Lessons for Libs in US Republican's shift

The decision by USA Republican Senator Arlen Specter to switch to the Democrats is a huge fillip for President Obama, and indeed for everyone who was worried that legislation that could be crucial to the futures of all of us relating to climate change, the economy or other important international matters might be stalled by Republican filibusters in the US Senate.

There is now a high probability that the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats before the end of this year, once the Republican’s delaying legal tactics challenging the Democrats’ Senate win in Minnesota reach the ultimate end of the line.

While Specter’s decision was no doubt heavily influenced by his chances of retaining his Senate seat in Pennsylvania at the 2010 congressional election, it also has some potential lessons for the Liberals in Australia as they continue to wrestle with their direction in the post-Howard era.

This rather mournful piece in the New York Timesby Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine – one of the very few remaining Republican moderates - highlights the major electoral dangers of trying to impose a narrow ideology on a party that needs to gain broad public support.

She quotes Ronald Reagan, the Republican’s touchstone in the modern era, when he spoke about the approach that party should take:

 “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

Leaving aside the rather obvious fact that Reagan actually didn’t deliver terribly well on most of these ‘litmus test’ issues, except tax reduction and arguably national defence (depending on your definition of ‘sound’), the principle (or strategy) of nailing down some core values and then giving people a lot more space on all the rest is a very sound one.

While there are many aspects unique to the USA system which doesn’t translate to Australia – the primary system and the much greater scope for politicians to vote against the party line being two of the big ones - the importance of remaining acceptable to a broad spectrum of members and voters is something the Liberals (and their Coalition/merged colleagues in the Nationals) need to stay very conscious of.

I am not saying they should necessarily adopt the same litmus tests Ronald Reagan outlined.  John Howard didn’t even deliver on the ‘tax reduction’ litmus test, although he  certainly did on economic growth,  and I find it hard to see how some of the Conservatives in the ‘Liberals’ and Nationals could genuinely say they sign up to ‘maximum individual liberty’.

But whatever litmus test they want to use, the key thing is getting agreement across the broad range of views in your party on a few core principles which you can at least maintain a plausible façade of all signing up to, and not spending energy internally brawling about the rest.

Personally, I still think there is a prospect that many Australians could be attarcted to voting for a Malcolm Turnbull led Liberal Coalition, if they could be surer what the core principles of that Coalition are. 

Fewer Australian voters now stick to supporting the one party for life, regardless of that party’s actions or policies. But if they are going to shift from one to another – especially from the government party to one that’s out of government – they need to have a reasonably good idea of the key things that alternative option presents.

I’m sure I’m not the Coalition’s target demographic, but for me the big problem is not that I disagree with all of what the federal Coalition stands for at the moment, it’s that I can’t really be sure what that is, let alone what it might be by election time.

And while I doubt the thoughts of President Obama or many US Democrats are on recent lessons from Australian political history at the moment, there is still a parallel message they need to be conscious of too.  The surprise appearance of a filibuster-proof Senate majority for the US Democrats is not too dissimilar to John Howard getting a (mostly) unexpected Senate majority after the 2004 election. History showed John Howard indulged in ideological over-reach with the almost total Parliamentary power he gained. President Obama will need to be careful not to fall into the same trap.