After a devastating loss in the most recent presidential election, it’s easy to point fingers. The truth is we have only ourselves to blame. When we nominate or elect officials in the future, we need to think long and hard about what is the best for prolonging the life of the GOP.
The most important component our party lacks right now is a firm stance. This election season was plagued with crossing party aisles and reaching across to the other side. This only works if both parties partake, but as always, the republicans are the only ones making this move. We don’t need to water down our beliefs to make friends across party lines. Since when is the goal of our party to change our beliefs to try and appeal to more moderate voters? The goal should always be to stand strong in our beliefs and, as a result, bring others to our cause. An election cannot be won on compromise. People are naturally drawn to people who are passionate, honest, and stand firm for what they believe in. Consider how Ronald Reagan won his second term in a landslide.
Another component our party needs to face head on is corruption. When sworn into office, politicians make the conscious choice to be in the public spotlight. They must live to a higher standard, especially in light of the conservative values promoted by the Republican cause. Our party leaders are essentially a representation of every Republican in the country. Americans need to be confident in the character and integrity of their Republican leaders.
A final issue that was perhaps the most significant in the recent election is the idea of attracting and exciting younger voters. The GOP needs to reach out and pave the way for future generations. To achieve this, the party needs to revamp their access to and utilization of technology. Young, first time voters spend more time on the internet than any other mass communication device of our time. By advertising online or operating through blogs, party members can exchange ideas, provide support for one another, and reach out to others.
As a party we should step back and analyze what went wrong in this election, what we can fix, and what we can do to ensure victory in the future. In this election, 57,838,800 million Americans voted for the Republican cause. This is a source of REAL hope in the fact that the Republican Party is far from extinction. If we use this opportunity to its full extent, the GOP could see the biggest revitalization of our time. Let’s get back to the grass roots of the GOP. Let’s bring back Reaganomics. Let’s fight for the dawn of a new conservative movement.
Last 5 posts by Katie Small
- We Can't Count on the Media - November 18th, 2008
What about centralizing all these themes under one-overriding theme?
Some suggestions…
Choice vs. Command/Coercion/Control; Let conservatives be the party of choice.
You choose where to spend your money.
You choose where to send your kids to school.
You choose what “green” investments occur.
etc etc etc.
Good Government; Small government and low taxes aren’t things conservatives pusue simply because they are good in and of themselves. We want small government because small government is good government. We want low taxes, because it is good government. We want an end to earmarks because it is good government.
Accountability/Citizen (read “customer”) service; I suppose this combines the previous two, but people want a responsive government. A government that is evaluated/audited/examined by others. A government that “throws the bums out.” A government that does not waste.
To me, the problem with republicans is that they have become a party of promises, lists, and slogans. Republicans can never be “the” party of promises, lists, and slogans as the Democrats have perfected this art and have no restraint to ever reign it in. Conservatives must have a party that has an overarching theme that encompasses its talking points that has to be easily identifiable by the public. Let’s start with the overall vision, and let that vision guide all other planks of the movement.
Governments always waste because they don’t have anything. They use other peoples money. The only time money is not wasted is when an individual is making a decision with his/her own money for his/her own purposes. We cannot expect bureaucrats and lawyers/legislators to properly spend the money they take from our paychecks, one reason why government should be drastically reduced, because from an economic standpoint they are dreadfully wasteful.
LibertyNow: Then why spend money on military or bridges?
I agree Government usually wastes, and can usually be smaller – but if the conservative argument is simply “smaller government to kill it” we will lose. I think the argument should be “smaller government will lead to better government, here is why”….
Maybe my distinction is more packaging than substantive. But “waste” is more persuasive than “size”. “Big government” used to scare people, now I think “incompetent government” scares people more.
To answer your question, because the Constitution outlines that infrastructure, and military spending are some of the limited actions the federal government is allowed to spend tax dollars on.
I think your packaging is ok, I would just use an entirely different message. People don’t seem to hung up on wasteful spending, most likely because they don’t understand why it is important. Governments obtain money three different ways: 1)Direct taxation, which is just a form of legal theft, 2) debt, they can borrow the money, like they often do, but not lately because no one will lend it, 3) counterfeit, i.e. start up the money printing press, which is an inflationary tax on the citizens, albeit a hidden one. So all this money comes directly from the working class. Of course liberals don’t mind being taxed, they think its patriotic(reading the Op-Ed page of the local paper on such nonsense is quite enjoyable, and excrutiating at the same time), but conveying this message to the people on the scheme being pulled, that it’s destroying their wealth when they have to work from January 1st to sometime in mid May before they can actually start taking home the fruits from their own labor, its a powerful message, and one that should be relayed to the people.
LibertyNow:
Well I would strongly disagree that people aren’t hung up on wasteful spending.
The gov’t taking money through taxation is just a part of living in the US. I don’t think people in Chicago, Dallas or L.A. really care about the gov’t taking money. They do care how that money is used. I don’t think the constitutionality argument (which we have alrady lost in the courts BTW)holds much water with people. “Waste” does. Every news network has a “fleeced” segment of some kind or the other. Earmarks, bailouts and duplicative programs are all issues you don’t want to to the wrong side of whether Dem or Repub. All of those issues are waste issues. Good government doesn’t waste – that should be conservatives theme.
Constitutional arguments about government spending will just power the wind farms and not get us votes – even though I think you are right in your argument.
Well I did not say that people aren’t hung up on wasteful spending, I said they do not seem too hung up. If they were we would not have the Fed, we would not have any of these bailouts, we would not have a single stimulus package. I think you are fooling yourself with this idea of good government. When are governments good? The only time I can think of such an instance is when they only concern themselves with protecting the natural and constitutionally granted rights of individuals, yet we haven’t experienced such an instance since before Woodrow Wilson, or perhaps even since before Lincoln.