Asserts the moderate-conservative Republican: "Well before Bill Clinton mastered the skill of political survival, and
became the most consequential ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt, he
pulled off a more pivotal achievement. Clinton essentially restored the
Democratic Party as an electoral force by shoring up its credibility on
fiscal policy, social policy, and race, and in so doing, he drew two
crucial blocs firmly back into his party: blue collar whites and
suburban professionals. The modern electoral map, which allots most of
the industrial north and Midwest to Democrats and in which suburb-heavy
states like California and New Jersey have not been contested in a
generation, is the legacy of Clinton’s restoration project."
He continues: "My strong hope is that Republicans, my new party, are about to discover
their Clinton instincts. Had those sensibilities surfaced in the last
ninety days, Mitt Romney would likely be planning a transition now. It
is not hard to imagine the impact of a well-timed denunciation of the
Todd Akin/Richard Murdock mythologies on rape not as gaffes, but as
wrong-headed efforts to have government substitute for the conscience
and moral judgment of a victimized woman. A fleshed out plan to rescue
homeowners underwater on ill-conceived mortgages would have reflected
some of the smarter instincts in the conservative intelligentsia in the
last several years, while paying dividends with voters who associated
the GOP with the blocking of initiatives and little else. Grabbing and
running with Senator Marco Rubio’s version of the Dream Act before Obama
absconded with it would have made a difference in Florida and Colorado."
More commentary from Mr. Davis: "The Republican Party is not about to abandon its status as a
conservative vehicle committed to the protection of unborn life, or the
defense of traditionally defined marriage, or its resistance to a
spending course that robs the future, or to taxes and mandates that
destabilize business confidence. But it is worth noting that Clinton’s
willingness to mix it up with the status quo in his party earned him
ground to defend the unshakable parts of the liberal orthodoxy. Had
Clinton not recast welfare as a privilege rather than a right, for
example, affirmative action would have been deeply vulnerable in the mid
nineties. In the same vein, a Republican who rescued the pro-life
movement from its farthest edges is better poised to defend Catholic
institutions from the Obama Administration’s healthcare mandates. A
Republican who acknowledges that a conservative party should refrain
from ripping immigrant families apart is a far more credible advocate
for a tighter border and a crackdown on the hiring of low wage,
undocumented labor."
Artur Davis: "Republicans Should Look to Bill Clinton For Electoral Guidance"
