How to Save the Republican Party?
Any one that follows American politics at all and has not had there head buried in the sand on mars, knows that the Republicans have been taking something of a thrashing lately. Over the 8 years of the Bush administration republican leadership alienated huge swaths of the American populace, and changed hands repeatedly. Over and over again the Bush administration made decisions with only the support of republican loyalists, ignoring criticisms and concerns on behalf of the left, by dismissing them as "unpatriotic", "cowardly", or "fringe", and relying on ideology heavy slogans, rather than reasoned statements, to refute arguments. The worrying trend of the increasingly simplistic and polar debate proses accelerated dramatically, largely thanks to republicans at the highest levels relying on arguments that in their entirety could be printed on a bumper sticker and appeals to raw emotion without any thought to pragmatic policy, like the over repeated "have you liberals forgotten 9/11?". The Bush presidency, made many decisions, some ineffective, some arguably immoral, and even some that are simply unconstitutional, because it felt that since it was in power it did not need to consult dissenting opinions and simply steamrolled over them. While enormously effective in getting what it wanted, this monolithic and unyielding take on politics severely damaged the legitimacy of Bush and the Republicans at large in the eyes of many political centrists, and in my opinion allowed them to make various unwise choices, blinded by their own ideology, without ever subjecting their ideas to real debate before being implemented.
In 2006, the resentment of Republican control overwhelmed the inertia of the status quo, and the republican controlled congress was turned over to the Democrats. In 2008, the continued resentment at the perceived ineptitude of the Bush presidency, in conjunction with with McCain's inability to distance himself from Bush resulted in what has come to pass in American presidential elections as a landslide in favor of Barrack Obama*. I was among those that voted for Obama. Happy that Obama had won I initially ignored the concerns put forward by republicans, but soon realized that was much the same mistake the the Bush supporters made.
Given the new scandal regarding senate majority leader Nancy Pelosi, what should have been obvious is now undeniable: that integrity, intelligence, and understanding of the issues at hand, are not doled out along party lines. having meaningful debate is a total necessity to the political wellbeing of any nation, and I think, although I have a Liberal bent, the best first step is to revitalize the Republican party so in can force the Obama administration to examine policy and make good decisions.
Here are my thoughts as to what the Republican party can do to become a viable political force once again:
1) De-democratize. It has been the trend in not only American politics, but also around the world, that things are becoming more and more democratic. This has brought many benefits, but also a handful of serious problems. for instance, look at California. Once the cutting edge of America, it is now a political wasteland of dysfunction, under both liberals and conservatives. Why? because the California government allows the people, through popular votes, to decide on what laws to introduce therefor bypassing the California legislator, resulting in any bill that sounds good, superficially, being enacted. If it does not work for states, it won't work for parties. As it stands right now, both Parties are blobs that respond to what ever is the popular whim of the moment, an incapable of establishing a semi-coherent ideology, both parties defining themselves as the opposite of the other, and little else. This is madness and it has to stop. If the republicans adopt a real leadership with the ability to ignore popular yet stupid ideas, and not just a seres of figureheads to spin the news, they will have a real tactical advantage over democrats, and the Dems will be forced to act in kind.
2) Selectively liberalize. Admittedly an easy thing for me to ask, yet a critical one. There are a number of issues that republicans have spent countless amounts of political capital to advance, only to beat dead horses. for instance, homosexuality. Not only are the various talking points conservatives use to combat homosexuality dead wrong (the concept of Homosexuals "recruiting" kids comes to mind) in is becoming an increasingly big thorn in the republicans side. statistically younger people are more accepting of homosexuality, and the younger they are the more OK they are with it. This trend shows no signs in slowing down, and in a generation hence, homophobia will be a political anathema on par with racism. The republicans need to drop the issue NOW before it is too late, yes this will alienate some republican supporters, but those same people will not go over to the democrats, and it will allow a much larger constituency of log cabin republicans and like minded people to join the republicans. This same argument can be applied to a number of issues, like state mandated prayer in schools, opposition to environmentalism, and flag burning. A word to the wise: get off it, you have more important things to do.
Note: While it may seem as if I am arguing that republicans give up core values, one does need to understand that although rampant populism is not a good thing, at some point political parties need to be functional, ie take in votes, which may mean compromising on issues that one would rather not.
3) Get serous about small government. So often you hear republicans throwing temper tantrums about how big the government is and the problems associated with it. This is not an unfair complaint, by any stretch of the imagination, and yet republicans have proven again and again to be ineffective and alienating (the last thing that political party should be) when dealing with government size. Republicans, and Conservatives at large, have made a number of mistakes in dealing with government size. The first, is that they have repeatedly been unable to recognize potential allies across the aisle. Republicans have repeatedly cast democrats as socialists and thoroughly corrupted by anti-capitalist sentiments, and although there is a strong curnal of truth to that it does us a deserves because, most of us are not liberals because of economic policy but because of other issues, in fact, there is a very strong current of libertarianism among the American left. Demonizing the left as uncompromisingly socialist makes propositions that would shrink government much harder to pass as well as increasing the unnecessary and largely artificial rift between Americans. This is compounded by the assumption that the socialist element among the democrats want big government, which is untrue (except for the tiny communist element), because these folks don't want big government, they want adequate government, which is a very different thing, and there is much common ground to be had. The second mistake they make in terms of shrinking government is the inability to prioritize what things should be scrutinized. Regardless of how you feel about American public education, threatening to cut it will not win you any political capital. Rather there is much less controversial fat that can be focused on first, and it would do wonders for republicans to cut this, because there is a lot. A third reason is a total inability to actually cut government size, and this has held republicans back the most. Cutting taxes is not enough, one also must decrease government spending. I some times am awestruck at the self-righteous stupidity of politicians as the plunge us into further debt.
4) Dump old idols. There are a number of voices out there that are loud and abrasive and deeply, as Yahtzee said, "mouth breathingly, paste eatingly, chasing the girls around the playground with a piece of dog pooingly stupid". I know this would require some political finesse, but you do not want Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson as the most enduring conservative voices out there. You just don't. For all the hubbub about moderate Muslims failing to condemn radicals, American conservatives do far worse. There are some great conservative commentators in the world, people who don't intentionally say crazyto sell more books, the kind of people that can give the liberal dominated academia a run for it's money but right now there is not much impetus for young republican minded people to think and act like real agents for responsible governance, because no one listens to the real thinkers.
I would even give this advice in a broader sense, although I admit it is far more controversial: Forget Reagan. He was a poor president, and a poor conservative. Why the man is remembered as otherwise is still a little bewildering to me, because his administration was repeatedly unpragmatic and ineffective, he simply got quite lucky that he had talented people work in the US government at the time. Now, I recognize that it would be political suicide to make ANY disparaging remarks about the man's legacy, but in a recent interview with a number of influential republicans every single one said that the president that they admire the most is Reagan. What is wrong with Lincoln? or Teddy Roosevelt? I mean come on. Even Nixon or Eisenhower, who might not be the most politically savvy choices, were great republicans that did great things for for our nation.
5) Redefine your relationship with science. Allow me to hit you with a statistic: 67% of registered Republicans reject the theory of evolution. I have said this two times already on TWC and no one has seemed very surprised. This is very, very bad, for a number of reasons, not least among them is the fact that this shows with some degree of certainty that scientific illiteracy among republicans and American conservatives is weirdly, and dangerously high. I usually don't respond to comments before they are made, (I hate having words put in my mouth, golden rule and all that) but this warrants an exception: "So what?", you say "Plenty of democrats believe in stupid things..." This is unarguably true, but I quote myself in response
"But Wilder," you say, "thats all well and good, but how will that help the republican party survive? Right or wrong if it gets them votes you can't argue with them in this context can you?" Very true, but ultimately the Christian right wants to feel that they will be represented, and I am convinced that a moderate bible thumper that is sincere in his or her faith, can convincingly argue politics from a Christian perspective, and yet accepts and understands the importance and validity of science, would not go far awry. I think the Christian right would be accepting of someone like this and it would be effective in bringing in nonreligious, people who agree with his or her politics.If you do not believe in evolution you do not understand, on any level, Biology, Ecology, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and, thus, many of the connected sciences, including huge swaths of history, and in my opinion, morality. You would be unable to perform any effective governance in anything that involved these subjects.
Another concern I have related to this subject matter is the refusal among many conservatives to recognize ANY of the scientific validity of Anthropogenic global warming, for very dumb reasons. Obviously I have my biases here, but I am being totally sincere when I say that the knee jerk reactions of republicans against almost any environmental initiative, is useless. I am not denying that there is plenty of pseudoscience and useless regulation put forward by environmentalists, and republicans would do well to scrutinize it, they are doing themselves no favors by acting like all environmentalism is a socialist plot. Repeat after me: environmentalism is about the environment, not socialism. Not only would accepting environmentalism result is somewhat better policymaking, it would cement the support of rural voters nation wide. from Appalachia, to the rockies rural, and, interestingly, Christian Americans are finding that preservation of the environment is increasingly important to them.
If the republicans got this particular issue sorted, I would seriously consider changing my party affiliation.
6) Define yourself by what you want not what you don't. This is a simple rule, so I'll keep it simple, don't be non-democrats, or non liberal, be REPUBLICANS. It is much easer to vote for people like that.
7) Remember politics is not a zero sum game. I still find it weird, that in a country allegedly dominated by left leaning media, the word "Conservative" has absolutely no negative connotations, yet "Liberal" has tons. The demonetization of opponents in politics is an effective tactic, and calling for its retirement would be both naive and poor advice. Yet there is a point a diminishing returns when it comes to smear campaigns, and Republicans have far passed that point. Worse still they have apparently convinced themselves that Liberals are universally stupid, PC, vapid, alarmist, hive minded, borderline retarded cowards, who vote for people based on skin color. It's not true and it is a fully unthought out paradigm, that actually damages the right more than the left. In the end, competition is good, but effective governance is about cooperation.
So, what do you think? What should republicans do? I'm particularly interested to hear from those Republicans here.
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Originally Posted by Simon Cashmere
away from the religious right. Stop trying to legislate morality through the Federal government, let the States decide.
