Wall Street Journal
By William A Galston
September 30, 2015
The
resignation of House speaker John Boehner symbolizes the most important
question Republicans face: Do they want to be a party of protest or a
party of governance?
Governance
requires compromise, but the protesters reject that as collusion. They
want to get their own way without yielding an inch, which is impossible.
This is the
core truth about the criticism Mr. Boehner and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell level at insurgents: As long as 60 votes in the Senate
are required to move legislation to the president’s desk, and 67
senators and 290 representatives are needed to overcome
his veto, pure protest leads straight into a cul-de-sac.
But
narrowly focusing on the unlikelihood of legislative victory misses the
point, say many conservative pundits. Mainstream Republican leaders
seem unwilling to say what
needs to be stated clearly and boldly: We can’t win the vote until we
win the argument. There is no evidence, however, that an unalloyed
conservative agenda enjoys majority support in the country or would do
so if articulated even more intransigently.
A
Pew Research Center survey released Sept. 28 showed that 40% of voters
would blame Republicans for shutting down the government, compared with
only 26% who would blame
Democrats. According to a Quinnipiac poll released the same day, fully
69% of American voters—including 56% of Republicans—oppose shutting down
the federal government in the dispute over funding Planned Parenthood.
Nor
do conservatives fare better on same-sex marriage, which 55% of
registered voters now support in the Quinnipiac poll. Sixty-two percent
say that government officials
should be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples; 55%
agree with that even when those officials say that same-sex marriage
violates their religious beliefs.
The
choice between protest and governance confronts GOP primary voters as
well. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was one of the loudest voices defending the
Kentucky county clerk who
refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and he seems determined to
push for defunding Planned Parenthood in December.
Every
Republican presidential candidate will be compelled to take a position
on the government-shutdown strategy. The ones who support it will
represent the party of protest.
The ones who reject it, if there are any, will be standard-bearers for
the party of governance.
Assuming,
as I do, that the Republican Party in the end won’t nominate a
candidate with zero experience in elected office, there are four
candidates with a plausible path
to the nomination—Mr. Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush and the current governor of Ohio, John Kasich.
If
Republican primary voters want the most conservative candidate, they
will choose Mr. Cruz. If they want a safe candidate who would know how
to be president on Day One,
they can choose between seasoned executives from the two largest swing
states. And if they follow the “ Buckley rule”—nominate the most
conservative candidate who could win the general election—they will back
Mr. Rubio.
In
today’s Republican Party, both governors face an uphill climb. Jeb Bush
has underperformed in debates, and his donors’ patience seems to be
wearing thin. So far, the
“I’m my own man” candidate has offered his brother’s foreign policy and
his brother’s tax plan.
He
can survive a poor showing in Iowa, but not in New Hampshire. As of
now, Mr. Bush is running fifth in the Granite State, with 5% of the
vote. It remains to be seen
whether he can offer anything that excites the Republican electorate,
or whether costly TV advertisements can boost his standing enough to
turn the tide.
John
Kasich has a solidly conservative record, both as the Ohio governor and
previously as chairman of the House Budget Committee. For today’s right
wing, though, his
decision to accept President Obama’s Medicaid expansion verges on
political treason, as does his support for a path to legal status for
the 12 million immigrants who lack it.
Worse still, he believes in compromise to get things done.
Campaigning
last weekend in Iowa, Mr. Kasich remarked that Republicans willing to
deal with Democrats are “drowned out by the voices that yell, ‘Stand for
something.’
” He positioned himself squarely against these loud voices: “I’m
hearing increasingly, ‘How do we get people to work together?’ ” At the
Iowa State Fair this summer, he laid it on the line: “You want to deal
with immigration? You want to balance the budget?
You want to deal with entitlements? . . . You have to do it as a team.
One party cannot do it all.”
Mr.
Bush has occasionally spoken of the need for bipartisan compromise, and
Mr. Rubio’s record is more pragmatic than his campaign rhetoric
suggests. But of all the candidates
now in the Republican contest, Mr. Kasich is offering the clearest
vision of his party as a party of governance. In less than five months,
we will find out whether today’s Republican electorate is open to some
form of this vision. If not, prepare for a rerun
of 1964.
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