Chris Christie, following on the heels of Bobby Jindal,
becomes the latest big time GOP player to disqualify himself for the 2016
nomination. If there is a silver lining to
the Mitt Romney debacle it may be that it will provide the bait to lure out
Republicans who are not truly committed to conservative principles. Those Republicans who believe the lie that
they must water down their views in order to win.
In the wake of Romney’s loss the left, with the help of the media,
were all too quick to offer up free advice for Republicans. If you want to win, just drop this silly
opposition to gay marriage, it is going to happen anyway. Do you have to be such sticklers on
abortion? Why don’t you quit fighting
over these silly social issues and then maybe the American people will listen
to your fiscal message.
The folly of that (as all 5 regular readers of this blog
know) is that our social ills are directly linked to our fiscal ills. You can’t fix one without fixing the
other. You cannot have massive increases
in the disability rolls, food stamps (now rebranded “SNAP” – all the public
assistance with half the guilt) rolls and somehow expect that tax revenues
(based on taking money from working Americans) will increase to pay for it. It is insanity. Those are opposing forces. Paying out more in benefits reduces the
incentive to work or need to work. That
reduces tax revenues.
But you have a scared GOP and 2016 contenders who apparently
think that social issues are just primary issues and something to be left
behind in the general election. Bobby
Jindal came out literally weeks after the election ready to find a compromise
on the issue of insurance requiring contraception.
Now Chris Christie is out as okay with gay marriage and
looking for gun control. It seems odd,
until you read that he is cozying up with Mark Zuckerberg. Christie is running the McCain-Romney
playbook (ironic since we have had neither a President McCain nor a President
Romney). The Romney plan is trying to
raise enough money you can plow your way to the nomination without really
saying anything conservative, thus allowing you to run as a liberal Republican
in the general election and win.
It sounds great in theory, but as I have documented, Romney’s
road to the nomination was much longer and brutal than it needed to be as a
result of this bizarre strategy. Then,
when Obama hit him hard out of the gate, he lacked the resources to hit back
and define himself. He spent most of the
summer, not in the battleground states that would determine the election, but
in places like Beverly Hills and the Hamptons trying to raise money. He also lost, very clearly, because he
provided no response on social issues.
The McCain playbook is to challenge fellow Republicans (as
Christie has on gun control) to become a media darling. Sounds good, right? The problem with that is at the end of the
day a liberal Republican is only ever going to be an insurance policy for the
left. They will never prefer a liberal
Republican to an out and out left wing Socialist like Barack Obama. So when push comes to shove, you will lose
your new media friends and be like grade school kid in the cafeteria without a
table to sit at for lunch.
Contrast this with the approach Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and
Rick Santorum are taking. Rubio is
leading the charge for significant immigration reform, a move that will help
the country and the GOP. In a very
unusual step for him, Jeb Bush took a very public position in support of common
sense immigration reform.
Rick Santorum spoke at the March for Life event in
Washington. To my knowledge, he was the
only big name GOP figure to speak there.
That is a pro-life event that has grown to 500,000 participants in just
a few short years (it is consistently referenced as “a few thousand” in the
secular press).
The next Republican President is going to have to
intelligently and passionately present the conservative case on social issues
if for no other reason than in a vacuum, the Democrats message of death will
carry the day. There has to be a voice
that challenges the American people to think about life from conception to
natural death, to think about pregnancy as the start of a family and not a
disease. To say that marriage is
something special between a man and a woman, the start of a new family and that
families are the foundation of our society.
There shouldn’t be this irrational fear that this will
somehow come at the expense of an economic message. The two work together. Never before has it been easier to make the
case that the fate of the family and the economy are directly intertwined. Our economy is struggling to grow because we
are producing fewer new consumers, entrepreneurs, citizens. Industries like food manufacturing, utilities,
are struggling to find growth in a world with only 1% population growth and a
gray existing population.
The answer isn’t more government, we cannot afford the
government we have in a shrinking world.
The answer is not more entitlements it is less, we cannot afford
it. But rather than simply cutting,
Republicans have to offer a credible vision for restoration. That restoration is to bring in policies that
cut taxes for the middle class, that provide school choice, that give married
couples, parents, hope for a future that they will want to bring more children
into. Those are policies that only
Republicans will sell and the only policies that will save America.
The GOP stands at a crossroads. They can either capitulate to the forces of
the left, become watered down Republicans, moderate Democrats, and go with the
flow in the hopes of maintaining any relevance as the country slips into
oblivion.
Or, they can make the decision that they will selling the
truth, the right vision for the future and keep doing so until the country
comes around because they know if they don’t, there won’t be a country. That is real leadership. As move towards 2016, Republicans need to
hold any potential Presidential contender up against that rubric. If they see anybody trying to fill the shoes
of McCain or Romney, they should run the other way immediately.
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