Continuing the election postmortem that
I started yesterday, let's get back to No. 2, the lack of leadership.
(cont.)
Forceful, committed leadership is essential to carrying forward an
agenda, a philosophy of government.
It was not, however, just a lack of leadership on the part of the
Republican leadership team in the House and the Senate. The
President is the de facto head of the Republican Party, and the
President did almost nothing to force the congressional leadership
to toe the line. In fact, the President gave the congressional
leadership a blank check. He did not veto appropriations; he did not
even threaten to veto appropriations. He just “went along to get
along.” As a result of this abysmal lack of leadership from the
White House, Congress floundered and finally ran aground in the
congressional elections.
Republicans
who came Congress with a commitment to conservative principles
allowed the years to eat away at their integrity and commitment to
those principles. They became career politicians as the Democrats
had become prior the the Republicans' “Contract with America.”
Their commitment had become, “stay in power.” They failed to
realize that the only way to stay in power was to carry out the
promises they had made to the voters that put them into power. The
citizens who had voted them in because of their philosophy of
government, now voted them out because of their failure to live by
that philosophy.
More later...