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Fritz Knaak: For the GOP, some healthy self-analysis

The Republican gubernatorial field merely reflects a time-worn (and timely) internal debate.

By FREDERIC W. (FRITZ) KNAAK

Last update: October 11, 2009 - 7:14 PM

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As someone certifiably part of what the Star Tribune describes as the "remnant of the moderate Republican mentality," I'd have to say that the Oct. 6 editorial missed the mark when it complained about the lack, in its view, of a palatable Republican candidate in the gubernatorial field.

Liberals and Democrats are generally nostalgic for a type of Republican they view as malleable and willing to agree to support partisan Democratic initiatives from time to time. Generally, they tend to be less nostalgic for Democrats who would occasionally do the same for Republicans. People like, for example, former congressman Tim Penny.

What is going on inside the Republican party right now has virtually nothing to do with vetting candidates who may appeal to centrist or liberal Democrats.

Rather, it's part of a sometimes wrenching dialectic inside the party to right something that has clearly gone askew: the party's historic focus on fiscal responsibility.

This internal debate is not a new one. For well more than a hundred years, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives inside the party have wrangled over whether the emphasis of the party's message should be fiscal or social.

A careful and successful strategy, begun in the 1970s, placed greater emphasis on social issues. While this may have irritated the more libertarian or socially moderate wings of the party, there was no denying the success of the Republican Party nationally from the Nixon administration through the Reagan years and the two Bush administrations.

A party left for dead after the New Deal harbored serious fantasies about being the "new majority" party.

But contrary to expectations among fiscal conservatives, a Republican Congress and a Republican White House didn't produce restrained spending. Pork-barrel politics, if anything, seemed to achieve new heights, even while socially conservative issues were advanced, often at the seeming expense of fiscal restraint.

In the end, something had to give, and it did.

In 2006, Republicans got pasted in the congressional elections. As it turns out, this wasn't the result of a sudden surge in support for Democrats. Their voter turnouts, while relatively high, were also relatively stable. What was new -- disturbingly new -- for Republicans was that for the first time in living memory, moderates "let go of the rope."

This didn't amount to a switch for Democrats. Many fiscally conservative moderates simply did not vote, which resulted in a 5 to 10 percent loss in the Republican base vote.

The reason was relatively simple: The Republican Party had lost a large measure of its credibility as fiscally conservative.

This worrisome development carried through in the 2008 election and promises to be a chronic problem if Republicans are unable to seize the initiative and reestablish the party's role as the voice of spending restraint.

It won't be easy.

Tim Pawlenty's continuing popularity in the face of very deep and painful spending cuts exemplifies the appeal of this view, if it appears to be unwavering and genuine. He does have the support of Republicans in the Legislature, and his support in the electorate extends to moderates.

But most of the prominent voices of the party today on the national level got to where they are by harping on social issues and not on budget restraint. The concern many moderates now have is that turning the obvious focus of the party more to fiscal matters will be like steering a giant oil tanker: obviously possible and necessary, but often imperceptible in a business where perception counts for a lot.

In the meantime, in these very early stages of angst and reconstruction, expect to see statements and dialogue from Republicans to be directed to reestablishing a core -- and credible -- strong fiscal message that will be believable to those moderate Republican voters who stopped believing.

This may sound harsh to non-Republican ears like those at the Star Tribune. And many of those ideas may get dropped after some necessary push-back. But it is music to the ears of moderates who want to see this dialogue and their party to firmly reestablish its role as the guardian of our collective pocketbooks.

Frederic W. (Fritz) Knaak is a lawyer and former Republican state senator.

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