Let’s look at who’s rights the different political parties care about, considering how fractured the GOP is, we’ll have to look at each fraction separately:

The Tea Party like Republicans including the Ron and Rand Paul variety care about the rights of states and businesses. Every chance they get they want to meddle in the affairs and minimize the rights of the individual as demonstrated by their anti-contraceptive, anti-abortion, and anti-secularism views and moves. They don’t want the federal government to tell you want to do with your body, what types of businesses you can frequent, or what they call science in school, but they’re more than happy for the state government to do all of that. They are not libertarians, they just decentralized autocrats.

Republicans like Santorum and Gingrich push for the rights of the states and churches over individuals. If the pope says you shouldn’t do it, then the state should tell you that you can’t do it. Of course they don’t want the federal government speaking up on this, so they’d just try to get Roe vs. Wade repealed to make abortion a state issue, not a matter of personal rights. They’re also not libertarian or constitutionalists, they’re theocrats.

The more mainstream republicans, yes the Romney variety, just care about themselves. Romney’s views change as fast as the voters he’s trying to woo change. At the moment he’s pandering to the religious right (for the faith vote) and those who can give him multi-million dollar campaign contributions. It’ll be interesting to see how much he changes once he’s secured the nomination. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the ultra-conservative Romney disappear and be replaced with the centrist Romney we knew before. He’s such a vote whore that I wouldn’t be surprised his actual agenda as president wouldn’t be that bad, since staying in office would just require keeping the moderates happy. Oh, to get back on topic, mainstream Republicans, like Romney, just care about enough people’s rights (or the rights those people support) to keep themselves in office. States rights keep the right wing happy, the rights of businesses keep the donors happy, they just need to champion (or ignore) enough rights to keep the moderates happy.

The one thing they all have in common is they want the government to be small enough to not be able to stand up to big businesses

Neoconservatives, the Karl Rove and Dick Chaney types, are all about the rights of the federal government and businesses over all else. Actually, they’re all for using the federal government to support business. They don’t seem to care about the states and certainly don’t care about individuals. They do care about winning elections, so they will throw a bone to the right and middle every now and then, just enough to keep them placated.

Democrats push for the rights of central government and individuals. They view the federal government as the best way to help the individual. Unfortunately they often want to take the limited welfare state and turn it into a comprehensive nanny state since obviously most people are too stupid to figure out how survive on their own.

The reason the Bush years were so disastrous was because it was a coming together of neocons and liberals. The only thing they could agree upon was that a large federal government was the solution, they just couldn’t agree on what problem it was the solution for.

States rights, although guaranteed by the 10th Amendment lost in the Civil War. Slavery was not the biggest issue in the Civil War, it was just the catalyst. The rights of the states, especially the rights of the states to regulate slave ownership and trade was the concern. In the end, the federal government won the war and gave millions their freedom. Then again in the 1960s and 1970s it was the federal government, either through legislation or judicial rulings, that had to step in to protect the rights of racial minorities and women. It’s far too easy for an individual state to move way too far to the left or the right, just look at what Oregon did in the 1990s when it regulated its two largest industries out of existence and the way Idaho is destroying education and continually trying to erode women’s rights and the separation of church and state.

The federal government is just large enough and just diverse enough (at least in view points) that it’s horribly inefficient and ineffective. Just look at how much legislation has to be amended to the point of being unrecognizable and completely useless just to pass. Unlike the state legislatures, the US congress cannot get organized enough to get anything done, and that’s a good thing.

Legislatures are also a horrible place to protect or manage the rights of the individual since they are answerable to the majority and those who’s rights need protected are the minority. A strong federal judiciary is the only part of the government with adequate insulation to be able to protect and advance the rights of the minority, and we need that.