How the Republican Party can heal itself

I would like to preface this by noting that I speak as somebody who first got involved in Republican Party politics when I was 16-years-old. I worked on a plurality of Republican campaigns while I was in high school. I am now 32-years-old.

Rank-and-file Republicans have been conned into believing that, in order to get elected, they must surrender conservative principles. Party consultants have candidates and party members convinced that there is a formula for winning an election, and that winning the election is everything.

There is no formula for winning an election. If there was, somebody would have patented it by now. The Republican Party has followed the formula of compromise and surrender, and where has it gotten Republicans? Republicans haven't been winning very many elections lately. And winning elections isn't everything. It does no good to win an election but lose the country. The second you surrender principles, you have already been defeated.

Let me clue the Republican Party in as to why it has become inconsequential: the party has abandoned conservative principles. Party consultants argue that Republicans must behave like Democrats in order to "steal" Democratic votes. It doesn't work that way. If somebody wants big government, they will vote for the authentic socialist, and then blame all of our problems on "laissez-faire" Republicans. By abandoning conservative principles, Republicans give conservatives no compelling reason to show up and vote. The Republican Party has been hemorrhaging conservative votes, while simultaneously discrediting authentic conservatism.

With a FY '09 budget deficit - not even counting off-budget outlays - that will come close to $2 trillion, and a Federal Reserve that has more-than-doubled its balance sheet since September of '08, now is no time for pseudo conservatism. Sterile platitudes are insufficient. We need conservative positions with meaning. Spending less than the Democrats is without meaning. Curtailing "wasteful" government spending is a platitude. Aren't all politicians opposed to "wasteful" spending? And where has that gotten us?

If the Republican Party wants to atone for its past and rebuild its lost credibility, it must work towards electing conservative candidates. It must give conservatives a compelling reason to support Republican candidates. It is a long road ahead, but the Republican Party can start down this path of redemption in 2010.

This won't be an easy road. But to travel it, we must not only elect truly conservative Republicans, we must also elect Republicans who can articulate the virtues of the free market. This is the only way to short circuit demagoguing Democrats, who appeal to the masses by convincing them that the government can spend us out of poverty.

It shouldn't be hard to put an end to demagoguing Democrats, so long as we understand economics. With the government as big as it is, would it not be reasonable to assume that most people who are very wealthy are so because of government interference in the market? Does big business not use the government to manipulate the market in its behalf? And with the government as big as it is, would it also not be reasonable to assume that many people are poor precisely because of government interference in the market? It is called the cost of lost opportunity.

Political crossdressing Republicans won't cut it. Republicans must admit their past sins, by acknowledging that they haven't been governing as true conservatives for the last several years. Until then, the free market will continue to be the scapegoat. If the party fails this test, it will become a party of irrelevance, sentenced to the same fate as Sisyphus.