The Conservative Soul

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6253752

" In his new book, The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan examines how the Republican Party has changed and the tensions between two forms of conservatism: historical conservatism and what he calls fundamentalism.

"Sullivan argues for getting back to the basics of conservatism: limited government, balanced budgets, individual liberty, rule of law. He says today's Republican-controlled U.S. government has strayed from these fundamental tenets.

"'I am asking for a conservatism … that gets back to understanding that we have to restrain government, not empower it, and that faith and politics need to be kept apart for the sake not only of politics, but also of religion, which is being poisoned by partisan politics,' he says."

Not too much I can add to this-- it's exactly my point. Conservatism has lost its focus with the existing "conservative" politicians, who seem to use conservative jabber as a tool for grabbing power, but seem to have no real interest in actual conservative ideas or beliefs.

Bryan Burrough states
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901116.html )
"The party I grew up in, which stood for fiscal discipline and strong defense and avoided the sloppiness and stained dresses of so many good-hearted Democratic administrations, seems to have been conquered by people who think stem-cell research is murder, who want to ban unpopular sex acts and who have proven incapable of managing such basic government tasks as disaster relief and a war."

I will argue once again (am I getting tedious here?) that the whole problem is power-- with Republicans in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, they have no checks on power, and unlimited power has fundamentally damaged them.