Governor Mark Sanford, giving advice to the Republican party, writes

If John Deere’s tractor sales are declining, they don’t say, “Tell you what, let’s make cars and airplanes, too.” Instead, they focus on producing better tractors.

Everybody’s got advice for the Republicans. A lot of that advice is coming from people who didn’t vote for John McCain but would like us to run more John McCains. I’m writing as an independent, one who often but not always votes Republican. Someone who found McCain a decent choice policy-wise, but would have preferred someone with both policies and principles, such as Fred Thompson. For all the talk about McCain’s anger problem, his real problem appears to be that he’s a nice guy. He refuses to criticize his colleagues when they’re wrong—even when running against one of them. And he trusts his colleagues far too much when they state their legislative goals. For example, the described purpose of the pre-election rescue bill was a whole lot more palatable than the practice of it.

Over on Hot Air, Ed Morrissey listed these conservative first principles:

• fiscal responsibility
• smaller government
• national security
• free market economics
• federalism
• lower taxes

These are the principles that drive me, as an independent, to vote for Republicans. Every single one of them, with the possible exception of national security, either leads to more individual freedom or is more individual freedom.

Look ahead

Notice, however, what’s not in that list: gay marriage and abortion. Opposition to gay marriage and legal punishment for abortions are losing issues. Allowing same sex marriage is inevitable, not just because it is the right thing to do (as I believe) but because it looks like the right thing to do. If Republicans choose to make being anti-gay a defining characteristic of being a Republican, they’ll fall further behind with each generation. Yes, Proposition 8 won in “liberal” California despite California overwhelmingly voting for Barack Obama. But the converse is also true: despite supporting Proposition 8, California still voted Democratic. The issue has no coattails; soon it won’t even be an issue.

Republicans who want to oppose gay marriage would be better served by trying to get the government out of the business of deciding who can and can’t be married. That will be difficult as well, but it will at least align with Republican principles and won’t sideline them as irrelevant or out of touch on other issues. Within twelve years anyone still campaigning as anti-gay marriage will be treated like someone campaigning against miscegenation today. And there’s only room for one Robert Byrd.

Abortion is a tougher issue. Abortion is wrong. But it’s also legally problematic: few voters want to punish women for choosing to have an abortion. Republicans who care about ending abortion should follow Governor Palin’s lead: personally against abortion, legislatively neutral, and publicly working to make other alternatives a better choice. For all that abortion is wrong, abortion laws strike at the heart of individual freedom and privacy. The only way abortion can go away in a free country is if women no longer want to have them.

National security is important insofar as successful national security reduces calls for limiting freedom. Beyond that, we can no longer afford a national security that actively supports brutal dictators just because they’re currently providing a precarious stability we think we need. The strong-man theory of stability is wrong for America, and it is a good thing that Bush moved the United States away from it. To the extent that immigration is tied to national security, we need to understand that we can't stop immigration, we can only force it underground, which is dangerous. As I’ve written before, I think that the Bush immigration policy was a good one.

Principles confuse the beltway

Ace at the Ace of Spades is suggesting that Republicans look for Six at Sixty: six issues that command 60% support. These should be issues that show people once again what conservative principles can do for them.

Politicians are confused by principles. Today’s parties are not composed of principles but rather of a hodge-podge of often contradictory policies. If the Republican party could convince their members to support Ed’s conservative list, it would throw the Democratic base into disarray, or force them to identify based on principles as well. The Democratic party is filled with “core constituencies” that hate each other, and agree on only one thing: Republicans are worse. Six at Sixty can change that.

Imagine if, for federalism, smaller government, and free-market economics, the Republicans united to say, “this is what federalism can do for you”, and chose a policy supported by well over 60% of voters; an issue idolized by one of the Democrat’s core constituencies and hated by another: states’ rights to medical marijuana. Medical marijuana consistently receives 60% or greater support in polls. But there’s one core Democratic constituency that consistently opposes it: California (and possibly other) prison guards.

That’s just an example of the kind of principled thinking that Republicans are going to have to do. Democrats have been carefully cultivating core constituencies that they don’t have to work for. Make them work. Make them have to explain to prison guards why they’re not putting more easy-to-manage people in jail or go over to students and explain why they can’t get this through even when they control the House, the Senate, and the White House—while the Republicans are pushing for it as an example of Republican principles. It’s one thing to have a big tent, it’s another thing entirely to have a circus tent of people who really hate each other. Principle can cut through the circus.

The elephant in the schoolhouse

One of the biggest problems that Republicans need to face, however, is the tendency for government programs to become money laundering systems lobbying for more government programs. Whether it’s the prison guards or ACORN, it’s pretty rare to see government funding used to support less government funding.

The elephant in the room for advocates of smaller government is the increasing government control over information and education. If you want to win on message, you need to get your message out. Until average people can send their children to schools whose teachers don’t ridicule fifth-grade McCain supporters, candidates who support reducing the size of government will always face an uphill climb. Heaven forbid if the ailing newspapers ask for a bailout and we get an industry czar for the news industry. During this election we asked if the newspapers could be any more biased. If that happens, we’ll find out.

Republicans need, also, to stick to their principles even when their opponent’s policies follow them. Too often in the past eight years Democrats have spun around to support things they used to oppose, solely because President Bush also opposed them (the intelligence czar, for example, and federal ownership of state disaster efforts). Republicans need to figure out what their principles are and act on their principles, and not mindlessly act in opposition to whatever the Democrats and President Obama propose.

They might have a long time to figure their principles out. As President, Obama only has to do two things to win a second term. Continue the victory in Iraq, and stand back to let the economy improve. You might think that a politician who has said the things he’s said will find it impossible to stand back and stop doing the things that brought this crisis on in the first place, but he also has a strong record of doing nothing. That’s all he needs to do to let the crisis run its course and let the economy right itself. If he can do that, Republicans are looking at 2016, not 2012, for the presidency.

On the other hand, if he ends up pouring money into expanding the scope of government, nationalizing the auto industry, the banking industry, and every other ailing industry, success will depend on how well the Republicans come up with an alternative vision that resonates with their own principles—and an alternative to a nationalized news industry.