The Republicans dilemma in this age of Millennia and Obama
THE POLITICAL SCENE about conservative Republican strategy in the Age of Obama. In late spring, the writer travelled to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to hear a political talk by Pat Toomey, the conservative former congressman who had effectively driven Sen. Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party. Toomey’s decision to challenge Specter in the 2010 primary caused Specter to join the Democrats, all but assuring them a filibuster-proof majority. The Toomey challenge crystallized the stresses that tore at the Republican Party in the early months of the Barack Obama era. Toomey was a candidate of the conservative base. Republican moderates and the Party’s leadership, wary of the base, saw in Toomey’s move the flawed impulses of a defeated and contracting Party. In Bethlehem, Toomey talked about the economy, and the perils posed by the Democratic program in Washington. He did not mention abortion or gay marriage, both of which he opposes. He also said that the Republican tent had to make room for constituencies besides social conservatives, but that there needed to be a unifying idea—personal freedom, and its corollary, limited government. It was Toomey’s calculation that Obama’s policies and governing philosophy would do more to rehabilitate conservative doctrine than Republicans themselves ever could, and that by 2010, the American public would ask the Republicans to apply a brake. The way back for Republicans was through resolute opposition to the Obama spending programs. Jim DeMint, the junior senator from South Carolina, and Toomey are natural allies. Mentions the Club for Growth. DeMint and Toomey stand on the side of the Republican divide which believes that the Party failed because it strayed from its core principles, and that if Republicans hold fast in opposition the Party can regain its lost identity. DeMint is a first-term senator in establishment Washington, but he has managed to become a leading insurrectionary voice. In a July 17th teleconference call with activists opposing Obama’s health-care initiative, DeMint said, “If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.” With this remark, DeMint emerged as the de-facto voice of the Republican opposition. He has tapped into the wrath of the conservative base, which was magnified by Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet. The loss of Congress in 2006 sent the Republican Party into a period of pained introspection, its partisans divided into roughly two camps: those who insisted that renewal could come from a return to low-tax, limited-government fundamentals; and reformers who believed that the Party had become too harshly doctrinaire and urgently needed to broaden its appeal. Sen. Specter says that the Party has now become a captive of the DeMint wing. The question remaining for many Republicans is whether the Party can develop a strategy beyond opposition, an argument for governing that will expand its appeal beyond its ideological core.
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