In the days leading up to the election, a lot of us are stressing out, trying to get the last bits of projects together and trying find ways to help our candidates out on the local, state or national level. Focus like this makes it harder at times for us to come back to the big picture, where we are as a party, and what we need to be doing overall as a more holistic movement.
While I fully support everyone going out there with as much force as possible and fighting the good fight, let me take a moment here and talk about a more generalized approach to the future. Aaron talked about some points earlier, and I wanted to expand on those and bring some of my perspective in.
Full disclosure- I’m very fiscally conservative, but I also have a lot of socially conservative positions. However, I believe you’ll find them to be very logically based, and if you will indulge me, I can explain how they are very important to the Republican Party, and how through properly framing these issues, we can not only retain our base, but gain new ground across the board.
A senior public policy analyst at CSPAN once said that there is an inherent strength of the GOP that sets us apart from the democrats- we essentially have only two factions, as opposed to the Democrat’s three. We have social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. The Democrats have blue dog democrats (fiscal conservatives), the New Democrat Coalition (pro business, anti labor), and the Majority Makers (socially conservative DINOs who only ran so the Democrats would get the majority). Trying to get these factions to agree is more like herding cats, whereas Republicans, while one side may roll their eyes at the other on occasion and vice versa, can get along on important things.
Herein lies a point of strength, one we have to maximize on. It is pretty widely agreed that a good part of the late start to McCain’s campaign came from the social conservatives who felt that McCain was not conservative enough for them. I actually felt strongly about this, and stated as much during the primary. When Sarah Palin was chosen as Vice President, her social conservative values were doubtless part of the extremely high level of excitement at the RNC convention. One thing we’ll never know is whether an earlier move to shore up those conservative voters would have led to an earlier consolidation of Republican voters.
One of the significant things Reagan was able to do was create a coalition of supporters by making friends on both sides- espousing the social conservative values while aggressively addressing the government’s role. I don’t believe many people would say that our current administration has pursued both of those ends to the same extent, or that the current role of the government is a reflection of traditional Republican values. Bearing these points in mind, here are a few things I would like to add to Aaron’s earlier list, again in no particular order:
1. The Republican Party will stand for protecting the civil rights of the unborn. Abortion is a violation of the rights of those who have no voice of their own, and as such, it is a human rights violation to ignore their voice and give them no voice. This is the line of argumentation that can build coalitions and create effective policy because it relies on current precedent and relies on a more well-established line of reasoning.
2. The Republican Party will enforce border security measures. One of the largely unsung online success stories of 2007 was the NumbersUSA internet lobbying and activist network- using action alerts and online forms for faxes, the NumbersUSA immigration movement was able to lobby congress with literally millions of faxes and countless phone calls- this is the precursor to the #dontgo movement that we’ve seen lately. This issue has not been addressed very significantly lately, and I believe this has been to the detriment of our party.
3. Speaking of #dontgo, the energy movement is an area where the Republican Party can make major strides. “Drill here, drill now” has become an anthem that people can believe in universally, and have shown their support for through the #dontgo movement. Stressing the fact that we need a solution for the short term and the long term, and that in the short term, drilling is necessary, the Republican Party can bring in significant political support. I believe McCain’s emphasis on increasing nuclear energy is also well placed- obviously there are still some concerns with the developing technology, but only nuclear energy can be used at near-universal levels- Wind and Solar are only economically viable in certain areas.
I’m sure there will be more to put out there- the very nature of this kind of movement means that there is a lot of important dialogue that goes on between contributors and commenters. And the nature of a conservative movement, I believe, is one of personal decision `making rather than groupthink. That’s why you see centralized left websites like dailykos and huffingtonpost, but on the right, there are countless significant blogs from prominent thinkers, not all of which believe the same thing. And that’s important. That’s what makes us conservatives. But we also need to come together and use our combined resources to make the internet work for us. That’s what this movement is about- coming together and using the internet to make our party work for us.
Last 5 posts by Brad Tidwell
- Followup for Petition for Our Future - May 20th, 2009
- Examining Obama’s Online Campaign - May 3rd, 2009
- Candidate Obama, Meet President Obama - April 8th, 2009
- Next Gen GOP Social Media Post Awarded at 2009 AAPC Convention - April 2nd, 2009
- GOP Comeback Plan - February 23rd, 2009
