Enough With Freedom And Socialism Already

With just 21% of Americans willing to identify themselves as Republicans, GOP leaders have launched the National Council for a New America and embarked on a listening tour. By establishing a dialogue with ordinary Americans, they hope to generate and successfully market conservative policies to a public that has soured on the GOP.

Unfortunately, this is shaping up to be a pretty one-sided conversation between the public and a GOP leadership that sounds like it already knows the answers. Republicans seem to think that existing conservative policies only need some better messaging, and the GOP is in business.

And at the heart of this messaging seems to be a conservative recommitment to “freedom,” and a rejection of the “socialist” tendencies of the Obama administration.

This conservative meme that Republicans must stand for freedom and against statism or socialism is now widespread within the movement

Mark Levin titled his bestselling book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. There is not much room for interpretation here. Conservatives are for “Liberty.” Obama and the statist Democrats are for “Tyranny.”

After being ridiculed for his assertion that he would rather be one of 30 true conservatives in the Senate than have to associate with the likes of Olympia Snowe, Senator Jim DeMint advanced his own argument for freedom over the weekend. Promoting his version of the Republican big-tent, he explained that “the strongest pole of our party -- the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats -- must be freedom.”

Beginning with Joe the Plumber, (an ongoing embarrassment for conservatives), Republicans have attacked Obama as a “socialist.” And apparently, Republican activists are charged up that Michael Steele has insufficiently challenged the President for his socialistic policies.

At the first meeting of the National Council for a New America, Congressman Eric Cantor explained that conservatives must remain committed to the “essential principles” of “span>free markets, faith in the individual and faith in God.”<

Republicans have good reasons to fear the Democrats’ agenda, much of which threatens liberty, entrepreneurship and future economic growth. Obama’s expansion of bailout nation has revealed his willingness to use the government’s toehold in the economy to promote a Washington-directed industrial policy that will crowd out private investment, distort markets, and undermine the nation’s long term fiscal health.

That said, the effort to rebrand the GOP as the party of freedom is foolishness.

Who on earth are conservatives speaking to when they attack Democrats as socialists and statists? Certainly not anyone under the age of 50 or without a dog-eared copy of Hayek. Most Americans have no clue what socialism represents. Nor do they care. Americans are certainly worried about continued bailouts and spending growth. But I am confident that they do not stay up nights fretting over who owns the means of production, and conservatives who talk openly about a socialist threat risk becoming as relevant as the German university professors they are beginning to sound like.

And while it is noble for conservatives to commit themselves to freedom, who isn’t in favor of freedom? There are few policy areas where I agree with Ted Kennedy, but is he really a partisan of tyranny? Do conservatives really want to make the case that FDR, Truman, and Kennedy were enemies of freedom? Most importantly, are Republicans really going to win over any independents or Democrats by suggesting that their friends and neighbors have views that are deeply at odds with America’s founding traditions, and in some sense un-American?

Obviously, Republicans should stand against socialism. And they should promote freedom. But let’s not pretend that this freedom agenda is any effort to prop up a big tent. As promoted by conservatives, the commitment to freedom and the attacks on socialism are too often chest-beating meant to establish one’s credentials as a true conservative.

And if Republicans are not careful, the conservative freedom agenda could wind up further depleting their ranks.

Senator DeMint might just get his wish after all.