I came across this website while surfing. I find it interesting that it shares a lot of my concerns. Quoting Fred Barnes doesn’t hurt you either when it comes to gaining favor with Republicans like me. And the Contract 2.0 is great.

I, like most Republicans, am a staunch Reaganite. I think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of our lifetime, if not the century. Because of Reagan, I became interested in political science and took it as a major in college, earning a B.A.

I have a dual degree in Poli Sci and Literature. I’ve had extensive business training in the real world after graduating. I am partners in a business. I understand the intellectual arguments that go into discussing political policy. I’m not trying to impress you or sell you on believing what I’m about to say. I just want you to know this because its the basis upon which I have given this great thought and come to the conclusion I have. I know that I am also just a regular middle class guy from Virginia who, like the rest of us in life, is just a flea on an elephant’s ass in the grand scheme of things.

But I need to know if my observations based on my background are going to be in line with those of my political party. Because if they are, I am willing to fight for the future of my party. If they are not, then I have more work to do in convincing my party.

The first step to getting the Republican party back to its Reagan roots and reviving its greatness has to be in the selection of its next great leader. We cannot have party in-fighting between moderates and conservatives, or the elite and the rank and file. If everyone who shares my sense of urgency about how important it is to get the Grand Old Party back to being grand again can agree on one person, one candidate, one standard bearer who can lead this party back to greatness, then I think we’re in business.

It’s been a painstaking toil intellectually to find the qualities of greatness in a political candidate after the bar was set so high by Ronald Reagan. It’s been really tough. There have been tricks of the light like George W. Bush. There have been tricks of the mind like Fred Thompson. Therein lies the first issue in choosing our new standard bearer.

I’ve supported both Bushes, and actually thought W would keep the philosophy alive. However, after a brilliant first term, he sputtered on issues of fiscal responsibility and spending. He oversaw the Democratic party’s destruction of our financial system and didn’t utter a word. Bush the father broke his promise on tax increases.

I’ve always voted down the line Republican at both the state and national levels. I’ve researched political candidates, studied leadership in seminars I’ve attended for business and kept in touch with my Reagan roots using Reagan as a litmus test for what I was looking for in a leader.

During this year’s primaries, I still didn’t see it in one candidate. I saw bits and pieces of it in the different candidates. Fred Thompson had the ideas, Mitt Romney had the charisma, Mike Huckabee had the populism, John McCain had the military hero background and Rudy Giuliani had the nuts and bolts leadership skills. If you asked me during the primaries who I wanted to win, I would have told you if you can combine all the candidates into one, I’d vote for that guy.

Are my standards just way to high, or was I just not seeing any true great ones out there? Since Ronald Reagan’s passing, there has been a void in leadership. It’s been a saddening void which basically led me to a melancholy reckoning that “okay, I’ll vote for McCain because he’s the lesser of two evils.”

Then something changed that melancholy to profound hope. John McCain was the last guy on the list of primary candidates that I would vote for. Even after McCain had locked up the nomination, I still voted for Romney in the Virginia primary. Saddened by the fact that our best days may be behind us as I watched the rise of Obama, I reluctantly got on board for the lesser of two evils. Then John McCain did something more profound than just running for president. He did something that history may some day look back on as the choice that saved the party.

I’m going out on a limb. I’m staking my entire political being on this one. I’m willing to eat crow if I’m wrong. I know who the next great one is.

But don’t believe some schmo from Virginia just because he’s got a couple of degrees. I want everyone from your group to the groups across this great country to take a real good hard look. Do the research yourself. But more importantly, understand that some of the research cannot be done because it hasn’t happened yet. I want everyone to watch our next great leader over the next four years. Watch how this person takes the foundation on which this person’s life has been built and adds levels of greatness to this foundation.

I told you I know who the next great one is. But don’t believe me. Believe John McCain, a man who would lose an election if it meant putting his country first.

For the sake of the party and the future of our republic, I implore every American and every republican to come to their own conclusions and say, you know maybe this person really is the next great one. I can give you compelling arguments in the days, weeks and months to come. But it’s not important that I see it. It’s important that everyone else in the party sees it.

John McCain, foot soldier to the last great one, selected the next great one to be his running mate. Sarah Palin embodies everything that Ronald Reagan stood for. She fills the void left by the passing of Ronald Reagan. She’s the greatest hope our party has. If my party is willing to accept her as its leader and standard bearer, I’m in.

With that said, it would be nice if someone got started on writing one up. Maybe someone can start collecting specific proposals now and over time we can figure out what sticks with the electorate.

Meh. Several points of your proposed “contract” abandon classic conservative positions in favor of happy-feeling soundbites. The points sound, frankly, like a re-tread of current GOP talking points. The Party does not necessarily need a whole host of “new ideas,” rather, it needs to return to foundations which it has left behind in the pursuit of a permanent conservative majority. In no particular order:

1) Corruption = bad. Got it. However, conservatives stand firm on individual liberties and rights granted in the Constitution – of which one of the most fundamental is the right to considered innocent until proving guilty and a robust defense in the face of accusers. Public lambasting is not really the cure all; it would be wise not to abandon foundational principles merely to look like the GOP is “tough on corruption” or whatever. Stevens et al are prime examples of a) putting self before service and b) the lack of initiative by party leadership to take on powerful, entrenched interests – particularly with respect to very senior members of the party. Stevens’ largess was common knowledge in and around DC; the party should have dealt with the situation prior to it getting out of control. Instead of focusing on “getting rid of corruption” the party needs to rededicate itself to the idea of serving those that, by grace, elected them in the first place.

2) Joe the Plumber is a nice sound bite but its repeated invocation is beginning to sound like the absence of a real plan. Yes, we like free markets. It is also important, however, not to simply be reflexively “anti-regulation” but more of 1) support the sane ideas and 2) ditch the ludicrous. “Joe the Plumber” is an effective “tool” (for lack of a better word) at the moment but in the long run its continued use is merely a symbol of a party bereft of ideas.

3) Phrases like “socialist income redistribution” are good scare quotes during an election cycle but they mask, much like Joe the Plumber, an absence of any real deep thought on the matter. The GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility (though the execution did not always live up to the promise). Under Bush II the GOP has engaged in an orgy of unnecessary spending to the point where many people don’t even give lip-service to sensible accounting. Republicans need new ideas beyond “we’re going to cut taxes.”

I’ll skip a few other issues with the post so this does not get terribly long (save for one more point or two). I think that the GOP has not only strayed from principles of the mid-late 20th century conservative movement the GOP has also forgotten many of the lessons learned.

Republicans always like to say (or at least infer) that we stand on the shoulders of giants (Reagan et al). Ignoring the threat of the spread of Communism for a moment – a circumstance which united even the most disparate of conservatives – there are several lessons that can be learned.

Serious movement conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s were asking themselves several basic questions to include 1) what is in America’s national interest and 2) what kind of America do I want to see in the future? In large part by the time Reagan was elected those ideas were mostly concrete (read his diaries if you want to see his first term struggles with what he knew was correct but the rest of the country did not yet) but required a force of will to push through.

Ignoring the questions about online presence above completely absent from the “contract” is any real intellectual rigor. Frankly, most of them seem to be positions merely at odds with the current Democratic platform. That doesn’t provide an “alternative vision” it merely provides a “difference.”

The Contract with America fizzled not terribly long after it go off the ground due to the fact that the party lost the bubble. Instead of a battle of ideas the focus became on surviving the election cycle. While I tend to agree that the US is historically more conservative than it is liberal I’m not entire sure that the “core principles” that have been articulated by the GOP are the ones that line up with the inherent conservatism within America.

Likewise, your final thoughts in point 6 ignore many of the lessons learned from the “Nixon goes to China” miracle and the associated secret shuttle diplomacy which led up up to the summit. I’m not saying that one should simply jump on a plane and meet either of those two “presidents” rather that some hard calculus must be brought to bear. Point 6 seems to be standard boilerplate; I think that it needs to be articulated a bit better / fleshed out some more.

Remember: what is in America’s national interest and 2) what kind of America do I want to see in the future?

Glad to see that you are initiating this. It is definitely needed.

We have had our Republican brand tarnished by both lack of integrity and by abandonment of our core principles by Republicans elected to office. We need a new breed of Republican who lives in integrity and who will take a stand for free-enterprise, small government and personal liberty.

Kudos.

Whatever I can do to help.

Gary Aminoff
President
San Fernando Valley Republican Club