“Congressional Republicans would do well to remind voters of the dangers of a Democratic Congressional majority and avoid all temptations to formulate a me-too Progressive-lite agenda for the fall campaign. But they’ll need to do more in order to stop, much less reverse, the advance of the Progressive leviathan.
“A good example of what this type of action looks like is found in Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee’s Conservative Reform Agenda, a set of action items that aim to tackle systemic societal problems by empowering individuals and families. Lee’s policy formula (from employment to education to transportation matters) is simple: encourage individual and familial liberty by creating the greatest amount of flexibility in every important life decision Americans make.
“Lee’s approach embodies two simple precepts that Republican officeholders and candidates would do well to adopt in designing an action plan of their own.
First: addition begins with subtraction. Renovating a structure that has been plagued by careless craftsmanship is not an easy task when people are living in the building–as is always the case in politics. Wrecking balls, while rhetorically appealing, can’t be the usual tool of choice. As Lee’s agenda suggests, a limited-government majority should begin with multiple and targeted steps to remove the political debris that has made such a mess of American politics before moving on to more substantial renovations.
“Second: follow the original blueprint (as closely as you can). The Constitution remains a reliable guide for American statesmen. It provides a ‘do-something’ Congress with all the tools that it needs to do its part–and, in Madison’s “principal objects,” a good place to start.
“In sum, neither Rome nor America (nor any other great regime) was built or destroyed in a day. Renewing our liberty necessitates people employing their rational and moral faculties to a greater degree. The re-emergence of societal flourishing built upon political liberty will require both a regime that wants the people, more and more, to “do something”–and a people eager to act.”
