Keep Your Powder Dry, Fellow Conservatives

There's war on the horizon:

As we watch the 2008 Republican primary season unfold, the questions no one is paying attention to are the same as they were when Bolton and I were haggling in 1984 -- except even more so. They were the central reason for the presence back then of Helms, and the young rebels Gingrich, Kemp and Weber. What will the 2008 Republican Platform say? How true to conservative principles will it be? How can conservatives ensure that when it comes time to write the Republican platform 24 years from now the same care is taken to specifically reflect the core conservative principles that Bolton and others took so much time with 24 years ago?

Indeed, is the point of the whole exercise to be kind to President Bush -- or will it take issue with some administration policies that conservatives feel are off-principle? Will the Bush White House team be insisting on inserting language that ratifies the Bush policies on Iraq, where conservatives would presumably agree, but also on Iran and North Korea, where Bolton and others might object? What about government spending, immigration, and other issues? Will the prospective nominee insist that the platform represent not conservative principles but his own personal worldview, attempting however subtly to walk away from the conservative principles Ronald Reagan fought so hard to instill? Principles that are not about Reagan himself but rather about the political law of gravity that is conservatism.

Indeed, the Fifth Columnists are already targeting our war heroes.

Conservatives built the Republican Party. We didn't build it so that a bunch of limousine liberals could have a place to bed the Left Wing Media.

It's about time we kicked the squatters out and made it a respectable place to be again.