Don't You Think The Hole Is About Deep Enough?

The core lyric of my favorite country song is "When you're in a hole, stop diggin'." That also sums up the message voters have given Republicans.

Tuesday night, our party suffered a resounding electoral defeat. President-elect Obama and his congressional partners deserve our sincere congratulations on their victory. As the country catches its breath, the conservative movement must regroup and set upon a course to prevent November 4th from repeating itself in two years.

Traveling around the country in the closing days of this campaign I heard the same frustration from voters over and over. We in Washington are long on talk and promises, but short on action.

The President-elect faces that frustration starting today. His message of change raised hopes, but his congressional partisans lack his vision and will only offer reheated liberal policies that have little chance of delivering the promised results.

While Mr. Obama has pledged a tax cut for 95% of working Americans, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi have made no similar pledge. Does anyone really believe that as President, Mr. Obama will veto a single tax and spend measure proposed by Congressional leadership? I didn't think so.

We cannot tax and spend our way to a better future. The American people did not vote Tuesday to exchange their entitlement to liberty for crushing entitlement programs. The liberal tendency to ease America into the false comfort of a cradle-to-grave welfare state will worsen rather than solve the self propagating crisis of expensive and ineffective government. Republicans have a duty to make sure this is not what they get.

The great question now is "how?" As a party we have added to Americans' frustration with the gulf between our message and our methods. We have become lazy in our assertions and half-hearted in our actions. It isn't good enough to evoke "Ronald Reagan" without bothering to explain how and why the ideas he articulated 30 years ago are the best framework to solve today's problems.

The time has come to return to our foundation; to the party of Lincoln that President-elect Obama rightly said was founded on the principles of self reliance, freedom, and national unity. Conservatives and Republicans must admit that our focus, message, and methods have erred. We grew content and reliant with Ronald Reagan's words, yet failed to exercise the energy required to preserve the freedom his revolution earned from one generation to the next.

Committed Republican leaders must reassert the relevance of our party to a generation of voters born after 1988. Rather than focus on "branding" our cause, let us simply pursue it. In that pursuit, we will rebuild trust and regain purpose.

House Republicans are now the "last men standing" to fight for conservative values. It is up to us to articulate what a conservative believes and how a conservative behaves. In this, we cannot oppose for opposition's sake, but find the imperative to stand up and fight when we have the better idea for a stronger America.

We cannot hurl stones from our own glass porch. We must address our own manifold lapses in behavior and do more than preach conservatism, we must live it. A decade in the majority led to excesses that must end if Republicans are to earn the trust of our constituents.

The fastest way to reassert our relevance is to focus on the basics. This must start with the size and scope of government and fiscal responsibility. The conservative vision of small government is effective only if that government is simultaneously competent, accountable and responsive.

I suspect that our opportunity for that reassertion will come soon. We owe America a solid plan to avert the impending entitlement tsunami. This is an issue that, if ignored, will dwarf the credit crisis of the last year.

Voters want us to define problems, lay out a way forward, and take action toward the solution. Our philosophy obligates us to bring creative solutions to bear on the entitlement issue, especially when our colleagues will only offer the inevitable waste of an unchecked majority. Entitlement reform is where we can start.

The taxpayer will shortly get the bill for the most expensive congress in history, and without conservative Democrats joining us, we will not have the votes to stop the waste. We cannot allow the funding of bad ideas and worse ideas to hide behind the shield of bipartisanship. We must propose alternative measures in every instance and vote no to wasteful spending every single time. That means many of us will have to cast difficult "nay" votes. In so doing, House Republicans will make sure that when the bill comes due, the taxpayer knows that Republicans aren't responsible for running up the tab.

The voters sent us a message Tuesday night, and we must now heed the words: Go back to basics, stop embarrassing them and ourselves, be true to our principles, and regain the majority by the virtue of our deeds rather than the eloquence of our words.