The talking heads have been abuzz, salivating at the prospect of a decapitated republican party, with many already writing up the eulogies. Reports of the party’s demise are, of course, premature. While the landscape this election is unquestionably bad, the party can regain its strength in the long run if it returns to a proper understanding of its role in the American political landscape.

The party must quit trying to play the democrats’ game.

Republicans have fared so poorly in recent years primarily because the party has abandoned the ideological framework which successfully guided the party into power and replaced it with the democrats issue-oriented, say-whatever-it-takes-to-achieve-power approach. Lacking any significant overarching ideology, the democratic party jumps from issue to issue, adopting whatever position is most popular by pandering to a public that may or may not be capable of understanding the consequences of its positions. The Republican party cannot win by adopting this appeal-to-popular-feelings approach. It lacks the ability to out pander the democrats, in large part because the media are less inclined to call democrats out on the inconsistent positions which will necessarily arise when candidates act on whim rather than coherent ideology.

Unable to actually win many new voters with this approach, Republicans are still perfectly capable of losing them. No longer given the option of a “thinking man’s party,” ideological voters who once saw a sharp contrast between parties now find little reason to consistently choose republicans over democrats.

The way out of the wilderness is fairly straightforward. The party must quit trying to play the democrats’ game. Don’t berate oil companies just because democrats are doing it; point out the numerous ways in which government has forced high gas prices upon us. Don’t whine about fictional “price-gouging”; defend the free market system and acknowledge the important role that price fluctuations play in simultaneously signaling a need for, and encouraging the movement of, additional resources. Don’t jump on board the “climate change” bandwagon; point out the very real dangers in ceding control of so many realms of private society out of fear for an unproven environmental threat. The republican party needs to justify its existence in a political landscape in which the role of panderer is already taken. To do so it must not only pay lip service to the free market, classical liberal ideology, it must live it.

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