Whither the GOP is on everyone’s mind these days. Karl Rove offered advice to the Tea Party activists that assumes the same GOP leadership that blew it prior to 2006 will remain in office. The likes of Boehner and McConnell are part of the problem, Tea Partiers feel, and cannot be part of the solution to big government.
Richard Viguerie offers this as a counter to Rove’s establishment-Republican view:
… Tea Parties should support only candidates who will pledge to repeal many of the laws, regulations, programs, and policies of recent big-government politicians — and by that I mean both Republicans and Democrats. Also, any candidate who does not identify upholding the Constitution as one of his or her top five priorities should be suspect.
As a multi-decade veteran of the conservative movement, I can say that two of its biggest mistakes have been to become too attached to big-government Republican Party leaders and to fail to make inroads into the Democratic Party. The Tea Party can change that.
Nothing illustrates the problem facing Tea Partiers and conservative Republicans more than this story, “Republicans Against Repeal,” in The American Spectator today:
Republicans against repeal have found an amen corner in the cooler heads among conservative commentators. One Oliver Garland even counseled that repeal was fundamentally unconservative: “True conservatives are not radicals; they respect tradition and work for stable reform to fix institutions.”
There you have it: Repealing a bill that became law last month is radical. Acquiescing to a decades-long flurry of legislation that effectively repeals the Constitution’s limits on federal power is conservative. Ronald Reagan should have raised taxes to conserve the Great Society and shouted, “Mr. Gorbachev, remember and reform that wall!”
Republican leaders in Congress, their political instincts deadened by the din of traffic on the Beltway, fundamentally misunderstand what is happening in America. This, sirs and madams, will not go away. Acquiescing to liberal affronts to freedom isn’t upholding traditions. It is not “conservative.” Many incumbents will learn that in November, I suspect.
Republican leadership will change, or be changed.
UPDATE: Yet another reason the Tea Party folks think changes in GOP leadership are needed: Their failure to address health care when they had the votes and a Republican president:
Since the GOP refused to engage on it, they wound up with lower credibility. More importantly, by not accomplishing reform when they had their chance, Republicans left it on the table for when the Democrats got complete control of Washington.
