The Come To Jesus Reagan Meeting
By Mitch Berg
In the world of business, when an executive wants to get his subordinates onto the “same sheet of music” he’s on, he holds a “come to Jesus meeting”, where he/she exhorts, cajoles, bullies or otherwise convinces everyone to get with the program, whatever the program might be.
The GOP needs to do this, and desperately.
Ed and I had a bit of a Come to Reagan meeting Saturday on the NARN show. The subject – what does the GOP need to do to regain its worthiness to govern?
We, and most of the callers, agreed it came down to “first principles”. Of course, deciding what those “First Principles” are can get pretty dicey.
For example, Gay Marriage and Abortion are two issues where it’s possible not only for conservatives to disagree with liberals, but indeed with other conservatives, purely on conservative grounds. Banning either on a national basis would turn the Tenth Amendment on its head – so even as most conservatives are revolted by abortion and oppose gay marriage in and of themselves, they differ with social conservatives on government’s role in either issue. And both sides are conservatives.
As far as I’m concerned (and Ed was more or less on board with this as well), the big principles on which the GOP needs to model itself are:
- Strong defense (not just in a military sense, either; securing the border is vital)
- Limiting government – both in bread and butter terms (taxes) and higher principles (like restraining judicial activism). Constitutional Constructionism generally goes along with this.
With that understood – that the party is a big tent, but the tent is built on those two key overarching ideals – I have some questions for Republicans:
- Assuming you’re a Republican (Democrats can abstain from this one; I gave you your own post last week, with generally dismal results), do you agree? On what principles should the GOP base itself?
- Who, given your principles, should the GOP support for President? VP? If you’re in Minnesota, for Senate in ’06 and Governor in ’10
- John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have both violated a number of these first principles (McCain sponsored Campaign Finance Reform, a gross inflation of government power, and chaired the Gang of 14; Giuliani is quite anti-Second-Amendment, likewise a big government power grab (and also political suicide for anyone, much less a Republican, these days). Both are “pro-choice”, which means either/both that they support abortion (a no-no among social conservatives) and they abrogate the state’s Tenth Amendment right to decide an issue that the constitution, but for the fairly ludicrously-written Roe decision, would seem to have been reserved for the states. So – if either of them made amends on these issues, given that both of them would be very strong on defense and generally useful on other conservative issues, then would you, as a conservative/Republican, support them?
I don’t have the answers – I’m thinking about it, too. But I fully intend to do whatever is in my (dubious) power to hold the party’s feet in the fire about this.
UPDATE: Thorley Winston has a new blog – OK, a blog that’s been around a bit, but Thor’s been a bit busy for much updating – and a response to this post.
November 13th, 2006 at 9:27 am
1. I’d add a strong defense of individual liberties. One of the winning issues for the GOP has been respect for individual rights, such as gun rights and the like. A stronger commitment to expanding equal opportunity as a contrast to equal result would be a nice contrast with the failed liberal attitudes towards social programs.
2. I haven’t been excited by any of the major candidates so far.
3. McCain at least talks a good game on most issues of importance to conservatives. He’s too big-government to be Reagan-esque, but contrasted to Giuliani he’s the better choice. Not that either of them will really fire up the base unless they actively work to present a program and a choice that will convince Americans that they’re anything other than Dem-lite. But I’m not too hopeful that the GOP will return to their Reagan/Contract With America roots in time for ’08 — there’s been too much rot in the leadership.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:05 am
The republicans strength in numbers is still with the social issues. You aren’t going to get enough people to the polls on the idea of limited government alone. It’s too abstract unless it is tied to the threats to morality, property, security etc. Then it becomes very personal. I agree with Hugh to a certain extent that without Evangelicals engaged and voting republican, we’re toast, at least until the next generation which is libertarian comes along.
Recall that nearly all the ballot issues that passed throughout the country upheld conservative values. (omitting California and the stem cell research in MO. There were also those minimum wage proposals but who wouldn’t vote to give themselves a pay raise if they had a chance–no surprise there.)
A freind of ours talks about the “Neo-Liberals.” They don’t care about “education.” They care about *my school* and *my kid.* They voted Democrat this time but they could just as easily have voted republican if they believed that they would be better off.
McCain has a better chance at painting himself as pro-life than Guiliani. I don’t know Guiliani’s stance on the 2nd amendment but I can guess. He has a way around it, if he cares to undertake it. Most of the more recent Manhattan institute crime stuff that I’ve read has emphasized a focus on getting rid of *illegal* guns, on the premise that they are the problem. The idea is that if police regularly shook down petty criminals and drug dealers for illegal guns that would do more than all the increased permit regulation to cut down on crime.
As a prosecutor, Guiliani was pretty conservative with the law. I don’t know if you could call him a strict constructionist but I don’t see him as somebody who would like activist judges very much.
I think there is more of a trust factor with Guiliani than with McCain. A lot of social conservatives suspect McCain because of his cozy relationship MSM. With Guiliani, it’s what you see is what you get. We know how he would react in a crisis. McCain has a rep for being too emotionally driven.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:41 am
If the Republicans run a candidate who is for a good chunk of the following, I might well support them:
* small government and state’s rights
* dedicating defense to defense, not nation-building
* civil liberties
* be very very conservative when considering constitutional amendments
With these additional more controversial planks:
* reduction/elimination of the IRS in favor of a simple tax code (Or better yet, no federal taxes – have the fed get their money from the states and let the states decide taxation for themselves. Now THAT would be brilliant!)
* Investigating returning to a dollar backed by something actual. If not gold, something real – not this virtually worthless meaningless paper.
* Ending the drug war. Talk about your nanny state!
* And the big one for me although I’m fine if there’s a strategy to encourage business to solve this as opposed to having government fund it: Achieving Energy Independence. Not only for the environmental reasons but also for purposes of economic stability and national security. To have our nation absolutely reliant on a finite resource that we have to get from other nations puts us in a really bad situation.
Anyway, I may not be a Republican, but I think that all of these goals are fundamentally conservative and if the Republicans were to run a candidate that was coming from this direction, I could easily see voting for them.
I’d really like to see a federal government that took the time to read the constitution and realize what their job is supposed to be and stop trying to exceed it. I’d like to see congressional debates ALWAYS ask the question “Is this question a constitutionally federal matter?”. I get a lot more progressive when it comes to state/local politics, but when it comes to national, I’m far more constitutionalist/libertarian.
My perfect federal government has no IRS, the FBI is primarily responsible for investigating the very few federal crimes and investigating local/state government corruption, the FDA is eliminated with aspects of it broken off into state-level or industry specific certification boards, the DEA is pretty much eliminated, the EPA is probably brought into some other organization and their only job is to investigate claims by states against other states (they’re polluting a river that flows into us, damaging a shared water table, sending toxic fumes our way, etc.) and so on.
Seriously, put together a platform like this for a federal candidate and you should be able to unite the Republicans with the Constitutionalists, the Greens, and the Libertarians and even pick up a few Anarchists. You’d even get the smart Democrats and Socialists who realized that this gives them MORE ability to decide how their society operates at the state and local levels although I wouldn’t count on too many.
November 13th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Given that the influence of the federal government expands in war time I think that conservative strategy should take a secondary role to conservative tactics. After all, the D’s won two weeks ago without a clearly expressed or understood set of principles.
-Home ownership should be encouraged
-Secure, self-directed pension plans and health plans
-Local control of schools
-“culture war” issues, like stem cell research and gay marriage, should be left to the states.
Oh, and I like Romney for prez.
November 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Mitch, I’ve posted a response to you on my blog which you can find here:
http://entitlementreform.blogspot.com/2006/11/getting-back-to-first-principles.html