How to get a winning coalition for the GOP
Share with others:
To win the 2012 Republican nomination and have a decent chance against President Barack Obama in November, the eventual candidate will have to mollify and motivate three factions: the GOP establishment, the religious right and the tea party.
Though the religious right is a wing of the GOP, the tea party most insistently is not; the two entities hold one another in mutual mistrust. But that doesn't mean they are equals in this relationship: The tea party doesn't need the GOP, but the GOP sure does need the tea party.
To meld these three fractious factions into a winning coalition, the eventual candidate will have to provide clear, persuasive positions on the two issues that deeply divide them: money and religion.
Since we can't hear theology lessons over growling stomachs, money matters come first.
As in 1992, "it's the economy, stupid," but this time around no candidate will need to "triangulate" his position: The statistics are so stark and the real suffering behind them so widespread that contrasting free-market policies, competently administered (one hopes), with the Obama administration's ill-conceived and disastrously handled economic policies should be relatively easy.
Tax rates, deficit spending, and Main Street-versus-Wall Street -- these are the aspects of economic policy that the broad public follows and cares about. How would each of the GOP front-runners fare against Mr. Obama?
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the most vulnerable. Democrats have delighted in pointing out that his health care plan for Massachusetts served as a model for "Obamacare," the federal takeover of the nation's health care industry that ignited the tea party movement. "Obamneycare," former candidate Tim Pawlenty memorably dubbed it -- but that's not an epithet that Mr. Obama or his apologists can use.
Since GOP conservatives and tea party activists want a candidate who will repeal Obamacare and curtail the federal government's overreach in other constitutionally and fiscally important ways, Mr. Romney has to deliver a cogent defense of his Massachusetts plan. He can, and must, argue that as the state executive he put together a plan that would work for the people who elected him -- not necessarily for Idaho or Alabama. One size does not fit all.
Mr. Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are both vulnerable for the "sin" of having made lots of money. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum deserves praise for his defense of both men in last week's debate -- arguing that they did well because they worked hard with the skills they had -- a stark contrast to sore loser Texas Gov. Rick Perry's earlier "vulture capitalism" dig.
But the Democrats will not "set aside" these "petty partisan politics," as Mr. Santorum urged, so the candidates had better be prepared. Mr. Romney might try this: "Those who accuse me of dismantling a company for profit are supporting a president who has dismantled an entire nation's economy -- at a huge loss. My record as a governor and an investor who can tell the difference between sound financial decisions and poor ones has equipped me to do the same for the country."
But if money matters take center stage, candidates' religious inclinations are a constant undercurrent of concern -- when it comes to Republicans, anyway. Vice President Joe Biden is a faithful Catholic, and Mr. Obama spent years under a preacher of militant black liberation theology, but how Democrats' private faith might affect their public policies never seems to worry the national media.
It should. Mr. Obama has recently begun referring to "freedom of worship" rather than "freedom of religion" -- two quite different things. While worship is an attitude of the heart expressed alone or in gatherings of the like-minded, religion is something practiced both in private and in public -- and it's "organized" for those purposes.
Many religious groups fulfill their calling by providing health care to the needy. Soon Obamacare, however, will force Catholic hospitals to violate their religion by providing birth control services.
At last week's debate, Mr. Santorum pointed out that the Constitution serves to protect rights that the Declaration of Independence asserts are God-given, but Texas Rep. Ron Paul articulated a crabbed vision of faith -- as nothing more than personal kindness -- more in keeping with the false "freedom of worship" philosophy.
As James Madison noted almost 200 years ago, we owe our cherished separation of church and state to "the genius of [Martin] Luther," and it was a minister who established it first in America. In short, people of passionate faith changed history by insisting that government could not suppress religious activity or individual conscience.
With a philosophy more like Mr. Santorum's and less like Mr. Paul's, the eventual GOP candidate, whatever his faith, can inspire -- and reassure -- voters at every point on the political spectrum. That's what it will take to win.
First Published January 30, 2012 12:00 am
