National Review Online
Monday, August 29, 2022
In the midterm elections, Republicans are running
against an all-Democratic government that has produced record inflation,
falling real wages, insecurity at the border, and weakness abroad. The
indictment is just, the instinct to capitalize on public dissatisfaction sound.
But there’s something missing from the Republican
campaigns. With rare exceptions, Republicans are doing little to explain what
they would have the government do differently if they took power. If
Republicans take the House and the Senate, what kind of legislation do they
intend to send to President Biden? Detailed plans aren’t needed; nor must all
the candidates agree on a singular platform, Contract with America–style. But
voters deserve to have a sense of how Republicans intend to wield the power for
which they are asking.
Spelling out a sensible conservative policy agenda might
even help Republicans win their campaigns. But that consideration, weighty as
it is, is secondary. As Yuval Levin elaborates in the lead essay of our new issue, the point of the
campaigns ought to be better, and more conservative, government. Defeating
Democrats and their terrible ideas is important, but if that is all Republicans
want they are acquiescing to every past victory for progressivism and every
other outdated or dysfunctional policy. To seek nothing more is to say that
Americans are already governed as well as they can be — and thus to undercut
the premise that they are right to be dissatisfied in the first place.
That’s why our offerings at National Review Online
regularly include proposals to address America’s challenges in ways that are
consistent with our constitutional order. Our special issue on a GOP agenda
presents several that are particularly compelling at this moment. Daniel Lips
explores the new opportunities that post-Covid America offers for giving parents more control over education — including
letting states use schools’ unspent pandemic-relief funds to promote school
choice. Beth Akers argues for holding predatory colleges accountable for saddling
students with debt without giving them the skills needed to pay them, and for
ending government-backed loans for graduate school altogether.
Adam White takes up the hydra-headed problem of Big Tech. He would have Republicans in the next Congress
conduct oversight hearings on the way Big Tech has insinuated itself into
American classrooms and what legislation could do about it. He also recommends
some practical reforms to mitigate the damage Big Tech is doing, such as
restricting social-media accounts to adults and placing controls on TikTok.
Perhaps most important, he urges Republicans to look at regulatory changes that
would provide start-up firms with more sources of financing outside Silicon
Valley.
Alexander William Salter urges Congress to use oversight
and legislation to constrain the activism and discretion of the Federal Reserve, arguing that requiring more predictable
monetary policy would enhance its credibility. In this way Congress could do
its part to prevent the continuation or recurrence of today’s inflation. Chris
Pope explains how government keeps health premiums too high, and what
legislators could do to lower them if they wished. And Ramesh Ponnuru argues
that congressional Republicans will be in a better position to win the abortion
debate if they renew their push for a 20-week ban.
That list hardly exhausts the ways conservatives could
make American government less burdensome. Republicans have been listless even
on taxes, with few of them calling for an extension of tax cuts that are due to
expire. Legislative attention to immigration, where action is needed if we are
to have a system that looks like someone designed it on purpose, is sporadic at
best.
This is a moment of liberal overconfidence and failure
that should create numerous conservative opportunities. But those opportunities
will be squandered if Republicans persist in not even trying to identify them.
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