Redstate

By Martin A. Knight Comments (31) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

PREVIOUS POSTS
The Way Back To The Majority [1]: Start 2008 Senate Campaigns Early
The Way Back To The Majority [2]: Start Recruiting & Campaign Work Up For House Candidates

NOTE: I have decided to update this blog entry to remove much of the "Moderate" VS Conservative stuff so as not to distract from the main message of it.

[3] It has become a cliche that the Republican Party needs to once again confront the voter with another "Contract With America" - this refrain has been with us since before 11/07/2006 - but no attention beyond lip-service was ever really paid to it by the hubris-infected higher-ups in the GOP. Cliched though it may be, such manifestos and restatements of principle, like the original Gingrich created Contract, is something I have come to believe is perenially necessary for the modern Republican Party to win and maintain its Congressional majorities.

This should be irrespective of whether or not the occupant of the Oval Office has an 'R' behind his name. Republicans elected to Congress should not make the mistake of thinking they were elected simply to pass a Republican President's agenda. They should have their own independent agenda and priorities; where a GOP President and Congressional Republicans' agendas coincide, all well and good. Where they differ, that's fine; they negotiate and I believe the Party would end up the stronger for it. The Founders did envision a government in which the three branches are in tension after all.

Anyway, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at CPAC on the 1st of March 1975 that is instructive on how every Republican is supposed to look at the elections just passed this November. Note that this speech was delivered less than six months after the mid-term elections of 1974; after the Democrats had just increased their majority to a filibuster-proof 62 in the United States Senate and their expanded House majority was such that the size of their majority actually was greater than the total number of Republicans in the House of Representatives. i.e. the Congress inaugurated in January 1975 sat 291 Democrats to 144 Republicans.

In the aftermath of the 1974 elections, the usual suspects, pundits and commentators, many of them who called themselves Republicans, came out in force, advising the Republican Party to abandon all principle and move to the Left. In response, Reagan instead called for Republicans to abjure such appeals to water down conservative principle and instead re-dedicate themselves even more fully to those same principles. This was his famous "Let Them Go Their Own Way" speech in which he called for Republicans to "... [raise] a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues ..."

What Reagan was saying then remains true to this day; unlike Democrats, Republicans are more likely to win when they make the effort to effectively and forcefully differentiate themselves from the alternative by running toward the animating principles of their party. Note that a significant number of the Democrats who wrested seats from Republican incumbents this November ran on philosophies in many ways diametrically contradictory to that of their leadership in the soon to be inaugurated 110th Congress - a great many touted themselves as "Conservative Democrats" and protested mightily when their Republican opponents called them liberals. On the other hand, the group of Republicans who lost the largest number of members was comprised of those Republicans who prided themselves on how indistinguishable they were from Democrats, how so very "moderate" they were, on a vast array of issues.

Endpoint; when Republicans try to blur the differences between the two parties, either through word or deed, we lose. Newt Gingrich led Republicans back into the Majority in both Houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years when he eschewed "moderation" as advised by the New York Times editorial page and presented the American people with an agenda that brightly highlighted the distinctions between a Republican and a Democrat.

So this formulation of an agenda is a task that should be even higher on the list of the Republican Party's priorities as recruiting good candidates for the 2008 cycle. We need to develop a distinctively Republican, and that means Conservative, and unifying agenda that the various wings of the GOP can sign on to and market to their constituencies all across the nation. We should be realistic though; there should, of course, be space for some compromise. It is a given that not all the items on such an agenda can possibly be found acceptable to all Republicans; Chris Shays is not likely to agree 100% with Todd Akin. But it should be possible for the Right's considerable brain trusts to come up with a manifesto of policy items, 80% of which someone as Conservative as Akin and someone much further to the Left within the tent of the Republican Party, like Jerry Weller, can come to an agreement on and implement once elected to the Majority.

There are some Republicans, especially those typified by the proprietress of this blog here, who would say that it is unfair to demand so much unity with conservatives from so-called "moderates" like Mike Turner and Mark Kirk. Maybe. But we need to remember another thing Reagan specifically made clear in that speech - it is not the 'R' you bear behind your name that makes you a Republican;

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

A Party simply must stand for something. The nature of Shays' district may make it difficult for him to lean any further to the Right when it comes to social issues, but we can at least demand a steadfast adherrence to Conservative principle on fiscal, economic, defense and governmental matters.

It really is not too much to ask of even the most "moderate" Republican to actually be a Republican in some discernible way beyond an organizational vote at the beginning of a Congress. Such a creature may not exist today in Congress but it is indeed possible to be fiscally conservative, a defense hawk and be socially on the Left at the same time. William Weld in Massachusetts and Rudy Guiliani in New York City pulled this off with some flair and high approval ratings in the Bluest of the nation's regions. These guys could give absolutely anyone in government today a run for his money when it came to being fiscal and small government Conservatives. Weld slashed taxes 19 times, balanced the state budget for seven years running, sharply slashed welfare rolls (largely prior to the implementation of Welfare Reform) and actually left the Governor's office with the state government employing 15000 less people than when he came in. Did I mention that this was in dark Blue Massachusetts? Where Democrats had, and continue to have, veto proof majorities in both Houses of the State Legislature?

A Republican Party that went to the mat to defend a Senate or House seat held by a Republican like William Weld or Rudy Guiliani would be one that Reagan would recognize as a Republican Party flying a banner of Bold Colors and no pale pastels. The same simply cannot be said of a Republican Party that goes to the mat to fight for Lincoln Chafee. The fact that the RNC actually had to turn out Democrats to carry him to victory in a Republican Primary should have told them that the GOP was selling its soul for someone who was frankly not worth having in any caucus of the Republican Party. Dole and Mehlman may have killed the political career of Rhode Island's brightest young Republican star for a man who never voted with his party on anything other than procedural votes, who later indicated that he was actually planning to switch parties if the Senate had gone 50/50. And to make matters worse, Chafee lost, so it was all for naught.

Among the many pundits and commentators who rushed into print, the broadcast studio and the blogosphere after Blue Tuesday to offer their analyses and "advice", a significant number - many of whom call themselves Republicans - have taken great care to level the accusing finger of blame at social conservatives for the GOP's recent woes. The story goes that social conservatives "distracted" from the "real issues" and prevented Republican Leaders in Congress from properly concentrating on fiscal matters. The story continues that if the Republican Party were to repudiate and ditch wholesale those icky unsophisticated social conservatives, Republicans would return to their fiscally conservative and "socially moderate" roots and be back in the majority in no time.

Put simply; this is nonsense on stilts. Leon's posts here and here are worth reading again.

Let's make no mistake; all wings of the GOP - some would say especially the "moderate" Rockefeller wing of the Party - played a part in losing us our hard-earned pedigree as the fiscally responsible party of American politics and getting us to where we are now; and it's assuredly not a good place - 2006 could very well prove be as ominous a year as 1954 proved to be for the Republican Party.

So while there should always be room for dissent in any Party it should be axiomatic, especially in our current situation, that one of the most important things we need now in the minority is a significant measure of unity. There should be no daylight between the wings on the things we should all agree on in principle like fiscal, economic, defense and security issues and good natured and respectful disagreement on those things that we disagree on when it comes to things like social issues. So it is incumbent on the official Republican Party to make it clear to Sarah Chamberlain Resnick and her other Main Street[ers] to first of all start by refraining from "... Speak[ing] Ill Of Fellow Republican[s]." And this includes the very essential social conservative wing of the party - who are often just as solidly fiscally conservative as well.

Either way, the endpoint is that the GOP needs unity, a re-dedication to tried and true core principles, and new ideas animated by those principles to make its way back to the majority. That means that "moderate" Republicans have to get over their distaste for people like Sam Brownback and social conservative Republicans have to forgo their resentment at the "moderate's" characterization of issues that matter to them as window dressing or pointless wedge-issue "yammering" and come together to hash out ideas (an Ideas Summit?) that would take the GOP forward into the future.

Final point; we may have lost this last battle. But we're still in the fight and no way near beaten yet. This is not 1958 or 1974. We are still remarkably strong and at the fundamental level the Republican Party is fully capable of making 2008 a miserable year for the other side. The Right's network of think tanks; Heritage, CATO, Mackinac, Hoover, the Manhattan Institute and even the Federalist Society continues to remain the object of considerable envy by the Left, whose most innovative idea of recent years is still "framing." We have some brilliant thinkers in folks like Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, Bobby Jindal, John Shadegg, Jon Kyl and Jeff Sessions in Congress. We still have Newt. And as Michael Barone points out, we have Governors like Jeb Bush and even Democrats like Phil Bredesen to get ideas from on how to move America forward at both the Federal and State level.

1994 was one of the high points of this party. But 1994 is over and done with, and so we need new ideas for the 21st Century that tell the voter precisely what he is voting for when he sees that 'R' beside a candidate's name on the ballot in the voting booth in every part of the nation. As Reagan demanded of Republicans in one of the GOP's darkest hours, one much darker than this, whether you call yourself a "moderate", a Conservative or a libertarian, it should mean something. Something to be proud of and something to stand and be counted for.

So let's resolve to win 2008 on the strength of our ideas and leave winning based on destructive criticism, "macaca", slander and the mendacity of a compromised Fourth Estate to the other side. And if we should fail, then we should simply get up, unite, re-dedicate ourselves to our core principles, crack our knuckles, and try again. After all, we're Republicans. They have said the GOP was dead so many times in the past. Some even say based on just the elections just concluded that we're over and done with.

But we're still here, aren't we?