A Party Gone Clubbin'

Several months ago, after the 2008 election, and amidst the mass "THE GOP IS DEAD, HOPELESS, OMG, OMG!!1!!" hysteria, I wrote that the Republican Party had one major flaw that it needed to fix: its inability to multi-task. In the interim time period, however, I have come to realize that there was another, equally important, point, that I seem to have inadvertently overlooked.

Before doing so, let me first note, for the umpteenth time, the Republican Party's remarkable ability to eat its own. Indeed, if the last 7 months have shown us anything, it is most certainly that no organization on earth knows how to self-destruct quite like the GOP. And this leads in nicely to the real point I'm trying to make today, which I will begin with the following question: have you noticed anything about the faces participating in all of these (self-destructive) discussions about the future of the GOP?

How about the fact that they're all old - and familiar.

Think about it. Who do you see on the talk shows and writing the columns about these things? Newt Gingrich. And Karl Rove. And Colin Powell. And Dick Cheney. And, seriously, how many times have you heard some 'analyst' introduced by the phrase "former (Insert former Republican President here) appointee..."? Are these the people who we should have leading the Republican Party into the future? The same people who've been leading it for the last 20 years? Sorry, but no matter how good or bad your message is, if you keep dragging the same old chumps out on stage to present it, there's only one word that can be used to describe it: stale.

And stale is not the kind of message that a party which just lost the youth vote by a 2 to 1 margin needs to be putting out there.

Of course, if it's not just the same old folks out presenting the message, it's the relatives of these folks. And if it's not those folks, well, then it's the same old 'experts' in newspaper columns and weekly magazines who you've been reading for years. In other words, it's a bunch of self-styled experts who don't really have any actual qualifications to make them any better arbiters of 'the direction of the Republican Party' than you or me.

Simply put, the GOP has a Good ol' Boy problem.

Indeed, whether it's the self-designated 'experts', the same 'prestigious' last-names, or the same, tired old faces of yesteryear, the fact remains that this continuing argument about what is wrong with the GOP, where it needs to go, who it needs to include, (etc., etc.); is all being hashed out by what more-or-less constitutes a Good ol' Boy club. Moreover, and unsurprisingly, while these folks spend a great deal of time fighting amongst themselves on the Sunday talk shows, they all do tend to agree on each others relative level of importance.

Now, the reason all of this matters is that the very idea of a GOP Good ol' Boys club is completely and utterly antithetical to the conservatism that (supposedly) remains the bedrock of the Republican Party. You see, Conservatives believe in earning what you have and keeping what you've earned - but Good ol' Boys don't earn things, they're given them.

Most importantly, however, the Good ol' Boys contradict the fundamental conservative belief in small government. You see, conservatives don't believe in small government because of some dogma we hold. Nor is it because we hate the inefficiency and bureaucratic red tape that comes with big government (although we do dislike these things). No, conservatives believe in small government because we understand, as per the famous axiom, that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In other words, we believe in limited government because we understand the abuses of power that are bound to happen without those limits. We believe in the inherent fallibility of man, which is why we believe it foolish to trust him with something as dangerous as power. It is from this rudimentary conception of man and government that we derive a belief in things like checks and balances, limited government, (small R) republican government, and Federalism.

The Good ol' Boy system is inherently at odds with these ideas, because a Good ol' Boy system is fundamentally about collecting and retaining power, not limiting it. Furthermore, having such a system makes it more difficult for the Republican Party to get out its limited government message; because, simply put, it's hard to take the Party's 'small government' rhetoric seriously when it both fails to stand up for small government and is represented by a group of folks whose organizational principle contradicts the fundamentals of that idea.

Here, of course, is where the Sarah Palins and Bobby Jindals of the conservative movement come in. They are the ones who will rescue the GOP - not Colin Powell, or even (much as I love him) Rush Limbaugh, for that matter. These new faces are the ones who are successfully putting conservative principles into action, instead of just squabbling about them.

It's Tim Pawlenty using a unique political maneuver to not only prevent the Minnesota state legislature from raising taxes, but also get the spending cuts he needs to balance his state's budget. It's Sarah Palin significantly reducing Alaska's operating budget in each of her first 3 years in office. Or Bobby Jindal working for ethics reform in Louisiana, of all places.

That is how the Republican Party returns to power: by looking to its young faces and returning to its bedrock principles.

Of course, if you're not in the Good ol' Boys club, you probably didn't need me to tell you that, anyways.