The Moderate Five

According to every newspaper and pundit, the Republican Party is in shambles. However, there are some organizations whose e-mails and websites seem be getting ever more professional-looking, and whose membership list and donation-filled coffers seem to be growing.

These include:
1) Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC, for which I'm on the California Board of
Directors)
2) Republican Majority for Choice (RMC)
3) Log Cabin Republicans
4) Republican Leadership Council
5) Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP)

Some of the members of the REP are anti-gay marriage. Some supporters of the Log Cabin Republicans are pro-life. Some RMCers don't believe in environmental restrictions. However, the common denominator of all these groups is that they represent the moderate constituencies of the party. Most pundits (except Rush Limbaugh, who writes that the Republicans lost because they weren't Right-Wing enough), believe that these types of people will be the ones needed to shape and re-introduce a new, attractive, GOP.

Right now, the Republican Party needs groups like us even more than we need them. Yet, while I don't speak for other members of the Moderate Five, I sense that we haven't stayed simply due to an imagined increased influence within the party. We stick around because, after our being deemed as "RINOs" during the years of plenty, our party is now in deep, deep, trouble, and we are finally able to prove our allegiance. It would be very easy for us to get on the Dem bandwagon, but we simply don't believe in what they stand for, in comparison to what we Republicans are supposed to stand for. We all anchor our views in the traditional conservative framework of small government, constitutional rights, and personal responsibility. In other words, I cower when I learn about the oxymoronically titled "Fairness Doctrine." I am appalled by the very suggestion that workers might be stripped of their right to cast a secret ballot in elections concerning union participation. I could likely never pull the lever (well, punch those funny tabs in our retro CA booths) for a Democrat.

The Log Cabins, REP, and Republican Leadership Council all officially endorsed McCain. The RMC held out for Giuliani for a while, while the RLC largely pinned their hopes on Ron Paul. (Neither of the latter two groups have since explicitly endorsed any presidential candidate). All of the above groups are willing to officially endorse only Republican candidates (unless there is no Republican running in a particular election). When half the staff of the National Review, most (all?) of the conservatives at The Atlantic, and the rest (Peggy Noonan and Christopher Hitchens, for G-d's sake!) seem to have all abandoned ship, there is clearly still a lot of love coming from the Mod 5. To the right-wing members of our party: We may not be the pretty blond prom queen, but we still show up to the after-party, when you've been ditched by everyone else.

Increasing Welfare: A Uniquely Republican Solution?

Here is an Op-Ed I submitted to a newspaper. It was rejected, and I am too lazy to work on it and resubmit it somewhere else. So enjoy it on my blog!

When imagining politicians clamoring for income redistribution, one may not think of Republicans. As proponents of small government, GOP members generally believe that the best method for helping the poor in the long-run is a free market economy that creates jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurship. Additionally, as Tom Coburn (R-OK) frankly stated in an Op-Ed for "The Wall Street Journal" last week, "Spending other people's money is not compassionate." While these beliefs have considerable merit, they fall flat to many Americans mesmerized by Barack Obama's hopeful, if unattainable, promise to provide every American with health care, housing, and a myriad of other benefits, all while improving our GDP. Furthermore, charts and figures that extol the long-term advantages of fiscal responsibility seem callous to Americans who, according to Pew Research Center polls, increasingly favor a "safety net" for the poorest Americans.

The key to a Republican solution is the fact that American sentiment is not "either-or." Most Americans also favor free-market capitalism, small government, and pro-growth policies. Thus, rather than simply dismissing all types of aid to the poor, Republicans have a unique opportunity to distinguish their version of government assistance from that of the Democrats. In this area, a Republican pro-market solution can come prevail, based on its simplicity and potential popularity: Republicans should legislate for the government give the poor more money.
One area where Republicans can implement this approach is in addressing the health care crisis. Faced 45 million uninsured Americans and stratospheric costs of care, the Democrats' solution is to control, regulate, and even socialize the pharmaceutical, hospital, and insurance industries. Their ideas involve mandating which medical conditions must be covered by insurance companies, controlling how eligibility may be determined, calculating "legitimate" compensation to health care providers, and even creating government-controlled insurance. To many fiscal conservatives, the cost of such bureaucratic meddling , in addition to outrageous legal settlements, are at least as economically burdensome as the actual costs of providing health care.

Republicans should not ignore the problem of the uninsured. But they can favor a policy that maximizes aid for the poor, while keeping an appropriate distance from people's insurance plans and medical records. John McCain's health plan is built on this principle. He believes that by simply deregulating the stifling insurance market, initiating tort reform, and, most of all, providing money for health coverage, many more people could receive the prevention and treatment care they need.

A similar approach can be taken to assist the homeless. Democrats opt for big-government solutions, including rent control, public housing, excessive zoning laws, and all-out bans of untrendy "corporate" stores from certain neighborhoods. These strategies have distorted and raised market rental prices, deterred landlords from improving or building new rental units, and increased neighborhood blight. Public housing is also inequitable, in that it provides low-cost housing to a select few, leaving thousands more to languish on wait lists. The most devastating manifestation of public housing is perhaps its social cost: public housing neighborhoods have contributed to "two Americas," placing low-income families in a de facto racial "ghettos," thus forcing Americans of different social classes to live parallel lives with minimal interaction.

A Republican solution to the housing crisis would be to provide homeless people more money for rent, while interfering minimally with the market. Thus, low income families could be empowered to choose their neighborhoods, after evaluating school districts, access to supermarkets, and relative safety. Additionally, the money would be allocated more fairly, with the amount of aid determined by income, rather than a winning housing lottery ticket.

The "simply give poor people more money" could also be the Republican approach to the education crisis, in that it would empower families, rather than union leaders or unaccountable administrators. Washington D.C. spends $24,000 for every pupil per year, which should be enough to cover enrollment at Horace Mann or Dalton. Instead, an untraceable money chain has resulted in physically dilapidated schools, dissatisfied teachers, and abysmal graduation rates. Distributing money (in the form of vouchers) to individual families would respect needy parents by allowing them to make their own decisions on behalf of their families. And we could be sure that they will use this power of the purse to hold their children's schools accountable.

Reports of Republican party's death have been greatly exaggerated. Yet, the party, faced with a populace demanding for the government to actively solve problems, must update their mantra of fewer taxes and less spending. If Republicans instead focus on moderate taxation, a balanced budget, and smart spending in the form of direct payments to the poor, perhaps they can win popular support, improve the economy, and truly help the poor. The Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services could be dramatically downsized. Meanwhile, the GOP's least favorite government agency, the IRS, would ironically extend its responsibility, through a renewed role of redistributing income. This strategy, similar to Milton Freidman's "negative income tax," or Martin Luther King's "guaranteed minimum income" could be a uniquely Republican way to reduce government bureaucracy, while ensuring a "safety net" for every American. Of course, guidelines for eligibility, such as a demonstrated willingness to work, could be implemented. But through a well developed, small government strategy for social mobility, we may find that today's aid recipients will be on tomorrow's giving end of diminishing welfare rolls.