New Year Victory Plan
by Donald Devine

Contrary to all the Republican whistling past the graveyard, the 2006 election will cripple the remaining George Bush term and its effects will reverberate long thereafter. While the defeat was more Republican than conservative, the public does not make such fine distinctions. Both party and movement will pay dearly for their desertion of principle over the past several years.

Only twice since 1850 has a president’s political party been able to elect a successor from its political party after holding it for two terms anyway. Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were the only exceptions to the rule that presidents wear out their welcome over time. As the 2006 elections demonstrated, President Bush’s is already pretty well spent and it is difficult to see how things could improve in two years. The economy was humming as voters went to the polls this November, with the stock market hitting an all-time high and unemployment the lowest in the developed world. How could it be better in 2008—and, in any event, the economy made no difference? The election was determined by the Iraq war and that will almost certainly be much the same as it is now even if withdrawal of American troops began immediately, which the president will not do. After two more years of tough slogging, why would the voters respond differently than in 2006?

Well, voters will not elect Hillary Clinton. Do not be too sure. How will she look against a 70 year old man like leading GOP candidate, John McCain? If one knew nothing about her except her Senate career, Hillary would come across as a reasonable moderate. She even supported the Iraq war and still does in the face of strong opposition from her party’s left-wing base. That opposition could just make her look reasonable enough in the minds of centrist voters to elect her. If someone like Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack were nominated, he would not even break a sweat beating any of the potential Republicans. As far as conservatives are concerned, even if Hillary loses, no conservative will become president since none is running.

The Senate will be even worse. Republicans have 21 seats at risk in 2008 and Democrats only 12. Five of the Republicans last won by less than ten percentage points as compared to only three Democrats. Only South Dakota’s Democrat Tim Johnson seems at any risk but on the GOP side there are Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, Colorado’s Wayne Allard (if he even runs), Oregon’s Gordon Smith, New Hampshire’s John Sununu and maybe even New Mexico’s seat if Pete Dominici retires and Virginia’s if John Warner does. Several other GOP seats are in play as well. With an unpopular president and war (by then lasting two years longer than World War II), Democrats will almost certainly keep the Senate and add several more seats.

Republicans are in better shape for the House. They can probably win most of the seven seats they lost in 2006 due to scandals because they are large-majority GOP districts. But Democrats could pick up some of the nine GOP seats carried by John Kerry in 2004. At best, the House will stay narrowly divided with a small Democratic majority. While Republican members will probably get religion and become more conservative in the minority, the overwhelming re-election of their centrist leadership shows the pragmatists remain in charge and there also are only four or five Senators who will really fight for their conservative principles against incumbency protection.

The good news is that there is a strategy for conservatives to regain the political initiative and once again set the direction of U.S. and world policy. The bad news is that it is going to take a long time.

Following a similar disastrous defeat of conservatism under Barry Goldwater in 1964, I circulated a “Victory Plan” that predicted it would take two decades for conservatives to build the movement so that we could win the presidency even if we did everything right. Although this strategy earned its author the nickname “dog of doom” for many years thereafter, its prediction turned out to be only slightly pessimistic. Ronald Reagan came to power in 16 rather than the predicted 20 years.

Conservatives would not have come to power even then if they had not redirected resources from current politics to the long run. The idea of the plan was to recruit and develop a cadre of effective new political leaders, especially young ones, to provide the troops for the conservative revival. Current events were used to recruit the troops and develop their political and intellectual skills but the focus was firmly on the goal rather than winning in the short term. Political organizations were refocused towards training, publications elevated philosophy front and center, new organizations were formed to advance principles rather than candidates, and think tanks were invented to develop the ideas to win supporters and provide the policies when victory was achieved.

Most conservatives would say it is preposterous to compare 1964 when conservatives had a mere handful of institutions and miniscule political support to today with so many wealthy and successful institutions on the right. But conservatism’s success has turned most of these institutions toward current events to maintain the power they achieved. Conservatives won control of the Republican Party so they had to defend and support it. Scores of right-leaning organizations now had to meet payrolls and learned it was difficult to raise big bucks without the support of establishment dollars and access. Inevitably, conservative institutions and the Republican Party became so intertwined so that it became necessary not to see much less fight the fact that the GOP had become the party of establishment big government.

In some ways, conservatives are even weaker than in 1964. Then, they had nothing to lose. They had candidates galore. In 2008, as noted, there is not one conservative running for president. How has it come to this? Can conservatives even face this difficult fact? Or will they take whatever they can get and consider themselves fortunate if the most liberal candidate does not win the GOP nomination? In 1976, conservatives were bold enough to run an actor with limited political experience against a sitting president. In 1972 they supported an even more obscure Congressman, John Ashbrook, against Richard Nixon. How many conservative leaders or institutions would take such a fling today?

The 2008 election would be a wonderful opportunity to begin. Indeed, there is room for some intelligent conservative to showcase himself and become the leader of the conservative remnant for the future. However, election rules are now so stacked in favor of early campaign resources that only those with name recognition today can win the nomination. Even if a Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback or Newt Gingrich won the Iowa caucuses, Rudy Gulianni would prevail in New Hampshire, eliminating the Iowa leader and neighboring Mitt Romney, leaving only Sen. McCain with enough support and money for the jumble of following primaries. For all of his enthusiasm, Gingrich is too old hat, and is the most unpopular politician in America anyway. McCain would be the only one available to coalesce the anti-Gulianni forces and become the “conservative” nominee. Sen. Clinton would then exploit the popular weariness with Republicans and defeat him soundly.

This is not gloom but realism. There is no real electoral opportunity until 2012 other than luring the Democrats rightwards. As former GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Sizemore argues in this issue, real patriots cannot give up even in the face of these long odds. The good news compared to 1964 is only six rather than sixteen years are needed this time to become ready for the next stage of the Reagan Revolution. Rather than desert the Republican Party, the plan is to transform it to become truly conservative once again, as former GOP official Jeff Crouere argues below. As before, the emphasis should be on recruiting and training the cadre that will work for a principled victory in 2012. Nothing else is more important. That cadre should be involved and include the next presidential candidate, who does not have to run in 2008 but must be working with the remnant to build for that day, as Ronald Reagan did starting with his speech for Sen. Goldwater in 1964.

For the next six years, politics should take a backseat to building the movement. Besides, it is not all doom. Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and even Antonin Scalia will still be relatively young by Supreme Court standards. Even better, it will be great fun to watch President Clinton and her Congress trying to deal with the coming bankruptcy of her New Deal’s preeminent legacies, Medicare and Social Security. After four or certainly eight years of cost/benefit tradeoffs, payroll tax increases, benefit cuts and economic pain, America will be more than ready for a more fundamental reform back to its basic federalist principles under the next Ronald Reagan.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.