Time to regroup: Sen. Mitch McConnell, a minority leader in the Senate, says the United States is still a “center-right” country. He and others in the GOP are counting on that to rebuild the party following significant congressional losses – not to mention the presidency – in the last two elections. (Ed Reinke/AP)
After big losses, GOP looks to rebuild public trust
Leaders say they’ll have to examine their party’s ‘brand’ and consider new faces.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer/ November 6, 2008 edition
Reporter Gail Russell Chaddock discusses the future of the Republican Party.
Washington
After a drubbing at the hands of voters in the last two election cycles, Republicans are regrouping around two ways out of the wilderness.
One is to find a new face for the party – presidential contender Mitt Romney, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are often cited – and wait for the Democrats to “overreach.”
The other is to publicly overhaul the family brand. That means vetting the mistakes of GOP years in power – corruption, big government, and pork-barrel projects – and restoring public trust.
“What the election told us is that the American people agree with our ideas, they just don’t trust us,” says Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, who was renamed chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators, on Thursday.
“[President-elect] Obama ran on tax cuts, energy independence, curbing wasteful spending. He even said he would order an audit of all federal agencies to cut out waste. The reason we are losing is that we are not acting like Republicans,” he adds. “The Senate is ruled by a few big spenders, and we’ve allowed big spenders to rule and ruin our party.”
So far, there’s little taste among congressional Republicans for circular firing squads. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. John Boehner of Ohio expect to keep their jobs as Republican leaders of the Senate and House, respectively.
GOP tally from Election Day
One reason is that the losses in Campaign 2008, while significant, weren’t as massive as expected. To date, Republicans have lost six seats in the Senate and 19 in the House. Even with recounts pending, Democrats aren’t likely to reach the 60-vote threshold to ending a filibuster – the tool that allows minority party members to derail legislation or nominations they oppose. [Editors note: This paragraph was corrected to say “nominations.”]
Another hopeful sign is that the US is still a fundamentally center-right nation, GOP leaders say. President-elect Obama ran on cutting taxes for most Americans and on hope, but he won’t be able to govern on those principles and satisfy pent-up demands for spending.
“America remains a center-right country,” wrote Mr. Boehner in a letter to House GOP colleagues on Nov. 5. “Democrats should not make the mistake of viewing Tuesday’s results as a repudiation of conservatism or a validation of big government. Neither should we.”
The way forward is for Republicans to learn how to win on issues, one by one, and win back public trust, he says.
An example of how a minority can still win on issues is last summer’s protest over energy policy, launched by House conservative Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana and Tom Price and Lynn Westmoreland, both of Georgia. Instead of returning to their districts for August recess, Republicans held daily protests on a darkened House floor over the need to lift a ban on offshore drilling.
“While Democrats were on vacations and book tours, we stayed in town demanding a vote, defying expectations and putting the country’s interests ahead of our own,” Boehner wrote. “We showed Americans we stand with them.”
Bipartisanship on select issues?
On the Senate side, GOP leader McConnell is signaling the new administration that he will cooperate with them on bipartisan issues, such as implementing the president-elect’s campaign promises to cut taxes, increase energy security, reduce spending and ease “the burden of an immense and growing national debt.”
“On these, and other bipartisan issues, he will find cooperation in the Senate,” McConnell said in a statement on Nov. 5.
With enough votes to mount a filibuster, Republicans can block legislation that falls outside the scope of those issues.
But many conservative activists predict that stepping up the fight as a minority won’t be enough to bring the party back into power.
“You’re likely to have a rejection of a lot of the establishment leaders that dominate things today within the Republican Party and articulate conservatives stepping forward,” says David Keene, who chairs the American Conservative Union, the largest grass-roots conservative lobby group.
“The fact is the Democrats won this election because Republicans managed in the last few years to screw up their performance,” he adds. When Democrats assume they have a mandate to launch big spending programs, they will “overreach” and wind up in the same position.
But there’s a growing sense among some party backbenchers that the party needs more than to wait for Democrats to slip.
After the 1964 defeat of GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Republicans used their years in the wilderness to sharpen a message.
“We built over a period from 1964 to 1980 the intellectual case against the welfare state that the Democratic Party had become, and for 25 years this has been an effective agenda for the Republicans,” says Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama.
“But as we’ve been in office for a long time, we’ve got senators who think they’re getting elected by short-term political maneuvering, such as bringing home benefits for their state. That would have been fine in 1994, but you’ve got to be more sophisticated today and be more sensitive to what people’s real concerns are,” he adds.
The need isn’t just a new face for the Republican Party, he says. It’s for deeper ideas and a sharper way to convey them.
Comments
2. g.a. browne | 11.06.08
The Republican brand is broken. They successfully created an America with a class system based on who can screw the other the best. They then took in the Far-right religious zealots that thought they should rein supreme much like the Vatican. Thankfully these narrow minded “full of themselves” people pushed their agendas into the ditch. As for the politicians, maybe all these “old white men” can retire and let a new group of men & women, regardless of skin pigment, take control of Reagan’s deal. i doubt it.
Hopefully the supposed “Christians” will go back to their churches and stop trying to merge church and state.
Lets hope that the Republican party’s present leaders and clings go into the wildreness and stay there for at least a generation.
3. Gop Gopnik | 11.06.08
It’s not a lack of trust. It’s the religious right. It’s the love of ignorance and hatred of knowledge. The world is not 6,000 years old. Jesus did not ride to school on the back of a dinosaur. DNA science is evolution science. Stem cells no longer require the destruction of embryos. Bio-sciences offer an economic boom. So do energy, hi-technology, and environmental conservation - but only if the schools stop being attacked by religious extremists for teaching biology, chemistry, physics, and higher mathematics. Praise science from the Capitol Building, GOP, invest in knowledge and expertise, and watch the tide turn.
4. Russell Hellein | 11.06.08
A central question for the Republican party is if the 04 election reflects unique problems that will not reocur of if it reflects structural changes in values and demographics that will be long term in nature. Obviously key Republicans feel it is the former and by returning to the values of Ronald Reagan they can regain the White House.
I think this is unlikely. American values have changed signficantly since the eighties, core elements of free market ideology such as limited government, elite based tax cuts and free trade have lost their appeal with the bulk of the public. At the same time respect of the American public for business is in decline while stagnating economic conditions have broken the respect many Americans had for trickle down economics. This was reflected in polls well before this election, it has been occuring for years. The collapse of the cold war has removed another key plank of the Republicans reinforced by reaction to Iraq.
Some analysis suggest the US business community (or key elements of it) and well educated americans are losing faith in the Republican party. Increasingly the Republicans are (aside from Texas) only competitive in low population rural states - all the economic leading states are moving into the democratic party. I am not sure what is responsible for this, loss of faith in the Republican regulatory model, the social positions of Republicans, or possibly that well educated voters have been hurt by the income stagnation as much as lower income groups lately.
5. steve cole | 11.07.08
Good article, Sen. Jim DeMint hit it on the head with his assertions that Obama ran on a pretty centrist platform of “tax cuts, energy independence, curbing wasteful spending”, etc… I not only think that our party has a few big spenders, with the infamous ‘bridge to nowhere’ but also that our party has made some very bad choices over the last 8 years. Granted times were tough for the country following 9/11, but were republicans were supposed to be for liberty, not for some over intrusive government, with a foreign policy built on arrogance, and an economic policy built on greed.
A lot of Republicans, made fun of Ron Paul during the Republican debates, and I find it ironic how more and more republicans like Ron Paul, are feeling that our party lost its way.
Commenting on the state of the Republican Party **** Armey, the former House majority leader from Texas, stated that the party “… was no longer about small government and individual liberties.”
If only the GOP, could take some lessons from Ron Paul, and a few others that actually still respect the constitution and liberty, perhaps we will have a chance in 2012.
6. Jason Rose | 11.07.08
I would say the failure of Republicans has had more to do with an excessive belief in free market solutions ( - or a blind eye -) to social and environmental problems, as well as excessive spending on the Iraq war. The Democrats have been handed a mandate to move forward with their platform; I don’t believe they should be overly concerned with paying lip service to the “center-right.”
7. manny minaya | 11.07.08
What about the hispanic vote, go ahead continue to ignore this important group and be asure it’s going to be even worse for the GOP 2012 election.
8. John Smith | 11.07.08
A life long Republican, my dad served as a State Senator for the state of North Carolina, I could not for the life of me understand why President George W. Bush was not issuing vetos on bills laden with pork barrel spending. Ditto for why Republicans serving in congress were not loudly complaining about wasteful spending. McCain was right. Republicans went to Washington to change the system and the system changed them.
Although I did not vote for Barak Obama I pray he avoids similar mistakes.
9. Zac in CA | 11.07.08
I find it a rather absurd notion that the Republicans truly wish for smaller government. While characters like Tom Delay did everything they could to whip the party into a cohesive shape in the past few years, nevertheless some blame must be portioned out to all Republicans for the sprawling, privacy-invading, warmongering mess our nation has become.
In my opinion, what we’ve seen - Democrats pushing for programs, Republicans pushing to lower taxes - has only led to greater entitlements on part of corporations and an obscene level of federal debt. California is in the same boat, and it would seem that it’s a microcosm (if a rather large one) for the nation. Do we really trust the Republicans to be as principled as the (in)famous Dr. No - Congressman Ron Paul? Do we really trust them to oppose spending, as opposed to merely taxation? Spending, after all, puts money in *someone’s* pocket, and corporations like Halliburton are all too eager to let that spending flow into their pockets.
The privatization and corporatization of everything from prisons to the Iraq reconstruction is not only wasteful, but deeply corrupt and disturbing. I’ll only trust the Republicans again when their small-gov’t, fiscal conservative wing manages to rout the war hawks and the Bible beaters. Until that day, they are hypocrites of a deep and shameful stripe.
10. Idahed | 11.09.08
I wonder if they’ve considered things like; honesty, integrity, consistency, tolerance, and empathy. That’d be a good start. I’m still amazed that 46% of the country voted for McCain, which says there’s still a lot of work to be done.
11. apowell | 11.10.08
The wording of this article clearly points to the core issue for the Republican Party, which is simply too much partisan and cultic political maneuvering, and not enough SERVICE. Now is the time for selfless service, which will require an emphasis on cooperation and consideration in order to repair the horrible effects of the “Party” agenda disposition the past 8 years (and longer). That is how you regain trust, shut up and serve! Enough with the posturing and power-mongering! We need smarter decisions made by DIFFERING points of view, and in ever area of government. Establishing an homogeneous electorate (or world!?) has nothing to do with the constitution, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fundamental freedoms of America.
Obama represents a leader for America, not merely a political agenda. A leader who knows he was elected to bring the two (self-serving) political cults (Republicans & Democrats) back into one unified group serving the people. Unified. United. The “new face” for the Republican Party (and the Democratic Party) should be oriented to the whole, not continuously minded to adolescent party agendas and personal gains. Time for the good ole boys to grow up!
apowell
registered Republican, soon to be independent
12. apowell | 11.10.08
The wording of this article clearly points to the core issue for the Republican Party, which is simply too much partisan and cultic political maneuvering, and not enough SERVICE. Now is the time for selfless service, which will require an emphasis on cooperation and consideration in order to repair the horrible effects of the “Party” agenda disposition the past 8 years (and longer). That is how you regain trust, shut up and serve! Enough with the posturing and power-mongering. We need smarter decisions made by DIFFERING points of view, and in every area of government. Establishing an homogeneous electorate (or world!?) has nothing to do with the constitution, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fundamental freedoms of America.
Obama represents a leader for America, not merely a political agenda. A leader who knows he was elected to bring the two (self-serving) political cults (Republicans & Democrats) back into one unified group serving the people. Unified. United. The “new face” for the Republican Party (and the Democratic Party) should be oriented to the whole, not continuously minded to adolescent party agendas and personal gains. Time for the good ole boys to grow up!
I hope and pray that Obama will upset both party agendas, using the ancient technique of cooperative consideration and unified consensus.
Get serious, this is not Party time!
apowell
registered Republican, soon to be independent
13. John Imrie | 11.11.08
The Republican party has forsaken Reagan and Goldwater. They either need to return to their libertarian, small government roots, or they need to die and allow another party to take over.
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1. sangjmoon | 11.06.08
Corruption is what brought the Republicans down, and corruption will be what will bring the Democrats down again. The Democrats lost congress under Clinton because the Democrats were more corrupt than the Republicans then. While corrupt Republicans are being shown the door now, most of the corrupt Democrats who lost congress before are still around. If you read the news, you already see a trend where there are more and more corrupt Democrats in the news. If the Republicans are to regain the government for more than a relatively fleeting period of time, they need to avoid the quick and easy way of the dark side of the force which brought them to dominance of the government and just as quickly lost them all. If the voters won’t weed out the bad apples, the party itself needs to do it even if it means increasing the seats Democrats have in the short run. It also means sticking to their guns about being against pork, unethical gifts, and opaqueness in its leadership decisions. Trust was justifiably lost by the Republicans, and it is going to take more than business-as-usual to regain that trust.