Jim DeMint offers advice in a Federalist column for his former colleagues and successors in Congress.
I left my foxholes in the House and Senate almost 15 years ago. And, while continuing to work in D.C. supporting conservative members of Congress and an America-first conservative agenda, my perspective is now clearer as I look at policy debates inside the Capitol from across the street.
Sadly, looking from the outside in, it seems the competition inside the Capitol is increasingly between socialist Democrats and socialist Republicans. Any policy deemed bipartisan inevitably spends more money to create delusional government “solutions.” The Republicans who continue to fall for this insanity consider themselves to be enlightened moderates — much more constructive and compassionate than the uncivilized, rebellious conservatives. These “moderates” are regularly celebrated by the media.
This foxhole mentality eventually overtakes practically every Republican who stays in Congress too long. They lose sight of their original campaign promises and follow the media, the polls, and Republican leadership into box canyons where the only way out is left. Our so-called leadership become administrators who think their job is to make the trains run on time, forgetting their real job is to get the trains to run in the right direction. Rank-and-file Republicans are left with no leadership or vision of what they want America to become.
The current spectacle of political debates is reminiscent of my years as a strategic planning consultant for businesses, hospitals, universities, and school systems. It was difficult to get management and employees to refocus from short-term activities to long-term outcomes: the vision of what they wanted the organization to eventually look like.
I often used an exercise with puzzles in our planning meetings to help change their perspective. Participants were organized into groups of four sitting around small tables and given bags full of puzzle pieces, but no box tops with the pictures of finished puzzles. The groups would quickly begin to shuffle the pieces around on their tables and argue about where pieces should go, but few ever made much progress assembling their puzzles.
Everything changed when I handed out the box tops. There was immediate unity of purpose and division of labor.
