So where do we go from here? Bill Bolling is now the new leader of the Republican Party — a conservative leader at that. Bob McDonnell is the heir to the battle standard — yet another conservative leader.
Pro-life and anti-tax values are now at the top o’ the ticket, and the moderates in the GOP have zero leadership to hang their hat upon. This having been said, the pro-tax moderates aren’t going anywhere, and the Senate Republicans (Chichester et al.) seem more willing to work with the Dems than with their own party.
So where do we go from here?
Bottom line here is that we need a flag to rally around. 10 years ago I might have told you that the pro-life issue was that flag, but the introduction of social conservatives have allowed a rival tent pole to be eroded. That pole which has forever been what keeps the Big Tent afloat is the pole of limited government and fiscal conservativism. The Republican Party is the party of lower taxes and smaller government.
Or we used to be anyhow.
Now we have four potential positions. Are we pro-life or pro-abortion? Are we for smaller government, or are we for making the Democratic leviathan more efficient?
I have always been of the opinion that the limited government long pole is first and foremost what makes us Republican. True, all of the social issues are important, but a government that is so small as to be a non-factor in the lives of it’s citizens is the most true to that omnipresent of all American virtues, that of self-reliance.
So what brings us back to sanity? Senator George Allen is running for re-election in 2006, and as Republicans we will be looking to him to bring us back together.
Jeffersonian Conservativism has always been the calling card of Senator Allen. I know what Jefferson beleived, and I have a good idea of what conservativism is (and what it used to be). In the past, Jeffersonian Conservativism meant lower taxes and minimalist government, with a small degree of ambivelance with regards to abortion.
But let’s consider the following. If a new Republican Party emerges in Virginia that is so strong on the tax principle, that demands and encourages entrepreneurship in the face of big government, that seeks a minimalist government that seeks to defend the Jeffersonian principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that ultimately could become the answer to neo-conservativism, if that kind of ideology that borrows from the classical liberal tradition emerges, the whole world changes.
If you look at Tuesday’s results, I see an electorate ripe for a new way. Jeffersonian Conservatism, with Senator Allen as it’s prime advocate, is the golden key to a GOP in search of itself.