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Of big tents and little people—Part II

In my last post I suggested that the Republican Party, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, had sent a confusing message about what it stood for and where it could tolerate disagreement. How could it become clearer?

I think there are three basic things that unify most Republicans, but which still leave a lot of room for debate—more, I think, than in the other Party. I’ll consider these in turn.

1. The preeminence of the private sector: Nearly all Republicans believe that the private sector (a.k.a. free market) is historically the most important engine of economic growth and is likely to remain so in the future. That leaves a lot of room for disagreement over the right level of taxes and regulation, not to mention more specific issues like energy, education, and the environment, all of which involve persuasive evidence of market failure. But you won’t find many Republicans who think higher taxes or regulation are a good thing in principle, or that the answer to, say, education is to block competition and leave it to the teachers’ union. In other words, they may come up with different answers, but the question they will ask—is this a legitimate area for Government activity, and is there a way to resolve it that involves more rather than less respect for private initiative?—is going to be fairly consistent, and different from that of their rivals.

2. The continuing relevance of traditional values: Almost all Republicans, along with some but hardly all Democrats, believe that religious and other traditional values are a positive rather than a negative force. They may disagree on abortion, gay marriage or stem cell research. But almost none of them will say that the traditional religious objections to these practices are simply irrelevant, or that “science” or “rationality” should invariably triumph over supposedly irrational (read: moral) factors. This is, again, a significant difference from the Democratic mainstream, and one which shows no signs of shrinking soon.

3. The historical mission of the United States–Nearly all Republicans, together with some (but increasingly few) Democrats, believe that the United States is on balance a force for good rather than evil in the world, and that the world is generally speaking a better place when we are stronger and a worse place when we are not. As in the previous cases, this leaves plenty of room for debate on Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America and just about anywhere else. But it’s hard to imagine a Republican President apologizing to Iran or Cuba for our foreign policy, or a Republican Congress acting as if the response to terrorism were a greater danger than the terrorism itself. Once again, the outcomes may vary, but the fundamental approach is coherent and sensible.

Where particular people fall on this spectrum can be a difficult question. I would have no trouble calling Tom Ridge or Christie Whitman Republicans, because I think they pass all three tests pretty easily, even though their application of these principles varies from that of other politicians. I think Arlen Specter, even before this week, would have been a tougher fit, since I think he is wobbly on the first principle and his behavior with respect to the second seems pretty much indistinguishable from most Democrats. Foreign policy might be a closer call. But the point is less to “score” individual candidates than to begin to articulate a core ideology which is shared by all or most people and within which vigorous debates on individual issues can be conducted.

I’ll be returning to these themes and their applications in my future posts.

May 4, 2009 at 9:28 am

--Michael Livingston

Tags: Arlen Specter, Christie Whitman, Republican Party, Tom Ridge

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