If the Republicans are looking to restore their credibility with the American people and differentiate themselves from the Democrats, they might do well to focus on two issues. Both relate to fundamental liberties, both put the Republicans on the same side as large majorities of American voters, and both have the Democrats trapped by virtue of their dependence on Big Labor. In short, these are winning issues, both on policy and on politics, for Republicans.

The first is school reform. The Republicans in Congress need look no further than out of their windows to see opportunity. In the horrid Washington D.C. school system, the Schools Chancellor, 38-year-old single mother Michelle Rhee, is struggling to upgrade standards, institute charter schools and school choice, and, if needed, break the back of the teachers’ union which has stood foursquare against her efforts to remove bad teachers…This presents a golden opportunity for Congressional Republicans … What better way to stand up for parental rights, take the side of minority and poor children, and make clear which party stands with Big Labor and which with educational reform advocates?

And this is not the only opportunity for Republicans to highlight the Democrats’ co-dependent relationship with Big Labor. High on the wish list for the union bosses is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would, in essence, abolish secret ballots in union elections. Even George McGovern has opposed the measure, declaring to Democrats: “To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.”

Card check is a no-brainer.  Susan Collins beat Tom Allen about the head and shoulders with that and trounced him, in a state with a lot of union presence.  No question education reform is a potentially huge issue.  NCLB data has parents all over the nation second-guessing how good their schools are.  Everyone knows modern union-dominated education policy is about the adults in the system, not the kids.  The GOP could and should  come forward with a whole suite of potential education reform measures – merit pay, school choice, charters, new assessment regimes, alternative teacher certification – the list is endless.

I am amazed how powerful the teachers’ unions are, though – we almost had charter schools here in Maine if the GOP had stayed together on it and not been peeled off by the MEA…Can we do better this time?

Nearly 30 years after Ronald Reagan ushered in a period of conservative ascendancy in American politics, how should the movement re-energize itself? And how can conservatives chart a path back to power after this month’s Republican defeats?

Some conservatives want a return to basics, arguing that President Bush abandoned conservative principles by expanding government and driving up spending. Others draw just the opposite conclusion, warning that Republicans have tried to appeal to too narrow a base and that the party must update the focus of conservatism, especially at a time when voters are thinking more about issues like jobs and health care than about abortion and gay rights.

The divisions are clearly there:

The chairman of the Florida Republican Party, James Greer, one of several likely candidates to lead the national party, called for putting less emphasis on some social issues and more on economic issues that he said could have broader appeal.

“I think we need to answer the questions that are asked by the conservatives: ‘Is it still my party for family values? Is it still my party for faith?’ ” Mr. Greer said. “Answer those questions, answer them firmly, ‘Yes it is.’ But then move on. And start talking about the issues that are important to Americans: the economy, job opportunity and education.”

Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, scoffed at calls for the Republicans to move left, which he said had followed Republican defeats in 1964, 1976 and 1992. And he suggested that some calls to update conservatism — by taking global warming more seriously, for instance — were essentially disguised calls to move the party to the left.

“They will be cheerfully ignored,” Mr. Norquist said.

Ugh.

Interesting snippet at the end from Tim Pawlenty, speaking about Ronald Reagan:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota told the group of fellow Republican governors that Reagan was one of his heroes, and recalled being spat at by a hippie while volunteering for one of his campaigns. “But Ronald Reagan was president a long time ago,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “A lot has happened since then. So the challenge for us is how do you take the principles from the late ’70s and ’80s and apply them to the circumstances and issues and opportunities of our time.”

Amen.

Dreher:

The right has developed a vicious habit of tagging any dissenting conservative as a closet liberal. This folly has constructed an airtight bubble around the GOP and conservative leaders, not only depriving conservatism of constructive criticism from within its ranks, but also reinforcing the rank-and-file’s worst instincts. If the election results didn’t convince Republicans that they couldn’t afford to throw people out – especially their intellectuals and people who respect intellect – then their ignorance is invincible.

This election ought to once and for all teach conservatives that Ronald Reagan is dead, and he’s not coming back. The intellectual poverty of the GOP primary debates showed itself by the candidates’ ritualistic invocation of Reagan’s name, as if saying it often enough would compensate for the lack of new ideas among the sorry bunch.

Reagan and his popular brand of conservatism arose out of a particular set of historical circumstances – specifically, the challenge of Soviet communism abroad and welfare-statism at home. It’s a new day with new challenges, and the intellectually exhausted right is not up to meeting them.

Conservatives must return to the philosophical sources of our tradition and reinterpret its insights and truths for the world we live in now. Ideas really do have consequences as, obviously, does the lack of same. Yes, conservatives have to oppose the Obama Democrats when they overreach, but if the only response conservatives offer is defensive and obstreperous, they will not soon recover.

I’ve just started Ross Douthat’s book Grand New Party, which he wrote with Reihan Salam, and which discusses ways that the GOP can craft conservative public policy that speaks to the working class.  You can find an interesting discussion between Douthat and National Review’s Jonah Goldberg here.

A 2008 Market Decisions poll found 60 percent of Mainers dissatisfied with the high level of taxes they pay, with 56 percent saying they did not feel they were getting their money’s worth from Augusta. When asked what should be done about the state’s budget shortfall, 70 percent said they supported spending cuts; 80 percent said they opposed any tax increase, even a temporary one, to balance the budget.

Yet on Election Day, Maine voters enlarged Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. In the House alone, Democrats will outnumber Republicans by an almost two-to-one margin, up from a margin of just one seat only four years ago.

So what is going on here? Do voters actually support high taxes and spending, but tell pollsters otherwise? Or, if they believe Maine is headed in the wrong direction, why do they keep re-electing the same people who have been running things in Augusta for more than 30 years?

I wish I had the answer to this.  We’re not getting the message out – we’re not getting people riled up and we’re not attaching the state’s manifest failures to the Democrats. Really need some new thinking here – desperately…

Or is it?  The Hoover Institute’s Tod Lindburg writes the following in today’s Washington Post:

We are now two elections into something big. This month’s drubbing is just the latest sign that the country’s political center of gravity is shifting from center-right to center-left. Republicans who fail to grasp this could be lost in the wilderness for years.

In 2004, Republicans and Democrats each constituted 37 percent of the electorate. In the 2006 congressional election, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 38 percent to 36 and won big. This year, the Democrats made up a stunning 39 percent of the electorate, compared with just 32 percent for the Republicans. Add the painful fact that Obama outpolled McCain among independents, 52 percent to 48, and you have a picture of a Republican Party that has lost its connection to the center of the electorate.

The McCain campaign was not shy about letting voters know about the elements of Obama’s record that marked him as a man of the left. Perhaps voters simply didn’t believe a word of it, but a better explanation is that a majority of them heard McCain’s warnings and just didn’t mind. Center-left nation, anyone?

There is no question that the GOP is in real trouble.  I’m especially concerned about where we stand with regard to younger and college-educated voters.  But, being a policy wonk, I believe we can develop some policy innovations that may get us back in the game with some of those voters, especially around the issue of entitlement reform.

And, we need candidates.  Let’s not forget that much of Obama’s win can be attributed to his being a once-in-a-generation political talent.  He even said himself that people project their hopes on him. That is tough to compete with, even if you have policy approaches that people like.  So we need, to use Ross Douthat’s phrase, “populist wonks” who can speak to working class Americans but demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of policy innovation.

We have lots of work to do, and we need to keep Lindburg’s findings in mind. Let’s not take for granted that this may be a center-right nation.  Let’s work to make it one.

Conservatives rightly think, or once did, that much, indeed most, government spreading of wealth is economically destructive and morally dubious — destructive because, by directing capital to suboptimum uses, it slows wealth creation; morally dubious because the wealth being spread belongs to those who created it, not government.

The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical. Well.

Probably as temporary as New York City’s rent controls, which were born as emergency responses to the Second World War and are still distorting the city’s housing market. The Depression, which FDR failed to end but which Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor did end, was the excuse for agriculture subsidies that have lived past three score years and 10.

In America, socialism is un-American. Instead, Americans merely do rent-seeking — bending government for the benefit of private factions. The difference is in degree, including the degree of candor. The rehabilitation of conservatism cannot begin until conservatives are candid about their complicity in what government has become.

So can a revitalized GOP break the spending habit and win?  This is, again, the essential question.  Voters seem to want some spending, particularly on themselves – entitlement programs such as Social Security remain discouragingly popular – but, as bailouts continue, we will learn a lot about how much propping up of business the nation is prepared to tolerate.  If it appears to voters that the government is simply shoveling money down a hole to keep big businesses afloat that should fail, there may be a place for conservatives to talk about a return to more of a free-market model.

I think it may be time to reassess whether we want to be the party of big business – of near monopolistic multinationals – as opposed to being the party of small business and entrepreneurship – the party supporting the guy who just developed a more fuel-efficient engine in his garage, for instance – ensuring an economy that is supportive of innovation and ingenuity by backing off “rent-seeking” regulation and tax policy.  That approach, I think is much more in tune with the nation’s aspirational character.

Aren’t we better off with a hundred GM’s out there than just one?

After the 2006 election losses Republicans did some soul-searching. They held conferences, gave speeches, and went on talk shows. They concluded: we were not conservative enough.

Again, in 2008, Republicans took losses across the board. They got a fraction of the Hispanic vote, lost their last New England congressman, saw more western Senate seats flip to the Democrats and watched their share of the electorate drop to 28.7%. They lost the independent vote by 8%. Yet once again you hear the call to return to “conservative roots” or to adhere more strongly to “core principles.” That seems to miss the mark — by miles.

Let’s be clear – the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans did indeed abandon timeless conservative principles such as fiscal discipline and limited government.  They turned off a lot of conservatives and deserved, in my mind, to get something of a comeuppance for it.

Still, the theme that seems to be developing among the reformist wing is that even a return to a limited government/fiscally conservative governing model will not be enough to win back independent voters.

More from Rubin:

The only place where Republicans are flourishing in national elections is the Deep South. There is reason to fear that if Republicans do not alter their present course they will be relegated to a permanent minority in Congress and be stuck below the 200 electoral vote mark in presidential elections.

Given all that, it is hard to see how “returning to core values” enhances the Republicans’ appeal.  If that phrase is code for “limited government,” it seems to lack an audience. At present, there is not much clamoring for fiscal austerity, at least not at the expense of other issues.

The challenge for Republicans is to maintain a distinctive alternative to liberalism but appeal to a broad cross-section of voters, both ideologically and geographically… It is not an impossible task but it will be that much more difficult if Republicans maintain a tone of class resentment, paranoia, and vitriol and adhere to policy positions which are either extraneous or offensive to large segments of the electorate.

That last part is a bit much, perhaps – I don’t think limited government is “offensive to large segments of the population.”  I think we do struggle with explaining how a limited government approach works better. You can’t veto SCHIP health insurance for kids without some kind of alternative that can be explained in a paragraph.  The real challenge is developing clear, coherent policy alternatives that are consistent with our governing philosophy.

We also need candidates who can campaign effectively for them, but that is for another day…

The underlying problem for Republicans is the absence of a compelling conservative vision for the future that is aligned with New England’s more tolerant and civic-minded political sensibilities.

Typically, political observers say that the national Republican Party has moved too far to the right for moderate New Englanders. But I think a more telling way to frame the problem is that the national party has drifted away from the core conservative principles that used to unite Republicans from all parts of the country, in favor of policies that appeal to an increasingly narrow, albeit fervent, base.

So more moderate?

At the same time, a worldview that is defined merely by moderation – the space that lies between left and right – is no worldview at all. In the post-Reagan GOP, any viable governing philosophy has to be grounded in the basic tenets of conservatism: limited and accountable government, individual liberty and responsibility, and free markets.

Amen.  But how do we make the message more appealing? First, be more positive:

…the loudest voices of conservatism on the national stage today are more likely to bemoan America’s decline than to praise its potential. They are also increasingly known for their resistance to science, technology, and change. This rejection of hope and progress runs against the grain of the American spirit and is a formula for even more electoral defeats.

Next, focus on issues that broaden the base:

Republicans should start to focus on those issues that transcend the traditional partisan boundaries. Call them reverse wedge issues. For example, promoting charter schools appeals to conservatives, but it also appeals to low-income families who tend to lean left. Ending public subsidies for favored industries, like biotech, movies, and trade shows, reinforces the conservative belief in free markets, but it also responds to liberal concerns about fairness. Issues like these can broaden the base, not circumscribe it.

Third, push for real reform and new ideas:

Republicans should concentrate their energy on developing bold proposals for transforming the state’s bloated and costly bureaucracy, not only to save money, but also to deliver better performance. Reforming the state pension system, rationalizing the capital budget, consolidating agencies and line items, and eliminating programs that can’t demonstrate results should all be issues where Republicans lead.

The author, James Peyser, also suggests a name change, which seems to be a bit of a stretch, but I’m with him on much of the rest.  A more positive outlook, pushing conservative ideas with broad appeal, (like school choice), offering new ideas to make systemic changes.

I like it.

It’s only been a week since the defeat, but the battle lines have already been drawn in the fight over the future of conservatism.

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. George W. Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism. John McCain was a Republican moderate, and his defeat discredits the moderate wing.

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters.  They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

The same split has been in place among conservatives here in Maine for years.  Centrists like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins continue to win re-election by large margins, yet one hears all the time on the right that the reason the Democrats have been running things for a generation up here is that the GOP is just not conservative enough…

I have to say, I’m having trouble believing it…

Depends on who you talk to.

In yesterday’s WSJ, pollster Scott Rasmussen suggests that President-elect Obama may not have the mandate he might think:

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment.

Mr. Obama won the White House promising tax cuts, but he will be governing with a Democratic Congress bursting with desire for a more activist government. As he faces this challenge, he might remember the fate of another man who made taxes the central part of his campaign: the first President Bush, whose most memorable campaign line — “Read my lips, no new taxes” — was as central to his victory as Mr. Obama’s promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. George H.W. Bush famously reneged on that promise. Voters rejected his bid for a second term.

At National Review online, the great Mark Steyn takes a dimmer view:

My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a “center-right” country. Americans didn’t vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a Dancing With The Stars election: Obama’s a star and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn’t mean they’re suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery.

Up to a point. Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to “go left.” Yet oddly enough that’s where they’ve all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter. Even in America, federal spending (in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars) has gone from $600 billion in 1965 to $3 trillion today. The Heritage Foundation put it in a convenient graph: It’s pretty much a straight line across four decades, up, up, up. Doesn’t make any difference who controls Congress, who’s in the White House. The government just grows and grows, remorselessly. Every two years, the voters walk out of their town halls and school gyms and tell the exit pollsters that three-quarters of them are “moderates” or “conservatives” (ie, the center and the right) and barely 20 per cent are “liberals.” And then, regardless of how the vote went, big government just resumes its inexorable growth.

“The greatest dangers to liberty,” wrote Justice Brandeis, “lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

Now who does that remind you of?

This is the basic challange: Can “reformist” conservatives develop a set of policy initiatives that provide a better answer to middle-class anxieties than “just cut taxes,” but which don’t lay the foundations for ever-expanding government?