How Conservative Is the Republican Party?
The Republican Party has traditionally been on the right of the political spectrum in the US. Therefore it normally seeks low taxation on both personal and business terms with a fiscally conservative agenda meaning that people and corporations have more money due to less government intervention. In terms of social issues whilst the majority of the party is conservative and believe in little government intervention and that the power regarding social policy belongs with the states there are some prominent Republicans who support a moderate stance. The Conservative view on States rights is that they should be free of federal government and not dictated over. However, in recent years the highly conservative Tea party has proved to be a driving force and this has forced the party to the right in order to appease the members and voters. This has therefore resulted in a Republican party that is continuously moving further right towards its traditional Conservative views, and is more Conservative than it has been under Bush.
In recent terms the Republican party has in fact been less Conservative with their economic policy.This is due to the fact that the Republicans abandoned their policy of having a balanced budget under the presidency of George W. Bush which saw programs such as the Medicare prescription benefit and the Iraq and Afghanistan war result in a large federal deficit .The Republicans were also Un-Conservative in 2013 when they voted for a deal that increased taxes for those earning more than $400,0000 or couples earning more than $450,000 which was the level it was pre-Bush. Yet it could be argued that Bush was just reacting to popular belief and the situation at the current time, and that really he was fiscally Conservative. This can be seen by the fact he introduced tax cuts in 2001-3 with the top rate of tax being brought down from 39.6% to 35%. The emergence and huge popularity of the Tea party has also shown the clear Conservative support within the party and there passing of the “999” plan which would have introduced a flat rate of tax at 9%. Furthermore, Mitt Romney won the nomination in 2012 because people believed he was there best to run the economy. His policy of lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% was very popular, and cutting all taxes by 20% was a major factor in his choice as nomination showing how highly fiscal Conservatism was thought of. The fact that Congressional Republicans have also accepted cuts to the defense budgets, when previously Republicans would have never accepted this suggest that in terms of the economy the Republicans, have had to ditch some of their values to cope with the global economic climate are still Conservative with their core beliefs on the economy.
When regarding Social policy, the party has in most cases remained Conservative yet there have been a few prominent exceptions. Most obviously Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain who both support abortion rights and express no strong views either way on gay rights unlike the majority of their party. Furthermore, in the Senate there is a small group of RINOs (Republican in Name Only) who hold views that are considered very liberal by others in their party and it is a group that have seen a large decline in power. Yet there are a number of issues which they are still hugely Conservative on. One of these issues is immigration. They are largely opposed to any sort of amnesty to be given to illegal immigrants and want tighter border control. This has been shown by recent prominent individuals such as Mitt Romney arguing that life should be made so difficult for illegal immigrants that they self deport and Donald Trump wanting to build a wall along the Mexican border. To add to this certain states such as Arizona have had its immigration law changed by Republican governors so that it made illegal immigration a crime under state law and increased the punishment state police could enforce if they found any illegal immigrant. The Conservative nature of the party can also be seen by the way in which un- Conservative policies and actions are reacted to for example, Rick Perry saw his presidential bid of 2012 fail mainly due to the fact that he had signed a law allowing certain undocumented students to pay the same rates as other residents at public universities. This was against the popular Conservative