Jay Reding.com

Dr. Tom Coburn has a diagnosis for the Republican Party, and their political future looks to be in critical condition. Why?

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and “compassionate conservatism.” If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof “governing” majority, the goal of “compassionate conservatism” was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

He’s right. The GOP got too comfortable with power and lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, it became all about a quest for political power. So far the first instinct of the GOP remains to attack “liberal values” rather than uphold an agenda. While there is much to about the values of the Democratic Party that is worthy of attack, that will do nothing to get the Republicans out of their hole. There has to be a real agenda that the Republican Party stands behind from top to bottom. Just hitting the Democrats will not cut it.

The Senator from Oklahoma has the right diagnosis for the political ills of the Republican Party. There’s no agenda, and without something to lead people towards, you’re not really leading. The GOP is making the mistake of thinking that they can run based solely on a brand that is as tarnished as it ever has been. Instead, the GOP must run a campaign based on a sincere promise to reduce the size but increase the efficiency of government. That requires a sincere effort to fight pork and waste. The Republicans have not embraced a reform agenda, and it is killing them.

The GOP must rediscover its own first principles: what is needed is not a Reagan, but a party of Reagans. The problem is that so far the GOP is not such a party.

Karl Rove has some sage advice for a GOP in free-fall after some serious losses in Congressional special elections. The loss of the House seat in MS-01 was a sign that the Republican Party has some serious problems ahead of it in 2008. As Mr. Rove notes:

This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker’s Louisiana seat.

Both of those losses can be attributed to bad candidates. But that only shows the GOP can’t take “safe” seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

He is absolutely right. The GOP simply must have an actual agenda for 2008. Just calling their opponents liberals isn’t enough to cut it. The Democrats have run too many candidates with centrist street cred, and at this point too many people have decided that taking a chance on a liberal is better than risking more Republican incompetence.

If this sounds harsh, too bad. The GOP needs an intervention this year, and the grassroots have to give it.

Every Republican officeholder needs to realize that the Republican “brand” has been utterly trashed. Too many scandals, too many times when GOP lawmakers have failed to stand against corruption, too many times when the GOP has failed to connect with what really concerns the American people—all of these things have taken their toll on the future of the party.

Of course, all is not lost. The GOP’s loss is not an inevitability, so long as the party is willing to reform itself. GOP candidates need to be honest with their constituents: the GOP has not been a party of good governance. We failed to stop the growth of government. We failed to keep the American people in the loop on Iraq and our strategy from 2003–2007 was a failure. We failed to uphold home-town values, but ended up following Beltway values.

The road ahead requires reform. To fix healthcare in this country we need real reform, not another failed top-down approach. Republicans can win on healthcare if they start talking not about why a market-based approach is better in theory, but why the average voter will be better off. Republicans can win on the economy with a very simple message: if you have to tighten your belts in times of trouble, then the government should do the same. The GOP must stand resolute on fighting earmarks and government waste.

The GOP can win on the issues, but first they must set the agenda. That means running on principles, not on bashing the other side. The GOP shouldn’t need to spend their resources convincing the American people that the Democrats are radicals who are out-of-touch with American values: if the GOP makes sure that the electorate knows what we stand for, the contrasts will be obvious.

More of the same will not work. The GOP has to set an agenda and defend its principles. 2006 should have been a wake-up call, and if the GOP doesn’t learn from its lessons then they run the risk of a repeat.

Scott Johnson has a deeply skeptical look at Sen. McCain’s new “climate change” policy

. From a standpoint of policy, that skepticism is well warranted. The political story, however, is entirely different.

The political reality is this: global warming concerns are part of the political landscape now. Too many voters have bought into the hype to stake a position on the theory that climate change doesn’t matter in this election. While that is bad science, that is also the political reality the GOP faces. For that matter, even if there is no man-made global warming, there’s no reason why America shouldn’t be looking ahead to an age of increasing scarcity of oil. The more power America gets domestically from renewable resources, the fewer petrodollars flow into the hands of two-bit tyrants like Hugo Chavez. Some “green” policies make sense for other reasons than environmental hysteria.

The problem with the McCain approach is that it gets the politics right, but makes for atrocious public policy. For example, a “cap and trade” system would necessitate a massive new government bureaucracy and raise America’s energy prices. The Congressional Budget Office has found that the current Lieberman-Warner bill amounts to a trillion dollar tax increase in a time when Americans are already finding it hard to pay for energy. Even more troubling, this tax would be incredibly regressive, its impacts adding more stress to families barely able to pay for heat and fuel.

Republicans should have a plan that reduces our dependence on sources of energy that produce pollution. However, that should not mean abandoning political principles or the rules of basic economics. The GOP should push for more clean nuclear power, tax credits for research and development of clean fuel sources, and should embrace something like Bob Zubrin’s flex-fuel plan (using cellulosic ethanol rather than burning what we eat). There are plenty of economically viable ways for the U.S. to “go green,” but we need policymakers willing to support those sound policies.

The GOP has good reason to grumble at McCain’s energy policy, but the fact that it talks about climate change is not it. It would be nice for more politicians to stand against the bad science behind the global warming movement, but in an election year you have to pick and choose your battles, and this year the GOP needs to have an energy policy on the table to compete on this issue.

Ross Douthat sees the GOP as the party of the middle class. With Barack Obama virtually assured the Democratic nomination, that seems quite possible, as Obama has yet to close the deal with middle-class voters.

However, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the GOP. The Republicans can’t win on populism, partially because the Democrats are better at sounding populist themes and partially because populist public policy is just bad public policy. The GOP has to reach out to the middle class, but they have to do that on their own terms. Just attacking the Democrats just will not cut it, not in an election cycle where a culture of political arrogance has so damaged the GOP brand.

What the Republicans need to do is relatively straightforward: they need to admit that “compassionate conservatism” was a failure and start running on “competent conservatism.” American attitudes towards government are as cynical as ever, and for good reason. The Democrats will try to hang all those failures on President Bush. The Republicans have to use the failure of the Democratic Congress to make the point that the problems with American government run deeper that who is in office.

Sen. McCain is well-positioned to make those arguments, but the leadership of the GOP is not. They want to play politics as usual in a time when playing politics as usual is political suicide. The GOP has to be a party dedicated at every level towards reforming American government. That means having a party leadership that can credibly deliver that message. With only a few exceptions, the GOP does not have the leadership they need to win.

The way to victory in 2008 is for the GOP to recapture the Reagan message: more government does not help the working classes, American strength can be victorious in a turbulent and dangerous world, and the values upon which this country was founded are values which are as vital now as they have ever been. That message works because it appeals to the essential values of the American experience. If the GOP wants to win the middle class (as well as the independents they need to win) they have to give voters a compelling reason to vote for the Republican Party beyond attacking the Democrats. If they can’t offer a competing vision backed with substantive policy, then they will risk a repeat of the 2006 bloodbath, and this time, the stakes are much higher.

Ed Morrissey rightfully goes after Sen. John McCain for his comments that pork-barrel spending caused the I-35W bridge collapse. It’s one thing to say that money spent on pork can’t be used for better purposes, like infrastructure repair. That’s a legitimate argument. However, money had nothing to do with the I-35W bridge collapse, either a lack of it or too much of it. The problem was that when the bridge was built in the 1960s it had a critical design flaw that wasn’t identified until after the collapse.

It’s bad enough when Democrats try to politicize the collapse—it does not behoove Republicans to do the same.

UPDATE: McCain is backing away from his comment, as well he should. Earmark reform is a serious issue—it doesn’t need to be tied to an unrelated bridge collapse to be good policy.