Matthew Gagnon's blog

For the better part of today, I have been reading reactions among the right to the news of Dede Scozzafava's withdrawl from the NY-23 race.  Probably the most oft repeated commentary I have seen is that the developments of this race once again prove that, "moderate Republicans rarely succeed, and true conservatism wins every time". 

Scozzafava dropping out is indeed a great thing for the conservative movement.  It represents a victory for the grassroots activists on the ground over a disconnected and out of touch Republican establishment.  But the analysis that says this proves "conservatism wins every time" is woefully misplaced, extremely lazy, and not at all grounded in reality.

This notion is an extension of rhetoric that has been used by Rush Limbaugh for years.  It has gained popularity as the "true conservative" (whatever that means) base has grown frustrated with what it sees as "squishy moderates" losing in national elections.  We heard it endlessly following John McCain's defeat in 2008, and had heard it previously when Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton in 1996.

But the reality is very different.  This increasingly popular notion is simply false, and lets take a look at why.

Since World War II, the Republican Party has run sixteen presidential campaigns.  It has won nine of those campaigns and lost seven:

• 1948 - Moderate Thomas Dewey (Loss)
• 1952 - Moderate Dwight Eisenhower (Win)
• 1956 - Moderate Dwight Eisenhower (Win)
• 1960 - Moderate Richard Nixon (Loss)
• 1964 -True Conservative Barry Goldwater (Loss)
• 1968 - Moderate Richard Nixon (Win)
• 1972 - Moderate Richard Nixon (Win)
• 1976 - Moderate Gerald Ford (Loss)
• 1980 - True Conservative Ronald Reagan (Win)
• 1984 - True Conservative Ronald Reagan (Win)
• 1988 - Moderate George HW Bush (Win)
• 1992 - Moderate George HW Bush (Loss)
• 1996 - Moderate Bob Dole (Loss)
• 2000 - Moderate George W. Bush (Win)
• 2004 - Moderate George W. Bush (Win)
• 2008 - Moderate John McCain (Loss)

Haggle about my definitions if you wish - but lets just say I am pretty comfortable labeling each of these men as I have put forth above.  The only one I even find debatable is George W. Bush - but that is mostly because he talked like a "true conservative" in 2000, but acted completely differently once in office, and the only bit of "true conservatism" in his administration was a large tax cut, and high defense spending.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand.  Republican moderates have a remarkable habit of winning nationally.  The only times they lost, they tended to have non-ideological reasons for losing. 

In 1948 Truman outlfanked Dewey with his whistlestop tour of America, connecting with the average American.  In 1960, Nixon went up against the transcendent John Kennedy, blew the campaign big time in the televised debate, and still probably won that election, were it not stolen by Kennedy's electoral shennanigans.  In 1976, Ford angered the country by pardoning Nixon.  In 2008, the entire country hated the Republican party, and Abraham Lincoln probably would have lost.

Every single one of those moderate losses - with the exception of McCain, and to some degree Dewey - were in extremely narrow elections that were decided by essentially one state.

Transversely, the only "true conservative" elected to the White House since World War II was Ronald Reagan.  Barry Goldwater got slaughtered, and every other "true conservative" couldn't even make it out of the primary.  Reagan's election is often pointed to as proof of concept on this theory, but was it about ideology?  No - in 1980 it was about economic malaise and American hostages, and in 1984 it was about an economic resurgence under Reagan's leadership.

Could "true" conservative candidates have won in '48, '52, '56, '60, '68, '72, '76, '88, '92, '96, '00, '04 or 08?  It is certainly possible, but if they did, it wouldn't have been because of their ideology.

This same analysis applies to more than just national elections.  Moderate Republicans often win crushing victories, and "true conservative" candidates often go down in flames.  But the opposite is also true - often moderates get absolutely spanked, while conservatives dominate.  Far too often we think elections are about ideology simply because we believe deeply in something, when they very rarely are.

But even if they are, the evidence in the last sixty years shows us that being a moderate does not even come close to dooming one's candidacy, and being a conservative hardly means you "win every time".

The victory of the conservative grassroots in rejecting Scozzafava in favor of Hoffman is a great thing.  I applaud it.  I happen to belong to a wing of the party that is fiscally to the right of Reagan, so I am hardly arguing for us to turn to moderates to solve our electoral problems here.

My problem is cheap, dime store analysis that is devoid of logic or rationality.  We should argue for more conservative candidates where more conservative candidates can win - but going with the superficial and inaccurate echo chamber soundbites like "conservatism wins every time it is tried" as the accepted explanation for an eventual Hoffman victory simply cheapens the conversation.

If we want to win, we need to understand why we win, and why we lose.  Such nonsensical rhetoric does not help us in that regard, so I suggest we stop saying it.  Real political analysis deserves better.

This morning on Meet the Press, Erin Burnett brought up an argument about the cash for clunkers program - an argument that opponants of the program have not effectively made to this point.

Most people who argue against cash for clunkers have made general points about the absurdity of the government paying consumers for junk cars, the inherent unfairness of subsidizing new car purchases for often middle and upper middle class citizens, and of course the wasteful nature of the program.

But there is a larger point that is much more important.

The Maine Legislature just pushed through a massive tax reform bill in the Pine Tree State.  This was not just a token "move the chairs around" reform bill - it was far reaching, ambitious and will genuinely help move Maine in the right direction on this issue.  The Wall Street Journal went as far as to call it the "Maine Miracle".

But here's the kicker - the bill was proposed by Democratic Governor John Baldacci, and overwhelmingly supported by Maine Democrats.  The Maine GOP naturally had several problems with the reform bill - many of which were legitimate, but at the end of the day we still have to realize that taxes were shifted from compulsory income taxes that were "progressive" and graduated, to a virtually flat income tax, with a shift to consumption taxes.

Don't get me wrong, if I were in charge of reforming the Maine tax system it would have looked dramatically different and provided a tax cut more quantifiable and more far reaching, but lets be honest here folks, this is at least a step in the right direction.

Baldacci is quite unpopular in the state, but its hard not to admire a lot of what he has done in his second term as Governor. He had barely even been sworn in again, and already he was pushing to consolidate the 152 school districts in the state down to 26.  He's also no fan of REAL ID, and was the first Governor in the United States to sign a same-sex marriage bill without being ordered to do so by a court - something I happen to consider a point in his favor.

Yes, I know, a few quality policies does not a good Governor make, and he still has things like Dirigo Health as major black marks - but still, he's done a lot right and we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

But whatever he has done right previously pales in comparison with the landmark tax reform bill he just pushed through and then signed.  The bill reforms Maine's tax structure in a number of important ways, but the crux of it comes down to the following changes:

• The states draconian and punative progressive income tax rate which topped out at 8.5% has been essentially changed to a flat tax (you heard me) of 6.5%.  The only exception to this is an additional 0.35% surtax charge for those making over a quarter of a million dollars.
• The state budget will be cut by 300 million to offset the losses, coupled with some tax loophole closings and extensions on the sales tax.

And to those critics of "tax cuts for the rich" that the new flat tax creates, Baldacci sounded off:

"Without employers, you don't have employees.  The best social services program is a job."

Incredible.  Well said, Governor.

Granted, the Republicans haven't had much of a chance to impliment this type of agenda since Jock McKernan was Governor (and he was hampered by an aggressive and hyper-partisan Democratic legislature), but it is to Baldacci's credit that he was the one - despite his party affiliation - who finally pushed through a comprehensive tax reform bill.

But, this betrays a larger question - why did Baldacci and the Democrats do this?  Are they converts of a fiscally conservative agenda (no), or is something else going on here?

The answer is pretty simple.  In 2004, Maine Republicans essentially split the Maine House and Senate 50-50 with the Democrats.  Maine is not a blue state.  Its not a red state either - as I've said before, its a gray state with a very slight blue lean, but it is completely winnable for competent Republicans with the proper message. 

But Maine Democrats rode the anti-Bush wave in 2006, and the Obama wave in 2008, and are now in complete control of every level of government.  However, now that they have power, unemployment is spiking high, wages are stagnant, young people are leaving the state and taxes are strangling the population.  Those of us in the know smelled major Republican gains in the House, Senate and even the Governor's Mansion.

Add to that the fact that Maine Republicans seem to be getting their act together.  Rather than the tired, poor choices presented to Maine voters in the 2006 election, there is actually an impressive crop of Republicans running for Governor in 2010 - cheif among them is Matt Jacobson, President and CEO of Maine & Company, an organization aimed at bringing businesses to Maine.

Jacobson has been carving out a decidedly pro-business, pro-growth, pro-jobs economic agenda for his candidacy, and it is already starting to resonate.  Indeed, Jacobson has been described as a "human jobs machine", as his position is literally devoted to doing just that - creating jobs.  In this environment, that type of economic message can quickly light on fire.

And Jacobson isn't the only one, other candidates such as Bruce Poliquin and Les Otten have cut their teeth in the business world, and will be hammering similar messages. Maine Republicans seem to have become clued into the fact that this brand of conservatism actually sells pretty well in Maine and are far more interested (for once) in talking about them now.  For the next two years Jacobson and the Maine GOP will likely be hammering that message non-stop, hoping it will sweep them back into prominence.

But in this one move, Maine Democrats attempted to cut Jacobson and other GOP primary candidates, as well as the statewide Republican message model off at the knees.

They are now able to campaign on the largest tax cut in Maine history.  They are now able to campaign on approving a budget that allocated fewer dollars than the previous year for the first time in three decades.  They can campaign on making Maine's business environment more friendly, and its tax burden less cumbersome.  Essentially, they out Republican-ed the Republicans, and may have just guaranteed themselves a continued majority for the forseeable future.

One wonders why national Democrats didn't take a similar strategy upon sweeping into power in 2008.  Imagine if the Democrats pushed for a balanced budget, fiscal discipline, and preached a more conservative fiscal policy.  After the Bush years and the gross excesses, massive government growth, huge budget deficits and fiscal irresponsibility that flowed from all that, they could have dealt a death blow to the GOP.  But they didn't do that.

Luckily for Maine Republicans, they have no such history of hypocritical behavior while in power - partly because they have been on the outside looking in for so long.  Thus, this newfound fiscal sanity by the Democrats won't necessarily be a crushing move, just a damaging one.

Fortunately (in a political sense), Maine has a long way to go in terms of taxes and business climate - they will still be in the middle of the pack for total taxation, and last year Maine was ranked as having the third worst business climate in the United States, and even this bold move won't suddenly mean Maine is out of the woods yet. 

Matt Jacobson is still a phenomenal candidate, and the Maine Democrats have already claimed about all the seats they are probably able to at this point, so 2010 is still looking up for the GOP in the Pine Tree State.

But with a bold stroke of political brilliance, the Democrats may have mitigated the damage a great deal.  I admire such a level of political accumen.

The Maine House of Representatives today voted (89-57) to enact L.D. 1020, also known as the Equal Marriage Act, which essentially would extend marriage rights to same-sex couples in the Pine Tree state.  Late last week the Maine Senate also passed the bill, and it is widely expected that Governor John Baldacci will sign it.

The only thing that can potentially stop same-sex marriage coming to Maine at this point is the "people's veto" - a Constitutional mechanism that allows the voters of the state to reject a law passed by the legislature.

This means that Maine is about to see a very "Proposition 8" style campaign come to their back yards, and are about to be inundated with commercials, phone calls, websites and door-knocking activists lobbying for a yes or no on a veto.

But more than that, for the first time in a long time, it will provide a chance to watch how a social wedge issue impacts politics in the northeast. 

Bobby Jindal gave his rebuttal to the President tonight in what was widely being billed as his "coming out party" - unfortunately for him, his debut was extremely underwhelming.

Barack Obama is a hard man to follow, no doubt about it.  Message aside, he is a gifted orator who is compelling and interesting to listen to on his worst days.  Add in the backdrop of a Congressional speech, massive applause and the adulation of the network anchors and you obviously have a rather difficult task.  But by all measures, Jindal failed, and he failed for a number of reasons.

Presidents have long been given the credit, and the blame for the status of the budget they oversee on a year to year basis.

I’ve seen this wikipedia article a number of times for example, as well as many charts which tend to focus on the president, his party, and the resulting budget.

This is what is in the public’s consciousness - and I suppose its understandable.  The president does propose the budget annually, afterall.

But its hardly where people should look when they want to assign credit and blame.  The president may propose the budget, but the purse strings have always lied with Congress.  They can summarily reject the president’s budget, they can roll over and accept it, they can play a chess game and force the president to change his budget priorities - and in the end, they can amend it to their heart’s content to shape it how they wish.  Congress is the true target we should look to for scorn, or praise.

As such, I decided to take a gander at the congressional makeup a the time budgets were approved, and found some rather interesting facts.  For the record, I’m using 1900 to today from the historical charts in the 2009 budget for my facts and figures on this - obviously this is not the complete picture, but gives us a relatively good idea of what’s going on.

"Cutting taxes increases economic growth, which in turn increases government revenue."

I have heard that phrase more times than I can count from more Republicans than I even remember.

It has been the central theme with which the Republicans have built their reputation, and basically the only thing that they have done in Washington that has matched up with their rhetoric.

There's a problem, though. And I want you to keep in mind when I say this, that I am a libertarian-Republican who would just as well like to see the income tax abolished. I repeat, I hate taxes, and if it were up to me I would lower them as far as possible - so if you somehow take this article to mean I am advocating tax raising, or increasingly progressive taxation or anything of the kind, please take a Valium and come back to read the article again later when your hysteria has gone away. We need to talk seriously about public policy if the Republican party is ever going to climb out of its hole.

Now, here's the secret. It doesn't work like that.

Oh, mind you, the economic growth argument is certainly true. You allow people to keep more of their own money, and you will in fact see a growth in consumer spending, which will lead to growth in business, and so on and so forth.

But, then we come to that tricky part about "growing government revenue". This, sadly, is not actually true - and if the Republican party wants to govern well when it eventually gets back into power (notice I said govern well, not "keep power") they need to understand this, so they don't repeat the same foolish mistakes they made in the 2000s.

To prove what I'm talking about, lets start by talking about the Laffer Curve.

The Laffer Curve is central to the ideas inherent in supply side economics. In its most basic form, it is a bell curve that describes points where tax revenues are their highest, and when raising or lowering those rates will increase or decrease revenue to the government.

It argues that there is a point where once you start increasing taxes, you actually do not increase revenue, because you are actually punitively taxing people to the point where it decreases their incentive to work, thus lowering revenues overall as fewer people contribute taxes or climb up the income ladder.

Similarly, if you are in such an area of the bell curve (obviously, to the right of the crest) and you cut taxes, you are actually going to increase revenue to the government because more people will have a reason to work, and those people who do work will see higher profits which will allow them to re-invest into companies and employees, allowing them to hire new people and grow their business, which will of course increase new tax revenue going to the government.

But, what Republicans have long ignored with their (justifiably) militant stance on taxation, is what happens when you go to the left of "t" on the Laffer Curve. Ah yes - taxes go down, but at that point so do revenues. According to the holy grail of supply side economics, there is a point where you lower taxes that it will no longer garner you increased revenue.

Just think of it logically. If taxation was set at a 5% flat rate on income nation wide, do you really think lowering it to 4% would result in more money flowing to the federal government? No - of course not, because at that point the capitalists who are in the private sector churning out the products and services of the economy don't see much of a difference in their bottom lines to a 1% drop in their income tax. It might provide for a little additional money to spend on a small project, or hire a few people, but in terms of the economy, its a small drop in the bucket that won't end up leading to more revenue for the government - all that will happen is the lower tax rate will mean less money streams into the government.

Laffer believed that. Reagan believed that. Any self-respecting supply sider who really knows what the philosophy is about believes it. I believe it. Its just how it goes.

So the question really is - what is "t". In other words, what is that magic point on the Laffer Curve where tax revenues are optimized for their greatest revenue benefit to the government.

We need to identify that not to set our tax rates there, but instead so we can identify what will happen when we cut taxes.

When Ronald Reagan took office, the upper tax bracket in this country was 70%. That's right, seven out of every ten dollars you made were you in that bracket went to the government. The 1981 tax bill dropped that number significantly to 50%. When he signed the 1986 tax reform bill, that top rate dropped to 28%.

Obviously, cutting taxes when they sit at 70% for the top bracket is likely to spur growth, expand business, and lead to (after some time) more tax revenue streaming into the government due to the increased availability of capital that has expanded the tax base.

But, where is that "t" level? Is it lower, or higher than where George W. Bush found it in 2000 (top bracket was at 39.6%).

I think that as time has passed, it has become rather obvious that we are in an area of the Laffer Curve that is to the left of the "t" line, which of course means that cutting taxes are likely to decrease revenue.

The best way to measure the effect of a change in tax policy is to compare tax receipts as a percent of GDP, because with a naturally growing economy (as ours is), we will basically always take in more in tax receipts than we did the previous year due to that growth, so that doesn't tell us much. What we need to find out is if a tax cut/raise has increased receipts as a percentage of GDP, or decreased it.

If tax cuts lead to revenue growth, then receipts as a percentage of GDP would end up going up. If they didn't go up, then the government would have received more revenue had taxes stayed where they were.

In other words, if taxes were at 35% and accounted for 30% of GDP the government would have collected a certain amount of money. If we then cut that rate to 30%, and tax revenues go down to say 28% of GDP, then we now know that while we are in fact gaining more tax revenue than we had the previous year, had we left taxes at 35%, we would have actually increased the amount of money coming into the government by more than we did get at 30%.

In real terms, if we collected 2 trillion dollars under 30% taxes, than we may have ended up with 2.3 trillion under a 35% scheme, because of how much, relating to GDP, that is.

And, that is exactly what has happened with the Bush tax cuts, which more or less proves the point that we are on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

Between 2000 and 2002 (post Bush tax cut), total receipts fell 10.3 percent relative to GDP, from 29.2 percent to 26.2 percent. The magnitude of that decline in total receipts since 2000 is unmatched since World War II, and it is directly related to the tax cuts. The 2003 acceleration of the tax cuts produced similar numbers.

So what does all this mean? Should we raise taxes so we can get near that magic "t" line and optimize our tax revenue?

No. Of course not - that is absurd. In fact, I'd love to see taxes whacked down further, by a lot.

What Republicans need to understand, however, is that their tax rhetoric is completely divorced from reality. Tax cuts are easy enough to sell to people without deluding yourself into thinking that the magic of economic growth will suddenly result in higher tax receipts. It does on the right side of the Laffer Curve, but not on the left side - and I think its obvious we are currently sitting on the left side of the curve.

Now, what tax cuts actually do, is grow GDP and expand economic growth. There is no reason to take that quantifiable, proven and true economic concept, and then pollute it by saying tax revenues would rise higher because of that expansion of GDP and growth. Again - yes, we'll get more revenue, but we won't be getting more as a percentage of GDP.

The only argument that can be made to the contrary is that GDP may increase so dramatically that even though receipts as a percentage of GDP go down, the growth of GDP means that lower percentage still accounts for a higher revenue amount into the federal government than a higher tax rate would have.

A fair argument, but the amount of growth of GDP would have to be ungodly for that to mathematically be true.

The faulty assumption that we have all been flying through life believing to our core since the 1980s is directly responsible for Bush's foolish budget management.

We are hovering around 11 trillion dollars of publicly held debt today (only to go higher with bailout after bailout coming down the pike) because we thought cutting taxes was the end all be all to economic policy. Why get your hands dirty cutting school lunch programs et all when you honestly believe your revenue stream will be better if you cut taxes anyway?

Its not. We can't just cut taxes and wash our hands of things. It doesn't work like that at this level anymore - not on the left side of the curve. Cutting taxes helps grow GDP and generates new economic activity, but at that level it is not increasing government revenue as a percentage of GDP, its decreasing it.

And that's okay. That's good, actually! We should love that, and want to see more of it. We should want to drive that Laffer Curve as far left as possible so that as many people can keep as much of their own money as possible.

But, by ignoring the actual effect of cutting taxes, it has left Republicans everywhere with the assumption that they won't have to get their hands dirty with that nasty business of cutting government spending. "Just cut taxes, and we'll get more money - we won't have to cut anything and make people mad at us", the compassionate conservative may say.

Idiocy.

Cutting taxes will decrease the growth of revenue into the federal government. Its an easy sell, no need to hamstring yourself by buying into the idea that we'll make more money by taxing people less. That may have been true during the 1960s Kennedy tax cuts, or the 1980s Reagan tax cuts, but we have reached an equilibrium now where that is no longer true.

So lets be honest with ourselves, and continue to advocate the slashing and burning of the tax code, but show the stones to actually do what will be necessary to do at the same time - cut spending.

The budget has to be balanced. We can no longer spend like this - its simply Chinese monopoly money at this point, and we have to start to retire the debt.

We'll never get there by cutting taxes, and then retiring to the study for a smoke and a congratulatory foot massage. We have to get elbow deep in the messy work of taking the red pen to the federal monster. We have got to cut taxes and also cut spending, to get our budget back in balance.

Cutting taxes and running away from the hard work is an ultimate act of political cowardice, and is one of the major reasons why George W. Bush's presidency has been a disappointment. When the GOP talks about cutting taxes to increase revenue so we can be "fiscally responsible", it has all the credibility of Hannibal Lector with a bottle of Chianti.

We all know it isn't true, not its time to be adults, be honest with ourselves about the reality of public policy, and push a fiscally conservative agenda that understands that reality and makes it work practically for the American people. Hack the tax code down as far as you possibly can, just understand what you'll be doing to the budget, and plan your spending accordingly.

Cut it.

Greetings once again folks - lets all take a couple seconds off staring at the television to chat about what really matters today - orange juice.

If you don't mind endulging me a bit in a bit of lighthearted fun (something I believe everyone on the right could use today, that's for sure), this is pretty cool.

Here where I work at New Media Strategies, we have teamed up with Tropicana to do something fun for election night.

What fun could an orange juice company and a new media firm have with an election? Glad you asked.

We’ve come up with a cool way to follow the election in a somewhat unorthadox way. You see, what we came up with was the creation of a live Twitter analysis of what people are talking about in relation to the election for the duration of election night. As a result, the “Not Red, Not Blue, But 100% Orange” campaign has begun.

It is a really cool website that we can use to keep tabs on who’s winning the chatter wars during the election - Election Tweets, Freshly Squeezed. You can make it show what you want: show only tweets about Obama or McCain, about both, or about one but not the other. If you want to compare the current conversational landscape against a full day’s worth of tweets, or even three days, you can do that, too.

Just go to An Orange America to check out the fun.  As the returns come in and we likely sink further and further into our glasses of adult beverages, why not spike some OJ and at least see what other people are saying about election night!

NOTE:  Originally posted at Political Capital

On the eve of an expected landslide sweeping Barack Obama into the Oval Office and congressional Democrats to majorities in both houses of Congress, many pundits have predicted a long period in the political wilderness for Republicans in national politics.

Not so far away in the UK the British Conservative Party has only recently recovered from its own journey to the dark side. In 1997 the Tory party was destroyed at the polls after 18 years in power and has been out of power ever since.

Whilst there are obvious and clear differences between the two sister parties, and the nations they aspire to govern, the circumstances of the 1997 and 2008 defeats are remarkably similar.

In the late ‘90s Tories were tempted to believe that the public were duped. That an inexperienced and inspirational young left wing leader had taken advantage of the divisions of the governing party and the credulity of the electorate to instigate what would become a far left regime.

A more sober assessment is the successes of the 1980s Thatcher revolution led to hubris and terrible mistakes. The party survived divisions over European policy and riots that followed the idiotic introduction of the Poll Tax through the dramatic defenestration of Margaret Thatcher, allowing the genial John Major to win an unexpected General Election victory in 1992.

It was the financial collapse of Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the pound crashed out of the European Exchange rates mechanism, and the ensuing recession that really killed Conservative hopes. Combined with party wars over its approach to the European Union (a relatively trivial matter compared to the 3 million unemployed) the recession not only tore the party away from the centre of political discourse but also created a massive rift between the modern British nation and the world the Conservative Government lived in.

To compound the matter there was the ever present “sleaze”, a string of Conservative MPs were exposed in sex scandals that would have made Larry Craig and Mark Foley blush, reaching its apotheosis with the strange autoerotic death of Stephen Milligan.

Even worse was the grubby stain of corruption, in 1994 it emerged that lobbyist Ian Greer had bribed Conservative MPs to ask questions in parliament on behalf of Egyptian retail mogul Mohammed Fayed. To compound matters a cabinet minister (Jonathan Aitken) was accused of conducting secret deals with Saudi princes, Aitken was later jailed for perjury – unlike Scooter Libby, Aitken did not get his sentence commuted.

So many of the ingredients are the same that it becomes difficult to see how the Republicans can avoid the fate of their transatlantic colleagues. Sometimes parties just deserve to lose, but that is far from being the bad news.

The disaster that the GOP of 2008 and the Tories of 1997 share is the fundamentals of the political background, both fell massively behind their opponents in levels of support from younger voters and crucially struggled to deal with the changing mores of a modern nation.

One of tomorrow’s most interesting results will be the outcome of California’s Proposition 8 on marriage equality. The idea that by 2008 there would not only be legally recognized civil unions in the UK but openly homosexual cabinet ministers would have been an anathema to many Conservatives, but not to the British public. One of the ways in which British Conservatives have begun to turn the page in recent years is making peace with issues such as this.

The issue of gay marriage matters not just because of the dangers of leaving behind an increasingly socially liberal electorate, but because of the fundamental contradiction in the modern conservative movement that it exposes. In a time of increasing family breakdown Conservatives should be promoting marriage as the primary family unit because of the legal and public commitment that it entails. Yet conservatives have pandered to their religious base in the search for easy votes, somehow the GOP has become a party at ease with telling people what to do.

It is when parties deviate from their fundamental intellectual core that they suffer the most. The most important example of this in the current administration is public spending. Whilst tax cuts helped to keep the American economy growing their pre-requisite – low public spending – was ignored. It’s harder to demonise big government liberals when you have spent eight years turning a health budget surplus into a massive deficit, a deficit which represents a massive tax burden on future generations in the form of interest payments to Chinese bankers.

In Britain the ideological departure had serious underpinnings and serious consequences. The pragmatic conservatism of the previous 150 years was eschewed in exchange for the dynamic monetarism, privatisation and market liberalisation of the Thatcher revolution. To succeed once more the GOP must rediscover its own ideological core, an ideology that is found not in the anti-intellectual city-dweller baiting of Sarah Palin but in integrity in government, individual freedom and not just low taxes but low spending.

The Tories have, recently, appeared to turn the corner, and are now consistently ahead of Labour in the opinion polls. Following their third consecutive election defeat in 2005 they nominated a young, modern leader in David Cameron. In the past three years the Conservatives have ‘decontaminated’ their brand, a focus on environmental issues and a rejection of upfront promises of tax cuts drew the headlines but the underlying change was more important.

The British Conservative party has changed, not a shift in policies but actual change. It has become a party that loves the country as it is now, and not as it wishes it was in 1983. The right-wing talk radio blowhards who think the answer is simply to hate the modern world more and scream at it harder are not part of the problem, they are the problem. If Republicans are to avoid the fate of their British counterparts then they need to develop a narrative for modern American that places the one true conservative principle – that of liberty – at the heart of the nation’s future.

EDITORS NOTE:  Edward is a guest columnist, sending us his thoughts from the United Kingdom.  He is a member of the British Conservative Party, and has witnessed first hand the destruction of the British Right, and how it has rebuilt itself from the ground up.  We are grateful to him for his perspective, and hope to bring you many more articles from our friends across the pond in the future.

Watching the GOP's fortunes in 2008 is a lot like watching a professional wrestler getting thoroughly beaten down, yet every time he face plants on the canvas, he slowly crawls up to his knees and looks poised to get up and perhaps storm back for an ugly, late win in the match.

Unfortunately for the right this year, every time the GOP lifts itself up and starts crawling, something else comes swooping in and delivering a swift kick to the ribs, causing us to crash back down, even more defeated than before. The insanity about this phenomenon, however, is that the people delivering those swift kicks to the ribs which wound us more and more, tend to be republicans themselves.

It is a sad commentary that "winning" this year would be denying the democrats a supermajority in Congress, but that is about what it has come to.  But now, because one one man, even that "victory" will be twice as hard.

Ted Stevens has screwed us twice, providing multiple humiliating cracks to our proverbial ribs.

The first way he has undone the right is obvious - he has betrayed the spirit of what it is to be a republican and has slavishly fallen in love with spending, pork and corruption. In the best Alaska tradition, Stevens has become the embodiment of what a republican traditionally would evicerate - but since he calls himself one that becomes tricky. But besides his revolting failures, he is now officially a criminal, and has brought about as much bad press our way as possible.

This has of course put his senate seat in jeopardy of falling to the democrats, placing them one stop closer to a supermajority. Given that (according to polling) they are on the precipice of achivieving this goal, this is all the more shameful.

But, being a corrupt, government loving monster who has defamed our party and put his seat in peril is only his first sin. The second one is even more egregious.

Once it became apparent that Stevens was no longer viable - that he was convicted and corrupt - he had one last opportunity to redeem himself, at least partially, and allow the republican party an honest chance to stop the bleeding.

He needed to come out with a commercial, paid for by all his remaining campaign funds, that had him address Alaskans, saying something to the effect of this:

My fellow Alaskans. I stand before you today to humbly appeal to you - not for myself, but for Alaska.

It is clear now that I can not continue to serve in the US Senate. I maintain my innocence, and intend to prove myself in the court of appeals, but no matter how strongly I feel about this, there is no way I can viably serve in Washington any longer.

Unfortunately, I am not able to be removed from the ballot for the upcoming election here in Alaska, so I can not give one of the other fine candidates in this state an opportunity to run on the republican ticket.

And so I appeal to you thusly - vote for me. Do not vote for me because you want to see me return to the Senate. If elected, I will immediately resign from the Senate at the beginning of the new session, allowing a special election to take place in Alaska - giving the voters of my beloved state an actual choice in this race.

This I give to you as my final pledge, as I appeal to your sense of fairness and your desire to see that good government be undertaken by your Senator in Washington. Please help me give the people of our state a real choice - do not let my unfortunate actions leave you with only one realistic person to vote for.

So, vote for a real choice. Vote for a second chance at a real election. Vote for what my election would represent - a chance to start over, to start clean, and to actually choose the best candidate for you early next year.

I apologize to you, the people of Alaska for being the center of this trouble - I only hope that this can at least begin to set right what has gone so horribly wrong this year.

Thank you, and good night.

Saturate this on the airwaves day and night constantly, do news interviews begging the citizens of Alaska to give themselves an opportunity to choose between two people by doing this, instead of choosing between only one. Make it a movement that appeals to people's desire to have options. These are the things he needed to do, given the damage he has un-necessarily caused.

But instead, he has sunk down into his bunker, insisting that he is innocent and that he will not only not resign, but that he will continue to run - under some deluded impression that he has any credibility or chance of winning left.

So, thank you, Senator Stevens for not only screwing us the first time, thank you for screwing us a second time by your refusal to do what is right (as cliche as that sounds) and bowing out as gracefully as is possible in this situation, by appealing to the voters to allow themselves the right to choose.