Some Advice For His Own
Former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey has never been one to shy from a fight. He shattered Washington propriety by telling President Clinton that his budget and tax plan would make him a "one-term president" and quizzed NAACP President Kweisi Mfume about "racial McCarthyism." Lately, though, his famous candor has been directed at his own party. Retired since 2003, the devoted fiscal conservative and former economics professor is now making waves by saying the GOP squandered voters' trust by focusing more on "wedge issues" like gay marriage than on fulfilling its promise to champion small government. With the Republican revolution engineered by Armey and Newt Gingrich now a shambles, Armey tells U.S. News that Republicans must renew their fight for moderate voters. Excerpts:
You've been railing against your brethren of late. What's changed?
First of all, I've been critical of my party for almost two years. My own view is they became more interested in saving the majority than they were in making good policy. They became insecure. They showed a lack of commitment to the priorities of the American people. They need to get back to being small-government conservatives so they can win the confidence of the people like Ronald Reagan did. Reagan was right. People will understand and reward good policy when we move forward on substantive issues.
But many believe the GOP owes its success to "wedge" issues. And based on the success of gay-marriage bans, conservatives are responding.
These are important issues. They are also issues people want to see dealt with on a serious basis. If you put an issue on a referendum, and I get to vote, there's no fooling around. But what they did in Congress last session was raise a constitutional amendment [to ban gay marriage] on the floor as a political exercise. A fundamental tenet of conservatism is an aversion to publicly funded elections. When pocketbook conservatives see people using Congress to score points for the next election, they know they're watching a publicly funded campaign. They don't see it as serious work by serious people.
Do the midterms show that Republicans have lost the political middle ground?
For now. The good news is they can very quickly get the middle of the spectrum back. Most of the big issues that face the American people require a substantial change in policy that the Democratic Party is incapable of making. Retirement security is probably first. It is the single biggest public-policy problem and opportunity of our lifetime. It's an issue plagued by Democrats who don't care and Republicans who don't dare.
But President Bush dared and got slammed.
If you come in halfhearted, you're going to get your head handed to you. We had that experience with welfare reform in 1995 and 1996. Half of the people in our party said let's not mess with that. The Democrats will take us apart. What happened was we completed the job and when Bill Clinton left the presidency, he said it was the best idea he had.
advertisement
