Rollins to GOP: 'Fight fights you can win'

by Mark Silva

Ed Rollins, a former White House political director who had more than a little to do with the late President Ronald Reagan's success, says it's time for the Republican Party to return to the hustings and build its leadership anew - in the governor's races, in particular.

"That's the future of the party,'' Rollins tells the Tribune Washington Bureau. "The future of the party is not in Washington... (The Democrats, he says, are) moving the ball very fast..... We've got to pick up the ball and move forward.''

Rollins is taking on a series of weekly radio shows on Sirius XM Radio's POTUS channel - The Ed Rollins Show starts Sunday, at 1 pm EDT, and will air for an hour each week there, at Sirius 110, XM 130.

"What I want to sort of do is not talk radio, but a thoughtful, behind the scenes... historical perspective,'' he says. "This is what happens when Nancy Pelosi says things about the CIA, bring folks in and say what this means... How do campaigns really work... How do polls really work.''

Rollins, who steered Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign, ran the White House political office in 1981 and has served four presidents -- though lately he has watched others claim the glory. He chaired Republican Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign last year. He now is senior presidential fellow at the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University -- and ready to offer some free advice here for the GOP:

The real fight with President Barack Obama is not over Sonia Sotomayor, but probably the next couple of Supreme Court nominees.

"I think the problem is, the senators are basically not going to vote against her.. If there are 20 senators who vote against her, it's going to be monumental,'' he says. "The numbers are terrible - the Congress is still held in low esteem.. To a certain extent, there are enough people who are smart who have gone to them and said, 'Look, the demographics are against us... and here you are beating up on a woman who has a historic story.''

That won't stop radio's Rush Limbaugh from railing against the nominee, Rollins says: "My sense is that Rush can do whatever he wants to... he's gotten a lot of publicity'' out of all this.

On the "party of no'' label that Democrats have slapped on the Republican Party, Rollins says:

"The problem is, that for a very long time we've had policies that worked... Bush went straight down... Our base got irritated, their base got motivated, and to some extent we weren't thinking about policies.''

If the GOP has lacked alternatives to Obama's economic stimulus, Obama's budget and Obama's healthcare, he says: "When you're in the minority, you don't have the staff... We don't believe in big government programs, we don't believe in big taxes...

"Everything is contrary... You vote no, everybody's happy, you're solidified and you get through the rough first period,'' Rollins says.

"I would say, let's get all of our energies focused on these governor's races in 2010... and change the dynamics... get some new leadership... and if you have a pretty good year in 2010, things can get better,'' Rollins suggests. "Fight fights you can win.''