Wave Maker

The leader of the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, Gingrich now argues that the era of running against the government has ended. “The Republican Party cannot win over time as the permanently angry anti-government party because neither appeals to most voters,” he writes in his recent book, “Real Change.” Rather, he argues, Republicans must learn to be competent managers of the bureaucracy and “pro-good government.” Furthermore, he advises them to reject the Party’s guiding strategy of the past eight years: making increasingly urgent appeals to its most conservative supporters for maximum turnout. In what sounds like the advice that New Democrats gave liberals in the nineteen-eighties, Gingrich points out that “Republicans allow their campaigns to be dominated more and more by pandering to small, specific segments of the activist wing of the party”—a trend that he believes has contributed to the drop in Republican numbers on the two coasts. Gingrich’s advice amounts to a sharp rebuke of the dominant political and governing philosophy of the Bush years—in particular, the strategies formulated and advocated by Bush’s former political adviser Karl Rove—and he suggests that if McCain attempts a dramatic refashioning of his party he may find support in surprising places.

Norquist, a longtime conservative organizer, has a different view. In a forthcoming book, “Leave Us Alone,” he describes the Republican Party as little more than a collection of interest groups—such as anti-tax activists, gun-rights advocates, and homeschoolers—that, if they are carefully tended, will grow into a “supermajority.”

Frum, in his new book, “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again,” warns conservatives about social trends that may overwhelm the Republican Party. He notes that Republicans have lost a generation of young voters during the Bush years. “The people who turned twenty between 1985 and 1990 were eight points more Republican than Democratic,” he told me. “People who turned twenty between 1970 and 1975 were eight points more Democratic than Republican. People who turned twenty between 2000 and 2005 are twelve points more Democratic.” He sees a country moving slightly to the left as Republicans are “left stranded on the right.” He told me, “If what you are is a pragmatic, business-oriented, moderate-minded person who wants things to work in a fairly competent and ethical way, and you’re under thirty—the kind of person who would have been an Eisenhower Republican and a Republican in the Nixon years and in the George H. W. Bush years—you are a Democrat today.” Frum added, “As the country becomes more single, more childless, more secular, more non-white, more immigrant, it becomes more Democratic. And all of those groups are growing.” Frum has ideas on how conservatives can reverse this trend, but his most radical thought is that, given the realities of the federal budget and the public’s unwillingness to curb entitlement spending, Republicans need to rethink their approach to tax cuts. He proposes making a deal with Democrats in which some of the Bush tax cuts become permanent in exchange for a carbon tax to deal with the global-warming crisis.

Posted by: Wave Maker / 3:56 PM/ |