Tea Party Series: How the GOP can use the tea parties and why

For the last six to eight months, the Democrats have been placing their hopes in the tea parties. Yes, I said the Democrats. They have placed their hope that the tea partiers, or "tea-baggers," as they've derisively labelled them, will redeem everything wrong with them, that the Nazi-sign wielding right-wing extremists would make the GOP look so bad that all the mistakes of the current administration would be dwarfed by the ineptitude of the opposition. And at first, they were right.

But the tea party crowd, and the Republican Party itself, may just be beginning to learn from its mistakes. The oft-predicted bloody GOP civil war hasn't materialized. In fact, there are many groups working to unify the GOP's progressive, centrist, and right-wing conservative factions, such as Republicans United and David Frum's Frum Forum. There seems to be less in-fighting than last year, as if the GOP is actually starting to listen to the Big Tent speak. Look no further for evidence than the recent Scott Brown victory; a Progressive Republican by all accounts-he even describes himself as fiscally conservative yet is a social moderate. And not only did he get GOP backing, he won in a traditionally all dem state. And the tea partiers did not get upset that a moderate won-quite the opposite in fact. In Sarah Palin's keynote address at the tea party convention, she said that "...in many ways Scott Brown represents what this beautiful movement is all about..."

In a syndicated op-ed piece, The Potent Tea Party, Rich Lowry writes:

If the tea partiers were to split from the GOP, or be spurned by it, that
would indeed spell disaster for Republicans. It's an unlikely prospect, though.
In a survey for the National Review Institute, pollster John McLaughlin found
that tea-party activists and their sympathizers self-identify as Republicans,
and 68 percent of them voted for John McCain. They are pro-life, pro-tax cuts
and pro-defense -- in other words, mainstream conservatives who are particularly
engaged by the debt-fueled growth of government.

Palin's rapturously received speech in Nashville could have been delivered
almost line for line at a Republican Convention. She skipped the social issues,
but otherwise rehearsed unalloyed conservative orthodoxy on national-security
and fiscal issues. This is not the stuff of ideological fissure or
self-immolation.

Any activist-driven movement will inevitably have rough edges. The
Nashville convention itself was beset by feuding among tea-party groups and
allegations of profiteering for its extravagant $550 admission price. It gave a
platform to ranters Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman, and Joe
Farah, editor of a right-wing Web site, both of whom predictably delivered
cringe-inducing screeds.

But such embarrassments are a trifle compared with the enthusiasm of the
tea partiers, and their populist-tinged purifying impulse. They want to
reconnect the GOP to the people, to its principles and to an ideal of public
service that got obscured in the decadent latter days of its congressional
majority.

Tom Tancredo gave a terrible speech, and was rightfully called out by Meghan McCain when she said "...I'm sorry [but] revolutions start with young people. Not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English. It's ridiculous..."

And she is right. Speeches like Tancredo's, and in fact speakers like Tancredo, should be scorned by the tea party and the GOP itself. The way to really start winning again is to continue to embrace the "big-tent" ideal that Reagan spoke of in the '80's; by embracing our brothers and sisters that are more progressive than us, and also those that are more conservative than us, so that we can, together, reconnect the GOP to the people.

Crossposted at Republicans United

Too bad Guiliani won't run again; we could use a real leader

Not to relive last year's primaries and elections, but McCain/Palin was a terrible idea. Romney or Guiliani, I would've voted for.

Hell, I would've voted for McCain had he not let the GOP trample him after he won the nomination and push him to pick the [disastrous] Palin. He said "Country First" yet he put the party's leadership first. Not something I want in the leader. And then, to make it worse, after he picked Palin, he shoved her under the bus during his campaign. I couldn't have confidence in a man who would pick someone he didn't believe in, and I couldn't have confidence in a vice president who doesn't even have the respect of the guy she's running with.

Guiliani: I would've voted for him. I'm willing to bet a lot of other centrists and moderate/progressive Republicans, not to mention even independents, would've too. He held New York together after 9/11. While Bush was off starting two wars and blaming them both on 9/11, Guiliani was rebuilding New York. He was a true leader.

Too bad he dropped out of the primaries.

And too bad he won't be running for Senator, or Govenor, and will instead remain on the sidelines.

Too bad. He's a real player, and a real leader. I could definitely have confidence in him.

Source

GOP Litmus Test Resolution

The Republican National Convention (RNC) has obtained the necessary co-sponsors to bypass the RNC's resolution's committee and eventually vote on the "litmus" test for a candidate to be considered "pure" enough to get the GOP's backing, according to David Frum's forum . Not only is this political suicide for the GOP, it's just plain stupid.

This is the Litmus Test:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

In order to be considered for political backing by the GOP, a candidate must sign off on 8 out of 10 of this list. The rationale for this? They are invoking the spirit of Reagan, albeit misguidedly, by saying that since he said that “that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent,” the resolution will embody that spirit of Reagan and cut off all Republicans who don't fit at least 8 out of 10 items from the resolution.

I don't know about that. Reagan constantly talked about the "big-tent party." This doesn't seem like a big tent. This seems like an eight out of ten pup tent to me.

Oops, looks like I only score 7 of 10 (I'll leave it to you to guess which 7). I guess I can't be a Republican anymore. But wait...I'm a moderate, with pretty common views for my generation. Oh well. Guess the GOP doesn't need Generation X and Y.

This just doesn't make sense at all. Before, I've blogged about building a moderate part (here, here, here, here, and here) of the GOP, much like the Democrats have their blue dogs and their DLC (Democratic Leadership Committee) to balance the far-left. We need a Red-Dog or RLC (Republican Leadership Committee) type organization to balance the Republican National Convention, especially if they pass this suicidal GOP litmus test.

If there is a candidate that Progressive Republicans could support, that we believe could bring embody the GOP's spirit and win again, but doesn't meet the RNC's 8 of 10 lunacy, the Progressive Republican organization should be able to rally behind said candidate and provide backing and support. Why should we let the far-right drive the party into obscurity?

Let's not only defeat the resolution, but let's make sure similar resolutions are not only circumvented, but defeated as well. There are more of us, and we want a winning GOP again. Not some pure minority that just spouts off items from a ten item list.

GOP: A Pure Minority is Still a Minority

Read this over at Republicans United, formerly The Progressive Republican, and thought it hit the nail on the head. I have had, here and at other blogs, many right-wing Republicans tell me that as a RINO, I need to "get out" (often in more colorful terms) and that the GOP doesn't need anymore RINOs or moderates or Progressives in the party. Got news for all of you: You're wrong.



A Pure Minority Is Still A Minority

by Pat Edaburn


Ever since the election last fall we have seen an ongoing debate in the Republican party over which direction it should take in the future. Hard liners in the party have stated that they need to swing hard to the right to become as ideologically pure as possible. Web sites like Redstate.com and Polipundit.com regularly rail against so called RINO’s for being insufficiently pure.
In recent weeks however another voice has emerged as leading Republicans call for the party to be more of a big tent organization. Calls for the party to tone down social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been met with contempt by the web sites above.
Well I’ve got a message for those hard liners, being ideologically pure may be a nice idea but if you are in the minority it doesn’t do you very much good since you lose almost every vote. I certainly understand the desire to have people in office who you agree with on all of the issues, but the fact is that absent a situation where I become King of the World this isn’t going to happen very often.
If the GOP is going to succeed in the future they need to consider the impact of the hard line attitudes being pushed by the evangelical right.
Let us first consider the advantages of having a party that is ideologically pure, only allowing those who follow the party line 90-100% of the time to be members. On the bright side you are, as a hard liner, going to be happy with the way your party caucus votes most of the time. You can count on a 90-100% satisfaction rate.
But there is a problem when it comes to actually winning elections and getting policies implemented. I think it is fair to say that right now about 40% of voters will tend to support Republican/conservative views, about 40% will tend to support liberal/Democratic ones and about 20% will shift from one side to the other.
We can debate demographic trends but I’m not sure that it will change too much from this in the future. Even in our most one sided party periods there was a pretty solid middle set of voters that held the balance of power. I’m someome who likes to play with numbers so I ran up the following calculations.
So if you restrict your party to only the hard liners that are GOP/Conservative oriented voters, you’re gonna win about 40% of the votes, which means you are not going to control much more than 40% of the seats. This means you might be able to pull off wins about 10%-20% of the time at most.
So taking 90-100% satisfaction and factoring in 10-20% success on legislation and you end up with a ‘victory quotent’ of about 10%-20% of the time, and that isn’t very good.
On the other hand if you work to a broader coalition in your party, reaching out to those 20% of swing voters and maybe even some of those on the other side you will probably lower your satisfaction figures from 90-100% down to 70% or 80%. But you raise your success rate to 80-90% because you are winning elections.
This gives you a victory quotent which could approach 75% which is a whole lot better than the 15% or so that you had before. You might not get success on all of the social issues or the harder line domestic and foreign policy debates but you do win most of the time.
To put it another way, while I understand that subjects like abortion, gay rights, etc might be important to you and you might not like the inability to get your agenda passed. But the fact is you are not going to get that agenda passed no matter what.
Either you’re going to be in the minority and fail or you’re going to be in the majority and have to give ground.
When it comes to these kind of polarizing topics majority or minority status isn’t going to matter, whether you are on the right or on the left. But when it comes to the other 90% of the agenda, being in the majority is quite important.
In addition the future is only going to exacerbate these conditions.
Younger voters are far more libertarian in their attitudes towards social issues. This is unlikely to change as they get older. But when it comes to domestic and foreign policy issues there is much more room for movement, and in there the GOP has an opportunity.
I’m not saying you should give up your core beliefs. There is nothing wrong with the Republicans having a strong pro life element, but there is also nothing wrong with including voters who agree on most other issues, but happen to be pro choice. There is nothing wrong with having a strong evangelical contingent in the party but it should not be able to dominate.
During the 60’s and 70’s the Democratic party forgot the rule of broad inclusion and the result was a serious of major defeats. So far the Republicans have suffered two losses in a row and if they do not change things they are likely to see many more.

I'm Afraid of Sarah Palin

I've been on a number of Liberal and Conservative blogs alike. Many have been chatting away about Sarah Palin's decision to step down.

The Liberals are happy about it, in a sense, because they never liked her.

The conservatives are happy about it, because Sarah Palin can do no wrong in their eyes.

And that makes me afraid.

The right talks about the "Obamassiah" and "the One" on the left.

For those on the right, that is Sarah Palin.

On one blog, I read a conservative blogger defend Palin's decision:

"She didn't quit! What are you smoking?"

Um, what? She didn't quit when she...quit?

If Sarah Palin is all we have to offer in 2012, we are done for. As David Frum writes over at New Majority,

...[we] are afraid that Palin’s distinctive combination of sex appeal, self-pity, and cultural resentment has a following in today’s GOP. We are afraid that it is not utterly inconceivable that she could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and we are afraid that if she did so she would lead the party to a 1964-style debacle, accompanied by unnecessary losses down the ballot.

Palin 2012? God I hope not.

There is a lot of speculation about why Sarah Palin decided to resign as Govenor.

Most likely, it is to clear the way for a Presidential run for 2012.

God, I hope I'm wrong.

Sarah Palin one of the worst candidates to come from the ranks of the GOP in a long time.

During the McCain candidacy, she couldn't name any Supreme Court decisions she agreed with or disagreed with (except for Roe v. Wade, of course). Her foreign policy experience? Russia is almost seen from Alaska!

And now she quits on her constituents after a [undeserved] lashing from the press. Yes, her lashing was undeserved on such subjects as her family life; her womanhood; her sexuality. On her political career, however, she was fair game, and just couldn't take the heat.

So she abandons Alaska so she can facebook and twitter away to her [fanatically, unrealistically] loyal fanbase.

Just because she is conservative does not mean she is qualified for the Presidency.

Her resume was often compared to Obama's. In 2012, his will be much more qualified, with four years as President, while hers will have shrunk, since she couldn't even finish what she started. She will hold no weight in a contest between her and the incumbent.

How ridiculous that she actually sees this as a strategy.

The GOP better find someone strong, and soon.

Otherwise we'll be stuck with "gotcha!"

Progressive Republicans

From Building a Progressive GOP:

What is a Progressive Republican?

A Progressive Republican

• believes in the defense of the nation, but will not betray Constitutional principles out of fear
  believes in justice and the rule of law
• acknowledges that there is a difference between freedom and unbridled self-interest
  believes that with rights come responsibilities
• believes in equality of opportunity, but not in the undue interference of the state in private lives
• believes that all public servants, elected, appointed and hired, are ultimately accountable to the people
• believes that free enterprise is the driving force of America's wealth, strength and vitality, but also that the involvement of the Federal government may be desirable and necessary in certain areas
• believes in traditional family values while acknowledging liberty and justice for all
  believes in rule by the majority and also in the rights of minorities
• believes that education is a matter for individual states apart from ensuring that individual rights are protected and funding fairly administered
• recognises the difference between a handout and supporting the less able and helping them to prosper.

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Here are many things that comprise what many are calling "Progressive Republicans." I'm sure there are more, but these are things I found on another blog and are things I believe I can agree with.