A Principled Conservative Party

A common thread through many op-ed columnists that I read these days is the need for the rise of some kind of "principled conservative" political party. It's really more difficult to dig down beyond the label to find out what that means. There are catch phrases thrown around like "fiscal conservatism" and "limited government." These sound harmless enough, but in practice (at least in my adult lifetime) they have been empty promises (or threats, depending on one's perspective). And using the word "principled" seems to suggest a rejection of more than a half-century of the Southern strategy, where the conservatives embraced the Southern segregationists.

Yet those of us who grew up in the Jim Crow south (schools in Union County, SC were segregated until my 9th-grade year), understand that without the segregationists and their ideological descendants, the current Republican Party as we know it would go the way of the 19th-century Whigs and Know-Nothings. If the GOP decided to reject the Southern strategy and confess much as Lee Atwater did on his deathbed, what appeal would "principled conservatism" have? More importantly, what would be the major policy planks in a "principled conservative" party platform?

Well, some might start with fiscal conservatism as a significant plank. That one is pretty easy to rip up, as for all their talk of fiscal conservatism, in practice the GOP has run up huge deficits in the cause of tax cuts for the wealthy, and using the plank as a bludgeon against the economic safety net.

Advancing free market capitalism might be a plank. But taxpayer-funded giveaways to profitable corporations doesn't fit into any textbook definition of capitalism, at least without the modifier "crony" attached. At it's worst, such crony capitalism turns into oligarchy, or in the extreme, fascism.

Law and order might be a plank. But law and order without aggressive protection of the people's 4th amendment right coupled with the equal protection of the laws descends into the kind of police state that the most vile tyrant would applaud.

Limited government might be a plank. But, like with law and order, those were planks of the segregationists, who used them as baseball bats (sometimes literally) against those who marched to advance their 4th amendment and equal protection rights. In the segregated South, that was a dog-whistle, saying, "Don't let the big bad government make my little Susie go to school with those people."

So I would like the details filled in. What would a principled conservative party look like? To whom would it appeal? Who are some current prominent politicians that would represent this principled conservative party? 

Inquiring minds want to know!