Not since the days leading up to the Contract with America, has the need for a change in House leadership been so obvious. Republican leaders have failed us. For more than a decade, the vision and opportunities outlined by Ronald Reagan and further articulated by Newt Gingrich have been squandered  by ineffective Republican leaders who fail to connect with the values of the American people.

By definition, leaders lead. It is not enough to promote positions that are not-as-left as Nancy Pelosi and it is intellectually lazy to allow the other side to set the agenda and define the issues. From spending and earmark reform to energy and health care, Republican leadership has spent its time challenging around the periphery of the Democrat agenda and appear content with permanent minority status.

Change is in the air and Orange County's very own Rep. John Campbell has a few words for the House GOP leadership in today's WSJ article, located here.

House Republicans Need Leadership
June 27, 2008; Page A11

Of all the thorny questions facing House Minority Leader John Boehner, the one he might want to consider is this: Newt Gingrich or Bob Michel?

Outwardly, the House GOP is gearing up to take on Democrats this fall. Inwardly, it's in disarray, engaged in a fight over the soul of the party. The reformers demand the leadership aggressively define itself on health care, earmarks and spending; the fat and happy push back, insisting their pork and their farm bills are necessary for re-election.
 
In the middle is the minority leader, who has so far walked a tightrope. Yet this is a fight that must be resolved, and definitively, if the GOP wants out of the wilderness. Mr. Boehner's choice: To join with the reformers, Gingrich-like, and rally the troops around a bold agenda, or to find himself, Michel-like, a footnote in minority history.

The GOP has been quarreling over its image ever since its 2006 electoral banishment. But the fight got nastier after the party lost two special congressional elections in May. The Republican Study Committee's 105 conservatives have been aggressively challenging the leadership's agenda (which it views as too fuzzy) and its refusal to rein in pork. The appropriator kings have banded together to block reform, and have so far been winning the battle.

Mr. Boehner's heart is undoubtedly with the reformers. He's never asked for an earmark, never received one. He's shepherded his own change legislation, most notably 2006 legislation overhauling private pensions. On any individual issue, his personal vote mirrors that of the reform bloc.

His head, however, has been with keeping the peace. The minority leader likes consensus, and goes where the majority of the party wants. Yet parties, by definition, become minorities because the bulk of the members go wrong. They need their leaders to look ahead, aggressively redefine the message, inspire and, if need be, wrangle members into place. Love or hate Mr. Gingrich, he got it.

Mr. Boehner's other defining strategy has been to focus the party's energies on the opposition, hammering Democratic policies. He's been rewarded on several issues, most recently the energy debate and a victory on wiretapping authority.

Yet that approach has allowed the party itself to dodge the tougher question of how it will define itself, so necessary to reconnect with conservative voters. "We have not shown the American people that congressional Republicans today are different from the Republicans they voted out," California Republican John Campbell tells me. "Much of our congressional leadership does not believe we did anything wrong or are currently doing anything wrong. But we did, and we are."

Read the rest of the story in today's WSJ article here.