First Principles

Recent events such as the defection of Arlen Specter has amplified the calls of (mostly liberals) for the Republicans to move left if they want to remain relevant.  The argument goes that Republicans have shifted hard right since the Big Tent days of Reagan, and are now seeking to purge anyone from their ranks who doesn’t share every tenant laid forth in the Book of Limbaugh.  Only by embracing all who are willing to accept the name “Republican”, no matter what they believe or how they vote, can we build the numbers necessary to regain a foothold on the national scene.

What a bunch of crap.

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The facts simply don’t support this contention.  I defy anyone to name a single significant policy in which Republicans in the last several years have gotten more conservative on than we were in, say, 1983 (a time Arlen Specter claims to look back upon with nostalgia).

Back then, Republicans explicitly argued that the newly formed federal Department of Education was unnecessarily redundant, oppressive, a waste of money, and Unconstitutional to boot.  Today, Republicans are responsible for the biggest expansion of that federal power in history.

Back then, and again in 1994, Republicans swept into office demanding a Federal balanced budget amendment.  In 2008 our candidate voted for the porky bailout TARP bill (which was pushed and signed by the sitting GOP President) which plunged us further and deeper into debt than ever before.

Back then, our military was the most robust than it had been since WWII, and we weren’t afraid to flex that might when necessary.  We didn’t apologize for it.  It’s a push in terms of will, but in terms of a big enough military and success in its employment, I’d stick with the ’80s.

Back then, abortion was a much bigger issue than it is now.  Gay marriage would have been uniformly opposed had it been conceivable that it would be an issue at all.  Now, many conservatives, especially younger ones, are indifferent at most to gay marriage, and abortion isn’t the powerful issue it once was.

Back then, Bush’s expansion of the Medicare program would have been unfathomable in conservative circles.

Back then, the most conservative Republican contender became the party’s nominee over the far more moderate George H. W. Bush – and then he won twice in general elections decisively.  Reagan was an overt, principled conservative who talked about what he read in National Review and Human Events.  He didn’t apologize for being conservative.  He discussed things philosophically, and gave the American people credit for being smart enough to follow along.

President Bush, on the other hand, certainly had principles – but they weren’t necessarily political principles in the sense of having considered a coherent philosophy.  And most recently, Republicans nominated exactly the kind of candidate all the “Move Left!”-ers said we should nominate, with disastrous electoral results.

The two times in modern history when the Republican Party was at its popular (and therefore, electoral) zenith was in 1984 and 1994.  In those electoral years it was also at its most conservative.

In other words, the argument that the GOP was moderate 25 years ago and “far right” now is a total, absolute fiction.  The only way that position is defensible is to define “far right” as “everything we didn’t like about George Bush,” or “things that aren’t cool.”  (The later is, I think, the real core of the argument, having the advantage of both accurately reflecting the intellectual depth of this new conventional wisdom, and also of acknowledging that “cool” matters, whether we like it or not.)

If the party is “purging” now, then it was positively decimated when it was at its most popular – at least if you follow this logic.

The purpose of the argument is to either hope the GOP continues to adopt a leftward shift and therefore slip into obscurity, or to create a second leftist party in the country, which has the same effect.

How ’bout let’s not.

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Some would say that the nation has moved left from those days.  But if that were the case, then why did the successful Presidential candidate in the last election promise “net spending cuts,” “line-by-line” budget cutting, gun protection, and a health care plan which focused on individual choice, running ads which explicitly rejected a big government controlled system?  Why did Democrats spend so much time blasting President Bush (rightly, at times) for too much spending?  Why do vast majorities of Americans still think that Big Government and Big Labor are a greater threat to our future than Big Business?

I think there has been a move left, although not such that we’re no longer a center-right country.  But even if there has been such a monumental leftward shift in such a short period of time, nothing stops us from attempting to move it back.

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Most conservatives agree that what is needed is not less conservatism, but more.  I agree with this.  But most of this discussion is focused on kicking out “RINOs” and other politicians who aren’t in line, which I think is only a small part of the story, and puts the cart before the horse.

There is, of course, something to be said for this.  I’m a big believer in half a loaf over none, and if the choice is between Olympia Snowe and an Obama Disciple Democrat, I’ll take Ms. Snowe.  Sheer numbers matter under our Congressional rules, after all.  But if the choice is between a Republican who is willing to vote for the foolish stimulus bill and one who isn’t, then, well, I’ll be happy to put my support behind the actual conservative.

And let’s face it – when people who call themselves “Republicans” or “Conservatives” reject the core principles of our shared philosophy and embrace Big Government paternalism, anti-business rhetoric, etc., then voting for them is pointless.  (I’m talking core principles – something vastly different than certain specific policy disagreements.)

Even if they are marginally better than a Democrat, the only purpose they can serve is to allow the failures of Liberalism to be labeled “bi-partisan” – or worse, as was done with the quintessentially liberal Republican Bush, “conservative.”

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But while commentators like David Frum are wrong about why it’s a problem, there is danger in the way we’re complaining about the “RINOs.”  The focus on this in our discussions on radio and in the bloggosphere are what fuel our adversaries’ conclusion that we are about to engage in a Great Purifying Purge, which will shrink our old tattered Big Tent into perpetual electoral obscurity.  Actually, it’s not limited to our adversaries – people like Peggy Noonan are falling for this line, too.  They’re missing the point, but in a way, the rest of us are, too.

I think there are two critical pieces of the puzzle that are being left out of the conversation, and will prevent us from falling in the trap that is, right now, being way oversold.

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First, we need to rethink the entire concept of “outreach.”

Right now, there is (as Obama likes to say) a “false choice” being presented:  Either we have a conservative party, or we have a big party.  This argument assumes that people can never change their mind, or that the nation has moved irretrievably center-left, or that minorities are nothing more than automatons who cannot be moved from their slavish party loyalty (the later is particularly annoying and offensive to me, as it should be to all who believe in a philosophy of individualism and free will).

The people who have fallen prey to this “liberals pander to X Group, and so we need to out-pander them!” mentality miss the point entirely, and are chasing a dragon we cannot ever catch.  No one can out-pander a liberal Democrat.  No one.  And we shouldn’t try.

Instead, the strategy must be in talking to these other groups and people and interest groups, and effectively communicate to them why our core  policy principles of limited government, strong national defense, and a restrained judiciary will benefit them more than nanny state paternalism and endless debt.

The lack of school choice in the form of vouchers or tax credits brutalizes minorities in particular, as residents of D.C. have recently learned.  Endless entitlements designed to help the poor have obliterated the economies of states like California, and economic obliteration means fewer jobs, fewer raises, and fewer opportunities for people who don’t wish to be poor any more.  Advocates of gay marriage and abortion and all the liberals who complained so much about No Child Left Behind have all suffered from the Left’s wholesale abandonment of the very idea of Federalism.  College students are in college because they want to be successful and independent – at least most of them are.  Why are we not tapping into this?

But we must come at these things while tying them into our core principles.  After all – as Reagan often said, a party cannot be all things to all people.  If it tries, it ultimately stands for nothing, because some things just can’t be reconciled. And parties which stand for nothing will never be successful.

We need to properly define things, too.  A poll question which says, “Does the government have a roll in helping homeowners struggling with mortgages?” will have a much different response than, “Do you think you and your neighbors should be forced to pay for the guy down the street who bought more house than he could afford and ran up all his credit cards, when you gave up certain luxuries so you didn’t default on any of your debt?”  We must make people understand that “government money” is their money and their friends’ money and their children’s money.

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Liberalism and populism only helps some people – whatever groups you’re redistributing the wealth to, to the detriment of those from whom you take it.  Freedom, on the other hand, helps everyone.  Conservatism provides opportunity for everyone.  And that means we need to talk to everyone.  Ceding entire voting blocs to the Democrats is suicide.

We don’t need to pander.  We need to educate.  We need to be aggressive about this – Karl Rove’s “51% Is Good Enough” via a primary focus on turnout strategy is a loser in the long term, and needs to be rejected.  And when we do these things, we will start making serious inroads into a lot of those groups which the elites have written off as irrevocably tied to the left wing.

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And that brings me to the second point.  If we get the education and outreach part right, the RINOs will take care of themselves.

Does anyone think that if Republicans were polling better right now, that Arlen Specter wouldn’t have voted with the caucus more?  Or that he would have decided his philosophy was more in line with Democrats than Republicans?  Of course not!  He’s not a moderate, he’s an opportunist.  He always has been, and he’s not alone.  Politics (in either party) will never, ever be free of them.

So when our leadership (when we can find some) starts doing the things that Reagan and Gingrich did so effectively, with the predictable electoral results, these opportunists who only look at the trends and the polls will fall in line.  And if they switch parties anyway, that’s fine.  At least we’ll have a little truth in advertising.  That’s how conservatives all over the country can help eradicate or at least “cure” the folks whose conservatism is unacceptably “wobbly”.  Starting with that is backwards, and only feeds the myths our opponents use to define us.

We can do better than that.  And if we want to once again defy the giddy left who have never yet been correct about our imminent demise, we must.