How Republicans talk when they disagree with each other
The Republican Party is having a debate about its future. Before it can have the debate, its leaders must agree on just how it should take place. At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, there emerged several distinct theories about how to approach the GOP split.
Eject the establishment: Sen. Ted Cruz knows there's a fight and he is taking a side. He said conservatives should stand for principles and not support weak establishment candidates like Bob Dole, Sen. John McCain, and Mitt Romney. "When you don't stand and draw a clear distinction; when you don't stand for principle, Democrats celebrate," he said. That message undermined Ryan's claim that the differences in the party were small, since Cruz was saying that the GOP ticket the budget chairman ran on last year was an example of a catastrophic loss of principles. (McCain has since called on Cruz to apologize to Dole.)
Overrun the establishment: Sen. Mike Lee started his remarks with a well-told Emo Phillips joke about carrying ideological distinctions too far. "We as conservatives have got to be far more engaged in finding converts than discarding heretics," he said. Lee said he was offering a formula to rebuild the movement and the party, and it sounded for a moment like he was offering a softer version of Cruz's pitch. Maybe he was going to create a synthesis between the establishment and grassroots segments of the party. No heretics! Everyone would get to join in! But then the senator told the story of anti-establishment forces in the mid-'70s who rallied around Ronald Reagan. They worked quietly and diligently, said Lee and "those in the establishment never knew what hit them." Lee wasn't offering to convert the establishment; he was promising to ambush them.