Conservative Revival?

After four years of the largest growth in entitlement and non-defense discretionary spending in over a half-century, conservatives have become disheartened. They now doubt America can ever return to the Founders' and Ronald Reagan's ideal of limiting national government involvement in peoples' lives, so that private citizens and communities can set their own destinies rather than bureaucrats. That this explosion of government took place under a Republican president and Congress seems to end hope for the future, a despair that has been measurable from our readers over the past year.

Is there no hope? There has been one positive effect from this irresponsible spending, the greatest increase in unfunded entitlement obligations since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It has forced serious conservatives to face the facts. For years, the right has preached the dangers of bankruptcy posed by the trillions of dollars of red ink generated by the Ponzi-like funding of Social Security. Yet, in one blow, Republicans in Washington added an unfunded Medicare liability equal to the entire Social Security obligation-plus one-half again -- with their new prescription drug bill. Even conservatives in Congress could not long ignore spending of this enormity, although the fact that seniors have started complaining about the bill's increased costs has helped to focus its attention on a problem legislators now wish would go away.

It took a House ethics committee censure of Republican House Leader Tom Delay for offering a favor in return for a member's support for the drug bill to force the issue into the public domain. The strong-arm tactics of the GOP House leadership in passing the bill by a single vote backfired. Republicans won majority status by exposing sordid tactics such as these by oppressive Democratic leaders. Now they were revealed to be just like their foes, the same type of establishment majority that would whip its members into passing supposedly popular bills, whether they were consistent with principle or whether they would actually work. Something had to give: either all Republicans would have to give up their conservatism and shift to raw pragmatism as had most Democrats, or some stalwarts would have to begin a renewal.

A large majority even of the conservative caucuses in both houses supported the expensive and controversial Medicare drug bill. Indeed, there were only 25 Republicans in the House and nine in the Senate who stood up to leadership pressure and opposed a badly flawed bill. But Congressman Mike Pence (IN), the leader of the conservative opposition to the bill in the House, has been reporting over the past several months since the vote that more and more of his colleagues were admitting to him quietly that they had made a mistake. What could they do to get their party back to the limited government principles that had allowed them to gain control of Congress, they whispered?

On September 22, 2004, these repentant conservatives acted. Congressman Pence was elected the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative Republican caucus in the House. Because a majority of its members had supported the leadership's drug bill, Pence was reluctant to accept mere appointment by the six permanent, founding members of the RSC, as had been the practice since its beginning. So they agreed to open the election of the chairman to the full membership to obtain a mandate from all to plot a more principled and aggressive legislative course for the future. As it turned out, Rep. Pence was elected unanimously. The Steering Committee was also expanded to add others who had voted their philosophy against leadership pressure, such as Jeff Flake and Marilyn Musgrave.

To show his commitment to this more principled conservative course for the future, Congressman Pence announced he would resign his position as a Deputy Majority Whip. "One cannot serve two masters," he explained and it would not be fair to the GOP leadership to remain on their team while at the same time serving as chairman of an independent group, although he said he saw no conflict for Steering Committee members to take such positions. This courageous decision sets Pence apart, forgoing leadership ambitions to steer a quieter but more important course, to re-create a principled conservative presence in the House of Representatives.

The new chairman's plans are bold. He will lead his cadre of conservative members by reverting to a strategy adopted by Republican House members when they were wandering in what seemed to be a perpetual minority wilderness. The revitalized Republicans on the right will advance conservative solutions through Special Order and one minute speeches during the quiet hours when most members are off pacifying constituents or soliciting campaign funds. While the audiences are relatively small by TV standards, it was this advocacy under the bright glare of C-SPAN coverage that first presented the new GOP ideas to the activists who generated the wider public support that eventually led to majority status. In addition, the RSC will initiate a forward-looking appropriations strategy proposing substantive amendments to advance conservative principles rather than pork projects.

Rep. Pence says he learned two things from fighting the prescription drug wars. More communication is needed between GOP Congressional members and between them and outside conservative groups, fifty of which supported his efforts at the time. The second lesson is that the right needs more conservative Congressmen. This has led to the formation of a political action committee to aid in the election of principled conservative members who would then be solicited to join RSC efforts once they are elected. Plans are to get needed funds to conservative challengers even in this election. Those who want to help PEN-PAC can reach it at 10 West 8th Street, Anderson, Indiana 46015, attention Ron Arnold.

The good news is that the coalition of conservative groups -- led by, I am pleased to say, the American Conservative Union and the National Taxpayers Union-and the activists they represent, working with the House conservatives-and especially Mike Pence -- has born fruit. There are even some good things going on in the Senate, about which more will be said in the next issue. Congratulations to Rep. Pence on his election and hooray to him and his colleagues for the guts to begin the revival of Congressional conservatism in the wake of the GOP legislative meltdown over the past four years.

By Donald Devine, Editor.

Email the Editor