It seems that Senator John McCain (mostly) understands why the GOP suffered a tremendous loss. He said ‘that Republicans had lost the midterm elections because “we abandoned our principlesâ€? on fiscal policy and government restraint, inviting a backlash from Americans over what they saw as widespread hypocrisy.’
“Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins — and the people will punish it,� said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. “We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office.
“We lost our principles and our majority,� he said. “And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first.�
[…]
Mr. McCain, speaking here to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, said the outcome did not represent a rejection of “our values and governing philosophy.�“On the contrary, I think they rejected us because they felt we had come to value our incumbency over our principle,� he said. “And partisanship, from both parties, was no longer a contest of ideas, but an ever cruder and uncivil brawl over the spoils of power.
“Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us,� he said. “We must spend the next two years reacquainting the public and ourselves with the reason we came to office in the first place: to serve a cause greater than our self-interest.�
About Iraq:
“In no other time are we more morally obliged to speak the truth to our country, as we best see it, than in a time of war,� he said. “So let me say this, without additional combat forces we will not win this war.�
“As troubling as it is, I can ask a young marine to go back to Iraq,� he said. “What I cannot do is ask him to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb, so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year. That is more to ask than patriotism requires.�
I strongly believe that if the Republican party wants to win the Presidential elections in 08 it has to come up with a new program, based on old values: a conservative agenda.
If Republicans want to appeal to Independents – who, as always, will determine who will win elections – they have to reform their own party. The GOP has changed for the worse during its years of hegemony. Power corrupts is more than just a cliché.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.