Helpful policy tips for Dino Rossi

So far, not a lot of policy is coming out of the Dino Rossi campaign, but it may be very interesting when it does. That's because the Republicans are getting pretty desperate for bold new ideas to turn around their national tailspin. I'll give some examples below.

First, why is Dino so dull? Three factors come to mind. One is his deep distrust of the media, and his expectation that anything he says will immediately be turned into comic material. (That pretty much happened with his one foray into policy, on transportation, which quickly got caricatured.) Second, Rossi doesn't really do "the vision thing." Rather, he's a dealmaker, and a good one, who makes policy by shuffling together the various positions other people have. Third, the campaign thinks it can run against Gregoire (cold personality, punting on big issues, too cautious) and so doesn't need to risk having Rossi take stands.

That strategy of lying low and making Gregoire the issue may work, though I doubt it. So far, Rossi is staying within the margin of error on polls, and Gregoire's ratings are not good, considering her incumbency. Also, if Rossi thinks he can avoid becoming a target by not having any controversial views, he need only look at all the attacks on his main support group, the BIAW, a very conservative lobbying group for builders and Rossi's main source of financial support so far. (The irony in the race is that most business groups have either thrown in with Gregoire, normal for a sitting governor, or are wary of Dino and are holding back. Rossi will have to count on national money, local billionaires, and BIAW — an indication of the tatters the state GOP machine is in.)

Now, about those possible (if missing) ideas. The most interesting blueprint for revival I've seen so far comes from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, both with The Atlantic and authors of a fascinating new book, Grand New Party. The authors recently spelled out part of their back-to-the-center strategy with a focus on regaining upscale suburban voters (who are now tilting decisively Democratic). Here are four interesting proposals:

School choice for the suburbs. Suburban families are being squeezed by the high cost of home in high-quality school districts, and they figure No Child Left Behind is all about poverty kids, not their kids. Avoid the bad politics of vouchers and even charter schools, and instead let schools compete for more students from nearby towns, stipulating that the new money that flows to attractive schools can be spent outside controls by unions and central bureaucrats. It's a variant of Seattle's weighted-student formula (for disadvantaged kids).

Green conservatism. Innovate, rather than regulate, our way out of the climate-change crisis, largely by a huge federal effort to subsidize the invention of alternative technologies. An example is McCain's suggestion of a $300 million prize for the inventor of an improved car battery.

Relief for commuters. Rossi actually gets some of this: More traffic lanes, toll highways to generate more money for infrastructure, differential pricing to steer some commuters to off-peak trips, and public investment in technology to increase telecommuting. Couple all this with a crusade against earmarks, one of the main reasons taxes go up and congestion gets worse.

Lots more cops. The Republican approach of locking up more criminals is about to backfire as the prisons disgorge a huge "graduating class," and gang-related crime is spreading to the inner suburbs. So combine a policing-first strategy with prison reform, acknowledging that prison is an incubator of crime.

Doutha and Salam urge a return to the suburbs for the GOP, as opposed to its current strategy of courting Sam's Club voters, a resentful class of diminishing numbers. Rossi, an Issaquah commercial real estate developer, has a natural feel for the upper middle class suburbanites that the Republicans have lost. We'll see if he has the confidence to break out of his defensive crouch and start putting forth some compelling ideas that appeal to this forfeited bloc of voters — or waits until he loses and then discovers them in the coming wilderness of the GOP exile.