THE ART OF POLITICAL WAR Feedback Box: How Republicans Can Fight To Win by David Horowitz The Republican Dilemma | It's The Politics | The Six Principles | Practicing the Art | Reshaping the Republican Party CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE BULK COPIES letters@noleft.com RESHAPING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE FIRST STEP is to stop complaining about life and the media being unfair. The press is outrageously biased against conservatives. Republicans must come to grips with this, stop whining about it and conduct strategies based on this reality. What that means is that every major policy initiative must be accompanied by a mass media campaign composed of 30-second television spots paid for by for-profit and non-profit groups. This is absolutely necessary to create a new public opinion base for any new conservative policy initiative. The Clintons’ proposal for a national health care plan was defeated not by Republican spokesmen, but by a $35 million national TV ad campaign in which "Harry and Louise" explained to Americans that the Clintons were going to take away their family doctor. Newt Gingrich’s failed orphanage idea might have been helped by changing the word "orphanage" to "youth care center" as some have suggested. But not much. Only a $35-$50 million national television campaign explaining how enlightened and progressive the Boys Town approach could be would do the job. Politics is a moving target. You can’t fight last year’s wars and expect to win—unless your opponent is asleep at his command post. Bill Clinton has not been asleep, and by refashioning the Democrats’ agenda as Economic Buoyancy, Free Trade, Balanced Budgets, Welfare Reform, Tough Attitudes Towards Crime PLUS the signature Democrat concerns for women, children, minorities, working Americans and the poor, he’s made the Democrats a much tougher opponent than they’ve been until now. (Provided that their candidates can stay on this course). What should the Republican response be? Right now, Republicans are identified with flat taxes, opposition to minimum wages, opposition to more money for education, and opposition to more money for health care and health research. If this is combined with an opposition to all abortion rights, a perceived intolerance to the homosexual minority and an overzealous promotion of organized religion, the resulting profile is not the platform of a modern majority party. Such a party can no longer win a governorship even in a Bible Belt state like South Carolina! And such a party loses a governorship by 20 points in the must-win state of California. In order to win now, Republican candidates have to run away from their Party image, much as Democrats had to until triangulation turned them around. How can the Republican Party remake itself into a majority party in the eyes of the American people? By focusing on the following five agendas:   1. Military preparedness If the Clinton Administration has demonstrated one thing, it is that Democrats still cannot be trusted with the nation’s security. The Clinton Administration’s gutting of the defense budget, the failure to build an anti-missile defense, the erosion of military credibility, the addiction to UN and NATO diplomacy, multi-lateralism, arms control agreements and other failed panaceas is the result of an apparently incurable liberal policy reflex. Coupled with the enormous security breaches and technology transfers to potential adversaries, these habits make defense the obvious central issue of any national Republican campaign. The world is a dangerous place, and Democrats consistently lack the tough-minded realism necessary to deal with these dangers. But remember: You need the $50 million TV campaign to make real to voters that which is real in life: that American children will die and that civilization is at stake if we don’t improve the military, develop an anti-missile defense and aggressively pursue our security interests.   2. Give Minorities, Poor People and Working Americans a Shot at the American Dream Government welfarism, regulations, taxes and quotas, excessive urban crime, lower performance expectations, and metastaizing school bureaucracies are oppressing poor people, minorities, and children and cutting off their opportunities. Republican policies and principles—lower taxes, single standards, school choice, secure streets, and individual responsibility provide the necessary rungs in the ladder of success. Empowering minorities, poor people and working Americans by putting the education dollar directly in the hands of parents, either through "opportunity scholarships" or school vouchers is the most important single legislative step that Republicans can take in liberating them from the chains that liberals have shackled them with.   3. Accountability and Standards for Government Expenditures. Republicans are not against more money for schools. They are for more money for schools and against wasting money on schools. They want the money to go to educating kids, not to buttressing failed school systems and lining the pockets of education bureaucrats. If Democrats propose $100 billion for school expenditures, Republicans should propose $150 billion—but only for schools that implement a teacher standards test (the penalty for failure to pass being dismissal), require an annual increase in student performance tests, abolish bilingual programs that fail to teach students English, teach phonics reading, do not teach "new math," and require expulsion for disruptive students. This is the way to define a Republican education agenda. (Clinton could not sign such a bill.) Republicans will have grasped both the common sense and compassion sides of the issue. What goes for education, applies to other similar issues.   4. Crime This is the one issue where liberals cannot control the media spin. Because local stations must report crime to keep their ratings. In California, there is an attack on the "three strikes" law because the third felony that sends an offender away for life can be non-violent. Where is the Republican Party? Why isn’t it screaming that the American people have a right to tell a violent felon that "you’re on notice; anything else keeps you off our streets for life." Republicans should put up ballot initiatives all over the country for a two strikes law if the first felony is violent. Hard time for armed crime. Felons who use a gun in committing their crimes should have 10 years automatically added to their sentences. Republicans should support the NRA-sponsored "Exile" program to remove armed felons from law-abiding communities. Protection of lawful citizens from security threats at home and abroad is the single most important responsibility of government.   5. Individual Responsibility Individual responsibility means that individuals should win jobs and educational places on merit, not on the basis of their race or gender. It’s the basic American principle of non-discrimination and fairness to all. The Democrat Party supports racial preferences. This was the policy of segregationists in the era before the Civil Rights Acts. It is time to end government racial discrimination for good. The Republican Party can be a majority party, but only if it respects the common sense of the American people, recovers the Reagan-era optimism ("it’s morning in America"), diversifies the face it presents to the voting public, remembers that it’s not how much you spend that counts, but how much you spend on vote decisive activities, and never forgets that the American electorate is very large and (when it comes to politics) hard of hearing as well. Above all, Republicans need to remember their heritage as the party of Lincoln, of principle, of the underdog—the party of the American Dream.   Back to Literature Table Back to