On Mount Vernon: Forget About It!

David Frum is correct in criticizing the so-called "Mount Vernon Statement" of movement conservatives. He is correct that the document is just a rehashing of conservative nostrums and offers nothing to gays or minorities, let alone how to deal with the current economy.

But while he is correct in talking about this documents' shortcomings, I have a question to ask David:

Did you expect any different?

Why Moderate Republicans Matter

What are Moderate,Centrist, Progressive, Rockefeller or whatever they are called Republicans good for?

That's the question that is on my mind this morning and it has probably been the question many in the GOP are asking. In many cases, the answer is that we are good for nothing and that we should join Arlen Specter in leaving the GOP.

By now, I am familiar with the epithets lobbed at us: we are RINO's (Republicans in Name Only), wishy-washy and willing to leave the GOP for the cozy confines of the Democrats when things get rough.

In today's column Ross Douthat, excoriates moderate Republicans saying that these are not the type of centerists that the GOP needs. He offers this portrait of Arlen Specter and other moderates:

The larger species to which he belonged — Republicanus Rockefellus, the endangered Northeastern moderate — likewise has little to offer a party in distress. Indeed, if you listen carefully to high-profile Yankee moderates like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Lincoln Chafee, who fanned out across op-ed pages and TV shows last week to bemoan their marginalization, it seems as though they don’t even understand their own political situation, let alone the Republican Party’s.

The Northeastern moderates tend to style themselves as fiscal conservatives, spinning a narrative in which they’re the victims of a doctrinaire social conservatism and its litmus tests. But many of them are just instinctive liberals who happen to have ancestral ties to the Grand Old Party. Chafee fit that bill; so did former Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, who amassed a distinctly left-wing record after he bolted the Republican Party in 2001 to become an “independent.” For that matter, so does the retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a New England native and Republican appointee who often gets described as a moderate, but boasts the jurisprudence of a reliable liberal.

Others, like Collins and Snowe and (until last week) Specter, are simply horse-traders and deal-cutters, whose willingness to cross party lines last month to vote for $800 billion dollars in deficit spending tells you most of what you need to know about their supposed fiscal conservatism. They’re politically savvy but intellectually vacuous. Their highest allegiance isn’t to limited government. It’s to meeting the party in power halfway, while making sure that the dollars keep flowing to their constituents back home.

Can't you just feel the love?

While I really like Douthat's thinking on many issues, I think he is dead wrong here. He has not taken the time to truly understand moderate Republicans, instead relying on the old caricthure that we are basically in Democrats in sheeps clothing. The reality though is much more nuanced.

Take outgoing Supreme Court justice David Souter. The usual complaint against him is that he was a stealth liberal and not a true conservative. However, this complaint says a lot more about those who make than it does about the person the complaint is directed at. While Souter did side with the liberal wing of the Sumpreme Court on social issues, he tended to be pretty business friendly. As Kermit Roosevelt, who clerked with Souter notes, he was the classic New England Republican of 30 years ago. On several occasions he made more business friendly rulings, something that wouldn't please most Democrats and something that probably won't happen with Obama's replacement.

Douthat seems to not like the fact that moderates tend to be horsetraders, people that try to make a deal and in Douthat's view sell out their ideals in the process. He cites the three GOP Senators who voted for the bloated stimulus package as testament that these moderates are hardly fiscally conservative.

Hmmm. While I didn't support the stimulus package because it was too big and too spendy, it's kind of hard to start pillioring Snowe, Specter and Collins for selling out their fiscal conservatism when Republicans of all stripes did that with ease during the years that they controlled Congress and the White House. I don't see Douthat condemning the more conservative lawmakers that voted for tax cuts and then spent like crazy.

The other problem is that I thought deal making was part of American politics. I thought democracy was about dealing with competing interests. This isn't a parlimentary democracy where the opposition doesn't have any say in the making of law. The minority can work with the majority to change legislation that is more suited to their tastes or block the legislation. Maybe Douthat needs to re-read his civics lessons.

Douthat seems to have trouble defining what a centrist could be. Yes, they can be vacous, but they can also have a very solid ideology. He touts the late Jack Kemp as a centrist, but as much as I count Kemp as someone that brought me into the Republican fold, he was not a moderate Republican. It could be that Douthat only sees moderate Republicans as nothing more than wishy washy liberals, which is his right, but because we have lost one of those RINOs, the GOP has effectively lost the Senate.

Douthat and others have always had good time defining who moderates are, but we moderates have done a bad job defining who we are and why we matter to the GOP.

It is a task that we must take up, lest we be defined. That said, there are those that have taken up that task. In today's column, David Brooks talks about a long-lost conservatism that is more civic minded than what currently passes as conservatism:

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.

They would begin every day by reminding themselves of the concrete ways people build orderly neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods bind a nation. They would ask: What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids? The answers would produce an agenda: the disruption caused by a boom and bust economy; the fragility of the American family; the explosion of public and private debt; the wild swings in energy costs; the fraying of the health care system; the segmentation of society and the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving.

But the Republican Party has mis-learned that history. The party sometimes seems cut off from the concrete relationships of neighborhood life. Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns.

The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances.

I don't think this was Brooks' intention, but what he is describing is moderate Republicanism in a nutshell. Like their more conservative brethern they were interested in individual liberty, but that was a means to a civic end. If you look back over the history of moderate Republicans, they were not simply Republicans in Name Only, but interested in building up and maintaining American society. They were interested in fiscal responsibility and in low taxes, but they also knew that taxes were needed to maintain an orderly society. Writer Geoffrey Kabaservice has written an excellent series on moderates in the GOP. In writing about people such as Thomas Dewey,
Arthur Larson, and Bill Frenzel we see people concerned with what kind of society we wanted to live in, not just lower taxes.

Brooks notes later in his column that many who share this type of civic-minded conservatism are no longer in the GOP, but now in the Democratic Party. It's not a shock that we see Arlen Specter now among Democrats. When he first swtiched in the 1960s the GOP still have a community minded conservative tradition in the party- but not so anymore.

Moderate Republicans matter because we embody this civic conservative approach, and I think this is key in this era where Americans do expect more from their government to address issues like health care, but may not be so inclinded to accept the Democratic agenda which tends to see government as the solution to everything. Despite all the noise coming from the Tea Parties last month, I don't think most Americans are going to take part of the movement. Most people don't want a Euro-style social democracy, but they do want an effective government that spends within its means. They want answers to some big questions, and the GOP tends to be giving them angry protests.

What I love about conservatism is that it does honor the uniqueness of the indvidual. But I think conservatism has in the past thought that individual liberty had to be for something, that are individuality, was not just an end but a means to a better society. There is a need for a civic minded conservatism, now more than ever. It is up to moderates to uphold and grow that tradition in the GOP.

The Greatest of these is Charity (or Not)

When it comes to economics and money matters, I understand it...to a point. My partner is the better person when it comes to money. But I will give it a go when it comes to the following issue.

I work for a non-profit, actually one and a half: I work part time as a pastor at a church and full time as a webmaster for a the administrative body of a mainline Protestant denomination. Non-profits and churches are at the mercy of the goodness of people. A church stays open because people give offerings to help with the upkeep of the church. Sometimes churches are propped up by a few big givers.

In America, we have decided that it makes sense for a person to deduct what they give to charity from their tax bill. President Obama's proposed budget is planning that those at the top bracket (whose taxes will rise to 39 percent because of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts) would not be able to deduct what they give to nonprofits at the 39 percent level, but cap them at the 28 percent level.

Now, I have no problem seeing the tax rates rise back to what they were during the Clinton years. I never thought the Bush tax cuts made sense. That said, I am against capping the deduction amount at 28 percent for high income earners. Now, Obama is correct that people who give to charities will do so for reasons other than getting a deduction. I agree, but there is something sort of mean spirited to in a way punish high income earners who want to give. It's one thing to say that the rich should pay more in taxes, it another thing to say that they are limited in what they can write off to a favorite charity.

Conor Clarke over at the Atlantic Money Channel isn't as sympathetic. He seems to thumb his nose at the whole notion of private charity:

...I take it that Marty Feldstein thinks charity is something we should all consider good.

I think charity is pretty good too, but there are still two problems. First, the tax code does not define charity narrowly. You can claim the same deduction on giving to an amateur sports league as you can for founding a hospital. I'm not in a position to say which of those is more beneficial to society as a whole. But neither is Warren Buffett or Eli Broad. Decisions about what will make our community better should be made communally -- by pooling revenue and making collective decisions about where and how it should be spent.

The second problem is deeper: It's a mistake to think about charity as an entirely selfless and personal sacrifice on the part of the donor. It is also charitable spending. High income individuals give to charity in part because they derive some benefit from the gift: They get their name on the building, or the continued benefit of an opera in their hometown, or the warm glow admiration from their peers. Why feel confident that this kind of spending should be subsidized?

There are several assumptions here that I take issue with. First is Clarkes' belief that someone who gives to a charity is not in the position to determine what makes a community better. Who does? Let's repeat what he said:

Decisions about what will make our community better should be made communally -- by pooling revenue and making collective decisions about where and how it should be spent.

In essence, decisions on what makes a community better should not be the sole choice of any common joe, but should be made by the government through taxes.

Please hear me out: while I tend to be right of center, I am not some anti-government, anti-tax nut. I am not against raising taxes for programs that might better society.

But I am enough of a conservative to believe that government is not society. Society is made up of different institutions, public and private. Non-profits are an important part of society and part of the fabric that is America. Government to me has its place and it is a necessary function. But so do those churches and other agencies that work to better our society.

Clarke also seems to think that rich folk who donate only think about what they can get from the donation. Maybe, but then, I don't think anyone gives without some self interest. Let's face it, self-interest can be a motivator to do good: look at all the swag you get when you donate to public radio.

I remember how many liberals made fun of Bush the elder when he talked about "a thousand points of light." He was urging folk to go out and volunteer to make a difference in society. It was panned as a way of ignoring the needs of the poor. Maybe it was a way to skirt the issues of poverty, but maybe not. I think Bush could see that Americans wanted to do more than pay taxes and let the government do the rest, they want to get involved. They want to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, or donate to a food shelf or give money for Tsunami relief. We want to support local symphonies and other artists, we want to paint the house of a neighbor. America is a volunteer society and it has prospered because people rich and poor have decided to get involved, by writing a check or rolling up their sleeves.

Government has a needed place. But so does charity.

Wanted: An Anti-Limbaugh Big Mouth

This post over at Conventional Folly was a bit annoying at first blush, but then made sense:

I went and listened to the on-air debate between David Frum and Mark Levin at the urging of Massie and Sullivan, and I came away with the surprising conclusion that Levin definitely got the best of Frum (all use of the mute button aside). I think that’s because Frum is not acknowledging a sad fact: the dearth of charismatic political leaders on the right means that Levin’s incessant digs about relevance, as measured in “audience” for their respective work, actually matter. What good is the “idea leadership” espoused by Frum, Douthat/Salam, Brooks, et al. if it has little resonance with the mass of voters who make up the core of the Republican electorate?

The retort that Frum was unsuccessfully trying to make is that demagoguery, which is what Rush Limbaugh, Levin, and their ilk regularly engage in, is a sorry substitute for leadership. And, while that may very well be true, wonkery is an even more sorry substitute for leadership. The people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas. They want something they can easily understand in sound-byte form, something that resonates with their simple, innate notions of justice, something they can repeat around the water cooler and feel good about. That’s something that writerly, intellectual types all too frequently miss. And, I hasten to add, it’s exactly what Barack Obama has been able to provide for the Democrats. (Emaphasis mine.)

I think he has a point. Frum, et al. are good writers, but in the world of politics, there needs to be someone that can take all this wonkery and distill it down to something that can be placed in a soundbite. As Marusic notes, Obama had a good way of taking all the Democratic wonk and distill into a wonderful speech. Bill Clinton could do that. So did Ronald Reagan. The thing is, someone like a Ross Douthat is not something that the average joe is going to get excited about. Which is why so many among the base like Rush: he can take "conservative" notions and make them easy to digest.

What the GOP needs is somewhat that can be "wonky" and accesible at the same time.It might be that someone like a Utah Governor Jon Huntsman could be the guy that takes thoughts from Frum, Douthat, Salam and others make then ready for mass consumption.

In the end, to reach out beyond the base that people like Frum (including myself) want to do, they need to find people who can translate that and make it presentable to the a water cooler conversation. Until that happens, the reform-minded conservatives will be on the losing end of the battle.

The Future of the GOP is in Utah.

I think the future of the Republican Party lies in the states. It will be the governors leading the way. There is one governor out there that I do think represents the future of the GOP if party leaders are wise enough to listen.

No, I am not talking about Bobby Jindal.

I am talking about Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who is a conservative that actually lives and works outside the conservative cocoon. From an interview in Politico, here is his take on the stimulus:

It’s easy to criticize the bill and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to take the money. It’s pretty simple.

I guess in hindsight we can all say that there were some fundamental flaws with it. It probably wasn’t large enough and, number two, there probably wasn’t enough stimulus effect. For example, a payroll tax exemption or maybe even a cut in the corporate tax…for small and medium-sized businesses for three years, for example.

We will take the money...I’m not sure it’s the stimulus money that will necessarily allow the economy to recover…It will help to fortify our budgets, frankly, to ensure that there isn’t as much backsliding in the areas of education and healthcare, for example. But economic recovery must be earned. And it will be earned by entrepreneurs and it will be earned by small businesses.

His take on free trade and the "Buy American" rhetoric coming from the Democrats:

That’s shades of Smoot-Hawley, 1931…When America closes its doors, so does everybody else. We are the primary engine of growth in the world and we are the only beacon of free trade left, and open markets.

His views on the current state of the GOP:

...we will be irrelevant as a party until we become the party of solutions and until we become the party of preeminence.

Huntsman has come out in favor of civil unions for same-sex couples and is very pro-environment.

Huntsman hits all the right notes for a vibrant 21-century conservatism: seeing government as a needed part of society but not the end all and be all, believing in entrpenuership and free trade and supporting the environment and the right for all Americans to live in freedom.

Listen to Jindal's speech this morning, what I heard was a conservatism of the past- where government was seen as an impediment. As David Brooks has said, people want the government to do something during these tense times, so the argument between liberals and conservatives has to be how government can help and how much of a role should it have.

Rush can have Jindal, my heart is with Huntsman.

Two Moderate GOP Groups Team Up

From the Hill Blog:

The Republican Majority for Choice recently announced plans to form partnerships with the WISH List - Women in the House and Senate - and with other groups who share the ideals of limited government intrusion and a commitment to the core conservative fiscal policy that once made the GOP so strong. Enthusiasm for these efforts from Republicans across the country was overwhelming. Consistent in their support was an understanding that the GOP cannot survive as a regional Party driven mainly by divisive wedge issues.

The last election showed us what happens when the GOP abandons its core agenda of smaller government, fiscal responsibility and individual freedom. In suburbs across the country, voters who the GOP once relied on chose to support Democratic candidates. A recent study by Muhlenberg College’s Institute of Public Opinion conducted in the key swing state of Pennsylvania showed GOP voters were defecting in record numbers. Sixty-seven percent of those who switched in the last election self-describe as in favor reproductive rights. Fifty-three percent said the Party had become too extreme in its positions and one third supported the sentiment they left the party because of the influence of the religious right on the GOP’s social positions. If the GOP does not change and become a true big tent these voters will not be coming back.

Social fundamentalists who criticize RMC for creating partnerships to promote a broader common-sense agenda also seem to think these defections are good. They have failed to connect the dots — moderates in important swing states left the GOP and the GOP lost elections. Demanding 100% adherence to an extreme single issue agenda seems more important to them than the future success of the GOP. It’s this attitude that will further marginalize the Republican Party and relegate us to a permanent minority.

Despite these nay-sayers we remain optimistic that a true big tent GOP is within reach. We know through our own polling that 81% of Republican voters support a GOP Platform that says we can agree to disagree on social issues. New leadership at the Party, the NRCC and NRSC seem to recognize the vital role of moderate Republicans in winning elections. More importantly, they seem to understand that the GOP must focus on core fiscal conservative values and NOT divisive wedge issues to gain back the trust of voters.

H/T: Real Republican Majority Blog

A Choice, Not an Echo

It's not a big shock to anyone that the GOP is in the middle of an identity crisis. After straying from its fiscally conservative roots and losing two national elections in a row, there is a lot of talk about how the GOP should go forward. Some suggest "going back to our roots" which means a method that will please the so-called base. The other is to be willing to be more appealing to a changing America, to tack to the center instead of the far right.

Anyone who has followed me over the years, know that I am lumped in the second group. I do think that the GOP has become to ideologically rigid and has basically told persons of color, moderates and gays to take a hike.

But how does the party change? What does that look like?

There has been a lot of talk that congressional Republicans were wrong to oppose the stimulus package. In the view of many, the GOP was given the tax cuts it wanted, but it walked away, listening Rush Limbaugh instead of the people.

My fellow blogger, Pete Abel, talked about how two Republican governors offer a guide to where the party can go. Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, who has criticized the Stimulus comes from a heavily Republican state that is not very urban or diverse, and Charlie Crist, the governor of Flordia who has a diverse state with a robust two party system and state with deep fiscal problems.

He ends with this statement:

I still believe that those who seek GOP reform — specifically, those who seek to reverse the party’s slide into a marginalized, regional, Old-South-centric party — would be well advised to closely study Crist and Schwarzenegger and then initiate a systematic search/recruiting drive for more candidates like them, candidates who can run and win elections among large, diverse, urban populations — candidates who can win such elections because they understand the need to (and how to) moderate/soften/back down from the Old-South, hardline mentality, open their arms, and dance with voters who have a million-plus points of view.

There’s your future. Seize it.

Now, I think Pete has a strong point and I agree with him- to a point.

My problem is that while the GOP does need to moderate away from its hard-right stance, it needs to do so in a way that is not simply aping the Democrats. To quote Barry Goldwater, moderate Republicans need to be a choice, not an echo.

I can understand Crist's as well as Scharzenegger's support for the stimulus on practical matters- both lead large states that are facing major budget issues. But I would be careful in holding up Crist or as I have said earlier, Arlen Specter as an example of what the GOP needs to do. Both made practical judgements, but that does not make for a real policy that will point the way out of the political wilderness. They were both "echoes" for legitimate reasons, but basically accepting a plan that was for the most part a Democratic plan is not going to save the GOP. In this interim period, that might work as we wait for new ideas, but that doesn't make a long term strategy.

Moderate Republicans do believe in reaching across the isle to craft policy, but in reaching across that isle they also need to have ideas and principles to guide them and give them an identity.

I also think some of criticism of the stimulus (which also came from moderate Republicans) was warranted. This bill was passed without care for the growing deficit. Of course, even though that was a true issue, the GOP lost any credibility in making that argument by acting like kids with their parent's credit card for the last eight years.

Conservatives in the GOP are locked into a "no new taxes" position. But moderates can and should pick this issue up and run with it. As Thomas Dewey once said, we can show the Republicans can have a heart and a head when it comes to running the government.

Moderate Republicans need to work on a vision for governing. We need to be a choice not only against the far right in our own party, but against the Democrats as well.

Being an "echo" might make us welcomed among the chattering classes, but it will not provide a future for the GOP.

Thoughts on the Stimulus from a Moderate Republican

Now that the Stimulus Package passed by Congress will be signed into law by President Obama tomorrow, I have a few thoughts I wanted to share from my perspective as a Republican and not just a run-of-the-mill Republican, but a moderate Republican, or so-called "RINO."

My initial thoughts aren't good. I understand and accept the need for a larger role for the government right now. I also think there needs to be something done to jump start the economy. But I don't think the bill passed is what is needed. It's not simply that it's too large, but it seems to be a catch all of every Democratic plan that has not been enacted during the Bush years and even during the "New Democrat" Clinton years.

Any economic stimulus package should do what Travis Johnson has suggested:

• Bridge the gap for between jobs for unemployed Americans.

• Keep people in their homes.

• Help existing businesses survive and provide a stable environment in which new ones can develop.

But that is not what happened here. What passed, seems overly bloated, and that's with the three moderate Republican Senators.

Many of the projects that were funded are important and even necessary (such as Amtrack or high speed rail). But it seems like those are the things that should have been part of an appropriations bill, NOT this bill. In someways, this is a repeat of what the GOP led Congress did in the days and weeks after 9/11, use a national crisis to throw in needless stuff. David Frum has said as much:

After 9/11, President Bush (supported by me, among others) argued that the right way to respond to a terrorist attack from Afghanistan was by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. We offered a complicated explanation for this roundabout response, and for a time the public accepted it. But as the war went wrong, and failed to deliver the promised results, our plan’s credibility collapsed.

Now the Democrats have placed themselves in a similar situation. They are offering an indirect answer to an immediate question. The suspicion arises that they had decided the answer long before the crisis ever materialized—that they are using the crisis as an excuse to do what they had long wished to do anyway, for reasons that they are not stating in full.

But the other thought that has been running in what passes for my mind is how the GOP is to respond to the current era we live in and especially how moderates should respond. As a whole, the GOP is still stuck in the 1980s: offering tax cuts as the solution for what ails us. But when taxes are already low, you need to find a different note. (Of course, in light of the current bill, it looks like the Democrats are stuck in the 1930s, but that's for another post at another time.)

The fact is, with all this debt that the government has run up, as well as the Baby Boomers getting ready to claim their Social Security checks, taxes will go up. Maybe not to what they were in the late 1970s at 70 percent for the top rate, but they will go up. So, the GOP is going to have to find a new plan and a new way to manage the current reality- not live in a time warp. The 1980s were a good time, I was a teen back then, but just like it's silly to try to live like your 15 when you are going on 40, it's silly to pretend that Reagan is still in office.

Part of that answer should come from moderate or Progressive Republicans. But the recent actions of the three moderate Republican Senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are laudable for making a bad bill, well, less bad, it also shows what moderates should not do.

What is troubling about their actions is not that they deigned to cooperate with the Democratic majority. I do think it was good to try to reach out accross the isle. What was troubling is that there was as Ross Douthat said, more of an emphasis on process than there was on policy. Douthat, who isn't fond of GOP moderates, I should add, was correct in saying:

So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts - but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the "gang of moderates" have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.

Now, being a moderate or progressive Republican myself, I have a lot of respect for Snowe, Collins and Specter. I share many of their views. But Douthat is correct. This form of bipartisanship, this form of moderate Republicanism, was not one that should be aspired to: it reeked of defeatism, instead of pragmatism. It had no vision of it's own; just trying to limit the scope of a Democratic bill.

This is what gives moderates in the GOP a bad name; it makes us look gutless instead of showing vision. Instead of fashioning a conservatism that is forward looking and progressive, moderates look like they are supporting a pale version of Democrats.

This has not always been the case. Moderates in the party tended to have an viewpoint that was all their own and not simply aping the Democrats. Here is what Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote about Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York and GOP Presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948:

Unlike the stalwarts who continued to dominate what little remained of the Republican representation in Congress in the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Dewey believed that the Depression had permanently reshaped the political landscape and that it was insufficient for Republicans simply to denounce the New Deal and hope in vain for the eventual disappearance of the welfare state. As Dewey said in his first gubernatorial address, “There has never been a responsible government which did not have the welfare of its people at heart… anybody who thinks that an attack on the fundamental idea of security and welfare is appealing to people generally is living in the Middle Ages.” As governor, he put forward social programs that included unemployment insurance, sickness and disability benefits, old age pensions, slum clearance, state aid to education (including the creation of the State University of New York), infrastructure projects (particularly highway construction), and pathbreaking anti-discrimination legislation.

Dewey attempted to distinguish his programs from similar Democratic programs by running a government that was acknowledged to be clean, honest, and efficient. His was pay-as-you-go liberalism, as he managed to implement his social programs while cutting taxes, reducing the state debt by over $100 million, and still achieving budget surpluses. He also argued that while Republicans and Democrats might agree on social ends, the parties would differ in their means, with moderate Republicans emphasizing individual freedom and economic incentive over collectivization. However, this relatively sophisticated position inevitably opened Dewey to conservative gripes of “me-tooism” and Democratic claims that he was offering a lesser version of the genuine article.

While some might claim there is a "me-too ism" in Dewey's ideas, they seemed both pragmatic and bold. He was able to provide forward and progressive thinking programs that were within budget and even cut taxes. There is something in Dewey's accomplishments that seem more fearless and ready to move the GOP forward. That is not what you hear in Specter's response.

Moderates have a long and proud history in the GOP and they will rise again. But it has to be with their own ideas and approaches and not simply going along with the Democrats.

Why Being A Gay Republican is not an Oxymoron

Yesterday, I went to a rally. A state Senator was introducing a bill that would allow same sex marriage in the state. Many organizations took part in sponsoring the legislation, including the one that I've been a part of for several years- Log Cabin Republicans, a national organization of gay and lesbian Republicans that are working for the inclusion of gays in the GOP and in the larger society.

Being a gay Republican is not an easy thing. People are constantly asking me how I could be openly gay and a Republican. Travis Johnson, the head of Progressive Republicans asked me to spend a blog post answering that question. So, I will.

I had had some inkling of being gay since I was about 12, but it was when I was in my early 20s that I really started dealing with my sexuality. At the same time, I was also dealing with my political philosophy. I grew up with two staunch Democrats, so I kind of followed their leads. After college, I flirted with socialism. But after a while, I started to believe that goverment didn't always have the best solutions, that the private sector sometimes can do things better than the public sector. I didn't think single-payer government sponsored health care was the best solution to the health care problem in America, though I did think government should have a role. I tended to like people like Jack Kemp, the former congressman and Vice Presidential candidte, who emphasized conservative solutions to helping the poor prospser. More and more, as I was becoming more confortable with my sexuality, I was become more and more comfortable with my budding conservatism.

However, I hesitated initially from joining the GOP because of its social views. But then, I started to get more familiar with Log Cabin Republicans and their fight for equality. It became obvious that I could be a good Republican and be a proud gay man as well.

So, how can I be gay and Republican? Simple: because I am a Republican that is also gay. I believe in many of the GOP principles, such as limited government, low taxes and a strong national defense. I also live as an out gay man who lives with his partner.

Of course, the answer is not that simple. If it was, I wouldn't be writing this. For some on the Left, the whole concept of a gay Republican is one of a sad and self-loathing person. This is what Gene Stone said in the Huffington Post in 2006:

Why would any gay man or woman belong to a party that has stated, over and over, as clearly as can be, without equivocation, that he or she is not welcome?

It's understandable why someone might not choose to be a Democrat. Those brought up in a family or culture where the traditional Republican party values were celebrated, such as smaller government and less taxes, might feel uncomfortable with the Democratic party...

... But why specifically chose a party that loathes you? The answer is hard to fathom. Still, it's hard to avoid the self-hatred issue. Nearly all gay men and women are raised in families where there is little-to-no support for their core identity. So while self-loathing may be an over-used phrase, it's hard for most gays not to at least pass through a stage of wondering how they got that way, and whether it's some form of punishment (particularly for religious gays)--and hating it, and themselves.

There you go: gay Republicans hate themselves. Stone asks why anyone would bother to be a party that doesn't like you? He tells gay Republicans, who he calls "morons", that their efforts to change the GOP is a silly guesture.

Mr. Stone has probably never met a gay Republican, or he is so convinced what a gay Republican is like that he isn't willing to see another viewpoint.

Gay Republicans stay in the GOP because they are Republicans and they will fight for a place at the table. It is our party too, and we will not remain silent. Gay Republicans aren't interested in being liked, we want to be free. It is liberty that is our song. We don't want government telling us who we can or can't marry and we will oppose those who call themselves "conservatives" who try to force goverment to do such a thing.

A common comparison is that of Fanny Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. That group came to the 1964 Democratic convention demanding to be seated in place of the segregationist delegation from Mississippi. They were not liked by the ruling Democrats in Mississippi because they were a bunch of black folk and white allies who dared to challenge the system. What would have happened had they said that they weren't liked by the powers that be?

If you want to be liked, get a dog. If you want respect, fight for it.

And that is what I do. That is what many gay Republicans do everyday, fight for equality in their party. They work with those straight allies who are still in the party (and they still remain) who see all of us as God's children.

The work to change the GOP is not an easy one, but it is a good fight. What I have learned over time, is that by being a presence, forcing Republican lawmakers to see me and my partner as real human beings, is a powerful statement and it starts to change their minds from being anti-gay to more supportive of who we are. If I wasn't there, then they have no one that can tell them the story, my story.

So that is my story. I believe that one day, the GOP will be a party more open to gays and lesbians. It is my hope. After all, it's my party too.

Introducing Progressive Republicans

Shortly after the November elections, I received a message on Facebook to join a group called Progressive Republicans. I was interested and started to get to know Travis Johnson, the 30-something behind this endeavor. This enterprise is still in its early stages, but Travis has done a lot to get things off the ground. Travis put together list of common principles that sets out the mission of this strange beast called a Progressive Republican. This is what the preamble states:

We are Republicans. Not only in name, but in belief and principle. We are proud to share in the legacy of those who held together the union, ended slavery, and championed civil rights. We gladly continue our party’s old battle against state excess. We uphold its traditional respect for personal liberty, open markets, and strict constitutionalism.

However, as progressive Republicans, we understand our party’s dedication to limited government and individual choice should as a full spectrum commitment, encompassing social as well as economic issues. We champion liberty for markets and men alike.

Travis started a blog with a list of fellow Progressive Republicans who write on various topics. I was asked to take part in this enterprise and I have done so.

The Progressive Republican blog is a good way to peek into a strain of the GOP that has been dormant for far too long. We hope that you will enjoy the blog, feel free to comment and take part in the conversation.

The loss the GOP suffered in November created a narrow opening: a space where people are starting to question past practices and figure out how to be conservatives in a new landscape.

I hope people will take part in this conversation.

Remember the Moderates: Thomas Curtis

There has been much news about Michael Steele's ascension to the Chairmanship of the GOP. As the first African American to head the party, there is a hope that the GOP can reach out to African Americans.

Over the last few decades, the GOP has not been known for being forward thinking when it comes to civil rights. But there was a time when the GOP was the party that recieved the lion's share of African American votes and also took the lead in granting civil rights for African Americans.

In a continuing series, Geoffery Kabaservice highlights another moderate Republican, Thomas Curtis from Missouri. Here is a snippet:

What particularly raised anger against him in the Jim Crow state of Missouri, however, was his unswerving advocacy of civil rights for African-Americans. Contrary to much later mythology, civil rights efforts in Congress during the 1950s and early ‘60s were led by Republican moderates like Curtis rather than better known Democratic liberals.

Washington Post reporter Meg Greenfield recalled that when she first arrived in the nation’s capital in the early ‘60s, she gradually discovered that in terms of the political forces at work opposing and defending segregation, “I seemed to have the lineup of players just about completely wrong.” With the Democratic Party heavily dependent on its autocratic Southern chairmen, even the northern liberal Democrats who were most vociferous in their denunciations of Jim Crow were mainly posturing. “At that moment,” Greenfield wrote, “the principal force truly committed to taking immediate action against the kinds of crude racial repression still officially in place seemed to be, of all things, a bunch of Republicans, many of them unknown.” Some were northeasterners with urban constituencies, but “the effort’s most tireless organizers and/or communicants were a few generally conservative midwestern House members, notably Tom Curtis of Missouri.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 originated in Curtis’ office in 1962, and it was mainly Republican pressure from Curtis and his fellow Republican Judiciary Committee member William McCulloch of Ohio that forced John F. Kennedy to make his first, hesitant message on civil rights in April 1963. Curtis’ defense of civil rights was rooted partly in the Lincoln tradition of the GOP, but more simply in the belief that civil rights were at the base of the American philosophy of government and Judeo-Christian morality and that their defense was “the most fundamental issue that confronts any government at any time,” as he wrote in 1952.

Read on.

Read the other two installments in the Moderate Republican series.

Remember the Moderates: Thomas Dewey

This is the second in a series of articles on New Majority.com by Geoffrey Kabaservice on this history of moderates in the Republican Party. He focuses on Thomas Dewey, the former Governor of New York and the GOP candidate for President in 1944 and 1948. Here is an excerpt:

Unlike the stalwarts who continued to dominate what little remained of the Republican representation in Congress in the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Dewey believed that the Depression had permanently reshaped the political landscape and that it was insufficient for Republicans simply to denounce the New Deal and hope in vain for the eventual disappearance of the welfare state. As Dewey said in his first gubernatorial address, “There has never been a responsible government which did not have the welfare of its people at heart… anybody who thinks that an attack on the fundamental idea of security and welfare is appealing to people generally is living in the Middle Ages.” As governor, he put forward social programs that included unemployment insurance, sickness and disability benefits, old age pensions, slum clearance, state aid to education (including the creation of the State University of New York), infrastructure projects (particularly highway construction), and pathbreaking anti-discrimination legislation.

Dewey attempted to distinguish his programs from similar Democratic programs by running a government that was acknowledged to be clean, honest, and efficient. His was pay-as-you-go liberalism, as he managed to implement his social programs while cutting taxes, reducing the state debt by over $100 million, and still achieving budget surpluses. He also argued that while Republicans and Democrats might agree on social ends, the parties would differ in their means, with moderate Republicans emphasizing individual freedom and economic incentive over collectivization.

Read more.

Remember the Moderates!

God Bless, David Frum.

I've always appreciated Frum, even if I don't always agree with him. He has always been an open-minded sort of fellow, a thoughtful conservative. (Plus, as a native Michigander who lived an hour from the Canadian border, I loved watching his mother, Barbara Frum on the Canadian Broadcasting newsprogram, the Journal.)

Frum has an introductory post on his website, NewMajority.com where he introduces a series of articles highlighting the forgotten history of moderates in the Republican Party.

Here is what he says about moderates:

The Republican Party tends to be most successful when it attracts moderates as well as true-believing conservatives to the tent.

There is a long, often overlooked tradition of moderates in the GOP, and moderates have been an integral component of the party throughout the century and a half since its founding in 1854. Barack Obama, in his attempt to seize the political center, surely aims to claim the Republicans’ neglected moderate heritage as his own, as evidenced by his swearing-in on Lincoln’s bible and the conscious appropriation of moderate themes in his inaugural address.

Democrats remember and honor their past champions. Republicans too often forget them

.

It means something when one of the leading conservatives in North America understands that moderates in the GOP are not "RINOs," but a long-standing wing of the GOP, that deserve respect, not derision.

He goes on to say that Geoffrey Kabaservice will be writing a series of profiles on moderates starting with Henry Stimson, a self-professed "progressive conservative." Kabaservice sums up his political philosophy:

The sort of East Coast, upper-class Republican progressivism that Roosevelt and Stimson embodied manifested itself through liberal policies undertaken for conservative reasons, social reform not necessarily motivated by social conscience. Because Stimson and other progressives wished to preserve the social order from which they had benefited handsomely, they thought it necessary to prevent a violent working class revolution by creating a modern welfare state, much as Otto von Bismarck had done in Germany in the 1880s. The policies advocated by Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” included government regulation of corporate power, a minimum wage, child labor laws, unemployment compensation for workers, progressive income taxes and inheritance taxes. Progressives also opposed the boss rule of corrupt (and usually Democratic) urban machines and formed Good Government Clubs (leading their detractors to mock them as “goo-goos”). Many progressives left the GOP after Roosevelt’s bolt from the 1912 convention to form the Bull Moose Party, and some never returned, but the progressive tradition survived within the Republican ranks through individuals like Stimson.

In foreign policy, Stimson carried forth the Roosevelt maxim to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” He was an ardent internationalist, at odds with the prevailing isolationism of Republican conservatives (especially in the Midwest). He felt that it was in the nation’s best interest to engage with the rest of the world in forums such as the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations. At the same time, Stimson was convinced that the U.S. could only maintain peace by preparing for war; the country “could not long remain safe in a world where aggressors were allowed to roam free.” Stimson led the military preparedness movement before the First World War, and helped lead the fight for rearmament and a military draft before the Second. As Hoover’s Secretary of War, in the wake of Japan’s seizure of Manchuria from China in 1931, he articulated the Stimson Doctrine: the U.S. would not recognize any international territorial gains based on conquest. The U.S. invoked the Stimson Doctrine following the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 1940, and the policy of non-recognition remained in effect until those countries regained their independence in 1991. The doctrine to which he gave his name was not, in the case of Manchuria, Stimson’s preferred policy; he wanted Hoover to impose sanctions on the Japanese and was disgusted that the president refused to brandish the “big stick” of American power against aggression.

Read the whole thing.

"Declaration of Conscience"

Every so often, I like to look over speech by Senator Margaret Chase Smith called "Declaration of Conscience." It was written in response to Joseph McCarthy's early witchhunts. Smith was a moderate Republican Senator from Maine whose claim to fame was putting her name in contention for the GOP nomination in 1964.

I think "Conscience" is a great speech in that Smith stated her views with boldness and was willing to denounce those who would take down the GOP. She is an example of a so-called "Rockefeller Republican" who was not wishy-washy in the least.

I hope you enjoy these words.

"Mr. President:

I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership in either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch of our Government.

That leadership is so lacking that serious and responsible proposals are being made that national advisory commissions be appointed to provide such critically needed leadership.

I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.

I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

It is ironical that we Senators can in debate in the Senate directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to any American, who is not a Senator, any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming an American -- and without that non-Senator American having any legal redress against us -- yet if we say the same thing in the Senate about our colleagues we can be stopped on the grounds of being out of order.

It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal. Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we dish out to outsiders.

I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul searching -- for us to weigh our consciences -- on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America -- on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered; that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism --

The right to criticize;

The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

The right to protest;

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know some one who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn't? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as "Communists" or "Fascists" by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed. But there have been enough proved cases to cause nationwide distrust and strong suspicion that there may be something to the unproved, sensational accusations.

As a Republican, I say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the Republican Party faces a challenge today that is not unlike the challenge that it faced back in Lincoln's day. The Republican Party so successfully met that challenge that it emerged from the Civil War as the champion of a united nation -- in addition to being a Party that unrelentingly fought loose spending and loose programs.

Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusion and the suspicions that are bred in the United States Senate to spread like cancerous tentacles of "know nothing, suspect everything" attitudes. Today we have a Democratic Administration that has developed a mania for loose spending and loose programs. History is repeating itself -- and the Republican Party again has the opportunity to emerge as the champion of unity and prudence.

The record of the present Democratic Administration has provided us with sufficient campaign issues without the necessity of resorting to political smears. America is rapidly losing its position as leader of the world simply because the Democratic Administration has pitifully failed to provide effective leadership.

The Democratic Administration has completely confused the American people by its daily contradictory grave warnings and optimistic assurances -- that show the people that our Democratic Administration has no idea of where it is going.

The Democratic Administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russia through key officials of the Democratic Administration. There are enough proved cases to make this point without diluting our criticism with unproved charges.

Surely these are sufficient reasons to make it clear to the American people that it is time for a change and that a Republican victory is necessary to the security of this country. Surely it is clear that this nation will continue to suffer as long as it is governed by the present ineffective Democratic Administration.

Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny -- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.

I doubt if the Republican Party could -- simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory.

I don't want to see the Republican Party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one party system.

As members of the Minority Party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our Government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

As a woman, I wonder how the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters feel about the way in which members of their families have been politically mangled in Senate debate -- and I use the word 'debate' advisedly.

As a United States Senator, I am not proud of the way in which the Senate has been made a publicity platform for irresponsible sensationalism. I am not proud of the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle. I am not proud of the obviously staged, undignified countercharges that have been attempted in retaliation from the other side of the aisle.

I don't like the way the Senate has been made a rendezvous for vilification, for selfish political gain at the sacrifice of individual reputations and national unity. I am not proud of the way we smear outsiders from the Floor of the Senate and hide behind the cloak of congressional immunity and still place ourselves beyond criticism on the Floor of the Senate.

As an American, I am shocked at the way Republicans and Democrats alike are playing directly into the Communist design of "confuse, divide and conquer." As an American, I don't want a Democratic Administration "white wash" or "cover up" any more than I want a Republican smear or witch hunt.

As an American, I condemn a Republican "Fascist" just as much as I condemn a Democrat "Communist." I condemn a Democrat "fascist" just as much as I condemn a Republican "Communist." They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.

It is with these thoughts I have drafted what I call a "Declaration of Conscience." I am gratified that Senator Tobey, Senator Aiken, Senator Morse, Senator Ives, Senator Thye and Senator Hendrickson, have concurred in that declaration and have authorized me to announce their concurrence."

Who's Afraid of the Big Tent?

John Avalon has a great piece up at David Frum's New Majority website about how the GOP can win in New England again. He notes that before the Bush-era there were still an favorable number of Republicans holding office in New England and now there are none (two if you include New York State.)

One of his tips that the party has to become a Big Tent party:

Somehow Republicans have lost common ground – Reagan invoked the Big Tent constantly as a way of collecting libertarian conservatives, national security conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives under one banner. But the spirit of outreach and inclusiveness has been drummed out of the GOP – disagreement is seen as disloyalty, and the search for heretics has become a hobby. Libertarians are losing any logical reason to affiliate with the GOP, while centrist Republicans are seen as suspect almost by definition. When Senators like Olympia Snowe or John McCain win re-election with over 70% of the vote, they are considered sell-outs rather than successes. I’ve debated conservatives on TV who were rooting for Norm Coleman to lose, because they considered him insufficiently conservative. This road leads not just to political disaster, but party suicide. Republicans who have won statewide in the Northeast tend to be centrist on social issues, especially on a woman’s right to chose and gay civil rights. Republicans must welcome social moderates into the big tent of the GOP, focus on finding common ground and not treat them as second class citizens. Remember: In a place where everyone thinks alike, nobody is thinking very much.

This is something that I have long advocated. There are many flavors of Republicans, but for some reason many conservatives think there is only one way to be conservative. Social conservatives look down on those of us who happen to be pro-choice even though we tend to do so on completely conservative grounds.

So, what is it about some in the GOP to be so afraid of the Big Tent? What is so scary about facing a person that might not exactly have the same conservatism that you do? Why has the party so drifted from Ronald Reagan's message of forging alliances with those who agree with you 80 percent of the time?

I don't have an easy answer, only a guess. As religion played more and more a role in the GOP, the party itself has become more rigid. If the lines between religion and politics blur, the party becomes less open to ideas that are seemed as sinful in religious circles.

Take gay rights. There are many African Americans that have issues with gay marriage. African Americans also tend to be an important aspect of the liberal coalition. However, Democratic politicians who do support gay marriage don't fear being treated as not "Democratic enough" because religion doesn't play as big a role in the Democatic Party as it does the GOP. In the modern Republican party, there are many who see gay marriage and homosexuality itself as a sin and want that expressed in national policy. They also believe that it should be expressed in the party platform and made a tenet of conservatism. So, if you are a conservative who happens to believe gays should be tolerated in society and should have the right to marry, you are not only going against religious teaching, but because church and state are blurred in the GOP, you are then deemed not a true conservative.

Which is why, I believe, that many social conservatives are afraid of the Big Tent. If you admit people who support gay rights, or abortion rights into the party, you are admitting those who support sinful practices and there taint the party. This is why the Kathleen Parkers of the world have called for the GOP to not be so identified with religion. Someone like a Joe Carter have interpreted that to mean that social conservatives should be kicked out of the GOP. That's nonsense. Nor do we want to silence those who have a faith. But the fact is that social conservatives have kept power in the party to the exclusion of anyone else that tends to believe in small government or low taxes but have a more socially moderate views. But in their eyes adhering to those bedrock coservative ideas don't not matter; God doesn't get upset with wanting big government, but would- in their eyes- if you treat gays like human beings and not as someone that committed a sin.

Which is why in the end, I believe that if we want to have a viable GOP that follows a Big Tent Conservatism, it will have to come from the margins and not from the powerbrokers. The social conservatives are too strong, and the powerbrokers are too beholden to the social conservatives to make room for other flavors of conservativism. If we want to see more Republicans running and winning seats in areas like New England, it has to come from insurgents who are willing to buck the established order and bring about a more tolerant and open Republican party.

Will it happen? It all depends on the outsiders being able to raise hell.

Your'e Conservatism Is Too Small

Alex Massie has a wonderful post on how dogmatic the Republican Party has become and ties it to the history of the Conservative Party in the UK after the age of Thatcher. Reaganism helped revitalize the GOP and ushered in a conservative era in the United States. But as Massie notes, the party has become stuck in its past, unwilling to change as the nation changes, and that past has become highly fictionalized, make Reagan more doctrinare than he was in reality.

The point here is not to say how great Massie's article is, though it is a good read and you should take some time and read it. He puts into words, what I have wanted to say for a while, that conservatism in the United States has become too small; more interested in setting up tests to show who is the "true" conservative and expelling those who are deemed heretics. As Massie notes, you'd think Reagan was the only Republican commander-in-chief, with no one ever mentioning Ford or Eisenhower or even Teddy Roosevelt. (We kind of know why Nixon isn't mentioned with any pride.) All the others are in some way deemed as insufficiently conservative.

Reagan was a good president, but to focus on him alone is too fashion a Republican Party that is very narrow, when in reality there are many different forms of conservatism, that have had a place in the GOP at some point in the past. The real Reagan was more willing to widen the base to make the GOP a majority party, something that many his current devotees would find an anathema.

Maybe because I'm a pastor, I've been fascinated at how the GOP resembles the mainline Protestant congregations that I have been a member of or served at. Many of these congregations were great institutions in their day, but those days are now long gone. However, people look at the past with rose-colored glasses, ignoring all the shades of grey or all the things that might not have been so good during those so-called "good ole days." People in these congregations then end up holding on to the past, afraid to change in order to keep the church going. This road is a slow road to dying, as the old folks in the congregation die off and the new are never really allowed in.

In many ways, this is what the GOP is facing. We are in love with the past or more succinctly, the past when we were king. And many in the party have held on to a fictionalized past that they long for, afraid to let anyone in lest it changes their perceptions of the party.

But we hold on to the Reagan years at our peril. The America that Ronald Reagan faced in 1981 is not the America of 2009. The nation has changed, we have become more diverse, and more accepting of issues like homosexuality. But instead of trying to fashion a conservatism for the 21st century, it seems like time has not changed and that has caused people to walk away from the party. Here is what Massie says:

Witness, for instance, the party's hostility to gay marriage. That plays well with the base, but it's not something that's likely to endear it to the political future. It's a symbolic issue in some ways, but each year plenty of voters who agree with the GOP die while plenty more who don't are added to the electoral roll.

Style matters too. The Tory position on Europe in the 1990s (and on immigration and crime more recently) was more popular with the electorate than were Labour's policies, but the stridency and, to many, the ugly tone in which the Tories expressed themselves turned many voters off. Similarly, the GOP position on, say, immigration is not without its supporters but the manner in which a position is expressed matters almost as much as the position itself. And the GOP has seemed bitter and parochial - qualities with which the electorate is unlikely to wish to associate itself.

Another example? The Terri Schiavo affair: millions of Americans might have been conflicted as to what they felt in what was a horrid, ugly affair. But they knew they didn't like the spectacle of Congressional Republicans stomping all over the case in hob-nailed boots, abandoning any notion of Congressional restraint, let alone respect for States' Rights and due process. The party that says the other mob always want to interfere abandoned all pretence to principle to interfere itself. Voters can spot hypocrisy and while they may sometimes forgive it if its purusued with a modicum of subtlety or on grounds of expediency, more often they dislike it intensely when it seems a flagrant breach of promise or purpose.

He also goes on to chat about how the whole tax debate is still stuck in 1981. Of course, back then taxes were very high and were lowered. Today, taxes are much lower than 30 years ago, and I don't see Obama raising taxes back to the 70 percent top marginal tax rate it was back in the early 80s. It made sense to cut taxes for the upper income back then, but not anymore. But the answer to anything economic seems to be cut taxes as if time had not changed.

But as Massie notes, the worship of Reagan speaks to a very narrow interpretation of who is a Republican and who is not. Conservatism is not as much a philosopy as it is a checklist. There are some in the party who have a figurative list that determines who is in and who is out. If you don't have enough of checks then you aren't a conservative.

Witness a recent post by Robert Bluey at the conservative blog RedState who believes that former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele is not loyal enough to head the Republican National Committee. Steele, who running for RNC chair deemed "defective" because he dared affiliate with moderates:

Steele’s well-documented role with the Republican Leadership Council and association with co-founder Christie Todd Whitman is perhaps the most egregious political error he’s made. Any conservative who partners with the liberal Whitman must be viewed skeptically. Steele claims he was trying to broaden the party’s base by appealing to moderates. “We have to elect moderates in the party,” he told CBN’s David Brody.

One of those moderates Steele supported was former Rep. Wayne Gilchrist, a classic RINO if there ever was one. Gilchrist faced a primary challenge from conservative Andy Harris, a Maryland state senator with strong backing from the Club for Growth. It didn’t matter to Steele. He threw his support to Gilchrist. Harris went on to win the GOP primary, prompting Gilchrist to turn on the GOP and endorse Harris’ Democrat opponent.

Nevermind that former New Jersey Governor Whitman was a successful GOP governor in a "blue" state. She's a "liberal" and hanging around moderates makes you suspect among a true believer like Bluey.

The same goes with his trashing on Wayne Gilchrest, the a former Representative from Maryland. He was a moderate Republican in a blue area, which should be seen as a good thing. Not with these folks. He was a RINO, and the Club for Growth ran a candidate to unseat him in a primary, who was later trounced by a Democrat.

Political parties are always dealing with the tension between those who are the dogmatists and those who are pragmatists. In the 80s and 90s, the Democrats were fighting amongst themselves, with the New Deal dogmatists on the one side and the New Democrat pragmatists on the other. In the end, the pragmatists were able to win the day and elect one of their own, Bill Clinton, to the presidency.

While this isn't a perfect analogy, (the New Democrats are not as strong as they once were and the New Dealers are back in power) it might explain the situation the GOP is in. The dogmatists are in control and looking for heretics to expell. But after several losses, people are going to want to win instead of just holding on to principle. For conservatism in the US to grow, it has to become more pragmatic, more willing to open itself up to differing strains (there is more than one way to be conservative). This doesn't mean becoming liberals, but trying to figure out how to be conservative in a different age.

Our conservatism is to small. It's time to dream big.

Towards A Progressive Conservatism, Revisited

About four years ago, I wrote something in an old blog based on a David Brooks essay from 2004. I called the post, "Towards a Progressive Conservatism" and it went something like this:

I've been reading the new book by Jim Wallis called , God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. In it, he talks about a essay written by New York Times columnist David Brooks last summer. I remember briefly looking at it, but not really getting around to reading it.

If you haven't read it, do so. Now. It's entitled, "How To Reinvent the GOP" and it's a provactive essay on how the Republican Party can reinvigorate itself. His basic argument is that the guiding principle of the GOP in recent decades, namely the size of government, is not an issue anymore. Socialism, which called for a big and interventionist government, is a spent force and the old conservative argument over the size of government is not the issue. Instead he argues for a limited and yet robust government that would spur empowerment among individuals who would in turn, empower the nation.

There's a lot more I should be saying, but it's close to eleven and time for bed. What I can say is that Brooks is advocating for a conservatism in the view of Teddy Roosevelt, a progressive conservatism. I think it's a great blueprint for the party and I could see it expressed in someone like Chuck Hagel.

Okay, so I was wrong on that whole Chuck Hagel thing, but having re-read the Brook's piece, I still think it is an great blueprint for the future of the GOP and it seems that some of these ideas were expressed in the book by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, called Grand New Party.

Give the article a read. Here's a taste:

Nobody knows who the nominee will be that year. (He's referring to 2008.)It could be Bill Frist, Chuck Hagel, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado or somebody else -- maybe even Arnold Schwarzenegger. But if the party is going to offer a positive, authoritative vision for the post-9/11 world, which is a world of conflict and anxiety, then it is going to have to develop a strong-government philosophy consistent with Republican principles. It will have to embrace a progressive conservative agenda more ambitious and fully developed than anything the Bush administration has so far articulated.

A candidate who does that would not need to launch an insurgency campaign against the Republican establishment, the way Goldwater did in 1964 or the way Reagan did in 1976. The fact is the Republican Party no longer has a coherent establishment left to inveigh against. Instead, a progressive conservative candidate would have to play a more constructive role. He would have to lay out a vision that would rebuild the bonds among free-market conservatives, who dream of liberty; social conservatives, who dream of decency; middle-class suburbanites, who dream of opportunity; and foreign-policy hawks, who dream of security and democracy. He would have to revive and update the governing philosophy that did bind these groups, and did offer such hope, in the early days of the G.O.P. Long before it was the party of Tom DeLay, the G.O.P. was a strong government/progressive conservative party. It was the party of Lincoln, and thus of Hamilton. Today, in other words, the Republican Party doesn't need another revolution. It just needs a revival. It needs to learn from the ideas that shaped the party when it was born.