The Golden Edge
June 24, 2009
Thomas Sowell is right and wrong at the same time.
The legendary economist is correct about the consequences of the current infighting between various factions of the Republican Party. “A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as conservatives than as liberals,” Sowell notes in his June 23 syndicated column. “Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2006 elections and the 2008 elections. In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling — in fact, amazing — that we have the furthest left president of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left speaker of the House of Representatives.
“Republicans, especially, need to think about what this means. If you lose when the other guy has all the high cards, there is not much you can do about it. But when you have the high cards and still keep taking a beating, then you need to rethink how you are playing the game.”
There’s no question that the GOP needs to get its act together — largely because the party embarrassed itself with its repeated betrayal of conservative principles in the early— and mid— 2000s. It is in fact not a surprise that we now have very liberal figures calling the shots in Washington, after supposedly “conservative” figures demonstrated administrative incompetence and failed to live up to their oft-stated beliefs.
Sowell further notes that “The current intramural fighting among Republicans does not necessarily mean any fundamental rethinking of their policies or tactics. These tussles among different segments of the Republican Party may be nothing more than a longstanding jockeying for position between the liberal and conservative wings of the party…the only political party with any chance of displacing the current leadership in Washington is the Republican Party. That is why their internal squabbles are important for the rest of us who are not Republicans.”
He continues: “The ‘smart money’ says that the way for the Republicans to win elections is to appeal to a wider range of voters — including minorities — by abandoning the kinds of positions Ronald Reagan held and supporting more of the kinds of positions that Democrats use to get elected. This sounds good on the surface, which is as far as many people go when it comes to politics. A corollary to this is that Republicans have to come up with alternatives to the Democrats’ many ‘solutions,’ rather than simply be naysayers. However plausible all this may seem, it goes directly counter to what has actually happened in politics in this generation. For example, Democrats studiously avoided presenting alternatives to what the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration were doing, and just lambasted them at every turn. That is how the Democrats replaced Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Here’s where Sowell is simultaneously accurate and inaccurate. Democrats weren’t under any obligation to propose new ideas: they simply declared that the GOP’s ideas were awful, and left it to influential third-party entities (academia, MSNBC, the New York Times and Washington Post, etc.) to repeat their claims ad infinitum. Republicans don’t have that luxury. If Republicans simply start running around yelling “Obama’s ideas are lousy!”, who will hear such claims besides fans of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the Fox News Channel and the op-ed pages of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal ? Sowell presupposes that there is now parity of penetration between conservative-leaning media outlets and progressive-leaning mainstream media outlets. That’s just not reality.
Republicans must develop rational alternatives to the Democrats’ alleged solutions to the problems of health-care availability and higher-education affordability. The GOP doesn’t have the propagandistic power to get away with being the “Party of No.”
Thankfully, Sowell concludes on a note of logical flawlessness. “Ronald Reagan won two elections in a landslide by being Ronald Reagan — and, most important of all — by explaining to a broad electorate how what he advocated would be best for them and for the country. Newt Gingrich likewise led a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives by explaining how the Republican agenda would benefit a wide range of people. Neither of them won by pretending to be Democrats. It was precisely the Republican ‘moderates,’ Bob Dole and John McCain, who lost disastrously to Democrats who had been scarcely known at first but who knew how to talk.” In order to win again, the GOP must find candidates with better ideas than the Democrats — and the ability to communicate those ideas clearly.
