Jeb Bush spoke the other day at the conservative Summit and reportedly thrilled the crowd with his defense of conservative principles and his assertion that the electoral defeat in 2006 was largely due to Republican abandonment of fiscal restraint. I think the younger Bush brother has it mostly right.

Jeb even recognized that some Republicans in Congress don’t seem to have realized the obvious. According to Zachary Goldfarb at the Washington Post, Jeb Bush told the crowd that: “[i]f the promise of pork and more programs is the way Republicans think they'll regain the majority, then they've got a problem."

Jeb Bush is not the only one to recognize the Republican problem with pork spending. David Boaz and David Kirby at the Cato Institute have argued that small “l” libertarians abandoned the Republican Party in droves in 2006, primarily over the issues of the Iraq war and profligate spending.

Boaz and Kirby go too far, I think, in placing the War in Iraq on the same level as runaway spending. Virtually any particular policy will have its detractors and proponents. Taking a position in support of this or that issue will always cost you x number of voters but will also bring you the support of y number of voters. I don’t think opposing the War in Iraq, for instance, would have gained a Republican candidate more votes than they would have lost.

However, I think Boaz and Kirby are right so far as spending goes. Most Republican and small “l” libertarians were disgusted at such earmark abuse as the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Republicans will never gain enough voters grateful for the pork bestowed upon them to offset the supporters they lose for wasting public money. Fiscal restraint voters are a big segment of the Republican coalition and the Republican congressional majority took them for granted.

Amazingly, rather than repent their sins of pork, many Republican members of Congress think they can gain voter approval by abandoning President Bush on Iraq. Once again, they think they can mollify the left by irritating the right. Just like when they try to please the mainstream media, this plan is doomed to failure.

To be sure, wasteful spending was not the only reason republicans took a pasting in 2006. Republicans were barraged with negative news throughout the Summer of 2006 regarding corrupt Republican members of Congress. Republican congressmen were either soliciting gay sex congressional pages or taking bribes from government contractors. The Democrats’ assertion of a “culture of corruption” was very effective on this point. Republican arguments that Democrat members had ethical problems too were beside the point. The Democrats did not control the Congress – the Republicans did. Congressmen who take bribes in return for pork or who sexually prey on minors are not the image any political party wants to put forward. These ethical stains are even worse for Republicans because they are supposed to be the party of restrained sending and traditional moral values – leave pork and sexual deviancy to the Democrat party.

Republicans need to clean house and get back to their fundamental principles. Alaska is great example of how to do this. Long-time Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski ran for governor in 2002 and won. He then promptly named his daughter Lisa to his old senate seat.  Republicans in Alaska were bothered by this and many other questionable lapses in judgment and did the right thing – they refused to renew old Frank’s contract. They voted in the primary for challenger Sarah Palin, who went on to victory in the general election.

The lesson is clear: the Republicans can still appeal to the majority of voters by focusing on fiscal restraint and ethical clarity. If the Republicans who have stayed too long in Washington would only recognize this, the party and the country would be better off for it.

- posted by Thomas @ 9:25 AM