The Story
Republicans at a Crossroads
Virginia is historically contrarian: the party in the White House hasn’t won a Virginia gubernatorial race since 1977. Of the past ten governors, five were Democrat and five were Republican. Virginia voters place great value in moderation and balance of power. It is no surprise, then, with Obama’s national agenda veering so sharply to the left, that Virginia candidate for governor Creigh Deeds was soundly defeated at the polls by Republican Bob McDonnell.
Republican spokesmen are already painting this year’s turnaround as an indictment of Obama’s first year in office. And national issues undeniably played a role: Deeds himself made a conscious effort to distance himself from the President for much of the race. But Republicans, like the Democrats of 2008, should be wary of celebrating too much over the mere rejection of the other party. The Republicans still must prove that they are capable of constructing a coherent and palatable approach to governing.
Republicans should not forget that it was their abandonment of their own core principles that made 2008 such a humiliating election year for them. But so far there is little evidence that they will not merely continue to repeat their same mistakes. Although they pay lip service to the free market, Bush’s eight years in office were marked by undeniably corporatist interventions.
This is a distinction that many Americans fail to notice. Corporatism, or government favoritism of large corporations, is not the same as the free market. In a free market, the government does not favor any single competitor over others. It is a neutral arbiter. And so when Bush gave hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts to corporations while at the same time claiming he supported limited government and a free market, he revealed his hypocrisy. As a result, the conservatives of his party-those who were intellectually honest and consistent-punished the party at the polls for its betrayal.
An examination of McDonnell’s platform reveals few indications that supporters of the free market should be anymore enthused about his election than if his opponent had won. His ideas to “stimulate” the economy involve government job creation and subsidization. But a dollar spent by government is one dollar less that can spent by the private sector. Those who believe in the workings of the free market believe the private sector is a more efficient spender than is a government bureaucracy.
But Bob McDonnell doesn’t hold such a clear-cut free market position. Indeed, referring to McDonnell, the Cato Institute comments, “Today, we seem to have arrived at a point where it’s virtually impossible to tell the difference in economic platforms between a self-proclaimed conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat.” Deeds is a stereotypical big government, tax and spend Democrat, and McDonnell is disappointingly similar to that model.
His energy proposals bear a striking resemblance to his economic proposals. For Bob McDonnell, growth and innovation are things to be stimulated by the government, not things that arise spontaneously through the exertions of entrepreneurs and private investment. In addition to expanding government subsidies and preferential tax treatment for certain groups, he wants to “encourage public private partnerships between small businesses and government.” It is hard to see how such proposals promote anything except government as a solution to our problems.
The Republican Party also alienated many of its core supporters by succumbing to the fundamentalist religious component of its base. The classical conservatives of the party realize that the imposition of Christian religious values on the population is inconsistent with the principles of limited government. But in McDonnell we have a social conservative who at the age of 34 laid out in his master’s thesis a fifteen-point plan to inculcate the traditional Christian view of the family through legislative action. For McDonnell, the use of contraceptives by unmarried couples is “illogical,” and “traditional Judeo-Christian values” should be taught in public schools.
Is a Republican renaissance underway, as some have claimed? Unless the Republicans find an identity in line with the values they preach, the answer is no. Socially they have moved out of the mainstream while economically the Republicans have become almost indistinguishable from their Democratic counterparts. In both these shifts they have betrayed the ideals of limited government and personal freedom. When Republican senators fight health care reform on the grounds that it will hurt Medicare (another Democrat entitlement program), it’s clear that something is wrong.
The Tea Party movements of 2009 exposed a strong, libertarian-leaning contingent of the conservative movement that the party failed to appeal to as it betrayed its ideals and instead supported theocracy, corporatism, and big government. If the Republican Party hopes to recapture its political influence it must return to the classical conservative principles that made it distinct and appealing in the first place.
Austin Raynor is a staff columnist for The DSJ. His views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.