Barack Obama has been president for 100 days, and where is the GOP? We asked some leaders on the right: Has the conservative movement begun to fight? Facing the specter of increasing Democratic majorities in Congress, can it rebuild? What should the Right be doing right now? Is it doing it?
EDWARD H. CRANEPres. Barack Obama is not a socialist. He is a thoroughgoing statist, perhaps the worst in American history. And with Wilson, FDR, and LBJ, he’
s got some serious competition. Republicans in Congress lack the leadership to challenge the president’
s audacious power grabs. More important, they lack any serious philosophical basis for doing so. The acronym RINO is an oxymoron, for the name “Republican” in fact designates someone with a commitment to nothing more than maintaining political power. The purpose of maintaining that power is to, well, maintain that power.
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There is a reason sales of Ayn Rand’
s Atlas Shrugged are going through the roof. The book is nothing if not prescient. The “
Troubled Assets Relief Program”
is straight from its pages. Monday’
s New York Times front page suggests Atlas may be starting to shrug. “
Doctor Shortage Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals,”
laments the headline. Hmm. Wonder why there would be a doctor shortage in the face of nationalized health care? Perhaps bright young people considering a career don’
t want to work for the federal bureaucracy?
Time for those conservatives serious about limited government to re-read Goldwater’
s Conscience of a Conservative. Strategically, conservatives have made three major mistakes. The first was to follow the advice of supply-side guru (and big-government Democrat) Jude Wanniski and not talk about spending cuts, much less the proper role of government. Economic growth replaced individual liberty as the rallying cry of far too many GOPers. Second, the neocons — mostly statists themselves — should never have been accepted into the fold. All they gave us is a war against a country that never attacked us and schemes for “
national greatness”
like going to Mars. Enough. Finally, conservatives should jettison the social agenda of gay marriage, flag burning, and school prayer, and focus instead on federalism. Politics is about man’
s relationship to the state. That relationship, to be healthy, should be minimal.
— Edward H. Crane is the president of the Cato Institute.
ED FEULNER
In 1942, following the Allied victory at El Alamein, Winston Churchill declared, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
That’s how conservatives ought to view Barack Obama’s first 100 days: The end of the beginning of our struggle to reassert conservative policy ideas and our country’s traditional commitment to free trade, free markets, and free people.
The first action took place exactly two weeks before the 100th day.
On April 15, Tax Day, hundreds of thousands of regular Americans took to the streets for more than 3,000 protests that were 21st century “Tea Parties.” They were united by the conviction that government has become too big, too interventionist, too wasteful, and too indifferent to the people who pay for it all. Fundamentally conservative, this was a new grassroots movement.
Of course, every movement needs leaders, and the modern conservative movement has a number of them.
Reps. Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Tom Price led the opposition to Obama’s so-called stimulus bill in February. Sens. John Cornyn, Tom Coburn, and Jim DeMint are fighting for more sensible tax and spending plans. And in the states, Govs. Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford have spurned some federal stimulus money that would have left their taxpayers all the poorer in the future.
Conservatives know things won’t be easy. But we should also remind ourselves that President Obama is more popular than his policies are.
Over the next 100 days, and the hundreds that will follow, we’ll keep pressing for sane fiscal policy. We’ll push for policies that promote abundant, affordable energy, not trillion-dollar tax hikes in the guise of cap-and-trade legislation. We’ll resist the move toward national health care, promoting instead real health reform that gives people the ability to choose and keep their own affordable coverage. We’ll work for entitlement reform and insist that the administration bring federal spending under control.
When history is written, we’re confident it will show that conservative ideas prevailed.
— Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation.
