Back in Jesse Helms’ campaign in 1990 when we made the ‘infamous White Hands’ ad one of the handful of people sitting in the studio was Alex Castellanos; lately Alex has been spending time on CNN and the other night he was asked how the Republican Party could save itself politically – after Barack Obama routed McCain and retired 26 Republican Senators and Congressmen.

About five decades ago, after Fidel Castro took over Cuba, Alex’s family crossed the Florida Straits and eventually settled in North Carolina. After Alex spent four years as a Morehead Scholar at Chapel Hill back in the 1970s, he worked with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign here in North Carolina. Not long after he started work, Tom Ellis, who was running the campaign, decided he wanted Reagan to do a thirty-minute TV program but Reagan’s national headquarters said absolutely not – so Mr. Ellis went out and dug up this old grainy black and white film Reagan had done for Barry Goldwater about communism and announced by God, he was going to put that on TV.

When I played the film for the campaign staff there was an audible gasp – not because of anything the film said but because it looked (with those flickering black and white images) like it had been made around 1921. Everyone in the room said don’t air it – except Alex, who said he didn’t care if it was black and white, that message about communism suited him just fine.

I think what Alex was trying to explain on CNN – it was hard to follow because this Obama pundit sitting beside him kept interrupting – sounded like he thought the way for the Republican Party to save itself was to get back to standing up for principles like individual liberty and I can tell you Alex believes that to the roots of his Cuban soul.

But when it comes to proscribing cures for the Republican maladies these days, he’s got plenty of competition.

Five candidates are running for Republican National Chairman and every one of them has his or her own cure and so does every pundit, political consultant and Republican talking head. They’re saying:

‘We abandoned Republican principles.’

‘McCain ran a poor campaign.’

‘McCain got overwhelmed by a hostile media.’

‘Obama raised $600 million.’

‘Republicans have to jettison divisive social issues – like abortion and gay rights.’

‘It was Sarah Palin’s fault.’

‘It wasn’t Sarah Palin’s fault.’

The problem with these answers is they’re all politics, politics, politics. While the root of the Republican dilemma isn’t politics. We lost the election because of our record the last eight years and, in all likelihood, no amount of clever, brilliant, stellar politics would have changed that. The litmus test was governing – not clever politics. So the real question we need to ask is why did we govern so badly?

Once we have the answer to that question we can worry about politics.

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