Tapscott’s New Contract With America

Mark Tapscott just emailed me:

Bruce, I think this discussion's importance far exceeds that of the outcome of the November election. So I've written a What is to Be Done" post that explains why I am not simply advocating staying at home and in fact am looking towards a comprehensive strategy for the future, a future that may or may not include the GOP. Thanks for taking up the discussion on these issues.

Below is Mark’s post.

I may not be as adventuresome as Mark, and I see some of his case as overly optimistic that is particularly built upon what I see as a greater than real strength of bloggers and the Internet. I'm also not really a fan of increased polarization. Nonetheless, if not now, this is a future-building program, or at least a wake-up call that better be heeded by Republican office-holders who want to continue as such.

Mark and I have discussed where we were in 1964, when we began the long march. Glad to see in our middle age we’re still marching, and may be on another roll.

So what is to be done? Three things:

First, conservatives should make clear to the White House and GOP leadership that who we vote for, work for and provide financial support for this November depends absolutely upon what is accomplished in Congress between now and Election Day.

With Congress' approval rating at near-record lows, the GOP leadership has nothing to lose but everything to gain by embarking on an emergency campaign to enact major conservative reforms and thereby to challenge the Democrats to say no on the core issues of the conservative agenda.

Cancel all congressional recesses between now and the election. Stay in session on Mondays and Fridays. Read and study on Saturdays. Rest on Sundays. Forget about kissing babies back home. The campaign that determines your future is right here in the nation's capitol. The time for talk is past, it is time to act.

The Democrats think they are nationalizing the election via Iraq. Most Americans just want the GOP to do what its been promising to do for years. Nationalize the election with actual reforms, not mere promises of reform.

Consistent majorities of the American people have for decades supported essential conservative reforms, so a succession of roll call votes making those reforms real between now and November is likely the GOP's only hope (short of total lunacy on the Left, a possibility I don't for a minute dismiss).

What kind of reforms?

* Immigration reform, including building the wall and whatever other measures are required to secure our borders and disavowing any form of amnesty for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in America. These measures are essential because as 9/11 made clear we must know who is coming into our country and who is already here.

* Federal spending must be brought under control, starting with an end of all earmarks. If doing this means out-of-touch Old Bulls like Ted Stevens resign, so much the better. Sen. Tom Coburn would make an outstanding Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman.

* Entitlements must be controlled. We simply cannot afford to pay the benefits promised to the Baby Boomers (of which I am one) under Social Security and Medicare. The Liberal welfare state's defined benefit based retirement program is bankrupt and must be replaced with a defined contribution program (compare the Civil Service Retirement System to the Federal Employees Retirement System for respective models).

Similarly, the current system in which government bureaucrats make the basic decisions about the nation's health care must ben replaced with one that puts the power of consumer choice in the hands of health care consumers. As The Heritage Foundation's Bob Moffit has argued for decades, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program is a suitable model here.

* The size and scope of federal power must be reduced and rebalanced. Congress must create a Base Re-Alignment and Closure (BRAC) process for the federal bureaucracy. The budget process must be reformed. Duplicative federal programs must be eliminated. Here's a suitable blueprint.

* President Bush's judicial nominees must all receive up or down votes before Labor Day.

* Repeal McCain-Feingold. It is the shame of the GOP that Congress has abrogated to itself authority to regulate political speech. As George Will notes in today's edition of The Washington Post, it is "sinister" to argue that the government should determine what is and is not appropriate political speech in campaigns to determine control of the government.

* Pass the Cornyn-Leahy Open Government Act of 2005. Transparency is Big Government's biggest enemy. Making the federal Freedom of Information Act effective is an essential first step towards making the federal government functionally transparent. The second step is putting all government spending, contracts and supporting documentation on the Internet so that any citizen can see how his or her tax dollars are being spent with just a few clicks of the mouse.

If the GOP majority in Congress makes acceptable progress on these issues, conservatives will work, contribute and vote accordingly. If Congress doesn't act on these issues - or merely goes through the same old rhetorical motions - it will be clear beyond doubt that GOP majority really doesn't care about enacting conservative reforms.

Second, if the GOP majority fails to act, conservatives have an obligation to find or create a new party. I'm not unaware of the immense difficulties that face new parties in American politics. The GOP's sucess in coming to power in only three elections (1856, 58 and 60) is the great exception to the norm for minority parties.

I'm not talking here of a political Kamikaze ala Bob Smith of New Hampshire. The reason the GOP succeeded in the pre-Civil War era was it provided a new home for dissatisfied Whigs and Democrats. The hard work of creating and sustaining a new home for conservatives leaving the GOP is what is needed before any Member of Congress, sitting governor, state legislator or other elected GOP official switches parties.

How to do that? There is no shortage of third parties out there, including most prominently the Libertarian Party. But for a variety of reasons, I don't think the answer will be found in an existing entity. If the GOP loses its majority in November, millions of conservatives are going to be willing as never before to consider a new party.

At that point, the historical analogies for third parties in American politics may not be so applicable, thanks to the advent of the Internet in general and the Blogosphere in particular. Thanks to cyberspace, it may still take several elections to gain a new majority, but the time required to make potential recruits aware of a new option and to provide them with tangible courses of actions to empower that option sufficiently to make it a genuine factor in the next election could well be months rather than years. (Yes, I am also aware of the ballot access difficulties placed by the major parties in the way of aspiring third parties.)

Odds are also excellent that the first wave of Karl Roves of the Internet era of politics is already out there, most likely consisting of politically savvy conservative/libertarian Thirty-Somethings old enough to have seen up close and been repelled by the present system and young enough to recognize and seize the opportunity using the new tools provided by the internet.

This is why skeptics in the GOP (and the Democrats, too, for that matter) should beware: What the Internet has done to the mainstream media - see Dan Rather and CBS for a relevant example - can and most likely will be done to all of the "Bigs" of our society, including Big Government and the political parties that live by it. See Hugh Hewitt's "Blog" and Glenn Reynolds' "An Army of Davids."

Third, there is no reason for conservatives to lose heart. If anything, this is the time conservatives should be most optimistic and energized. The Hewitt and Reynolds works make clear the incredible opportunity that has been given the present and emerging generations of conservatives by the internet.

As President Reagan famously asked of the liberals who dominated the previous era of American politics, if no one of us is capable of governing himself, who among us is capable of governing all of us?

With the internet, the capacity of every individual to govern himself is immensely expanded and the capacity of networks of individuals to engage in concerted action for the common good is similarly magnified. The need for massive bureaucracies is less now than ever before (if indeed it ever really was needed) and the opportunities created by the internet to expand the realm of individual freedom are without historical precedent.

But human nature and history being what that they are, there are no guarantees. The Left is aware of these opportunities as well and in some ways is ahead of the Right. Thus, conservatives must embrace the internet and make it our own. There is no time to waste, my friends.

In conclusion, allow me to correct one point that is a frequent theme among those who believe it it inappropriate to discuss these matters. The term Bruce used, I believe, to describe us summarily is "petulant."

Traditional American liberty has never been more threatened, either externally or domestically, thanks to the Jihadists and continued expansion of Leviathan at home. I hope this foregoing analysis and explanation is sufficient illustration of the inaccuracy of such a description.