The Conservative Policy Experiment Revealed

Opinion/Op-Ed

The+Conservative+Policy+Experiment+Revealed

Worlds collided the day Donald Trump became President. Republicans voted in a candidate that appeared to be the exact opposite of everything they had argued for the previous eight years.

In the rubble, the stunned silence, Republican leaders stepped out from behind the curtain and revealed themselves to be Conservatives and nothing but Conservatives.

We call them Republicans, but it is Conservative policy driving this nation’s agenda under the Trump regime. It is the same Conservative ideology Republicans in Congress have fought for years, decades even to implement in government and in society.

Most of the changes Republicans seek represent radical changes to American society and way of life. From the border wall idea to literal immigration and sexual orientation bans, from denying people health care to cuts in social service programs and schools, on guns, voting rights, infrastructure, private prisons, and homelessness, it is Conservative vs. Liberal policy at issue in all the debates.

The most recent and glaring example of Conservative policy at work is the President’s recent decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA a/k/a Dream Act).

The reason President Obama created the Dream Act in the first place was because Congress had failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform.  That failure left hundred of millions of people’s fate up in the air, facing threat of deportation, uncertainty, and fear.

The Dream Act was always intended to offer the minimal protections allowed by the power of the office to give, until a full immigration reform package could pass Congress and be signed into law by a president.

Republicans have consistently argued against immigration reform bills, stating the belief that border security and stricter enforcement is all that is needed.

In 2013, an immigration bill passed the Senate by a healthy majority.  House Republicans would not even bring the bill to the floor for a vote.  The debate has been stalled ever since.

Republicans also decried and continue to decry the DACA program.  U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced Trump’s decision to rescind DACA, led the fight against Obama’s initiation of the DACA program from the start.

Republicans refer to the Dream Act as an undeserved amnesty.  That misleading, if not fully inaccurate, description of DACA ultimately shuts down constructive debate; it offers no reasonable path forward for hundreds of millions of people, and it offers no resolve for our nation.

Conservatives will try but can no longer hide behind the Republican brand name. It is not just a few Republicans in Congress pushing and passing the Conservative policy agenda.  It is not the Tea Party causing friction. It is not the Freedom Caucus.  It is the entire Republican majority, lock-step, standing behind these Conservative policies.

It is time to call the Republican party by its true name–Conservative Party–and it is time to go to the mat on which party’s policies are more American, more humane, more decent, more civil, more orderly, more economically sound, and even more fun.