There are some largely encouraging early signs this morning about how Republicans might proceed in the new Congress next year. And the most encouraging thing about them may be that, while one comes from the two leaders of the congressional party and the other comes from one of its most important and creative conservative back-benchers, they are quite compatible and tend mostly to reinforce one another.
In the Wall Street Journal, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell lay out some of their priorities and emphasize some of the ways that simply ending Harry Reid’s reign of obstruction will make a difference. They recommit to repealing Obamacare and (in general) to advancing some of the measures passed in the House in recent years. They focus in particular on a few measures they think might get enough Democratic votes along with the Republicans to pass the Senate (given the filibuster). I think they’re probably overly optimistic about that, but the entire House-passed agenda should be advanced in the new Congress, for a start, and the Democrats will fall where they’ll fall.
As to what might be done beyond that modest start, they could hardly do better than to follow Mike Lee’s advice. In The Federalist this morning (and I hope you read The Federalist every day, it’s fantastic), Lee offers a five-part strategy for the new Congress that strikes me as exactly right. He calls for an open process of policy development, a commitment to combat crony-capitalism, a broad and plausible Republican consensus approach to the budget process, a commitment to reform government in a conservative direction rather than just argue about how much to spend on it, and an effort to (in his term) “Ryan-ize the committees” and use them to develop ambitious conservative ideas. This seems like just the right way to think about the opportunities and the challenges Republicans will have in the wake of this election, and it suggests that Lee was just the right choice for his new role as chair of the Republican Senate Steering Committee.
The ways forward suggested in these two strategic outlines seem reasonably compatible and for the most part mutually reinforcing. Here’s hoping.