Posted by
Jim Hunt on Wednesday, January 07, 2009 8:00:00 AM
As the dust from the recent election is finally beginning to settle, Republicans are again faced with the question “what went wrong?” There has been a myriad of answers offered but I haven’t heard yet the one I think this correct.
George W. Bush entered office with the goal and the track record of being the great unifier: The President who could end all the partisan bickering and bring us all together under the banner of “compassionate conservatism”. He learned too late that you can’t please all the people all the time. His biggest failure was trying to do just that.
One of his earliest acts was to join with Liberal icon Ted Kennedy to create the No Child Left Behind program. He again crossed the aisle to support the huge expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. But when President Bush put forth programs like his tax cuts, where were his Democrat friends then? Did they reciprocate? No, they attacked. They attacked not only his proposals, but the very bills they had worked with him on like No Child Left Behind.
In trying to avoid conflict at home and to be “bipartisan” President Bush never vetoed a bill in his first several years in office. What did he accomplish? Absolutely nothing he expected. Conservatives were angry because he would not throttle spending. Democrats saw him as domestically weak and they mocked him and laughed at his pathetic attempts to please everyone. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the country was in a state of war, the economy was ok, and John Kerry was such a pathetic candidate, I think Bush would have lost in ’04.
So what happened in ’08? More of the same. The Republicans named a candidate who tried to please everyone. His “maverick” status was given to him by the press who liked him for joining Democrats opposing conservative positions on many issues, but didn’t like him enough to keep them from throwing him under the bus when the “Messiah” came along.
Ronald Reagan only once gave in to the temptation to be “bipartisan” and he regretted it immensely and in fact his popularity rating reached its nadir (the lowest point for those of you from Rio Linda) soon thereafter.
We have to be able to work with the Democrats when possible, but we cannot and must not give up our principles to do so. Republicans who stand firm like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1988 win elections. Republicans who try to be “moderate” or “bipartisan” like George H.W. Bush in 1992 and John McCain / George W. Bush in 2008 come out on the short end of the elections.
Partisanship has been part of this country from its beginning. Being principled is not an evil thing, on either side of the political spectrum (cf. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sen. Paul Tsongas, Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman). Trying to please all the people all of the time, has unfortunate (even if unintentional) results.
God Bless America