A few months back, longtime FR friend Dan Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee started on a new project for the Sunday Opinion page of the Bee. This new feature is called "The Conversation" — they pick a topic, and ask someone to pen a lead editorial on the subject, and then get a couple of others to pen smaller companion pieces (to start a "conversation"). Today’s topic is the Future of the Republican Party and the lead editorial on the topic is penned by yours truly. The other, shorter columns are from Tony Quinn and State Senator Abel Maldonado. The Bee’s editorial board also weighed in with their own ten cents (with some sort of bizarre "we need a Republican Party that believes government should be smaller, but we think they shouldn’t be intractable and should actually compromise to give us bigger government — bizarre).
I AM GOING TO REPRINT IN FULL MY SUBMISSION BELOW. BUT I WANT TO ENCOURAGE ALL FR READERS TO CLICK THROUGH HERE AND PARTICIPATE IN THE ONLINE DISCUSSION AT THE BEE’S WEBSITE.
The Conversation: GOP needs to stand on its principles
By Jon Fleischman
Special to The Bee
Published: Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008 | Page 1E
In the preamble to the economy plank of the Republican Party’s National Platform, it says:
Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie;government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government. That agenda translates to more opportunity for more people. It represents the economics of inclusion, the path by which hopes become achievements.
It is the way we will reach our goal of enabling everyone to have a chance to own, invest and build.
When I read that statement, two thoughts come to my mind as an elected party leader. The first is that I agree with it – in fact, I emphatically agree. I guess that means I am in the correct political party! The second thought, however, is that based on the track record of the Republican Party nationally of late, this paragraph may be a work of fiction.
In order to have a candid conversation about the future of the Republican Party, both nationally and here in California, we have to be willing to acknowledge that the Grand Old Party has some problems – and we are going to have to confront them and come up with a way to deal again become a majority party.
I recently read a survey that asked voters where they get their opinions about political parties. The results were not surprising. The president and Congress are overwhelmingly the source of partisan impressions. Governors also had a good showing.
When you look at the drubbing the Republicans took in the last month’s election and you take this survey information into account, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Republicans are doing something wrong.
I would submit to you that Republicans are losing market share because Republicans in Washington, D.C., have abandoned the basic core principles that attracted voters to the party in the first place and that are so well articulated in the party’s platform above. In this decade, it is impossible for Republicans to make the case that we are the party of limited, smaller government and that we believe in greater individual liberty and responsibility.
In this decade, Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. What a tremendous opportunity to actually implement the ideas and policies articulated so well in the platform, and to demonstrate to the American people that after so many years of Democrat control of all or parts of the federal government, that we could actually scale back an ever-expanding centralized government. We had a chance to curb spending, eliminate agencies and departments, and implement real reforms of the massive entitlement programs that taxpayers can ill afford to fund.
But what did we do? Republicans in Congress, while approving some tax cuts, actually increased domestic spending substantially, and participated in the growth of the federal government, creating more programs and embracing an earmarking culture that encouraged the approval of egregious pork barrel spending.
Speaking of President Bush, his form of "compassionate conservatism" turned out to be no form of conservatism at all. Whether we look at the first six years of his administration where he didn’t wield his veto pen against the egregious spending on Capitol Hill or just the last few months with the outrageous support of the use of taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street and his public commitment to a similar bailout for U.S. automakers, there is no doubt that President Bush has embraced much of the philosophy of the other party when it comes to domestic spending.
It is very disappointing for me to have to be so openly critical of our sitting Republican President, especially because for two years, during his first election, I worked hard for him in my capacity at the time as executive director of the California Republican Party. Even cutting him some slack for having to be, in essence, a wartime president for most of his term, that is no excuse from walking away from his party’s principles on the issue of domestic spending.
Of course, one cannot round out a candid criticism of why Republicans are losing market share; I have to single out Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. His capacity to poison the image of the Republican Party is enormous, as his superstar status gives him a higher profile. How do you calculate the negative impact on those who voted for the governor, twice, with his strong message of opposing taxes only to now turn around and embrace them as a panacea to solve the state’s longtime overspending abuses?
There is some good news. First and foremost, to the extent that California’s dismal financial condition makes the news, then more people are learning that in the state Capitol, Republican legislators are actually sticking to their guns, and to their principles. I would submit to you that if our Republicans in Congress had the resolve of our GOP state legislators, we would still have a majority in both the Senate and the House, and we would be swearing a Republican president into office next month.
In looking to the future for my party, the answer isn’t an easy one. Because in politics it is a lot easier to point fingers at what the other people are doing wrong than it is to look in a mirror and admit that we need to change ourselves. But that is exactly what needs to happen.
Voters look not to a party platform, which is an obscure document, but to the rhetoric of a party’s candidates and the actions of a party’s officeholders when they judge them. The Republican Party nationally needs to figure out how to work with our senators and congressmen, whether politely or not, to get them to understand that we cannot make the credible case for being a majority party in Washington until we can say with a straight face that we would do things much differently than when we overspent in the majority before.
Here in California, the Republicans in the state Legislature "get it" – and they are doing everything they can to make the clear distinction between a party that believes in limited government and the other party that believes in overspending, and then overtaxing.
As for the governor – well,that will be a self-correcting problem thanks to term limits. To quote former California Republican Party Chairman Mike Schroeder, "Like passing a kidney stone, it will be painful, but soon he will be out of the governor’s office, and perhaps we can replace him with someone who will campaign against big government and actually mean it."
I can tell you that the board of directors of the California Republican Party recently passed two very stern resolutions, which I authored. The first criticized Arnold Schwarzenegger for proposing billions of dollars in tax increases, the other was critical of the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill in Washington for overspending.
Resolutions, of course, aren’t overly impactful. But it is the start of an important change in the relationship between the Republican Party and our candidates and officeholders. We are all in this together. Party leaders, and frankly all interested Republicans, need to send a loud message to our own banner-carriers – either get on board with the idea that we need to reduce the size and scope of government at the national and state levels, or get out of the way.
Credibility matters. Before core Republicans can start to pick up market share, our actions need to match our rhetoric.
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Jon Fleischman is the elected Southern California vice chairman of the state Republican Party. He is the publisher of www.FlashReport.org, a Web site on California politics.
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