Conservatism at the Crossroads

For 50 years, the conservative movement has slowly but successfully changed the terms of debate within American politics by articulating a clear and compelling vision for America’s government and civic culture. Nevertheless, in the wake of another in a string of electoral victories where conservatives gained even greater representation within Washington and the state capitals, the conservative movement finds itself at a crossroads.If government spending on entitlements continues at its current pace, then conservatives will have lost and the liberal Democrats will have won, even if Republicans manage to stay in charge. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office testified earlier this year that if health care costs stay on their current trajectory, “the federal government’s spending for Medicare and [the] Medicaid program would together exceed 21 percent of GDP by 2050 (compared with 4.1 percent in 2004), and total [Federal] spending would be about 33 percent of GDP. “The three principle drivers of those costs are all entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Federal spending at that level is unsustainable, not only for the conservative movement but for the country. Yet, that is likely to be the result if we do not continue the job of transforming our government and our entitlement programs.Unfortunately, the longer conservative elected leaders stay in office, the more they will find themselves torn between the revolutionary ideas and values that got them elected and the need to explain and defend the institutions they inherited. Over time, their original goals of transforming government may be replaced by being resigned to merely presiding over a government that is growing to one-third of the output of the American economy.The continued success of the conservative movement cannot accept this and should reject only modest, marginal improvement of the liberal bureaucracies and laws we campaigned to transform. Change is hard, but the values and goals of the conservative movement require that we not be satisfied with merely presiding. We must reaffirm our commitment to the values and ideas that brought conservatives to power and aggressively work to transform the ineffective bureaucracies of the 20th century into a model able to cope with the speed and efficiency of the 21st century.Conservatism began this large-scale transformation with President Reagan who was able to reinvigorate the American economy by cutting taxes and regulation, strengthen American civic culture by making us proud to be American again, and to win the Cold War by shifting from accepting detente to defeating communism (the Soviet Union disappeared 10 years after Reagan was sworn in).We continued in 1994, using the Contract with America as our management document to reform the U.S. House by term-limiting committee chairmen, implement transparency in accounting, and allow every citizen access to the legislative process with the Thomas online information system. In addition, we balanced the federal budget four years in a row leading to the biggest surpluses in American history and record-setting economic growth. At the same time, we cut taxes while increasing defense and intelligence spending. We passed welfare reform which resulted in nearly 60% of the people trapped on welfare going to work or to school – the largest social policy transformation in a generation.I believe that we can meet our current challenges as we have in the past, but it will require adhering to four essential principles.First, truly transformative movements start first in the country and then gradually impose their values and their expectations on Washington. No bold, large-scale, decisive change has ever originated in Washington or state capitals. Washington and the state capitals are citadels of timidity and caution. Held hostage by the tyranny of the present, they are bastions of the status quo and the old order that confuse meeting the daily tasks of governance with meeting the historic demands of governing. Only the past has lobbyists who protect what they already have; the future is unrepresented unless citizens engage.Second, to rally the country to change Washington, we must follow Prime Minister Thatcher’s rule that “first you win the argument; then you win the vote.”There are no easy, quick solutions to meet the scale of the challenge. Reagan proposed welfare reform at the National Governor’s Conference in 1970. No one supported him. By 1996, polls showed that 92% of the country favored welfare reform, including 88% of the people on welfare. By then, it was virtually impossible for the Congress to avoid passing it or President Clinton to avoid signing it, which he did after vetoing it twice. We must again define the debate about winning the future and not let the elite media or our opponents derail us into an argument about defending the past.Third, winning the future requires developing a pattern of clarity, simplicity, and repetition. Since defending the past is much easier than explaining the future, the burden is on the conservative movement to be much clearer and much more compelling than the left.Finally, applying these principles requires the courage and commitment Reagan showed while advocating conservatism from his first national speech in 1964 to winning the presidency in 1980. For those 16 years, his views were ridiculed, distorted, and derided by his opponents and the elite media. The same was true for those of us in 1994 who believed Republicans could actually become a governing majority.The conservative movement cannot let itself be lulled into complacency. The challenges facing America in the next generation cannot possibly be met by timid reforms of archaic government institutions and marginal modifications of obsolete policies. Transformation is imperative not only for America to compete globally, but also for our very survival. It is time for the country to lead the capital once again.Mr. Gingrich is a former speaker of the House, the author of “Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America,” and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This is adapted from a longer essay, “The Conservative Movement at the Crossroads,” which can be read at www.newt.org.

Conservatism at the Crossroads

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