Here's Your Big Tent

We're constantly told my GOP moderates that the party has to have a "big tent", and that's usually code for "accepting Democrat priorities and social policies and finding ways to help them achieve their goals". Freeman Hunt tells us that if we want a big tent party there's an easier way to do it:

You want a big tent? It's fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it.

You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats.

Everything else is beside the point right now. You lose the fiscal conservative fight now and allow the United States to head deeper into Statism, and it's over. If the government controls healthcare, it will "[redefine] the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists." You can kiss freedom goodbye in the longterm.

So instead of utterly failing our future generations, leaving them to toil under the yoke of an obscenely powerful government, we should make our stand now. Embrace fiscal conservatism. Leave the rest to federalism.

It's easy. It's a no-brainer. It's even Constitutional. People are sick of the spending, sick of the debt, sick of the bailouts, sick of the handouts, sick of the back room deals, sick of the taxpayer funded bribes, sick of the bureaucrats. They want unyielding, unapologetic fiscal conservatism.

Fiscal conservatism is the big tent.

It is certainly going to be attractive to a lot of people in 2010. Bill Clinton once said "the age of big government is over", but he didn't mean it. I think the voters mean it and they'll vote the way they think they can make that happen.