GOP modulation in action.
Posted on 03/13/2009 1:08:18 PM PDT by pissant
I read David Frum's cover piece in this week's Newsweek magazine, "Why Rush is Wrong: A Conservative's case against Limbaugh," and I've been thinking about it ever since. Frum is a former Bush #43 speechwriter, and has started a great website, newmajority.com, that I found on Michael Barone's recommendation a few weeks back. Frum's article is the must-read of the week for Republicans. I agree with most of what he says, and here's the part that makes the most sense to me:
Look at America's public-policy problems, look at voting trends, and it's inescapably obvious that the Republican Party needs to evolve. We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message. It's health-care costs that are crushing middle-class incomes. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount that employers paid for labor rose substantially. Employees got none of that money; all of it was absorbed by rising health-care costs. Meanwhile, the income-tax cuts offered by Republicans interest fewer and fewer people: before the recession, two thirds of American workers paid more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.
We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice ...
Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility ... After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.
Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than ... not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him.
But they can vote against Republican candidates for Congress. They can vote against Republican nominees for president. And if we allow ourselves to be overidentified with somebody who earns his fortune by giving offense, they will vote against us. Two months into 2009, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have already enacted into law the most ambitious liberal program since the mid-1960s. More, much more is to come. Through this burst of activism, the Republican Party has been flat on its back.
I couldn't agree more on that last point. It's time to move past Rush Limbaugh, on many levels, and I think there are a lot of conservatives who feel the same way. For Republicans, it's time to evolve.
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R I N O
Cary to GOP: “Drop Dead!”
Well, she's got an interesting idea there...
I don't know if I agree, but we'd certainly benefit it free-market health care reform would become more a central part of the debate.
Former speech writer for Bush1. RINO enough said.
Yeah but I don’t believe in evolution.
Maybe if we all had 3 names....
“the Republican Party needs to evolve. “
Evolve into what? Liberal Democrat?
How about we combine a no-prisoners lasse faire capitalism platform, with trade nationalism.
You’ll get the 50% of Americans who are themselves capitalists - and the workers who either have been, or are worried about, losing their jobs overseas.
It’s a knockout combination.
Reagan Democrats 2.0
Oh, so the definitions of right and wrong have changed, and we need to adapt? Is that what they’re saying?
No thanks.
GOP modulation in action.
Uh, free market anything goes hand in hand with tax cuts. The fact that this author thinks tax cuts are mutually exclusive from health care, shows her lack of understanding of conservatism.
I agree.
End Medicare/Medicade, privatize Social Security and make it voluntary and you can kill two birds with one stone, fix health care and have tax cuts.
These wussy people like (writer) Mary Kate?? or whatever must be projecting their own views onto what they think Limbaugh is saying.
Because I’ve never heard Limbaugh or any well-grounded conservative say that we will excommunicate any voters if they don’t support X, Y, or Z.
But the Republican Party has got to maintain a solid core of values, both moral and fiscally, or we might as well just disband and join the deranged Democrats.
Lastly, there is no such thing as a “fiscal conservative and social liberal” ... or whatever it is these ‘moderates’ claim to be.
After all, it is those ‘socially liberal’ things that COST SO MUCH.
It cost this nation Billions to pay for liberal Head Start, or midnight basketball, or taxpayer funded healthcare, or welfare, or any other so-called liberal program.
Frum is envious, conceited, not a conservative, and not nearly as brilliant as he imagines himself to be.
Given that description, it's pretty obvious that Frum has more in common with Obama, whom he very vocally supported in the fall, than he does with anyone or anything associated with conservatism.
Those birds can go flock together.
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