New Ideas for the Republicans - A response to the Economist's Lexington

Lexington is the pen name for a columnist in the Economist who covers US Politics wrote a column for the November 13 Column which was titled "Parties Die from the Head Down." He goes on to argue that the GOP needs some new ideas. I believe his basic argument is unsound on several counts. He says "but high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains." I am not sure that the results show that.

In the 1970s I was a leader in a group called the Ripon Society (President of the Washington Chapter) which was a collection of young intellectuals in the Republican party that produced a series of issue papers that helped to change the party. Almost 40 years from that I find that my former colleagues have dispersed widely - so some are now liberal democrats, some libertarians and some conservative republicans. But a good core of them stayed around through the 1970s and contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

Ronald Reagan came into office with a set of principles that helped guide his administration. He wanted to defeat the Soviets (or communism) and he wanted to lower tax rates. He also wanted to reduce the size of government. On two out of three of those goals one could make a credible case that he was very successful. On the third he was not. But clearly since Reagan the GOP has not been a wellspring of a coherent set of ideas.

From my point of view, the same can be said for the democrats. Obama's campaign was based on a notion of change - although it was poorly defined. The McCain campaign had an even less stunning coherency. While I believe his health care plan was better, McCain proved unable to defend or even explain the idea. McCain seemed to flitter from lousy idea to lousy idea on a lot of things (including the battery subsidy and the gas tax holiday) and where he had good ideas (for example immigration and health care) he was unable to defend them.

Supporters of Obama have suggested some very bad ideas such as card check (the elimination of secret ballots in union elections) and increasing restrictions on trade. They also seem too inclined to bail out the auto industry. But at this point, it is unclear whether the President elect will chose to support all of those ideas.

Both candidates should have been rightly criticized for the incoherency of their proposals. Both were somewhat successful in attacking their opponents for their inconsistencies.

In my next post I will try to lay out several key issues which either party could adopt which I think might come up to Lexington's standard.