GOP faces test of principles

A rough ride to recovery or further recession into the political backwaters advances Tuesday from trot to canter for Republicans here and elsewhere. This places upon the shoulders of the GOP’s carefully coiffed Virginia gubernatorial candidate a burden of hope that he so far appears able to carry though his party falters.

To reassure itself, among other things, the GOP needs Bob McDonnell to win in November. His adversary, to be determined in the Democratic primary in a few days, likely will be Terry McAuliffe, a big name and first-time candidate whose fund-raising prowess already is legend. Republicans’ principal interest is in seeing McDonnell arrive first at the finish line. More intriguing and more important will be how he gets there.

Typical of winning sides, Democrats suggest a refashioning of foes in their likeness, necessitating a GOP shuffle from right to left, far enough, at least, to reach the gooey center. In other words, to win, Republicans must become Democrats, who, it may be noted, happen already to exist.

Some observers suppose McDonnell reaches for the middle, though tepidly, by referring to renewable energy initiatives and promising to be the “jobs governor,” as if Republicans oppose the concepts. On energy, conservatives raise right questions not over the philosophy of renewables but their practicality, a consideration that leftists prefer to ignore. McDonnell, as a result, professes an interest not so much in creating green jobs but jobs of any color. Fancy that.

Beyond this, McDonnell calls for drilling offshore and pledges he’ll speed up approval for clean coal and nuclear plants, all traditional points of Democratic resistance. Poof, say some Democrats, there goes McDonnell’s centrism, as if adhering to what works constitutes a kind of extremism, and so maybe today it does.

Whatever its position on the ideological meter, fiscal pragmatism traces a vein that runs through McDonnell’s record and composes an essential branch of conservatism obfuscated in the Bush years by increased spending and debt, war and the faltering economy. Reviving faith in the Republican Party requires that McDonnell not only restore fiscal responsibility and limited government as planks in his campaign platform but that his tenure, should he be elected, reflect as much.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s typically Democratic zeal for new or expanded programs along with spending fueled by revenue projections blissfully ignorant of economic realities plunged the state into the red, forcing a rash of cuts to meet balanced budget requirements.

Of the two philosophies, conservatism is equipped to combat this sort of thing while liberalism fosters it. This is so, in part, because conservatism hews to fixed principles while liberalism clings to utopian ideology, the form of which alters to suit needs real and perceived.

Principles are needed now with the economy struggling to right itself and the temptation for government intercession overwhelming in Washington. The latter offers ostensible gains in the interim at a balloon price to be paid later, a deal, in other words, that subprime lenders and borrowers treasured before the crash.

Republicans have forgotten and surrendered much in recent years, starting with a failure at the top of the party to manage well the people’s money, a stumbling block for Kaine as he followed a successful fellow Democrat in Mark Warner. The task for McDonnell is not to wander about the middle pandering for votes, but to reclaim that sensibility so many others in his party have lost. Otherwise, Republicans might well grow accustomed to swimming upstream in backwaters foul and stagnant, like a party no longer grand.