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Conservative-GOP dream is dazed, not dead

BY RICHARD N. BOND | Richard N. Bond is a former Republican national chairman.

November 10, 2008

Sen. John McCain's defeat is leaving Republicans dispirited, but they will be re-energized quickly - first by a series of events within the Republican Party, and, second, by a fundamental misread of the electorate by the Obama administration and the MoveOn.org Congress.

On the Republican side, there are the recriminations against McCain, similar to those President George H.W. Bush experienced after his defeat. Conservatives accuse McCain of faithlessness (they're mostly right), presidential rivals may claim they would have done better (maybe), losing GOP candidates are blaming McCain for dragging them down (probably not, in most cases), and the media are running stories about backstabbing in the McCain operation.

This jawing serves a useful venting purpose, and it's the necessary predicate to new faces and directions within the GOP. One of the first new leaders to emerge will be an "old" new face, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who, along with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, will assume a leadership role this week at the Republican Governors Association.

Barbour's return to leadership is significant: He's a respected national voice who, along with Newt Gingrich, quarterbacked the 1994 GOP comeback; he's a conservative with success in bridging the ideological divides that bedevil Republicans; and he's a state chief executive who, along with Sanford, will represent an outside-the-Beltway approach to rebuilding the party.

On the congressional front, battered House Republicans will hold leadership elections soon. Minority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, had the misfortune to hold their posts in an uncontrollable election. It's doubtful that anyone serving in the Republican caucus would have produced a result even marginally different from that which occurred.

Boehner and Cole have announced their intention to seek re-election to leadership posts, and while Boehner appears safe, Cole faces a tough challenge from Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas. The No. 2 and 3 ranking House Republicans, Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri and House Republican Conference chairman Adam Putnam of Florida, have announced their departure from leadership.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats are on the brink of having the numbers to enact the Obama-MoveOn agenda with little or no interference from the ranks of Senate Republicans. But star-quality Republicans - such as Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, John Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas - are smart operators. They'll be major assets to their chamber's leader, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who survived a close election.

Democrats, swelled by their seeming mandate and sense of invincibility, will forget the true dynamic of the 2008 election: the revulsion the American people felt for George W. Bush. And so, because of who they are (committed liberals), and how they think (class warfare), Obama and the Congress will mistakenly believe that voters have given them a green light and a blank check for higher taxes and redistributing wealth.

It is a great irony that at this moment, the Obama Democratic Party is at the zenith of its power. History reminds of the parallel to Bill Clinton and his overwhelming congressional majority at this same time in 1992, and it further reminds us of the liberal political hubris that ended more than 40 years of Democratic Party rule just two years later.

No issue represents the key to a Democratic downfall and a GOP resurgence more than redistribution of wealth. Opposition to this policy shouldn't seem like a new direction for the GOP. But George W. Bush's government expansions and the profligacy of congressional Republicans made them unworthy stewards of this key tenet of Republicanism.

The Obama Democrats will revalidate Republicans on tax-and-spend issues. The now-infamous Obama-Joe the Plumber encounter that dominated the Hofstra debate may not have saved McCain, but it may save his party.

This is the opening the GOP has to regain its footing. Voter sentiment will swing against Obama as voters shake off their Bush hangovers and realize they do not want to put the government in charge of their dreams. Conservative think tanks will make the case against redistribution of wealth as a failed policy with roots in communism and socialism. Republican governors will lead by example and remind voters that indeed, there is a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

As the baseball great Yogi Berra said after losing the 1960 World Series, "We made too many of the wrong mistakes." Little does Barack Obama know, but at the hour of his historic triumph, it is all downhill for him and his party. They are destined to repeat too many of the wrong mistakes.