After President Obama held a press conference to discuss his plans for dealing with the U.S. auto industry, two things were obvious on the Republican side. First, Congressional Republicans are deeply divided on the issue. Second, we were all caught completely off guard. These two factors led to party leaders not having a unified message and giving the appearance, once again, in the press that the Republican Party is in disarray.
If we take into account regional interests, it’s of little surprise Republicans from different areas of the country had different personal opinions. Rust belt Republicans like Ohio Senator George Voinovich, who is co-chairman of the Senate Auto Caucus and Blue State Republicans like California Representative Darrell Issa expressed approval with the administration’s plans. Republicans from southern states that have interests in the success of foreign auto companies with factories in their states all opposed the plan. Some Republicans like Michigan Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter said President Obama was not doing enough to help the auto industry, pointing out a double standard between the requirements dictated to GM and Chrysler and those dictated to the banks before they received a bailout. Still others accused President Obama of going too far and trying to bring GM under almost complete government control by forcing the resignation of its CEO.
While the regional differences of opinion are understandable, they are not helpful. Either we are ideologically opposed to propping up companies that would fail on their own or we are not. Republicans cannot just be in favor of saving companies in their districts. The same can be said about wasteful spending. They cannot get away with supporting wasteful spending when it benefits a select few of their constituents but not when it benefits someone elses. This hypocrisy and division does not bode well for a national party. We were (generally) united on the stimulus and Obama’s budget. We should be united on this.
A big reason why the Republicans released statements contradicting each other was because they had little or no time to meet amongst themselves before they made statements. Lawmakers were returning from a weekend away from DC as President Obama spoke and generally said the first thing that popped into their heads. A little discipline would have helped. Even if the press was hounding them for a response, there would have been no problem with Republicans responding, “We are currently reviewing the President’s just released plans and will reserve judgment until we are finished reviewing those plans.” That would have bought enough time for the Republican leadership to come up with a unified message and talking points and send it out to the rest of them. Instead, what we got was a unified Democrat response which included remarks on how disunited the Republicans were.
The mistakes made yesterday clearly have to do with our overarching problems of a lack of a clear message and an absence of leadership. It seems more and more apparent that until we figure out what message we want to give the American people and who we want to give it, PR nightmares like yesterday will be a regular occurrence.
Last 5 posts by Abel S. Delgado
- Let’s Support the Cantwell-McCain Bill - January 6th, 2010
- Deeds Gets Dirty, Doesn’t Win Anyway - November 2nd, 2009
- Obama & The Berlin Wall - October 25th, 2009
- The Nobel Prom King - October 11th, 2009
- Bureaucratizing Interrogations a Horrible Idea - August 28th, 2009
I very much agree with your conclusions. However, as they say, “All politics is local.” Unless Obama makes a huge blunder and get blamed for it, the conservatives may be in for a long time out of power. Right now, it seems to me that the best hope for conservatives is to form a Reagan-esque coalition with the Blue Dog Democrats and try to head off the left wing challenge.
As you said Abel, there is no leadership. There’s also no principles, which you also spoke about. If they had any principles this would not have turned into a problem, because they all would have opposed Government Motors’ bailout from the beginning. I remember George Bush saying during the first round of TARP, “I have to sacrifice my free market principles in order to save capitalism.” I was not too pleased to hear that, as it was completely obvious Bush had zero economic principles. If he truely had market principles then they would not have been sacrificed or compromised, which is the whole point of a principle in the first place.
I think the Republicans should gather up the few individuals they have in Congress that are principled representatives; Michele Bachmann, Jim Demint, Ron Paul, etc., and have these people as their main messengers. I see guys like Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan, young Republicans that are supposedly the future leaders of the party, and yet they caved on TARP, caved on AIG bonus tax, and lack any principles at all to be of any value to lead the country towards greater liberty.