How To Rebuild The Republican Party

Now, why would I want to give them any advice?

Well, for one thing, I know they won't follow it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never.

To hear the "movement" conservatives whine, they think the problem is that they weren't "conservative enough".

Here's South Carolina governor Mark Sanford:

Our party took nothing short of a shellacking nationally. Some on the left will say our electoral losses are a repudiation of our principles of lower taxes, smaller government and individual liberty. But Election Day was not a rejection of those principles — in fact, cutting taxes and spending were important tenets of Barack Obama’s campaign.

Instead, voters rejected the fact that while Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom, they have consistently failed to govern that way. Americans didn’t turn away from conservatism, they instead turned away from many who faked it.

I believe this is a flawed analysis, because it's based on a bad assumption, namely the meaning of "conservative." Or at least, the original principles of the Republican Party.

If a core "conservative" belief is that all government is inherently wasteful, inept, and ineffective - "government is the problem, not the solution" - then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Conservatives told us that government doesn't work, then they got elected and proved it.

"Lower taxes?" What does that mean really? Lower than what? How low? That's a tenet that reaches an absurd conclusion - if "lowering taxes" is good, why not lower them to zero? Besides a few extreme libertarians, no one thinks that's a feasible conclusion.

"Less government?" Sure, as long as that includes things like a smaller military-industrial complex, the elimination of the insane, untenable "war on drugs" and a general shrinking of the bloated prison industry - governmental expenses that are shown to be obscenely wasteful ($700 hammers, anyone?) - then liberals could get on board with it. But today's conservatives only want to shrink the parts of the government they disagree with, like banking and environmental regulations, and social safety nets. Their version of "less government" is synonymous with "incompetent government", which is what we got under Bush II.

"More freedom?" Sure, how about the freedom to marry who you want to? How about the freedom from religious restrictions you don't believe in? How about economic and social equality for women? How about freedom from (again) the insane prohibitions on drug possession and consensual sex? Liberals would be with you on this, conservatives.

So the GOP would do well to look to their own icons for inspiration if they want to make a comeback. Their problem is they're not Republican enough. Because over the last 30 years, the Party has systematically altered what used to be their true core principles, those polices that were once the signatures of their greatest leaders, before the infatuation with St. Ronnie Reagan. For example:

• Abraham Lincoln: Racial equality. Preservation of a single Union of all Americans, with equal protection under the law. "A new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all Men are created equal." "Government of the People, by the People and for the People."
• Theodore Roosevelt: Conservation and common benefit of natural resources. Support of labor unions. Breaking up of corporate monopolies. "The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant not the master of the man who made it."
• Dwight Eisenhower: Investment in national infrastructure. Expansion of social security and unemployment insurance. A watchful government eye on corporate power. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Heck, it was Richard Nixon that created the EPA.

Now that's what I call Republicanism.