By Rick Keene, Candidate for Senate
Although starting with a mandate of reform contained in the Republican revolution of 1994, our national Republican leadership gradually fell into the same traps of out-of-control spending, failure to secure our borders and ethical and moral scandals as their predecessors. As a direct consequence, Republican leaders lost the moral authority to lead, lost the confidence of hard working Americans and thereafter, the mantle of leadership. This laid the foundation for the subsequent election of Democrat President Barack Obama and thereby cemented unified Democrat control of our country.
Our lesson? When Republican leaders govern like the Democrats they replace, they cease to be relevant in the public debate and they lose elections.
As a reaction, Republican leaders at many levels have become so busy trying to forge a Democrat-like agenda in that they have failed to design and advance their own alternative Republican vision for the State and the Nation. As a result, they’ve allowed the GOP to become defined nationally by the left as simply “The Party of ‘NO’”, or seen as no different. These failures leave the public with the perception of being forced in elections to choose either people with bad ideas or no ideas.
Concurrently there have been other very significant developments that are worth noting. We recently saw an estimated 2 Million Tea Party activists pay their own way out of their own pockets to travel to our nations capitol. They came to protest the current direction of our government and to tell them that they are fed up with the leadership of both parties. In fact, they deeply and sincerely fear for both our liberties and our nations future. They, with other Patriots throughout America, passionately want a new direction for America.
The other significant political development is there has been a political shift underway in the rise of those re-registering Decline to State (DTS). DTS is the fastest growing group of voters in the state. People are leaving both major parties due to the fact that neither is seen as reflecting their values or having practical logical solutions. It is essential that we define both what Republicans are against, and also what they are FOR.
Both of these groups clearly reject what they are seeing coming out of the Democrat leadership and the Obama Administration. And as much as they fear what they are hearing from the Democrat leadership, they are also not hearing a responsive alternative vision springing from the Republican leaders. Republicans cannot expect voters to turn to them until these same leaders are clear as to where they went wrong and also where they want to go. You can’t effectively drive a bus if you can’t tell others where you want to take it.
Historically, when Republicans clearly keep their conservative commitments and articulate their own reasoned solutions, voters respond positively. It worked for Ronald Reagan. Even though he faced a Democrat controlled Congress, communication of the strength of his Republican vision and his commitment to carry it out endeared the American public. Due to the resultant public pressure, the Democrat Congress was forced to follow. Again in 1994, Newt Gingrich with the “Contract With America” clearly defined a new vision. The American public embraced that vision and changed our course. No doubt it can happen again now.
In the next article I will outline some specific elements that I believe the Republican Party can be FOR as we seek to put the train of our state and our nation back on it’s tracks.
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