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Steele Needing A Big Tent

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in At TMV, Politics.
May 3rd, 2009 | Comments

Michael Steele is no Jack Kemp. The latter passed away yesterday, the former is already a political afterthought, who is not conservative enough for the right-wing of the Republican Party and who has driven away Arlen Specter and other moderates.

Jack Kemp and his former boss, President George H.W. Bush, were pragmatic conservatives under the Reagan mantra of creating a big tent where Republicans could openly dialogue with each other about the issues of the day. Reagan’s coalition, which included working-class Democrats and (gasp) Log Cabin Republicans, won three presidential elections and changed America from a policy of failed big government, record debt and crippling inflation, to twelve years of unpredented economic growth.

Last Friday, Michael Steele illustrated how far the Republican leadership has moved away from the Reagan – Bush (41) – Kemp brand of Republican populism. In wanting to get moderates to come back into the GOP fold, Steele said “Understand that when you come into someone’s house, you’re not looking to change it. You come in because that’s the place you want to be.”

Chairman Steele is under the impression that moderates need the Republican Party. Moderates have not left their fiscal conservatism; the right wing of the party have decided that they would rather lose and know that they were right, then to win and make policy. As a Republican in Maryland, I have seen this kind of narrow-minded, self-defeating behavior for the past twenty years.

I was a member of the State Central Committee when Congressman Bob Ehrlich and then State Chair Michael Steele laid down tough love to party members in 2001. The tone set down by Ehrlich / Steele was to stop whining, work together, and we can win. It worked for the MD GOP in 2002; it can work for the national GOP. President Reagan and Secretary Kemp have passed on. It appears that Michael Steele has some pretty big shoes to fill if he wants to bring moderates back in 2010.

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Jcavhs

"Reagan’s coalition, which included working class democrats and (gasp) Log Cabin Republicans, won three presidential elections and changed America from a policy of failed big government, record debt and crippling inflation, to twelve years of unpredented economic growth."

Except that under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush the deficit rose, income inequality increased (which in industrialized countries tends to limit economic growth), and job creation was less than than it was under Presidents Carter and Clinton. Even when looking at just GDP growth, under Reagan GDP growth rose on average 3.5% per year. It rose 5.2% under Kennedy, 5.1% under Johnson and even 3.2% per year under Carter. So 3.5% per year was hardly unprecedented economic growth. In fact 2-4% per year is what you would expect in a health, industrialized economy.

Rudi

Here is a few links showing that Reagan balloon the debt. Please stop the spin.
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/001746...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A...
"Voters and politicians became anesthetized to big deficits," Moore recalled. "Reagan was running these big deficits, and liberals argued it was going to be Armageddon. We were going to ruin the economy. Interest rates were going to go through the roof. And none of these things happened."

The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

To some economists, the impact was clear. Interest rates rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the economy slowed, then slipped into recession, and productivity barely advanced. Americans feared their nation had slipped into the shadows of Japan and Germany.

Reagan's "economic policy . . . was a disaster," University of California at Berkeley economic historian J. Bradford DeLong wrote this past weekend on his Web site. "The tax cuts made America a more unequal place, and the deficits slowed economic growth in the 1980s significantly."

But after the boom years of the 1990s, and the steady economic slides of those international rivals, some economists are reevaluating that version of history. The argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics, they say.

DLS

I just hope at this point Obama and the Dems don't anesthetize themselves to their far greater deficits and spending, not merely now, but if their more wacky ambitions actually reach fruition once the economy recovers. (Just as is the case for GM and Chrysler and federal ownership, and the threat that one or the other company may become the playpen of leftist experimentalists, and worse, a prototype for other parts of the "private" sector.)

DLS

"The argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics, they say."

In other words, now that there's a D in the White House, and deficits are in at least some part known publicly to be in support of lib-Dem goals, then once more we can dust off the ability to disparage the "Great Deficit Scare" or "Myth" as the Dems and libs did before.

It will help once the economy does better and fractions of GDP look better.

DLS

The Republicans need to decide on what they want to be. In large part they have recently lost elections because they have aped the Dems. They would appeal to many moderates if they sought to put Washington to the same kinds of Change [tm] that, say, oversized and oft-misled Detroit auto companies have avoided for thirty years and now face. What the GOP does _not_ need is to be visited by the equivalent of pirates boarding the SS GOP and turning it leftward even more to follow pathetically and pitifully in the SS Dem's wake, a pale, comic-book-level imitation (even more than now). Unfortunately, the GOP not only has worked against itself in numerous ways but faces an inherent problem. The middle class is the biggest beneficiary of all kinds of entitlements and multiple generations of Americans have now been accustomed to a huge federal government that encroaches into state and local affairs routinely, and is seen by many nowadays as not only a welcome partner, but as their parent. The Dem-lib New Dealers said they would buy votes, and the legacy of theirs is stronger than ever today. Republicans look to be at an inherent disadvantage (in sheer numbers and in cultural "conditioning") for years and generations more.

Jcavhs

"The Republicans need to decide on what they want to be. In large part they have recently lost elections because they have aped the Dems."

No they lost elections because the last eight years have shown that lowering taxes for the wealthy while increasing spending doesn't work. And because they have become more conservative, less open, and unwilling to listen to any dissent. Add in fear mongering tactics and that is why they lost.

"The middle class is the biggest beneficiary of all kinds of entitlements and multiple generations of Americans have now been accustomed to a huge federal government that encroaches into state and local affairs routinely, and is seen by many nowadays as not only a welcome partner, but as their parent."

Except that the vast majority of states that receive more from the federal government than they pay in taxes are states that tend to vote Republican. Alaska is a great example. Blue states tend to be states where they pay more than they get back from the federal government - they aren't looking for a hand out but rather wanting to make sure that in this country we actually have a social safety net to ensure that people have a minimal standard of living. And liberals are more than willing to pay to ensure that people get to eat.

superdestroyer

The Republicans have lost because they have zero credibility. Republicans talked about cutting spending and then started two land wars in Asia. The Republicans created new Departments and started treating normal citizens like criminals. The longer the Republicans were in Washington, the more they wanted to expand goverment. And to top it off, President Bush proposed to sell citizenship at $5k a person to illegal aliens who would immediately start voting for Democrats.

elrod

The Maryland GOP had an assist in 2002 - the inept Kennedy-Townsend campaign.

Maryland has gotten more and more Democratic every year - especially the suburban counties like Montgomery (remember Connie Morrella?), Howard County, and Baltimore County. Even Anne Arundel has gotten more Democratic as the DC suburbs spill over. The only Republican strongholds left are the extreme mountain counties (Garrett, Allegany) and parts of the Eastern Shore. Needless to say, those areas are not growing in population.

DaGoat

The argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics, they say.

Well that's awfully convenient. Deficits were a terrible problem while Obama was campaigning, now they're just self-righteous moralism. It's good to know has Obama solved that problem, way to go Barack!

pacatrue

You'd taken a few months off, DLS. What took you away and what brings you back?

Jcavhs

"Well that's awfully convenient. Deficits were a terrible problem while Obama was campaigning, now they're just self-righteous moralism. It's good to know has Obama solved that problem, way to go Barack!"

The article quoted was from 2004 and was in defense of President Reagan's policies.

Sometimes it is good to get the context first.

superdestroyer

elrod,

Of course Maryland has become more Democratic. The total number of whites in Maryland is going down and the number of both legal and illegal aliens has gone up by a lot. Why do you think that John Allen Mohammad (the DC Sniper) was tried in Virginia before Maryland. The prosecutors that a Maryland jury would believe that the two white guys in the white van really commited the murders and that the government was trying to frame two black men.

Rudi

This site also shows Reagan as the deficit problem.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_def...

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