How the GOP can get back in the game

Posted by Chris Connolly on 01.25.2009

I'm (kinda) back with two stands the GOP needs to take...

Hello everyone! I am back once again after taking a little time off to recover from some election-related political burnout and the self-loathing I felt for spending months defending a guy I had spent years swearing I would never vote for. But I am done dwelling on the past. The GOP lost, so now the question is what do they have to do to get back in the game with a congressional election less than 2 years away? (And yes, I just got a little sick to my stomach at the thought of another election cycle.)

The one thing they cannot do is sit on their hands and let the Democrats pass whatever they feel like without any opposition. I realize they don't have the votes to stop anything, especially considering how liberal a lot of the GOP members of the Senate are. However, they need to take every opportunity they can to express their disagreements, either from the floor of their respective houses, in media interviews or in the op-ed pages of newspapers and magazines. At the same time, they need to come up with proposals of their own that highlight the differences between the parties. In short, they need to do what the Democrats did from 2002-06, minus the tasteless personal attacks. (Well, the Dems didn't really offer counters to GOP legislation, but bear with me...)

So what should be the first two things on their agenda? Stop Eric Holder from becoming Attorney General and derailing the "stimulus" package.



Why Eric Holder?

Quite simply, Holder is the easiest "big name" appointment they can derail. There was never a question they would do nothing to stand in Hillary Clinton's way since the Senate is more concerned with getting along with each other rather than asking if it is a good idea to have a Secretary of State who was intervening on behalf of donors to her husband's foundation, which also happens to take a lot of money from foreign governments. Besides that, I think the GOP was convinced she was the best they were going to get under the circumstances. Tim Geithner's nomination as Treasury Secretary has apparently been labeled as "too big to fail", despite his pathetic excuses as to why he didn't pay his taxes and also having economic Armageddon occur when he was in charge of the New York Fed. They also can't stop Leon Panetta from taking over the CIA, even with his having no qualifications to run an intelligence agency, due to all the connections he has from being in government for so long. That leaves the bull's-eye on Mr. Holder.

His comments on the War on Terror aside, the GOP has enough on Holder to spark a public outcry to keep him from becoming head of the Justice Department. His role in the Mark Rich pardon alone should be enough to disqualify him, especially considering that during his testimony to Congress about Rich's pardon he perjured himself. The facts are clear: he used his office to get help in his effort to become AG in a Gore administration. On top of that, there is his work helping to pardon unrepentant FALN terrorists to help Hillary in New York and former Weather Underground members. Oh and then there is the Elian Gonzalez affair, which led to this great piece of video:



If the GOP has any fight in them at all, it needs to come out in opposition to Holder. Besides, do we really want an AG who has ties to the biggest nut job in the country?

Putting the brakes on TARP and the "Stimulus" Package

By now it is clear to everyone and their grandmother that TARP has been a massive failure and the biggest waste of money since the New Deal. In fact, I fully support tracking down Henry Paulson and beating him senseless with a copy of Atlas Shrugged. The money was never used for its original purpose of buying up toxic assets. The other stated purpose of helping otherwise sound banking institutions get cash to resume lending never happened either, as banks that were forced to take the money sat on the cash in order to ease their debt-to-capital ratios and people like Barney Frank used the bailout to give out party favors to banks that did not qualify under the original terms of the bailout.

The GOP needs to end this madness now by creating a public backlash against any further TARP spending. They need to be on every show that will have them talking about how TARP was fraudulently pushed on the American people and how the effects of allowing the government to take preferred stock in financial institutions is going to kill any hope of attracting private investors back into the market. They also need to frame the debate as being between two polar opposites: those who believe that individuals in a free market should decide winners and losers, and those who want a Soviet-style system where the government decides.

The other part of the equation is stopping the "stimulus" package. As more details emerge, this thing is a pork-laden nightmare. While there are some who are starting to voice opposition, they need to recruit more of the caucus in both the House and Senate in order to put the brakes on it. The CBO has already come out and said that the iinfrastructure spending isn't going to provide any help to the economy any time soon. Plus, none of this spending is going to create any new, permanent private sector jobs:



Add to that the fact that paying for it when we are already trillions of dollars in the hole is going to mean either printing so much money we become the Weimar Republic or raising taxes so much we kill the economy, and this becomes a pill I don't think the American people are going to want to swallow.

The GOP needs to attack this one on several fronts. First of all, they need to articulate to the country that it is absolute insanity to think that borrowing more to spend more is a solution when that is what got us into this mess in the first place. It is time we all start living within our means, and they should demand that the government set an example. Second, they need to offer a bold plan of their own, one that tries to encourage private sector growth.

My idea? Propose a five approach. First, call for a suspension of the income tax for 2009, including payroll taxes, which would do more to put money back in people's hands than any government spending could. Then call for a 2009 reduction in the corporate income tax to 10% (it is currently the highest in the industrialized world aside from Japan), followed by a permanent reduction to 15% in order to allow American companies to better compete in the global market. Third, introduce flat-tax legislation (for example, 20% on all income over 20K with a 5K per-child deduction) in order to end the ability of the government to determine winners and losers through the tax code. The next step would be to demand using a priority and performance based budgeting system (without earmarks) used in states like South Carolina that would start to trim the fat and rid ourselves of outdated programs that don't work. Finally, they should demand that President Obama form a commission of economists (NOT politicians) to examine our entitlement system and propose real reforms.

I realize that the GOP is not likely to take these stands (aside from several outspoken small government members). I know there is no way that if proposed they would ever see the light of day considering the iron grip Pelosi has on the House and the lack of spines in the Senate. However, in order to get back in the game, the GOP has to start to take some stands and these two fronts are the perfect targets. If they choose to sit back and just hope that the Democrats will overreach, they might as well dissolve the party.

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With the end of this column also comes an end to my time here in the Politics Zone, as I am going back to doing my own thing. I want to thank Ashish for giving me the opportunity to write here and thanks to my fellow writers who have helped me out over the past few months. A special tip of the hat goes to George, Al and Andrew. More importantly I want to thank all of you who took the time to read my work, even if you didn't agree with a word I wrote.

God bless you all and I am sure I'll see you all in the comment sections...