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.<\/p>\n
The GOP needs to do this, and desperately.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/em>. 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n\n
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