by Jay McConville
There has been a flurry of blog posts and articles over the last week detailing various divisions within the Republican Party. Much of it, in Virginia anyway, has been focused on the Statement of Affiliation requirement to vote in the March 1st GOP Presidential Primary, but the issues are much deeper and wider than just that. With the Presidential Primary season upon us, it seems that the party is more fractured and dysfunctional than ever – certainly more than most of us can remember.
What is driving this deep division? Is it the natural result of a nominating contest that features a dozen or so candidates, with party members furiously supporting their candidate and attacking all others? I suppose that tension could flow from such a situation. Is it also the rise of the outsiders, most notably Donald Trump, but also Dr. Carson and Carly Fiorina, and their supporters’ suspicion that the “establishment” is trying to sideline these candidates? Certainly, that could be a factor. Or maybe this is all a result of the on-going discomfort of the Tea Party movement against the structure and rules of the Grand Old Party? I suppose that could be a factor too.
Yet one has to wonder, is all of this enough to cause the deep divisions that are splitting our party apart today? All political contests are competitive by nature, and activists expect conflict when more than one candidate throws his or her hat in the ring. Our party has also never been enamored with career politicians, although we certainly have supported them often, and most Republicans I know welcome newcomers to the ranks of candidates. And rules exist everywhere, in every organization, and debating and influencing those rules is the normal give and take within any functioning political movement. We should be able to get past all of these conflicts and challenges without imploding.
So what is it that is pulling our party apart? I would submit that it is a lack of clear political objectives. Without a cause to rally the troops, all we are left with is infighting and division over trivialities. If we cannot say what we are for, as Republicans, why then would we ever be unified? What we need today is a strong set of organizing policy goals, general enough for the majority of us to believe in, yet bold enough to result in real change. Yes, in fact, to borrow a phrase, we need “change we can believe in.”
The GOP Presidential debates were informative. Due in part to poor moderating, but also to the inability of many candidates to articulate a bold platform, the debates were dominated by “yes-you-did, no-I-didn’t” banalities and vague pledges to “make America great again” in many different forms. While entertaining, they were not in any sense unifying, and they were complete failures at illuminating a bold platform for victory in the 2016 General Election. It is no accident that the most popular moments were when candidates were specific and bold, as when Carly Fiorina detailed specific things she would do to improve our military posture, or when she called for “zero-based budgeting” or the three-page tax form. Candidates that were bold and specific received applause from the hungry party faithful, and, as in the case of Ms. Fiorina, saw their numbers rise accordingly. On the basis of a bold undercard performance, Carly Fiorina rose from relative obscurity to the top-tier and onto the big stage. (For the record, I’m supporting Carly Fiorina.)
Our party should be debating these specific and bold agenda items, and the candidates should be seeking our support based on their positions on these ideas for real change. We all love America, and we all want our government to be limited yet effective. The question of “how” you are going to support our nation’s desire for improvement, both in international and domestic affairs, and “how” you are going to reign in “big government” and turn us away from the path of financial ruin, should be answered, in specifics, by each candidate. If they were, then we could turn our energies away from internecine battles over trivialities, and back to the big questions of who we are, why we organize as Republicans, and how we are going to save our beloved nation.
There are big issues out there. In my opinion, we should be asking candidates how they are going to:
- Fix the bankrupt Social Security system, transitioning from the “Ponzi-scheme,” depression-era disaster we currently have, to a system that creates individual financial security (yes, even wealth) for all Americans while strengthening our economy through capital accumulation, all while supporting current and future retirees without breaking the bank.
- Secure our nation and our people from the scourge of terrorism, improve our defense posture, promote peace and stability around the world, and deal with Russia, China and Iran (among others), all in the face of yearly deficits of half-a-trillion dollars and an $18 trillion national debt.
- Provide needed (and popular) government services to the people with a more accountable and efficient federal bureaucracy, by transforming our ineffective, unaccountable and corrupt system into an effective mechanism for providing real service for the tax dollar.
- Fix our federal tax system so that we can provide the required levels of financing for the constitutional functions of government within a fair and understandable format, without penalizing good financial behavior and subsidizing bad behavior.
- Realign our national commitment to education to foster creativity and success within an affordable and accountable framework, instead of settling for union-centric bureaucratic sclerosis, ever-increasing and unsustainable costs, and a continued decline in performance.
- Replace the monstrosity of Obamacare with a national health insurance system that actually works to support better health in our nation through the widest possible coverage, without promoting massive cost-growth and layering government bureaucracy and one-size-fits-all mandates across an already bloated system.
I am sure there are many more big issues to tackle, immigration and economic stagnation come to mind, and everyone will have their own list. Still I would love to see all our candidates explain what they are going to actually do to address the “big six” or “big eight” issues that face our nation. Nibbling around the edges and “happy-to-glad” vagaries need not apply. Specific plans, bold ideas, and actual change – this is what we need. A candidate that can well articulate their plans to address these in the context of the conservative, free-market, and liberty-loving principles of the Republican Party will find unity.
Our party will be unified when we have something to be unified about. Now is not the time for timidity. Now is the time for bold strokes and big ideas. Want unity? Have purpose.
Jay McConville is the former Chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, a former candidate for Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia Co-Chair for the Carly Fiorina for President campaign
