Rebuilding the
Republican Image
Republican Image
If we no longer believe in the power of the individual to overcome obstacles, what do we believe in?
If we no longer believe in the rule of law to govern our society, what do we believe in?
If we no longer accept, as Ronald Reagan did, that there is good and evil in the world, and the United States should stand on the right side of that argument, what do we accept?
The Republican Party used to stand for these things, and according to our convention planks, our speeches, and our rhetoric in general, we technically still do. The 2008 election was less a repudiation of these values than it was a repudiation of a party that no longer stood for what it believed in, but rather just said what it believed in and governed otherwise.
We’re the party that forced Bill Clinton to govern responsibly in 1995 with a balanced budget at the federal level. In a slight digression, one of the men most responsible for that, John Kasich, a great Republican and a fellow Ohioan, should be the next governor of the Buckeye state, but that’s another post entirely. What happened to men like that, who stood for economic conservatism, that you have to run your government like your family does: on a budget, and buying the things that are most vital to its survival first, not last with borrowed funds. In this past decade, we’ve failed to do just that.
We’re the party that went to war with its own country in 1861 to firmly state that the rights of man extend to all individuals, regardless of skin color. We’re the party that went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century to ensure that those rights were extended in those countries as well.
And yet, the liberals and the Democratic Party have beaten us. Why? Because our candidates have run on these values, and not stood for them. We lost touch with the to a man philosophy that won the 2004 election where we reached out to likely voters on an individual basis through friends and neighbors, microtargeting at its very best. They’ve exploited this very well.
In claiming to care about keeping American jobs and creating new ones, they fail to tell their voters their policies will actually destroy American jobs and cost us large amounts of money in the process. They claim to protect the American worker through making it easier to organize unions with “Card Check” legislation. They forgot to tell us that by creating jobs, they were meaning creating jobs for guys named Vito and their crowbars. I guess they were boosting the American automobile manufacturers in that as well considering they’ll need transportation to get to your house to intimidate you into signing your union card.
Where were we on the bailout? If you really want to know why we lost the election, here’s a simple progression for you. We failed to act on President Bush’s suggestion in 2002 that we push through oversight on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, we failed to act again in 2005 on John McCain’s similar suggestion. Oh yes, we also failed to inform the American people that the Community Reinvestment Act was a large part of the problem, and that it was passed by a Democratic president in 1977 and expanded by another Democratic president in 1994.
But our biggest mistake here? Rushing to pass a bill that did little to fix the underlying problems, did little to stabilize the credit markets, and had absolutely no oversight to ensure the money was even used properly. Didn’t we learn this from the original acts that created the crisis in the first place?
Our economic conservatism failed us there, but only because we didn’t stick to it. For those who want to continue to throw John McCain under the bus for losing the election, I offer a vastly different version of why we should, and it has nothing to do with his stances on, well, virtually anything all these self proclaimed I’m a conservative and nobody else is if they disagree with me on anything’s do: because he went to Washington to protect the American people and get us a good deal, and he failed to vote against a bill that was ostensibly a bad one. From the exit polling I’ve read, and from virtually every comment I got while working on the ground, whether it be door-to-door campaigning, or my long stint as one of the token Republicans on the ground at Ohio State, if John McCain had led the charge against the bailout and represented the best interests of the American people, I do not believe for one second we would be talking about anything other than how President-elect McCain’s transition team is putting together a great cabinet right now.
My final major bullet in the what we did wrong gun is reserved for the social elements of the party that stick to that and nothing else to win elections. Let me start by saying I agree with you on virtually every issue to varying degrees, I’m pro-life, I’m anti-gay marriage, and I’m pro-family values, we’re on the same page there. Here’s where I differ: it doesn’t win an election to attack the other side on these issues when people are losing their jobs, their homes, and they’re lining up to blame your party because you’re seen as the ones in power and the ones who are at fault. I saw this too much in the local legislative races here in Ohio.
We attacked the other side on social issues, and virtually nothing else in terms of mailers when we needed to be attacking the fact that they’re for high taxes and wealth redistribution, they’re anti-jobs, and they’ve done nothing, nothing, not one single tangible thing, in two years in office, to fix the mess that is Ohio’s education system. Kevin DeWine was right to say we need to shift away from focusing so heavily on social issues and start focusing more on kitchen table economic issues.
Where are our principles here? Well, for starters, in Ohio, we need to be for lower taxes, absolutely and unequivocally for lower taxes so that we can jumpstart a stagnant economy, attract new businesses, and create new jobs for Ohioans. We need to be for market based reforms to entitlements like Medicaid that threaten to eat up ever-increasingly more of the state’s budget, reduce our ability to provide tax relief to job producers and working families, and increase the degree of difficulty of turning around the state’s economy that is quite frankly, too high to begin with. To this particular end, Michael Bond and Jonathan Goodman of the Buckeye Institute have an absolutely amazing report out now on Medicaid reform that could save the state billions in the long run that if you’ve got a free hour and the interest, I highly recommend.
Finally, I come to my personal crusade: education. The reason I got into politics to begin with is education reform. It isn’t right that while taking a senior physics course in high school in 2003, I was learning from a book that if memory serves, theoretically could have been used by the parents of some of my classmates that were in high school in the mid 1980’s. I’m also fairly certain that that particular issue hasn’t gotten much better over the past few years, and considering the district I attended wasn’t exactly all that bad off (at the time), the 500 or so districts in worse shape throughout the state at the time I’d reasonably expect had similar problems. It’s been five years since that particular incident, I doubt the situation’s gotten much better if at all.
We have a governor here in Ohio who promised to fix education and its funding in his first term. Well, Governor Ted, the podium’s been setup for quite a while, the masses are gathered to hear you speak, but all I’ve heard in two years are crickets. Our side must step up and fill this gap, we must step up and talk about realistic solutions such as school choice, merit pay for teachers, and an end to the ridiculous system of teacher tenure that plagues Ohio schools with ever increasing costs and ever declining efficiency. If we really want to deficit spend money on infrastructure improvements, by all means, let’s do it, but let’s do it in an area where we’ll eventually get a return on it: improving school facilities and technology.
There’s a contrast that is missing from the two party system at the moment. It shouldn’t be hard for the Republican Party with its principles to win elections and govern effectively. Their side says government knows best, ours says we the people know best. Their side says groups should have rights, ours believes in individual rights and freedoms. Their side believes in an ever-expanding government bureaucracy moving further and further into our lives, ours believes that government should remain small, and that, borrowing from the 10th Amendment, those powers not expressly given to the federal government are reserved for the states and we the people of the United States, not some bureaucrat in Washington.
With solutions like the ones prescribed above, it’s not hard to see how the Republican Party can rebrand itself, only this time, in its own image. It’s a return to core values that will win us elections, not a shift towards the center. It’s sticking to these principles in a center-right country that will keep our side in power and America on the road to further prosperity and a better standard of living for all.
Chris Grewe is a 23 year old political science major at The Ohio State University. A lifelong native of Ohio, Chris is well versed in losing football teams (the Browns specifically...love them though he may, they lose...a lot...), presidential politics (yeah...we're a big swing state...), and general mayhem (the Ohio state government). Chris serves as a SOTH sporitics (or polorts, whichever your prefer) writer, and since 2005, has been writing for PigskinHeaven.com as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment