What’s the Agenda?

So what’s the agenda around which a Movement 2.0 might be built? Ideas, not technology or tactics, are what any political movement is built around. They’re what animated the New Right.

The netroots has been strikingly devoid of new policy ideas. They are all about infrastructure and mechanics. We’ll build something stronger than them if we focus on the ideas. Here’s my (by no means exhaustive) list of big policy ideas that aren’t getting enough attention — and that we might exploit.

War on Terror

• Take the War on Terror into Pakistan if necessary. I don’t think Barack Obama is wrong here. It seems kind of inconsistent for conservatives to lash into “our friends the Saudis” while standing up for the Pakistani status quo. Has anyone considered that it might strengthen Musharraf against local Islamists to be able to huff and puff against American military incursions, instead of always having to play pattycake with us? Musharraf long ago relinquished sovereignty over the tribal areas and his people will probably hate us no matter what we do.
• Define an achievable victory in Iraq. Focus on defeating al Qaeda and seal the borders. De-emphasize nation-building (not the military’s core competency) and sectarian violence. Throw everything at defeating transnational Islamist terrorists. Extend gains in Anbar and build a safe haven there.
• Screw the b*tching about FISA. More covert operations and HumInt. Now.
• Reorient our focus in the Middle East toward strengthening civil society and institutions (the rule of law, education, etc.) instead of immediate elections; Rudy Giuliani made this point at the debate. Most of this is non-military.

Foreign Policy

• John McCain’s idea of a Union of Democracies to delegitimize the U.N.
• Position the Republican Party as the only party able to deal with increasing competition from China. Raise the Clintons’ coziness with the Chinese in the industrial swing states. Launch a moral crusade for democracy in China like we did against the Soviets. We would not endorse protectionism, but making America more competitive. Part of this will require increased legal immigration, particularly the high-skilled kind (H1-B, etc.) to be able to confront an economic engine of 1.2 billion people. If the Middle East ever diminishes in importance, the China issue returns with a vengeance.

Health Care

• Refundable tax credits for health insurance.
• Allow people to buy health insurance across state lines (many candidates have proposed this).
• Make it easy for anyone, including non-employers, to start a health insurance pool. Support association health plans.
• Any other elements of RomneyCare worth looking at?
• Package these all together as H.R. 1, the Health Freedom & Deregulation Act of 2009. I bet a Republican President could claim a significant improvement in the number of uninsured by the end of the first term. I think it’s time for a Republican to do for health care what George Bush did for education: “steal” the issue from the Democrats, with a free-market, accountability focus.

Reform

• End all earmarks. Don’t just reform them. Kill them. Dead.
• Broad tax reform (any other tax changes suggested below are an interim fallback).
• Open APIs for all government data — so our government’s dirty little secrets can be mashed up in third party applications and brought to light. National security and intelligence would be exempt. Imagine something like this for all government activity in your area? Unleash the Army of Davids on all manner of government information, including decades old bridge blueprints.

• FEC-like reporting of all government expenditures over a certain amount ($10K, $100K?) in near real-time. National security exempt.
• Purely as a process thing, I’d love to see Republican legislators do what Durbin is doing now on broadband: collaboratively draft legislation with the blogosphere. That would help rebuild a bond of trust that was broken by immigration.

Budget & Taxes

• Lower tax rates for small businesses in the first three years of operation.
• Index income tax rates to income growth not inflation — would stop de-facto tax increases as society as a whole gets richer and chill revenue growth.
• Rudy Giuliani’s emphasis on shrinking the government payroll through attrition. An astounding percentage of the federal workforce will retire in the next five years, and government service is not exactly an appealing option for recent college grads. (But how do stanch the flow of ex-feds being rehired into the same jobs as contractors for twice the pay?)

Social Security

• Keep on plugging on personal accounts for Social Security. The Democrats keep re-proposing universal health insurance every election, without result. We need to keep going on this until we win, the gutlessness of Congress in 2005 notwithstanding.
• Rename “Social Security” as part of any comprehensive reform to something that honors the individual rather than the state. Framing matters! They won’t be able to say “Republicans will cut Social Security” anymore.

Immigration

• Build the border fence — then let’s talk about regularization that requires illegals to exit the U.S. for a period of time (tied to ~70-80% reductions in border crossings).

Anything else? Leave them in the comments. Or post them on a site like Solutions Factory for others to rate.

Tagged: agenda conservatism movement policy

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