Making Claim to the Mandate

Overheard on Capitol Hill on 11-03-10, "Wow. That was... something. Those crazy voters must have been sending us a message. Wonder what it could have been..." And so the fight to claim the mandate began.

In the last week or so, the argument of which issues are “Tea Party Issues” has come back to the surface, as two different groups released letters to Congress detailing their respective lists of acceptable Tea Party issues. One group asserts that the November elections were a mandate on fiscal issues and nothing else. The other group details a list of six items, including both fiscal and social matters as “Tea Party Issues.”

Each group included in its letter an assertion that goes something like this: “I am the Tea Party, and I believe these things. Therefore, these (fill in the blank) issues are ‘Tea Party Issues,’ and we expect you to deliver.”

I’m pretty sure I disagree with both groups. Here’s my thought process for what it’s worth:

When the Tea Party came on my radar, I first learned of it by its acronym TEA – Taxed Enough Already. That, along with the homage to the original Tea Party leads me to believe that this movement is about fiscal conservatism only. However, I challenge the assertion that our elected leaders should focus on fiscal issues to the exclusion of all else – or even with higher priority than all else.

I am strongly conservative on both fiscal and conservative issues. My fiscal conservativism is apparent by my support of the Tea Party movement. However, you can take it on good authority that I am also very conservative on social issues as well. In fact, pick a social issue, any social issue. Now imagine the most conservative position you can think of. You’re probably in the neighborhood… And I am not by any means, willing to compromise my positions on those issues for the sake of unity on fiscal issues. A prime example is my position on the unborn. Despite the fact that an unborn human is dependent on another person for nurture and protection, he or she is still a human being, endowed with the same rights as a “breathing person.” I will never knowingly vote for a candidate who believes it is acceptable to violate those rights.

Do I have a right to bring this position into the Tea Party? Tough question. It is part of who I am, so I bring it with me wherever I go. But do I have a right to say, “I am the Tea Party, and I believe this thing. Therefore, this issue is a ‘Tea Party Issue.’”? I’m coming down on the side of no.

Do you remember the early days of the Tea Party when the mantra was, “We are people from a variety of different political backgrounds who are united on the issues of fiscal responsibility and limited government”? At its ideal, I understood this to mean that I could stand side-by-side with a pro-choicer with the full recognition that we did not agree on the issue of abortion, and still yell at our out-of-control government that enough was enough. I was yelling at my Republican representatives, and she was likely yelling at her Democrat representatives, but our message on this one issue was united.

Since that time, the message has morphed in two different directions: (1) The Tea Party reflects both fiscal and social conservative positions. And (2) The Tea Party reflects only fiscal conservative positions, and all else is to be put aside. Both groups are wrong. In my opinion, the Tea Party movement reflects only fiscal conservative positions, AND we as individuals must hold true to our positions on social issues when we choose our candidates. Each voter must develop his or her own voting algorithm. I will tell you that mine tends to lend greater weight to social issues than fiscal issues, but that doesn’t make me any more or less “Tea Party” than the next person.

So who gets to claim the mandate? Me. You. EVERY VOTER must lay claim to the mandate and hold it with tenacity. Call every elected official who represents you and tell them why YOU voted the way you voted. For me, fiscal issues will be a part of that, and social issues will also be a part of that. I expect my representatives to deliver on all of those issues, or I will be seeking a different candidate next time around.

Duke It Out, Conservatives! It's Good for Us!

Twitter’s been fun for the last few nights… The raging debate-which-shall-not-be-named has brought out passions on many sides of the issue. The “purists” have accused the “RINOs” of being RINOs, and the “RINOs” have accused the “purists” of being purists. But I won’t elevate the name-calling by calling the names (RINOS/purists). Oh. Wait. (Edit note: delete this paragraph)

At times, the debate-which-shall-not-be-named has been reasoned; at other times, it has gotten ugly. The latter has led many to express exasperation that we are even having the debate. Countless tweets of this type have zipped through my All Friends Column: “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.” Or “Can’t we all just get along, man?” 

Banish the thought! These words are for hippies. Variations on the theme include, “We just finished the election. Can’t we just enjoy it for a minute before going at one another’s throats?” I would argue that this is the very time, indeed the ONLY time that it’s REALLY beneficial to throw all our cards on the table and hash out the issues within the GOP. 

We just finished the general election, where we all “played nice” with each other for our joint benefit. We buried our hatchets and worked together to support the most conservative candidates in races across the country, which in most cases, was the GOP primary winner, despite our individual differences and pet issues. But we have been cooped up together in the big tent for far too long. It’s time to air it out. (I may never forgive myself for using the big tent analogy, but you know it’s the only way to get those RINOs to pay attention… The tent analogy will be the subject of a future blog post – if I ever write another blog post…)

These discussions MUST occur within the GOP to help determine the direction of the party as we go forward. Every so often, our party undergoes a major shift in focus – usually back to the right. The adjustments toward the center are generally more incremental and under-the-radar. This has been one of those big-shift years. In the last occurrence, 1994, we allowed the POLITICIANS to determine what the voters’ mandate must have been. Super-dumb, amazingly idiotic, incredibly foolish move. In case you wondered, my thesaurus ran out of antonyms for “smart.” In our defense, we didn’t have Twitter in 1994, so it was tough to have these debates on a nationwide scale. So the Washington elites (Yes, I said it!) got together and decided what we, the voters must have meant. They kept their focus for about two and a half minutes before succumbing to the wheeling and dealing of Capitol Hill. This time, it will be different. It MUST be different. But for us to take the reins in this country, we have to be able to clearly define our position. The best way to do that is to talk it out (or fight it out) with fellow conservatives. I imagine that the pubs, churches, and town halls of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York sounded much like the last few nights of Twitter as the citizens hashed out the founding of our country.

There is a time for everything, and this is the time for this discussion. For months our audience has been with outsiders – new voters, disengaged voters, disillusioned voters. And our message has been overwhelmingly positive and unified. Now is the time for conversation AMONG INSIDERS (Please don’t take that “insiders” to mean anything akin to “Washington insiders” or other purist slur against RINOs. I simply mean those who are inside the Republican Party, as evidenced by generally voting for GOP candidates.) We must take control of our message to our newly-elected leaders. And the time to develop this message is short. We have a brief window between November 2 and the run-up to the 2012 election. Soon we’ll find ourselves in a position of having to “play nice” once again, and debates like these will be much more difficult to have.

Do we have to agree on everything? Gee, I hope not! Unless of course, you all want to agree with ME on everything… But by raising these debates, we begin to form an understanding of the things that we do agree on. And in an ideal world, we will recognize that everybody doesn’t agree with us on every issue, and we will get the heck over it. Or we will realize that we can’t get the heck over it. And that’s a person’s right as well… We must continue to voice our opinions without fear, listen to the opinions of others with some semblance of decorum, defend our own position skillfully, and reach common ground when possible. This is HEALTHY for the GOP. Engage in the debate with gusto, and don’t let anybody shame you out of it. Remember, no election was ever won with smug (the main weapon of the shamers).

One very interesting observation about the last few nights of infighting among conservatives on Twitter: In all but ONE isolated case, I left the argument with a greater respect for and sense of solidarity with the person on the other side of the debate. Did we solve our disagreements? Most of the time, no. But at least on my end, I left with the knowledge that my “opponent” was a real person, who really cared about our country, who really valued conservative ideals, who simply had a different approach to the process. There are things we’ll never agree on. And I’m not planning to compromise my views on those things any time soon, nor should they. In almost every case, we each had an opportunity to hone our words to more clearly reflect our positions, a skill that will be advantageous as we go into the 2012 primary and general election seasons, when we will need a tight message to share with the outsiders.

I'm Not a Blogger

I’m not a blogger. I will go ahead and admit defeat in advance. I will not be regularly updating. I will not be doing research. I will not write witty, pithy, insightful prose. In fact, I do not even know what “pithy” means. Okay, I lied. I just Googled “pithy,” so I now know what it means.

I do not like blogging. I have two other blogs which have not been updated in over a year. Sad. True. Yadda. Yadda. To be a read-worthy blogger, you must work. Hard. You must research your subject. You must understand the different sides of the issue. You must write diplomatically and without overuse of hyperbole, at the risk of being accused as a conspiracy theorist. I do not like blogging.

I do like Twitter. But sometimes 140 characters simply will not suffice. My tweets do not require 72 hours of intense research, battle-tested insight into the political process, or encyclopedic knowledge of every player within the beltway. When I tweet, I just say what I think. And what I think matters every bit as much as the opinion of a political industry professional in DC. It’s the beauty of our system of government, ain’t it? Twitter allows me to express what I think BETWEEN ballots cast. I do like Twitter.

So, you can think of this blog as an extension of my Twitter stream. I’ll only post to it when I have something to say that takes more than 140 characters, or if I have something to say that I may want to refer to in the future.