Republican inclusivity
By Chris Barna
President Obama was inaugurated a year ago last week and, since then, there has been a running political joke that the only group that Obama has succeeded in helping has been the Republican Party. Indeed, if you turned on any cable news channel last Tuesday to see Republican Scott Brown elected to the Senate in Massachusetts, you would probably be convinced that the Republicans are now running Washington with their new 41-vote majority. Opinions differ on the reasons that Brown reigned victorious in the liberal Bay State but one thing is clear: the identity of the Republican Party is far from settled.
One of the main problems with the Republican Party is their blatant obstructionism inside and outside of Congress, as Politico.com reports. They said no to health care reform. According to U.S. News, they said no to the stimulus. They are saying no to climate change legislation. CNN.com reports that rather than working with the Democrats on points of all those pieces of legislation they agreed with, Republicans insisted on explicitly banning government money for abortions and increasing stimulus tax cuts even though only one Republican voted yes on health care reform and three voted yes on the stimulus bill.
It is this obstructionism that is reflected in what are known as the Tea Parties. With the first meetings scheduled to coincide with tax day 2009, the Tea Partiers have become a force to be reckoned with in the American political scene.
Aside from Fox News and CNN, very few media outlets dedicated much time to these protests and most people forgot about them until the summer. Members of Congress came home for their month long recess to host town halls so their constituents could voice their concerns.
Probably none of them were expecting to return to massive crowds cramming themselves into small auditoriums to interrupt, contradict and shout down their representatives. Did they have anything constructive to say? No. Did they make their voices heard? As Sarah Palin once said, "You betcha!"
It's easy to say no when you're in the minority. You don't have to share the responsibility if the legislation should run awry and you can say your "I-told-ya-so's" when the time is right. But it doesn't have to be this way. In his blog, Frumforum.com, conservative journalist and former Bush speech writer David Frum has taken an active stand against what he has described as "a betrayal of conservatism's own achievements."
On his new Web site, Frum and his fellow writers ask, "How can we promote the policies we want?" Frum is not the only well-known conservative thinker to split from the pessimism of members of Congress and the Tea Partiers.
According to the New York Times, former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett was famously fired from a conservative research group for publishing a book critical of George W. Bush in 2005. Bartlett has recently called for the Republican Party to adapt to changes in government over the last decades. No longer can Republicans afford to campaign on cutting taxes and spending, says Bartlett, because people actually do like what the government gives them.
There are a multitude of other conservative voices calling for moderation in the Republican Party. Though their opinions can be considered ideologically conservative, the Republicans have a legitimate chance of ignoring them. Republicans value order and normalcy.
To maintain this order, some -- like the Tea Partiers -- have called for a test to see if Republican politicians agree with their principles. In reality, this will do more harm than good. The point of a political party is to attract voters, not scare them away. If the Republicans implement a litmus test, they will become a party of exclusion, when what they need is inclusion.
Chris Barna is a sophomore political science major.