Republicans need to start working together.”

By Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose 

 McHose represents the 24th Legislative District of Sussex, Morris, and Hunterdon Counties 

Contact:  Bill Winkler 215-862-1029 

      It happens after every election defeat.  Prognosticators appear to boldly tell us who we need to become to win in the next election.  It’s a curious exercise to peer into the future to guess at what will make the voters love us at a distant point in time.

     National GOP Chair candidate Michael Steele commented recently in the Telegraph ( London U.K. ), calling for a Republican “modernizing” along the lines of what David Cameron has done for the British Conservative Party.  Someone at the New York Post called for a return to the glory days of Governor Christie Whitman.  Then my friend and colleague, Assemblyman John Bramnick, said in PolitickerNJ that we all need to adopt the politics espoused by Congressman-elect Leonard Lance, a longtime family friend. 

     With respect to Mr. Steele, we had our modernizers in Presidents Bush, father and son.  President Bush 41’s “kinder, gentler” version of Republicanism ended up by raising taxes (so, at the end, it wasn’t even fiscal conservatism) and went down to defeat. 

     George W.’s “compassionate conservatism” ended up as “big government” Republicanism, spending at a rate higher than Presidents Clinton and Carter combined.  On November 4^th, that too went down in defeat. 

     In between these two modernizers, we had a moment of unapologetic Republican triumph under Speaker Newt Gingrich with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Working with President Clinton, the Republican Congress put us on a track of fiscal responsibility, balancing the budget, and reforming welfare. 

     Many self-identified Republican “moderates” are now calling for a purge of their conservative compatriots.  This is especially true of Republican moderates in states like New Jersey. They blame the presence of social conservatives in their party for the defeat of the most moderate GOP presidential candidate in memory.  Besides it being an odd formulation, they are neglecting the lesson of Canada .

     Once upon a time, Canada’s right-of-center party was called the Progressive Conservatives (PC).  They blamed their social conservatives too and drove them out of the party. Canada is far more liberal than any state in America , but their social conservatives grouped together and formed a new party.  At the next election, these social conservatives won three times as many seats as the PC did.  Eventually the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to fifth place among Canada’s political parties and had to come crawling back to their old friends to form the new Conservative Party of Canada (yes, they dropped the “Progressive” bit).  This new Conservative Party has won the last two national elections.

     It ill befits a minority to begin its trek back to the majority by throwing people out of the tent.  The prognosticators – and everyone else in our party – need a time out to take a deep breath. Then the party simply needs to grow up and learn to get along together as a family. Instead of arguing that one style of candidate fits all, the party should be adult enough to acknowledge that while a Leonard Lance is certainly a perfect fit for the voters in Somerset County, he might find it tough going with the more earthy Republicanism of Sussex County.  And while applauding the wins of moderates in our congressional delegation, let’s not forget the impressive victories of that great Republican – and committed social conservative – Chris Smith, and my friend and neighbor Scott Garrett. 

    Congressman Garrett maintains one of the most principled conservative voting records in our nation and proved the pundits wrong by rolling up an 11,000 vote majority in Bergen County.

A well-articulated conservative philosophy can serve to grow our party in many communities throughout New Jersey.  We conservatives have made Sussex County a solid center-right community.  But we also made a place for moderates in our Republican family, and we encourage their participation.  I grew up in a political family that didn’t always agree with the conclusions I arrived at.  I served in the Legislature with my father and took opposite positions  from him on matters of principle.  Our disagreements did not lessen my love and respect for him or his delight in seeing me find my own way.

     We should never forget that “moral purpose” is in the DNA of our party.  We were, to a large measure, formed to do moral battle over the issue of slavery.  That fight gave our early party its element of spirituality that was lost for a time to commercialism, before finding itself again with Ronald Reagan.

     Social conservatism can open doors for the Republican Party.  As the author of a ballot question to protect the status of traditional marriage in New Jersey, I am intrigued by results from California’s ballot question Number Eight, which indicated that African-American voters chose to protect traditional marriage by a margin of more than two to one.

     So what can all Republicans agree on?  Happily, it is something that most voters agree with.  They don’t think government is an innately competent institution.  A recent poll indicates that 60% of Americans agree with the statement that “government is the problem, not the solution.”      
     Even President-elect Barack Obama might agree with that, reading as I do that he is a student of the philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote of the essentially brutal nature of collectives.

     Let’s then all resolve to agree on this: That we as a party must work to reduce the size and scope of government; that by doing so we can reduce spending, reduce debt, so that we can reduce the burden of taxation.  Lowering taxes on businesses and people brings increased investment, jobs, and disposable income.  It makes us more prosperous.

     This “small government” Republicanism has a lot of work to do here in New Jersey.  The state has about the worst business climate anywhere in America, the highest property taxes in the nation, and even taxes businesses when they create new jobs.  New Jersey grows government, overspends and goes deeper into debt each year.  Now that an economic crunch has come, the state doesn’t have enough to cover it. 

      If we are ever to get out of this downward spiral of spending, debt, and taxes – we are going to have to reform New Jersey’s judiciary.  It is unelected, unresponsive to the hardships of taxpayers, and undemocratic.  It legislates, issues policy directives, and has stolen the prerogatives of both the Legislature and the Executive to an extent unheard of in a modern democracy.  We must break its authoritarian hold before it breaks our state, and all of our communities.

     So let’s set aside trying to tell the voters what we think they want to hear.  Instead of this exercise in followership, why not try leadership? 

     We know who we are, our good points and bad, if we are worthy of support then let’s quit making excuses and resolve to work together, to grow our party, to better serve our people, our communities, our state.  We are needed.  Someone must stand up to runaway spending, debt, and taxes.  Someone has to listen to the people.  There is no one else.  The job falls to us. 

 Our value as a party, our worth as political leaders, will not be measured by the elections we win, but by the policies on which we win and then see them through, when it is our time to govern.