The Path to
Republican
Revival
Obama’s overreach and a sustained commitment to policies of
growth and reform offer a way forward for a damaged party
By Peter Wehner and Michael Gerson
A
T SOME POINT about five years
ago, America became a “One-
Party Country”—and the party
in question was the GOP. Such,
at least, was the conclusion of
Los Angeles Times reporters Tom
Hamburger and Peter Wallsten in
the book they wrote under that title following the 2004
presidential election. Bizarre as their claim may sound
today, it stood on solid ground. In November 2004,
George W. Bush had won re-election with the largest
number of votes up to that point in American history
while racking up the seventh Republican win in the
Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and
Public Policy Center. Previously he worked in the ad-
ministrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush,
and George W. Bush, in the last of which he served as
deputy assistant to the president. Michael Gerson,
formerly a speechwriter and policy adviser to Presi-
dent George W. Bush, is now a syndicated columnist
appearing in the Washington Post and a senior re-
search fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement.
Commentary 21
previous 10 races for the White House. Republicans,
moreover, were in control of the Senate by a margin of
10 seats, and of the House by a margin of 30. To com-
plete the sweep, they also boasted a majority of the na-
tion’s governorships and a plurality of state legislatures.
In short, Republicans had reached their most
impregnable point of strength in the modern era, a
fact hardly lost on their glum and battered adversar-
ies in the Democratic and liberal camp. As “euphoric”
as were Republicans, wrote the New Republic’s Peter
Beinart at the time, “the intensity of their happiness
can’t match the intensity of our despair.”
But then came the reversal, sudden and swift. To-
day, after two punishing election losses in 2006 and 2008,
in the course of which Democrats gained 15 Senate seats,
54 House seats, and the White House, the GOP is now
the minority party, Democrats are rejoicing, and many
Republicans have lapsed into a state of near panic. “Are
the Republicans going extinct?” Time asked in a dramatic
cover story. “And can the death march be stopped?”
It can—though it is indisputably true that the
challenges facing Republicans are the stiffest since the
years immediately following Watergate.
B
ARACK Obama’s victory in 2008 was the most
sweeping since 1980. He became the first Demo-
cratic president since Lyndon Johnson 44 years
earlier to garner more than 50.1 percent of the vote.
In the process, he took seven states that had twice
voted for George W. Bush, including two (Indiana and
Virginia) that had not gone Democratic since 1964.
In the Senate, Democrats hold a filibuster-proof 60
seats, the largest margin for either party since 1978. In
the House, Democrats hold 257 seats to the GOP’s 178.
Twenty-nine out of the nation’s 50 governorships are
now in Democratic hands.
Democratic electoral dominance is reflected in
other numbers as well. In every age group between 18
and 85, Gallup reported in May, Democrats enjoy an
advantage over Republicans among those identifying
themselves with a political party. In a Pew study earlier
this year, self-identified Democrats outran self-identi-
fied Republicans by 11 percentage points. “On nearly
every dimension,” the study concluded, “the Repub-
lican party is at a low ebb—from image, to morale, to
demographic vitality.”
The reasons for the vertiginous decline are both
proximate and long term. At the top of the list, surely,
is the Iraq war—a venture that, at the outset, had gar-
nered the support of more than 70 percent of the pub-
lic and strong majorities in both the Senate and House.
But that support quickly unraveled. The Bush admin-
istration never fully recovered from the revelation that
Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of weap-
ons of mass destruction, and many Americans came to
believe, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that the
administration had “lied” the country into war. Add to
this an Iraqi insurgency the White House did not ad-
equately anticipate and an occupation strategy poorly
conceived and poorly executed, and one had the mak-
ings of massive political erosion. By the time Bush em-
braced a new and successful counterinsurgency strat-
egy in Iraq, it was too late for Republicans. The public
had grown bone-weary of the war and blamed both the
president and his party.
The GOP was also hurt badly by well-founded
charges of congressional corruption. This, arguably,
was the most salient factor behind the Democratic
gain of more than 30 House seats in the 2006 midterm
elections. “Not since the House bank check-kiting
scandal of the early 1990s have so many seats been
­affected by scandals,” an article in the Washington Post
put it a few days before the election. Democrats turned
the GOP’s “culture of corruption” into a rallying cry of
their campaign, and it worked.
Finally, among major proximate causes there
was the economic crisis of late 2008. By September,
22 The Path to Republican Revival : September 2009
the GOP’s presidential candidate, John McCain, had
clawed his way into a statistical dead heat with Obama
and was even leading in some polls. But then came the
collapse of the investment giants Merrill Lynch and
Lehman Brothers, the freezing of credit markets, wild
fluctuations on Wall Street, and fears of an imminent
depression. As the party most closely identified with
Wall Street, bankers, and capitalism, the GOP was in-
evitably held accountable. And none of this is to men-
tion the other issues contributing their share to the
party’s decline, from the mishandled response to Hur-
ricane Katrina to the failure of efforts to reform immi-
gration policy and the Social Security system.
B
EHIND and beyond all these difficulties, the
GOP has been facing even more fundamental
problems. The first might be called the curse
of policy success. Thanks in large part to a series of
conservative achievements, the major domestic chal-
lenges facing Americans a generation ago—runaway
welfare statistics, crime, drug use, high marginal tax
rates—have been significantly ameliorated even if
not yet fully overcome. This, ironically, has deprived
Republicans of some of their more time-tested talking
points in partisan conflict.
A second problem is demographic. Obama took
the presidency with the help of a “coalition of the
ascendant” (the phrase is the analyst Ronald Brown-
stein’s): young people, Hispanics, and other grow-
ing elements of American society. One of those ele-
ments is white voters with college or postgraduate
degrees, among whom Obama prevailed handily. By
contrast, McCain enjoyed a decisive plurality among
­non-college-educated whites—a segment that ac-
counted for 53 percent of the overall electorate as re-
cently as 1992 but that now stands at only 39 percent.
A third long-term challenge is geographical.
Over the past five presidential elections, Brownstein
writes, Democrats have built a “blue wall” consisting
of 18 states and the District of Columbia; these account
for fully 90 percent of the electoral votes needed to win
the presidency. In addition, Democrats control most
of the Senate seats from those same 18 states, as well
as more than 70 percent of the House seats, two-thirds
of the governorships, every state House chamber,
and all but two of the state Senates. In the Northeast,
Republicans now hold just 18 percent of U.S. House
seats and only one-seventh of U.S. Senate seats. Some
parts of the country are nearly devoid of Republican
­representation.
Is it any wonder that many observers are now
prepared to consign the GOP to the dustbin of history?
“Today,” proclaims the Democratic strategist James
Carville, “a Democratic majority is emerging, and it’s
my hypothesis, one I share with a great many others,
that this majority will guarantee the Democrats re-
main in power for the next 40 years.” In the judgment
of Sidney Blumenthal, author of The Strange Death of
Republican America, “no one can even envision when
the Republicans will control the presidency and both
houses of the Congress as they did as recently as 2006.”
Adds Michael Lind: “The election of Barack Obama to
the presidency may signal more than the end of an era
of Republican presidential dominance and conserva-
tive ideology. It may mark the beginning of a Fourth
Republic of the United States.”
Now who’s “euphoric”?
results of a series of state referenda; even in such a
deeply blue state as California, citizens by huge mar-
gins have voted down a spate of spending proposi-
tions. This year’s federal expenditures will rise to more
than 28 percent of GDP, a level exceeded only at the
height of World War II; the deficit for the fiscal year
is projected at more than $1.8 trillion. Worse, instead
of paring down ambitions in the face of such runaway
figures, the Obama administration has undertaken a
recklessly expensive domestic agenda, including an at-
tempt to nationalize American health care.
So staggering is the scope of this effort to in-
crease the federal government’s size, reach, and spend-
ing that not a few Democrats themselves have had to
warn of the consequences of massive miscalculation

I
T turns out intoxication takes one only so far in and hubris. Nationally, according to a June New York
politics. Indeed, over the past six months a combi- Times–CBS poll, voters by a 2-1 margin do not believe
nation of factors has already begun to counteract Obama has developed a clear plan for dealing with
some of the Democrats’ post-November inebriation. the deficit, and a majority reject the president’s plan
Facing a severe fiscal crisis as he entered office, to stimulate the economy at the cost of higher deficits.
Obama chose to meet it by indulging his seemingly Confidence in government itself is near a his-
limitless faith in the power of government to solve ev- torical low, and confidence in even bigger government
ery human ill. The president who had campaigned by is practically negligible. According to Gallup, only 13
loudly decrying the debt accrued during the Bush years percent want to see a permanently expanded role for
promptly took steps that, according to the Congressio- government, which is exactly what Obama aims to give
nal Budget Office, bid fair to double the national debt them. Among independent voters, according to a Wall
in six years and nearly triple it in 10. In the meantime, Street Journal–NBC News survey, the president’s job-
his signature $787 billion stimulus package, hurriedly approval rating fell from 60 percent in April to 45 per-
put together and loaded with pork, has largely failed to cent in June. These last figures represent “a clear and
stimulate where stimulation was most needed. Unem- important danger” for the president, according to the
ployment rates have risen far beyond the administra- Democratic pollster Peter Hart; independents formed
tion’s gloomiest forecasts, and problems with the econ- a crucial Obama constituency in 2008, and “this ad-
omy remain deep and durable.
On the foreign-policy side, the
self-confidence of presidential So staggering is the scope of this effort
rhetoric has sometimes been
undermined by the irresolution
to increase the government’s size, reach,
of presidential behavior. and spending that not a few Democrats
Chinks in Obama’s sup-
posedly impenetrable armor themselves have had to warn of the
were already appearing by
May, when Republicans pulled
consequences of Obama’s hubris.
slightly ahead of Democrats in
some polls of public confidence. In July, a survey by ministration is leaning much more Left than they ex-
the polling company Rasmussen Reports comparing pected.” In general, and however impressive Obama’s
the parties on 10 issues showed Republicans leading 2008 win in purely partisan terms, it remains the case,
in eight (immigration, government ethics, national in the words of a recent Pew survey, that there has been
security, Iraq, taxes, Social Security, abortion, and the “no consistent movement away from conservatism,
economy); the previous October, Democrats had led nor a shift toward liberalism” in the country’s basic
on all 10. ideological disposition.
The public’s chief worry about Obama centers, Nor are the demographic advantages now en-
naturally, on the economy. Specifically, the worry is joyed by the Democrats necessarily immovable. Sus-
over government spending, and it is reflected in the taining Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” may

Commentary 23
prove difficult, particularly among the key cohort of
Hispanics. Republicans, following the example set by
George W. Bush, could regain support among mem-
bers of this large and variegated group. Pulling in the
GOP’s favor are the growth among many Hispanics of
Protestant evangelicalism (a factor that helped both
Bush and McCain) and the steady progress of Hispanic
assimilation. Younger voters will not blame George
A moral component to our foreign policy
is part of the American DNA. Americans
also have an interest in liberty and human
rights because our safety is served by the
hope and health of others.
W. Bush forever if they find themselves unable to find
work at decent wages, especially as they begin to think
of beginning families.
Obama’s overreach has created a measure of op-
portunity for Republicans. The question is whether that
opportunity will be grasped. Can Republicans overcome
their manifest problems and succeed in preparing them-
selves for a restoration of public trust, and can they do so
not only by appealing to new groups but also by offering
compelling answers to pressing public needs?
Herewith, a brief primer.
A
NY serious attempt to revivify the GOP might
begin with a full-throated stand for a strong
national defense.
The United States, after all, is engaged in two hot
wars—in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Pakistan, the situa-
tion is fragile and, if things go badly, potentially cata-
strophic. North Korea is an already existing nuclear
threat; Iran is rapidly becoming one. While Obama
has acted impressively in some areas, especially in Af-
ghanistan, his response to crisis has often been timid
and tardy and nowhere more delinquent than during
the recent spontaneous revolt of Iran’s citizens against
the dictatorship of the mullahs.
Obama’s effective freeze of defense spending
over the next five years is inconsistent with American
global commitments. Republicans would be astute to
offer as an alternative an increase in defense spending
in the range of 4 percent real growth per year, includ-
ing support for an ambitious missile-defense program
to counter the rising ballistic threats from North Ko-
rea and Iran. Obama’s worldwide apology tours radi-
ate a weakness that arouses hope among America’s
24 The Path to Republican Revival : September 2009
enemies, dismay among America’s allies, and discom-
fiture among many American citizens. As for his trust
in diplomacy and charm, they have, to say the least,
shown themselves to be ineffectual in motivating des-
pots to change their ways. Obama has already been de-
fied, and he will be defied again, and how he responds
will go a long way toward determining the safety of the
country and the course of his presidency.
In response, some Re-
publicans have been tempted
to promote their own brand of
retreat from global engagement
out of the belief that, the cause
of democratic internationalism
having been severely damaged
by the war in Iraq, the GOP
should seize the mantle of for-
eign policy “realism.” Thankful-
ly, the Republicans who nomi-
nated John McCain in 2008 did not succumb to this
temptation, and it would be disastrous if the party
were to yield to it in the future. A durable national
consensus holds that American interests are served by
the promotion of free trade and classical liberal ideas.
With the spread of weapons of mass destruction, it has
never been clearer that America and the world have
the most to fear from dictatorship and radicalism, the
most to gain from liberalization and reform.
A moral component to our foreign policy is,
moreover, part of the American DNA. It would have
been impossible to maintain the seemingly endless ex-
ertions of the Cold War without the American people’s
instinctual concern for those held captive and their no
less instinctual abhorrence of oppression. The same is
true in the conflict with Islamist extremism and other
current global challenges. Americans have an interest
in liberty and human rights because they are Ameri-
cans—and because America’s safety is served by the
hope and health of others. Republicans can be forth-
right about the foreign-policy tradition that mixes
toughness with generosity, the willingness to confront
threats forcefully with the active promotion of devel-
opment, health, and human rights. Since the midpoint
of the last century, this has been the GOP’s watchword.
Among younger Americans focused on global issues
like genocide, poverty, women’s rights, religious liber-
ty, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, it can resonate loudly.
R
EPUBLICANS will also have to put forth a com-
prehensive reform agenda. There is no short-
age of issues at the federal level: converting
the labyrinthine U.S. tax code into something far less
burdensome and far more family-friendly; repairing a
budget process that is broken, corrupt, and inefficient;
developing a modern-day regulatory system in the af-
termath of the collapse of our financial institutions; re-
making a tort system that imposes wholly unnecessary
upward pressure on the costs of health care; insisting
that foreign-aid expenditures are both generous and
outcome-oriented; and so forth.
Take as an example education, which is, for most
Americans, an essential element of the common good
and a primary task of government. Reform of our dis-
mally ineffective system of public education was be-
gun in the Bush years, based on the understanding
that broad improvement depended on regularly test-
ing students in the basics of reading and math and im-
posing consequences on schools unable or unwilling to
raise performance levels. The natural next step in the
process would be to bring accountability to the teach-
ing profession itself, by paying teachers not just for
showing up but for excelling. Effective reform means
rewarding superior teachers through merit pay and
encouraging poor teachers to seek employment else-
where. Certification procedures need to be changed to
attract qualified instructors now barred from teaching
by the self-dealing rules of the teachers’ unions. Pub-
lic charter schools need to be supported at every turn.
Priority needs to be given to high-quality research and
data collection, the indispensable requirements for
virtues, has not been hitherto known for medical ex-
pertise, let alone for signal powers of human empa-
thy) while hugely amplifying the worst deficiencies of
Medicare and running up catastrophic debt. Effective
Republican opposition could vividly point out these
dangers while offering alternatives that would pro-
duce far better results, empowering individuals to pur-
chase their own health insurance and control their own
health care while maintaining the American edge in
medical research and innovation.
As it happens, the GOP has successful reformers
to whom it can look to and learn from, including popu-
lar governors or former governors like Mitch Daniels,
Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, and Jeb Bush. Daniels’s
health-care plan in Indiana facilitated the transfer of
money previously consigned to Medicaid into indi-
vidual health-savings accounts and simultaneously ex-
tended coverage to more than 130,000 uninsured indi-
viduals. In a state carried by Obama last year, Daniels
won re-election by 18 points. The Daniels plan is worth
emulating on its own merits. Politically, it is worth
studying as a case history in what the country cries out
for: leadership dedicated to fixing what can be fixed at
a cost that can be afforded and in a spirit of inclusive-
ness untainted by class resentment and a manipulated
antipathy toward “the rich.”

T
meaningful reform. HEN there is the key question of immigration.
With education, as with banks and auto compa- No national party can hope to succeed in the
nies, the Obama administration seems bent on shoring long run without broad support among immi-
up failure. Here is where Republican officeholders, at grants and the children of immigrants—particularly,
every level of government and in every area of public these days, Hispanics and Asian Americans. Immi-
policy, could provide a contrast:
by speaking out for clear perfor-
mance standards, by focusing No national party can hope to succeed
on good results rather than on
good intentions, and by recruit- in the long run without broad support
ing strong minds in the service
of what works and can be shown
among immigrants and the children
to work. of immigrants—particularly, these days,
If education is one critical
arena for demonstrating con- Hispanics and Asian Americans.
trast between the parties’ re-
spective approaches, another central arena is health grants, like other Americans, hold a variety of views
care. More than anything else the new administration on American immigration law and on how it has been
has attempted, ObamaCare would fundamentally alter applied. But uniformly they resent being made into de-
for the worse the government’s relationship to the pol- bating foils. Republican leaders have a positive duty to
ity and the economy. It would entail imposing cost con- confront careless rhetoric and to appeal consistently
trols through the inevitable rationing of medical care to new Americans, welcoming their overwhelmingly
itself, thus putting the state in charge of life-and-death positive contributions to the American economy and
decisions. By effectively nationalizing the health-care American values. During the last presidential primary
system, it would create universal dependency on the season, most Republican candidates, to their party’s
federal bureaucracy (a body that, whatever its other cost, were no-shows at Hispanic forums.

Commentary 25
 But the Republican appeal to immigrants is fun-
damentally different from the ethnic politics often
practiced by Democrats who attempt to play on griev-
ances rather than appeal to common values. To suc-
ceed, the Republican argument requires communicat-
ing that growing ethnic diversity does not undermine
but rather strengthens the American ideal. But an even
more powerful argument lies in the appeal to social
The GOP must be the party of both Adam
Smiths: the free-market champion who
wrote The Wealth of Nations and the
moral philosopher who authored The
Theory of Moral Sentiments.
mobility: the idea that, in America, economic and so-
cial dynamism is what offers striving individuals the
prospect of success and wealth.
This is true for immigrants because it is true
for the native-born poor and it is true for all. It is, in,
fact, vital for Republican leaders to press the case for
economic growth in general. Americans achieve their
dreams not through the redistribution of wealth but
through the creation of wealth. As the late Jack Kemp
never tired of stressing, growth-oriented economic
policies are a simple matter of justice and equity. At
the same time, they offer fertile opportunity for in-
novation by applying conservative and free-market
ideas to the task of encouraging savings and wealth-
building among the aspiring poor, rather than debt
and dependency. Such innovative ideas can range
from local efforts to nurture financial literacy to am-
bitious KidSave proposals that would create savings
accounts for every child at birth, subsidized for low-
income families. Whatever its particular expression
in policy, asset-building should be a hallmark of the
Republican party, on the sound theory that owner-
ship encourages social mobility, community, and
family stability.
In this last connection, and again with an eye to-
ward immigrants and the poor, the GOP would be wise
to strengthen its reputation as the party of community
and order. Republican rhetoric can sound intensely
individualistic, as if to suggest that once government
impediments were cleared away, all persons and all
families would thrive as a matter of course. Individual
freedom is indeed central to conservatism but so is the
belief that individual freedom is given purpose and
direction in the context of strong communities. It is a
26 The Path to Republican Revival : September 2009
staple of conservatism that strong social bonds are es-
sential to human flourishing.
Besides, it is patently clear that most Ameri-
cans do not locate the source of all of today’s social
ills in an overactive government. They are also wor-
ried about an economy that has come to seem treach-
erously unstable; a popular culture that assaults the
souls of their children; schools and neighborhoods
drained of respect and order;
and, particularly in cities and
densely packed suburbs, a de-
graded moral and physical
­environment.
In this respect, Repub-
licans would be well advised
here to borrow a page from
David Cameron and Iain Dun-
can Smith in their revival of
the British Conservative party.
These leaders have emphasized a range of issues that
directly influence the quality of life in community:
homelessness, addiction, prison reform, family break-
down, long-term unemployment. As yet, Republicans
have no comparable agenda to address such issues of
social justice from a conservative perspective. This, as
we noted earlier, may be partly owing to the curse of
previous success, which has allowed the issue of social
justice to be seized by Democrats. But, to invoke a his-
torical reference, the GOP must be the party of both
Adam Smiths: the free-market champion who wrote
The Wealth of Nations and the moral philosopher who
authored The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Like Smith
in the 18th century, the party of the 21st century must
uphold the paramount virtues of freedom and the “in-
visible hand” and the no less paramount truth that the
free life is nurtured and sustained in community.
R
UNNING through this account of domestic
and national-security issues is an attitude to-
ward public life and toward public discourse.
Tone and bearing are terribly undervalued commodities
in American politics. On the whole, people drawn to a
party like to feel that those representing the party are
both amiable and peaceable. This hardly precludes con-
viction and tough-mindedness when it comes to articu-
lating policy. Democracy was designed for disagreement,
and the proper role of an opposition party is to oppose.
But anger, personal attack, and extreme language do
nothing to expand the appeal of a party in trouble.
Unfortunately, this point has been lost on some
members of the Religious Right, whose scolding ap-
proach has created a significant backlash, especially
among young people (including young Christians). It
has also been lost on the party’s more abrasive popu-
lists, with their habit of pitting the heartland—aka the
“real” America—against the denizens of the coasts.
This not only vitiates their own claim to seriousness; it
almost willfully alienates the very groups and regions
that Republicans need to attract. There is no magic
formula when it comes to dealing with such matters
of tone, temperament, and the right use of language.
They are admittedly delicate things to measure, but
they are no less crucial for that.
Running through this analysis is, as well, an at-
titude toward government. No party founded by Abra-
ham Lincoln—a president who advocated internal im-
provements while being simultaneously prepared to
maintain the Union by force—can consider itself sim-
ply and purely antigovernment. Nor does such an at-
titude befit a conservatism inspired by the writings of
the same Edmund Burke who averred that God, “Who
gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed
also the necessary means of its perfection—He willed
therefore the state.” (By “perfection,” Burke meant hu-
man improvement.) Skepticism toward government,
however warranted and indeed necessary, is not the
same as outright hostility.
This is not to deny for a moment that the federal
government is far too large and intrusive, too ossified
and inefficient, and has failed too often to meet its
basic duties or do enough to warrant public trust. Re-
publicans are known to worry about large, overly am-
bitious government, and President Obama has fueled
those worries with a vengeance. His expansion of gov-
ernment has united in opposition both deficit hawks
and advocates of growth, each properly concerned that
his policies will lead to massive tax increases, the mon-
etization of debt and massive inflation, or both. As a re-
sult, Republicans have perhaps their best opportunity
in a generation and a half to advance a reasoned and
reasonable case for limited government. The opportu-
nity should not be squandered.
P
ARTIES in power often overreach. Triumph can
unleash their least attractive elements, which
then run up against the challenges of the world
Commentary 27
as it is. When their political plans meet with upset,
the perceived strengths of a president can quickly
become weaknesses in the public mind. We have seen
this before, and we may be seeing it again as President
Obama’s coolness and caution are judged as covers for
arrogance and indecision.
Often, for an opposition party, the best counsel
is patience and consistency. Many Republicans, han-
kering for a banner around which to rally, talk of a “re-
turn to Reagan.” The idea is attractive because Reagan
was attractive. But as a strategy, it hardly suffices. The
electorate that gave its vote to Reagan in the 1980s has
changed and is continuing to change, demographi-
cally and generationally. And the ills of the GOP are
not so trivial or temporary as to be healable by invok-
ing a new-old face. Republican leaders need leeway
to reshape the appeal of their tarnished institution,
just as Reagan did, patiently and consistently, over the
years he spent preparing his run for the presidency.
The need of the moment is not for greater “ideological
purity” (a phrase which Reagan himself abhorred) but
for greater clarity; not for louder voices but for more
thoughtful and persuasive ones; not for retrenchment
but for outreach; not for building a bridge to the past
but for creativity and innovation for the moment and
for the future.
In the 1980s, one of the Republican party’s main
sources of attraction to younger conservatives—we are
thinking of our younger selves, among legions of oth-
ers—was its growing reputation for intellectual vital-
ity. “Of a sudden,” wrote Senator Daniel Patrick Moyni-
han, a Democrat, in 1981, “the GOP has become a party
of ideas.” Restoring that reputation, to be earned now
as then through carefully argued and compellingly ar-
ticulated programs of reform, is a central challenge.
We have witnessed a collapse of confidence in our pub-
lic institutions, whose manifest failures the Obama
Democrats seem prepared, on a gargantuan scale, to
subsidize and therefore to aggrandize. Positioning Re-
publicans as the advocates of modern, accountable,
responsive institutions would strike a politically pow-
erful chord. It is where the work of renewal must begin
and whence it can be carried forward. q