No “Ideas” at the “Summit”
Enterprise Zones, Health Savings Accounts, Supply-side Economics, and constitutional rights grounded in a philosophy of limited government are policies that have concerned political and economic conservatives going back to the Administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
In 2016 a battle for the soul of the GOP is underway with business interests led by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney leading the left within the Party to “Idea Summits” that can be seen as counter-events to annual Conservative Political Action Conferences first conducted by the editors of Human Events in 1961/2.
Today’s Washington Post reports on confrontations that occurred at Mitt Romney’s “Idea Summit” where failed Republican candidates like Mitt and Meg Whitman stood their ground against Paul Ryan and other elected officials and Republican donors who have accepted the inevitability of a Donald Trump nomination.
Trump Compared to Hitler at Idea Summit
The Republican Party has been an imperfect vehicle for the actualization of conservative policies and principles. Conservative advocates like Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan had to fight a GOP Establishment, now meeting in Mitt’s “Idea Summit.” That Establishment is dedicated to big government, the interests of high finance, and a vision of international cooperation and peace rooted in supra-sovereign international institutions. These are our “betters.”
Fortunately, not all of us accepted the Establishment’s disdain. Taft vs. Dewey, Goldwater vs. Rockefeller, Reagan vs. Bush defined the conservative “movement” within the GOP from 1940 to the end of Reagan’s administration in 1988.
It will take conservatives another generation to grow the leadership it needs to lead us into the coolness and light of better times when Republicans no longer search for ideas at “Summits” but find them in the daily lives of the American people.
