Open Letter to the GOP

Hey, you guys: yeah, you, the ones who lost the presidential election and control of both the Senate and the House. I am one of those people that left you. Millions of people like me gave up on you. Our actions seem even smarter as the GOP defers to its anointed spokesperson, Rush Limbaugh. For goodness sake, people. It seems that each time a politician who actually represents real people and has a real constituency speaks a little truth to the GOP faithful, Rush gets offended and the politician takes his hat in hand and apologizes publicly. This is not only embarrassing, it demonstrates something really sinister about the extreme edges of political orthodoxy. Both Republicans and Democrats suffer from this. But the recent Rush Limbaugh spectacles magnify it in a way that is hard to ignore.

Stop apologizing! Isn’t it painfully obvious that the orthodoxy has serious flaws? When Michael Steele or other prominent GOP leaders recognize this and openly suggest that the party needs some updating, it gives those of us in exile some hope that we will be able to restore some balance at some point, that we won’t have to choose between ultra-conservatism and liberalism. We are not comfortable with handing a blank checkbook to a liberal Congress just waiting to spread the goodies around while we are in the middle of an economic meltdown. We are not comfortable with giving unions ammunition to intimidate workers who might vote against unionization. 

But we are really not comfortable with the orthodoxy that is very clear and unambiguous as stipulated by Rush Limbaugh: that conservatism is timeless, that a conservative will always solve problems the way they have always been solved, that conservative principles most certainly do not adapt to changing conditions, are not shaped by different circumstances. In this world, government intervention is always bad, tax cuts are always the solution to every economic problem, a capitalist society will always self-regulate and will therefore always self-correct. In this world view, society’s values never change and, therefore, we need to impose the “right” values on all of its citizens. 

The tough part for those of us in exile is that we agree with the basic principles: there are timeless principles, government intervention is usually a bad idea, tax cuts often help a flagging economy, self-regulation is almost always preferable to government regulation and a capitalist economy usually does self-correct — eventually. Our society does have core values and those core values do manifest themselves as laws.

But unchecked capitalism results in banks and other businesses that are “too big to fail” requiring massive intervention.  Tax cuts for everybody, always and forever limit the ability of the government to respond in true crisis and leads to deficit-spending as an acceptable fact of life (Iraq war + tax cuts = unimaginable debt). Self-regulation limits oversight such that massive ponzi schemes, both legal (credit default swaps)  and illegal (Madoff), go undetected. Inflexible values that do not adjust to the times results in the tolerance of institutional segregation, the valuation of some men as 3/5 of a person, women having no right to have a say in their governance, national interference in decisions legally relegated to individuals and states ( see Terry Schiavo), and attempts at a national (and state) level to interfere with intimate relationships between consenting adults (this is the “we  abhor big government except when it conforms to our ideology” school). 

It is a matter of degree. The problem with the current brand of conservatism is the absolutism that leads to the hope of failure. The sad fact is that there are people who will benefit if our president fails. The doom and gloom purveyors of apocalyptic visions will enjoy a moment of smugness as they then capture an even more frantic audience. That audience will be more frightened than before and be desperate for leadership. Can anybody imagine what would happen if a charismatic, deft politican came charging in trumpeting Rush Limbaugh’s world-view after a total collapse caused by the failure of the Democrats to find a solution? Having proven that a left-leaning approach is unworkable, the people would turn back to the right again and this time would look further to the right of even George Bush. The world has seen this movie before and it does not have a happy ending. 

So, short of utter failure of the Democrats, the GOP has to hope for a qualified success in which they actively participate. If the Democrats succeed, even modestly (which is really all we can hope for), without Republican support then Republicans will be relegated to the dust bin for a long time. Wishing for the failure of this administration, and especially this president, is a wish for the failure of our nation and its people. This was just as true during the Bush administration. I cannot fathom why this is so hard to grasp. 

The president is not the representative of an ideology with which we agree or disagree. He is the representive of the American people. Failure of the American government to contain our economic issues has a global impact. We saw a negative impact on our global relationships with a right-wing president. If we see the same thing with a somewhat liberal president that is very popular both here and abroad, American influence in the world could suffer for a very long time. This is bad news in a time when we have become dependent on the import of manufactured goods and the confidence of foreign investors.

I am amazed at the attitude of otherwise smart people. As soon as Obama was elected we started hearing the “end times”, apocalyptic, world is upside-down-going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket hand-wringing (I heard this a lot in the 70’s — nothing new here). This as a direct result of electing a popular Democrat. Since then, the voices have become ever more shrill as the president has done exactly what the smartest minds on the planet (liberal, conservative and everything in between) said he had no choice but to do. 

I can’t say that I am totally comfortable with what has been done to date. But I have not heard one single solitary fresh idea coming from anybody on the right. All I have heard is that we need more tax-cuts, reduced spending, smaller government, and that we need to let market forces finish the demolition process if businesses can’t compete. None of that is new and all of that has been part and parcel of the governing philosophy of the last 8 years, and really most of the last 28 years. It clearly does not work in the current economic climate. We are not in a normal market economy. And it was the last administration that placed so much economic hope on people spending far beyond their means. We need solutions that are appropriate for this moment, these conditions and the global economic climate. Staying on message is totally useless once the message has proven ineffective. Inflexibility is exactly what we do not need.

We may return to normal where the conservative principles apply. But our leaders need to be flexible and adaptable. And that right now appears to be the domain of the Democrats, a few brave but battered Republicans, and the president. I really hope they succeed. And that the same flexibility is apparent when the ship is upright again and the bilges have pumped out the water, when we need once again to embrace a more traditional American model that rewards success and takes dying companies off life support. In other words, a more conservative model. I just hope that there are enough modern, adaptable conservatives to make that happen.