Next Right

Two days ago, Jon Henke posed the question, "What policy should Republicans be advocating and pursuing to limit government and regain popular support?"

With Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress proposing new bailouts and a significant amount of additional government spending to create jobs and restore the economy, Republicans have a phenomenal chance to reinforce our earnest belief in limited government.  I propose a simple policy that will allow us to both "limit government and regain popular support": Republicans must fight Democratic efforts to build a nanny state to solve the economic woes. Instead, our policy should be offering solutions to revive the economy that are rooted in free market principles.

Indeed, Thomas Sowell points out that government intervention may actually be harmful to the economy:

Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

I recently had a unique chance to discuss the economy with renowned economist and monetary policy expert Dr. Allan Meltzer (which you can read at length here).  Meltzer and other leading economists have observed that the big problem plaguing the economy is the housing crisis, and that the government's efforts to breathe life into the economy have neglected this issue.  Meltzer proposes a free market solution to the housing crisis that could be immensely effective as a step toward getting the economy back on track:

To address the housing problem, Congress and the administration should take actions that increase the current demand for housing. For a limited time, say up to the end of 2009, allow buyers to use the value of their down-payment (or some part of it) as a tax deduction. Or, reduce the tax rate for qualified buyers who purchase a house between now and January 2010. Or do both. Give the benefit to all home buyers, including those buying a second or third house.

The bottom line is that the battle of free markets versus government control is one Republicans can – and should – win.  Dr. Meltzer noted that he often says, "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin."  Yes, the free market will inevitably fail on occasion – and Republicans, as champions of capitalism, must pursue a policy that ensures that the free market is given the chance to fix itself as it has many times before.  If Republicans can identify innovative free market solutions to the economic woes like the proposals outlined by Dr. Meltzer, we can help ensure limited government while making real progress toward economic recovery.

Gary Andres makes a very important point about the Left's new infrastructure in a recent Washington Times article.  The whole thing is very worth reading, but I want to focus on the infrastructure.

Democrats regularly benefit from well-organized, well-financed and effective outside liberal advocacy groups who relentlessly investigate, attack and criticize Republicans. The GOP lacks this kind of advocacy infrastructure.

Glenn Reynolds calls this sort of thing "battlespace preparation".  It's an appropriate term.

These outside groups have long existed, but the rise of the new media has accelerated the Left's political machine.  The organic elements, such as Moveon.org, Daily Kos, MyDD, Atrios, Talking Points Memo, etc, arose between 1998-2003, and they have been reinforced since then by very savvy, cultivated elements, such as the Center for American Progress, Media Matters, the Center for Independent Media and many more. 

The Left has taken their existing coalition and grassroots-based infrastructure, and combined it with this new internet-based Progressive Infrastructure to move messaging, mobilization and money into more effective channels.  They have seen three benefits from this.

• Better information and strategy coordination among coalition groups and the broader movement
• New channels for signaling and mobilizing the activist base
• Better targeting and influence of the media

Gary Andres continues...

Liberal activists have grown increasingly restive and well-organized over the past 15 years. Their grievances mounted when Republican political power grew in Washington between 1995 and 2006. Impeachment, the disputed 2000 election and the Iraq war all have helped focus liberal anger like a laser. [...]

[The Right has] also suffered over the past decade because they lacked a coherent narrative about what they would do with government once they controlled it - or at least a vision that could sustain a majority of American public opinion support. They needed new ideas and communications channels for these policies. Liberals are working on such a comprehensive model. [...]

[The Right] will never possess liberals' passion for the prize. But they need to build new advocacy institutions simply to fight back against the increasingly sophisticated and effective liberal infrastructure. If they don't, the "just leave me alone" conservatives will get some unwelcome company, overrun by the insurgent liberals at the gate.

This cannot be emphasized enough.  The Right is not just being beat at the polls.  That pendulum will swing back and forth.  The Right is being beat at the communications game.   You cannot lose the communications game and expect the pendulum to swing back in your direction.  It may swing away from the Left again, but it will not swing back to a "limited government, leave-us-alone" Right unless the Right can identify its unifying grievance, and communicate a clear, coherent, consistent and compelling narrative - an alternative vision of government to the one currently being sold.  

New distribution channels do not simply allow us to communicate "more"; they will allow us to move messaging, money and mobilization outside of the traditional establishment channels - from the entrenched bureaucracy of the Right, to a new, more vigorous and relevant "leave us alone" movement.

Now don't get me wrong, I really love all this gibberish about who is going to pick who as their Vice-President. But I would hope at least a few posters here would be interested in laying the foundation the Right must take after the election.  From the content I see on this forum so far, there is going to be precious little discussion after the election. In fact, I fully expect this forum and many other fora to dry up and blow away after the election. 

ex animo

davidfarrar

I spoke to Ed Cone, of CIO Insight, last week to discuss online politics, branding and the Next Right.

CIOI: What happened to the Right that makes a site like yours necessary?

Henke: People on the Left would like to believe that the philosophy has failed. People on the Right would like to believe the people have failed, if we just elect better people we'll be fine. I think both of those are off the mark. Fundamentally what failed was the movement itself. We erected a movement based on two ideas: elect Republicans, to limit government. They elected Republicans, and then they didn't have a politically viable way to actually limit government, and so they settled for the first -- and so instead of a vast right wing conspiracy we had a half-vast right wing conspiracy.

What needs to be fixed is the movement needs to organize itself to actually accomplish the second part of the goal. Just electing Republicans is not enough, what you get is a corrupt Republican Party that is not an effective vehicle for the actual goals of the movement.  [...]

CIOI: You guys are playing catch-up. How did liberals take the lead online?

Henke: The web is conducive to insurgency movements. That's been the Democrats for the last eight years. They were out of power and needed different tools. Progressives perceived that the political culture had shifted, but the Democratic Party did not shift with it, so they began telling a story about a different vision of the Democratic Party and the political system. They made fundamental criticisms of both parties and the media, and rallied a lot of people to them. They erected a very effective mechanism for bringing the party in their direction, they created a gravitational pull so the political leaders and the money people had to come to them. That has fundamentally reshaped the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was perceived by most in its base as being a more effective machine.

CIOI: So there's no ideological basis for the gap?

Henke: People forget that the Right was ahead online in the '90s. Sites like NewsMax, Drudge Report, and World Net Daily were very successful. They still have large audiences, but never really made the transition to Web 2.0. They're one-way: we present the news, you read it, end of transaction. The Right does a lot of things well online, like microtargeting of voters, things the Left is just doing now. That the Left is catching up in those areas is a major accomplishment, and the Right is going to have to think about what the Left does well: mobilizing communities around specific ideas, and messaging to the media and the base.

More at the link.