GOP MUST RETURN TO BEDROCK PRINCIPLES
From time to time, I get email from the Colorado Republican
Party. This latest one to hit my Inbox is
all about principles.
I like principles. I
think they’re important. They tell
others where you stand, and even if you disagree you can still admire people
who practice what they preach. By that
standard, how well does the GOP measure up?
The email describes the GOP as “The Party Of All The
People”, and lists four key principles:
”Protect the rights of the individual”, “Protect the free enterprise system”,
“Reduce government to the lowest practical level” and “Endorse
and practice fiscal responsibility”.
Let’s go through the list and see whether Republicans walk the walk.
Right away, we run into a
problem. Can the GOP legitimately claim
to be “The Party Of All The People”?
Most African Americans don’t vote Republican, nor do most Jews. The GOP has also had trouble courting women;
most women who go to the polls consistently vote Democratic.
Perhaps being the “Party Of All
The People” is not a fact but a commitment, a goal that reflects the GOPs
noblest and highest aspirations. Fair
enough. But does “All The People”
include
Let’s move on to “Protect the
rights of the individual”. Democrats are
all about protecting the rights of groups, so here’s a chance for Republicans
to really show how they differ from the competition. But if the phrase “rights of the individual”
means anything, shouldn’t it include the right of individuals to lead their
private lives as they please? Regrettably,
it is the Democrats who lead on this issue, not the Republicans. Score one for them.
How about “Protect the free
enterprise system”? Truly a great
principle. Democrats are at best mildly
tolerant of free enterprise. Even the
most diehard leftists now admit that capitalism is the only way to create the
wealth they are so desperately eagerly to redistribute. Republicans, by contrast, have always
understood that free enterprise fights poverty, creates opportunity, and makes
Unfortunately, once again the GOP is
shooting itself in the foot. According
to one Cato Institute study, last year’s Republican Congress spent $92 billion
on direct and indirect subsidies to business.
That kind of corporate welfare isn’t protecting the free enterprise
system; it’s strangling it in its crib.
A party that claims to protect free enterprise while giving out handouts
is not principled at all. It is merely a
group of cronies and hypocrites.
What about the last two
planks: “Reduce government to the lowest
practical level” and “Endorse and practice fiscal responsibility”? Here is the GOP’s greatest failing of
all. In what should have been eight years
of opportunity to truly put a vision of limited government into action, the
national Republican Party has overseen the biggest expansion of government in
forty years.
Thanks to Republicans succumbing
to the temptations of power, Democrats can now position themselves as fiscal
conservatives, in stark contrast to those reckless Republicans who spend like
sailors on leave. No wonder Republicans
got thumped in the last elections. With
that kind of hypocrisy, they deserved to.
So what will happen in 2008? The 2006 elections were more a rejection of
the direction the Republican Party has taken than an endorsement of eastern
liberalism; there is still reason to hope for a Republican resurgence. But Democrats in the West are already fielding
fiscally conservative, socially libertarian candidates in an effort to woo
independent voters. It is just these
voters who are leery of the “God, Guns and Gays” Republican Party that the GOP
has become.
It doesn’t have to be this
way. If the Republicans want to win,
they don’t have to betray their principles.
They merely have to take them seriously.