The Fiscal Times: Edward Morrissey: 'Five Who Could Lead the Republican Party in 2013'

Source:The Fiscal Times- Potential 2013 GOP POTUS candidates. 

"Another New Year has arrived, and with it the requisite resolutions for improvement in the coming twelve months.  Many of us promise to eat right and exercise more. Most of us probably plan to exercise more spending discipline, too, although that hasn’t translated into political efforts over the last several decades."

From The Fiscal Times

The problem that any opposition party has in America is that we don't have an official opposition leader. Someone to go head to head the with head of state or even work with that person when they can. We don't have that one position to lead an entire opposition and set the policies and alternatives of the opposition party. We do have that in Congress where the Minority Leader in the House and Senate can offer alternatives to what the majority is putting on the floor, to a certain extent.

But Congressional leaders aren't responsible for leading an entire party. That won't be the role of House Speaker John Boehner or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2013-14, the Republicans leaders in Congress. Their jobs will be to lead their caucus's in the 113th Congress. And to set the agenda for their caucus's, not to try to lead the Republican Party as a whole, because again we don't have a Leader of the Opposition in America. Like they do in Canada and in Europe. I wish we did but that's for a different post.

The Republican Party's problem is that they are a broken party and a party that's either broke on ideas or near broke on ideas as far as what they can push that the American people by consensus would support as we found out in the presidential election. That's a big enough problem. Another problem that the Republican Party has is that they are divided between Christian-Nationalists (the Big Government faction in the party) that rather talk about social issues than economics or foreign policy.

The other faction in the Republican Party are the real Conservatives in the party, the people who are economic Conservatives but also believe that personal freedom is important and that there's a limit to what American foreign policy and our military can accomplish. Like former Senator Olympic Snowe who just left Congress after serving there for thirty six years in both the House and Senate, is a perfect example of this. And then there's also a growing conservative-libertarian faction in the party led by Senator Rand Paul and others who are the real Conservatives in the party.

So the Republican Party as the opposition party in America won't have that one person who can bring them together. And set the agenda for where the party should be going, but they might be able to do it by coalition and have a national meeting, but of real Conservatives who are only interested in bringing the GOP back as a real conservative party. And not a party that scares women, gays or minorities, but a party that welcomes a big tent of Conservatives. Who believe in economic freedom to go along with personal freedom and a strong national defense, that's fiscally responsible. 

And maybe the Chairman of the Republican National Committee is the person that could put this conference and coalition together, but they won't have one person to lead the whole party.