Changing the Republican brand

Michael Contentti:

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... Mr. McCain needs to recast the party in his own image: anticorruption, pro-reform and fiscally and socially conservative.

In recent weeks, Republican strategists have urged Mr. McCain to run against the Democrats who control Congress. But that isn’t enough for Mr. McCain. By picking Ms. Palin, he has signaled that he will campaign against the Republicans in Congress, too.

In recent years, the Alaska Republican Party has become a metaphor for the national Republican Party. There are probably more caribou than pigs in Alaska, but its Congressional delegation is nonetheless addicted to pork. Flush with oil money, Alaska’s Republicans have built a welfare state that Washington’s “big government conservatives” must surely envy. Corruption is rampant. The party is out of touch. Senator Ted Stevens, who championed the infamous $400 million bridge, faces prison. On Tuesday, Alaska Republicans nominated him for another term.

This is where Ms. Palin comes in. She campaigned for governor on an anti-corruption platform and has spent the past two years in combat with oil executives, lobbyists and politicians comfortable with the status quo. She helped prevent Senator Stevens’s bridge to nowhere. In Alaska, as in the country at large, Republicans have done everything they can to get thrown out of office. Ms. Palin was elected to save the party — and the state — from itself.

Sound familiar? A year ago, there was little chance Mr. McCain would be the Republican nominee. He had upset conservatives time and again by breaking with party regulars on immigration, climate change, the Bush tax cuts and interrogation. He had made enemies in Congress — including Senator Stevens and Alaska’s representative, Don Young — by fighting egregious pork. And he disturbed the party’s money-raising apparatus not only by promoting campaign finance reform, but also through his crusade against Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist, and his friends.

Mention Mr. McCain before a crowd of conservatives a year ago, and their faces would grow pale before turning red in anger. The most likely sound you’d hear would be boos.

Today Mr. McCain’s conservative critics have quieted their protests. They appreciate that he is most likely the only Republican who could win the presidency in the current political environment. No more boos. Just cheers.

They do this even as Mr. McCain tries to change the Republican Party. Choosing Ms. Palin affirmed her place among the party’s rising stars. But it also rejected the various alternative models of the conservative coalition that Mr. McCain’s other options for vice president represented.

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I think the anti corruption candidate has a lot of potential. I have been surprised how few in the parties congressional leadership have embraced it. Too many are too tied to the pork spending to see how it is hurting the country and the party. Palin has shown just how powerful an issue it is. And, one of the dirty little secrets of 2008 is that when it comes to corrupt politicians the Democrats lead the pack. The embedded local corruption of Democrat politicians seeps up into the bigger races and this nominee will help the GOP attack that issue. It is one that Obama is vulnerable on too, from his association with Tony Rezko.