It isn’t surprising that the Democrats, after being virtually shut out of power for the last eight years, developed a critique of the GOP that involved a concern about personal freedoms/civil liberties, the national debt, and the way that federal monies were being appropriated. A minority party will always be cynical about the use of executive power and the spending priorities of the majority party. This is true even in an atmosphere of competent government. When we look at the Republicans’ core principles, as articulated today by Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, we see familiar themes.
There needs to be a high standard for our franchisees. In other words, I believe Republicans and conservatives must agree on our core principles. St. Augustine called for ‘unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things,’ and while I believe there should always be a big GOP tent, there must also be a shared agreement on the essentials — including expanding liberty, encouraging entrepreneurship and limiting the reach of government in people’s everyday lives.
To these, Sanford added a belief in small government and an emphasis on solutions developed on the state (non-federal) level. A party that is long shut-out of power in Washington will naturally develop an aversion to federal incursions into state prerogatives. But let us consider what this means for conservatism going forward.
Modern conservatism developed during a period of sustained dominance by the FDR-inspired New Deal Democratic coalition. The Civil Rights/Warren Court era pitched Southern Democrats that were unhappy with federal outcomes, against their northern brethren, and eventually into the arms of waiting Republican/Wall Street coalition that shared their discomfort with large government with its taxes and regulation. Southerners were concerned about desegregation, school prayer, abortion, women’s and gay rights. Their answer was to join the Wall Street crew’s campaign against a strong federal government and activist courts.
But this philosophy was developed as a strategy for a minority party. It was completely unsuited for a party that controlled the federal purse-strings. After the 1994 Gingrich Revolution handed the purse-strings to the Republicans, they quickly adapted to majority-party status and began to behave in much the same way the Democrats had for a half-century. This meant that the Republicans continued to spend federal monies at the same or higher rates, but they spent the monies in ways that favored their core constituencies and that helped assure the reelection of their members.
Now that the Gingrich Revolution has crashed and burned and the Republicans have returned to what appears to be a sustained period in the minority, it is natural that they should revert back to the principles of a minority party. It is also natural that they will blame their failure on their lack of adherence to those principles while they were in power. But, while all of this is predictable and easily understood, it is an example of a minority party failing to understand the shortcomings of their philosophy. What the Republicans need to do is not to simply revert to their old philosophy but to come to terms with the reality that they do not and never have had a philosophy for being in the majority. The Republicans need to develop a governing philosophy. If they do not, then there is no reason to believe that they won’t fall into the same trap again the next time they take power.
John McCain often said that the Republicans came to Washington to change Washington and instead found that Washington changed them. This will always happen if the minority party has a purely negative philosophy that has no vision for how best to run the federal government.
Set aside the demographic challenges facing the Republicans. Until they decide how they want a majority-Republican federal government to work, they’ll never be prepared to run one.
