Sen. Tom Coburn is also on the Wall Street Journal
op-ed page today making the case for Republicans who
behave like Republicans:
Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to
come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an
agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush,
so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like
Republicans.
Unfortunately, too many in our party
are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government.
Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because,
after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being
Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore.
Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a
big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new
advertising, but truth in advertising.
Many conservative reformers would tell
us that Coburn's message is exactly the wrong one for the GOP. In
his recent conservatism-is-dead piece, George Packer argues that
there are two explanations for why the Republicans are currently in
trouble: "One is the purist version: Bush expanded the size of
government and created huge deficits; allowed Republicans in
Congress to fatten lobbyists and stuff budgets full of earmarks;
tried to foist democracy on a Muslim country; failed to secure the
border; and thus won the justified wrath of the American people."
Then there is the second version, which holds that conservatism
"has a more serious problem than self-betrayal: a doctrinaire
failure to adapt to new circumstances, new problems."
I'm just not entirely sure that these
two points are mutually exclusive. Certainly, if Republicans spend
more energy on earmarks and liberal-baiting than conservative
health care reform they will lose. There are new problems that
require conservative attention. But if an essentially welfarist
view of government wins out, if we accept that the right ten-point
plan can "save the American dream" or some such, conservatives
still lose even if our brightest lights are able to come up with a
way for Republicans to contain the damage. There's a lot of truth
to the conservative reformist argument. But the Republican Party
still needs its Tom Coburns.
topics:
Health Care, Earmarks, Conservatism, Energy
