Tom Davis on Fixing the GOP
Former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis’ take on fixing the GOP is well worth reading:
Let’s not kid ourselves, our party is broken. In no small way, we’ve been victims of our own success. We fought communism and won. We fought stagnation brought on by high taxes and restrictive government policies. Today, voters take low taxes as a given, and the burden of proof — even in the wake of the financial crisis — is on those who would regulate, not those who would remove regulations.
With the heavy lifting out of the way, we indulged in more trivial pursuits — and this led to trouble. We talked to ourselves and not to voters. We became more concerned with stem cell policy than economic policy, and with prayer in schools rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities. Not so long ago, it was easy to paint the Democrats as the party of extremists. Now, they say we’re extremists, and voters agree.