Advice to Republicans

The coming elections are looking very promising for the Republicans, and that is a good thing. The Obama administration has been a disaster, and a brake on it is much needed. However, with Republicans there is always the fear that they will find a way to blow it. So, I have some advice for them. They need to realize that they do not need to worry about the creationists, the hard core abortion prohibitionists, or the anti-homosexual zealots ( just as the Democrats do not need to worry about the dogmatically religious greens, the crooked trial lawyers, or the dregs of the public employees’ and teachers’ unions). Every vote counts, and they certainly should work to turn out these voters. However, they should not focus their campaigns on them. They already have them.

Instead the Republicans need to realize that the failures, excesses, and power grabs of the Obama administration and the Democrats in the congress have given them a big opportunity to win back the voters they lost during the awful Bush administration and to win over new ones. However, the voters the Republicans need are not going to be won by appeals based on the social issues of the religious right. They are more likely to be repelled. Issues that can work and that Republicans need to campaign on include freedom, real tolerance, Americanism, a foreign policy based on the national interest, a strong national defense, shrinking government to something affordable, reducing deficits, stopping bailouts , and generally respecting the private sphere in each person’s live that is none of the government’s business. This can be a winning approach.

It is also a right approach, elections aside. This nation has an astounding diversity of social practices and lifestyles, many of them quite mutually incompatible. The only way to avoid strife and worse is to take the government out of most social issues thereby preventing any group from imposing its customs and prejudices on others by fiat, just as we have taken it out of religion.