Last week, as I was going through an old spreadsheet of writing notes from about a year and a half ago, I came across the typed-out line “conservatism has got to be about ideas.”
That, of course, isn’t an earth-shattering notion, so to remind myself of the larger context I was pondering some 18 months ago, I started clicking web links I’d included under that line.
Columnist David MartinSoon, I was reading through a collection of news stories about various conservative personalities still calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act roughly four years after its passage.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been an advocate of the ACA – not even close. However, after losing count of how many times House Republicans voted to repeal the law, I was obviously in the mood to see more emphasis on the “replace” part of the “repeal and replace” GOP mantra.
There is definitely something to be said for “standing athwart history, yelling stop,” as William F. Buckley used to put it. And as the Obama administration has bullied its way around for the last six years, conservatives have rightly adopted that stance. However, to win the hearts and minds of voters moving forward, the right will need to boast a more proactive rallying cry.