Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990 TAG: 9007230288
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Teeter said the nation is on the verge of a revival of social activism that will parallel the idealism of the 1930s and 1960s. Ignoring the fact that Republicans have been winning the White House and the public-policy battles on a platform of traditional values and economic growth, Teeter believes that if Republicans want to keep winning, they have to become "me too" Democrats. The GOP, in his view, must "adapt" conservative principles to resemble the Democrats' principles on such issues as the environment, day care and education.
Then there's the media's favorite Republican, Kevin Phillips, favored, apparently, because he sounds so much like a Democrat.
Phillips charged that Republicans are "in trouble" because "they tried to take care of a small constituency and lost the whole country." If the victories of the 1980s, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, along with unprecedented prosperity at home, are examples of "losing the whole country," most Republicans and most Americans would be happy to see more "defeats" like these.
It was Phillips who wrote 21 years ago in his book "The Emerging Republican Majority" that Republicans could win elections by forgetting the Northeast and the philosophy of New Deal Democrats, and by concentrating on "Heartland" America and the South, where shifting population and sentiments would create Republicans out of disillusioned Democrats.
The population continues to shift; the conservative Democrats are more disillusioned than ever about their party. But instead of moving in for the kill, the victors seem to be drawing up their own terms of surrender to hand to the vanquished.
As former Reagan domestic policy chief Gary Bauer notes, "We've had 10 years that should tell the Republican Party how to win elections. You do that by standing for something such as traditional values, coupled with economic growth. If the party persists in taking advice from people like Teeter, they'll not only again become a minority party, but they'll richly deserve it."
At least one recent poll taken since President Bush said new taxes might be on the horizon showed that some Democrats who had supported the president are beginning to back away. They are blue-collar, conservative Democrats, the very people that Reagan and Bush won in the 1980s by taking principled positions. If the positions of Republicans like Teeter, Phillips and Meyer are correct, support for the GOP among Democrats ought to be going up, not declining.
It is increasingly apparent that if the hard-won victories of the Reagan years are not to be squandered, there needs to be a credible challenge to President Bush from the right in 1992.
The goal would not necessarily be to deny him renomination. It might serve its purpose if it pulled him back in the direction of more conservative policies.
There is something worse than losing elections while standing on principle. It is losing respect. The Republican Party is in danger of losing respect, which will guarantee it loses elections.
At the very time when the GOP should be crowing over its Cold War victories and taking credit for the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, it is negotiating its own demise.
Republicans are beginning to replace conviction with the cult of tolerance, a philosophy that will seal their political doom. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, "In the world, it is called tolerance, but in Hell it is called despair. The sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, enjoys nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."
This is the Republican Party of Teeter, Phillips and Meyer. It is not the victorious Republican Party of the recent past, but, sadly, it may be the emerging Republican Party of the future. Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB