Posted by
Rob Stevenson on Wednesday, October 03, 2007 4:18:39 PM
Tagg Romney, on "Five Brothers," made an great point today about the future of the republican party:
"I believe the reason we had such a tough loss in 2006
was that the grassroots of the party felt that the Washington politicians had let them down and
gotten away from their core principles."
Tagg, the eldest son of Presidential Candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, correctly identifies
the source of GOP trouble in the midterms not as a referendum on the Iraq war, but
as the direct result of a retreat by the elected officials of the party from
conservative values. Essentially, Republicans lost when they stopped being
Republicans. Their three fatal flaws were as follows:
1) Retreat
from the Border. After allocating the funding and receiving overwhelming financial
and political support from their base, Republican leader, including the
President, continued to drag their feet with regarding to building a fence
across our southern border.
2) Retreat
from local issues. We are the party of states rights, small government and
local control. Why then, in the wake of the 2006 defeat, did the remnant of
lucky incumbents huddle together in the washingtonian “Bastille” and talk to each other about what went wrong. What
they needed to do was stop playing party politics, get back home to their districts,
and listen to the real wants and needs of their constituents
3) Retreat
from traditional jurisprudence. When Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination was
being held up by a filibuster, a technique designed for legislation and never
intended for Judicial Confirmation, seven prominent republicans compromised
with the democrats when they could have merely used their constitutional
authority to force an up-or-down vote. Their cowardice cost them dearly, of the
three members of the “Gang of fourteen” who were up for re-election, only one
maintained her seat. Furthermore, the actions of the other four republicans
lost many other seats in their home states because of their constituents’
distrust of their ability to lead.
If republicans want to keep the White House, they will need
to stay true to what Tagg has rightly called their “Core Values.” I believe
Mitt Romney is up to this task. The time has come for us to return to
Republican values and embrace the party of Lincoln, Reagan and Romney.