Editorial: GOP challenge: Prove the naysayers wrong

Coleman, Minnesotans can change GOP signature.

Last update: May 30, 2008 - 6:07 PM

Has Republican conservatism, as Americans have known and either loved or despised it since 1964, run its course? That contention, from the New Yorker magazine's George Packer in a long and deeply researched essay, "The Fall of Conservatism," has had the nation's politicos buzzing since it was published last week.

"Among Republicans, there is no energy, no fresh thinking, no ability to capture the concerns and feelings of millions of people," Packer concluded. He went so far as to declare the party "brain dead" for its devotion to smaller government and tax cuts as an all-purpose solution to America's problems. The 2,000 delegates to Minnesota's Republican state convention convincingly put the lie to at least a portion of Packer's indictment on Friday. Energy was in ample supply at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, as the party anointed U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman for a second term.

Disproving the rest of the charge is the central challenge that confronts Coleman and his party between now and Nov. 4. Americans' deep, bipartisan dissatisfaction with the nation's direction and the presidency of George W. Bush has set the stage for what could be a once-in-a-generation election, one that alters the course of both parties. The question for the party of Bush is whether it can chart a course new enough to satisfy voters' hunger for change, without leaving its still-loyal base behind.

Coleman was at his empathetic best yesterday, acknowledging Minnesotans' worries about the nation's direction and even owning up to Republican mistakes. He cited his own experience tapping retirement funds to pay for college, and suffering sticker shock at the gas pump, as he sought to assure Minnesotans that someone in Washington appreciates their struggles.

But Coleman didn't say what a majority of Americans, and likely Minnesotans, now believe -- that the war in Iraq was a blunder for this nation. He paid homage to the virtues of a marketplace unfettered by government, without prescribing a remedy for the ill effects of capitalism's boom-and-bust cycles.

For the country's economic ills, he prescribed permanent tax cuts and smaller government, going so far as to rank "cutting wasteful Washington spending" one of the "great issues of our time." He faulted GOP leaders for budget-cutting timidity. But he offered no hit list of what should be cut -- though he said he'd assign an appointed commission to take a crack at shrinking future Social Security and Medicare commitments.

Coleman calls himself "Minnesota's mayor in Washington." We hope he means that slogan to be more than a reminder to voters that he was, for eight years, a popular mayor of St. Paul. Good mayors are independent-thinking pragmatists who put loyalty to place ahead of party or special interest. Those are also desirable attributes in a U.S. senator. His challenge in the next five months will be to convince Minnesotans that he's been that kind of senator in the past six years, and can deliver more of the same.

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