When All Else Fails . . . Blame The GOP

That’s right. The problems plaguing Detroit have absolutely nothing to do with more than 50 years of one party misrule, mismanagement and malfeasance by liberal Democrats. No. It’s Republicans who are to blame, for coming to the city’s rescue when total collapse made that necessary. Readers coming fresh to this story might swallow such outlandish blame-shifting. But as someone who grew up in the Detroit area and watched the debacle unfold, I know it’s complete claptrap. 

Republicans certainly deserve their share of blame for many problems plaguing the U.S.. But blaming them for Detroit is revisionism on Ritalin.

Election Day Reflections

Republicans today seem poised to benefit, at least temporarily, from the anti-Obama-Pelosi-Reid backlash. I'm one of those who is looking forward to the return of divided government in Washington. But I'm feeling more relieved than triumphant, more cautious than elated, given the speed with which the pendulum could swing back in Obama's favor if Republicans don't make the most of this shot at redemption.

Part of what killed Democrats was their hubris -- that and their fatal misreading of the "mandate" they thought they were handed two years ago. Republicans should not make the same mistake.

These could very well be short-term gains, given the unprecedented volatility of today's political climate, unless the GOP rediscovers its Reaganesque roots and begins building a coherent and compelling alternative to the super-statism of the other party. The Tea Party testifies to a growing public distrust, and disgust, with both political parties, but Republicans will suffer most if they don't heed the message this movement is sending. Being the anti-Obama and anti-Pelosi will be good enough for now, perhaps, given the mess they made of things. But it wasn't that long ago that Republicans were making a mess of things. And this will be a very short, unhappy honeymoon if they misread the message and return to old form.

Is two years of wandering in the political wilderness long enough for Republicans to have truly seen the light? I have my doubts. But unless they soon do, they'll be wandering in the wilderness again -- next time, maybe for good.

No More Business as Usual for the GOP?

Just when you think the GOP is destined to wander the political wilderness for 40 years, paying penance for having lost its moral and ideological compass, a glimmer of hope emerges that the party might still regain its bearings. Although it's been in the public domain for a week, I just stumbled across this incisive and important op-ed by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, in which he calls on his party to distance itself from the creeping Chamber of Commerce socialism on the march in Washington and elsewhere.

Although they've long been caricatured by their enemies as the tools of big business, Republicans actually won elections in the 70s, 80s and 90s by preaching the gospel of political and economic liberty, according to DeMint. And the party won't regain public support, or its soul, until its leaders make a clean break from the business and political elites behind the corporatist convergence currently taking place.

Wrote DeMint:

"For decades, the Republican Party has been portrayed by liberals (and the media) as a political country club - interested only in serving the interests of oligarchic corporate elites, insensitive to the needs of "real" Americans in the bottom 95 percent.

And for decades, Republicans consistently won elections - because the caricature was false. From President Richard Nixon's silent majority through President Ronald Reagan's realignment and the Contract With America, Republicans were not a party of economic elites as much as they were a party of economic freedom. They represented a clear, philosophical contrast to the watered-down socialism of the Democrats. Even when Republicans fell short on their promises of limited government, Americans believed the promises to be sincere nonetheless.

I doubt many Americans believe the promises anymore.

For the past eight years, the Republican experiment in big government hollowed out our core identity. In battles over immigration, spending, education and other "compassionate conservative" priorities, small-government conservatives were attacked by leading Republicans for choosing principle over poll-tested politics. It was in these battles that the long-alleged marriage between the Republican Party and corporate America was finally consummated . . . .

. . . . The road back to Republican success is not to reinforce our weakened coalition of corporate interests, but to drop it altogether. Republicans shouldn't be the party of business any more than they should be the party of labor - we're supposed to be the party of freedom. We should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. We should not care who wins in fair fights between Microsoft and Apple, between CitiGroup and community banks, or between Home Depot and mom-and-pop hardware stores. All we should demand is a fair fight.

If Goliath beats David, so be it - just so long as he does it without corporate welfare.

Similarly, we should not tip the legal scales for either side in negotiations between Ford and the United Auto Workers. Instead, both sides should simply know that if their contract leads to competitive disadvantage, layoffs or bankruptcy, there will be no federal bailouts there to reward their mistakes.

It is none of the government's business - let alone the Republican Party's - whether banks make or deny risky loans, but only that we ensure lenders and borrowers bear the consequences of their own decisions.

When free markets are allowed to work by punishing failure and rewarding success, everyone benefits. The results are higher quality, lowered cost and innovative breakthroughs. But in a system of corporate welfare, those who suffer most are Americans who pay higher taxes funneled to well-connected companies.

A party of freedom is not a party of any one competitor, but a party of competition itself - what you might call the true "spirit of enterprise."

Republicans will succeed again when we realize our true allegiance is not to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but to free markets, free people and freedom itself."

Whether DeMint's Declaration of Independence from creeping corporatism will be heard by fellow Republicans -- and heeded by leaders in the business community as well -- is unknown. The problem, from the standpoint of the "practical" politician, is that this is where most of their campaign funds come from. But if the Republican Party is going to successfully reinvent itself, and wants to offer a real alternative to the party now in power, DeMint seems to be pointing it in the right direction. The GOP won't regain lost ground by offering socialism lite, or statism lite (if you take umbrage at my use of the "S" word), but by redefining itself as the party that champions economic, political and personal freedom -- even when that puts it on a collision course with the corporate welfare-chasers at the country club.

Don't Smoke the Kristol Meth

Whatever else Republicans do in trying to pull themselves up off the floor after a much-deserved drubbing, they ought to avoid like poison the political counsel of Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, who would have the GOP abandon what shreds of principle it has left in a pointless quest to regain power.

I say "pointless" because that's what power is without principle -- as the GOP aptly demonstrated in the last 8 years.

Kristol, in two recent New York Times columns, unmasks himself as a non-con rather than a neo-con -- meaning he has nothing in common with conservatives except an empty label. It's the Kristol Republicans who helped sever the party from its traditional moorings, leading directly to the disaster at hand. Cut adrift, party insiders fell victim to every seduction that power can offer, from pork-barrel pigouts to reckless acts of nation-building, with Kristol cheerleading from the peanut gallery. And the party will be dashed on the reef, never to recover, if it doesn't disregard this new siren song.

Several weeks back, ably filling in for regular New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman (meaning that I couldn't tell their columns apart), Kristol argued that Republicans must abandon their slavish belief in free markets and free enterprise if they want to regain power. Wearing Adam Smith neckties is fine for the dweebs that hang out at Heritage Foundation events, Kristol all but said. But these ideas just aren't trendy at the moment -- and they certainly aren't worth losing congressional races over!

Kristol yesterday delivered another broadside -- and another dose of bad political advice -- arguing this time that Republicans no longer can win on the limited government platform. That, too, is passe in Kristol's view. Just as conservatives and libertarians must acknowledge that free markets and free enterprise need to be managed by the wizards in Washington, we must give up on the archaic idea that government should be modest in mission and power. "I can’t help but admire some of my fellow conservatives’ loyalty to the small-government cause," Kristol sneers. "It reminds me of the nobility of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, as it charges into battle: 'Theirs but to do and die.' Maybe it would be better, though, first to reason why."'

Most who ascribe to freedom philosophy already know the "reason why," Bill. We've thought the matter through and decided that political and economic liberty are practically and morally superior to their antipodes, statism and socialism. Kristol's attachment to these ideas is obviously more tenuous, conditioned on whether they help or hinder his party of convenience. I would rather see the Republican Party lose elections than see it lose its soul.

Remove economic and political liberty from the old-line Republican platform, as Kristol advises, and the platform will collapse. What will be left then, except a malleable mish-mash of "position statements" tailored to win congressional races but detached from any over-arching economic, political or moral philosophy. Knee-jerk support for Israel does not a party platform make, contrary to what Kristol and other neocons (oops, that's non-cons from now on!) seem to think.

Republicans don't need to repudiate these timeless ideas; they need to rediscover them, revive them, re-fashion them in a way that works in a modern context. If that takes years, and means they're out of power for a while, so be it. That will give the statists and collectivists the time they need to make an even bigger mess of things -- setting the stage for a revival of popular interest in the limited government virtues our founders espoused.