Read A Message From Eric Cantor.

Control debt, pass balanced budget amendment

Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan
USA Today

Our Constitution has endured the passage of time with remarkably few changes, being amended just 27 times in 223 years. Unfortunately, America’s debt limit has not been nearly so stable. Since World War II, Congress has increased the limit on the national debt 69 times. The reasons behind this disparity tell an important story.

Let’s begin with the debt limit. President Reagan once observed that “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Once created, government programs build constituencies of special interests determined to keep the money flowing, whether or not the program is effective. In our time in Congress, we have placed many such programs on the chopping block, only to see pressure from the spending lobby win the day.

While the federal government has consistently collected revenue of about 18% of U.S. economic output, federal spending has consistently been even higher. The debt resulting from these budget deficits builds up until the debt limit is reached. And rather than fight the spending lobby, politicians have taken the easy route of raising the limit without cutting spending.

Rein in the debt

The relative scarcity of constitutional changes stems from the high hurdles for success. Constitutional amendments require the support of two-thirds of the House and the Senate and then three-fourths of the states. Because of these same requirements, successful amendments tend to stay in place. Only one, Prohibition, has ever been repealed. The moral of this story is clear. Anyone who hopes to rein in the debt and make Washington live within its means should support amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget.

Always a concern, the national debt has grown into a malignant cancer on our economy. Attacking this cancer at its root means cutting spending. If we do not, the U.S. will face a job-killing debt crisis within just a few years.

Promises, promises

Near-term spending cuts are necessary to alter the course, but they will not be enough without long-term changes. Likewise, promises of cuts 10 years from now mean little without a way to enforce them. The only way to truly guarantee delivery from future politicians is if the Constitution demands it. That’s why the House will vote next Wednesday on a balanced budget amendment that would require supermajorities in both chambers to run a deficit, raise the debt ceiling, raise taxes and spend more than 18% of GDP.

With the balanced budget movement gaining momentum, members of the spending lobby want to argue that Congress and the president already have the ability to control spending. Ability and discipline are not the same. If Washington actually had the discipline to live within its means over the long term, every American citizen would not owe $46,000 toward the national debt.

Today, this massive borrowing is taking a toll on our economy. As businesses defend against the higher taxes, inflation and borrowing costs likely to follow from the coming debt crisis, they take fewer risks and create fewer jobs. By cutting spending and balancing the budget, we can alleviate such fears and put the private sector back on offense.

The importance of the upcoming votes cannot be overstated. House and Senate passage of the Balanced Budget Amendment will make reckless borrowing a thing of the past and will ensure that our children enjoy futures full of opportunity. Let Democrats and Republicans join together to do the right thing and make a real difference for the future.

More On Jim Bunning's Poltical Exit From The Senate.

After months of tension, Kentucky's Bunning steps aside
Halimah Abdullah

WASHINGTON — For months, Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning bemoaned the state of his re-election war chest and blamed his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas for casting doubt about whether Bunning would stay in the race.

Even in the face of mounting political pressure, Bunning, who as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies and Detroit Tigers famously ignored catchers' signs when they came from the manager, vowed to stay in.

Now, he's out.

Bunning announced Monday that he's ending his bid for a third term, bringing to a close a multimonth-long saga that pitted the 77-year-old Hall of Famer against a Republican leadership that sent strong signals that he should step aside for the good of the party.

"Unfortunately, running for office is not just about the issues," Bunning said in a statement Monday. "To win a general election, a candidate has to be able to raise millions of dollars to get the message out to voters. Over the past year, some of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Senate have done everything in their power to dry up my fundraising.

"The simple fact is that I have not raised the funds necessary to run an effective campaign for the U.S. Senate," Bunning said. "For this reason, I will not be a candidate for re-election in 2010."

For the better part of the year, speculation swirled that Bunning, who over the past three months raised $302,467 for his re-election campaign, eventually would have to quit the race.

Bunning raised about half the amount that his political protege and potential Republican challenger Trey Grayson, Kentucky's secretary of state, raised in the same period. Of the four top contenders for Bunning's seat, the incumbent raised the least during the second quarter of the year. Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway says he pulled in $1.32 million, compared with $602,699 for Grayson and $302,993 for Democratic Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo.

Money woes weren't Bunning's only problems, however. The tension between Bunning and McConnell grew palpable.

At public events, the two Kentucky senators kept a cool and cordial distance. From their respective corners, however, the two men sparred.

McConnell publicly questioned "who the players are going to be in Kentucky" and, according to Bunning, during a December meeting the minority leader told the state's junior senator that he was "too old to run for re-election."

"McConnell treats friends like some people treat Pampers — disposable," said Lexington attorney Larry Forgy, who's a friend of Bunning's. "I'm sorry he treated Bunning this way, doing everything he could to keep campaign money from coming his way."

McConnell was politic on Monday.

"Jim has enjoyed two Hall of Fame-worthy careers, and I am honored to have worked by his side in the Senate for the past several years," McConnell said in a statement. "His steadfast focus on serving the people of the commonwealth has been as unwavering as his conservative ideals. Kentucky is a far better place because of his service."

Bunning also accused the National Republican Senatorial Committee of trying to court primary challengers when members of that group met with state Senate President David Williams in February. Cornyn said the meeting was a "courtesy visit" and that the party would back Bunning in a contested primary.

On Monday, Cornyn was laudatory.

"For over 20 years, Senator Jim Bunning has been a principled leader in Congress who has served his state and its people well," Cornyn said in a statement. "He has always been a leader who has put Kentucky first."

The outcome of the Kentucky race will have national implications. Many political analysts consider the U.S. Senate race in the Republican-leaning state a toss-up.

In 2010, the Republican Party, which currently has 40 Senate seats, will have to defend 19 of those. Several Republicans, including Mel Martinez of Florida, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Kit Bond of Missouri, have announced that they won't seek re-election in 2010. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is running for governor in Texas in 2010.

Over the past two elections, Republicans lost 13 Senate and 51 House seats. The party's base is shrinking as a percentage of the overall vote, and Democratic voter registration is on the rise.

Grayson, 37, and a rising star in the Republican Party, is widely seen the GOP's best hope of keeping the seat. The Democrats, on the other hand, may have a much more contentious primary field to clear.

"Let's see what Grayson can do now that Bunning isn't there," said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the Cook Political Report. "My guess is that he’s going to find things get easier for him. The NRSC can now help him and he can get some national money."

(Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader contributed to this article.)

Another Republican, Dr. Rand Paul, Son Of Ron Paul, Forms Exploratory Committee For Jim Bunning's Senate Seat. Watch Video.

Check out his website.

Wanna read more, check this out, from Ronnie Ellis.

In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, Dr. Rand Paul is my family eye Doctor.

So there.

An observation: Notice that in the Ronnie Ellis piece, Cathy Bailey suggests that the GOP needs to reach out to more women and Hispanics.

I guess, for the rest of us Black people, SCREW us!

"It's Still My Party".

It's Still My Party
By Christine Todd Whitman

I HAVE always admired Arlen Specter for his willingness to stand up for his principles and to put policy ahead of party when he thought it was necessary. I do, however, regret his decision to switch parties and I worry about the direction this country could go with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Some historians suggest that no president has had such power since 1937, when large Democratic majorities in Congress gave President Franklin Roosevelt tremendous leverage.

The United States needs two vibrant, competitive parties. With the economic crisis, the war in Iraq and countless other issues facing the nation, the stakes are too high to simply let one ideological segment of the country determine our fate. If we are to prevent this kind of one-party dominance, Republicans need to reassess where we are and what we stand for — and we need to do it now.

Unfortunately, a preview of the Republican Party's future came from the reaction to Senator Specter's switch — many conservatives evinced a sense of "I told you so" satisfaction and denigrated his service to the country. As was to be expected, the blogosphere is full of people saying that Arlen Specter was always a Democrat and now he's simply proved it.

In reality, until Tuesday, Arlen Specter caucused with the Republicans, and he voted with his party 70 percent of the time in the 110th Congress. It is a sure bet that his voting record will now change. I fail to see the satisfaction in that.

Mr. Specter's announcement portends a challenge for Republicans, in terms of both governance and political prospects. To those Republicans counting on the usual phenomenon of off-year election losses for the party holding the presidency, I say do not forget the examples of Roosevelt and George W. Bush, whose parties prospered in 1934 and 2002, respectively. Besides, given the re-election rate of incumbents and the number of Republicans from competitive districts who have retired, the chances of gaining more than a handful of seats is remote.

I also worry about the impact of this defection on the gubernatorial races this year in New Jersey and Virginia. Mr. Specter did not reach his decision in a vacuum. He was responding to what he and others saw as a trend in the party — a trend that will make it harder to get out a centrist message.

Arlen Specter made his decision to leave the party after years of being attacked by fellow Republicans. I can understand how he felt, but I believe that now, more than ever, it is important for us moderates to stay and work from within. One thing we can be sure of is that we will have no impact on the party's direction if we leave.

Moderates Republicans should use Senator Specter's switch as the impetus to force a re-evaluation of where our party is going — a review that can happen only from the inside. Besides, third parties in the United States don't have a particularly successful history.

In the coming election cycle, we have the opportunity to remind the nation that our party is committed to such important values as fiscal restraint, less government interference in our everyday lives, environmental policies that promote a balanced approach between protection and economic interest, and a foreign policy that is engaged with the rest of the world. The responsibility of ensuring that the party follows the right path lies with those moderates who are willing to work to make it happen. I anticipate that centrists will convene in the coming days to discuss how we can return the party to the sensible middle.

This isn't just about winning elections. To the extent we lose more members of the Republican Party, we lose what ability we have left to effect policy, and that is going to be devastating to our nation. Our democracy desperately needs two vibrant parties. And for Republicans to be that second party, we need to remind the nation of the principles for which we once stood.

We cannot simply be the party of no; we need to provide a compelling counterpoint to the Obama administration's tax-spend-and-borrow policies. The Republican Party has a proud heritage and much to add to the current debates, but only if we can return to the principles that made us the party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

Paid for by the RLC-PAC - P.O. Box 225 Colonia, NJ 07067, Ronald Gravino, Treasurer

"Why Rush Is Wrong."

Why Rush is Wrong
The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh. A conservative's lament.
Good As Is: Conservatism, Limbaugh told CPAC, 'is what it is, and it is forever'
By David Frum

It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."

Now, of course, Mark Levin knows perfectly well where I come from. We've known each other for years, had dinner together. I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I mention all this not because I expect you to be fascinated with my life story, but to establish some bona fides. In the conservative world, we have a tendency to dismiss unwelcome realities. When one of us looks up and murmurs, "Hey, guys, there seems to be an avalanche heading our way," the others tend to shrug and say, he's a "squish" or a RINO—Republican in Name Only.

Levin had been provoked by a blog entry I'd posted the day before on my site, NewMajority.com. Here's what I wrote: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party.

Here's Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party." What a great endorsement for Rush! … But what about the rest of the party? Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

All of this began even before Obama took office. In his broadcast on Jan. 16, Limbaugh told listeners he had been asked by a major publication for a 400-word statement about his hopes for the new administration:

I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "OK, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words. I need four: I hope he fails." … See, here's the point: everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff: "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here … I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.

Notice that Limbaugh did not say: "I hope the administration's liberal plans fail." Or (better): "I know the administration's liberal plans will fail." Or (best): "I fear that this administration's liberal plans will fail, as liberal plans usually do." If it had been phrased that way, nobody could have used Limbaugh's words to misrepresent conservatives as clueless, indifferent or gleeful in the face of the most painful economic crisis in a generation. But then, if it had been phrased that way, nobody would have quoted his words at all—and as Limbaugh himself said, being "headlined" was the point of the exercise. If it had been phrased that way, Limbaugh's face would not now be adorning the covers of magazines. He phrased his hope in a way that drew maximum attention to himself, offered maximum benefit to the administration and did maximum harm to the party he claims to support.

Then, exacerbating the wound, Limbaugh added this in an interview on Sean Hannity's Jan. 21 show on Fox News: "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president." Limbaugh would repeat some variant of this remark at least four more times in the next month and a half. Really, President Obama could not have asked for more: Limbaugh gets an audience, Obama gets a target and Republicans get the blame.

Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach. Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research. Limbaugh himself acknowledges his unpopularity among women. On his Feb. 24 broadcast, he said with a chuckle: "Thirty-one-point gender gaps don't come along all that often … Given this massive gender gap in my personal approval numbers … it seems reasonable for me to convene a summit."

Limbaugh was kidding about the summit. But his quip acknowledged something that eludes many of those who would make him the arbiter of Republican authenticity: from a political point of view, Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally. No Republican official will say that; Limbaugh demands absolute deference from the conservative world, and he generally gets it. When offended, he can extract apologies from Republican members of Congress, even the chairman of the Republican National Committee. And Rush is very easily offended.

Through 2008 Rush was offended by the tendency among conservative writers to suggest that the ideas and policies developed in the 1970s needed to change and adapt to the very different world of the 21st century. Here's what he had to say about this subject in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 28:

Sometimes I get livid and angry … We've got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and, worst of all, to redefine it. Well, the Constitution doesn't need to be redefined. Conservative intellectuals, the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined, and neither does conservatism. Conservatism is what it is, and it is forever. It's not something you can bend and shape and flake and form … I cringed—it might have been 2007, late 2007 or sometime during 2008, but a couple of prominent, conservative, Beltway, establishment media types began to write on the concept that the era of Reagan is over. And that we needed to adapt our appeal, because, after all, what's important in politics is winning elections. And so we have to understand that the American people, they want big government. We just have to find a way to tell them we're no longer opposed to that. We will come up with our own version of it that is wiser and smarter, but we've got to go get the Wal-Mart voter, and we've got to get the Hispanic voter, and we've got to get the recalcitrant independent women. And I'm listening to this and I am just apoplectic: the era of Reagan is over? … We have got to stamp this out …

Here is an example of the writing Limbaugh was complaining about: The conservatism we know evolved in the 1970s to meet a very specific set of dangers and challenges: inflation, slow growth, energy shortages, unemployment, rising welfare dependency. In every one of those problems, big government was the direct and immediate culprit. Roll back government, and you solved the problem.

Government is implicated in many of today's top domestic concerns as well … But the connection between big government and today's most pressing problems is not as close or as pressing as it was 27 years ago. So, unsurprisingly, the anti-big-government message does not mobilize the public the way it once did.

Of course, we can keep repeating our old lines all the same, just the way Tip O'Neill kept exhorting the American middle class to show more gratitude to the New Deal. But politicians who talk that way soon sound old, tired, and cranky. I wish somebody at the … GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library had said: "Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems—and we need very different answers. Here are mine."

I wrote that in spring 2007. But you can hear similar words from bright young conservative writers like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, and from veteran Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich. Gingrich told George Stephanopoulos on Jan. 13, 2008: "We are at the end of the Reagan era. We're at a point in time when we're about to start redefining … the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs."

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

We lost the presidency in 2008. In 2006 and 2008, together, we lost 51 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate. Even in 2004, President Bush won reelection by the narrowest margin of any reelected president in American history.

The trends below those vote totals were even more alarming. Republicans have never done well among the poor and the nonwhite—and as the country's Hispanic population grows, so, too, do those groups. More ominously, Republicans are losing their appeal to voters with whom they've historically done well.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis among college graduates by 25 points. Nothing unusual there: Republicans have owned the college-graduate vote. But in 1992 Ross Perot led an exodus of the college-educated out of the GOP, and they never fully returned. In 2008 Obama beat John McCain among college graduates by 8 points, the first Democratic win among B.A. holders since exit polling began.

Political strategists used to talk about a GOP "lock" on the presidency because of the Republican hold on the big Sun Belt states: California, Texas, Florida. Republicans won California in every presidential election from 1952 through 1988 (except the Goldwater disaster of 1964). Democrats have won California in the five consecutive presidential elections since 1988.

In 1984 Reagan won young voters by 20 points; the elder Bush won voters under 30 again in 1988. Since that year, the Democrats have won the under-30 vote in five consecutive presidential elections. Voters who turned 20 between 2000 and 2005 are the most lopsidedly Democratic age cohort in the electorate. If they eat right, exercise and wear seat belts, they will be voting against George W. Bush well into the 2060s.

Between 2004 and 2008, Democrats more than doubled their party-identification advantage in Pennsylvania. A survey of party switchers in the state found that a majority of the reaffiliating voters had belonged to the GOP for 20 years or more. They were educated and affluent. More than half of those who left stated that the GOP had become too extreme.

Look at America's public-policy problems, look at voting trends, and it's inescapably obvious that the Republican Party needs to evolve. We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message. It's health-care costs that are crushing middle-class incomes. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount that employers paid for labor rose substantially. Employees got none of that money; all of it was absorbed by rising health-care costs. Meanwhile, the income-tax cuts offered by Republicans interest fewer and fewer people: before the recession, two thirds of American workers paid more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

We need an environmental message. You don't have to accept Al Gore's predictions of imminent gloom to accept that it cannot be healthy to pump gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are rightly mistrustful of liberal environmentalist disrespect for property rights. But property owners also care about property values, about conservation, and as a party of property owners we should be taking those values more seriously.

Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility. Even ultraliberal states like Massachusetts would elect Republican governors like Frank Sargent, Leverett Saltonstall, William Weld and Mitt Romney precisely to keep an austere eye on the depredations of Democratic legislators. After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.

Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than … not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him.

But they can vote against Republican candidates for Congress. They can vote against Republican nominees for president. And if we allow ourselves to be overidentified with somebody who earns his fortune by giving offense, they will vote against us. Two months into 2009, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have already enacted into law the most ambitious liberal program since the mid-1960s. More, much more is to come. Through this burst of activism, the Republican Party has been flat on its back.

Decisions that will haunt American taxpayers for generations have been made with hardly a debate. The federal government will pay more of the cost for Medicaid, it will expand the SCHIP program for young children, it will borrow trillions of dollars to expand the national debt to levels unseen since WWII. To stem this onrush of disastrous improvisations, conservatives need every resource of mind and heart, every good argument, every creative alternative and every bit of compassionate sympathy for the distress that is pushing Americans in the wrong direction. Instead we are accepting the leadership of a man with an ego-driven agenda of his own, who looms largest when his causes fare worst.

In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult.

I'm a pretty conservative guy. On most issues, I doubt Limbaugh and I even disagree very much. But the issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern? And finally (and above all): to profit—or to serve?

Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of NewMajority.com.

Editor's comment: Unfortunately Mr. Frum, I think you are preaching to the KNUCKLE DRAGGERS of our party!

Listen To Newt, Oh Ye REAL Conservatives Like Me.

New York Times Newspaper Takes On Senator Jim Bunning, "A Cornered Animal".

Read more here, or interesting excerpts below:

One of the entrenched narratives in American politics is the case of the guy who refuses to quit, even though a lot of people on his own team want him gone.

While the Democrats are preoccupied with Senator Roland W. Burris and his ties to a tainted Illinois governor, the Republicans are trying to rid themselves of Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, the former baseball star who clearly has little use for some colleagues and party leaders, and who keeps exhibiting what one senator calls “behavior issues.” ...

But in recent weeks, Mr. Bunning has shown no sign of stepping aside and delivered a string of incendiary pronouncements that have fed an impression that he is, to go with a baseball metaphor, a bit of a screwball.

He declared in a speech last month that the cancer-stricken Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would probably be dead in nine months. (He then apologized in a statement that twice misspelled her name.) He threatened to sue the National Republican Senatorial Committee if it backed a primary challenger. And he hinted at a Capitol Hill fund-raiser last week that he was so mad at some in his party that he might just quit and let Kentucky’s Democratic governor pick his successor.

The senator later denied saying this, but veteran Bunning-watchers said it was impossible to know exactly what he had in mind.

“You never know what a cornered animal is willing to do,” said Al Cross, a University of Kentucky professor who writes a political column for The Louisville Courier-Journal.

As a general rule, Mr. Bunning tries to limit his references to his Hall of Fame pitching career. He is sensitive about being pigeonholed as just “a great baseball man” (as a Democratic colleague, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, mocked him last year in a verbal brawl on the Senate floor). ...

When asked about Mr. Bunning on Tuesday en route to a Republican luncheon at the Capitol, Mr. McConnell said nothing and continued walking.

Privately, Republican senators and strategists readily express exasperation with Mr. Bunning’s refusal to step aside, but tend to be more diplomatic in public.

“The question is whether it’s time for him to hang up his cleats,” Mr. Musser said. “My basic contention is it probably is.”

The REAL Bobby Jindal Needs To Stand Up And Be Himself.

I liked the old Bobby Jindal better -- the one whose brain moves so fast, he's already indexing questions his interviewers haven't thought of yet.
Advertisement

What did they do with him?

The Jindal who responded to Barack Obama's address to Congress was less the brilliant statesman than a terribly mixed metaphor -- equal parts Mister Rogers, Bobby Brady and Kenneth the Page.

I know Bobby Jindal, and that guy wasn't Bobby Jindal.

The real Jindal is the intellectual equivalent of a nuclear power plant. The real Jindal has actually read the stimulus bill and can recite its contents. The real Jindal is the sort of politician who promises ethics and education reform, and actually delivers.

Stories of Jindal's ability to quickly assess a problem and fix it have become the stuff of legend in Louisiana, as when he was assigned the task of reforming the state's Medicaid program and presented a workable plan the following morning. He was in his 20s.

That kind of performance, followed by his bare-hands approach to Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts as a Louisiana congressman, helped him become the nation's youngest governor in 2007. What happened to that guy? Who snatched his body?

His staff did.

In fact, Jindal did not write his own speech and he's on a choke collar by some well-meaning people who helped him win the governor's race. What worked in Louisiana in 2007 may not work on the national stage in 2016, when Jindal is most likely to run for president.

The stage-crafting was amateurish and the speech embarrassing. Jindal is smarter than the guy who criticized "volcano monitoring" as an example of wasteful spending in the stimulus bill, prompting the same cringe reflex that Sarah Palin did when she targeted silly ol' spending -- in France, no less -- on fruit fly research that is, in fact, crucial to medical research.

Volcano monitoring may not be a top priority for creating jobs and stimulating credit, which is doubtless what Jindal's speechwriter meant, but it does save lives. Jindal's rendering of a spending eruption metaphor (get it?) merely gave Democrats yet another opportunity to question Republicans' understanding of science and the role of government in protecting the public good.

Being the smartest person in the room can be a mixed blessing. Whether it is advantage or handicap for a brainy candidate depends on having the right people around him. At the moment, Jindal seems to be handicapped by handlers who either don't trust their candidate or have no faith in Americans' intelligence.

In coaching him to dim the lights a tad, they stole his spark. Dumbing down doesn't come naturally to wunderkinds like Jindal. In trying to sound human, he sounds fake. In attempting to convey everydayness, he comes across as an extraterrestrial.

Tuesday's speech was a setback, much like Bill Clinton's droning 1988 Democratic convention speech, but hardly a career-ender. When Jindal apparently slipped his collar and resurfaced Wednesday morning on the "Today" show, the Rhodes Scholar Jindal (who was accepted to both Yale and Harvard medical and law schools) was back.

He dropped his "I'm-just-a-regular-guy" shtick and managed to articulate his conservative principles without putting the audience in mind of cookies and milk. Praising Obama's objectives -- while conceding that Republicans have lost fiscal credibility -- he emphasized his preference for policies that help businesses create jobs rather than government programs he fears will require a taxpayer feeding tube in perpetuity.

It's a shame that Tuesday was Jindal's first introduction to many Americans, who won't have a clear picture of the man. It's also a shame he and Obama aren't on the same team. Although they differ strenuously on social issues and the role government should play in problem-solving, they are temperamentally similar. Most important, both are pragmatists who promise to seek solutions that work, rather than be bound by ideology. It would be heartening to watch these two serious thinkers craft real bipartisan solutions to our economic troubles. One can fantasize.

At just 37, Jindal needs seasoning, but again, like Obama, he's a quick study. Lesson No. 1: Governor, fire your staff and retool. A majority of Americans have demonstrated that they'll vote for the smart guy, even if he talks too fast.

Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist who lives in South Carolina. Her e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com.

GOP Losing The Young Generation Of Voters.

Read more.

Republicans Say "Not So Fast" As Some Of Them Introduce An Alternative Stimulus Plan. Read More Below.

DeMint, Sanford stir up stimulus opposition
James Rosen

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford urged members of the Senate to reject President Obama's economic-stimulus bill, as DeMint introduced a rival measure with only tax cuts and no spending.

Sanford, in Washington for a Republican Governors Association meeting, asked Republican senators at a Capitol Hill lunch convened by DeMint to follow the lead of House Republicans who voted against the $819 billion stimulus measure last week.

The bill passed the House by a 244-188 margin without a single Republican vote. It would bring South Carolina $3.2 billion, including a $905 million infusion to eliminate the state budget deficit and $830 million to build and repair roads, bridges, schools, colleges, universities, water-treatment plants and other infrastructure.

Sanford and DeMint, also of South Carolina, said Wednesday they are joining forces in a bid to try to spark the kind of national outcry among conservatives that led to the defeat of a major Senate immigration-reform bill in 2007.

The two men oppose using federal deficit spending to jolt the economy, saying increased tax cuts will have a more immediate impact on restoring consumer confidence and spending.

"When you actually begin to look at the fine print, it just doesn't work," Sanford said after emerging from his luncheon address in the Mansfield Room at the U.S. Capitol. "That's why I came to make my plea before these senators and ask them to continue to stand in the breach as they are."

Sanford has drawn attention since a National Governors Association meeting Dec. 1 when he confronted Obama, then the president-elect, the stimulus measure he was crafting.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has backed some of Obama's key early moves, criticized the House-passed stimulus bill now before the Senate.

"People are running scared in the Senate because this bill is stinking up the place," Graham told a crowded news conference. "I'm asking the president not to start over from scratch, but to get people in a room" to work out a compromise.

DeMint, however, derided the House-passed measure as "one of the worst bills in the history of Congress" and said Obama might have to start from scratch.

"We'll try to make the bill better, but this bill is bad." DeMint said. "You can't fix it by tweaking around the edges."

Graham and DeMint joined 16 other Republican senators and representatives at a feisty news conference called by DeMint to denounce the House measure.

The Republicans said it spends too much money on short-term jobs and government employment that won't revive the economy.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina disagreed with DeMint but said Democratic lawmakers are open to compromise.

"Economists across the spectrum agree that investments in infrastructure and innovation have more of a stimulative effect than tax cuts," Clyburn said. "I think the House bill struck the right balance, but I look forward to working out the differences between the bills in conference (committee). We will need to find compromise with our colleagues in the Senate in order to produce the bold, swift action that President Obama requested of the Congress."

Obama turned up the heat on Republicans who oppose his stimulus plan.

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery and a more uncertain future," Obama said.

"Millions more jobs will be lost. More businesses will be shuttered. More dreams will be deferred."

Obama launched a direct attack on DeMint and other Republicans who want to stimulate the economy solely through tax cuts.

"Now, in the past few days, I've heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis - the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems," Obama said.

In a pointed reminder that he won the election, Obama added: "I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

DeMint and the White House released competing lists of benefits their stimulus bills would bring each state.

The Obama-House bill would create or save 53,700 Palmetto State jobs in the next two years, according to the White House.

It would give 58,000 South Carolina families a $2,500 tax credit for college costs and provide a separate tax cut of up to $1,000 for 26,313 workers, the White House said.

DeMint said his measure, as analyzed by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, would create 6,956 jobs in South Carolina by the end of this year, and 28,262 jobs through 2013.

DeMint said his measure would save Americans $1.2 trillion in taxes over the next decade, including more than $80 billion for South Carolinian families and businesses.

Under the DeMint plan, the income of the average South Carolina family of four would increase by $1,153 in 2009 and by $3,864.

Graham, though, didn't cosponsor DeMint's rival bill. He chose instead to join Sens. John McCain, Richard Burr, Mel Martinez and John Thune in backing a separate measure that mixes increased tax cuts with reduced spending

Sanford cited a recent Congressional Budget Office study showing that a good chunk of the spending in the Obama stimulus bill won't start for two years.

"You can't have your cake and eat it too," Sanford said. "You can't argue, 'This is a crisis and we've got to do something now,' but then say, 'Oh, by the way, the spending won't actually come for twenty-four months."

Mitch McConnell: The Path Forward [For The Republican Party].

The Path Forward
By Mitch McConnell

Republican National Committee Winter Meeting, January 29, 2009

"Thanks, Gail. And thank you Mike, for your leadership over the past two years.

"I wouldn't even think of turning down an invitation from Mike. It's the only chance I get all year to refer to a Republican in Washington as 'Mr. Chairman'.

"Kentucky seems to be pretty well represented here today, so I hope you don't mind if I begin with a little Kentucky trivia. A couple weeks ago, I surpassed a good man and a Democrat named Wendell Ford to become the longest-serving U.S. senator in Kentucky history. I remember what I was thinking on my first day in the Senate: I looked out at all the desks in front of me, and I thought none of these guys was ever going to lose, retire, or die. Of course, I was wrong. And all these years later, I'm honored to lead a very different group of Republicans in a very different time.

"This afternoon I'd like to share some of my thoughts about the state of our party and its future.

"The year Kentuckians first sent me to Washington, the Republican governor of New Jersey was reelected with 70% of the vote. Republicans had just taken over both legislative chambers in Connecticut, and the Republican candidate for president won 49 of 50 states. That same year you could walk from Maine to California and from Oregon to Florida, without leaving a state that had a Republican in the Senate. You would have found Republican governors on the East Coast, the West Coast, the Great Plains, and above and below the Mason Dixon Line. We were everywhere.

"A lot has changed since then. We had success in the 1990s, when voters soured on Bill Clinton and his vision of big government. And we had success after the 9/11 attacks, because we shared the belief of most Americans that war had been declared upon America and its allies -- and that it was long past time to confront Islamist terrorism.

"Yet today, when we look out at the political landscape, we see an array of worrisome signs:

"Every House member from New England is a Democrat. You can walk from Canada to Mexico and from Maine to Arizona without ever leaving a state with a Democratic governor. Not a single Republican senator represents the tens of millions of Americans on the West Coast. And on the East Coast, you can drive from North Carolina to New Hampshire without touching a single state in between that has a Republican in the U.S. Senate.

"Some of this is the result of changes in voter attitudes and demographics. We all hear a lot about how these things have affected our party in particular. We're all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us. And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one.

"In politics, there's a name for a regional party: it's called a minority party. And I didn't sign up to be a member of a regional party. I know no one in this room did either. As Republicans, we know that commonsense conservative principles aren't regional. But I think we have to admit that our sales job has been. And in my view, that needs to change.

"So we need to recognize where we are. Over the past two elections, we've lost 13 Senate seats and 51 House seats. Our most reliable voters are in decline as a percentage of the overall vote. And Democratic voter registration is on the rise.

"Now, we can argue about how much of this is attributable to our last president. On issue after issue, President Bush showed himself to be a man of principle. And I agreed with him most of the time. But we can all agree, sad as it is, that he wasn't winning any popularity contests. And history shows that unpopular presidents are usually a drag on everybody else who wears their political label. It happened with Truman. It happened with Johnson. It happened with Nixon. It happened with Clinton in '94. And it happened in '06 and '08 with President Bush.

"Still, the results of the two recent elections are real, and so are the obstacles we face as a party. And my concern is that unless we do something to adapt, our status as a minority party may become too pronounced for an easy recovery. The situation is challenging, but it's far from irreversible. We have a proud tradition of adapting to new circumstances. And if we're serious about a comeback -- and we must be -- then we'll all do what's necessary to get there.

"The first task, in my view, is to find the voters who've left the party. As we do this, the temptation for some will be to run from our principles or to dilute our message. I think that's a temptation we need to resist. These people were Republican for a reason. You don't get them back by pretending to be something else. And you certainly don't gain voters by running away from the ones that are most loyal. But it's clear our message isn't getting out to nearly as many people as it should. We need to give voters who've turned away a reason to take another look. And that takes a lot of work.

"We also need to expand the spectrum of people who vote Republican. We've made the case to African American voters that our policies are best suited to the dreams and aspirations of this community. Sadly, the party that was created on the principle that African Americans are equal members of society attracted just 4% of their vote this past fall. This doesn't mean we should abandon the effort. It means we should try twice as hard.

"We've tried reaching Hispanic voters. In 11 years, Hispanics will constitute one fifth of all voters. The future of campaigns and elections depends, for both parties, on the ability to attract voters from the Hispanic community. This is particularly true for us, since Hispanic growth is even more dramatic in regions where we do best. To borrow a corporate analogy, Hispanics are our customers, and turning them away would be like a businessman turning away his own customers. Hispanics are the fastest growing community in the country. About the same number of U.S. households tuned into Univision's Election Eve coverage as watch the "Today Show" in an average week. And Univision is the top ranked network on Friday nights for young viewers across the U.S.

"All of this should be good news for Republicans: in a center-right nation, polling suggests that Hispanic voters are even more conservative on a number of issues than the average American. About half say that tax cuts are the best route to economic growth. Nearly 80% oppose abortion. As Reagan put it, 'Hispanic voters are Republicans. They just don't know it yet.' Yet this past election saw the worst showing for our party among minorities in 150 years -- and not because Senator McCain didn't try. He did, mightily. We've worked hard to attract everyone who dreams of a better life -- in cities and suburbs and everywhere in between. We need to work even harder.

"One way to appeal to more voters is to realize that we can't promote what we don't know. So I think we need to have a better grasp of our history -- and a willingness to share it. The reason for the establishment of the Republican Party is not in dispute: A brave group of antislavery activists pledged that if Congress ever allowed slavery in the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska, they'd form a new party. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law, that's what they did. So the first thing to know about our party is that it was born of a commitment to equality and opportunity.

"In its early years, the Republican Party was responsible for The Homestead Act, which paved the way for the cultivation of the Midwest. Republicans were responsible for the Transcontinental Railroad, which bridged the Atlantic and Pacific, and set the foundation for the development of the western United States. We saw the need for an educated citizenry. We acted on it legislatively. And today, about one fifth of all college students in the U.S. are enrolled in schools that were created through the Land Grant Act of 1862.

"Later on, Republicans came to be known for fiscal restraint and low taxes, conservation, defending the working man, and laws that protected Americans from unsafe food and drugs. Republican influence waned in the 1930s and 1940s. But Republican accomplishments during the FDR years say a lot about our party. And the GI Bill is a good example. Here was a piece of legislation that didn't open the doors of opportunity to the well-born, but to the children of line-workers, mechanics, truck drivers and cabbies, from Biloxi to Brooklyn. It covered everyone who served -- including women and African Americans. And it was written by a Republican.

"Every one of these things came about because the Republican Party recognized new needs or new opportunities -- and responded to those needs with courage and vision and optimism. From Lincoln's day to our own day, as America has changed, Republicans have adapted with it.

"That's our past. Now what about our present? Today, as in the past, Republicans have the right solutions for the problems Americans expect government to address. Yet too often we've failed to express our ideas on issues that matter to people most. So we need to explain our ideas -- and the practical benefits they promise for people of every class or race in every corner of the country.

"Too often we've let others define us. And the image they've painted isn't very pretty. Ask most people what Republicans think about immigrants, and they'll say we fear them. Ask most people what we think about the environment, and they'll say we don't care about it. Ask most people what we think about the family, and they'll tell you we don't -- until about a month before Election Day.

"Republicans need to explain that when it comes to government spending, it should be limited. And the taxpayer's burden is our first concern, and that we support programs that create the conditions for individuals and families to flourish. On education, we need to explain that inner-city parents have the same rights to a good education for their kids that suburban parents do -- and show them that Republicans will fight this battle until it's won.

"Workers need to know that we're not anti-union -- we're pro employee. That means that when it comes to union elections, Republicans will protect a worker's right to a secret ballot. On healthcare, we need to explain to people that the best health care in the world is worthless if people can't afford it -- and that Republican policies will drive down costs.

"On energy independence, Republicans need to explain that our approach is the balanced one. If our twin goals are to keep prices low and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil, then we need to produce more, conserve more, and invest in the alternative and renewable fuels of the future. The Republican concept of finding more and using less is simple and sensible. People need to know about it. And on the environment, Republicans need to explain that the most effective way to protect the environment is to match our desire to protect it with our desire for prosperity.

"There isn't a single person in this room who doesn't support clean energy and clean air. There isn't a single person in this room who doesn't want more affordable health care. There isn't a single person in this room who doesn't want all of America's children to have the best education possible.

"We need to ask ourselves why most people don't think that we believe these things.

"There is no doubt that some in the media help the other side. President Obama got more credit for saying he wants to close Guantanamo than President Bush did for capturing the guys who live there. But blaming the media isn't a strategy for success. It's like blaming the ref for losing. The only sure way to win is to explain our ideas to those who stand to benefit from them. In the end, these are the people who decide elections. Americans are increasingly mobile. The family dollar doesn't stretch as far as it used to. College tuition has become impossible for many to pay. To all these 21st Century realities, Democrats offer 20th Century solutions. And we need to highlight it.

"In Congress, we'll be responsible enough to admit when the other side is right. But we'll also point out where Democrat ideas fall short. We'll point it out when Democrats attempt to undermine or reverse successful terror-fighting policies that have kept us safe since 9/11.We'll point it out when they try to tax and spend our way to prosperity. We'll point it out every time they do the bidding of the trial lawyers and Big Labor bosses. And we'll point it out every time they claim to solve a problem they've really only put off -- as they did just last week on Guantanamo Bay.

"The same week President Obama announced his plan to close it, we learned that a number of former detainees had resurfaced on the battle field and returned to al Qaeda. Some have admitted to their intention of killing Americans during interrogations. In my view, we should take them at their word -- and keep them where they are so long as they pose a threat to the United States.

"We need to communicate our ideas to everyone who ran away from the Republican Party in November -- and to many others. And we need to show them that our policies are developed with a human being in view, not just an abstract principle. As we do this, we should avoid the false choice of being a party of moderates or conservatives. America is diverse. The two major parties should be too. But this doesn't mean turning our backs on commonsense conservatism, or tailoring our positions to suit particular groups. Our principles are universal. They apply to everyone.

"The Republican Party puts the family first. We believe mothers and fathers make better decisions about their childrens' education than the state. We believe every life has worth and deserves protection. We believe the role of judges is to say what the law is, not what they think it ought to be. We believe workers know how to use their hard-earned money better than the Democrats running Congress. We believe all these things. And we believe most Americans agree with us. Somehow the message has been muddied. Now is the time to clear it up.

"Every so often, there comes a time when a political party has to reexamine itself. For Republicans, now is such a time. For some, the work might seem daunting. It shouldn't -- because there are signs that a revival is already taking place. Thanks to the efforts of Republicans across the country, including many of you, men and women of courage and principle are carrying our message to new audiences -- even to places where that message has long been unspoken or ignored.

"One person who heard that message is known to many of you. Two years ago, he decided to run for state office as an Independent in a strongly-Democratic city in the South. When he lost, a local Republican activist who saw potential in the young man called him up. He told him he thought he was a natural Republican -- and that he should run as one for Congress.

"When the young man's wife heard the idea, she laughed. When campaign forecasters heard about it, they said he'd never win. And when Joseph Cao was sworn into office this month, he became the first Vietnamese-born member of Congress in history and the first Republican member from New Orleans since 1891.

"Someone recently asked Congressman Cao why he became a Republican. His answer was simple: 'Because someone asked me too.'

"So my message is this: Be proud of our heritage. Be confident in our principles and our policies. Be daring in the hunt for good candidates, and tireless in recruiting them in every corner of the country. As someone from a state that used to be solid blue, I assure you: you'd be amazed at how quickly people get used to someone with an "R" after their name once he's held office a little while.

"By reaching out to more people like Joseph Cao, Republicans will not only ensure the survival and future success of our party, we'll ensure the progress and the prosperity of America. The problems we face as a nation are too serious for us to neglect this necessary work. And I have no doubt that Republicans will do nothing less to ensure a stronger, freer America in the years ahead."

Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is the U.S. Senate minority leader.

Editor's comment: These POWERFUL words of Mitch McConnell do NOT need to be diluted by anything I can say here. I just hope the Senator understands that it is NOT the delivery of the Republican message that is at fault with the party.

It is the OBVIOUS disconnect between the Republican Party's message and the acting out or living the message that is the PROBLEM.

DICK ARMEY: Washington Could Use Less Keynes And More Hayek. Good Advice.

Washington Could Use Less Keynes and More Hayek
The late Austrian economist offered good reasons to be skeptical of government action.
By DICK ARMEY

"In the long run, we are all dead," John Maynard Keynes once quipped. An influential British economist, Keynes used the line to dodge the problematic long-term implications of his policy proposals. His analysis of the Great Depression redefined economics in the 1930s and asserted that increased government spending during a downturn could revive the economy.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats (very few of whom likely have read Keynes's 1936 book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money") have dug up the dead economist's convenient justification for deficit spending in defense of their bloated stimulus legislation. But none ask the most important question: Was Keynes right?

According to Nobel economist Fredrick Hayek, a contemporary of Keynes and perhaps his greatest critic, Keynes "was guided by one central idea . . . that general employment was always positively correlated with the aggregate demand for consumer goods." Keynes argued that government should intervene in the economy to maintain aggregate demand and full employment, with the goal of smoothing out business cycles. During recessions, he asserted, government should borrow money and spend it.

Keynes's thinking was a decisive departure from classical economics, because arbitrary "macro" constructs like aggregate demand had no basis in the microeconomic science of human action. As Hayek observed, "some of the most orthodox disciples of Keynes appear consistently to have thrown overboard all the traditional theory of price determination and of distribution, all that used to be the backbone of economic theory, and in consequence, in my opinion, to have ceased to understand any economics."

Classical economists up to that time had emphasized a balanced budget and government restraint as the primary goals of fiscal policy. The simplistic notion that "aggregate demand" drove investment and employment threw all of that out the window, but it had one particular convenience for policy makers. Government spending is, according to Keynes's construct, a key component in determining aggregate demand, so more spending, even to resod the Capitol Mall or distribute free contraception, drives the economy in the short run.

A father of public choice economics, Nobel laureate James Buchanan, argues that the great flaw in Keynesianism is that it ignores the obvious, self-interested incentives of government actors implementing fiscal policy and creates intellectual cover for what would otherwise be viewed as self-serving and irresponsible behavior by politicians. It is also very difficult to turn off the spigot in better economic times, and Keynes blithely ignored the long-term effects of financing an expanded deficit.

It's clear why Keynes's popularity endures in Congress. Intellectual cover for a spending spree will always be appreciated there. But it's harder to see any justification for the perverse form of fiscal child abuse that heaps massive debts on future generations.

Today, one problem with manipulating the economy through "discretionary" spending -- that part of the budget not mandated by one entitlement or another -- is that entitlements have grown large enough to influence the economy, a phenomenon unheard of when Keynes was alive. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements are becoming larger factors in economic decision making than what Congress spends on, say, roads. Discretionary spending is becoming irrelevant as a fiscal tool.

Of course, despite Mr. Obama's campaign promises to adhere to "Pay As You Go" budgeting, no one seems terribly worried about paying for what will likely be a trillion-dollar stimulus package. What everyone should agree on is that the money has to come from somewhere, either through higher taxes, borrowing or printing.

If the government borrows the money for the stimulus, then it will either have to print money later or raise taxes to pay it back. If the government raises taxes to pay for the stimulus, it will, in effect, be robbing Peter to pay Paul. If the government prints the money, it will increase inflation, which will decrease the value of the dollar. That would, in effect, rob Paul to pay Paul back with devalued currency.

Taking money out of the private economy -- either through taxes or inflation -- and spending it in a way that doesn't offset the loss of money with real economic gains is worse than doing nothing.

Years ago I developed the "Armey Curve" to explain the negative burden government has on prosperity. The idea, borrowing liberally from Arthur Laffer's curve (which demonstrates that tax revenues fall when the tax burden gets so high that it no longer pays to work), is that at some point the burden of government spending exceeds the private economy's ability to carry it. "Stimulus" spending often does more harm than good, because it takes more money out of the system than it creates and thereby destroys jobs and leads to stagnation and diminished prosperity for all.

Hayek, who famously debated Keynes in a series of articles after the release of "General Theory," gave what I believe to be the most devastating critique of government action to stimulate "aggregate demand." Hayek viewed the boom and bust of the business cycle as primarily a monetary phenomenon created by governments' artificial inflation of money and credit.

Sound money policy, conversely, allowed the disparate knowledge of millions of economic actors to be conveyed through the price system, rationally allocating capital and labor through relative prices. The problem with government attempts to manipulate the economy through fiscal policy -- spending that takes resources away from those who are productive and redistributes it to politically favored interests -- is that it is audacious. It assumes that government knows better how to spend and invest than individuals acting in their families' best interest.

"The real question," according to Hayek, "is not whether man is, or ought to be, guided by selfish motives but whether we can allow him to be guided in his actions by those immediate consequences which we can know and care for or whether he ought to be made to do what seems appropriate to somebody else who is supposed to possess a fuller comprehension of the significance of these actions to society as a whole."

In reality, no one spends someone else's money better than they spend their own. The charade of the current stimulus package, chockablock with earmarks to favored pet constituencies and virtually devoid of national policy considerations, is the logical consequence of Keynesianism in action. It is about politics and power, not sound economics, and I believe that the American people will reject it.

Mr. Armey, a former economics professor and former majority leader of the House of Representatives, is chairman of FreedomWorks Foundation.

Republican Senator, Dr. Tom Coburn, A RELIABLE REAL Conservative, Speaks On The Stimulus. Read More.

The Stimulus Package Is More Debt We Don't Need
Can Obama really defend this 'line by line'?
By TOM COBURN

As the Senate considers a massive $1.1 trillion stimulus bill, it is vital that the American people ask hard questions of their elected officials. When they do, it will become very clear that the bill will not only fail to stimulate the economy, but could seriously delay economic recovery.

As a nation, we got into this mess by spending and investing money that didn't exist. We won't get out of it by doing more of the same.

Yet this is precisely what this bill proposes we do. Less than 10% of the bill could be considered true stimulus, if one assumes tax credits and infrastructure spending will jolt the economy. The other 90% of the bill represents one of the most egregious acts of generational theft in our nation's history, with taxpayer money going to special-interest earmarks, an ill-conceived bailout to states, and permanent spending increases that expand government's reach in areas like health care and education.

The bill's selling point is that three million jobs will be created or saved by this package. What's alarming is that each job will cost $286,000 to create or save. Moreover, one in five will be a government job.

One of the more egregious provisions in the Senate bill is a $166 billion bailout plan for the states that rewards bad budgeting at the state level. Simply sending cash to states without asking for appropriate sacrifices is grossly irresponsible. States will no longer have the incentive to live within their means, because they'll assume the federal government will be there to bail them out.

Instead of a bailout, Congress could offer states an emergency loan that could be repaid at a low interest rate. This approach apparently wasn't considered because the members who wrote the bill aren't simply interested in saving jobs -- they want to push their agenda along the way.

A key example is health care. The Senate bill doubles the amount of the Medicaid bailout requested by governors and lays the groundwork for government-run health care, which invariably leads to rationing. This ideological overreach has led even some Democrats, like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, to express concern that various "sacred cows" in the package are hurting the bill's overall goals.

The bill is also loaded with old-fashioned pork, despite President Barack Obama's insistence that members of Congress refrain from adding earmarks. In fact, the bill contains the most expensive earmark in history: $2 billion for the FutureGen near-zero emission power plant in Matoon, Ill.

Other nonstimulative pork provisions include $88 million for a new polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard, $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees, and $850 million for Amtrak.

What is not in the bill is as troubling as what is. The package does nothing to clear the toxic assets and bad mortgages that helped trigger the credit crisis. It also contains very little meaningful tax relief to make small businesses and American companies more competitive. Instead, the tax provisions of the stimulus are essentially a modest cash handout that repeats the failed policy of George W. Bush's rebate-check stimulus.
Finally, the bill's sponsors have made zero effort to pay for this new spending by eliminating programs that aren't working. Mr. Obama's pledge to go through the budget line-by-line has made no impression on the bill's authors, nor has the plight of millions of Americans faced with tough spending choices.

Dozens of independent watchdog groups, think tanks and elected officials on both sides of the aisle have spent decades identifying areas of the budget that can be cut. Yet Congress remains focused on finding "shovel ready" projects when at least $300 billion in wasteful programs are "scissor ready" today.

One of the lessons I've learned from the practice of medicine is the danger of treating symptoms rather than the disease. Doing so makes the disease worse and causes the symptoms to come back with a vengeance. It's time for government to quit masking the symptoms and deal with this crisis at its source: toxic assets in the mortgage market and a federal government that continues to pollute our economy with pork and failed interventionist policies.

Dr. Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma.

Not Reagan's [And For That Matter, NOT Abraham Lincoln's] GOP Anymore".

Not Reagan's GOP anymore
By Mickey Edwards

In my mind's eye, I can see President Ronald Reagan perched on a cloud and watching all the goings-on down here in his old earthly home.

Rolling his eyes and whacking his forehead over the absurdities he sees, he's watching his old political party twist itself into complex knots, punctuated by pauses to invoke "the Gipper's" name.

It's been said that God would be amazed by what his followers ascribe to him; believe me, Reagan would be similarly amazed by what fervent admirers cite in their desire to be seen as true-blue Reaganites.

On the premise that simple is best, many Republicans have reduced their operating philosophy to two essentials: First, government is bad (it's "the problem"); second, big government is the worst and small government is better (although because government itself is bad, it might be assumed that small government is only marginally preferable).

This is all errant nonsense. It is wrong in every conceivable way and violative of the Constitution, American exceptionalism, freedom, conservatism, Reaganism and common sense. In America, government is ... us.

What is "exceptional" about America is the depth of its commitment to the principle of self-government; we elect the government, we replace it or its members when they displease us, and by our threats or support, we help steer what government does.

A shocker: The Constitution, which we love for the limits it places on government power, not only constrains government but empowers it. Limited government is not no government. And limited government is not "small" government. Simply building roads, maintaining a military, operating courts, delivering the mail and doing other things specifically mandated by the Constitution for America's 300 million people make it impossible to keep government "small."

It is boundaries that protect freedom. Small governments can be oppressive, and large ones can diminish freedoms. It is the boundaries, not the numbers, that matter.

What would Reagan think of this? Wasn't it he who warned that government is the problem? Well, permit me. I directed the joint House-Senate policy advisory committees for the Reagan presidential campaign. I was part of his congressional steering committee. I sat with him in his hotel room in Manchester, N.H., the night he won that state's all-important primary. I knew him before he was governor of California and before I was a member of Congress.

Let me introduce you to Ronald Reagan.

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this: "In the present crisis," referring to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Democratic administration of President Jimmy Carter, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Reagan then went on to say: "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work."

Government, he said, "must provide opportunity."

He was not rejecting government, he was calling -- as President Obama did at his inauguration -- for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

This is the difference between ideological advocacy and holding public office: Having accepted partial responsibility for the nation's well-being, one assumes an obligation that goes beyond bumper-sticker slogans. Certitude is the enemy of wisdom and, in office, it is wisdom, not certitude, that is required.

How, for example, should conservatives react to stimulus and bailout proposals in the face of an economic meltdown? The wall between government and the private sector is an essential feature of our democracy. At the same time, if there is a dominant identifier of conservatism -- political, social, psychological -- it is prudence.

If proposals seem unworkable or unwise -- if they do not contain provisions for taxpayers to recoup their investments; if they do not allow for taxpayers, as de-facto shareholders, to insist on sound management practices; if they would allow government officials to make production and pricing decisions -- conservatives have a responsibility to resist.

But they also have an obligation to propose alternative solutions. It is government's job -- Reagan again -- to provide opportunity and foster productivity. With the nation in financial collapse, nothing is more imprudent, and more antithetical to true conservatism, than to do nothing.

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, President George W. Bush and Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party; it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought to be cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems.

By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater's speeches in the mid-1960s, or to Reagan's in the 1980s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen.

Last year's presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism's worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation's public affairs.

American conservatism always has had the problem of being misnamed. It is, at root, the political twin to classical European liberalism, a freedoms-based belief in limiting the power of government to intrude on the liberties of the people.

It is the opposite of European conservatism (which Winston Churchill referred to as reverence for king and church); it is, rather, the heir to British philosopher John Locke and President James Madison, and a belief that the people should be the masters of their government, not the reverse -- a concept largely turned on its head by the Bush presidency.

Over the past several years, conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness. Today, they wonder what went wrong, why Americans have turned on them, why they lose, or barely win, even in places such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

And, watching, I suspect Reagan is smacking himself on the forehead, rolling his eyes and wondering who in the world these clowns are who want so desperately to wrap themselves in his cloak.

Edwards is a former congressman from Oklahoma, a lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and author of "Reclaiming Conservatism."

Editor's comment: You forget, Mickey Edwards, that it was Ronald Reagan who suggested that "government is bad (it's "the problem")"!

You see, my BIGGEST problem with the GOP is that the party has FAILED to follow the teachings of its Founding Father: my hero, Abraham Lincoln.

When the party does, then it can count on UNABASHED loyalty from its members.

Louisville Courier Journal's David Hawpe Joins The "Dump Jim Bunning" Wagon.

Candidate Jim Bunning and the uses of cliché
By David Hawpe

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's a cliché, of course, but then so is "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" -- and just think how useful Winston Churchill's description of Royal Air Force airmen's valor during the Battle of Britain has been over the decades. Since the observation first was made by the wartime prime minister in the House of Commons, endless numbers of quipsters and scribblers have paraphrased it and/or reapplied it.

For example, right now it accurately describes the relationship between American consumers and the major credit-card companies -- "never has so much been owed by so many to so few."

With slight revision, it depicts the partnership between all those failed bankers who have grabbed federal bailout money and all those American taxpayers who have supplied it -- "never has so much been owed by so many to so many."

Looking ahead, we may say of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, "Never will so much be owed by so many."

But since I prefer to write about things political, I want to apply the Churchill quote to what's happening in the nascent race for Jim Bunning's Senate seat. A few challengers are queuing on the sidelines -- not yet prepared to commit, but eager to toe the starting line.

Seldom in Kentucky politics has there been such a show of determination to push an incumbent luminary out of office.

And we ought to be grateful for this apparent demand that Jim Bunning (in the phrase first invoked by Cromwell, to dismiss the Rump Parliament of 1653) "in the name of God, go."

We should welcome all these prospective candidates for the Bunning seat, Republican and Democrat.

In 2004, our junior senator and his supporters embarrassed not only themselves but all the rest of us with shameful re-election tactics, including, among other things, anti-gay innuendo and anti-Arab stereotyping.

Bunning told diners at a GOP event that then-state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo looked like one of Saddam Hussein's sons. His campaign manager issued a non-apology: "We're sorry if this joke, which got a lot of laughs, offended anyone."

During the same campaign, Bunning supporters, led by Senate President David Williams, mocked Mongiardo as "limp-wristed" and a "switch-hitter."

Seldom has so much political muck been spread so widely across Kentucky by so many.

The kind of attention Bunning gets in Washington can best be illustrated by his making Time magazine's 2006 list of five worst senators. He was nicely summed up in an accompanying headline as "The Underperformer."

More recently, he has been entirely absent, during some periods of what everybody, Republican and Democrat, concedes is a national crisis.

What, Jim worry?

This is a guy who welcomed his party's nomination of Sarah Palin for vice president. He saw it as a political coup du ciel -- manna from heaven. He enthused that it "charges up the delegates" because "the conservative base has absolutely no complaints" about the choice. Never mind that it actually was the coup de grâce for John McCain's presidential aspirations.

The really good news is that in addition to now-Lt. Gov. Mongiardo, there are really good potential candidates with impressive backgrounds, personal toughness and political clarity, who could take Bunning on, including Secretary of State Trey Grayson, U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, Auditor Crit Luallen and Attorney General Jack Conway.

The best news is that even the dwindling number of top Kentucky Republicans seem quietly intent on doing what they can to toss the party's baggage.

If they succeed, never will so many of us owe so much to so few.

David Hawpe's columns appear Wednesdays and Sundays in the Community Forum. E-mail him at dhawpe@courier-journal.com.

Editor's comment: Jim Bunning has been a RELIABLE Conservative, but some of his antics have left me scratching my head -- literally.

iT tOOK potus bARACK oBAMA, a dEMOCRAT, tO pUT aBRAHAM lINCOLN bACK iN tHE sPOTLIGHT. sO hERE wE gO. rEAD mORE bELOW.

Lincoln's second inaugural address
'With malice toward none'

AT THIS second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Taking About Mitch McConnell, Give Him A "Shout Out" For His Bailout Vote; Ok, Where The Hell Was Jim Bunning?

Read more about who voted for more bailout, and who didn't.

Notice that Jim Bunning was AWOL?

And he has been AWOL too many times already, and his explanation sounds HOCKEY.

What the ... .

Ok, some day REAL CONSERVATIVES will take over the Capitol again, to bring some fiscal SANITY there.

I can't wait, can you?

Republicans Need To Read This: Your Party's Future Rests On So Called Moderates, Who Are REAL Conservatives Like Myself, And Who You Are Losing!

Haley Barbour: The Republican Revival Will Start in the States
The former RNC chairman says the party will again have to sell ideas, not access.

By STEVE MOORE

Haley Barbour has a message for Republicans still dispirited by the November elections: "We've been in a lot worse shape than this. . . . When I first started working in politics during the Watergate era only 16% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans." He recalls one incident in the mid 1970s when "Mary Louise Smith, the chairman of the party, appointed a committee to change the name of the party. You can't get much lower than that."

That doesn't mean the Grand Old Party will storm back into power in 2010 and 2012. "We shouldn't kid ourselves. Republicans have a whole lot of work to do to win back voters who've fled the party. I think the brand damage is much worse than in 1992," is his sobering assessment.

Mr. Barbour is a political-turnaround artist -- the Lee Iacocca of party rebuilding. He took over the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 1993 during another one of those low points. George H.W. Bush had just mustered 38% of the vote and lost the White House to Bill Clinton. Mr. Barbour recounts that the political wise men all agreed that 1992 was a realigning election, that the GOP had become a regional party of the South, that the conservatives were devoid of ideas, and that the era of Reaganism was over.

Not quite. Two years later the GOP stormed back and Mr. Barbour was one of the unsung masterminds of the 1994 Republican revolution. If Newt Gingrich was the four-star general, Mr. Barbour was the field marshal.

As we talk at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., I can't help noticing that he appears to have shed a few pounds in the last few years. Could it be in preparation for a presidential run? "Hail no," he retorts in his trademark southern drawl. He self-deprecatingly informs me that "the American people aren't likely to ever elect a former Washington lobbyist as president."

Perhaps not, but that didn't stop him from winning two terms as governor of Mississippi and from racking up a successful record of achievement. He's cut taxes, put the state budget in Jackson on a diet, passed one of the boldest tort reform laws in the nation, and helped bring thousands of new jobs into the state that ranks by many measures as America's poorest. He gets universal accolades for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, which obliterated whole regions of Mississippi. In contrast to Louisiana, which captured all the media attention because the botched recovery effort there, in Mississippi the reconstruction and relief efforts were a case study in government professionalism and, as he puts it, "harnessing the power of the private sector in a time of crisis."

"I am a small government, rational regulation, low tax, free market capitalist. And I'm going to be one even if I'm the last one!" Mr. Barbour declares.

He then offers a sobering fact of political history: "We need to understand that only once since 1896 has a party that took the White House not held on for at least two terms, and that was when Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. So the odds are stacked against us." Message: Brace yourself for eight years of President Barack Obama.

One of his biggest worries is that voters have lost confidence in Reaganite free-market principles. "The last few times that we've lost elections, it has not been because voters changed their mind about our policies, it's been because they changed their mind about us," he explains. "They decided that we hadn't adhered to the policies and principles that they had thought they were voting for during that election."

That was certainly true after George H.W. Bush raised taxes in 1990 and then in the 2006 bloodbath, when Republicans were punished for their reckless overspending.

Now the problem may be deeper: "Right now a lot of people that have voted for us repeatedly are not so sure about free-market capitalism. They're scared. They don't know if they're going to have to work until they're 80, they don't know if they're going to send their children to college, they don't know if they're going to lose their business or job." So he fears that "right now the only answer they know is government. The only place they know to turn that can help them is government."

This seems overly pessimistic to me, but we both agree that Republicans haven't exactly done much to disabuse voters of this sentiment. In 2008 the GOP became the party of federal bailouts and other socialistic solutions to the financial meltdown. Most voters don't fully understand why the stock market and economy collapsed this year, says Mr. Barbour, "but they do know it happened on our watch, and so we get the blame."

As with any rehab process, the first step for a Republican comeback, he argues, is to "come clean and admit we did a lot of things wrong." Like what? He quickly rattles off the misdeeds: "Corruption, out-of-control spending, enormous increase of the national debt under a supposedly conservative administration, no vetoes of spending bills that Ronald Reagan would have hit with a hatchet." He adds that the war in Iraq remains highly unpopular even among many conservatives. "Americans simply don't like long wars," he says.

There's a temptation after a loss like this, he continues, "to purify our party by running off the people that aren't with us 100% of the time, or the people who aren't social conservatives, or the people who aren't this or the people who aren't that." He says party purges like that would be catastrophic. "This is a time for the party to be figuring out how to multiply. Politics is about addition and multiplication, not division and subtraction." He fumes that efforts to evict moderate Republicans in primaries is counterproductive.

Wait, I say, aren't the big spending Republicans who act like Democrats -- people like Ted Stevens of Alaska or Jerry Lewis of California -- the people contaminating the GOP brand? His view is that Republicans need to elect a lot more moderates from the Northeast to regain operating majorities.

Mr. Barbour is fanatical about the need for the GOP to "to do the hard work to build strong and self-reliant" state and local chapters of the party that are in such disrepair. "Now is our chance when we're out of power to build back up from the bottom, to have a participatory, inclusive process for letting people get involved in our party. Barack Obama proved something that I've seen time and time again: if you'll give people a chance to participate in politics they'll knock your door down. And the Democrats did a whole lot better job of that than us this time."

Another worrisome trend he mentions is the youth vote. "We've got young people who voted for Obama by better than a 2-to-1 margin. The data is very clear, that when people vote in their first two presidential elections for the same party, more than 80% of those people are going to stay with that party for the rest of their life, barring some big event that changes it."

This gives the GOP four years to learn to communicate with the iPod generation. The party, he says, must figure out how to tap new media and new messaging to reach out and touch 20-somethings.

He also advises that the party figure out in a hurry how to close the money gap. Democratic money swamped not just John McCain but Republicans in all 2008 races. To counter that advantage, Mr. Barbour insists that Republicans have only one real option, which is to once again tap into the power of the mom-and-pop small donor. "When you're in power a long time, you become dependent on big money -- a few large donors." He again mentions with admiration how Mr. Obama captured the email addresses of a reported four million donors who "are giving $10 a month on their credit card. Republicans are going to have to once again become a party of ideas and then raise money on those ideas, because we're not going to get any access money. We haven't got anything to give anybody access to anymore. . . . You can get a picture with me, but that's worth about a sixpack of beer."

What should a post-Bush Republican foreign policy look like? I ask, because the party now seems incoherent on what it believes in with respect to America's position in the world. "I think, more and more, we're going to decide that there are very, very, strong limits to nation-building. But I think we'll also be for open markets. It's easy to be isolationist in bad economic times, but it's terrible policy. So I see our policy as open markets, internationalist, peace through strength, but caution about interventionism."

Mr. Barbour has been a vocal critic of the Obama stimulus plan. "A lot of this is just crazy," he fumes. "I'll tell you what I told [Obama] in front of 45 governors. Don't give me $400 million of one-time money and make me spend it on recurring expenses. I'm better off not to get it. I'm not sure a stimulus package is going to do much good after all the money the federal government has already popped into the economy." But then he adds: "The idea of long-term capital improvements is a lot better than just giving every state a blank check."

In the end, he advises, Republicans can only win if they rediscover the power and voter appeal of innovative and reform-minded solutions to the nation's ills. "If we're going to have a party that gets the White House back before we fall totally into socialism, we need to persuade voters that our market-based solutions work, and government mostly doesn't. And we're going to have to apply these principles to a whole new set of policy challenges."

The best people to do that, he insists, are the governors. He reminds me that in the 1990s it was governors like John Engler of Michigan, Fife Symington of Arizona, and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin who led the way on supply-side tax cutting, welfare reform and economic development. I ask him if there are any future Ronald Reagans out there in the states. He mentions Bobby Jindal, Mark Sanford, Jim Douglas and, of course, Sarah Palin. "This has to be a bottom-up rebuilding process," he says. "Republican solutions are going to flow from the states, not from Washington."

Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page.