ONE OF THESE DAYS REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO POLITICS AS WELL AS GOVERNANCE
ONE OF THESE DAYS REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO POLITICS AS WELL AS GOVERNANCE
By
Ken Eliasberg
Republicans just took a complete drubbing, and they deserved it; they have completely squandered the gift that Hillary Clinton gave them in 1994. God, are they inept!!!! Watching Republicans do politics is, as the saying goes, a great deal like watching sausages being made, i.e. you’ll have a tough time eating them once you’ve observed the process of their creation. And please spare me any assertion that one should not violate Reagan’s 11th Commandment, i.e. thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. I honor the man; I have no regard for the Commandment. Why not? Because my daddy didn’t discipline the kid across the street; he took it to me and my brother. By the same token, I did not discipline my neighbor’s children, I brought law and order to my house and my sons (all of whom seem to have survived the experience, gone on to lead productive and successful lives, while at the same time providing me with much pride and a great deal of joy). I believe in discipline, an ordered society, if you will. And that starts in the home — in this case, the Republican Party, for that is my political home.
I can’t discipline Radical Muslims, who seem bent on our destruction, with a consequent return to the dark ages (a period out of which this group seems not to have evolved); by the same token, I can’t discipline radical left-wingers, which, at this point, contemplates the entire Democrat Party, for it is now run by its most radical elements. What I can do, however, is try to discipline my own Party, which seems to have neither discipline nor direction; it seems both lost and leaderless. After the 2006 election I did 2 columns; The first was entitled Democrats Didn’t Win, Republicans Lost — And They Deserved To Lose (2/1/07), and the second was Republicans May Have Suffered A Defeat But Conservative Principles Are Still Very Much Alive (2/8/07). The sentiments expressed in those columns are even more appropriate today. The Republican Party is, quite simply, a mess. Conservativism hasn’t suffered at all. Why? Because it hasn’t been in evidence over the past 14 years (the years during which the Republicans have controlled either the Congress or the Presidency, or both). The manner in which they have governed has been, for the most part, indistinguishable from the manner in which Democrats would do the job (with the conspicuous exceptions of national security, taxes, and Supreme Court selections, laudable exceptions, to be sure). If Republicans do nothing but criticize Democrats, they will wander in the wilderness for many years. Summing up the Republican’s current status, P.J. O’Rourke put it as follows:
“It took a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives
40 years — from 1954 to 1994 — to get that corrupt and arrogant, and
the Republicans did it in just 12. And people say that we Republicans
don’t have a lot on the ball.”
The amusing (for lack of a better term) aspect of the past election is that the Dems did a better job of passing along a conservative message than we did (of course they were lying, but that’s something they know how to do and do quite well; indeed, as I once observed, Dems do a better job of lying than we do of telling the truth).
And, as I observed in a previous column, even when we win, we don’t reverse changes that the left has foisted upon us (you see they take winning more seriously than we do; they actually implement the changes, or at least many of them, that they campaigned on). All that we do is prevent them from making any further changes for the limited time during which we hold power (and many times not event that). Or, as John Derbyshire put it in a refreshingly insightful piece in the November 5th edition of National Review Online, entitled Eight Wasted Years — And the ratchet slips free:
“Margaret Thatcher used to talk about the ‘ratchet effect.’ When the
Left gets power, she said, they drive everything Left; when the Right
gets power, they slow the Leftward drive, perhaps even halt it for a
spell; but nothing ever gets moved to the Right. U.S. politics in the
21st century so far bears out this dismal analysis.”
This pretty much goes along with my previous description of our Republican officials— the get along to go along bunch. People who never make things happen or even participate in their happening; just a bunch of gutless windbags who either allow things to happen or just watch them happen. The Republican Party doesn’t have a “principle” problem; they have a “principal,” problem, i.e. a problem with principled leaders who can communicate the Party’s principles.
Perhaps Norman Thomas, the Dean of Socialism in this country (having inherited the mantle from Eugene Debs) was right when he observed in passing:
‘The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism.
But, under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every
fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will
be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
If we are to avoid this outcome, we need to learn how to do politics — efficiently and consistently. And, if necessary, ruthlessly — you know, the way the Democrats do it. We seem excessively concerned with good manners, even at the cost of losing, not justan election, but the entire country.
We also need principled leaders, who are rooted in those principles, believe in them and are capable of communicating them to an America hungry for their message. As I half joked, Republicans seem to have a flare for selecting presidential aspirants who have either one foot in the grave or one in their mouth (and, in some cases, both). From Bush I through McCain, we had men whose communication skills, to say the least, left a great deal to be desired. And, like it or not, such skills cannot be overrated - they are essential. For example, what was Ronald Reagan called — The Great Communicator. When you think back over the last 50 years, you think of Kennedy, Reagan, and even that snake oil salesman, Bill Clinton. All were exceedingly charming and possessed of great communication skills. In addition, all appeared to be quite likeable. Or put another way, who cares if you have a message if you are incapable of adequately communicating it to the voters. And, the Bushes, both 41 and 43, while decent men, were pathetically inadequate communicators — on those all too rare occasions when they chose to communicate at all. Perhaps Bill Clinton was at least partially right when he observed that, in choosing their leaders, Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.
And nowhere has this skill been more apparent than in our current president-elect. Obama was a clear case where the messenger, not the message, won; indeed, there was no message, just a number of polished presentations. And, I don’t say this in a partisan way; Obama is a skilled speaker, possessed of charm, grace, and incredible “likeability” - attributes which, while independently desirable, stood out even more when contrasted with his charmless and cranky opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
The Republican solution: Return to your roots, get a firm grip on your message, and select strong and principled leaders who are capable of communicating that message to a constituency hungry for such a welcome change. As the title to this column indicates, one of these days Republicans may learn how to do both politics and governance. Hopefully, should that day come along, it will not come when it’s too late to put the lesson to use in the service of saving the greatest country in the history of the world(and, as a consequence, Western Civilization).