Getting The Leadership Right

Before Republicans can determine what they need to do to get back on the right track, they need to make sure that the right people are driving the bus. Stephen Moore's opinion piece (sub req) in today's Wall Street Journal makes a strong case for House Republicans to put Mike Spence behind the wheel:

If Rep. Mike Pence, the fourth-term Republican from Indiana, wins his bid this Friday for House minority leader, he will become the second most influential conservative in Washington, behind President Bush. The leadership contest, of course, does not take place in a vacuum. The congressional Republicans are engaged in a desperate search for a new revolutionary, a Newt Gingrich figure to help them rediscover who they are and what they believe in. One story about Mr. Pence suggests that he might just be the man:

"The president said, 'Mike, I really need your vote for my prescription drug bill," Mr. Pence recalls of his first-ever meeting in the Oval Office. "And I responded, 'With all due respect, Mr. President, I didn't come to this town to create new entitlements, but to rein in the ones we already have.'" A few days later, this wet-behind-the-ears sophomore congressman captained a conservative revolt that fell one vote short of killing the hugely expensive legislation.

That wasn't the first time this maverick bucked his party leadership and his president. His first spending vote in the House was against the No Child Left Behind education bill that the Bush White House still considers one of its crowning achievements. His reasoning: "Why are we federalizing schools and education?"

A great question that far too few Republicans have bothered asking in recent years.

The silver-haired Mr. Pence is most known as a free-market conservative who fought to make the Bush tax cuts bigger and the Bush spending smaller, and he relishes the idea of taking on the trade protectionism of the Democrats. On immigration, he rejects as economically wrongheaded the Pat Buchanan isolationism of the party. He wants a border security bill that includes expanded legal immigration and a system to allow illegal workers to go back home and secure a green card for re-admittance if they have a willing employer who will hire them.

The closed-border Republicans have screamed "amnesty" -- a policy Mr. Pence says he's "dedicated to preventing." It says a lot about his likeability and conservative credentials that even his highest-profile opponent on the immigration issue, Tom Tancredo, is a Pence supporter in the leadership race.

Music to my ears. What about the notion of the need for bipartisanship?

One complication for Republican leaders is that over the next two years a legacy-minded Mr. Bush might work to make bipartisan deals with a Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- on questions like minimum wage, health care and entitlement reform. Mr. Pence sees the House Republicans' game plan for winning back the majority as pretty much the opposite: to oppose such deals whenever they deviate from Reagan principles.

"The duty of the Republican minority as I see it is to contest and where possible defeat the liberal agenda of the Democratic Party and Speaker Pelosi," he stresses. "But I think that we will only defeat the Democratic agenda by presenting positive, substantive reforms based on Republican values for every major legislative initiative of the Democratic majority -- whether the issue is the economy, security or values." There's a definite spirit of combativeness, not cooperation -- thank God.

Amen to that. Pence almost sounds too good to be true. He's just what the House GOP needs to get back to principles and win back the respect of conservatives. Which probably means he doesn't have a chance of getting the nod.

Whether the Republicans decide to go with Boehner or Spence will say a lot about the direction they're going to take in the House. And about their chances of getting back into the majority.