Matching the Message with the Messenger

At a recent meeting with concerned local Republicans, one person kept asking me how we can fix a widely-perceived problem with our party: the gap between the principles shared at the grassroots of our party, and the policies actually championed by Republican elected officials (primarily at the national level). This perceived gap lies at the heart of our party’s credibility problem with our own voters, and with independents, and we must address it if we are to win elections in the future.

What holds the Republican Party together is a set of shared principles about the role of the individual in society, and about the proper and limited role of government in our lives. However, the purpose of the Republican Party (like any other political party on the planet) is not to serve as a debating society or an advocacy group for these principles; it is to elect candidates to public office who will promote our principles in public policy. So, I think the first step in answering this question is to re-phrase it: how do we find, promote, and elect candidates who will promote our principles in public policy.

There is no silver-bullet answer to this question, but I believe we can begin a process, consistent with the strategic plan I’ve proposed, that will address this question. However, before I get to that point, I want to address the current approach that is being taken by the HCRP and why I don’t think it will solve this problem.

The current team at Richmond Avenue is taking a two-pronged approach: 1. they are allowing a group of precinct chairs and activists to use questionnaires, which are designed to identify specific platform planks people support, for the purpose of opposing candidates in our primary or excluding people from becoming precinct chairs; and 2. they are using the party email system, “rapid response” program, and social-networking sites to criticize fellow Republicans, including Republican elected officials. These approaches do nothing to build-up the party in the public’s mind. Narrowing our base and belittling our party’s elected officials is not going to help us win elections. Instead, this approach will only continue to agitate Republicans and drive many people away from the party over time.

The better approach is to first realize that the gap is caused by a systemic problem within the party, and then to address that problem focusing on communication, self-interest, competition, and culture.

First, we must begin to open a dialogue between our elected officials and our party leaders, activists and voters, in order to begin to harmonize the desires of our party with the issues faced by our elected officials on a daily basis in the process of administering their offices. The more we all understand each other, the easier it will be to help each other form and pursue policies consistent with our principles, and to support our officials as they face the daily challenges of their offices. If the only contact we ever have is a brief handshake during the months leading to an election, we can not hope to bridge the gap. This first step is so important to the future success of our party that I will elaborate on it in another post next week, in which I will outline specific ways the HCRP should facilitate this new process of communication.

Second, the HCRP must help create a positive atmosphere in which it will be in our elected officials’ self-interest to pursue our principles in public policy. By implementing the objectives of our proposed plan (including developing a supporting message, raising our own funds to finance our own operations to help get-out-the-vote efforts, and establishing permanent relationships and party infrastructure in every community and precinct), the party will create a broader base of like-minded supporters who will want our principles reflected in public policy. In turn, the need and desire to get the votes of this broader base should create incentives for our elected officials to pursue policies this broader base will support. If we believe incentives work in other aspects of our lives, let’s create incentives for our elected officials, too.

Third, just as we believe in incentives, we Republicans also believe in the positive consequences of competition. However, we distrust competition when it comes to our primary system. It’s time to embrace competitive primaries, by keeping the HCRP scrupulously neutral. That means opening the non-financial resources of the party to any candidate who qualifies to be on the GOP primary ballot, letting the campaign process determine the winner, and then embracing the supporters of the winner and the loser(s) into the party after the primary. If we think competition is good for our economy and our schools, we should use the threat of competition to improve the quality and effectiveness of our candidates and officeholders.

Finally, we need to address the culture of our party. Since the nomination of the famous explorer, John C. Fremont, as the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856, the pool of activists who sustain the party at the grassroots, the pool of activists who fundraise for the party, and the pool of people who run for office, have been drawn from separate and distinct groups, whose members rarely interact with each other. This is as true today in Harris County as it has ever been any where else in the country.

To change this culture, we need to break-down the walls that separate these groups. First, we need to expand our pool of activists: at the precinct level, by filling the hundreds of open precinct chair positions, and separately recruiting election judges and block captains; and, at the community level, by recruiting more people to run for the hundreds of local non-partisan offices at the municipal and school board level. Second, we need to create more interaction between this expanded grassroots base, our fundraisers, and those groups who have traditionally recruited our candidates. Once we’ve established a greater level of interaction, we then need to begin recruiting more candidates for higher office from the expanded grassroots base. This change in culture is a long-term project; but, if it is ever going to happen, we need to start the process now.

So, the answer to the gap is to start now to improve communication, to create incentives to fuel self-interest, to embrace competition, and to begin to change the culture of the party. This process will not fix the gap over night, but it will begin to narrow the gap quickly. As the process unfolds, we will then see the message match the messenger.

Let's not just stop health-care reform, let's fight for a private alternative!

The Health Care debate is now on the political center stage.

Besides enduring the President’s long-winded answers during last night’s press conference, local Republicans have received two emails over the last 48 hours about this issue from the Montgomery County Republican Party and the Harris County Republican Party Chair. While the Montgomery email was concise and focused, and directed the reader to Congressmen and their phone numbers in order to call with objections, the HCRP email was a rambling 650+ word editorial ending with a request for money. Both carried the same message, though: Just say "no" to the current legislation. While I agree with my fellow Republicans that we should do all we can to stop this legislation, we can’t just end this debate by embracing the status quo.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what the HCRP advocates in its email. Chairman Woodfill summarized this position perfectly when he wrote the following: "By controlling the money, the government, not your insurance company, will be the ultimate decision maker." The problem with the status quo is that we already have ceded our liberty over health care decisions to a middleman (our insurer), which, in exchange for giving us a small co-pay and for relieving us of a lot of paperwork, controls our money and ultimate decision-making.

My argument is very simple: neither the insurance bureaucracy, nor a government bureaucracy should control your money or your health-care decisions--you should. The only way to make the system affordable, accessible, and private, is to put control of medical transactions into the hands of the patient and the provider, and reduce the role of any middleman--government or insurance--to subsidizing catastrophic risk through insurance or a safety net. Preferably the primary role of managing catastrophic risk would remain within the insurance industry so that premium income will still be invested in the private economy. Even Medicaid and Medicare could be folded into this system by changing the system of direct reimbursement to providers to a system of providing medical accounts to individuals and using tax dollars to pay premiums to private insurers for catastrophic coverage. Coupled with effective regulation to enlarge insurance pools, guarantee portability and prohibit denial of coverage, these changes would reduce costs over time without rationing.

Ideas for re-engineering the system into a patient-centered, market-oriented system have existed for decades. Rather than only say "no", our party should take the lead in advancing these alternative ideas. In fact, Michael Steele should call a national conference of Republican leaders and leaders of the health care and pharmaceutical industries now, to hammer-out an alternative to introduce on the floor of the House and the Senate and to use during next year's campaign. Taking this positive approach, coupled with stopping the current rush to further bureaucratize health care, should be the focus of our party at all levels.

At a stop sign, the driver eventually proceeds through the intersection; similarly, if all the GOP does is say "no", the Democrats eventually will succeed in passing their health-care legislation. We need to present a positive alternative in order to truly stop the Democratic agenda.

Finally, I must note that the HCRP has claimed a remarkable turnaround in fundraising since the reporting period ended on June 30th. Though we will not be able to confirm the source of these new funds for months, reliable sources confirm that much of the money was paid to the party by elected officials, including incumbent judges, in response to emphatic pleas for help from Richmond Avenue. Demanding tithes from candidates and elected officials is not fundraising, and ultimately deprives these people of resources they will need to fight their Democratic opponents. This approach must stop. However, now that the party has some money, it should honor its outstanding obligations to third parties that have been delinquent for too long. In short, the current team at Richmond Avenue should focus less on editorializing about a national issue and focus more on “healing thyself”.

The Voter ID issue and the HCRP

In a recent interview for the Houston Chronicle, I predicted that I would get some criticism for my observations about the strategy the current HCRP Chair pursued to promote adding the issue of a Voter ID to the recent special legislative session. Never one to prove me wrong, yesterday Jared Woodfill used the party’s email system to again promote his idea for a session to address the Voter ID issue and to criticize my statements. Normally, I would ignore this predictable response, but I want to briefly show how our differences in approach to this issue matter for the future of our party.

Let’s be clear about one thing first. Mr. Woodfill and I agree on the goal of passing and implementing an effective Voter ID bill. In fact, at least 70% of Texans, including people from both parties, consistently have stated they support passage of such a law. Where he and I disagree is over the strategy and tactics for finally getting the law we both want.

Unfortunately, Mr. Woodfill promotes this issue as an "us"-versus-"them", Republican versus Democrat issue that requires a defense of our conservative principles. I do not. In fact, I believe that as long as we discuss the issue this way, we will divide the natural majority who support this idea, and we will continue to lose in a closely-divided House of Representatives in Austin.

This issue is not an "us"-versus-"them", Republican versus Democrat issue, like the 2003 battle over redistricting. That battle truly was a battle of power politics to determine which party would control the Congressional Delegation from Texas. To win it required steeled determination to outlast the other party. The analogy of that partisan struggle to the Voter ID issue is inappropriate.

Nor does this issue present us with a titanic struggle for the survival of our conservative principles. I don’t know about you, but my convictions in those principles are not so weak as to be threatened by the lack of a picture and smart ID card. In fact, our republic and our principles have survived a tremendous amount of voting irregularities and shenanigans over the last 230 years. I am confident that our republic and our principles will continue to be strong enough to survive a little longer until we get the bill we want.

Instead, the Voter ID issue is simply a good-governance issue that transcends party politics. If implemented properly by incorporating the latest technology, it will prevent fraud, and it actually will give both parties the ability to muster their voters and increase turnout by transmitting real-time voting information from the polling place to the county, and from the county to the local political parties. The parties can then use this information at the precinct level to get their voters to the polls--increasing interest and turnout. In fact, all of the arguments over alleged voter suppression are simply wrong, but they gain traction when we make the issue partisan rather than promote it correctly to the 70% of Texans who agree with us.

I believe as the current elected leader of our party in Texas, Governor Perry (who also supports the passage of this law) showed the proper restraint and fiscal sanity when he did not call a special session on this issue. Rather than stomp our feet and yell for a session that is doomed to fail because of the close division in the House, let’s regroup, work on promoting the facts and the benefits of the bill to the 70% who agree with us, and let that natural public consensus put pressure on the Democrats to vote for this law in the next regular session. That is the mature approach, and the approach that will eventually see the bill become law.

In the meantime, rather than publicly attack the elected leader of our party, our local chair should focus his time and energy on getting our local party’s house in order.

P.S. In that same interview, I believe the Chronicle columnist was very fair in her treatment of me and what I said. However, there was one bit of miscommunication that I have clarified to her.

In the column she stated that I believe "school board races should be partisan." Looking back on our conversations, I completely understand how that impression was created by the intensity of my approach to this issue. However, I do not want to convert school board races into partisan elections. Instead, my goal is to encourage Republicans to get more involved in the governance of their communities. If Republicans believe in improving education, and in local control of schools, we have to get more involved in our school boards and districts in a positive way. Essentially, I want the GOP to do more than appear periodically to fight a bond issue; I want our party to work seriously to be a constructive force for positive improvement in the classroom.

Some Republicans already sit on school boards for HISD, Spring Branch ISD, and Cy-Fair ISD (and probably others), and I applaud their efforts, and their non-partisan work on those boards. That is the type of involvement I want to encourage among Republicans in every city and school district in the county--there are over 600 elected offices in this county and most of them involve these type of non-partisan, civic positions. I want Republicans to seek these offices and engage in the governance of their communities.

Lastly, if you have time, I did a podcast interview last night with a gentleman from NYC, the interview went into discssing my principles in great detail, I think you'll enjoy it, click here.

Some Perspective for this Fourth of July

I find myself (like I am sure so many of you do) continually at a loss for words these days. I look for solace in old books, and new—including Beck’s new take on Common Sense,Mark Levin’s Liberty And Tyranny, and W. Cleon Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap.Through it all, I’ve been constantly drawn to the words of Kipling’s If (“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”). Now, more than ever, we need to keep our heads about us, and to focus on what is fundamental and necessary to fix this mess.

This calm approach is especially needed as we end another turbulent week of death (e.g., McMahon, Fawcett, and Jackson), irresponsible behavior (e.g., Mark Sanford), revolution at home (e.g., Obama’s legislative bullet train to utopia), and revolution abroad (e.g., Iran and Honduras). As we head toward the long, July 4th weekend, I would like to offer some perspective.

Every problem has a starting point. Understanding the starting point is the first step toward solving the problem.

I believe the starting point for our current dilemma will be found in the 1880s: the decade in which American scholars began debating the socialist ideas that were sweeping Europe; the decade when Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt first rose to prominence in academia and politics; and the decade in which FDR’s generation was born. Two of the leading debaters were William Graham Sumner, the Chair of Political and Social Science at Yale, and Edward Bellamy, the author of the third-largest selling work of fiction in America in the 19th Century—the utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887.While Bellamy wrote about a utopian future brought about through socialism, Sumner wrote about the devastation such a system would bring to the freedom and wealth of the middle-class because of the burdens and sacrifices they would be called to make in order to create and maintain such a system.

Those of us who thought this hundred-year debate ended with the Reagan Revolution listen in horror as these old arguments shout at us again from today’s 24/7 news cycle. Unfortunately, we are forced once more to fight against the utopian nonsense that government control of our material well-being can wipe all our cares away, and comes without consequences for our freedom.

Those of us who cherish our God-given freedoms, and who see ourselves as “forgotten” in this whole mess, need to focus on four simple words—What; When; Why; and How—and the questions they represent. The path toward finding the answers to these questions is reflected in the following four quotes:

1. What—“…no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but…by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”—James Madison and George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, June, 1776.

2. When—“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man….”—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

3. Why—“Conservatism means clear common sense, which equally rejects the fanaticism of precedent and the fanaticism of change. It would not have midnight last just because it exists; and yet it knows that dawn comes not in a flash, but gradually…. So the conservative is the real statesman. He brings things to pass in a way that lasts and does good.” Albert Beveridge, Historian and U.S. Senator, from a Senate floor speech, 1905.

4. How—“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.”—C.S. Lewis.

What we need to do is revisit the fundamental principles that formed the foundation of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our civil society. We need to understand these principles, and again have the confidence that they are historically and logically correct. Then, we need to implement them to solve our problems and improve society.

When do we need to do it? We are barreling down the wrong road at break-neck speed. We need to stop right now (but no later than the election of 2010) and turn back to those principles!

Why do we need to do it? Our society can not survive the “fanaticism of change” now enveloping us without the sound common sense of our principles, calmly applied to today’s problems. Society needs the steadying hand of true Conservatism, wisely applied.

How do we do it? The mundane, yet important, work of freedom in our daily lives—at work, at home, and in our neighborhoods--has always been hard, but it has always been courageous and, ultimately, rewarding, too. We must, once again, summon the simple courage of our convictions in our fundamental principles, and act on those convictions. It is both that hard, and that simple.

Remember as we celebrate July 4th, that our founders didn’t end the Declaration with “…hey, this was fun! See you when the war’s over!” They ended that document with a solemn pledge heard around the world and through the ages—the pledge to each other of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

It is time we keep our heads about us, and calmly make this same pledge. Then, we need to engage together in the hard work of fixing our problems (and the mess Obama is creating) in a manner consistent with our principles.

Have a Happy 4th!

Ed Hubbard

A GOP Agenda for a Metropolitan County

If you’re not from the Houston metropolitan area, you might ask yourself “why should I care who leads the Harris County Republican Party?”

Houston, Texas is the fourth largest city in the nation, Harris County is the third largest county in the nation, the population of this metropolitan area is larger than most states, and (most importantly) this area has been the most Republican-leaning of the major metropolitan areas in the nation for at least a generation. Therefore, the short answer is that what happens here in the near future will help shape the future of the Republican Party for the next decade. And, what we plan to accomplish here is to revitalize the GOP by expanding the party’s base into urban neighborhoods. This will be no easy task, but it must be done. Simply put—we intend to attack this effort as if it were a crusade, and then spread this crusade to other metropolitan counties across the country.

The single greatest challenge facing Republicans who want to change the political dynamic in our urban neighborhoods is overcoming the negative perception of our party in those neighborhoods. Frankly, we are perceived as only caring about the concerns of the most fortunate members of our communities, while so many of our neighbors struggle within perpetual cycles of behavior that destroy any chance for future economic growth and happiness. The question for Republicans is, do we have the will to join hands with our struggling neighbors to help create the solutions for the problems they face, or will we simply stand back and let the Democrats continue to make matters worse for all of us by renewing and expanding the welfare state?

I believe that, by doing the hard work of applying our Republican principles of liberty, responsibility and growth—individual to individual, school to school, and neighborhood to neighborhood—we will turn these conditions around. I am confident that this crusade can work, because our ideas have worked whenever they’ve been implemented. When enterprise zones, privatization of public housing, public/private partnerships for providing community services, and educational choice and competition have been implemented, they’ve worked to improve the lives of people in the affected neighborhoods. But to make this effort work now, our approach must be comprehensive and permanent.

Why is Harris County important or unique to this plan? Harris County is still the largest, politically conservative county in the country, and still has Republican elected officials in positions that can affect the direction and outcome of this effort. Therefore, we Republicans in Harris County must be the laboratory for this GOP effort.

To be that laboratory, we intend to create an environment in which our neighbors in these communities will listen to the GOP again. We will start by talking about the issues they care about—education (including not only the tools for the 21^st Century job market, but also the foundations of character and morality needed to be an effective citizen); economic growth and opportunity; low taxation; limited and effective local government; and a strong defense with secure borders—in a manner and tone that will attract people to listen to us, and join us. To start this discussion, we will become members of every community and offer these metropolitan voters something to vote for.

We will establish a permanent and active presence in every precinct, neighborhood and school district in the county. Framing the issue clearly, a young Marine, home from two combat tours in Iraq, recently made a challenge to a group of conservative activists—if he could risk his life a half-a-world away for strangers, couldn’t we muster the courage to cross the streets of our county to embrace our neighbors, talk to them about our principles, and invite those who agree with us to participate in the GOP? If we truly believe in our principles of liberty, responsibility and growth, this Marine’s question should answer itself.

Establishing a permanent and active presence means more than attending public events to be seen. Instead, we will actively engage in activities that are designed to improve the life of these neighborhoods. This aspect of the crusade must involve creating and participating in activities where our activists can engage with our neighbors, such as community clean-up projects, recycling programs, adopt-a-highway programs, food-pantry and family-shelter programs, child and adult mentorship programs, and sponsoring and teaching adult education and citizenship classes.

As we establish our presence, we will work with members of these communities to develop actual policies consistent with our principles, which address the issues relevant to their lives; and we will help establish networks of civic organizations and community centers that will provide a community infrastructure through which these neighbors can eventually help themselves, rather than turn to government.

Finally, to sustain this crusade permanently we will recruit, train and support party leaders and candidates from these neighborhoods who will press our agenda in their precincts, city councils, school boards, and legislative districts.

Houston and Harris County share many of the elements of the old and young, and the large and small cities and metropolitan counties spread across the country. But they also share something other similar areas don’t have—a conservative political base from which to launch this crusade. If Republicans successfully develop an urban/metropolitan policy agenda here, we will use that agenda as a blueprint to take to every major city and metropolitan area in the country, and thereby help enrich our urban communities while assuring the competitiveness of the GOP for the next generation.

Promoting Conservatism

Since I announced that I would run for a seat on the First Court of Appeals in the fall of 2007, I have been asked a lot about my views on legal and political issues. I provided answers on my campaign website, in responses to questionnaires, in public forums, during private conversations, and in postings on this website. Though I will continue to answer these questions over the next few months, I want to focus this post less on my views than on our current predicament, on those beliefs that most Republicans share, and on how both issues relate to two of the goals outlined in the proposed strategic plan posted at www.FutureoftheHCRP.com.

The primary point of agreement among today’s Republicans is that ours is the major “Conservative” party in this country. The harder question to answer is what “Conservative” means—and that question creates many of the fault lines within our party. To understand the Republican Party, and how to unite it, I believe you first have to understand these fault lines and the factions they create.

Arguably there are four major factions that form the Republican alliance: Traditional “Republicanism”; Burkian Conservatism; libertarianism; and Social Conservatism. Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bill Brock, and many others, worked hard in the late 1970s to bring these factions together to form the modern GOP, which crystallized during the 1980s and early ‘90s. When we’ve worked together, the party has grown and we’ve won elections. When we’ve divided along our fault lines and fought with each other, when we’ve demanded purity of thought or commitment to one faction or another, or when we’ve failed to promote the principles we share, we’ve lost elections. We lost elections in Texas and nationally over the last two election cycles, in part, because all three vices took control of our party.

This problem is acute in Harris County. Since the early 1990s we have won elections in spite of our continued civil war between Traditional Republicans and Social Conservatives, and their mutual antipathy toward libertarians. We won because the Democrats were so discredited that they left the playing field. We had the luxury to ignore our need to unite and grow the party, and to focus instead on building careers and power centers around the battling factions.

In the meantime, Burkian Conservatives like me, whose conservatism is based primarily on our study of history and philosophy, and who came of age politically embracing the teachings and initiatives of Buckley, Kirk, Goldwater, Reagan, Kemp, and Sowell (among others) whose intellectual roots trace back to at least the writings of Edmund Burke, have been left to watch this war absorb the energy of the GOP without an effective ability to stop it, or to re-focus the party's energy. To put it bluntly, the party drifted away from the ideas that united it, and, in doing so, failed to live up to the promise those ideas contained—the promise of creating solutions for all our communities that would lead to a great realignment of voting blocks away from the Democratic Party and to the GOP. This failure came home to roost here in Harris County in 2008, when the Democratic Party finally placed a team on the playing field, while we were still engaged in an intramural scrimmage.

The shame of this battle is that we all agree on far more than we disagree—that’s why we are Republicans. We are all Traditional Republicans to the extent that we want to preserve the institutions that have protected our liberties and our free-market/free trade economic system, while allowing for societal innovation. We are all libertarians to the extent that we believe in a limited role for government, and the economic principles of Hayek and Freidman. We are all social conservatives to the extent that we believe that we must maintain a proper balance between the isolation and chaos caused by promoting unbridled liberty and the tyranny created by regimented conformity to one specific set of customs and traditions, and to the extent we believe that the inalienable right to life includes the lives of both the child and the mother.

At the core of our strategic plan is the goal to elect Republicans; but to continue to elect Republicans in Harris County, in Texas, and nationally, we must re-unite this party around the principles we share, and then have the courage of our convictions to spread these principles to new voters in every community. In other words, we must re-embrace the ideas that first united us 30 years ago, and then step back onto the political playing field to engage our real opponent for the hearts and minds of our neighbors.

I am one Republican who is through with the old paradigm of allowing our civil war to absorb the time and energy of this party. I am committed to ending it and re-focusing our party on electing Republicans.

posted by Ed Hubbard 5-8-09

Thoughts on the passing of Jack Kemp

My guess is that many of you reading this blog have not liked what has been happening in our country since last fall—to our economy, to our government, or to our foreign policy. It has been an especially dark time for the Republican Party and our conservative principles. But I didn’t think anything could surpass the low of the last week—the defection of Arlen Specter, the bankruptcy of Chrysler and the take-over of both Chrysler and GM by the government and the UAW, and the reminder of the tragic waste that was the Souter appointment. Then, I awoke on Sunday to the worst news yet—the death of Jack Kemp.

To those of us of a certain age, Jack Kemp embodied both the promise and the future of an energetic conservatism. Although he had been a Hall of Fame pro quarterback and a Congressman for several terms, Kemp burst on the national political scene in the late 1970s with new ideas about economic and tax policy, and the application of conservative principles to the problems of urban America. He appeared to be the leader who would take the Reagan Revolution to the next level and the next generation.

But that never happened.

Although Kemp would never be far away from the leadership of the Republican Party and conservative politics, and would even serve as a Cabinet Secretary and Bob Dole’s Vice-Presidential candidate, Kemp never sought or seized the mantle of leadership that many of us expected—and kept awaiting, year after year. Had he stepped forward, would this “happy warrior” have been able to keep the factions of the GOP together to help convert the Contract of America into a lasting majority? Would he have expanded the party into minority neighborhoods—a goal about which he often spoke and wrote. These are questions that now will never have answers.

However, we do know that many of Kemp’s ideas worked—and worked well. His ideas about economic and tax policy, which were implemented by the Reagan Administration started the unprecedented era of economic growth that lasted for a quarter century. His ideas for urban policies, including public housing policies, enterprise zones, welfare reform, and school vouchers were found to be successful when implemented by the first Bush Administration, Giuliani’s Administration in New York City, Tommy Thompson’s Administration in Wisconsin, and many other state and local governments (and even the Clinton Administration). Unfortunately, the GOP never developed a comprehensive strategy to aggressively pursue these goals as part of a coherent policy agenda.

I have to admit that many of the objectives and action items contained in the proposed strategic plan for the HCRP posted on this website are derived from the ideas that Jack Kemp originally championed. In honor of Jack Kemp, let’s take his dreams and show that they can be molded into a coherent policy agenda. I still share his cockeyed optimism that if we do pursue this agenda, we will rise above the cynical calculations of men like Specter, the perversion of our economy and government by the current administration, and the mistakes we Republicans have made in the past, to create a brighter day for our party, our county, our state, and our country.

posted by Ed Hubbard 5-5-09