Regardless of whether John McCain wins in November or how Republicans fare in congressional races, one thing appears certain: The Grand Old Party is headed for a change.
For months, if not years, Republican leaders have been calling on their colleagues to reinvent or reform the party, whose brand has been tarnished by a controversial war, a ballooning deficit, increased federal expansion into such issues as education and Medicare, and pork-barrel spending.
Their calls for change are bolstered by poll after poll showing that the public trusts Democrats more than Republicans on nearly every domestic issue and that an average of 78 percent say the country is on the wrong track.
Though Republicans still have an edge on national security and military matters, it is overshadowed by Americans’ primary concern: the economy. The public is being hit hard by a mortgage meltdown, a housing crunch, an increase in food prices, rising energy costs and gasoline near $4 a gallon.
Part of Republicans’ troubles can be chalked up to a political pendulum that swings depending on time and circumstances. But political parties need to adapt to new challenges, say Republican leaders, and that won’t come from an ideological overhaul or a retreat into the past.
“This is still a firmly center-right nation. But we need to take the same values and principles and apply them to the different issues facing the country now,” says Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who was a political adviser in the Reagan White House. “Any political party has to periodically address changes in circumstances. It’s a natural evolution.”
Turning the page, say Barbour and others, doesn’t mean forsaking lower taxes, limited and small government, and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Republicans should walk the walk on those issues, for instance, by reining in spending and instituting meaningful earmark reform.
“For years, we attacked Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals,” says former Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who switched his affiliation from Democratic to Republican in 1995 because he felt Democrats were out of sync with voters. “Darned if we aren’t spending more than them.”
McCain has been adamant on the campaign trail that government spending must be reined in.
“American workers and families pay their bills and balance their budgets, and I will demand the same of the government,” McCain said at a Denver town-hall meeting in July. “Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years. That is simply inexcusable.”
He has pledged to balance the federal budget by 2013 and has said he would veto every bill that includes wasteful spending.
“We aren’t going to continue mortgaging this country’s future for things Americans don’t want or need,” he said in Denver.
Over the years, the party’s limited-government position has often translated into a no-government or anti-government stance. But there is middle ground between no government intrusion and a nanny state, many political observers say.
Indeed, 69 percent of Americans think the government should be more involved in taking “care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” according to the Pew Research Center. That’s 12 percentage points higher than in 1994, the year Republicans promised a “Contract With America” and won both chambers of Congress.
Government involvement includes issues that are gaining with middle-class and working-class voters: the environment, health care, wage stagnation, effective government management (such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and Social Security.
“We’ve mistakenly thought that those issues were more Democrat issues and didn’t devote a lot of attention to them,” says Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a former associate director of domestic policy in the George W. Bush White House. “There are ways to apply the same kind of conservative insights into these issues.”
Part of addressing different challenges includes making a pragmatic shift, says Reihan Salam, 28, who is part of the GOP’s younger generation and co-author of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.”
He contends family values should include kitchen-table economics. Acknowledging global warming isn’t an embrace of liberalism, he says, but the first step in discovering solutions. Instead of lambasting entitlement programs or just denying that a problem exists, he adds, Republicans should find a way to make them better, less bureaucratic and more cost-effective.
“Engage problems”
“The party needs to move away from nothing stances and engage problems that have been diagnosed,” says Salam, who is an associate editor at The Atlantic magazine. “It’s the only way to get the Republican reputation of competency back.”
McCain, in fact, broke with the Bush administration and most of his party in May when he acknowledged global warming as a problem that needed bipartisan solutions.
“I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears,” he said during a speech in Portland, Ore. “I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges. I will not accept the same dead end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto (a treaty on easing climate change that the U.S. has not ratified).
“The United States will lead and will lead with a different approach — an approach that speaks to the interests and obligation of every nation.”
Pendulum swings
Party power shifts are nothing new in American politics and are often considered not only natural but healthy. In recent political history, how a party governs drives the shift rather than changing ideology, says Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center.
“We almost always see a reaction of the public to one particular ideology in power,” he says. “The pendulum swings to the right and then to the left.”
Vietnam and domestic turbulence during Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s term opened the gates for Republican Richard Nixon, who won the presidency in 1968 despite the Democrats’ registration advantages. When Jimmy Carter floundered, unable to free U.S. hostages in Iran or stabilize the economy, voters backed staunch conservative Ronald Reagan. “New Democrat” Bill Clinton was ushered into office when the country was swirling in a recession and President George H.W. Bush broke a campaign pledge not to raise taxes.
In 1994, when the GOP took control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, voters rejected big government and what soon-to-be-House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the “bureaucratic welfare state.”
There is little question that this year, the wind is at the Democrats’ back. First, historical odds are on their side: Only once since World War II has a political party won three presidential elections in a row.
But more important, Republicans face a number of challenges, many of which are of their own making.
Saddled with a controversial war and a sagging economy, President Bush’s approval ratings have fallen as low as 28 percent. Government spending and the number of federal personnel have skyrocketed. And Bush backed the largest expansion of Medicare since the program was created in 1965.
Sex and corruption scandals — involving Republican Reps. Tom DeLay of Texas, Mark Foley of Florida, Duke Cunningham of California, Larry Craig of Idaho and Ted Stevens of Alaska, to name a few — have plagued the party. Mismanagement of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made the administration look incompetent, and federal involvement in issues such as gay marriage and the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case made the party, a proponent of states’ rights, appear hypocritical, critics have alleged.
Many political observers say the party appears to have jumped ship on conservative principles, with the GOP brand more synonymous with government expansion, Washington lobbyists and pork-barrel spending than compassionate conservatism.
“They are imploding from all of the internal contradictions,” says Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington and author of “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.” “It isn’t Bush in particular. None of the other Republicans have done a better job balancing these contradictions.”
Additionally, Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, excelled at targeting and turning out the conservative GOP base. But in the 2006 midterm elections, widely considered a referendum on Bush and the Republican Congress, the GOP lost both chambers in Congress.
“The Republicans didn’t rein in spending, they were distracted by the war and weren’t doing the things people wanted,” says Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington.
A year and a half later, the GOP suffered stinging losses of House seats in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi. Each of those districts had voted for Bush over challenger John Kerry by double digits.
Newt Gingrich’s plea
In the wake of these defeats, Gingrich wrote a plea to Republicans: Stop being attack dogs and come up with new policies. Pledge an earmark moratorium, protect workers’ rights to a secret ballot in union votes, declare English the official language and implement a space-based, GPS-style air-traffic control system to battle the Federal Aviation Administration bureaucracy.
“Without change, we could face a catastrophic election this fall,” he wrote in May. “Without change, the Republican Party in the House could revert to the permanent minority status it had from 1930 to 1994.”
As it stands now, the party’s multiple factions, once united under Reagan’s “big tent,” are splintering. Some, such as former Colorado Sen. Campbell, say the party has focused too much on “God, guns and gays.” Evangelicals, who turned out in record numbers to re-elect Bush in 2004, are upset with the war in Iraq and have contended that policy issues important to them are ignored. Libertarians are irate with the size and spending of government, and Main Street, K Street and Wall Street are pointing fingers at one another.
“The Ronald Reagan coalitions are crumbling and fraying,” says Pat Buchanan, a columnist and a two-time Republican presidential candidate. “It makes it hard to make a case to the voters that Republicans stand for positive change.”
With two months until the general election, the Republicans don’t have much time.
More Americans than ever are dropping from Republican registration rolls, opting to affiliate with Democrats, or often no party at all. The party is also more conservative, older and no more diverse than a decade ago, according to GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who compared a 2007 survey he did with one he conducted in 1997.
Last year, the Pew Research Center released a study of the public’s political and social values, tracking them back to 1987. Its findings indicated that the GOP is out of sync with the public.
Half the public identified themselves with the Democratic Party, while 35 percent lined up with the Republicans. While Democrats have historically held an advantage on this question, just six years ago the public was split down the middle.
Also declining is the number of people who endorse “old-fashioned values about family and marriage” and who say that “prayer is an important part of my life.”
And although the country is at war, only 49 percent of the public believes that military might is the best way to ensure peace. That’s the lowest level recorded by Pew in the past two decades.
Because the damaged GOP brand is tied directly to its highest leader, President Bush, Republican candidates at every level are not only avoiding the perception that they are aligned with him, they are actively trying to show voters they have bucked his leadership.
Three years ago, Bush raised $450,000 for Marilyn Musgrave, an incumbent Colorado congresswoman up for re-election.
Now, both her campaign and congressional office refer to her as “independent-minded.” In May, Musgrave joined a number of Republicans facing re-election in rejecting Bush’s veto of the farm bill. And in July, she joined other Republicans in overriding Bush’s veto of a Medicare bill that would have blocked pay cuts to doctors who treat seniors, the disabled and military personnel.
Sam’s Club, not just country club
“I am proud to continue my fight against the White House on behalf of Colorado doctors and seniors,” Musgrave said in a statement at the time.
It was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a rising star in the party, who a few years ago pointed out what he believes is one of the biggest problems in the GOP.
The party needs “to be the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club,” Pawlenty said.
The governor says Republicans can take conservative, market-based principles and apply them to issues troubling the middle class, such as health care, education and the environment. And they can do it without ruling out government intervention in certain circumstances and deliver the message with optimism and civility.
“We need to take the success and wisdoms of the Ronald Reagan playbook and apply them to new challenges,” Pawlenty says. “We don’t support government-run health care, but we can’t stop there. We need to present alternatives and new approaches to people.”
Republicans already have seen an opening with energy, a pivotal campaign issue this year. The party is touting domestic drilling as a proactive measure and calling for investing in alternative energy sources and oil-shale processing.
Energy issue energizing
“The energy issue has invigorated the party in a way I haven’t seen in years,” says Republican Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman. “It’s an issue Republicans are willing to fight for and come up with positive solutions to solve the problem.”
Barbour, the Mississippi governor, says that Republicans should also start thinking about things they may have dismissed in the past. Nation building, for instance, was something that never seemed consistent with the GOP position on foreign policy, he says.
Now the U.S. faces not armies of nations, but terrorist groups from all over the world.
“Would nation building help put a stop to that? Should it make us start thinking about things differently?” he says.
As the baby-boom generation gets older, lawmakers also must confront entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, says Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
“These are watershed years domestically,” he says. “We need to find solutions that will reinvigorate small government.”
In many ways, McCain, a self-described maverick who doesn’t fold neatly into a GOP box, appears to be the right Republican at the right time.
Although the election odds are against Republicans, McCain is nearly neck and neck with Democrat Barack Obama — and it is precisely because he does not represent the old GOP, political observers say.
VP pick should help with base
McCain says he’s anti-tax, will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and now supports the Bush tax cuts — all positions to help mollify conservatives. But he is opposed to and has vowed to reform pork-barrel spending and pay more attention to solutions for global warming. It is his more moderate stances that are expected to help him at the ballot box.
“He also has an advantage because it’s hard for the Democrats to pin the label of ‘another Bush term’ on him,” says Keeter of the Pew Research Center.
And while he has struggled with shoring up the GOP base, naming Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — a 44-year-old fiscal conservative who does not support abortion rights — as his running mate Friday is expected to go a long way. Conservatives, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, applauded the decision, and Musgrave said the “Republican base is so excited about this ticket now.”
Even in the GOP’s worst-case scenario, where Democrats trounce Republicans in the presidential contest and congressional races, some political observers say there is hope.
“The Republicans may not be able to unify until the Democrats are firing with real bullets,” says Franc. “When the Democrats have to be accountable and the public holds a referendum on their policies, Republicans get back an advantage.”
Karen Crummy: 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com
If you want to go
A Taste of Colorado began Friday and runs through Monday. Hours today are 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Monday the festival runs from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. There is no entrance fee, but the food ticket price is 8 tickets for $5 (cash only).
