Jon is right. The addition of some $300 billion in temporary tax cuts to the massive $775 billion Obama stimulus is a risk politically and Bushonomics (e.g. tax-cut-and-spend) on steroids policywise.

What's the main reason Republicans are dispirited right now? Because the Republican Party no longer represented less spending and limited government. What do we propose to do to fix it? Why... double down on this strategy by throwing in with the biggest spending bill in U.S. history if does enough tax cutting! As Jon infers, if the GOP accepts massive stimulus spending of any kind, it will sever the GOP from its base for years, and keep Republicans from rallying around a unifying limited government message in 2010. Instead of a peaceful 1994-style revolution, this will likely trigger a bloody Goldwater-style takeover of the GOP from the outside which may take 2 or 3 presidential cycles to fully play out. Ugly, but it may turn out, necessary.

There is broad consensus in the country right now that we need to "do something" about the economy. The economy will probably recover on its own by early 2010, but we must nonetheless "do something." Republicans should accept this fact and move on.

But there are different ways to "do something." A stimulus primarily composed of permanent tax cuts is a perfectly legitimate and defensive version of "doing something" both from a policy and public opinion perspective -- one that we can go to the country with and not appear like Hooverites or know-nothings. For one thing, past (successful) stimuli have been composed primarily of tax relief. Obama's own economist says the economic multiplier effect from tax relief is greater than than the general consensus of the multiplier from spending (allowing the GOP to paint larding up the bill with spending as primarily ideologically -- not economically -- driven). The American people are not economists, and likely have no inherent preference between tax cuts and spending increases so long as the plan is of a certain magnitude. So, let's educate them.

Right now, I yearn for the legislative acumen -- and in this case, the spine -- of Bob Dole, who rallied even John Chafee -- Lincoln's father -- to oppose the 1993 Clinton stimulus. With the GOP officially reaching rock bottom today, the Republican leadership in Congress has to recognize that number one political priority is not to give voters warm and fuzzies by angling into photo ops with Obama. Yes, he's popular, but his popularity can only redound to the benefit of one party, and that's not Republicans. For a cautionary tale on what happens when a party tries this strategy, see the 2002 midterm elections.

The GOP's number one priority politically is to set into motion a series of events that will make Obama look more ineffective, partisan, and unpopular than he is today. Playing hard-to-get on the stimulus is one way to do it. And we need to set the stage for a unified and effective Republican opposition that will actually fight from top to bottom. Even if Democrats did some truly stupid things these last two years, it was always impossible to rally grassroots Republicans in opposition because the party had zero credibility. Closing that credibility gap -- not beating Obama in popularity contest right now -- must be job one in order to rebuild the GOP. Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole (!) did it, and Boehner and McConnell must do the same. Not neutering our principles in search of short-term headlines would be a good start. 

Barack Obama appears to be making significant overtures to cultivate Republican support for his fiscal stimulus plan with massive tax cuts (albeit short-term tax shifts rather than structural changes or actual cuts).  The Leftroots (and Paul Krugman) are fairly upset about this.  Kevin Drum says this attempt to win bipartisan support (rather than just the few Republican votes he absolutely needs to secure passage) is a bad idea, because Obama is making concessions he doesn't have to make and diluting Democratic policy.

The netroots is understandably anxious to enact all of their favorite policies - they earned political capital in the campaign and they intend to spend it, they'll argue without a trace of irony - but that's what President Clinton did in 93-94, right before he learned the difference between stated preference (nice things are nice!) and revealed preference (wait, you want to do what to me?).  The Democrats tried to run out of the gate and discovered too late that they'd left a lot of people behind.  In 1994, those people voted.

Obama's strategy is a lot more sophisticated than that.

Here's the calculation on fiscal stimulus: If Obama gets his way, he's looking at massive, trillion dollars deficits, and much more government intervention in the economy.  The public may tolerate this due to fears about economic crisis, but if it works out well and the US gets a relatively soft landing from the recession, then the costs will still be visible (deficit, intervention), but the benefits will be intangible (the crisis that didn't come). 

What's more, the Democrats have only one possible solution to the massive deficits coming down the pike: increase taxes.  (Object lesson: "We can spend more of your money" is the Democrats solution to everything)

If Obama passes the perfect progressive stimulus bill without much Republican help, he owns the spending, the deficits, the tax hikes and all of the pain that comes with it.  Republicans will be happy to run against those problems in 2010 and 2012.

But if Obama buys significant Republican support for his bill, Republicans will own the deficits, tax hikes and intervention, as well.  The stimulus bill will be for Republicans what the Iraq war was for Democrats - a policy they first supported, then regretted, then tripped over themselves to explain.  The "they were for it before they were against it" ads would be inevitable and devastating.

Republicans are in a difficult situation here. 

• If they oppose the bill and it fails, they will be blamed (fairly or not) for any economic problems.
• If they support the bill and it passes, they will share the blame for the enormous costs it will entail.
• If they oppose the bill and it passes, the lack of policy leverage would leave the bill much worse than if they had forced potentially valuable compromises (e.g., sunset provisions and exit strategies).

Obama doesn't want bipartisan support, so much as he wants political immunization.  In this case, unity and bipartisanship = lashing the Republicans to the mast of Government.

There aren't many good solutions here, but one thing seems likely: as with the Democrats and the Iraq war, the future leaders of the Republican Party will probably come from among the politicians who can say "I told you so" when they run because they said "no" now.

Are we clear on the role of the RNC Chairman or does it need to be better defined? 

As a co-founder of Rebuild the Party, I’m staying neutral in the RNC Chairman race (at least for now); yet, I’m heavily invested in the process and ensuring we elect the best man for the job. 

I’m encouraged that the race for Chairman, hopefully in small part due to our efforts at Rebuild, has morphed into a more open process.  For a job as important as RNC Chairman, candidates should endure at least as stringent a job interview process as candidates for office.  In years when our Party holds the White House, we don’t have such a luxury.  In years when we get crushed, like we have the last two cycles, we do have that luxury.

Our Party is in crisis.  Let’s resort back to our Crisis Management 101 books.  Crisis is defined as a “turning point” and “danger and opportunity.”  At this turning point, we have a tremendous opportunity to leverage our best talent to revive the Party. 

RNC voting members have power, this time around, to choose who our fearless leader will be.  We all have an opportunity to use our voices, and any communication tool at our disposal, to influence the choice of the voting members.

The process for picking an RNC Chairman is crucial.  If we can agree that the RNC Chairman’s race is a job interview, then we should have a specific job description, at least as it fits each cycle, understanding that the job of Chairman with a Republican president differs from the job when there is not.  From what I can see, the only official job description of the RNC Chairman is “CEO” of the Republican National Committee.

Similar to the Vice Presidency, the RNC Chairman’s role is amorphous, so I seek to define it for the upcoming term:

1. Director of Operations at the Republican National Committee, providing guidance and leadership on message, fundraising and political strategy for the Republican Party.

2. Chief messenger of the Party, communicating the Party’s positions, ideas and opinions on current events through all media.

3. Chief fundraiser of the Party, making themselves available to headline Republican events across the country to raise money for the RNC and local Party organizations.

4. Director of Party Relationships, building and maintaining strong relationships with State Party leaders, allied 3rd party groups, issue groups, demographic groups and niche “wing of the party” groups.

What is not included in the job description as Kathryn Jean Lopez touches on (and I’ve been musing about):

1. Chief Policy Advisor for the Republican Party

2. Chief Agenda Setter for the Republican Party

This is not to say that showing leadership on issues, and robust knowledge on tax, energy, health care, and [name that issue] policy, is not a plus.  It is.  But I think we need to take care to frame the RNC Chairman’s job for what it should be, unless I’m totally off base and we expect a Chairman to be what we want in a 2012 presidential candidate.

I’m interested in your thoughts.  

Promoted. I don't think we disagree here. The RNC's job is to win elections... be they in 2010, 2012, 2016 and beyond. That will require long-term party building. The difference is between people who think the RNC is an electoral / party-building institution vs. those who think it should be a policy institution. -Patrick

Patrick Ruffini, whom I generally respect, made a statement in his post regarding questions for candidates for RNC Chairman that cries out for full discussion.  According to Patrick:

The RNC's job is to win elections -- period.

That viewpoint is at the heart of our current problems.  There are three national Republican Committees (RNC, NRCC and RSC) precisely to allow the NRCC and the RSC to focus on winning elections while the RNC takes the more long term view of how to build and maintain the party on the national level and assist the state and county parties to do the same within their jurisdictions.  Unfortunately, every time we have a Republcian in the White House, they quickly install an RNC chairman who morphs the organization into the reelection arm of the administration during the first term and a backwater during the second. 

One of the very few silver linings in November's results is that we now have the opportunity to return the RNC to its proper role as the national committee with the broadest range of interests and the only one that can afford to look beyond the next election.

I would suggest looking to Bill Brock as the standard for what an RNC chairman should be.  He came in after the very acrimoneous 1976 elections, helped to heal a badly divided party, focused the RNC staff on maximizing new technology, stregnthend the auxillary organizations (particularly the College Republicans),  and did more to assist state and local party organizations than any RNC chairman before or since.

Yes, he paid close attention to winning elections; but he paid closer attention to building bridges between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan Republicans.  He insisted that every group or organization willing to support Republican Candidates in the general election should have a voice during primaries and caucuses.  All should be heard, none should have a veto and intraparty divisions should be resolved amicably and quickly to ensure party unity in November.

People tend to forget the Rebulican party almost came to an end after 1976.  We had just come through Watergate, a divisive contested Presidnential nomination and a general election where many people believed Reagan declined to support Ford in order to bolster his own chances for 1980.  The level of disgust, disapointment and despair among party supporters exceeded even what we see today.  As a Pennsylvania College Rpeublican leader, I witnessed more than one outright fist fight between Ford and Reagan supporters.  Many of our CR members seriously questioned whether they would be more comfortable supporting conservative Democrats than staying with the Republicans.  More than a few of them left the Republican party and never came back.

Bill Brock became RNC chairman in the midst of all this and worked a quiet miracle of party reunification.  History may have given Reagan credit for restoring the Republicans to the White House with his Reagan Democrats; but the only reasont there was a Republican party left to restore was because Bill Brock took a long term view of party building and did the hard work to make it happen.  We need an RNC chairman today who will do the same.

Tomorrow is the RNC candidates debate hosted by ATR. You can submit your question for the candidates and vote here.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ron Paul activists have voted up the majority of questions con the site. Most of these questions deal not with the vital and necessary goal of getting more Republicans who supported Ron Paul involved in the process, but on policy questions like eliminating the Federal Reserve, Austrian economics, the Fair Tax and the 2nd Amendment that the RNC Chairman has absolutely no jurisdiction over.

Whether it's Ron Paul Republicans or movement conservatives or moderates, my message to all is one and the same: the RNC is not a policymaking body -- nor should it be. It cannot make Republicans in Congress spend less, worthy a goal as that might be. The RNC's job is to win elections -- period. That means the RNC is made up of good political people -- not policy wonks -- who with all due respect, you wouldn't want making policy.

All the candidates for RNC Chairman are good conservatives. RNC members should choose the one who will win elections. As I've written over the last few days, technology, strategy, and tactics are not the only things -- and success in these areas is inextricably linked to having a Republican message "we can believe in."

That said, technology, strategy, and tactics ARE an outsized concern of anyone leading a political committee like the RNC, and so it's important we probe the candidates on these matters. If you want to ask the powers-that-be about what the GOP's philosophy should be, ask John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican governors.

Below the fold are the top 10 questions that are relevant to the job of RNC Chairman, including some Ron Paul questions and a question about the authenticity of our small government message. I will be voting all of these up and encourage you to do the same, regardless of whether you agree with the specific angle the questioner is taking. I will also be exercising my right to vote down any questions that are not relevant to the job of RNC Chairman, ensuring a 2 vote swing from irrelevant to relevant questions. I went through every question for about 10 pages to generate this list.

Promoted. My basic philosophy on a good leader: A's hire A's, B's hire C's. Let's hope that the next RNC Chairman is an A that can find A's within CR's and YR's to work for (and provide innovation for) campaigns and parties around the country. -Matt Moon

College Students to the RNC: We Care, Use Us!


by James Barnes and Brandon Hines, The George Washington University College Republicans

Fellow Republicans:  As we enter a fresh new year, it's easy to be discouraged by the battle ahead.  The Obama Administration promises to pursue an agenda of socialist redistribution.  On top of this, the 111th Congress has just convened, and it's the most liberal in our nation's history. Together, this double-headed monster threatens to grow another in the form of a new judiciary.

Sitting in a position we have long been removed from, our first step has been to question what got us here.  We've started to regroup, on Twitter, on the web, and soon by reconsidering who should lead the RNC into 2010 and beyond.  And, through these exercises, we've come up with some basic answers to the question of what got us in trouble.  We've blamed it on our grassroots, our fundraising, our web presence, our message, and a slew of other equally valid reasons, which we promise to overcome in the next election cycle.  We hope to argue, however, that many of these issues boil down to one oft-overlooked component: a focus on engaging and activating the 18-24 demographic —College Republicans. 

As the future of our party and, in many cases, the most passionate advocates for our platform, it is important that the RNC not only reach out and speak the language that we speak and communicate the way that we communicate, but that it engage and empower the youth of the party in helping to win elections. In this vein, the party already has a virtual army of well informed and connected potential activists, who, in many cases, simply haven't been asked to volunteer the resource they have the most of: their time. Though we lack the ability to donate large sums of cash, or the experience needed to run campaigns, we make up for this with cheap labor and an uncanny, even absurd, ability to remain in instantaneous contact with our peers and advocate for what we believe in. It is time for these and other potential resources to stop being overlooked, and for the RNC to directly engage the future of the party.

Consider this: during our organization's deployment by the RNC this year in Ohio, a state never lost by a Republican president, we never met a single student from an Ohio college.  Elsewhere, in 2007, many argue that we lost the Massachusetts special election due entirely to a complete absence of area college students.  Contrastingly, in Georgia's recent runoff, the unusually strong showing of college students from Maine to Texas served to bolster a winning campaign—a notable exception to a troubling rule.  College Republicans exist everywhere.  In this regard, it's very simple; it's not about changing the minds of college students-- it's about activating and empowering the ones who already care.  To our detriment, this is something that Barack Obama knew all too well.   

In the coming years, the promise of victory does not tolerate the prospect of an inactive college demographic.  This is why we, with the support of many of our friends in the young conservative movement, are calling on the next RNC chairman to pledge to directly engage the next chairman of the College Republican National Committee in kick-starting a strong partnership for a radically better next four years.  In this, they should plan for a future that utilizes CR’s in dominating new media, more directly involves college students in party operations, and most importantly, ensures that, in 2010 and beyond, every willing College Republican will be afforded the chance to work for a Republican candidate through a better organized and more broadly utilized College Republican grassroots operation in every state.  On the path to victory, this is an important stop that has the promise to change the future (and the face) of our party for the better.

James Barnes and Brandon Hines are the Political and Public Relations Directors, respectively, of the George Washington University College Republicans and are working to re-engage Republican youth.

Promoted.  This is an interesting approach to stopping card check, preserving the secret ballot and expanding the authority of States to set their own policy.  - Jon Henke

The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will take away the secret ballot for potential union members and force them to openly declare their preferences for or against a union, causing that worker to be easily open to intimidation by union thugs. This is a law currently in the table in Congress, one that Barack Obama has pledged to push through regardless of how it eliminates one of the oldest democratic rights there is.

But, now Missouri is trying to head off the possible federal enactment of "card check" (the provision that eliminates the secret ballot) by legislating that a secret ballot is protected by state law.

So, the question remains, can a state law supersede a federal law?

The Right needs to do much, much more to condemn bigotry and purge itself of the bigots.  However, Paul Krugman's attempt to smear the Republican Party and opposition to big government is simply callous race-baiting, and we shouldn't tolerate that sort of smear.  Krugman's article isn't about real racism - the only example he cites is a satire that was popularized by lefties, Spike Lee and David Ehrenstein; it was tone deaf and poorly concieved for an RNC candidate to pass it on, yes, but that is categorically different than the virulent racism to which Krugman refers. 

Krugman's op-ed is about a narrative that Krugman has constructed to paint limited government itself as merely a form of racism; it is a Lefty equivalent to the ridiculous John Birch Society accusation that liberalism = secret support for Stalin's massacres.

Of course, the Birchers were kicked out of the Right.  The Left doesn't seem similarly inclined.

In order to do paint this picture of inherent, foundational racism, Paul Krugman argues by innuendo and misrepresentation.  In particular, look at this paragraph:

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

But Lee Atwater was not explaining "the evolution of the GOP's Southern Strategy".  He was responding to questions about  the theory that racism was being conveyed in 'code words'.  Right after the part Krugman quotes, Lee Atwater explicitly said "I'm not saying that."  Indeed, Atwater even pointed out that these theories about incredibly abstract "code words" indicate that "we are doing away with the racial problem..."

We are making real progress and we can make much more.  But that progress is thrown into reverse when people like Paul Krugman wave the bloody flag for political points.

Over the last few days, our diaries here at TNR have been consumed by discussions of how to valuate technology versus message in rebuilding the GOP. Stephen Gordon has a good post on this here. And over at RedState, Leon Wolf chimes in with the following:

In the wake of Barack Obama’s astounding fundraising success in 2007-2008, which was largely fueled by an unprecedented web operation that collected millions of active donors and volunteers, many Republican strategists have begun to realize that the current state of web operations on the right is simply not acceptable if the GOP is going to be competitive in elections going forward. New websites are springing up left and right in an attempt to solve this problem, and established web sites and online activists have dedicated countless hours, posts, and emails in the last several weeks to navelgazing over this issue. I tend to think that much of this misses the point entirely.

Don’t get me wrong; our web operation is clearly and unacceptably behind the left’s, and these discussions need to be had or we risk perpetual minority status. However, I am sorry to say that our enfeebled efforts are not going to reach the needed levels just because our candidates master the use of Twitter. You see, an effective web operation only links people as they are; it does not change people into something they are not. And the bottom line is that, more than having been beaten by a superior operation, we were beaten by people who were more motivated and willing to get involved and donate than we were. Obama’s web operation was just a tool by which he took advantage of a pre-existing resource.

All of this is spot on and Leon's entire post is well worth appreciating in full. However, there is one nagging annoyance I've had since the election that I'm going to have to call out, and that is when people focused on ideas or message start devaluing and even belittling the importance of technology or infrastructure. As in, Sure that tech stuff is important. But it doesn't matter until we get our message straight / return to our principles / kick out the religious right / kick out the fiscal right.

The idea that what a party stands for is more important than the tools it uses is so blindlingly obvious that I wonder exactly why people feel compelled to throw it in our faces once we mention there we also face key infrastructure challenges, like Barack Obama's 13 million email addreses or half a billion raised online. I've been banging the technology drum for a while, and not even I disagree with the primacy of ideas. Not even guys like Eric Odom or Michael Patrick Leahy who have been leading the charge on conservative adoption of Web 2.0 would disagree. 

The notion that there are tons of people out there saying you can rebuild the party only with technology, infrastructure, and tactics is a straw man. No one is arguing this. Leon's metaphor about fertile ground is something I live everyday as a political consultant -- the same strategies applied to issues where there is already a kernel of motivation and enthusiasm always yield explosively more effective results. My advice to people who come to me where that enthusiast base may be elusive is always the same: try to find it first, before implementing a technology strategy.

There is no basic disagreement here, but conservatives are balkanizing into "ideas" or "tech" camps needlessly. Because of the magnitude of the GOP loss, there is an unfortunate sense that we don't know where to begin. Fixing any one thing would not have stemmed the tide. That's why we need to at least try to fix everything starting now. That means revamping our ideas and rebuilding our infrastructure. These are not mutually exclusive. Those arguing that we need to do one before we do the other, or at the expense of the other, are part of the problem.

The other day, I argued strongly for a purpose-driven use of technology in which everything is subordinate to political goals like gaining seats in Congress, or Tim Goddard's goal of flipping state legislatures, or finding good candidates. A lot of the noise lately has been around driving conservative adoption of tools like Twitter, and this may be what people like Leon are responding to, but that is not the message I have been delivering, nor is it the message of Rebuild the Party.

At the end of the day, however, I think the smartest, most efficient way to accomplish these goals is through technology. I have to lodge a disagreement with Stephen Gordon. Technology is just "one of many" tools. It is the primary tool in the 21st century. Sure, it may not be any one technology, like Twitter. It may not be out-of-the-box tools like Joomla implementations or Ning networks. It's going to require programmers who can build tools that don't already exist -- and not wasting time building stuff like the "conservative version" of Facebook or YouTube because Silicon Valley is largely liberal. The technology toolbox itself is as vast as the traditional campaign toolbox.

Attacking technology as a way to rebuild the party misses the point in another way. It assumes that technology is just a tool -- that it doesn't change the dynamics of the political process itself. And that it can't be an instrument in nudging along the kind of change we all want on the issues and ideas front.

Were MoveOn.org and the netroots primarily about technology or ideology? The answer is both. They were instruments for the ideological "reformation" of the party that just happened to use technology. They were both successful because they tied technology to sense of political purpose, direction, and action. I understand we won't "be like" the left, but this is a very useful lesson for the right.

Without technology, the Democrats' path to power would have looked very, very different. Their purpose-driven use of technology sped up the process of giving the grassroots an ownership stake within the party and feeling like they could safely get involved in official Democratic politics again. Right now, there is a poisonous divide between the official Republican Party and the grassroots. This is the inevitable consequence of the bailouts, spending, and Medicare Part D and probably couldn't be any other way after eight years in the White House. But over the next few years, it has to be a goal to get the grassroots looped back into the party and in fact get them in the drivers' seat shaping the ideas and priorities of the party. For an opposition to be effective, it must be united. This means breaking down or rendering irrelevant the elitist mindset of the political class that divides it from the grassroots, and working as one united Republican Party in the think tanks, on the ground, and online to be an effective foil to the Obama Administration.

Technology will play the critical role in this process. And this is where stuff like Twitter actually matters in a political sense. It was a Republican, John Culberson, who was the first member of Congress to use Twitter as it was meant to be used -- as a personal communications medium. More and more members of the RNC are joining Twitter. They aren't just using a cool tech toy -- they're getting plugged into an instantaneous feedback loop where the grassroots can share their concerns and priorities in real time. Imagine what would happen if a Congressman actually had to answer constituent phone calls on the bailout, and you get a sense of the environment politicians enter once they start using technology the right way. Except those "constituent phone calls" a/k/a e-mails or Twitter DMs are less likely to be argumentative because you know the target it actually listening.

As we point out at the end of the Rebuild the Party plan, technology can be a way to reinforce the party's core principles of trusting the people. If we build a system in which political power can projected up, and not just down, within the party, the party itself will become more responsive to the millions of Republicans clamoring for a return to conservative principles just as the Democratic Party became more responsive to its liberal base in the last few years because of technology.

Ideological reformation cannot happen in a vacuum. We can't just cloister ourselves in a room and come up with new principles and expect people to adopt them. To the extent we already know what the principles are, the most effective mechanism for change is to elect as our leaders people who value those principles. In that fight, new infrastructure matters and serves as a handmaiden to electing principled leaders. And not just infrastructure, but technology specifically. If our primary communications mediums are still about the few broadcasting to the many, that won't promote real bottom-up participation in the process, and entrenched interests will continue to win at the expense of the grassroots.