A Moderate Republican Approach That Actually Delivers Results

I write a lot about the future of various flavors of conservatism. Today is a look at fixing the failures of political conservatism and Republican governance at the state and local level.

I’m a lifelong Republican who spent five years working at a conservative think tank. But I’ll bet you won’t be surprised to hear I have a lot of complaints about the failures of the Republican party in recent years.

I can actually name a lot of accomplished Republican leaders who did amazing things. I’m from Indiana. Right here in our state, Republican industrialist J. Irwin Miller’s civic leadership made his home town of Columbus the only Rust Belt city that never rusted. In 1967, Esquire magazine put him on its cover and wanted to draft him to run for President. A mayor of Indianapolis, Republican Richard Luger pushed through a far sighted city-county merger. Later, as a US Senator, he was a highly respected foreign policy voice that played a key role in securing post-Soviet nuclear weapons and materials. Republican mayor Steve Goldsmith was a nationally renowned innovator in government privatization, and went on to a variety of roles including deputy mayor of New York City and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. Mitch Daniels drew national kudos for reinventing state government as governor and then freezing tuition as president of Purdue University.

There’s just one problem: most positive examples of Republican accomplishment here I can cite are from a long time ago. Virtually all of them happened over two decades ago back in the 20th century.

In the 21st century, in today’s world, Republicans have largely been a failure at governing.

At the federal level, Congressional Republicans can’t do much besides pass tax cuts for the rich and appoint Federalist Society judges. The George W. Bush administration was a debacle. Trump actually had more accomplishments than people give him credit for, but by and large he was unable to govern. Undoubtedly the election of Trump itself revealed a lot of rot in the American body politic generally, and that’s especially true of the Republican party.

Republicans haven’t exactly set the world on fire at the state level either. I wrote a 7,000 word article for American Affairs detailing Republican failure in Indiana. Republicans have controlled the governorship since 2005 and the entire state government for over a decade. The results were declining incomes, anemic growth, a low wage economy, very poor educational attainment, a decline in the number of people attending college, and other indicators of stagnation. I actually don’t blame the state’s GOP for creating these problems, but they certainly haven’t been able to fix them. Similar stories could be told in many other red states.

Most examples of successful Republican state level governance are in Sunbelt places that were probably going to boom anyway. In fact, the growth wave in some of these places started when they were still part of the Democratic “Solid South.”

But there actually are some examples of successful Republican governance in America. This even includes people governing as the dreaded “moderate Republican.” If “respectable” Republicans want to win the favor of their own voters, they need to figure out how to channel these examples and start delivering real results.

I will share one contemporary case study whose general contours, if not the specifics, are applicable to a wide range of state and local governments. That is the story of Carmel, Indiana and its retiring seven term Republican mayor Jim Brainard. Brainard has simply been the most successful, consequential, and influential elected official in the state of Indiana in the last 25 years.

The Brainard strategy at its core is about a laser-like focus on improving community quality in the areas within city government’s span of control. This included: major infrastructure investments and improvements, improving the quality and attractiveness of the public realm, creating community amenities, and delivering high quality public services. Unlike most Republicans, he was willing to borrow and invest large sums of money to make it happen. And unlike most other politicians, he didn’t let other matters or endless conversation distract him from building and accomplishing things in the areas where he wanted to focus.

I will give a number of examples of what was accomplished, and compare this strategy to both the governance strategy the Republican party at the state level in Indiana has pursued and the principles I have previously suggested for red state governance.