The Republican Party is holding their national meeting this winter. This is standard fare for both parties, and these meetings are generally taken up by electing and appointing various people, tweaking the platform in small ways, and generally being an excuse for party leaders to get together and schmooze each other once in awhile.

A group of Republicans, however, just threw a bombshell into their own meeting. Here is a text of a resolution that just met the minimum requirement (signed by the chairperson from ten states) to be debated and voted on at this years convention:

“THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee”

A few comments.
First, this resolution is an explicit reaction to the events in the NY 23rd Congressional District, where a moderate Republican was nominated for the seat, but national conservatives didn’t like her and therefore recruited and endorsed a third party “conservative” to run. The national campaign committees were obligated by rule in that instance to provide the Republican candidate with at least modest financial backing. This resolution would resolve that issue.

Second, this brings up the philosophical and practical question of is it good for a national political party to define who can and can’t be a part of itself. Personally, I think this top-down approach (that is, having the organization decide who it will support) is counter-productive and will lead to the destruction of the party. The alternate and more healthy approach is simply to allow anyone who wants to join the party or run for office to get the chance, and then to let the voters (primary or general) decide. But conservatives have long blistered at the fact that “their” money and “their” influence are supporting moderate candidates–even though my impression of the party is that the richer and more corporate donors are generally in the moderate camp.

Third, I find the ten propositions that these party leaders identified to be fascinating. To summarize the ten.

1) Oppose any Keynesian stimulus package and support “small government, smaller debt, and lower taxes”.

Of course, Republicans have tried and failed to do all three of those simultaneously since Reagan. In reality they tend to lower taxes, cut the size of government only at the margins, and ignore the debt.

2) Oppose “Obama-style government run healthcare”. This is a border-line meaningless statement, other than I suppose to oppose any health care reform that includes drastically expanding the number of people who buy into government run insurance. (I say expand, because Medicare already provides this service to millions of Americans.)

3) Support “market-based reforms” and oppose cap-and-trade environmental legislation. I find this one amusing because cap-and-trade is a market-based reform, and moreover cap-and-trade was originally developed by conservative economists and supported by Republican leaders. The GOP opposes Obama’s particular cap-and-trade proposal, mostly because of the details of the plan.

4) Oppose “card-check”. I had to look this one up. It refers to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which opponents of the bill have labeled “card-check”:

Under current law, in order to form a labor union, 30% of the employees have to sign a card saying that they would like a union to be formed, at which point the union organizers submit the card to the government to form a union. Then the employers have the right to demand that a secret ballot be held among all employees to determine if a union will be formed. Of course, employers almost always demand this. If the union wins a majority in the election, then a union can be formed.

The new law states that if the union can get more than half of the employees to sign the card in the first place, then they can skip the secret ballot step. It would also do two other, seemingly less controversial things (although I’m betting that they are really what the fight is about). The second provision of the law would require that if the new union and the employer cannot reach an agreement within 90 days, that the case would immediately be referred to the labor board for mediation. This would prevent employers from simply not negotiating in good faith with the new union and risking a strike, where new unions who have yet to produce any tangible benefits often have trouble organizing strikes. And third, the new law would drastically increase penalties for companies that violate labor laws.

5) Opposes “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. If this passes, the GOP can kiss the American Southwest goodbye.

6) Support “military-recommended troop surges” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently the authors of this resolution never read up one who George Washington or George Marshall had to say about the importance of a civilian-run military.

7) Support “containment” of Iran and North Korea, with specific regard to getting them to drop their nuclear ambitions. Almost every politician in the country believes in these things, they just disagree about the details.

Support the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a women for federal purposes.

9) Oppose “health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion”. The amusing thing here is that the bill doesn’t stipulate who is doing the denying. Potentially, this could mean that any supporter of the current health care system, in which employers and private insurance companies ration and deny health care services all the time, is in violation of this one.

10) Oppose government restrictions on gun ownership. Does this include rocket launchers, or the guns attached to jet fighters and tanks?

The part of me that likes having two viable parties hates this resolution. On the other hand, the part of me that supports liberal policies hopes it passes. Why?

Because imagine that you are a pro-life, moderate libertarian and a firm believer in classical economics. This is a person that the Republican Party has traditional courted very successfully.

But this resolution tells you that you aren’t Republican enough. Why? Here’s how you score on the ten points:

1) You fail. While you hate the Obama stimulus, but you also don’t support supply-side economics.
2) You pass. You oppose government run health care plans, in general.
3) You fail. You may oppose the particular Obama cap-and-trade plan, but in general cap-and-trade has proven an extremely successful way of getting corporations to self-regulate their emissions.
4) You pass, probably. (Although I could imagine pro-business conservatives supporting the new labor law.)
5) You fail, probably. Granting amnesty to at least some number of illegal immigrants already in the United States will likely be necessary as part of any comprehensive immigration reform, just for practical reasons if nothing else. (The financial cost of hunting down and deporting millions of people would be prohibitive.)
6) You fail. No thinking libertarian would pledge to support every troop increase that the military ever requests.
7) You pass. Again, who doesn’t support containing Iranian and North Korean aggression?
You fail, probably. Most libertarians I know of oppose DOMA for federalist reasons, even if they dislike gay marriage.
9) You pass, assuming that they meant “government rationing and denial of health care”.
10) You pass.

There you go, you got a score of 50%. Even though you likely disagree with the Democratic Party on virtually all of these issues, if this resolution passes the GOP wouldn’t want you.

Silly conservatives.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Business And Regulation, Healthcare, Homosexuality, Obama Administration, War in Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.