While I have long recognized that while the GOP cannot win by excluding social conservatives, I realize that to win it needs keep its focus (as did the Gipper) on fiscal and national security issues. Thus, I was heartened to read yesterday about the “truce” that one of the nation’s most accomplished Governors is proposing.
Mitch Daniels, chief executive of the Hoosier State (and a man who leads my list for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, “told [the Weekly Standard’s] Andrew Ferguson the next president ‘would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues’“:
. . . Daniels says the truce was “just a suggestion. It was an expression of urgency I think that all Americans should feel about certain other questions like the debt burden.”
Daniels continued, “I chose the word truce because no one has to change their point and no one has to surrender. Simply, we have to come together to address what I believe are the most urgent problems of the country.”
The governor’s broader concern about the limits and priorities of government is certainly warranted. Our government hides behind infighting to ignore looming existential crises, and yet is currently micromanaging your salt intake and making sure employers don’t have unpaid interns.
Mark Hemingway writes that the Indiana Governor has
. . . emphasized the need to focus like a laser beam on the existential threats facing the country — the two big issues he’s previously identified being the war on terror and the country’s precarious fiscal position. “We’re going to need a lot more than 50.1 percent of the country to come together to keep from becoming Greece,” he said.
Emphasis added.
Right on, Mitch! Seems at least one prominent Republican has familiarized himself with the record — and vision — of Ronald Reagan.
OK, so how is Mitch going to convince the left to stand down? How is he going to convince NARAL to stop pushing for abortion on demand? How does he convince the ACLU to stop trying to sterilize the public sphere of any suggestion of Christian Faith? How does he get the left from promoting the Howard Zinn view of American History in public schools?
Unless the social left agrees to stand down, this isn’t a truce; it’s unilateral disarmament for the social right.
Daniels is right; I assume he’s speaking primarily to fellow Republicans and Independents because as VK points out, we cannot expect the left to call a truce. A truce among Republicans and Independents can, however, solidify our position in the November elections.
I don’t think he saying you don’t fight for those issues but you should focus on what really matters. Most Americans exist on the middle ground when it comes to abortion, they support limits but don’t want a ban. Daniels would rather run a campaign that is about the long term viability of the nation, which is more Dependant on its economy and its national security than its abortion policy. You appeal to a more border coalition of voters by speaking to them about economic freedom and protecting them from danger.
Dan,
I’m sorry that you dont understand that there is no such thing as a one issue election. I’m sorry that you dont GET the Reagan coalition. I’m sorry that you dont GET that Republicans win victories ONLY when they cobble together a coalition of people with different priorities based on a BROAD platform, not a single issue.
It nonetheless remains fact.
As someone on this blog recently posted, Gallup showed that even in this horrible recession, FOURTEEN percent of Americans think social issues are more important than economic issues.
You have still not explained how you plan to win an election while ignoring 14% of the electorate. Or how you plan to get those values voters to show up and vote for Republicans when you are suggesting Republicans should not only offer them NOTHING, but should instead tell them to shut up and pull the lever?
Ace of Spades gets it:
It seems to me extremely naive and silly to even suggest your premise, which is, “Hey, why dont you forget what is important to you, and vote for what is important to me”
It shows a deep ignorance of electoral politics, and makes Mitch Daniels DOA.
Ooops, here’s the link to the post at Ace of Spades. Read the whole thing.
Republicans also make a HUGE mistake in a country where HALF the population paid NO income taxes last year, to assume that a majority of Americans will vote for them based on tax cuts and spending cuts, when the other side is offering them free goodies.
You see, the honest, ideological voters who support the principle of tax cuts even though they wont get a penny of it, and government programs that they are eligible for may be taken away, tend to be the SAME values voters you are suggesting Republicans should tell to sit down and shut up.
Sorry, thats not how you win elections, thats how you lose trust and piss people off and make your base stay home.
So, the message to socially conservative voters is that their issues “Don’t really matter.”
Good luck with that.
Yeah, I can just see folk like Tony Perkins. Elaine Donnelly, Maggie Gallagher and Brian and the rest of those folk to say, ‘Hey, Sure, I will take a unpaid sabbatical, heck I don’t need my paycheck. Just get back to me after 2010, heck Nov 2012.
It would be the same for folk like Joe at HRC and other scary progressive folk. I am sure he (they) would be just as willing to take an unpaid leave.
I agree that a focus on ensuring the security of the nation and rebuilding the economy would be a great target. . .but asking the socons to step to the side, it certainly would leave to socon leadership out on a limb.
By the way, you also misrepresent the record and vision of Ronald Reagan!
Reagan RAN on social issues! Womens rights were the big social issue at that time, and were a BIG part of the campaign, particularly since the debates were HOSTED by the League of Women Voters. Reagan ran on opposition to the ERA, while pledging to appoint a woman to his cabinet and to the Supreme Court, he ran on opposition to abortion, he ran on states rights, for which Carter attacked him. He pledged to develop “enterprize zones” in inner-urban black neighborhoods. Reagan ran ridiculing environmentalists famously saying that “trees cause pollution”.
At the same time you are congratulating Daniels, and yourself for supposedly upholding the record and vision of Ronald Reagan you are actually IGNORING it, and THROWING OUT the Reagan Coalition, which is what ended 40 years of Republicans wandering in the wilderness and gave us a quarter of a century of Republican domination and prosperity!
Exactly.
“Unless the social left agrees to stand down, this isn’t a truce; it’s unilateral disarmament for the social right.” EXACTLY, V the K! And I believe the pseudoconservatives here and else where know that and that’s their goal. They need to be fought as vigorously as the outright Leftists.
Seane-Anna, to use the vernacular, bite me.
For one..’pseudo-conservatives’ do not have the bite marks and scars from rabid lefties as many of us true conservatives here do.
{c’mere, lemme show ya one…}
Leave your sex life out of it, Rodney 😉
Seriously, the last time I can think of a war where one side declared peace was the new Soviets in WW II. We saw how the Germans took that.
Focus on coalition building for like minded goals, yes. Telling people ‘we’ll back burner your core issues’ no. Even in my ‘dream coalition’ I don’t see that happening. It would be more like…
“Ok, I’ll support your budget plan, but I’m still going to fight for DADT to be repealed.”
“But I can’t support you on that!”
“You say you can’t, but here’s a cost benefit analysis. We both want to trim the budget, this shows how DADT will. If I can’t convince you, I’ll go with the other guys when DADT comes up, but I agree with you on budget cutting. You made that your hallmark issue. Read these numbers and tell me how you’re not arguing for a good budget cut here.”
It’s amazing to me how easily and often foreign policy hawks, who are so astute about the slithering lies of Iran and Korea when they talk of “truce”, are completely blind to the idea that their political adversaries are the same exact creature only on domestic issues. The Left would support a truce the same way Iran would support a UN resolution calling on “everyone” to stop building nuclear weapons.
Well can’t social conservatives be asked to compromise? Why should we bend over backwards when they don’t want give up on their positions. If they are more worried about telling people who they can marry or fighting a losing battle on abortion bans than economic strength and growth, then they are the ones who need to change their attitude.
Yes Reagan brought in social conservatives to win elections but its not like he bent over backwards to appease them either. He also brought in social moderates and libertarians to vote for him too, so lets not forget he had a big tent of voters. Daniels is pro-life and against gay marriage, exactly how much more does he have to do? Its not like he some raging social liberal who wants unlimited abortions and open marriages.
der,
There’s a difference between asking them to compromise with other conservatives and expecting a ‘truce’ with the opposition. Asking me to put aside my opposition to ‘marriage’ to work with you on financial reform is one thing. Asking me to put it aside while the other side pushes forward on it is something else entirely.
The ‘Compromise’ comes from the SoCons not making it front and centre, in exchange for an open debate once the issues that unify us are resolved. It’s kind of the ‘me against my brother, us against our cousin, we three against the world’ mentality.
Or like I said elsewhere, “Put out the fire, and worry about the colour of the firetruck later!”
Livewire, you’re absolutely right except for this little phrase. It is a myth that fiscal conservatism unites the right. There’s fiscal moderates and fiscal liberals in the GOP. The Olympia Snowes, Susan Collinses, the Lincoln Chafees, Mike Huckabees, etc…
That’s my point.
We get fiscal conservatism because what unites us is a broad PLATFORM, and we get fiscal conservatism when we get those groups to COMPROMISE with the understanding that we will in turn support their priorities.
Otherwise they have a inconvenient penchant, you may have noticed, for voting with Democrats on big government issues.
“Seane-Anna, to use the vernacular, bite me.”
North Dallas Thirty, gimme a body part and I’ll be happy to oblige.
AE, I don’t think it invalidates the point.
Take Fred for example. Say you want full on Gay Marriage, and I want Fred. If you work with me to get Fred, as a step to something more, you’ll have my support up to and including Fred. Once we get Fred passed, then you can try to persuade me going the next step to Gay Marriage is good.
Same thing for the financial Moderates. “I want to go here. You want to only go there. Help me get to there, then we can talk about getting to here.”
Livewire, fair point. You’re right.
Another point, similar to yours and V’s, is that just as Democrats will not give up pushing their social agenda just because Republicans forfeit their, neither will they stop portraying Republicans as socially radical-right.
Yet another reason why ignoring social issues not only does not help, but actually harms the Republican cause.
Seems Sarah Palin might be attempting the same tactics. She has come out, in what may be an attempt to tell people she’s not as socially conservative as they think, by suggesting that American pot laws are too harsh. Hoping her popularity will increase.
It wont. It may even make her more unpopular, as some of those who support drug policy give up on her.
Allahpundit also gets it.
And Mitch Daniels is apparently starting to get it too, as he is already backtracking saying he would end US support for foreign abortion just days after calling for his truce.
The left would of course be up in arms if he did that.
Truce over.
I do love being right. 🙂