Category | Op Ed

Republicans must regain principles

Published on November 18, 2008 by The Sentinel

    Elections have consequences. Republicans can choose theirs.

   
    They can make excuses. They can blame outsiders: the “liberal media,” duped youths or identity politics. They can continue the fratricide that boiled up as the diminishing McCain campaign ran out of straws to grasp.

    Or, they can stand up and be the adults they always insist they are and take a hard look at themselves. What they see should not please them, but it could encourage them.

    If polls are to be believed, Republicans still live in a center-right nation, with far more Americans self-identifying as moderate or conservative than liberal. If Tuesday’s election results are to be believed, fewer Americans in fewer states believe Republican candidates offer real answers to real problems.

    A two-party nation with dozens of strains of political philosophy naturally necessitates coalition parties that make room for dissenting views while organizing around a set of core beliefs.

    In happier times, Republicans understood that. They roared back from far bleaker days to regain the White House and Congress.

    Each time they then lost their way. They allowed the exercise of power to exceed their reliance on the principles that got them there. When they asked voters for one more chance, they were given President-elect Barack Obama and stronger Democratic majorities in Congress.

    If they use their heads, this could be the best thing to happen to them.

    They have an opportunity to regroup as the loyal opposition to a Democratic Party in charge of every lever of elected federal government. Now’s the time to reorganize around the key principles of fiscal discipline, personal responsibility, “conservation” in environmentalism, frugality over flamboyance and a strong but pragmatic national defense.

    Every policy they propose, every stand they take, should grow naturally out of these principles. They even have an example in the United Kingdom, where David Cameron and the Tories, after years in the wilderness, are one election from regaining power.

    There is a difference between conservative and Republican, as Republicans have made abundantly clear. The latter is only the application of the former, and the former is where this political party can rediscover itself.