The distinction can still be blurred, however, if the White House desire for legislative “accomplishments” translates into the inclination to suppress the conservative disposition of the House so that superficial agreement can be reached. And without focused attempts by conservative grassroots Republicans, this may well be the direction the Bush White House chooses.
So far, indeed, the course of the administration has been like a vector, a path that arises simply from the power and direction of the forces acting upon it.
Conservative enthusiasm at reclaiming the White House has prevented a complete veer to the left so far, but are we confident that we have the diligent and persevering energy in place to outwork the tireless termite activity of the left? The Jeffords and McCain propaganda is just one example of the powerful forces that will be acting on the administration, relentlessly urging a leftward lurch.
The energy to keep the Bush administration on course will not come from the White House. Unlike the Reagan years, when there was a clear ideological inclination emanating from the president himself, President Bush has been less committed to principle, less clear about it and, as a result, more open to the kind of compromises that negate what ought to be the progress the Republican Party represents for the country.
The education bill, again, is a good example of this fuzzy Republicanism. The heart and soul of conservatism for education is parental leadership, parental control and return of educational power into the hands of parents and families. These goals are chiefly represented by the movement for school choice. And there was a nominal, if superficial, school-choice component in the President's proposed educational plan. But after President Bush's advisers signaled that the school-choice component was not crucial, it died a rapid death in the Congress, a death that caused no apparent pain to the president.
This is not the way to advance conservative policies.
Conservatives who believe that the president is competently and aggressively shaping his legislative initiatives to get as much as possible passed through Congress should wake up and smell the coffee. Serious conservative presidential leadership required that the president make clear to the American people why school choice is an essential component of the policy path that is best for education in America. Instead, the president approved a back-room deal dismissing school choice because, apparently, he wanted to get something done instead of getting the right thing done.
This failure is not a function of the “political hand” the president has been dealt, but of his inability or unwillingness to define issues in such a way that the American people understand what is at stake. Ronald Reagan, by contrast, didn't merely “accept political reality.” Rather, he changed that reality through his ability to articulate issues and policy in a way that the American people understood. Such articulation, from the president and his chief subordinates, can set the stage for the kind of advances that are needed for the country's sake, just as it did in the Reagan years.
The point is not to criticize President Bush, or demand that he become something he plainly is not. Rather, for conservatives, the point must be that anything we will rightly consider political success over the next few years will depend upon making our effective work at the grassroots heard and influential in Washington.
Affecting the interplay of forces within the administration and throughout Congress – rather than waiting until initiatives are announced and then offering our unqualified and uncritical support – will be most important if we are to ensure that a truly conservative agenda is pursued by the federal government in the years ahead.
If the loss of the Senate was necessary in order concentrate our mind on this task, so be it.
(Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles.)
If the Bush administration is distinctly conservative, the argument goes, the Republican party will be wiped off the map in 2004.
This analysis is nonsense, to put it gently. The Jeffords drama, and the McCain-Daschle flirtation that followed, have been spun hard by liberals as illustrating the alternative between McCain, the “centrist populist,” and President Bush, the “dogmatic conservative.” I don't recognize much truth in either characterization.
If Republicans get sucked into this false reckoning of the political landscape, we deserve what we get. The Bush family has never represented conservatism, and there is not much reason to think that it does so today. The education bill that the president is attempting to get through Congress is a perfect example – it is allegedly a conservative educational initiative, and has not a single element of conservative principle left in it.
Conservatives need to decide whether they will continue trying to convince themselves that President Bush is a champion of conservative principle, or recognize that he is a likeable, fairly malleable, slightly right-of-center politician who should be supported just in the measure that he actually does the right thing. I, at least, will fight to maintain the integrity of conservative principles.
In saying this, I do not mean to propose abandoning the president, or giving him less than our full and most vigorous support in defense of conservative principle. Whether or not the president knows it, this is the best political help we can give him.
The grassroots of the Republican Party, like the platform, are founded on principled conservatism. The party supports responsible liberty, and hence is pro-life and in favor of educational choice. It favors less government, decentralization of societal control and endorses the whole range of policies that have been at the core of the conservative agenda for several decades and were advanced with considerable success, to the benefit of America and the entire world, during the course of the Reagan era and the years afterward.
This is where the Republican Party belongs. People like McCain and Jeffords actually want it to become a carbon copy of the Democrats, a me-too party. President Bush should reject their warnings about the dire fate awaiting Republicans in 2004 unless the party, as McCain condescendingly puts it, “grows up.”
If the president heeds these arrogant liberals, the party will in fact be doomed to failure because it will no longer represent the heart-felt commitment to principle that many Americans at the grassroots want to see.
Our principled support for the administration can help prevent this mistake. Our first task must be to remind the administration about the real source of political success for Republicans – adherence to fundamental American principle.
Despite the haze of “moderation” still swirling in Washington, Democrat control of the Senate makes it clearer that there remains between the two parties disagreement about important things. At one level, the change is to be welcomed as a simple victory for truth-in-labeling. Because of the five to eight Republican senators who have a consistent tendency to vote the liberal line, we had faced the possibility of years of Senate legislation that was diluted and had lost its conservative heart. The current education bill, which took shape before the Jeffords switch, is a good example of this. Fortunately, it will now be evident that the “Bush” education bill is coming out of a Senate that was not controlled by principled conservatives. From here on, the Democrat label on the Senate will openly confirm that the actions of this Congress do not necessarily reflect the conservatism that the country really needs.
Before the switch, Republicans had an organizing majority, but not a legislative majority that reflected the heart of conservative principle. Now that Republicans will no longer be held accountable for what comes out of the Senate, they will not be held responsible for flawed measures they couldn't have controlled anyway. Faithful Republicans around the country will thus be spared the apparent duty of supporting such measures, and we will avoid some dilution of the real meaning of conservatism that such support would represent.
Instead, as a result of the change, there will be more healthy competition between the House and the Senate. Measures passed in the House will tend more to reflect conservative views, to advance decentralized government, and to assume respect for citizens and their capacities. Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled Senate will be pushing for that old and discredited liberal line of government spending and government power. The clear presentation of these alternatives can help the American people make up their mind in the future as to what the two parties offer.