Redstate

By Martin A. Knight Posted in Bill Weld | moderates | Reagan | Republicans | Rockefeller | Rudy Giuliani — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

This started out as comment in reply to a comment by BigGator5 (unfortunately operating under the misimpression that the diary I posted yesterday was about John McCain) in response to me. It just got too long. Anyway, BigGator5 asks;
"Why are you arguing against party unity?"

My response to that is that I actually am asking for party unity.

Unity that does not end when Election Day is over and done with. We want some more of that Unity on the floors of Congress, in the State Legislatures and in the Governor's Mansions when its time to vote 'aye' or 'nay.' We want some more of that Unity when it comes to policy, when it comes to the tough votes on Capitol Hill, in Lansing, Harrisburg, Richmond, Olympia, Austin, Bismarck, Trenton, etc.

We want to see "moderates" voting with the rest of the party when it comes to core principles rather than the constant capitulating on every single issue under the sun under the false principle/rubric of "Bipartisanship™".

We want to see "moderates" actually selling Republican policy to their constituents, and helping us drag the nation to the Right (or at least the GOP), rather than offering cheaper (or slower) versions of what the Democrats offer and taking the argument in the wrong direction.

For those who don't know (like BigGator5 here), there's always been a rift within the GOP between the Conservative Reagan and "Moderate" Rockefeller Wings of the party. The Rockefeller Wing gave us 40 compromising years in the wilderness because they were too weak and spineless to actually be a principled partisan opposition and offer more than just faint echoes of liberal Democratic policy because they were too terrified of losing, of a negative article in the all-powerful left-leaning media to risk a fight. {See Note below *}

No wonder Democrats (both in Congress and the media) wax nostalgic for the "comity" and Bipartisanship™ of those days.

It took Gingrich sixteen years - from 1978 to 1994 - planning, training, recruiting, strategizing, and essentially waiting for senior Rockefeller Republicans to retire in enough numbers before all that changed. And when he finally acquired enough seniority to finally put the Reagan Wing on top in the House, he promptly became the first GOP Speaker in a generation.

To be honest, I'd be ecstatic if the average "moderate" were like John McCain (though I could do without the "Maverick" minstrelry) who is at least recognizably Republican. In other words, McCain really is not the issue here.

The issue is the continuation of decades of "moderates" not holding up their end of the deal by knuckling under when they're needed most. And contrary to the strangely common belief, that is not just when it is time to vote for the Leadership in either House of Congress. In fact, that's the very minimum.

We don't contribute, walk the streets, man the phone booths and vote to put a Republican in office just to see the GOP's Leaders get nicer offices and parking spaces than their Democratic counterparts. Voting for the Republican caucus leaders to take the top spots does not make it okay to vote with Democrats for tax hikes, spending hikes, expanding government programs, limiting free speech and shooting down Conservative nominees so people in the Press can pat you on the head and call you a good little "moderate."

I'm as aware as anybody that it's not possible to have a viable party in which there is a 100% agreement. Conservatives (at least, those with brains and in tune with reality) are not asking for that.

But the fact is, as Reagan put it;

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.

We want moderate Republicans who place a higher priority on being Republicans rather than the constant seeking of validation of their "moderation" from a Left-leaning Press Corps. We want fighters, not squishes. We want moderates who truly are lions on fiscal, economic, security and defense issues as advertized.

As Neil put it; what we're asking for is "More Giulianis, fewer Chafees, please."

Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of liberal New York City;

Giuliani curbed or killed 23 taxes totaling $8 billion. He slashed Gotham's top income-tax rate 21 percent and local taxes' share of personal income 15.9 percent.

Giuliani's spending increases averaged just 2.9 percent annually. His fiscal 1995 and 2002 budgets actually decreased total outlays.

While hiring 12 percent more cops and 12.8 percent more teachers, Giuliani sliced manpower 17.2 percent, from 117,494 workers to 97,338.

Rather than "perpetuate discrimination," Giuliani junked Gotham's 20 percent set-asides for female and minority contractors.

Two years before federal welfare reform, Giuliani began shrinking public-assistance rolls from 1,112,490 recipients in 1993 to 462,595 in 2001, a 58.4-percent decrease to 1966 levels.

Giuliani privatized 69.8 percent of city-owned apartments; sold WNYC-TV, WNYC-FM, WNYC-AM, and Gotham's share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel; and invited the private Central Park Conservancy to manage Manhattan's 843-acre rectangular garden.

Giuliani advocated school vouchers, launched a Charter School Fund, and scrapped tenure for principals.

Giuliani padlocked porn shops in Times Square, paving the way for smut-free cineplexes and Disney musicals.

William Weld, is another moderate Republican whose type more of us Conservatives would love to see more of. As Governor of freakin' Massachusetts;

Weld slashed taxes 19 times.

Weld balanced the state budget for seven years running.

Weld held the line against tax hikes, allowing none to make it into law (did I mention that this was in Massachusetts?).

Weld sharply slashed welfare rolls in Massachusetts (largely prior to the implementation of Welfare Reform).

Weld slashed down the size of government that when he left the Governor's office the state government employed 15000 less people than when he came in.

Give us more of these two instead of spineless caving unprincipled Chafees who quail and throw their hands up at a journalist's raised eyebrow. Give us moderates (not "moderates") who are fully on board with making the GOP a party of Bold Colors, on the campaign trail as well as the floors of Congress, not one of pale pastels who only offer weak echoes and peans to "Bipartisanship™". Give us people we can count on to stand with us at least 75% of the time and help move the nation in the right direction rather itinerant compromisers and "echoers" who cannot tell the difference between compromise and capitulation.

In other words, give us Republicans.

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* NOTE: I'm not in any way blaming "moderates" exclusively (or even saying they shoulder most of the blame) for the loss of 2006, though their tendency to fold like cheap suits and echo Democratic talking points at the first sign of adversity (i.e. a liberal journalist's frown) certainly didn't help matters. More to blame were Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert's abject stupidity in forgetting that they also had a mandate to govern independent of the President and virtually the entire caucus falling for the hair-raising idiocy of thinking that a Majority could be easier maintained by bribing voters with pork.

I put even more blame on Bush's New Tone™. Not only is it responsible for his absurd and ultimately disastrous refusal to engage in the information war - i.e. allowing the BushLied™ narrative to grow unchallenged, allowing the Bungled™ narrative on Katrina to become conventional wisdom, doing the Democrats a favor by keeping his incompetent communications team beyond mid-2005, etc. - it is also responsible for the six year lack of vetoes of the massively pork laden bills that reached his desk. New Tone™'s premium on avoiding fights made no exclusion for necessary fights - even with your own party.