[Publisher’s Note: After the defeats suffered by the Republican Party in the General Election, we have reached out to some California leaders to ask them to reflect on this question, "What must the GOP do to once again be the majority party?" We are pleased to bring you this column from FR Correspondent Mike Spence. Spence is President of the California Republican Assembly – Flash]
If you want to meet people who are mad at the Republican Party you can go to MoveOn.org, you can go to San Francisco, or you can go to a meeting of local Republicans. Any meeting: Republican Women, Congress of Republicans, California Republican Assembly, it doesn’t matter. You will find people are just plain mad about the Republican Party.
How can this be? The people who have toiled in the vineyard and given of their treasure to GOP candidates are mad?
Almost twenty years ago at a conference, Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation said, and I paraphrase, that the “Republican Party is the Monarchy Party. We always rally around the King, no matter how bad.” He was talking about George Herbert Walker Bush.
You can have good Kings, like the Republican Party had in Ronald Reagan or bad Kings like (fill in the blank here with your favorite).
The same goes on at the state and local levels. Republicans, as a party, rally around the King no matter how bad he or she is.
The problem is our voters don’t. They either vote against us or stay home.
Curtis Gans of American University says America will surpass the 1968 election totals, but that it wasn’t historic. “Republican turnout actually declined 1.3 percentage points from 2004”, he says. Democratic turnout was up, GOP down. This happened again in 2006.
The American people vote Republican when we stand for something and that something is different than a personality.
Ronald Reagan and later Newt Gingrich put together a coalition around what I’ll identify as four areas. Some are loosely based on Grover Norquist’s “Leave me alone Coalition” but with an added ingredient. The GOP, as a brand, has had too many Kings, Dukes, Earls and Princes abandon these principles. They are not in any particular order:
Tax cuts are good. Money Magazine did a graph comparing McCain’s and Obama’s tax plans. I get more back from Obama’s plan (if he keeps his word).
Can anyone name government programs cut by Republicans? I think we can approach the spending issue on efficiency grounds as well as the proper role of government. Our voters want both.
What Republican is doing that? Certainly not our Congressional Leadership nor the Governor.
John McCain had two chances to show a difference on this issue and failed. First he suspended his campaign to be part of the bailout of Wall Street financial gamblers. That plan failed. Bush and the Democrats added $100 billion of pork and Mr. Anti-Pork himself, John McCain, voted for it. What would the dynamic have been if at least on the second bailout, he denounced the Obama-Bush-Pelosi Pork Wall Street Bailout? We will never know.
Immigration has been handled so badly by Republicans it has become a tar pit. Our voters and many other voters want reform that makes sense. Amnesty isn’t part of it. E-Verify, border enforcement, and other areas make sense to most people. Allowing left wing groups and corporate need for cheap labor to dictate policy has hurt us with National Security Voters.
Our response has been, “the Democrats do it too”. That isn’t good enough for our folks. Republicans demand better and punish our party when we aren’t.
The solution is to do what subjects to bad kings have done throughout the ages. Rebel. Withholding Tribute. Supporting good princes against the bad King. Grabbing our pitchforks and going into battle. Simply giving our treasure and our time to the corrupt or weak kings, make us vulnerable to attack from other Kingdoms.
That is what has happened. We were done in by the “enemy within”. We have to take back our party from the princes that have corrupted it.
Then the rest of the people may trust us again.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
All of these four groups can and ought to be united under a unifying principle: Freedom.
If we just put all of out policies in terms of *freedom* we can unite, and not just balance, these groups. Ultimately, we ARE working towards a common goal, and we should make the clear
November 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
You put it very well. Republicans have moved from what they believe when they get elected. You also put the argument in a positive light which most can’t argue with. Also, the Republican Party needs to reflect ideas, come up with solutions, and not “just say no.”
The Republican Party when making arguments on hot button issues must look at it from a different perspective. Let’s take tax increases. Do I like them? NO, but when the Republican Party comes out of the box swinging and attacking it backs us into a corner and we have no relevance. Get something for the support – caps on spending, time certain, smaller increase, etc.
Remember, not everyone in the Republican Party or any group will always agree with everything, but electability and getting most of what we want is better than nothing – its called politics.
Sometimes a short tactical change gives overall strategic advantage.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mike,
I have to echo Mr. Shewmaker – very well put. Too long have the Republican leaders felt immune from standing by principle because they knew ‘The Party’ would back them as incumbents. This has been the tragedy that plagued our great value based party.
It is not limited to the Federal or state level. It occurs at the county and city levels also.
The recent endorsement by the Orange County Party of a gay candidate while at the same time supporting Prop 8 seems contradictory and shows lack of conviction over politics.
Yet no one stood to question the action because the leadership wanted it.
I, for one, do not buy the electability argument. Many did and we got the Gov. Many times these ‘electable’ candidates are electable because we as the party promote them.
Find your principles, values, and message and stick to it. Even if it means not endorsing a sitting Senator, Assemblyperson, Congressman, etc. Find and nurture those who do.