The trouble with Connecticut Republicans has always been the
same: There is no Maggie Thatcher among them.
The pre-Thatcherite Tory Party in Britain resembles to a “T”
the “go along to get along” Republican Party in Connecticut.
The late Mrs. Thatcher wrote in her memories, “Almost every
postwar Tory victory had been won on slogans such as ‘Britain Strong and Free’
or 'Set the People Free.' But in the fine print of policy, especially in
government, the Tory Party merely pitched camp in the long march to the left.
It never seriously tried to reverse it… The welfare state? We boasted of
spending more money than Labor, not of restoring people to independence and
self-reliance.”
So too in Connecticut the Republican Party, more often than
not, has been content to serve as the handmaiden to Democratic Party orthodoxy.
Mrs. Thatcher, who could run rings around the opposition in
debate, relished all the epithets thrown at her by Labor. But she was
especially fond of the term “reactionary.”
Said the lady, who was “not for turning” in a 1979 speech,
“Well, there’s a lot to react against.”
Britain’s social-democratic consensus threw in the towel
after her third electoral victory. She defeated that consensus on many key
issues of the day: labor union reform, the privatization of 26 major state
owned industries, to mention only two of her important victories. Under the
moral weight of her administration – with a little help from a reinvigorated
United States, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the foremost writer of his day, and a
Polish Pope – the Soviet Union collapsed in ashes.
Mrs. Thatcher is not hated by the left in Europe today
because she failed; the failed politician rarely inspires such vigorous
contumely as was hurled at Mrs. Thatcher’s corpse. No, only success brings out
the worst in what John O’Sullivan, a former editor of National Review, recently
called “the Caliban left.”
Ten years after losing office, Mrs. Thatcher found herself
surrounded by a bunch of mini-Calibans shouting “Thatcher, Thatcher, Thatcher,
fascist, fascist, fascist, out, out, out,” at which she turned to her former
speech writer, Robin Harris, and exulted, “Oh Robin, doesn’t it make you feel
nostalgic.”
It is unlikely that any Connecticut Republican should
similarly feel the affectionate tug of nostalgia, because in Connecticut there
have been no obvious victories over the liberal-progressive status quo. Even
worse, there has been no sustained and principled opposition to a progressive
putsch within the state Democratic Party that has displaced antique moderate
Democrats with bullish leftists.
The weary and spent pre-Thatcherite Tory Party in Britain
winked at the welfare state, possibly because it had not the moral imagination
to overcome a set narrative that pictured governmental aid as the solution to
every social problem in Great Britain. It fell to Mrs. Thatcher to point out
that the solutions exacerbated the problems: One does not become self-reliant
by relying wholly upon the kindness of strangers.
Before she could change her country, Mrs. Thatcher had to
change and invigorate her party, and the pre-Thatcherite moderate Tory Party
was very comfortable in its own skin. Its leaders simply could not understand why
the Tory Party should change. Were the grey heads in the party not successful?
Had they not been returned time and again to office? Cooperation with the
reigning regime certainly had benefited them, had it not? Why could not others
trod their effortless path to victory? The greatest bar to victory in politics
is the success of compromised office holders who by venturing nothing gain
nothing for others.
Any political party that considers only the short run will
lose in the long run. Old victories do not presage new victories.
The moderate Republican Party in Connecticut has been losing
ground to Democrats and Independents for more than 20 years. Surely these loses
carry a message.
One can only imagine how Mrs. Thatcher would have characterized
an opposition party that was responsible for the largest tax increase in state
history, presided over the exodus of young entrepreneurial talent to other less
rapacious states and couldn’t for the life of it balance a budget. Whatever
would she have said about an opposition party that, seeking to make life easier
for low paid workers, continually raised the minimum wage, thereby killing
potential jobs for low paid workers, mostly forgotten young urban African
Americans thirsting for self-reliance? She certainly would not have been
content with an opposition party that practices crony capitalism on a grotesque scale.
Nor would she have been content with a
phony conservatism at ease with pragmatic measures that left in place a
progressive opposition party and an emasculated Republican Party loyal only to
the status quo?
A little spine and a few OPERATIVE principles – social
principles as well, for the end of all politics is social betterment – might
carry Republicans out of their doldrums towards a fruitful campaign, if only
there were a Thatcher among them.
Comments
Amity Shales book on Coolidge is worth reading, as well as her book "The Forgotten Man".
Looking forward to her next book, what ever it is. Also we could use another Mellon in the Treasury. The dynamic duo.