I am a Reagan era Principled Conservative. I tend toward a well rounded approach, but I also understand those principles to be interwoven - Without all, you will have none. Philosophically, that's just a fact.
The debt, and the spending (relates to size, relates to coercive power) are so far beyond merely egregious that it has become the primary point to me as well.
I am happy with states that have curtailed abortion recently - But it will amount to nothing if the fed continues toward the erosion of states rights... And that is directly attributable to all that money (==power). A good example of how all conservative principles intertwine.
I don't know if we can bounce back out of this one. It could already be too late. The dollar is stretched too far. And we are using it like a trampoline jumping from the tenth story.
The ONLY way forward is with fiscal conservatism leading the charge with libertarianism on its heels. All the rest require that to come into balance first, or they simply cannot be secured...
And YES! Contract with America! You bet. I have often said that what is most needed is a Congress jealous of its powers. All this populist fawning over presidents like super heroes is not only embarrassing, but nearly completely useless.
We need a bad ass Congress. And we need a Tom Delay. The president is almost an incidental rubber stamp.
You are correct
@roamer_1 it may already be too late.
The only one that has come forward recently with a "Contract with America" is Sen. Rick Scott, former governor of FL. He sold us down the river on the 2A and implemented red flag laws. As far as I know DeSantis has done little if anything to remedy that.
Ultimately the power needs to be returned back to the states. I believe that would take convening a Convention of States, but because of the liberal state legislatures in some states that could prove to do more harm than good. I believe we missed that opportunity awhile ago.
Yes we need a conservative Congress that will actually do something. Voting the liberals out of Congress and finding enough conservatives to fill those seats has been an on-going problem which has been compounded by the issue of very poor and weak GOP leadership.
As for debt, obviously each president inherits the debt of his predecessor. Keep in mind it was Reagan that took us to that $1 trillion dollar mark -- just sayin'.
There is no easy solution, nor do I have the answers, especially when we have a Congress and a SCOTUS who are not on the side of "We the People".