Conservatives Play ‘Gotcha!’

By the Editors

What is it you think I should have done?” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) bellowed at the Institute of Politics Forum earlier this month. Harvard Law student Joel Pollak had asked him how much, if any, responsibility he bore for the financial crisis, and Frank was livid at Pollak’s “implication” that the Congressman had been asleep at the switch. 

While Pollak carried himself with aplomb—especially when compared to Frank—conservative commentators spun themselves into a tizzy over Pollak’s supposed “grilling.” Fox News pundits Greta van Susteren and Neal Cavuto both hosted Pollak on their shows and lauded his courage. But the euphoria over Pollak’s exchange was excessive: Pollak did not slay a liberal dragon; he merely asked a question—a question Frank successfully dodged. If Pollak had had a few more facts, he could have pressed Frank’s know-nothing response. Don’t get us wrong: We commend Pollak’s chutzpah, but if conservatives are going to play “Gotcha!” with liberals, they need to be good at it.

We don’t mean to discourage conservatives from showing some verve. Since Barack Obama’s coronation in November, many Republicans have been falling over themselves as they kowtow to the Emperor of Hope. First, RINOs—like former Congressman Jim Leach and former Senator Lincoln Chafee—endorsed Obama and stampeded out of the GOP, although they claim the party left them. Then, Republicans stepped into White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s bear trap: defending Rush Limbaugh. GOP Chairman Michael Steele scrambled over cable news to convince viewers that he, not Limbaugh, was the head of the Republican Party. And Republican congressional candidate Jim Tedisco later apologized for his remark that “Limbaugh is meaningless to me,” drenching his red-hot poll numbers. Finally, the GOP tried to out-Obama Obama, scheduling Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to give the Republican response to the State-of-the-Union, which was so sweet with clichés that it raised the audience’s blood sugar. Republicans are having a hard time playing the Happy Warrior.

Recently, they have gotten better. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) kept his moderate ducks in a row and secured complete Republican opposition to Obama’s stimulus package and budget. Waffly Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced his disapproval of card-check, effectively scuttling Obama’s plan to force unionization on workers. 

But Republicans still have not found their groove in their face-off with Obama. When they talked up the Democrats’ record deficits, they hung the albatross around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s neck. They blamed the AIG bonus scandal on Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). Although Republicans have scored a few bull’s eyes against congressional Democrats, they have yet to hit the main target: Obama. No matter how badly Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid muck things up, if Obama maintains his high approval ratings, Republicans better trade their tents for motor homes as they wallow in the wilderness. Sure, Republicans have offered vague alternatives to Obama’s budget, but they have not challenged his judgment in running the country into the red, or his lack of courage in permitting pork barrel spending by Congress. These gut feelings about Obama—that he is prudent, tough, optimistic—are widespread among the public, and the key to his success.

And if Republicans do not challenge these qualities, conservative activists will. The problem with activists, however, is that they often do not do their homework. On Fox News, talk radio, and other media outlets, they ask liberals questions which conservatives think damning, but which everyone else considers silly. During the presidential campaign, a Floridian anchorwoman quoted selections from Karl Marx’s works and asked then-candidate Joe Biden to respond to her suggestion that Obama’s policies were socialistic. On his website, Matt Drudge heralded the interview as Biden’s comeuppance, but it seemed to the average viewer more like his vindication. The woman’s questions were absurd. And even when conservatives find a good line of questioning, they rarely follow up. Take Frank as an example. He claims deregulation caused the financial crisis. But in the 1990s Democrats slapped on banks requirements to lend to people who couldn’t pay them back. And does anyone not see that Fannie and Freddie Mac—the ostensibly unregulated free-marketeers—were themselves government creations?

“That’s all well and good,” our activist friends would say, “but we need to talk in sound bites; no one pays attention past sixty seconds.” In response, we present Tory MP Daniel Hannan who slammed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his call for more deficit spending at the European Parliament last month. Speaking for only three minutes, Hannan detailed Britain’s bankruptcy with facts—every British child is born owing £20,000—and with flair, dubbing Brown the “devalued prime minister of a devalued government.” Within a week, his speech gained over two million views on YouTube, and this backbencher moved to the front of the room. In the U.S., conservatives struggle to articulate their message, but they have done it well before. Republicans wrested the House from Democrats in 1946 with the message, “Well, have you had enough?” They rode to the majority again in 1952 under their banner “I like Ike.” And in 1994, they once again conquered Washington after Newt Gingrich signed a “Contract with America.” Conservatives must relearn how to perform in politics without being hokey.

Otherwise, instead of “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” Republicans will chant “Drill Baby Drill”—and be ridiculed for it. Intelligence and wit are not incompatible. Indeed, they are complements of each other, and conservatives need both if they want to defeat the Democrats. It should not prove impossible, considering Obama is no jokester. Every time he makes a quip—about Nancy Reagan’s séances, the Special Olympics, etc.—he has to apologize for it. He grows wooden once he loses his teleprompter. Still, Americans want him—or any politician at this point—to set the country right, and if Republicans do not offer astute, good-humored opposition, they will continue to be the laughingstock of Washington.