In small meetings at the homes of conservative activists and bigger gatherings at research groups, in conference calls and on blogs, and at gatherings like the Republican governors’ conference that just ended in Miami, the questions have been the same.
Nearly 30 years after president Ronald Reagan ushered in a period of conservative ascendancy in US politics, how should the movement re-energize itself? And how can conservatives chart a path back to power after this month’s Republican defeats?
Some conservatives want a return to basics, arguing that President George W. Bush abandoned conservative principles by expanding government and driving up spending. Others draw just the opposite conclusion, warning that Republicans have tried to appeal to too narrow a base and that the party must update the focus of conservatism, especially at a time when voters are thinking more about issues like jobs and healthcare than about abortion and gay rights.
The debate has been simmering among veteran conservative leaders, a younger crop of conservative writers and thinkers who want to modernize the movement, and the Republican officials vying to become forces in a party that suddenly has no leader now that the Bush administration is at an end.
“Everybody’s discouraged and disillusioned, but also energized,” said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer who wants conservatives to stop supporting a party that he says has betrayed them, and to start forming grassroots groups instead.
Lee Edwards, a historian of the conservative movement at the Heritage Foundation, said that in meetings with conservative leaders since the election a consensus had emerged that the Republicans had been hurt by drifting away from conservative principles, and that religious conservatives, economic conservatives and strong-defense conservatives had seemed to realize the need to unite to regain power.
“It isn’t a question of stressing economic issues or stressing social issues,” Edwards said. “What we have to do is to go back to what Ronald Reagan did and put together a coalition.”
Other Republicans are not so sure. They point to the party’s losses this month — which spanned the entire Northeast and West Coast, the Great Lakes states, several Western states and traditionally Republican states like Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — and said that the party urgently needed to broaden its appeal.
John Weaver, who was the original chief strategist of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign before he left during an upheaval in July last year, warned that given the demographic changes sweeping the country, the Republicans could no longer afford to be seen as what he called an “angry white men’s party.”
He strongly questioned the premise that Republicans lost this year because they were not conservative enough.
“We still are a center-right country, but the gauge is closer to the center than it is to the far right,” Weaver said. “And we have got to communicate to the people who ultimately decide these elections.”
The chairman of the Florida Republican Party, James Greer, one of several likely candidates to lead the national party, called for putting less emphasis on some social issues and more on economic issues that he said could have broader appeal.
“I think we need to answer the questions that are asked by the conservatives: ‘Is it still my party for family values? Is it still my party for faith?’” Greer said. “Answer those questions, answer them firmly, ‘Yes it is.’ But then move on. And start talking about the issues that are important to Americans: the economy, job opportunity and education.”
Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, scoffed at calls for the Republicans to move left, which he said had followed Republican defeats in 1964, 1976 and 1992. And he suggested that some calls to update conservatism — by taking global warming more seriously, for instance — were essentially disguised calls to move the party to the left.
“They will be cheerfully ignored,” Norquist said.
Several conservative leaders said in interviews that they were heartened to have a bench of conservative politicians that they could look to in the coming years, mentioning names like Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina — as well as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose selection as McCain’s running mate was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm among many social conservatives at the leadership and grassroots levels.
And while there have been strong disagreements among talk-radio populists and veterans of the movement and conservative writers like David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David Frum and Reihan Salam, some conservatives said the disagreements helped keep the movement vital.
Palin, in particular, has proved to be a polarizing figure within the movement, with some hailing her as a potential standard-bearer in four years, and others seeing her as appealing too narrowly to social conservatives.
Some emerging fault lines were evident at the Republican Governors Association conference, which wrapped up on Friday.
Some called for keeping focused on social issues. Texas Governor Rick Perry, who praised Palin’s “unashamed embrace of bedrock conservative principles” and said that she was “just getting started,” pointed to the success of ballot measures opposing same-sex marriage to show the continued potency of such issues.
“The defense-of-marriage initiative that voters supported in California, Arizona and here in Florida ought to be proof enough that conservative values still matter to the American people and are worthy of our party’s attention,” he said.
Others called for moving beyond them. Florida Governor Charlie Crist argued that the party might extend its reach if it spoke more about the economy than about social issues.
“Those issues are very important, but there’s a lot of issues that people care deeply about, that affect their lives in a real way, every single day,” Crist said. “If you’re going to be successful in this business, you have to win a majority. It’s not just a majority of Republicans, it’s not just a majority of Democrats, it’s a majority of the people.”
There was particular worry among some conservatives that the party had wounded itself by scaring off Hispanic voters, a growing force, with the divisive rhetoric that accompanied the debate over the nation’s immigration laws.
And there was even the suggestion, made gingerly and reverently, that Republicans could not continue to make “Ronald Reagan” the answer to every question at a time when they are overwhelmingly losing the young voters who were children, or were not yet born, when he was president.
That was the implication of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who told the group of fellow Republican governors that Reagan was one of his heroes, and recalled being spat at by a hippie while volunteering for one of his campaigns.
“But Ronald Reagan was president a long time ago,” Pawlenty said.
“A lot has happened since then. So the challenge for us is how do you take the principles from the late ’70s and ’80s and apply them to the circumstances and issues and opportunities of our time,” he said.
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