[dogbyte12]

To the dismay of some "conservatives" on this "Conservative" Forum, social conservatives aren't going to shut up, and we aren't going to surrender our party to them without a fight.

Let me clear something up right here. Alot of the so called social conservatives are ex democrats who did not abandon their party on economics or their love of the constitution. A bunch of socialists of the Gary Bauer type, left the democrats in the 60's and 70's, because they thought that the civil rights movement, and the things that sprung up from it were being promoted by the northern yankee democratic party.

The republican party opposed quotas not to keep the niggras in their place, but because it was an unfair remedy. Those who want to create the Taliban in the GOP can go pack their bags and go some place else. The republican party is conservative. Tariff loving, freedom hating, Revelation today desiring johnny come lately types are not going to steal this party. When the party agrees on principal with fundamentalist christian aims, it promotes them, but not just those ideas. It promotes freedom and liberty as our natural rights.

I am a Goldwater Republican, not a Pat Robertson republican. Goldwater and even the Rockefeller wings were republicans long before the holy roller crowd abandoned the donkeys and decided to set up shop.

[Bonaparte]

"The republican party is conservative. Tariff loving, freedom hating, Revelation today desiring johnny come lately types are not going to steal this [Republican] party."
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From Professor Anthony O'Brien of Lehigh University --

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff grew out of the campaign promises of Herbert Hoover during the 1928 presidential election. Hoover, the Republican candidate, had pledged to help farmers by raising tariffs on imports of farm products. Although the 1920s were generally a period of prosperity in the United States, this was not true of agriculture; average farm incomes actually declined between 1920 and 1929. During the campaign Hoover had focused on plans to raise tariffs on farm products, but the tariff plank in the 1928 Republican Party platform had actually referred to the potential of more far-reaching increases:

"[W]e realize that there are certain industries which cannot now successfully compete with foreign producers because of lower foreign wages and a lower cost of living abroad, and we pledge the next Republican Congress to an examination and where necessary a revision of these schedules to the end that American labor in the industries may again command the home market, may maintain its standard of living, and may count upon steady employment in its accustomed field." [Direct quotation from the 1928 Republican Party Platform.]

In a longer perspective, the Republican Party had been in favor of a protective tariff since its founding in the 1850s. The party drew significant support from manufacturing interests in the Midwest and Northeast that believed they benefited from high tariff barriers against foreign imports. Although the free trade arguments dear to most economists were espoused by few American politicians during the 1920s, the Democratic Party was generally critical of high tariffs. In the 1920s the Democratic members of Congress tended to represent southern agricultural interests -- which saw high tariffs as curtailing foreign markets for their exports, particularly cotton -- or unskilled urban workers -- who saw the tariff as driving up the cost of living.

So it's clear that "tariff lovers" are hardly "johnny come latelys" in the Republican Party. Republican tariff planks go all the way back to the 1850s and continued, along with subsequent legislative measures, right up into the 20th century.

The "johnny come latelys" are, in fact, the advocates of free trade. Just a little history lesson for you.

You're welcome.