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 In “Republican Revisionism” by Jacob Weisberg, Federalism is discussed and then further viewed as a very complex subject. Weisberg is a liberal, which influences and affects the facts and points of our article in several areas. Our article simply lists different situations in which Republicans have acted in ways that favor federalism. Conservatives typically change their policies based on the president and his party. o Examples: Reagan issue, Whitewater scandal, executive privilege (Bush, Reagan vs. Clinton (Bob Dole)), Reagan’s failure to communicate o Reagan issue: Conservatives believed and voiced their opinion on the subject in favor of Reagan before the 1992 election. They caused the law authorizing special prosecutors to expire. However, after Clinton’s election the Conservatives changed their minds and decided to reauthorize the law. Republican beliefs formed in the eighties and now, all of the conservative principles are contradicting themselves. o Example: beliefs about affirmative action o Conservatives have often expressed the view that affirmative action is unconstitutional. o Federalism Quotes: § “When democratically elected governments act pro affirmative action, judges should over rule them; when democracy acts anti affirmative action; the people’s will must be sacrosanct”.
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Typical conservative belief is that state powers should have more power than national. o Example: Proposition 215 o This was the ballot in California that tried to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The authors of this proposition declared that the will of the people must be overridden and that the federal government should invoke a provision of the Controlled Substances Act of 1917 in order to take away the licenses of doctors who tried to act against proposition 215. This position violated two core conservative principles. One was federalism, the preference for state over federal/national government. The other violated principle was the demand for judges to defer voters, which would of led to conservatives favoring unelected federal judges backing the decision of unelected federal bureaucrats to overturn the popular will. Thus, this issue also connects to affirmative-action.