Would you abolish the Republican Party?

[DataGuy]

No.

It's interesting to see people accuse the GOP of authoritarianism, then at the same time dream of its abolition and the one-party dominance by Democrats that would follow. Most of those who wish to eliminate the GOP just hate its ideas on a fundamental level and would also want to abolish any replacement similar to it, so what they truly desire themselves is a lack of meaningful ideological competition.

[DataGuy]

Conservatism should quite simply be constitutionalism. The Constitution clearly defined the boundaries of government by delegating specific and limited powers to Congress, and conservatives should only support government up to the point that the Constitution does.

For me, the 10th Amendment sums it up. Anything not explicitly delegated to Congress is reserved to the states and the people. That's what it says and it's the supreme law of the land, whether people like it or not.

But FDR's New Deal was the last straw for the 10th Amendment. The Supreme Court was reining him in during the mid-1930s but they eventually relented to his political coercion (namely the court-packing plan) and started upholding many policies they knew perfectly well were not within constitutional bounds. Since then, the 10th Amendment and many constitutional limitations generally have been dead letters, only resurrected when most convenient. The vast majority of today's sprawling federal bureaucracy is nowhere authorized by the Constitution, but no one cares any more. Politicians talk about their newest bank-busting schemes as if the Constitution doesn't even exist. That has often included many people who call themselves conservatives.