GOP Faces Internal Debates in 2010
GOP Faces Internal Debates in 2010
by Edward Fitzpatrick, The Providence Journal
Republicans will need to arrive at some major resolutions early in this New Year.
The Rhode Island GOP will be diving back into a debate about its party platform while trying to find a candidate for governor. And national Republican leaders will be deciding whether to act on a proposed resolution that would deny party financing to candidates who buck the party’s stance on at least three items from a 10-point checklist.
Republican National Committee Vice Chairman James Bopp Jr. came up with the 10-point test, telling The Washington Post, “I think we have a very urgent task as Republicans and that is to reclaim our conservative bona fides.”
“All we’re requiring is that somebody agree with us most of the time,” Bopp said, calling RNC support for candidates such as former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee “very damaging to the party” because they “ended up either leaving the party or supporting the Democrat.” (Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent, ended up supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and is now running for governor.)
Bopp’s proposed “Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates” cites former President Ronald Reagan’s axiom that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.
Some Republicans reject the notion of a litmus test. For example, former U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who served as National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, told Politico, “We’re becoming a church that would rather chase away heretics than welcome converts and that’s no way to become a major party. This makes no sense for those of us who are interested in winning elections.”
And I’m reminded of a documentary that debuted at the Rhode Island International Film Festival in August. HouseQuake documented the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House in the 2006 midterm elections, showing that Democrats ran candidates with conservative views on issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.
In the film, Rahm Emanuel, who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 and is now President Obama’s chief of staff, said he didn’t care about ideology — he only cared about picking up 15 House seats.
Recent legislative battles have highlighted the difficulties Democrats can face when their ranks include a range of viewpoints. But Democrats are now in power, and that matters. For example, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., replaced Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., as chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, signaling a much different approach to global warming.
So with the 2010 elections looming, shouldn’t Republicans be expanding the size of their tent?
Raymond T. McKay — president of the Rhode Island Republican Assembly, an affiliate of [the National Federation of Republican Assemblies] a national group billed as “the Republican wing of the Republican Party” — said the big-tent philosophy has not helped Republicans in the Northeast. “We’ve been using that philosophy for three or four decades now, and where has it gotten us?” he said.
McKay said the GOP will succeed if it is clear about the principles it stands for and does not waste money and energy on candidates such as Chafee.
He noted Reagan won every state except Minnesota in 1984, and McKay said that shows “someone unabashed in his conservative beliefs” can win, even in a blue state such as Rhode Island. “It shows you can win if you are a principled individual and willing to expound on those principles,” he said.
When asked about Bopp’s proposed 10-point test, McKay said, “That’s probably not a bad idea” given what just happened in a special election for a U.S. House seat in upstate New York. He said the National Republican Congressional Committee wasted $900,000 on Republican Dede Scozzafava, who withdrew from the race and backed a Democrat, who beat a Conservative Party candidate.
On Dec. 8, the Rhode Island GOP’s central committee voted to send a platform proposal back to its platform committee for a rewrite. The proposal had staked out positions on jobs and state spending but said that in “the longstanding tradition of New England Republicans,” the state party respects “the right of all of our candidates to hold and express their own considered views on social issues.”
McKay, a member of the GOP platform committee, argued that the platform should take a stand on social issues. He said the proposal could just as easily have been presented by the new Moderate Party of Rhode Island, which focuses on issues such as the economy while avoiding issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration. (By the way, McKay suspects Chafee will run for governor as a Moderate.)
McKay agreed the economy will be a big issue in the 2010 elections but predicted issues such as same-sex marriage will also be a factor in Rhode Island.
Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, a moderate Republican, praised the original platform proposal as “very inclusive,” saying it would have “allowed us to market ourselves to people who might not normally consider themselves Republicans.”
(By the way, in the small world that is Rhode Island, McKay is Warwick’s computer network manager, so that makes Avedisian his boss.)
Avedisian said social issues are not the most pressing concern right now. With the state unemployment rate at 12.7 percent, Rhode Islanders want to hear about “building jobs here in Rhode Island and building an economy that will encourage people to stay here after college,” he said.
Avedisian said, “It’s great to say we are going to stand on philosophical issues, but if you can’t win elections, you can’t govern. I thought the goal of a party was to try to govern.”
He said that in the 1980s, the state GOP elected the likes of U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee, U.S. Rep. Ronald K. Machtley, U.S. Rep. Claudine Schneider, Attorney General Arlene Violet and Senate Minority Leader Lila Sapinsley. While they didn’t agree on every issue, they worked as a team to govern, he said. But now, he said, “We don’t have that notion of a team that wants to govern together.”
Avedisian said some Republicans wanted to kick him out of the party for saying he’d support Lincoln Chafee in the governor’s race. (Avedisian was a page for the late Sen. John Chafee, and Lincoln Chafee is a former Warwick mayor.)
When asked about Bopp’s proposed 10-point test, Avedisian said, “When you start doing things like that you end up with a closed, small group of people. That’s when you start to see a party falling apart because you’re not allowing any new ideas to come into the party.”
Both McKay and Avedisian make some good points. But in 2010, I think most voters will use a litmus test that involves one issue: the economy. And I can’t argue with U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a big-tent advocate who told Politico that while some countries have many political parties, we have two major parties and “when you get down to 300 million people divided by two, you have a lot of range of attitudes and views.”
Editor's Note: We have reprinted Edward Fitzpatrick's "GOP Faces Internal Debates in 2010" from Projo.com in full here. We encourage you to visit the original.
If you would like to join the fight for True Conservative Values in Rhode Island, contact the Rhode Island Republican Assembly at http://www.ri-ra.org.
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