Happy New Year.
Nice sentiments, but conservatives have every reason to wonder
if, politically, 2007 actually can be good. Last year was, of
course, just awful, and there haven’t been many signs yet that the
congressional wing of the Republican Party — the only outlet right
now, however flawed, for conservative ideas to find legislative
enactment — has even begun to figure out how and where and when
they went wrong.
The conservative movement will need to rejuvenate itself on its
own, without congressional help. But the mark of a successful
rejuvenation will be how effective the movement makes itself at
convincing office-holders to act in concert with conservative aims
and principles. Conservatives will know that the new year is good
if lawmakers — in the White House and in Congress — do the
following things:
Support President Bush’s expected call for a troop “surge”
in Iraq. It is impossible to be a true conservative and, at
the same time, to accept defeat in a military endeavor in a key
strategic area of the world. Forget the arguments about whether we
were wise to topple Saddam or not in the first place. (We were
right, by the way.) The fact is that we are there now, and if we
don’t secure the peace, we will have lost, and the loss will have
horrific repercussions for stability in the Middle East and for
American standing in the world. Every other option on the table
(other than a troop surge) is, in effect, a strategy for managing a
defeat, rather than for securing a victorious peace. Those other
strategies are therefore unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable. And
cowardly to boot.
Support President Bush’s call for a bigger military with
more personnel in all services. No matter what the otherwise
admirable Donald Rumsfeld wanted, it was utter folly to allow the
military to shrink (in terms of personnel) to a level in which
securing a peace in backwards Iraq cannot be accomplished without
over-stretching both active duty and reserve troops near a breaking
point. We are supposed to be able to fight and win two
regional wars, not just one. That can’t be done without boots on
the ground. Conservatives under Cap Weinberger (and Colin Powell)
understood that. How did we forget it?
Kill any liberal efforts to increase government interference
in markets or to raise taxes on investments and on marginal
individual rates. Opposition to the continued overgrowth of
the nanny state is the essential element without which modern
conservatism cannot exist. Republicans lost the majority this year
because they forgot that this rule is absolute.
Accept nothing less than absolute purity on questions of
formal ethics. It is an inexcusable travesty that Congress
passed no meaningful ethics reforms in 2006 despite the pledges to
do so by Speaker Dennis Hastert. Ethics are not a mere tactic for
political points and for victory; they are the essence of
statecraft. The Republican Congress for the past several years
deservedly earned a reputation as Sleaze Central. The answer is: No
free private meals. No junkets. Utter transparency on campaign
finance and on all spending and tax bills. And, most importantly,
personal integrity exercised both in public and in private, whether
required by formal laws and rules or not.
Stay tough against crime, including deliberate breaking of
immigration laws. Support and defend innocent life. Insist on
judges who construe the Constitution as written rather than as
social engineers would twist it. Insist on upholding constitutional
limits to federal power, and on its protections for private
property. Self-explanatory.
There. That’s a start. Those are the basics. Fail at those, or
at least fail at least to fight with all their might for those
principles, and the lawmakers will prove themselves worthless.
Again.
Since the year is new, though, let’s not end on a down note.
Here’s a toast in expectation that enough lawmakers will “do us
proud” this year. Ronald Reagan taught conservatives to be
optimists. The slate for the year is still clean, so let’s follow
Reagan’s example. Be optimists, and get to work.
