CQ WEEKLY
– IN FOCUS
May 23, 2009 – 3:17 p.m.
GOP Explores Ways to Repitch the ‘Big Tent’
By David Nather, CQ Staff
As John McCain ’s top domestic and economic policy adviser during last year’s presidential campaign, Douglas Holtz-Eakin got a firsthand look at the broad problems the Republican Party now faces: a shrinking base, a narrowing appeal among different demographic groups and an inability — in his view — to generate fresh ideas or effectively sell the ones it has.
In the wake of another chastening set of GOP defeats at the polls, Holtz-Eakin is now setting out to address those problems head-on. He’s developing a proposal for a new think tank that he describes as a “Center for American Progress for the right” — a reference to the liberal think tank that has supplied staff and policy proposals to the Obama administration and developed new ways to market its ideas.
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“I think there is now pretty widespread recognition that the Republican Party needs to become demographically broader, more welcoming of different ideas,” said Holtz-Eakin, who ran the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. “And it’s time to think strategically about how to appeal more broadly outside the South.”
Other GOP outreach efforts also have taken shape in recent months — notably the National Council for a New America, the group spearheaded by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia that is planning a series of listening sessions and policy forums. But “what’s not happening,” Holtz-Eakin said, “is to start rethinking the basic ideas of the party.”
The irony, of course, is that the Center for American Progress itself was developed as a liberal answer to the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that has been a source of Republican policy ideas for decades. But Holtz-Eakin says established think tanks of the right, like Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute, were “not helpful” during the McCain campaign because they weren’t politically engaged or innovative in their media strategies.
That’s why Holtz-Eakin says he now looks to the Center for American Progress as a model. The center, headed by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John D. Podesta, combined a battery of domestic and foreign policy proposals with outreach innovations, such as hosting film screenings around the country and collecting e-mail addresses of people who sign up for the screenings.
Holtz-Eakin’s project — still more of a concept than a fully developed proposal — is one of a scattering of initiatives starting to take shape as practical-minded Republicans look for ways to rebuild the appeal of a party seriously damaged by its losses in the last two elections. Cantor’s effort has received the most publicity, but others, in various stages of development, are experimenting with longer-term growth strategies to broaden the party’s appeal.
Some of these efforts are clear attempts to duplicate the Democrats’ recent successes. For example, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who’s in charge of recruiting Republican candidates for 2010’s House races, is talking about “broadening the playing field” — much as the Democrats did in 2006 — by looking for people with unusual and diverse backgrounds and putting less emphasis on ideology.
Likewise, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman who later served as counselor to President George W. Bush , has teamed up with GOP pollster Whit Ayres to form Resurgent Republic, a new firm that tests public perceptions of Republican issues and releases its surveys to the public. It’s modeled on Democracy Corps, a firm founded by Democratic consultants Stan Greenberg and James Carville that conducts surveys about Democratic priorities and writes strategy memos based on the results. So far, Gillespie’s firm seems to be focusing on issues that can play to Republicans’ strengths; a recent survey, for example, found that most independents sided with Republicans on the need for harsh interrogation techniques.
Updating the Party Line
There are also conservative writers and think tank scholars who are trying to promote ways to modernize the Republican agenda. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, runs a Web site called NewMajority.com, which features blog posts by writers who explore the challenges facing the Republican Party and conservatism in general. And Yuval Levin, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes about ways to modernize the conservative agenda by, as he describes it, “applying conservative principles to a new set of issues that conservatives haven’t always been comfortable with,” such as environmental and health care policy.
There’s no single standout in the crowd yet, and there’s no way to know which, if any, will emerge as the most successful effort. Some involve more dissent than others. Cantor, for example, doesn’t try to suggest his National Council for a New America will lead to a major rethinking of the Republican agenda; it’s more of an effort to sell the party’s existing agenda more broadly. “It’s really a conversation” about how “common-sense conservative principles” can address different groups’ problems, Cantor said.
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But Holtz-Eakin’s think tank, if it ever gets off the ground, probably will become more of a challenge to the current Republican agenda — a forum for pragmatic policy ideas rather than a keeper of the flame of pure conservatism. “I think what we’re trying to do is reclaim the center, or the center-right,” said John Feehery, who was a top aide to J. Dennis Hastert when Hastert was the Speaker of the House and is working with Holtz-Eakin to develop the think tank plan. Other prominent Republicans, such as fiscal conservative Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and former Bush White House Education Secretary Margaret Spellings are also watching Holtz-Eakin’s project with interest. “I do think he’s onto something,” Spellings said. “What’s missing are practical, reasonable, sensible ideas that sort of scratch the surface beyond the old dogmas.”
It’s not clear how much of an impact these efforts can have, given the scope of the GOP’s problems. A Gallup poll of 7,139 adults released last week found that the Republican Party had lost support among almost every demographic group since 2001, except for frequent churchgoers.
Ultimately, these efforts can gain traction only when there’s a ready audience, both at the Republican leadership level and among the base. Right now, the signs aren’t promising. RNC Chairman Michael Steele dismissed the idea of a deep rethinking of the GOP agenda in a speech last week, declaring, “The era of Republican navel-gazing is over.”
And former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia doesn’t think the party’s base voters are interested in seeking a bigger tent. “I think the grass roots right now is in an ornery mood — ‘we are who we are,’” said Davis, who’s now in the Washington office of the professional services conglomerate Deloitte and is also head of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership.
Still, the projects and conversations that are just getting started in GOP circles could lay the groundwork for the party to be better prepared when they do have a chance to return to power, just as the Democratic Leadership Council helped create a market for centrist ideas that allowed the Democrats to broaden their appeal when the Republicans stumbled.
“It’s still kind of in the shaking-out phase,” said Republican strategist Kevin Madden, a veteran of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But the significance is that, after months of private griping, Madden said, the Republicans and conservative thinkers who want to rebuild “are starting to say, ‘Well, we need to stop sitting around and figure out how to do this.’”
Reclamation Projects
The way to reclaim majority status, according to the party’s pragmatists, is to apply conservative principles in innovative fashion and develop solutions on issues that haven’t been a priority for Republicans. Levin cites the Republicans’ role in pushing for the 1996 welfare overhaul, which transformed policy by putting time limits on public assistance. “Welfare was not considered a conservative issue, except in the sense that most people were against it,” said Levin. “But then people started thinking of more constructive ways we could look at it.”
Holtz-Eakin agrees and has already developed a health care overhaul proposal that illustrates the kind of ideas his think tank would encourage. It includes a call to replace the tax break for employer-sponsored health coverage with a tax credit to discourage overuse of the system. President Obama criticized a version of that approach last year when McCain proposed it, but he might be forced to reconsider in the upcoming health care overhaul debate. Holtz-Eakin also suggests adopting a go-slower policy of steadily increasing insurance and improving the quality of health care, rather than immediately trying to cover all Americans.
But he stresses that new ideas have to develop in tandem with new outreach strategies. “We’ve gone a couple of generations without explaining why people use markets to solve social problems,” he said. It’s clear Republicans are paying special attention to how to lure young voters back to the party — an urgent concern, given that Obama won 2-to-1 among voters ages 18 to 29. McCarthy thinks the key is to find candidates who can emphasize fiscally conservative issues, which are more likely to resonate with young voters than social conservatism. “They may disagree with us on social issues, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be Republicans,” McCarthy said. Davis concurs that party leaders need to look beyond traditional social-issue divides. “The cultural stuff is holding them back right now on expanding the base,” he said.
Still, the conversations are just beginning. “I think all of these voices are helpful if they united at the end of the day,” said Davis. “They’re just a hodgepodge right now. I don’t think any one of them will take off by themselves.” It might be a long road back to power, but these Republicans are doing their best to start down that road, one step at a time.
FOR FURTHER READING: Democratic Leadership Council, CQ Weekly, p. 824; GOP’s future, 2008 CQ Weekly, p. 3082; Center for American Progress, p. 3133.
Comments
A big difference between the GOP recoveries in 66, 78, 94 and now is that in those previous years the GOP devised strategies based on developing trends and brought out new leadersship. This time around the GOP is trying to continue what worked in the past with tired and shop-worn leadership. Shades of Mike Dukakis!!!
Of course Douglas saw a base that would not engage. Even though I did campaign for John McCain believing him to be the best of two evils, I respect him for his service to our Country, however I very much felt that he like many other Republicans lost their backbone. The crossing over to work with Kennedy, Feingold and Lieberman. Moderate or liberals cannot believe that the Party is crying out for a True Conservative, someone to save the Country. A real man , America will tolerate a lot of things but NOT hypocrisy. The Party has suffered a disconnect from the people on the street. They have relied upon advisors only and that is surely a recipe for disaster. My advice to Douglas is to read a book by Ray Bliss entitled " Nuts and Bolts" the key to victory Ohio Republican Party. Ray Bliss understood more about the Political Arena than most men alive today. He was the Summit County Republican Party Chairman, then Ohio Republican Party Chairman (1949-65),then Republican National Committee Chairman (1965-69). The party must be rebuilt one precinct at a time. The grassroots are the heart and soul of any political party. Relationships are built person to person. Not up on Capital Hill down to the masses.
Today the Average American is now faced with a direct and vile attack upon their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to be left alone. the creeping tide of Obammunism is an unwanted and fascist-style intrusion into every private citizen's personal life. And this is where the Republicans must rally; this is their base-- the average Americans! Not conservatives; not the religious right; not the anti-abortionist faction; not the tea parties; not the Reagan coalition; not the big tent; not the moderates-- but EVERYONE. This shall be the new GOP banner: "Party of the average American"-- upholding American traditons the same way since 1776, when the Declaration of Independence put forth the doctrine of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So if you're an average American, why not become involved? Put fate in your own hands. If you do nothing, you will most assuredly suffer the tyranny of the left, and its hardcore "doctrine" of creeping Obammunism. Vote Republican. Vote freedom: And above all...vote for YOUR COUNTRY. Defend your right to remain an average American.
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