Frederalism

Fred Thompson is busy setting out his solid conservative credentials, with the topic today being Federalism - something near and dear to the heart of all small government conservatives. As Mr. Thompson states:

. . . Our government, under our Constitution, was established upon the principles of Federalism -- that the federal government would have limited enumerated powers and the rest would be left to the states. It not only prevented tyranny, it just made good sense. States become laboratories for democracy and experiment with different kinds of laws. One state might try one welfare reform approach, for example. Another state might try another approach. One would work and the other would not. The federal welfare reform law resulted from just this process.

Federalism also allows for the diversity that exists among the country's people. Citizens of our various states have different views as to how traditional state responsibilities should be handled. This way, states compete with each other to attract people and businesses -- and that is a good thing.

Everyone in Washington embraces Federalism until it comes to someone's pet project designed to appeal to the voters. . . .

. . . [I]f conservatives use Federalism as a tool with which to reward our friends and strike our enemies, instead of treating it as a valued principle, we are doing a disservice to our country -- as well as to the cause of conservatism.

Read the article here. My hope is that Fred Thompson throws his hat into this race very soon. He is blessed with an adundance of common sense and he is a superb communicator. Those are two things today's embattled Republicans sorely need.