American Conservatives Should Become Democrats

Today's Telegraph piece, on which comments are welcome over there:

Real American conservatives should forget the Republican Party. It has certainly forgotten them. Instead, they should register as Democrats and get on with it.

On the protection of American jobs, they could have no stauncher allies than the unions, never mind a President hysterically denounced as a “protectionist” as if that meant anything other than a patriot. If only they were Democrats.

On halting and reversing the national emergency of unrestricted and illegal immigration, and on making English the only official language of the United States, they could have no stauncher allies than anyone with a largely black electorate. If only they were Democrats.

On fair trade agreements, repealing much of the USA Patriot Act, ending completely the neocon war agenda, strict campaign finance reform, a crackdown on corporate influence generally and on corporate welfare in particular, and tax cuts for the pitchfork-wielding poor and middle-earning, these are stated aims of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with its 11 out of 20 House Committee Chairmanships. Conservatives could certainly line up with the CPC in order to secure the measures listed here. And they might even get one or two Committee Chairmanships out of it. If only they were Democrats.

On moral and social conservatism, those who feel most strongly about immigration and about the status of English also feel strongly that marriage is only ever the union of one man and one woman. They made that perfectly clear on the same day as they delivered Florida’s and California’s Electoral College votes to Obama, himself a supporter of traditional marriage. The Republicans have been talking about this for years, just as they have been talking about abortion for years. But they have done absolutely nothing about either. Conservatives could be fighting for the views of the President and of other black Americans on traditional marriage, and for Senator Bob Casey’s Pregnant Women Support Act, effectively endorsed by Obama at Notre Dame. If only they were Democrats.

On foreign policy realism, that is now the mainline Democratic position, the default option beyond the pacifist Left. Any remaining War Partisans (or, indeed, any anti-defence fanatics) are only a primary challenge away from oblivion. Conservatives could be backing, or even mounting, those challenges on the basis that peace must be defended by deterring aggression, and that “liberal interventionism” is the road to Saigon, Sarajevo, Mogadishu, Kabul and Baghdad, the graveyards of huge numbers of young blacks, young Irish Catholics, young Scots-Irish Southerners and Westerners, and young working-class Democrats in general. If only they were Democrats.

Some things that conservatives did not want, and going without some things that they did, would be the price of other Democrats’ support on other issues. That is political reality. Conservatives are supposed to be good at dealing with reality. And this reality would be infinitely preferable to the present one, in which conservatives get nothing that they want and everything that they do not want.