Former Majority Leader Dick Armey Shows of the hat from Texas, originally uploaded by republicanstudycommittee.

Earlier this week at Heritage’s Conservative Bloggers’ Briefing, we had the good fortune to chat with from former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks. As usual, Armey was full of sound advice and wisdom about the state of affairs in Washington.

I came away from the conversation interested in two points he made — one about the lack of small-government principles among Republican politicians and the second about the 2008 presidential race.

Earlier this year, Armey and his team at FreedomWorks were not shy in their campaign to support Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for a seat on House Appropriations Committee. They lost that fight when House Republicans tapped Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) for the job, but they sent an important message that Armey emphasized again this week: “Parochial thinking is bad politics for the Republican Party.”

In a speech Armey gave last year to the Republican Study Committee, he made exactly that point:

There is a difference between the expectations of people who have a predilection to vote for Republicans and the expectations of people who have a predilection to vote for Democrats. People who have a predilection to vote for Democrats are interested in looking at the guy and being able to say to the guy, “What’s in it for me, now?”

When Tip O’Neil said to his party, “All politics is local, so bring home the bacon,” he was giving good advice to Democrats.

That is lousy advice for Republicans, and we didn’t know it because the people who have a predilection to vote for Republicans are people who are looking at you and saying, “Oh you want to go to Washington? You want to have the job? Well what’s in it for this country? Do you know who we are?”

Of course, that’s the exact opposite strategy employed for the National Republican Congressional Committee’s former chairman, Tom Reynolds. It was Reynolds who repeatedly said all politics was local. The result? Republicans lost 30 seat under his watch in 2006.

Unfortunately, Armey believes the GOP has yet to learn its lesson. Parochial politics, rather than a national vision and desire to grapple with major issues, continues to dominate among the old bulls in Congress. “Good policy makes good politics,” he says. Take the Senate’s recent vote on Sen. Jim DeMint’s amendment to put a one-year freeze on earmarks — a position supported by the GOP’s presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain. Fewer than half of Senate Republicans voted for it, opting instead to continue Congress’s appetite for pork.

Speaking about this year’s elections, Armey doesn’t have much hope for the Republican Party. In fact, he thinks Sen. Barack Obama will win the presidency and Democrats will pick up seats in both houses of Congress. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he said. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Obama and liberal lawmakers will be so out of touch with America that the electorate will be ready for a change come 2012.

Armey’s outook isn’t very appealing in the short term, of course, but if it produces another Ronald Reagan (who can move the GOP past parochial issues) we may all be better offer in the long run.