{"id":2704219,"date":"2026-11-13T08:13:01","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T13:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-romney-gop-rises-from-its-grave-talking-about-principles-without-having-any\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T08:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T13:19:41","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-romney-gop-rises-from-its-grave-talking-about-principles-without-having-any","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-romney-gop-rises-from-its-grave-talking-about-principles-without-having-any\/","title":{"rendered":"The Romney GOP Rises From Its Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-romney-gop-rises-from-its-grave-talking-about-principles-without-having-any%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2704219&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Republican Party must rediscover coherent, substantive principles rather than surface-level complaints after midterm losses. Calls to return to \u201cReagan\u201d values often amount to defending corporate access to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/white-house-releases-list-of-president-trumps-accomplishments-and-it-is-historic\/\" title=\"White House Releases List of President Trump...s Accomplish...ts \u2013  And It Is Historic!\">cheap foreign labor<\/a> or criticizing immigration enforcement. A real platform shoudl define a vision for a healthy republic: individual autonomy and family authority, clear limits between government and corporate power, repeal of Obamacare, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-tom-cotton-senate-republicans-will-make-any-build-back-better-votes-painful-for-democrats\/\" title=\"Exclusive\u2014 Tom Cotton: Senate ...s Will ... Any \u2018Build ... Better... Votes Painful for Democrats\">strict immigration enforcement<\/a>, and measures to protect social trust by combating fraud.Leadership should come from voters articulating these foundations, not from technocratic or Romney\u2011style elites.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Republican Party needs to figure out what it is again. What\u2019s the point? What are we doing? Since the disaster of this year\u2019s midterm elections, a bunch of extremely tedious Vichy Republicans have called for a return to <em>principles<\/em>, which is apparently just a set of negative references: Something something Putin something something.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The GOP needs to reclaim our Reagan principles. Voters rejected populism, chaos, Putin and tariffs.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rep. Don Bacon \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\u2708\ufe0f\ud83c\udfcd\ufe0f\u2b50\ufe0f\ud83c\udf96\ufe0f (@RepDonBacon) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RepDonBacon\/status\/2117877142839087510?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 4, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But it\u2019s never at all clear what they mean. Is it this?<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<div lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Nikki Haley says deportations clearly went too far because big business is upset:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone saw that ICE overreached and what happened was it was too much. It wasn\u2019t just going after criminals\u2026 all of sudden it was going into companies and they thought the overreach was there.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OAICso5dQq\">pic.twitter.com\/OAICso5dQq<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2014 Steve Cortes (@SteveCortes) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SteveCortes\/status\/2120611266347913224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 11, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Return to Republican principles, and make sure that companies have access to plenty of cheap imported non-citizen labor? Deporting illegal immigrants too hard is a <em>violation of Republican principle<\/em>?<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Bad policy, bad character make bad politics: erratic tariffs, impulsive Iran war, blanket pardons, apparent corruption, weaponized justice, ICE brutality, mountainous deficits, hiding Epstein, abandoning allies and coddling enemies. Hoping for a course correction, for the country\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MittRomney\/status\/2118037074955882566?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 4, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This is just incoherent: Trump coddled enemies, which is bad; for example, he went to war against Iran, which is bad. And criticizing allies or pursuing our own national interest when we don\u2019t share goals with other nations doesn\u2019t amount to \u201cabandoning\u201d them, a point that would be too obvious to make in a discussion with anyone but Mitt Romney. It\u2019s also shamefully stupid for any Republican to flatter the empty noise about \u201cICE brutality,\u201d in the context of a leftist war on the normal enforcement of the laws governing immigration and naturalization that were passed by Congress. Do you believe in the rule of law, or do you not? If you reject the lawful removal of people who came here illegally, you don\u2019t and can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Anti-ICE protest in Seattle turns tense as fireworks, rocks thrown at police\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cdIEbBR5YJc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>What is the <em>moral and intellectual core<\/em> of Romney\u2019s argument, other than gormless preening? Romney spent six years in the Senate, by the way, 2019 to 2025, and you can go <a href=\"https:\/\/fred.stlouisfed.org\/series\/FYFSD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">see for yourself<\/a> what he did about those \u201cmountainous deficits\u201d he hates so much while he had the power to vote on federal spending. We must have had a balanced budget during the period when the nation was guided by Mitt Romney\u2019s <em>principles<\/em>, right?<\/p>\n<p>The search for principles by a reaction to a laundry list of events is a failure before it starts: <em>We should get back to principles and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignlegacy-media-falsely-argue-that-republicans-are-about-to-lose-because-americans-hate-deportations\/\" title=\"Media Falsely Argue GOP Will Lose Because Of Deportations\">stop deporting people<\/a> so much like all that stuff in Minnesota<\/em>. That\u2019s \u2026 not it. Capitulation isn\u2019t principle.<\/p>\n<p>A serious search for principles requires a search for a healthy society and the reasonable means by which to achieve it. It starts with a foundational question about how America should work. What are good and bad ways to live? What\u2019s a worthwhile life, what are healthy communities, and what role should government play in shaping them? What are the limits of that role?<\/p>\n<p>Americans have done this before. The Republican Party was born in a series of discussions about actual principle, with an explicit effort to address foundational values. At <a href=\"https:\/\/riponhistory.org\/the-little-white-school-house\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854<\/a>, and then at the first state convention in Jackson, Michigan that same year, the one held \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.experiencejackson.com\/things-to-do\/history\/under-the-oaks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Under the Oaks<\/a>,\u201d and then at <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=njp.32101077059028&#038;seq=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pittsburgh in 1856<\/a>, at the first national convention, the people who created the party spoke about the way they wanted the country to work. They were firm, clear, strong, and serious.<\/p>\n<p>The Free-Soilers of 1848, including Northern Democrats who would mostly go on to merge with the new Republican Party a few years later, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/documents\/free-soil-party-platform-1848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">diagnosed slavery<\/a> as social degeneracy. Men lived by coercing labor from others, they argued, in a condition that echoed the behavior of European aristocrats with serfs. \u201c<em>Resolved,<\/em>\u201d they declared, \u201cThat in the judgment of this Convention, Congress has no more power to make a Slave than to make a King.\u201d In a republic, there can only be citizens; differentiated identities and stratified power relationships were poison to a nation of independent free men.<\/p>\n<p>  That diagnosis of feudal degeneracy echoed, and men fought to clearly establish the conditions of life in a <em>republic<\/em>. You can find the resolutions of the 1854 Michigan state convention held \u201cUnder the Oaks\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/d.lib.msu.edu\/mmm\/9965?q=Cook%20T&#038;__goaway_id=f212b86858a87b12af875968eeb016c6&#038;__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fd.lib.msu.edu%2F&#038;__goaway_challenge=resource-load\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>. For example: \u201cThat in view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of republican government and against the schemes of an aristocracy, the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed or man debased, we will cooperate and be known as Republicans until the contest be terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Declaring that slavery was \u201ca great moral, social and political evil,\u201d the Republican delegates of 1854 produced a long list of reasons. Some of them will surprise you, like its \u201ctendency to relax the vigor of industry and enterprise inherited in the white man.\u201d That was their principle, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Genesis%203%3A19&#038;version=KJV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">derived from religion<\/a>: \u201cIn the sweat of <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >thy face shalt thou eat bread<\/a>,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kingjamesbibleonline.org\/2-Thessalonians-3-10\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">and<\/a> \u201cif any would not work, neither should he eat.\u201d Ashley Wilkes may very well have been wonderfully elegant, Scarlett, but somebody show that man how to work a plow.<\/p>\n<p>So they were Republicans, the very first Republicans said, because they refused to live in a country in which some men were citizens, but some men were slaves and some men were effectively aristocrats who lived by having others do their labor. In a republic, men would be independent of mind, morally upright, and fed by the work they did with their own hands. The founders of the Republican Party knew their politics because they knew who they were, and who they meant to be. They understood, and discussed explicitly among themselves, how they intended to live. Imagine <em>this<\/em> party turning into Nikki Haley complaining that business can\u2019t get enough cheap foreign labor.<\/p>\n<p>We need to get back \u201cUnder the Oaks.\u201d If the Republican Party is going to mean anything at all in the 21st century, there has to be a <em>floor<\/em>: a set of minimum expectations that have to be met. We can debate what all of those expectations might be, but several seem to be immediately clear.<\/p>\n<p>First, Democrats are the party of the technocracy, the social-managerial \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0393313719\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new elite<\/a>\u201d born in the Progressive Era that draws status from its effort to direct society. They\u2019re the Dr. Fauci types, and they\u2019re the people who expect you to obey the Dr. Fauci types. In California, for example, 12-year-olds can get STD medications and abortions without parental knowledge or consent, a fact the state\u2019s morally insane policymakers <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Scott_Wiener\/status\/1484560885364396036\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shout from the rooftops<\/a>. Social workers and credentialed professionals direct the lives of children, and parents can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BEdFs3MEdU8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">stay out of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Republican Party has to be the <em>other<\/em> thing, the party of personal autonomy for adults and and family-directed choices for children. It has to stand for the right to set the course of your own life, and for the life of your family. With the exception of child abuse, as transgender mutilation for minors obviously is, this can\u2019t be negotiable.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the Republican Party has to recognize a distinction between the role of the public and private sectors, government and private enterprise. Corporations are instruments of the state, but the intertwining of state and corporate interests has become obscene. Regulatory capture destroys the free markets that sit at the center of so much RINO rhetoric. <\/p>\n<p>Among <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/qDtRf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">many other examples<\/a>, a Republican Party that refuses to repeal Obamacare is meaningless and empty, tolerating the use of law and regulation to direct the substance of a corporate product that\u2019s supported with government subsidies. Where\u2019s the free market in that? A \u201cfree market\u201d party that won\u2019t take on the absurdly named Affordable Care Act doesn\u2019t deserve the support of its voters. No repeal, no Republican Party.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Thumb Down, McCain Votes No On &apos;Skinny Repeal&apos;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DWeayFHsH90?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>And third, the Republican Party should stand as a guardian of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-happened-after-sweden-took-a-hands-off-approach-to-covid-19\/\" title=\"What Happened After Sweden Took A Hands-Off Approach To COVID-19?\">high-trust society<\/a>, a country that can leave the front door unlocked and safely let children play unsupervised for a while. You can\u2019t have a high-trust society with a flood of Somali-run Quality Learing Centers, or a sprawling homeless industrial complex of NGOs that keeps making money vanish to no apparent effect. The massive, obvious, and ubiquitous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">social services fraud<\/a> in American cities is destroying the country. The Trump administration, led by Vice-President J.D. Vance\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2026\/03\/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminate-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Task Force to Eliminate Fraud<\/a>, is addressing the assault on social trust with clarity and forceful effort. They\u2019re Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>This means that Republicans who complain about deportations being too mean and depriving companies of cheap labor shouldn\u2019t really be welcome in the party, but you already knew that.<\/p>\n<p>An entire fake leadership class is poised to lead the Republican Party back into managed decline. If the party has a future, it will have to come from the leadership of Republican voters, who will have to know and say what kind of party they intend to have. Romney-style whining about Mean Donald Trump is noise, and we don\u2019t have time for it.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at &#8220;Tell Me How This Ends,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GOP must rediscover principles; post-election turmoil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2704220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/under-the-oaks-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[6203,9392,5389],"class_list":["post-2704219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-gop","tag-revival","tag-romney"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/under-the-oaks-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2704219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2704223,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704219\/revisions\/2704223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2704220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2704219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2704219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2704219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}