Is center v. right the wrong debate about the future of the Republican Party?

Interesting comments from Patrick Ruffini who attended the recent Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami:

. . . Tim Pawlenty put his finger on why the “traditionalists vs. modernizers” debate David Brooks is trying to foist on us is the wrong one.  Pawlenty argues we need to return to our core principles and apply them to 21st century issues.  . . .  And 21st century issues doesn’t just mean taxestaxestaxes. It means we need to be for broad, sweeping, dramatic free-market solutions to issues like health care and the environment that don’t let us get painted as any less visionary or aggressive on those issues.

. . .

For the foreseeable future, the GOP will continue to be the party of the Reaganite triumvirate of a strong national defense, free markets, and traditional values. Any effort to displace any part of the coalition will be met by fierce and automatic resistance.  . . . With the GOP in the minority, now is not a good time to be throwing parts of our coalition over the side — but to keep everybody in the fold and add new people.

American elections are by and large not referendums on ideologies. They are contests of personality, optics, and performance in office. This goes the same for when they win or we win — whether it’s 1980, 1994, or 2006/2008. The Democrats did not have to change their ideology to win; they needed to change the charisma level of their standardbearer and needed an economic crisis and a prolonged unpopular war.

Because ideology doesn’t matter in elections, and so much of politics depends on ephemeral characteristics like personality and who was in when the economy cycled south, the parties paradoxically have relatively wide latitude to govern ideologically without fear of public backlash once they get in. This is why cries of “socialism” were so ineffective during the campaign, and likewise why Bush got most of what he wanted in his early Presidency, even before 9/11. If Barack Obama is able to adopt far-left policies and make it look like he’s making the trains run on time, the country will enter a new liberal era not by virtue of public opinion, but by acquiesence to what appears to be competent governance. In 1993-94, the Clintons tried to move the country to the left and looked incompetent in the process. It was the latter more than the former that opened a door for conservatives in 1994.

There is a relationship between ideology and competence in that ideological governance makes the other side fight harder, while middle of the road policies usually stymie effective opposition (but don’t move the ball ideologically). This means that Mitch McConnell must obstruct to increase the likelihood of Obama being seen as ineffective or incompetent (independent of his ideology), but we have to lead with our positive alternatives to inoculate against the inevitable charge that the GOP is too negative.

What does this mean for the current party debate?

It means that the GOP will stick to its traditional principles, while distancing itself from examples of Bush’s botched execution. It also means that modernization will happen in other, more useful contexts  — be it in the aggressiveness with which we apply conservatism to a nontraditional issues, revamping how we use technology and modernizing our grassroots efforts, and most crucially, by fielding younger, more inspiring candidates who can transcend petty battles between the “so-cons” and the “fis-cons” by providing a better hope of winning elections and restoring both factions to power.  . . .