E.J. Dionne writes in Righting the Right that the path of the Conservative movement is in need of a correction.
“There is emerging within the Republican Party a very interesting debate about whether we need to change our approach, or just reassert the policies we already have,” Frum said in an interview.
Frum would like the heretical Republicans to come together to create their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council. The GOP sure could use something. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that only 27 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage in Pew’s 16 years of polling. If ever there was a moment for change agents within the nation’s conservative party, this is it.
There already is a relatively moderate “Republican Leadership Council” and hopefully a GOP thumping will drive many more to its membership.
Almost every public policy issue is a debate about how much or how little to do. It would be nice to have a larger fraction of Republican representatives who are willing and able to debate in that kind of pragmatic environment instead of stonewalling progress in the interest of ideological purity and pandering to the most extreme among their constituents.
And I feel likewise about the Democrats, but I think they are already more open to that message.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.