Whither Republicans?
HE SAID “WHITHER”, NOT “WITHER”
“When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating? … A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.”–Ronald Reagan
We’re told that Colin Powell, Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafee are the future, the visionary leaders of the Republican Party—nevermind that they’re Democrats. That’s not just a steaming pantload, it’s a Joe Biden Brand(tm) Steaming Pantload.
Some other voices:
Our first mistake was accepting this media-generated debate as legitimate. It’s a false choice that offers nothing but continued division for Republicans.
{O}ur nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. …All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative — a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted — if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.
If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.
…[B]e the party of no. And not just a party that bucks Obama and Democrats on easy issues like releasing Gitmo terrorists in this country, but one committed to aggressive, attention-grabbing opposition to the entire Obama agenda. Many Republicans recoil from being combative adversaries of a popular president. They shouldn’t.
The Republican Party’s navel is a pretty unattractive thing. So maybe Republicans should stop obsessively gazing at it. Instead, the GOP might focus on taking on the Obama administration, whose policies are surprisingly vulnerable to political and substantive attack. Battling Barack Obama is an enterprise that offers better grounds for Republican hope than indulging in spasms of introspection or bouts of petty recrimination.
…[W]hen the going gets tough, you don’t, as General Powell advises, “move toward the center.” You move the center toward you, as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did.
“… two million Britons were unemployed, recession gripped the country. Meanwhile, opinion polls showed support for her Conservative government had fallen to record lows and her personal popularity was dropping sharply. Consequently, she was under tremendous pressure from the public, from the media, and even from within her own caucus to do a “U-turn” and drop her economic measures.
But Thatcher had other ideas.
On October 10, 1980 she declared to a Conservative convention: “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catch-phrase — the U-turn — I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to; the Lady’s not for turning.”
From that speech, The Lady herself:
It is sometimes said that because of our past we, as a people, expect too much and set our sights too high. That is not the way I see it. Rather it seems to me that throughout my life in politics our ambitions have steadily shrunk. Our response to disappointment has not been to lengthen our stride but to shorten the distance to be covered. …
We have undertaken a heavy load of legislation, a load we do not intend to repeat because we do not share the Socialist fantasy that achievement is measured by the number of laws you pass. But there was a formidable barricade of obstacles that we had to sweep aside. …
We have made the first crucial changes in trade union law to remove the worst abuses of the closed shop, to restrict picketing to the place of work of the parties in dispute, and to encourage secret ballots. …
It was Anthony Eden who chose for us the goal of “a property-owning democracy”. But for all the time that I have been in public affairs that has been beyond the reach of so many, who were denied the right to the most basic ownership of all—the homes in which they live. They wanted to buy. Many could afford to buy. But they happened to live under the jurisdiction of a Socialist council, which would not sell and did not believe in the independence that comes with ownership. …
The Left continues to refer with relish to the death of capitalism. Well, if this is the death of capitalism, I must say that it is quite a way to go. But all this will avail us little unless we achieve our prime economic objective—the defeat of inflation. Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading armies do. …
This Government are pursuing the only policy which gives any hope of bringing our people back to real and lasting employment. …
Higher public spending, far from curing unemployment, can be the very vehicle that loses jobs and causes bankruptcies in trade and commerce. …
If spending money like water was the answer to our country’s problems, we would have no problems now. If ever a nation has spent, spent, spent and spent again, ours has. Today that dream is over. All of that money has got us nowhere but it still has to come from somewhere.
Those who urge us to relax the squeeze, to spend yet more money indiscriminately in the belief that it will help the unemployed and the small businessman are not being kind or compassionate or caring. They are not the friends of the unemployed or the small business. They are asking us to do again the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.
Lady Thatcher closed that speech with a plan just as apt for her party coming into power as for ours, now out of power:
We close our Conference in the aftermath of that sinister Utopia unveiled at Blackpool. Let Labour’s Orwellian nightmare of the Left be the spur for us to dedicate with a new urgency our every ounce of energy and moral strength to rebuild the fortunes of this free nation.
If we were to fail, that freedom could be imperilled. So let us resist the blandishments of the faint hearts; let us ignore the howls and threats of the extremists; let us stand together and do our duty, and we shall not fail.
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