Hands Across The Aisle
Tom Coburn 11.06.08, 12:00 PM ET
Barack Obama's election was a historic victory for America's aspiration to be a country where anything is possible, and where all men are created equal. His election also was a victory for democracy. Even if many Americans don't like the electoral results, his campaign proved that when the American people are inspired and mobilize, they can seize the reins of government and demand change.
The unmistakable mandate from the 2008 elections is one that applies to both parties in equal measure--it's time to define a "new kind of politics" not just with our words but with our actions. If anything, a "new kind of politics" means elected officials putting aside their careerist aspirations in pursuit of solutions that work.
The election also was a measure not just of the excellence of Obama's field operation but of the level of disgust with a decade of Republican hypocrisy. Voters expect Democrats to talk the conservative talk and backtrack, but they expect Republicans to do what they say in terms of enacting conservative policies. In many respects, the 2008 election was a continuation of the 2006 punishment voters exacted on Republicans who were saying one thing but doing another.
However, contrary to the visions of some on the left, the election was hardly the end of conservatism. The president-elect did not seek an ideological mandate, nor did he receive one. This election was unquestionably a change election, but unlike in 1994, the mandate for change was not organized under any particular ideological banner like the Contract With America.
Conservatives find the charge that they have been suddenly expelled from American political life surreal because we have been a minority within the majority, then a minority within the minority, since 1996. Conservatives have been consciously marginalized ever since the new Republican majority decided inconvenient promises like term limits were no longer necessary now that the "good guys" were in charge. And, as far back as 1997, Republican leaders initiated the Republican leadership policy of referring to conservatives as "you conservatives"--a troublesome band best kept outside of the Republican machinery that was busy doing important work like constructing the K Street Project.
While establishment Republicans find solace in complaining about the demands from the right, the record of history shows that virtually every warning and call for internal reform conservatives have offered since 1996 has been vindicated. It was conservatives who indicted the corrupting practice of pork-barrel spending long before sitting members were formally indicted. It was conservatives who warned that budget surpluses would quickly disappear in an environment of out-of-control spending and decimate the Republican brand. It was conservatives who insisted that a culture of oversight was more important to our long-term success than a culture of parochialism.
Therefore, what led the Republican Party to this day was not the application of conservative principles but the abandonment of those principles while hypocritically appealing to those tenets. The past few years have shown a strong correlation between electoral success and fidelity to limited government conservatism. The more Republicans abandoned conservatism, the more voters abandoned Republicans.
Conversely, the more Democratic candidates appealed to limited government conservatism, the more red states turned purple and then blue. Voters understand that conservatism, when applied, does not create the Katrina fiasco and Bridges to Nowhere.
President-elect Obama can learn from the Republican Party's failure to achieve change, a turning of the page, and the new kind of politics voters wanted back in 1994. As much as I have confidence in President-elect Obama's sincerity, skills and depth of his commitment to bring about a new kind of politics--a kind of politics he has demonstrated in our close work together in the Senate--he will face the daunting task of confronting the smallness of the politics both parties have practiced for decades.
Conservatives will no doubt take the lead in opposing the excesses and over-reaching of a Democratic Congress that hasn't yet signed up for change. However, conservatives should be the first to accept the olive branch President-elect Obama has extended to the opposition and help him achieve results in the areas where we agree, such as the need to review the budget line by line and eliminate programs that don't work.
As president, Obama will have to contend with not just an economic crisis but the impending collapse of Social Security and Medicare, not to mention other unforeseen challenges. Conservatives should be available not to celebrate liberalism's practical failures but to offer concrete solutions.
Conservatives need not despair because our ideas never go out of fashion. America was founded on a healthy distrust of activist government. Today, conservatives stand ready to remind the public why it's better to err on the side of too little government rather than too much. The challenges, and elections, ahead will provide conservatives more than enough opportunities to make our case.
Tom Coburn is a medical doctor and a Republican U.S. senator representing Oklahoma.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/06/coburn-obama-conservatives-oped-cx_tc_1106coburn_print.html
