Wayward Republicans Need to Return to Core Principles

Philip Klein published a must read for those who are trying to make sense of yesterday's election. Klein identifies what went wrong with Republicans, and why (after losing their way)they lost the House. I argued last year that Democrats could not win becuase they did not have a positive agenda for America - I was wrong on one account and right on another. Democrats never developed much of an agenda, but they didn't need to. Republicans, the party in power, chose to abandon any sense of an agenda at all! Republicans utter lack of any major accomplishment and their lack of articluating a positive agenda left the door wide open - Democrats walked through that door. Democrats successfully positioned themselves as being more fiscally responsible (an easy charge to make given the spending habits of the Republican Congress) and more ethcial (again, with four Republicans resigning due to scandal on the eve of the mid-term elections, an easy case to make). I recommend reading the Klein article, which sheds some light and makes much sense.

Political Hay
Renewing the Contract
By Philip Klein
Published 11/8/2006 12:09:29 AM

... In assessing last night's results it is important to note that it was not a defeat for conservatism; it was a defeat for Republicanism, or at least, what Republicanism has come to represent. In the past 12 years, Republicans went from the party that promised "the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money" to the party of the Bridge to Nowhere; it took control of Congress on a pledge to "end its cycle of scandal and disgrace" and went down in defeat as the party of Tom DeLay and Mark Foley.

Having abandoned its core principles, the Republican Party had nothing to run on this year, so its campaign strategy centered on attacking Nancy Pelosi -- a questionable tactic given that, according to some polls, more than half of the country had never even heard of her. Republican strategists who projected optimism over the past few months cited as reasons for their confidence: fundraising, incumbency advantage, gerrymandering and new innovations such as "microtargeting." But as this election made perfectly clear, none of this can bail out a party that is bereft of ideas. ... (Read the full article here.)

Addendum: The best reform for Congress would be to limit the size and scope of the federal government! I commented on this in February of 2006, you can read the post here.