Republican Game Plan for the 21st Century

I received this memo and found it thought-provoking...

Getting Back to Basics--A Republican Game Plan for the 21st Century
by Edward E. Getterman

The Republican party wakes up this morning at a crossroads. Having suffered two consecutive electoral drubbings, the GOP faces at least two long years in the wilderness. Republicans have two-and-a-half months to begin to chart a new course before the 111th Congress convenes. Two-and-a-half months is not a lot of time to do the thorough self analysis that needs to be done, but we can begin the work that will eventually restore the GOP brand.

This process will not be easy. During the past eight years, many Republicans in Congress have lost their moorings and it will take a lot of work to bring the party as a whole back to the harbor. There are now more Bush Republicans in the party than Reagan Republicans, and if we're to return to a position of prominence that's going to have to change.

Before I begin laying out the points I believe we need to follow in rebuilding our party, let me say at the outset that I do not blame all of our problems on George W. Bush and believe it is hypocritical and a major mistake for others to do so. I believe the 43rd President is a good man who takes a lot of unfair blame, but, I believe his Presidency will always be a very sad tale of lost opportunity for Republicans. More on that later.

Over the course of two terms, too many so-called "conservative" Republicans allowed themselves to be led down the primrose path of big-government disguised as "compassionate conservatism." "All politics is local" became code for "buy votes," and before we knew it we were no longer the party of small government and low taxes. We stood by and helped pass huge spending bills and gave the nod to huge new entitlement programs.

It's hard to pick a "worst moment" for our party over the past eight years, but the Medicare prescription drug bill would have to be on anyone's top five list. At the time President Bush was still in his first term and still had political capital. He and Karl Rove used that capital to argue that Republicans were seen as too cold and calculating and that passing the prescription drug bill would endear us to seniors and re-brand us as "compassionate conservatives." Instead, it marked the beginning of our movement away from our principles and our addiction to "bringing home the bacon."

It's important to remember that while we have suffered two major defeats in a row, polls show that America is still a center-right nation. People still believe in the independence and ingenuity of the American worker. People still want the government to leave them alone and they still want to keep the government's hands out of their pockets. What the polls tell us is that the people haven't abandoned conservative ideas. Instead, they think we've abandoned them.

The good news is we have the perfect opportunity to start from scratch and return the Republican party to its roots. We must, however, make a clean break from the past and make it clear to the American people that we understand they don't like what we've become. To begin to re-build our brand and begin climbing our way out of the hole we've dug for ourselves, we must do a few things:

1. House Republicans must elect an entirely new slate of leaders for the 111th Congress. If early reports are correct, no one is set to challenge current Minority Leader John Boehner for that spot in the 111th Congress. This is a mistake. John Boehner is a good man, but to show the American people we've started over, we must start from scratch with a leadership team made up of fresh faces and fresh voices. We must make room at the top for new, young talent. We must begin to divorce ourselves from the notion that we're the party of old white guys. Luckily, the House Republican Conference is full of rising stars who understand true conservative ideals, and we must take advantage.

2. Whether House Republicans see fit to re-elect John Boehner or not, they MUST adopt his admirable stance of no earmarks. I understand it can be argued there are some "good" earmarks. Unfortunately, we are not going to win back the mantle of the party of small government by having internal party arguments over the semantics of what makes good pork. We must totally wash our hands of the process of buying votes and bringing home the bacon. It is a cancer that has slowly eaten away at our party and led us to where we are today. It is a sad commentary that after two stunning defeats, there are still Republican Members of Congress who are against banning earmarks. There are no ways around this. If we want to ever again effectively argue that Democrats, not Republicans, are the big spenders, we must immediately stop earmarking.

3. When the Democrats were in the minority, their only tactic was to wait for Republicans to do something then criticize it. They never had any new ideas or alternatives to what we were doing, it was just a continuous drum beat of criticism. This is what kept them in the minority for so long and we cannot fall into this trap. To be sure, when it is warranted we must criticize the Democrats and their proposals. But we must also become the party of new, bold ideas. The free-market is the most powerful force in the world and we must present plans to the American people that harness this force. Whether it means supporting the Fair Tax, returning oversight of education to the states, or some other small-government, reform and market oriented idea, we MUST develop bold ideas that set us clearly apart from the Democrats.

4. More young people voted in this election than ever before. If we are to become relevant as a party again, we must develop ideas that appeal to this new constituency. We must become the "tech" party, the party that pushes for free-market innovation and technological advancement. We must show young people that we understand web 2.0 and the new economy. Young voters today wear their iPods all day and check the news on their web-enabled phones. We have to connect with them on this level and show that we are the party of cool new ideas.

5. Corruption, of any kind, must not be tolerated. It's that simple.

6. On immigration, we can regain the support of Hispanics while at the same time advocating for border security. We need to champion the cause of making it as easy as possible for hard-working Mexicans and others to get here legally by reforming the bureaucracy that creates the huge backlog of visa applications. We must emphasize over and over that we are not against immigration. On the contrary, we're FOR legal immigration. What we're against is ILLEGAL immigration. We cannot allow Democrats to blur the distinction between the two.

7. There exists today a huge Republican voting block that did not exist 20 years ago. During primary season, Republicans fell all over themselves trying to prove they were socially conservative enough. If we are to regain our majority, we need to realize that while there is a huge evangelical voting block, there is also a huge, and some would say majority, portion of the American populace that is becoming more socially moderate by the day. It is a question that has vexed Republicans for the last two cycles--how do we prove we're socially conservative enough for evangelicals without alienating the growing moderate voting block? It is not an easy question to answer. My suggestion would be that as a party we return to another core conservative ideal--state's rights. I suggest that it become the Republican position that if voters in Massachusetts want to approve of gay marriage, that's fine, but it's also fine if voters in Texas say no. In short, I suggest we get back to saying "that's none of the federal government's business."

Finally, to follow-up on a point I made earlier, I think in ten years we will look back on the eight years of George W. Bush's Presidency as a lost opportunity. George W. Bush came into office with high approval ratings and the wind at his back. Unfortunately, and for reasons that will be debated for decades, instead of taking the opportunity to re-shape the federal government into the small, nimble being it should be, he instead advocated huge new government programs and massive increases in spending. He led us into the abyss of Iraq and into the wilderness where we now sit. Of course many of the problems he faced were not of his own doing--Sept. 11th, for instance. Congressional Republicans, as I've already said, also share a large part of the blame. They were blinded by the President's popularity and chose to follow him wherever he went, a decision they now surely regret. However, given that the President of the United States is not just the leader of the free world but also the leader of his party, George W. Bush must carry the burden of most of the blame for the state of the GOP.

At the close of the Presidency of George W. Bush, I struggle to name any permanent, conservative, free-market accomplishments he can be credited with. His tax cuts, while the right idea, are not permanent and were not accompanied by the necessary spending reductions. The only lasting benefit I can see of his Presidency are the confirmation of two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

While I think the last eight years have been, in short, a waste, there is a valuable lesson to be learned as we move forward. If presented with a choice between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party-lite, the American people are going to pick the full-strength version. To regain the faith and trust of the American people, we must show that we've learned the lessons of our failures and are getting back to being the party of innovation, small government, and low taxes. We must get back to being Republicans.