A Reform GOP?

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 31, 2004 | Editorial

[OESY]

...Measured in offices held, the GOP hasn't been this strong since the 1920s. Republicans hold the White House and both branches of Congress, albeit narrowly but also by dint of an historic mid-term election victory in 2002. The party also owns 28 of the 50 governorships, including in the large, dynamic states of Texas, Florida and California.... [T]he GOP has a chance to forge a real mandate to govern....

Granted, this is not the case on national security, where Mr. Bush has united the party behind the assertive use of American power. In a sense, all Republicans are "neoconservatives" now, or at least they are as long as Mr. Bush prevails in November....

Under Mr. Bush, the GOP has also become the natural home for cultural traditionalists. Partly this is because the Democrats have so heartily embraced Hollywood and secularism, but it has also been driven by Mr. Bush's heartland instincts.... At least the GOP is debating such vital matters: Democrats long ago banished any anti-abortion dissent.

Perhaps the biggest question.... The GOP Congress -- as well as some of its state parties (Ohio, New York) -- has seemed only too comfortable acting as the party of the incumbent status quo....

If Republicans want to see the perils of this strategy, they might look at the blue (Democratic) patches of the electoral map that are Illinois, New Jersey and Long Island. Once GOP strongholds, those areas all turned left after Republican machines grew corrupt and became little different than tax-and-spend Democrats. It's no accident that the dynamic and growing parts of the GOP are in the South and West, in places like Florida, where Governor Jeb Bush has promoted school reform, or Colorado, where Governor Bill Owens has returned tax surpluses to voters instead of growing the government....