For Republican Leaders, It's Still the Vision Thing BY: Tom McClintock The California Republican Party's semiannual convention last month in Anaheim offered a remarkably clear insight into the reason for the GOP's inability to function as a viable political alternative to the Democrats. In the uncelebrated words of George Bush, it is still "the vision thing." No where was this more obvious than when Assembly and Senate Republican leaders visited with a group of Republican activists. The subject of the meeting was the 1998 election, and how Republicans intended to win. The panel of potentates unanimously agreed that "1998 is shaping up as an issue-less campaign." Victory would be achieved by "out-organizing and out-hustling" the Democrats. This is the dominant view of Republican leaders in California today. Politics is a giant football game; victory belongs to the team that out-hustles the other side. Ideology is as irrelevant to them as it is to the Oakland Raiders. Those who believe that politics should serve principle are routinely denigrated as "purists" and "ideologues." The Republican party's crisis of leadership played out more dramatically at the convention on the fundamental question of bilingual education. The same party leaders who were completely stumped to define a key issue to take to the voters in 1998 were working overtime to kill a resolution endorsing the "English for the Children" initiative. "English for the Children" is an initiative that arose from the barrios of Los Angeles, where frustrated and angry Latino parents boycotted their local school. Their grievance? California public schools are denying their children English language instruction. Under the mandates of "bilingual education," Latino children, who comprise more than one fifth of California's public school enrollment, are placed in racially segregated classrooms and taught in their native language. The parents want the same thing that every immigrant group before them has wanted that their children grow up as Americans. They know that to succeed in America, their children must be able to speak English fluently and flawlessly. And they are outraged that the public school system is deliberately denying their children the tools to succeed. The Republican party is the only hope these parents have. Bilingual programs are a cash cow for the teachers' unions, and the teachers' unions are a cash cow for the Democratic party. (Bilingual teachers receive as much as $5,000 more per year in salary; more than a third of a billion dollars of state funds are spent on this program annually). What a tremendous opportunity for Republicans to take a principled stand to rescue this generation of children from the grips of the public school bureaucracy and return a fundamental decision for their future success to their parents. And yet, the Republican leadership was fervently opposed. The Assembly Republican Leader attacked the resolution in the press, as did other Republican legislators. Party officials tried to derail the resolution through a hand-picked committee of seven members appointed for the sole purpose of killing the measure. It was the Republican rank and file who overwhelmingly overruled the party's pusillanimous leaders and took a principled stand to support the initiative. The convention battle---and the awkward groping for an issue at the activists' meeting---shows the problem facing Republicans, not just in California but across the nation. The rank and file members of the Republican party join it because they believe in principles of greater liberty and less government. In the case of bilingual education, they want parents - and not the school bureaucracy -- to decide how their children will be educated. The current Republican leadership approaches these issues not as a matter of principle, but as a matter of gamesmanship. They feared that after the disastrous way party leaders comported themselves over Propositions 187 (denying benefits to illegal immigrants) and 209 (ending racial preferences in state law), party endorsement of the "English for the Children" initiative would be a "third strike" with Latino voters. Latino voters answered that question emphatically just two weeks later. On October 15 , the Los Angeles Times Poll was released. "Opponents of bilingual education enjoy overwhelming support in a brewing ballot fight that has sparked early skirmishing in the 1998 campaign, with strong backing among California voters of all races, ethnicities and political persuasions," said the Times. "Latino voters surveyed favored the initiative by a slightly higher margin---84% to 16%---than whites, at 80% to 18%." The Republican leaders simply don't understand that good policy makes good politics. They can't take principled stands because they lack the courage of conviction. Propositions 187 and 209 represented two of the loftiest of all principles in human civilization. At the core of Proposition 187 was what the ancient Romans viewed as one of the highest of human virtues: "civitas," from which we get the word, "citizenship." The foundation of Proposition 209 was the essence of the Declaration of Independence: equal justice under the law. The Republican leadership turned both of these campaigns into crass, racist, "political wedge" issues because they never grasped the principles involved. They couldn't appeal to the "better angels of our nature," as Lincoln once put it, because they couldn't see those angels. Just two weeks before, a majority of the Republican leadership in the Assembly and Senate capitulated on the "California Children's Health Plan," a Hillary Clinton-style menu of state-approved and state-paid health plans covering the children of nearly half the households in the state. The reasons stated in the caucus meeting have been repeated over and over as the party's leaders abandon high principle for gutter politics in the state legislature. "We will lose our marginal seats," and "The press will have a field day," are the two recycled excuses we hear again and again. "We'll look like we don't care about ... (fill in the cause du jour)." What do these "leaders" mean when they say Republicans will lose their elections if they stand on bedrock Republican principles? They mean that deep down inside, they believe those principles are immensely unpopular with voters, and to stray too close to them risks political annihilation. What do these "leaders" mean when they say, "The press will have a field day?" They mean that deep down inside, they believe Republican principles are indefensible in a public debate, and that they don't dare to provoke one. The national debate on universal health care offers a lesson. In 1993, Republican leaders conceded that "Hillary-Care" was a foregone conclusion. Phil Gramm stood alone and said that his constituents didn't want the federal government choosing their health plans. The debate that Gramm provoked stopped the Clinton administration cold and turned the Democrats out of office for the first time in fifty years. Ultimately, good policy makes good politics, because policy determines politics. But it takes leaders with the courage to take principled stands when they are controversial, secure in the knowledge that when the debate is over, a majority will be won over. This is, after all, how minorities become majorities. The Republican party had that kind of leadership during the Reagan years, before its affairs were taken over by the "kinder and gentler" crowd. What happened in California should give Republicans pause. In the 1980's, 63 percent of newly registered voters in California became Republicans; only 30 percent became Democrats. In the 1990's, only eleven percent of new voters have chosen the Republican party, a plunge that began with Bush's broken promise on taxes. These new voters are not flocking to the Democrats; indeed, new Democratic registration has dropped to 26 percent. The huge bulge is in "decline-to-state" and third party registrations. In the 1980's, just seven percent of new voters registered "decline-to-state" or with third parties. In the 1990's, 62 percent want nothing to do with either of the major parties. The Democrats are not gaining new adherents to the cause of big government; Republicans have lost those who believed in less government. And there's a reason: Republican leaders today either don't believe in those principles or lack the courage to stand by them. Having spent many years watching the decline and fall of Republican leadership in the state Assembly, I believe three forces are at work.
A second factor is the political equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages who fear their captors gradually acquire their captors' viewpoint. This, too, I have watched in our Republican caucus meetings, as Republican leaders fret about what retaliation the Democrats will mete out against pet district bills, office perquisites, or campaigns. But perhaps the most corroding influence is the seduction of power and what it does to warp integrity. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," warned Lord Acton. After "English for the Children" author Ron Unz was excoriated by caucus members when he came to plead for support for his initiative, several members complained that he had not been sufficiently deferential to such an august assemblage. "He shouldn't have interrupted me," sniffed one. "After all, I'm the Assemblyman." The caucus narrowly avoided voting formally to oppose the initiative. Ours is a two-party system, but it is no longer Republicans and Democrats O perhaps it never was. It is the party of liberty and the party of paternalism. Many of the Republican party's current leaders do not belong to the party of liberty. And many rank-and-file Democrats and most rank-and-file independents do not belong to the party of paternalism. The Republican party can be the party of liberty, but only if it has leaders whose courage comes from conviction, and not the latest editorial or blip in the California poll. Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech actually was delivered at the Republican State Convention in Springfield in 1858. His words are as much needed today as they were then: "Two years ago," he said, "The Republicans of this nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now---now---when that same enemy is wavering and dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail---if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes, delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come." It will be later, if the mistakes of the current generation of Republican leaders continue. |