By Rick Manning
No matter what else happens on today in the election, if the Republicans pick up the Senate, there will be a mandate for conservative leadership.
There will be a mandate to reject President Obama’s failed foreign policies and put America first by protecting our nation’s security and borders.
There will be a mandate to rein in the lawlessness of the Obama Administration through aggressive oversight and legislative action, emboldening Congress to use the power of the purse to stop the most egregious executive branch overreaches.
There will be a mandate to, wherever possible, rollback Obama’s failed economic agenda and replace it with one that creates good high paying jobs.
When the dust settles, Republicans should learn that the security issue trumps Sandra Fluke’s latest sex crisis with women. That concerns for their children’s future and the declining hope that it will be better under Democrat policies, is more significant than worn out slogans from feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s heyday.
In short, it should be clear to national Republicans after this election that the failure of liberal national security and economic policies provide principled Republicans a pathway to gaining an edge with the suburban woman voter.
Republicans should understand that protecting our southern border is increasingly important as drug cartels, human traffickers and those who wish harm to our national way of life pose an existential threat to our basic freedoms. They should also understand that providing amnesty to millions who have broken the law will create a backlash amongst those who gave them the majority, breaching a trust that will be hard to regain in 2016.
And Republicans and Democrats alike should be able to figure out that towing the corporatist line doesn’t create support from the majority of Americans who believe that no matter which political party gets elected, they are going to get the short-end of the stick. If Republicans choose to squander their momentum and majority by passing big business supported legislation that Democrats vote for and President Obama signs, it will be increasingly difficult to answer Hillary Clinton’s infamous question, “what difference does it make?”
The new majority should listen closely to Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) who argued earlier this year, “The elites are failing America, they’re failing the people of America… My party, the Republican Party, needs to sever itself from the elite consensus, we need to break from it.”
If winning Republicans understand the successes, failures and tremendous lost opportunities of this election they will be united in their commitment to secure our future through using the power of the purse to disrupt Obama’s regulatory state which games the system for those big enough to manipulate it.
If they read the election results correctly, they should be equally committed to securing our border and national interests around the world by shaming Obama through oversight and setting specific funding priorities and direction that cannot be ignored, which hopefully force him into acting like the leader of the free world, rather than a 98-pound weakling.
Before the dust is settled on tonight, the spinners will be hard at work trying to define what Decision 2014 means. In those critical few hours, the mandate for leadership will be characterized. If Republicans fail to grasp the security theme, and the opportunity to reset the party’s brand to being the hope for securing the American dream and the nation, they will have laid the groundwork for future failure — all before the final ballots have been counted.
And the Party’s long-term defeat will have been grasped from the jaws of victory.
Rick Manning is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government. He is a former Executive Vice President of the California College Republicans and met his wife at a Republican recruiting table.
