There are two fundamental lessons to be learned by the GOP from the thumping the party received Tuesday: First, when Republicans worry more about staying in government than they do about limiting government, they get kicked out of government. Second, voters really do expect promises to be kept and they have no reluctance at all about throwing out bums who forget their promises.
The warning signs of impending electoral disaster were there for a long time. Federal spending under President Bush and the Republican majority in Congress has increased much faster than it did during the Clinton years. The federal role in education has ballooned. Federal entitlement spending has exploded. The regulatory morass is deeper than ever. In short, the federal leviathan the GOP promised for 12 years to cut down to a more reasonable size is bigger and more intrusive than ever.
The GOP majority’s electoral fate was sealed by the corrupt political culture embodied in the Bridge to Nowhere and the congressional leadership’s inability or unwillingness to put a stop to anonymous earmarking.
So what now? The first order of business is fresh leadership. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., has announced for House Minority Leader. Pence is a charismatic Reaganaut who has often led the conservative majority of the GOP in opposition to the Bush administration’s Big Government Republicanism on issues like spending and entitlements.
Pence clearly understands the GOP’s problem:
“I am running for Republican leader because we didn’t just lose our majority, I believe we lost our way. … Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people didn’t quit on the Contract with America, we did. And in so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters. …
“Only by making a dramatic turn in the direction of the agenda of the Republican Revolution can we hope to attain majority status again. … We must again embrace the notion the Republicans seek power not simply to govern but to change government. We are the agents of change and we must return to that reformist vision.”
On the Senate side, nothing would better demonstrate a new GOP commitment to its conservative principles than the promotion of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who more than anybody else in the Senate in recent years demonstrated an unswerving devotion to advancing conservative principles and programs.
Coburn particularly makes sense when it is understood that the Senate minority leader is not so much a legislative position as it is first and foremost a bully pulpit for articulating the case for reducing federal spending and intrusiveness, shining more light in the dark corners of Washington’s entrenched bureaucratic corruption and projecting creative ways of expanding individual choice and freedom for all Americans. Coburn has some rough edges, to be sure, and Old Bulls like Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Trent Lott, R-Mo., have fought him at every turn. But listening to Old Bulls in great part is what got the GOP in its present straits.
