McCain does Reagan

NY Times:

Senator John McCain said Thursday that Republicans had lost the midterm elections because “we abandoned our principles” on fiscal policy and government restraint, inviting a backlash from Americans over what they saw as widespread hypocrisy.

Mr. McCain — in back-to-back speeches delivered on the day he formally created his presidential exploratory committee — portrayed the election result as deserved punishment of Republicans for their performance in office, rather than an affirmation of the Democratic Party. Speaking to two conservative audiences still reeling from the Republicans’ losses of the House and Senate, he said Republicans could recover from the election but only if they took lessons from the results.

“Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins — and the people will punish it,” said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. “We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office.

“We lost our principles and our majority,” he said. “And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first.”

...

McCain seems to have the small government side of the equation down. What he has yet to demonstrate is a commitment to the tax cut side. In the 80's the Republicans could blame the Democrats for the growth in spending as the increased revenue from the tax cuts came in. Now they have to take responsibility for the increased spending and find a way to stop the Democrats from doing worse.