years and a particularly sleazy candidate to flip the script once more, but this time for a little longer. President Nixon offered a new form of thinking, a slightly less entitled one. Truth be told, this new thinking didn’t take hold for another seven years, under President Reagan.

Throughout the fifty-six years that preceded President Reagan, the United States became dangerously enamored with the idea of entitlements. What are entitlements? Entitlement is defined as having a right to something. Entitlements are things that the government owes citizens; they’re like extended rights, things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and food stamps. The idea was that the government would provide basic things to their citizens that needed it because it was their obligation to do so. The issue is that entitlements today are completely different animals than they were 80 years ago. Somewhere along the way they’ve mutated into something much more serious. Take the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare for short, for example. The idea is pure: free healthcare for those who need it, at the expense of those who can afford it. But the issue is that nothing in this world is free. ObamaCare comes at the expense of employers and employees. In fact, the law is reducing the pay of workers at small businesses, by a minimum of $22.6 billion a year, per the American Action Forum. I reference this case to bring up an important point. Conservatives tend to be practical. Now we’re starting to derive who a conservative really is.

Well, what do conservatives believe in? On paper most conservatives will advocate for cutting entitlement programs such as ObamaCare. They support this for practical reasons, not greedy ones. It doesn’t make sense to eliminate jobs and create poverty in an attempt to help the poor. They will advocate for a limited government, capitalism, and respect for innocent human life, which is why the pro-life stance is so deeply rooted in conservative ideology. They will advocate for traditional marriage, and family values, which is where a common misconception comes into play. Conservatives aren’t religious zealots. They don’t want to keep you away from the person you love because their religious doctrine says so. Conservatives just ask that if you support the separation of church and state, the respect must be mutual. Keep the government out of church affairs just as the church will stay out of the government’s. Conservatives believe that the term marriage is a sacred term, which is why often times you’ll get married in a church and most of the time you’ll get married by a priest or a person with a religious title. This doesn’t mean that two people who want to be together can’t; it just means that the government only has the power to label it a civil union, at least in their courthouses. This goes for all couples. Later, if a couple wants to get married it’s up to them to find a religion that will gladly support them, and these religions do exist. Conservatives will advocate for respect of and for differences between men and women. Men and women are different. And that is totally O.K. Just because we are different does not mean that we are any less equal. It’s ridiculous for girls to try to match boys in certain things and for boys to try to match girls in others. If we were the same then there wouldn’t be two biological sexes.  Conservatives will also advocate for private medical care and retirement plans, minimal taxation, and most importantly, respect for our military.

For those of you who were hoping that somewhere in this article I would prove to be some misogynistic, religious zealot, I’m sorry. I’m not. I’m an American, just like you. Conservatives and Liberals certainly have one thing in common: we love this country. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t care this much about its future.

So I want to close with this. Do you remember that glass of water I mentioned a while ago? I want to go back to that. I want to remind you that Republicans are people who support an institution. Conservatives are people who believe in principles. For a while the institution defended a conservative’s principles, and so conservatives backed the Republican Party, but as everyone can see, things are changing. Donald Trump may be the end of the Republican Party, come this July. It is entirely the party’s doing, and for the leaders of the party I feel no sympathy. Letting Mr. Trump associate his name with the Republican establishment was the very first mistake the party made. They knew that Mr. Trump was no Republican but they valued publicity over principle. They made a mistake. But I don’t feel sorry for them. Instead I sympathize with the millions of conservatives, like myself, in this nation who may not have an institution to represent their values anymore. I have no doubt that Mr. Trump will auto-destruct a great American institution in a few short months, but he will not—he cannot—tarnish the even greater principles that that institution championed long ago. So I know that I’m a conservative, but am I a Republican? It depends. I’ll let you know in July.

Sources: AP, Forbes, History Channel, BBC, National Review, American Action Forum, WelfareInfo, Wikipedia

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