August 21, 2012
We Need a
‘Conservative’ Party
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
There has been lots of
talk that Paul Ryan’s nomination ensures that we’ll now have a “real” debate
about the role of government. That’s actually funny. The bar for this campaign
is so low that we celebrate the fact that it might include a serious debate
about one of the four great issues of the day, though even that is not clear
yet. And even if Ryan’s entry does spark a meaningful debate about one of the
great issues facing America — the nexus of debt, taxes and entitlements — there
is little sign that we’ll seriously debate our other three major challenges:
how to generate growth and upgrade the skills of every American in an age when
the merger of globalization and the information technology revolution means
every good job requires more education; how to meet our energy and climate
challenges; and how to create an immigration policy that will treat those who
are here illegally humanely, while opening America to the world’s most talented
immigrants, whom we need to remain the world’s most innovative economy.
But what’s even more
troubling is that we need more than debates. That’s all we’ve been having. We
need deals on all four issues as soon as this election is over, and I just
don’t see that happening unless “conservatives” retake the Republican Party
from the “radicals” — that is, the Tea Party base. America today desperately
needs a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century “conservative” opposition to
President Obama, and we don’t have that, even though the voices are out there.
Imagine if the
G.O.P.’s position on debt was set by Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma
Republican who has challenged the no-tax lunacy of Grover Norquist and served
on the Simpson-Bowles commission and voted for its final plan (unlike Ryan).
That plan included both increased tax revenues and spending cuts as the only way
to fix our long-term fiscal imbalances. Give me a Republican Party that says we
have to put real tax revenues and spending cuts on the table to solve this
problem, and you’ll get a deal with Obama, who has already offered both,
although not at the scale we need. True conservatives know that both Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush used both tax revenue and spending cuts to fix
budget shortfalls. Ryan-led G.O.P. radicals say “no new taxes,” find all the
savings through spending cuts. That’s never going to happen — and shouldn’t.
Imagine if the
G.O.P.’s position on immigration followed the lead of Mayor Michael Bloomberg
and Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of the News Corporation. Bloomberg and
Murdoch recently took to the road to make the economic case for immigration
reform. “I think we are in a crisis in this country,” The Times quoted the
Australian-born Murdoch, who’s now a naturalized American, as saying last week.
“Right now, if we get qualified people in, there shouldn’t be any nonsense
about it.” Regarding the “so-called illegal Mexicans,” Murdoch added, “give
them a path to citizenship. They pay taxes; they are hard-working people. Why
Mitt Romney doesn’t do it, I have no idea, because they are natural
Republicans.”
Imagine if the G.O.P.
position on energy and climate was set by Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina
Republican congressman (who was defeated by the Tea Party in 2010). He now runs
George Mason University’s Energy and Enterprise Initiative, which is based on
the notion that climate change is real, and that the best way to deal with it
and our broader energy challenge is with conservative “market-based solutions”
that say to the fossil fuel and wind, solar and nuclear industries: “Be
accountable for all of your costs,” including the carbon and pollution you put
in the air, and then we’ll “let the markets work” and see who wins.
Imagine if G.O.P.
education policy was set by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, without having to
cater to radicals, who call for eliminating the Department of Education and
view common core standards as some kind of communist conspiracy. Mr. Bush has
argued that a conservative approach to education for 21st-century jobs would
embrace more effective teacher evaluation and common core standards, but add a
bigger element of choice in the form of charter schools and vouchers, the
removal of union rules that limit new technology — and combine it all with
greater autonomy and accountability for individual principals. When parents can
choose and school leaders can innovate, good things happen.
We are not going to
make any progress on our biggest problems without a compromise between the
center-right and center-left. But, for that, we need the center-right
conservatives, not the radicals, to be running the G.O.P., as well as the
center-left in the Democratic Party. Over the course of his presidency, Obama
has proposed center-left solutions to all four of these challenges. I wish he
had pushed some in a bigger, consistent, more daring and more forceful manner —
and made them the centerpiece of his campaign. Nevertheless, if the G.O.P. were
in a different place, either a second-term Obama or a first-term Romney would
have a real chance at making progress on all four. As things stand now, though,
there is little hope this campaign will give the winner any basis for
governing. Too bad — a presidential campaign is a terrible thing to waste.
