CHRISTIE AND DANIELS: THE YIN AND YANG OF A NEW REPUBLICANISM
My latest is up at Pajamas Media and I take a look at the new approach to governing offered by New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels.
A sample:
In looks, demeanor, temperament, and life experience, Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels are as dissimilar as the states from which they hail. The former is a blunt, outspoken, even pugnacious former U.S. attorney with a career in New Jersey noted for reforming a local political cesspool and prosecuting white-collar crime. The latter is a soft-spoken, balding, lifelong Hoosier political junkie who spent a decade as a top executive of a Fortune 500 company.
Despite their seeming opposite natures, the two governors share a common denominator that may hold the key to fostering a new kind of Republican Party where principle and pragmatism combined with confidence and competence offer the voter a real choice in governance.
Neither man can be considered an ideologue. Nor do the two governors pander to any faction in the party or outside of it. Instead, both seem to have hit upon formulas for success that are peculiar to their own state — and their personalities.
Polls show a majority of Republicans dissatisfied with their choices for president so far. Can you blame them? The candidates who are making noises like candidates are, for the most part, retreads from 2008. At at time when fresh ideas and fresh faces are desperately needed, the GOP is falling back on its old “next in line” scenario for a presidential candidate with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee each trying to claim that mantle and Sarah Palin trying to pretend that she’s an outsider of some sort.
The future of the party is in the statehouses across the country where Republicans like Daniels, Christie, Huntsman, and perhaps even Rick Perry are showing creativity, courage, and hard headed realism in confronting the problems of governance in these tough economic times. This, more than adherence to ideology, or being a slave to partisanship is what is desperately needed in Washington if we are to save the American model of capitalism from the levelers and anti-business zealots in the Democratic party.