Hoosier Politics Today

Last Tuesday was the Primary Election in Indiana for municipalities and in that light, it’s time for our post-primary healing. I’m not sure if it’s by design, but primaries splinter our party into factions and then afterwards, we need to work together for a common goal of winning for our candidates. We need to let our wounds heal and put aside the differences that divided us and be a whole party again.

While researching this, I used Wikipedia (honestly everyone does and it was just for some basic background information so I could easily add what I wanted and see the layout they used) and found some baseline information on the six primary types of conservatives in the Republican Party. I have a quick rundown of the different main types of Republicans.

Fiscal Conservatives

This group wants a reduced spending and in that reduction, they want fewer social entitlement programs. They want lower spending, lower taxes, and lower government debt. Supporting a balanced budget over extra government regulations, they want every taxpayer to keep money in their pockets. Supply-side economics is king to the fiscal conservative.

Social Conservatives

The Social Conservatives base their entire political ideology on conservative principals when it comes to social interactions. They push for laws against homosexuality, drugs, and alcohol; while promoting Christianity in it’s many forms and pushing for a return to traditional values.

Paleo-Conservatives

This right here is the most common form of Republican. It’s a mix of both the Social-Con and Fiscal-Con to create it’s own unique breed that wants lower taxes and less spending and couples that ideology with pressing for fundamental Christian ideas to be prominent in the government.

Traditionalist Conservatives

Looking at this as a primal version of conservatism, it looks to reduce controls over people with the thinking that people will control themselves. Traditionalists believe that the smaller government entities should have the greatest influence of the people it serves, while being controlled by those very people. In essence, a nation is made up of small groups with a weaker central government that these groups control. This is anti-jingoistic by it’s very nature.

Neo-Conservatives

Jingoistic in nature, this group believes in promoting America, American interests, and American business; if necessary, by force. Neo-Cons are the anti0communist movement and were created in the effort to fight the ideas of communism and socialism. They believe the American “sphere of influence” in the world is one of our most important potential assets.

Libertarian

This is with the lower-case “L” and not part of the Libertarian Party that has sprung up, but it closely resembles the Libertarian Party. They want lower taxes, fully free speech, and almost no gun control. Many believe in the concepts of a “fair tax” or “flat tax” at the federal level and want the IRS abolished.

Additionally, each of these six groups has moderates in their ranks. A person who cares about the budget, but doesn’t care about gay marriage could be a moderate fiscal conservative. The groups tend to mirror each other at times, but have distinct differences to the point that each faction is, itself, factioned.

Each of the six faction of the Republican Party refers to other factions as RINOs, Republicans In Name Only, and our party has never been more in need of unification.

Each of these six groups has negative feelings and prejudices against the others. Instead of looking at our differences, we need to start looking at what unites us as a group. Lower taxes and fewer restrictions on businesses seem to be the two points all factions agree on so we could start there. This is not the time to even discuss what points and projects we are okay with, but just that we need to reduce taxes. We need reduced restrictions on businesses, but, again, to what level is a moot point at this time. Let’s unify based on what we agree on, not fight about what we disagree with. There is plenary of time during the primary races to debate, but the day after, we need to have an organized, solid front for which we stand, focused on the points we can agree on, and not constantly fighting deep into general election season about our internal differences.

Let’s discuss lowering spending. Where can we all agree that spending cuts need to be made? Where do we want these cuts and how deep of cuts can we, as four different factions, agree to go? Let’s ask questions like that and work together instead of apart. We have too many commonalities to stay so splintered. Yes. We have differences.

We need to go back to basics in our own party and build a stronger, more unified Republican Party that will be a lasting testament to, at least, the most basic of conservative values that we all cherish. One former GOP County Chairman created an idea that helped us do that. He created “The Five-Tenants of the Republican Party.” A group of candidates running for the general election sat down with our chairman and worked together to make up a list of five things that we can’t disagree on. We need lower taxes. We need more jobs. We need lower crime. I can’t remember what the other two were, but you get the idea. Who can dispute that we need more jobs? It was something that unified our party and our candidates that year and it was rather effective at creating a singular message for us to push. Even though we each may have a different take on these ideas and how to accomplish them, we agreed on the principles. As you may or may not have guessed, I was one of the candidates that year. I was asked about how lowering crime could be done. It’s one of the primary ideas that we are using. I responded with how creating jobs would be a deterrent to people committing crimes. It actually wasn’t a bullshit answer and I firmly believe that lower unemployment also lowers crime rates. The candidate running for Judge that year had a different answer, as did the Sheriff candidate. Though we had different answers, we held a unified front.

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