Redstate

By Leon H Wolf Posted in Republicans — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Those of us who primarily vote Republican generally do so for a variety of reasons, each of them particular to our own favorite central Republican value. For those of us who consider ourselves to be "social conservatives," we are animated in large part by anger and frustration at the perceived moral direction of the country. For me, I am especially motivated to see the wholesale slaughter of the unborn in this country end.

What is lamentable and frustrating about the entire situation is that the national Republican party is throwing away our best chance to take out our anger on the left in the only way that matters: through policy. How is this happening? We turn to the state of Tennessee for answers.

The state of Tennessee, as some of you may know, has no state income tax. We are, according to various estimates, one of the lowest taxed states in the union. This is something that virtually no one who lives here is bothered by, and in fact is a significant motivating factor for in-state residence, especially given that many of our metropolitan areas border closely on other states (Memphis borders Arkansas and Mississippi, Nashville has moderate extension into southern Kentucky, and the tri-cities area in Eastern Tennessee has significant spillover into Virginia).

During the early 90s, when the push for nationalized healthcare a la Hillary was in full swing, then-Governor Ned Ray McWherter began to push for a Medicaid expansion program called TennCare, which conformed roughly to Hillary's vision of how healthcare in this country should run. To make a very long story short - the program almost instantly became the kind of fiscal disaster that scared folks away from nationalizing the same system.

Enter "Republican" governor Don Sundquist onto the scene. When TennCare bloated to the point that it was nearing 40% of the total cost of the Tennessee budget, Sundquist responded by pushing for an income tax. The ensuing political battle lasted two years, and provoked the first and only Republican mass protests I've ever seen - every time word leaked out that the legislature was considering an income tax measure, thousands of people would leave their jobs, drive downtown and completely block traffic around the capitol. Sundquist's approval numbers dipped into the 20s during this farce, and when his term expired in 2002, the Republican party in Tennessee was completely unable to launch an effective gubernatorial campaign, and what should have been a safely red gubernatorial seat instead turned into a comparatively easy win for Democrat Phil Bredesen.

Bredesen ran on a "no income tax" platform, and promised further that if the budget got too tight, he'd axe the rolls of TennCare. Surprisingly, when things got tight, Bredesen did just that. Despite hysterical shrieks and shrills from the extreme members of his own party, Bredesen announced in late 2004 that he was dissolving TennCare altogether, in order to save the state's budget without an income tax (subsequently, in a compromise maneuver, some of the sickest and poorest TennCare enrollees have been allowed to stay on the rolls). This simple act of keeping a promise to be responsible with the money of others has made Bredesen a virtually bulletproof candidate for re-election in 2006.

The TennCare debacle will likely have a trickle-down effect to the rest of Tennessee. Bredesen's credibility as a fiscally conservative Democrat, coupled with the fiscal irresponsibility of the Senate Republicans (of which outgoing Bill Frist was the figurehead) will likely have a coattails effect on Senatorial candidate Harold Ford, Jr. Ford Jr. is NOT a moderate, but he plays one well on television. Ford Jr. never met a piece of pork he didn't like, but he's smart, politically, and he knows enough to talk like a pork hawk, and to attach himself as often as possible to Bredesen during this run. Because Ford Jr. is much better at sounding moderate than your average Democrat - Bredesen can afford to maintain this symbiosis without a serious risk to his own reputation. And thus, a Senate seat that should be safely red has now become an absolute toss-up, with a very real risk of Republican loss.

Now here is the point that is applicable to myself, and social conservatives like me. We all have things and causes that are nearest and dearest to our heart. For me, it's the pro-life cause. For others, it might be other things. The political reality that we face in a representative democracy is that, in order to see those causes converted into policy, it is necessary to see like-minded folks elected into public office. Increasingly (and lamentably) for social conservatives, those like-minded folks exclusively wear GOP hats. It's natural for us, then, in seeking the advancement of the GOP, to make the assumption that our causes are the causes that will motivate others to vote for my party. The sad truth, for social conservatives, is that that's not often the case.

The reality is that, however popular certain socially conservative causes might be, there are NO causes more popular with average voters than fiscally conservative ones. People, essentially, want the government to do two things: 1) Keep them safe, and 2) Be responsible with their money. The other causes that motivate those of us standing on the far sides of The Big Ditch™ represent so much background noise for the average American who wants nothing more than to go to work in safety every day, and take home a bigger portion of his paycheck when that working day is done. And, a politician who will actually deliver in those two areas will win the middle in a landslide every time.

That used to be the grand vision of the GOP. It was that vision that carried us to victory in 1994. In 2004, we won on the first half of that vision - and I'm afraid that a certain hubris has gripped us whereby we believe that somehow that will be enough forever and always. However, it's becoming clear that, going forward, emphasizing number one to the detriment of number two just ain't enough. There are still Democrats who exist (although their number is growing smaller) who are smart enough, to simply refuse to discuss social issues in favor of fiscal and security issues. Bredesen is one of these. During a legal flap a few years ago over some Tennessee license plates that said "Choose Life," in which all the state Republicans tried to make hay over the issue (license plates!) - Bredesen's sole comment on the issue was (paraphrased), "politicians who have to run on this kind of non-issue usually do so because they haven't the faintest idea of how to actually govern." Ouch. I wake up in cold sweats at night at the prospect of a Napolitano/Bredesen ticket in '08, because in the current political climate, that ticket wins over 40 states over any ticket involving Sam Brownback.

We get a lot of folks on this site who express frustration and anger at what they perceive as the hijacking of the GOP by the "religious right". A lot of these folks are just mobys, but many of them are sincere in their vision of the party. The problem is that, while their frustration is legitimate, the target of their frustration is grossly misplaced. As a card-carrying member of the "religious right", I'm every bit as frustrated. And it's not because the party has been hijacked by Pat Robertson, because it hasn't.

The problem is that the party has been hijacked by our own elected representatives, many of whom seem to have forgotten that small government is a winning electoral strategy - and more imporatantly, a core Republican principle.

It's time to wake these dolts up, by whatever means necessary. How many of us who are here today were motivated by the force and the excitement of the 1994 movement - who were ecstatic that the promise of fiscal responsibility got a lot of great socially conservative folks elected? How much more infinitely disappointing it is that once those same folks got in power, they deceived themselves into believing that the citizenry didn't really mean they didn't like pork - they meant that they didn't like Democrat pork. The arrogance and buffoonery of this attitude is stunning, and if it is not checked, it will lose us elections - and not just the ones that are toss-ups, but the ones that should be safe, as well. Like the U. S. Senate seat in Tennessee, for instance.

It's time for social conservatives to work the grassroots of fiscal conservatism again. Our causes are our causes, and it's right for us to hold our policians accountable for betraying them. But, in our euphoria over the victory of 2004, if we press our agenda to the exclusion of pressing the agenda that got these politicians in office in the first place, we may find that our victory is very short-lived indeed.