Repairing the Republican Brand

On January 27, 2009, the New
America Foundation hosted a panel of GOP thinkers and
policymakers to discuss the current status of the Republican Party, the lessons
of its defeat in the 2008 election and the challenges it faces in the years
ahead.  Featured speaker Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Senior Policy
Advisor to McCain for President and former Director of the Congressional Budget
Office, was followed by responses from New America
Foundation Fellows Jim Pinkerton and Reihan Salam.  David Gray, Director
of the Workforce and Family Program at New America, provided the introduction
and moderated the question-and-answer session that followed.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin opened his talk by thanking New America
for assisting his “therapeutic recovery from the campaign.”  He noted that, as an economist and policy
analyst, he was talking outside his portfolio in addressing political
issues.  Holtz-Eakin first sought to
answer the question, “What happened in the 2008 presidential elections?” 

The 2008 campaign was run in the context of a deeply
unpopular president and a greatly diminished Republican brand.  There simply was not a large enough
Republican “base” to win, so the party had to reach out to moderates and
independents.  The McCain campaign was
further hampered by economic events: whenever Wall Street went through “a fit,”
people looked backwards and assessed GOP economic policy failures.  (McCain’s numbers ticked upwards, however,
when the campaign oriented toward the future, as in the case of Joe the
Plumber’s pointed question to Senator Obama.) 
Ultimately, however, 2008 was a turnout election; Obama simply had to
turn out his voters to win, and in the end the GOP won not a single key
battleground state. 

Since McCain’s defeat, Holtz-Eakin noted, discussion in some
Republican circles has focused on returning to the “Reagan playbook.”  Holtz-Eakin contended that this strategy is
not the answer: conditions in the late 1970s were very different from
conditions today.  The Republican Party
needs to be more appealing, more open to broader demographics.  Moreover, the GOP must have an answer for how
to help the middle class and a message for urban areas.  The party must not abandon its roots entirely:
American strength, national security, personal responsibility, and individual
risk-taking.  However, the GOP absolutely
needs a greater tolerance of intra-party divisions.  The “majority of the majority” mentality of
the Republican-controlled Congress plastered over differences by turning the
GOP into the “party of earmarks and special interests,” and created the image
of Republicans as “cookie-cutter” in the minds of voters. 

In terms of a specific policy agenda, Holtz-Eakin argued
that the GOP must be more interested in the “real economy” and should adopt a
pro-manufacturing bent.  Party leaders
must figure out the positive functions of a limited government and should work
towards implementing their vision of a new social contract.  Currently perceived by the public as the
party of “no,” the GOP must dispel the notion that it is a party against healthcare
and education reform, and it must develop a more coherent message on energy and
the environment.  Lastly, Republicans
must look at new policies for solving the Social Security and Medicare
entitlements crisis–a big government problem which only worsened under George
W. Bush.  In sum, the GOP must be a party
of “new ideas,” for which anti-elitism does not equal know-nothing-ism.  Republicans must “remember that it’s a center-right country, and respect the
center.”

Jim Pinkerton,
Senior Advisor to Huckabee for President, Domestic Policy Aide to Presidents
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and contributor to Fox News, opened his
response by stating flatly that the “the GOP deserved to lose in 2008, and
voters rendered their judgment.”  The GOP
failed on competence, Pinkerton noted, but continues to score strongly on
values.  He believes that the financial
bailout–TARP–will be a major intra-party dividing line in the future, and
compared today’s political climate to that of the post-Civil War era: a time of
one-party dominance, in which the main issue was railroads, and the brutal and
corrupt nature of economic expansion led to the birth of populist and
Progressive movements.  Pinkerton then
took issue with Holtz-Eakin’s claim that today is not like the late-1970s–he
showed a graph of the exploding money supply in 2008, and suggested that the
coming inflation will be a major (if grim) boon to tomorrow’s GOP.  Going forward, Pinkerton believes the GOP
should fight a new Kyoto,
cap-and-trade, carbon tax, and other growth-inhibiting environmental regulation
“to the death,” and resist the coalition of liberal coastal Americans and
northwest Europeans.  Finally, Pinkerton
touched on the issue of intellectualism: conservatives were historically smart
(even anti-populist), and the conservative movement must continue to respect
this tradition in order for it to thrive going forward. 

Reihan Salam, co-author of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save
the American Dream, stated that he broadly agrees with the policy prescription
that Holtz-Eakin outlined.  He noted one
significant challenge facing Republicans: the Democrats have a very deep and
growing bench, as almost all 25-year old centrists voted Democrat in 2008.  The Republicans will have a very hard time
winning policy arguments in the coming years: political dominance leads to
intellectual self-confidence, and minority status produces crabby
defensiveness.  Moreover, there is a
large gap between GOP candidates and regular GOP voters–Republican elites have
not been responsive to a changing electorate and are too beholden to Washington’s
intellectual echo-chamber.  The GOP must
look at the redistribution of voters in recent decades and look at the
opportunities in states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Jersey–where the
Republicans lost by less than they should have in 2008.  The GOP that wins in those states, however,
will be slightly more heterodox and middle class-friendly than today’s party.  Fundamentally, the Republican Party needs to
develop a new framework for talking about economic issues–marginal tax rates
are simply much less salient today than they were in 1980.  Instead, the GOP must ask itself, “What are
the barriers for middle-class people who want to get ahead?” and develop a new
set of policies and messages around that question. 

David Gray
moderated the question-and-answer session that followed.  After posing a few questions to the
panelists, including issues of branding, speculating about future GOP
personalities, and receptivity to a new middle-class orientation, Gray opened
the floor to audience members. 
Questioners touched upon how the GOP can convey its new intellectual
orientation, the future of the veteran constituency, what the rise of Ron Paul
means for the party, and its institutional capacity for adaptation.

— Event summary by Daniel Mandel, Program Associate, Next Social Contract Initiative, New America Foundation

Participants

Featured Speaker

Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Senior Policy Advisor, McCain for President
Former Director, Congressional Budget Office

Respondents

Jim Pinkerton
Senior Advisor, Huckabee for President
Domestic Policy Aide to President Reagan and Bush 41
Contributor to Fox News and Fellow, New America Foundation

Reihan Salam
Fellow, New America Foundation
Co-author, Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

Moderator

David Gray
Director, Workforce and Family Program, New America Foundation