Six candidates, two questions, three answers

January 7, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

I finally got around to watching/listening to the entire 90-minute televised RNC Chair debate sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform on Monday. Predictably, there were discussions of technological improvement of party infrastructure, recruiting among young voters and minority populations, and of course political philosophy.

For those party faithful looking for a candidate to emerge from that debate as a well-read scholar of the conservative philosophy that is the bedrock of the party, the debate could only have been a disappointment. There were questions with obvious answers – moderator Grover Norquist asked each candidate if he was prolife, each said yes – and buzz-phrases – the theme of “returning to our party’s small-government roots” was echoed by each candidate.

There were two excellent questions which could have shed some light on each candidate’s understanding of conservatism: “Who is your favorite Republican President?” and “Who is your least favorite Republican President.”

The first question was answered by each candidate in rapid succeession. Each said “Ronald Reagan.” That’s certainly a safe answer, but it would have been nice to hear one candidate say, “Reagan is my favorite, but since everyone else will say that, I’ll throw Calvin Coolidge in there too.” Along with Reagan, Coolidge was the other 20th century President who gave the concept of smaller, restrained government involvement – so mentioning him would have expressed an understanding of how those ideas have been put into practice by a good President. (And I’m not just saying that because I lived in a building named after the man for three happy years.)

On the question about each candidate’s least favorite Republican President, most candidates answered with some variation of the following: “I don’t have a least favorite Republican. Any Republican is better than any Democrat.” If you’re scoring at home, that’s the opposite of philosophical understanding. Give credit to Ken Blackwell, who named Herbert Hoover – Coolidge’s successor who abandoned free market ideas when the economy stalled, making a bad situation worse. Sound familiar?

All this is the long way to say that the RNC chair doesn’t want to go out on an ideological limb. But will they need to?

Nancy Scola at TechPresident sums up an ongoing debate on the right about the balance between the Republican Party’s tactical evolution and philosophical rebirth – and points out that by having a party that’s open to expanded grassroots involvement, the national leaders may not need to be fighting the good fight all the time. As Scola points out, the 1994 Contract with America was less a top-down set of talking points and more a grassroots roadmap for the Republican Revolution, with the focus on local leaders rather than a national figurehead.

The next RNC chair will have to appreciate the role of conservatives in defining the party’s direction and legislative agenda, but he may not need to be the second coming of Russell Kirk.

Paul Weyrich, 1942-2008

December 18, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Appropriately, as news of Paul Weyrich’s passing broke this morning, one conservative leader after another has released statements lauding him as a giant of the conservative movement, and rightfully so.

It would be disingenuous for me to comment too extensively, because outside of a few casual introductions at events, I didn’t know the man – certainly not as well as some who are blogging obituaries this morning. But I do know some things about Paul Weyrich that you might not see anywhere else, so I’ll share those.

The first is about his professional life. Most media outlets, in summing up Weyrich’s accomplishments, will list him as a founding father of the Heritage Foundation and most recently as the head of the Free Congress Foundation (FCF). They likely won’t go into much detail about his work leading the Kreible Foundation, an arm of FCF that helped train anti-communist dissidents in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Often, this work meant putting his life on the line by sneaking into Communist controlled territories to conduct training seminars. That’s why Weyrich didn’t have to quote Ronald Reagan in each of his columns and speeches to identify as as a conservative – he walked the walk. When he came to Washington as a Senate press secretary, he was dismayed that those who shared his conservative views had no infrastructure to expand their power, so he went about creating it – and beyond the Heritage Foundation and FCF, that also meant organizing meetings of activists and leaders to determine strategies and coordinate efforts.

Second, more personally, I did get to know and work with one of Paul’s sons, Steve Weyrich – a skilled video specialist who works at Heritage now. Steve was one of the people who got me interested in the political power of video. More importantly, from my experiences with him he’s a hard worker and a dedicated family man. For Paul Weyrich, I can think of no finer monument to his time on Earth.

Funding the conservative movement

December 15, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t read Funding Fathers: The Heroes Behind the Conservative Movement yet. I have read Dan Flynn‘s review of the book, which was written by two key leaders of the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), founder Ron Robinson and fundraiser Nicole Hoplin. (As any campus conservative knows well, YAF is an extremely helpful organization that helps bring center-right speakers to colleges and universities.)

As a history lesson, there are few better professors than Robinson, a firsthand witness to the rise of the conservative movement, and Hoplin, one of the bright young torch-bearers at YAF. But this also underscores one of the needed shifts in the conservative movement. In the past, deep-pocketed businessmen who loved freedom could and would bankroll books, organizations, or other projects. Direct mail mavens – especially Richard Viguerie – updated that model by creating a donor base that relied on relatively low-dollar average donations from a higher number of supporters.

Now, as Viguerie himself has long predicted, the conservative movement must go even farther in optimizing the internet. Online fundraising doesn’t offer the one-shot money bomb that a check from Richard Mellon Scaife may have, but it forces organizations to be more diligent and intelligent in their fundraising.

And best of all, it gets more people involved – which is what a movement should be about, anyway.

The Road Ahead

November 5, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

It doesn’t feel like a great morning to be a Republican. But in reality, last night might have been the best thing to happen to Republicans – and, more importantly, for the conservative base of the Republican party.

Is the GOP too conservative? The left-leaning pundits like to say so, because it tacitly paints their victorious candidate as a centrist. He isn’t – Barack Obama simply ran a campaign that painted liberal ideas like government-orchestrated health care and wealth distribution as “common sense.”

But the problem for the Republican presidential candidates this time around was that they tried too hard to identify as conservative in their tight primary battles by using the word “conservative” and constantly quoting Ronald Reagan – despite the fact that every candidate had glaring non-conservative credentials. This was not only an insult to the intelligence of Republican voters, but to those waiting for the general election GOP debates were stages full of buzzword-bandying empty suits.

As a colleague of mine said the other day, Ronald Reagan didn’t call himself the “next Barry Goldwater” when he ran for president in 1980. He didn’t need to claim the conservative mantle because he had been banging the drum for decades. He had walked the walk, so he didn’t need to talk the talk. That is why conservatives worship Ronald Reagan, but today’s Republican candidates simply don’t understand Reagan’s governing philosophy – at least, not enough to break it down like Reagan did when he said famously called government the cause of, rather than a solution to, America’s problems.

It’s not time to panic yet. Four years ago, pundits were asking if the Democratic party was dead – they were painted as a party devoid of ideas that could only react to their opponents. Two years after John Kerry’s failed presidential bid, the donkey-shaped tombstone had been chiseled, the Democrats were in power and driving the agenda. So the pendulum will swing, and it can happen sooner than expected. But depsite cries about the political environment being one way or another, a saying by my old boss Morton Blackwell rings true: in politics, nothing moves unless it’s pushed.

Now is the time to push – and it isn’t going to happen in smoke-filled backrooms and it’s not going to come from political celebrities who will deliver a new platform from on high. It’s up to us, to the grassroots, to make conservative ideas mainstream again. And given the challenge of a dynamic and charismatic champion of liberalism on the national scene, the right has no choice but to elevate our game – and not wait for national GOP leaders to do so.

Reagan would be the first to say that relying on big, national institutions for change is a mistake. The online media environment today gives us our window: never have such institutions (party leadership, national media) been less relevant. But to paraphrase fellow UMass alum and former Boston Celtics coach Rick Pitino, Ronald Reagan ain’t walking through that door.

We have our work cut out for us, but this should be fun.

Give credit where credit is YEEEAAAHHHHHGGHH!!!

October 29, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

CNN.com contributor Roland Martin reminds us that before Obama put Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and other formerly deep red states in play, Howard Dean boldly forged a “50-state Strategy” as chair of the DNC. The then-controversial plan was simple: Democrats would work to rebuild their party in every single state. Martin recalls that many influential Democrats feared the strategy spread resources too thin and would cost the Democrats their change to win a Congressional majority in 2006.

It obviously didn’t, and the statement was clear: Dean felt his liberal policies would improve the life of every American, so he would ask every American for their vote.

In the six years since Republicans staged historic gains in the 2002 elections, some conservatives have gotten sloppy when talking about the red state/blue state divide, assuming that “elitist” urban areas wouldn’t support conservative policies instead of finding a way to sell conservatism to those areas. We built a base of support in rural and suburban areas, but never made the case of why conservatives could run cities better than liberals.

The pendulum will shift, and in a few years Republicans will likely be in a stronger position than they are today. But to really rise from the ashes, we need to take new ground – rather than simply reclaim what we had.

Rebuilding around Palin

October 29, 2008October 9, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The New York Times and CNN both ran stories this morning about Sarah Palin being the standard bearer of the Republican Party over the next four years, and possibly longer. (The Times piece includes a quote from my former boss, Morton Blackwell, positively giddy about getting within four feet of Palin at a fundraiser.)

It’s true that Palin’s ascension to the VP spot on the ticket was a symptom of the GOP’s short bench – but no more than John McCain’s ascension to the top of the ticket. But she was also the best pick – a true small government conservative – and moving forward, she has the potential to give a credible voice to the Party from well outside the Beltway.

And though her support outside her conservative base has suffered from a harsh campaign, her wounds may not be fatal. Even Linda Bloodworth-Thomas – the television producer who used an entire episode of Designing Women to bash Clarence Thomas (no relation) – said she was fed up with the “demonizing” of Palin and red-staters.

It’s not hard to get sick of the treatment she has received, including the attacks on her experience (from the campaign of a guy who only has a Senate seat because Mike Ditka allowed it) and a silly RNC clothing budget controversy – which is a top story for all our major news outlets because everything else in the country is apparently going pretty well.

McCain learns what snoring elephants sound like

October 21, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

There will be no third party, anti-Obama campaign this election cycle in the image of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who exposed some of John Kerry’s dirty laundry in 2004. McCain shouldn’t be surprised – the campaign finance legislation that he’s so proud of made independent speech more difficult, and his campaign has worked to subdue potential independent, non-party election speech.

Ultimately, though, it’s tough for a Republican to be excited to be a Republican anymore. What does the GOP stand for?

In 1980, 1994, and 2000 it was simple: Less government. Keep more of your money. Elections in 2002 and 2004 were a question of which party was in touch with the American public.

In 2008, Democrats have been campaigning on their plans for America: healthcare for everybody; a steeply graduated income tax that forces higher earners to pay more; and government programs to generate environmentally friendly technology.

Try to sum up John McCain’s campaign in three sentences that don’t include “war hero.” Go ahead.

And the election outlook isn’t pretty for McCain or any other Republican. And it will go downhill from there. Republican pundits and politicos will be cannibalizing each other like they’re stranded in the Andes.

The theme I hope the GOP rallies around – and a major theme I’ll be using in my efforts to promote conservatism and freedom over the next few years – is one that the President-turned-pariah George W. Bush coined 2003: the “Ownership Society.” He talked about letting us manage our own retirement, rather than flushing money down the toilet with Social Security. It meant us taking control of our own health care and driving costs down. It meant more options for savings and home ownership. And in internal discussions, Bush intended these proposals to help Americans assume more personal responsibility. It was the best summation of conservative thought since Ronald Reagan.

This never came to fruition. Democrats successfully scared the American public away from any meaningful Social Security reform. Bush passed the biggest entitlement package since the Great Depression, gave out free money when the economy started to slide, and gave handouts to people who were foolish with their (and other people’s) money.

It’s only a start, but resurrecting the idea of an ownership society would excite the GOP base: those rank-and-file voters, volunteers, and activists who fueled their rise to power. And when excited, it will be “the base” who makes the case for Republican candidates – something they are not doing in 2008, as McCain is becoming painfully aware.

Heard anything about this Sarah Palin chick?

September 3, 2008 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

I’ve seen a story or two about Sarah Palin since her national introduction, as Obama’s camp tried to skewer her for everything from her lack of experience (“Where was she Governor? Alaska? That doesn’t count!”) to family issues (“How can she expect to represent real people when she’s trying to balance a family, a career, and a daughter’s unexpected pregnancy?”)

DailyKos takes the taco for criticizing Palin’s handling of Alaska dairy policy. And it was tough to top all the Obamanation minions who have the brass cahones to talk about Palin’s alleged inexperience.

All the drummed-up controversy demonstrates the political left’s understanding that Palin, 44, has the potential to be a strong female voice for conservative ideas for years to come – as a veep candidate in 2008 and as potential Presidential timber in 2012. If she isn’t destroyed, it strips the Democrats of their self-styled monopoly on “change.”

Ward Connerly, Christina Hoff Sommers, Star Parker, and others know it all too well: whenever conservative views are expressed by a constituency the left likes to think they own, the criticism of the messenger becomes especially swift and harsh.