Lessons for the GOP from the Gipper

Lately, it’s become fashionable for Republicans to argue that the party must move beyond Ronald Reagan if it wants to recapture its majority next year. Reagan represents the past, the argument goes. The GOP needs to stand for the future.

I made this argument myself in the January 2008 edition of The Ripon Forum. Comparing Reagan to a draftsman who designed the modern GOP, I concluded that, “Republicans need to be looking for a new architect, a leader who will help them meet the challenges our nation faces ahead, not the road we have left behind.”

Over the past few months, though, I have come to a different conclusion: I was wrong. This period has seen a Republican resurgence of sorts. In April, Republicans trailed Democrats by 9 percent in the generic ballot. By September, the GOP had cut that margin to 3 percent. While any Republican has to be pleased to see this margin narrowed, I suspect some in the party are also concerned that the gains have been built on voter anger.

Clearly, this anger has paid dividends for Republicans — not only in terms of better poll numbers, but in terms of better fund-raising. The question facing the party is whether this anger will be the foundation of a new GOP or the spark that fuels its drive toward a new majority.

Which brings me back to Reagan.

In 1978, a revolt took place in California over the rise of property taxes in that state. Called Proposition 13, the revolt was led by Howard Jarvis. Jarvis was the Glenn Beck of his day, riding a wave of discontent propelled by voter fear and anger. The revolt he led resulted in property taxes being slashed 57 percent in the Golden State. It also led to a nationwide anti-tax movement that culminated in Reagan’s election in 1980. Somewhere during that period, the fear and anger that fueled Jarvis’ revolt was transformed into optimism. That transformation didn’t just happen. It was led by Ronald Reagan.

According to his biographer, Lou Cannon, the former California governor not only tapped into the emotion that began in his state, but also turned it into positive support. “Reagan mined these seams of fear beyond doubt,” Cannon recalled, when asked recently about Proposition 13 and the 1980 campaign. “[He] didn’t seem angry, however. He campaigned as a ‘happy warrior,’ a la FDR, his first political hero. You can’t do this unless you truly are optimistic, and Reagan’s optimism — his steadfast belief that America’s best days were ahead — was, again like FDR, ingrained and natural, not posed.”

And therein lies the challenge for today’s GOP.

For all the talk about moving beyond Reagan and becoming a party of the future, the fact is that the GOP would benefit greatly from a dose of Reagan-style optimism. To their credit, leaders like John Boehner and Eric Cantor recognize this and are trying to move the party away from some of the anger. Boehner, for instance, bent over backwards trying to get Joe Wilson to apologize for his outburst toward President Barack Obama. And Cantor recently held a town hall with a Democrat in which he stressed the need for bipartisanship.

These steps are welcome if the GOP is going to move away from being seen as the party of “no.” But to become the party of “yes,” Republicans will need more than rhetoric. They will need solutions. And here, too, they should look to Reagan. It wasn’t just Reagan’s optimism that transformed the tax debate in 1980. It was that he had a plan as well — the Kemp-Roth tax cut package. Reagan’s support of this plan not only put him behind legislation that slashed taxes, but also embodied what the revolt led by Howard Jarvis was all about.

Today, Republicans have no plan that embodies the anger and fear felt by millions of Americans. Health care is a good example. Polls reveal that a majority of people are angry and oppose a public option. But these same polls also reveal that a majority fear rising health costs and support some kind of reform. Although various Republicans have proposed various reforms, the perception of the party as a whole is that it stands for doing nothing. This might work now. But when people step into the voting booth next year, they are going to want to know what Republicans will do if they win back the majority. And for this, Republicans need to get behind a plan.

In his Sept. 9 speech to Congress, President Obama provided the GOP with an opening to do just that. The president stated that both parties agree on “about 80 percent of what needs to be done” to reform health care. If this is true and consensus does exist, Republicans should turn this consensus into legislation and introduce the measure as the “80 Percent Plan.” What would be included in such a bill? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal outlined several areas of agreement in a recent interview with Politico.