Former Lt. Governor Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich have apparently locked horns in the effort to chair the RNC after two straight successive national-election fiascos.  One might wonder why anyone would want to take on that challenge; it would take undying optimism, as well as (dare I say?) hope and audacity.  Steele shows plenty of these qualities in his Wall Street Journal essay today, instructing his fellow Republicans on how to work their way back from the wilderness:

Republicans once said that the opportunities this nation has to offer rest not in government but rather in the hands of individuals. Over the past decade or so, however, we Republicans lost our way. The disparity between our rhetoric and our action grew until our credibility snapped. It wasn’t the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leadership.

Over time, our principles morphed into baser motives. Continued political dominance grew more important to those who led us than the noble vision most of us originally signed on for. And to maintain power we turned to the controls of government — we became the party of big government. We behaved like Democrats.

Most people have realized that failure, although some still believe that the future of the Republican Party lies in acting even more like Democrats, and not just on policy.  We hear people clamoring for the same MoveOn/Code Pink tactics rather than fixing our own house and offering a positive alternative to the liberal government we’ll endure for the next two years, at least.  Steele disagrees:

We must articulate a positive vision for America’s future that speaks to Americans’ hopes, concerns and needs. It’s time to stop defining ourselves by what we are not, and tell voters what we believe, how we’ll lead, and where we’ll go; how we Republicans will make America better; how we’ll make their families more prosperous, their children better educated, their parents more secure, and all of us healthier, safer and stronger.

Our challenge lies not in beating Democrats, but in uniting around a message that solidifies our ranks and attracts new people to our cause. We have to listen to what Americans are telling us about their hopes, desires and needs, and then translate that message into proposals for meaningful action squarely grounded on the values we Republicans have always stood for.

Our faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to build a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline is our uniting principle.

We need to do more than just unite around those principles, although that will be the start of our recovery.  We need to elect Representatives and Senators who will abide by these principles, and not those who merely mouth them while raiding the Treasury for their own personal purposes.  For that matter, we need to abide by those principles in state houses as well.  That’s where the future of the party will get built, and we had better ensure that we keep the hypocrites out at the ground level if we expect to compete nationally in the next couple of decades.

Steele evokes Ronald Reagan, as so many do, in hearkening back to the principles that transformed the Republican Party into a force for liberty and reform.  We’re fortunate to have both Steele and Gingrich to guide us out of the wilderness in this fashion, but Steele may represent the future of the party better than Gingrich as the head of the GOP in the next few years.  I look forward to hearing more from both as to their vision on revamping the technological infrastructure of the RNC in order to support the ideals the party unfortunately betrayed while it held power.