Watching the GOP go Down in Flames

I had a hunch while watching John McCain's concession speech on election night that the near future of the GOP would be grim. McCain's graceful pleas that we get over our partisan divide and work together were met, from his own crowd, with boos.

The hard right's behavior over the subsequent 6 months have been akin to watching angry monkeys fling their own excrement all over their cage. Rush Limbaugh has taken center stage, and GOP politicians and leaders have bowed to kiss his ring. The right-wing blogosphere has gone berzerk, telling every moderate from Arlen Specter to Ross Douthat to David Frum to hit the road, because the party needs purity and the fewer impure members the better.

This is unfortunate because the Obama administration and the Dem congress have, predictably, already acted like big government liberals instead of common sense centrists. The out of control spending and debt is, for me, intolerable. The identity politics of the Sotomayor pick are regretable, though unlike the rabid right I'm willing to accept that a President has the right to pick who he or she sees fit and Ms. Sotomayor is qualified.

This overreach by the Dems could be met in '10 or '12 with a consistent, and in my mind conservative message: one that promotes, above all, competence. I think a campaign centered around competence needs to be the central message of the new GOP. After eight years of Bush and 6 years of an incompetent congressional majority, the GOP has little credibility on competence. But then it doesn't have any credibility on anything else, either.

I think Americans right now are looking for pragmatic, competent leadership. Unfortunately, the rabid right is practically anti-competence along with being anti-everything else. I am for limiting government, however given the economic uncertainty (which includes health care) what the GOP needs to do now is explain that it has learned its lesson and that, if given another chance, it will competently and smartly reduce the uncertainty of the current economic turmoil. Save the anti-government, uber-capitalist (and, in the end, politically infeasible) rhetoric for better times. Instead, some ideas include:

1. Push private-public partnerships that can ease the uncertainty in a fiscally responsible manner.
2. Push for the elimination of programs that operate incompetently (such as farm subsidies, if they can ever wean themselves off the farm lobby) to help reduce the debt.
3. Advocate for scientific research we do approve of, and ignore the controversy over stem cell research.
4. Advocate for a new tax code that people can actually understand, that is economically efficient, morally fair, and that provides incentives for innovation and job creation. Drop the anti-tax rhetoric.

Finally please, please drop the culture war. This, I realize, is highly unlikely, but stop talking about abortion. Start talking up adoption and comprehensive (competent) sex education such as they have in Europe, where STD and abortion rates are far lower than ours. Drop opposition to gay marriage, let it happen organically because it's the right thing to do and because it's going to happen anyway.

A socially tolerant, fiscally conservative and above all COMPETENT style of governmental leadership, I think, would win elections big time and do it for a long time. The ideal candidate? The Republican that Republicans don't seem to want anymore: Colin Powell.