One last time, as you apparently missed the first several dozen times I've said it, the Conservative principle here has nothing to do with tax structure, tax codes, tax laws, tax anything. It has to do with the principle that should guide what our tax structure should be. Maybe that is too difficult a concept for a liberal to understand? I don't know. It seems so very easy to understand for me.
Regardless of what happens Nov. 4 -- whether Barack Obama wins handily or John McCain ekes out a victory -- Democrats are almost certain to increase their margins in the House and Senate. In the aftermath of this election, Republicans and conservatives need to examine what has gone wrong and why.
To be useful, those inquiries must be broken into parts. The GOP is in bad shape; conservatism is not.
Consider: Republican politicians are viewed as having "gone native." Political and personal scandals have tarnished the GOP's image. The early years of the Iraq war were badly mismanaged. The financial crisis, fairly or not, is laid at the feet of Republicans. Around 90 percent of the nation believes America is on the wrong track, and the GOP is perceived as the responsible party...
But it is a mistake to assume that significant GOP losses, should they occur, are a referendum on conservatism. In part, the GOP's problems stem from being seen as having become less conservative and less principled (think "Bridge to Nowhere").
The GOP stands at a crossroads. Republicans can pretend that nothing has really changed, that this is still a "center-right" nation, and that only an ill-timed economic meltdown cost them the White House. This means leaving their party in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists. The culmination of this approach would be to nominate Sarah Palin as their presidential candidate in 2016. Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.
If Republicans choose the first option, the GOP will be taking the first steps toward becoming a marginal party, one that will eventually end up an object of curiosity in the historical display case along with such extinct specimens as the Know-Nothing Party. If they choose the second, they will not only save their party, they could help heal the grievous wounds their divisive politics have inflicted on the country.
If conservatives' track record over the last 40 years is any guide, they will choose the first. And I won't be putting any flowers on their grave.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Rush's Blueprint
Last week, Tony Blankley published and Rush Limbaugh publicized what may prove one of the most important articles of 2008. I don't mean that the article was good - very much the contrary. But bad work can be even more important than good, if enough people can be got to believe it.
Here's Tony:
I suspect that the conservative movement we start rebuilding on the ashes of Nov. 4 (even if McCain wins) will have little use for overwritten, over-delicate commentary. The new movement will be plain-spoken and socially networked up from the Interneted streets, suburbs and small towns of America.
Here's Rush:
Since there is not a strong elected conservative anywhere, then conservatism right now is sort of like wandering in the distance with every conservative thinking that they're the smartest person in the room trying to show the way to the light. The way to the light is plainly visible. But everybody wants to be considered the smartest people in the room, so they come up with all these new things like "the era of Reagan is over."
And more Rush:
[T]here's a blueprint for winning it, 1980, there's a blueprint. McCain is not the blueprint for how Republicans win landslides. Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint. The blueprint's there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint's there. Why are these people ignoring it?
If I understand it correctly, the Blankley/Rush argument goes like this:
1) Reagan-style conservatism remains wildly popular with the American people. It was the "blueprint" for winning landslides between 1980 and 1994, and it remains the blueprint today.
2) Yet for some unaccountable mysterious reason, politicians are ignoring this blueprint! There is not a strong elected conservative voice in the country today.
3) So obviously what we need to do is return to the politics of the 1980s - and sit back and collect the rewards.
This argument raises one big question:
Could it be possible that the reason that we lack Reagan-style conservatives in elected office today is that they are having trouble getting elected?
Still more Rush, referring by name to people like Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker, and me:
These are the people who are embarrassed by Sarah Palin 'cause she's not an intellectual and she didn't go to Harvard or have a college degree from approved universities and she drops her g's from words like morning and says mornin'. She's embarrassing, and I think something else really bothering these people is that they believe that she may become one of the key leaders of the conservative movement beyond 2008 if she and McCain lose this.
OK, let's develop this a little.
1) Sarah Palin has the potential to become a key leader of the conservative movement beyond 2008.
2) If that happens, she will follow "the blueprint" and achieve another conservative landslide - and another successful presidency!
3) But snobs like Peggy, David, Christopher, Kathleen and me are embarrassed that she drops her Gs. Our motto: "Unless we can nominate a Harvard graduate, we'd rather lose."
I have to wonder:
Can even Rush himself believe this junk?
I think Rush is a great entertainer and has often been a force for good in the conservative movement. But right now, he is feeding his audience pleasing illusions that can only lead conservatives to even greater troubles in the days ahead.
Take a look at this poll from Stanley Greenberg. (Yes Greenberg's a Democrat - but he's long proven himself a realistic analyst of American politics. Greenberg is the guy who identified Macomb County, Michigan, as the heartland of the "Reagan Democrats" - and warned Democrats that they were losing both Macomb and the nation.)
While a sizeable majority of voters say Republicans have lost in 2006 and 2008 because they have been “too conservative,” a sizeable plurality of Republicans say, it is because they have “not been conservative enough.”
Over three-quarters of Republicans say Palin was good choice, while a majority of the electorate says the opposite.
Two-thirds of Republicans say McCain has not been aggressive enough, but a majority of voters think they have been too aggressive.
Looking to the future, a large majority of Republicans say the party needs to “move more to the right and back to conservative principles,” while an even larger majority of all voters say, it should move to the “center to win over moderate and independent voters.”
When Rush and Blankley tell us the blueprint is there, if only we would follow it, they are telling us something that is not true. They are offering flattering illusions when we need truth. They are leading us to disaster - and beyond disaster, to irrelevance.
Conservatism's Sunshine Patriots Will Never Live Down Their Collaboration With The Obama Campaign
Posted by: The Directors
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 09:01AM CDT
8 Comments
We have been treated in recent weeks to an unfortunate procession of people on the Right lending their assistance to Barack Obama against the Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin. These people should never be listened to or employed in any responsible or prominent position by anyone in the Republican Party or the conservative movement again.
One group - including Colin Powell, Ken Adelman, Charles Fried, Scott McClellan, and Christopher Buckley - has explicitly endorsed Obama. Like hostages giving forced confessions, their statements doing so seem to repeat the same basic list of 3 or 4 talking points aimed at swaying wavering moderates. Members of a second group - Chuck Hagel, Paul O'Neill - have declined to formally endorse but have nonetheless made numerous appearances with Obama and lent their good names to his policy initiatives. A third group - David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, David Frum, George Will, Kathleen Parker - has remained nominally on the side of the McCain-Palin ticket but exerted far more effort tearing down that ticket than on addressing the problems presented by the Obama-Biden ticket, often using the terms and tone reserved for full-throated opposition to a candidate's election. The net effect of all of these efforts has been to provide a patina of bipartisan moderation to the Obama campaign, whose nominee has done so little to deserve the title, and undoubtedly to sow confusion among center-right voters who are less familiar with Obama's record.
Adelman's statement is the nadir of this genre:
Quote:
I'd rather a competent moderate president. Even at a risk, since Obama lacks lots of executive experience displaying competence (though his presidential campaign has been spot-on). And since his Senate voting record is not moderate, but depressingly liberal. Looming in the background, Pelosi and Reid really scare me. Nonetheless, I concluded that McCain would not -- could not -- be a good president. Obama just might be. That's become good enough for me -- however much of a triumph (as Dr. Johnson said about second marriages) of hope over experience.
If Obama is a "moderate," the word has lost its meaning, and even Adelman is forced to admit that he has no basis whatsoever for concluding that Obama will govern as a moderate, nor even that he possesses basic competence as an executive. Here's a thought experiment: pick three issues of any public consequence; describe the predominant position of the Democratic Party; describe with any degree of specificity and honesty Senator Obama's record and proposals; and explain how that position places him to the right of the bulk of his party. The difficulty of the task - and the ease of coming up with a far, far longer contrasting list of issues on which he has been to the Left of his own, already liberal party - should disabuse any reasonable person of the notion that Obama is any sort of moderate within the context of the American political spectrum.
If Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, it will be with the collaboration of all of these people, and that fact should damn their judgment on all matters political for the rest of their lives. A year from now, if Obama wins, no one will care what they thought about McCain or about Palin. All that will matter, and justly so, is that they aided the most left-wing and least-experienced and least-accomplished presidential candidate in the past century to capture the commanding heights of American government. The consequences of that decision for everything these people have ever worked for in their own professional lives shall be on their heads daily.
Now, let us not be misunderstood as to two points. First, Republicans and conservatives need not be blind or mute to the flaws of our own side. We have primaries for that purpose, and even in a general election we should not hesitate to provide constructive criticism. Nobody will accuse Rush Limbaugh, for example, of being unaware of John McCain's shortcomings as a conservative, nor have we at RedState been secretive about our discomfort with some of his history and positions. We do not call for mindless partisan shilling but for advocacy that is honest, principled and forthright. On rare occasions, we may even recommend voting for a responsible Democrat for office where the Republican alternative is deficient or corrupt. But there is a difference, especially in tone, between constructive and destructive criticism. (Some Republicans and conservatives who could not in good conscience endorse the McCain-Palin ticket for one reason or another have at least maintained a respectful silence on it, or have focused their efforts entirely on educating the public about Obama.) And there is most certainly a difference between endorsing a halfway-acceptable Democrat and endorsing one whose record contains no shred of moderation and heaping gobs of left-wing extremism for the highest office in the land.
Second, we well understand that if Obama is elected, it will be with the votes of many people who have supported Republicans in the past, including many who voted for George W. Bush and other conservatives in 2000, 2002 and 2004. A good many of those people have genuine reasons to be unhappy with the GOP, in some cases reasons we ourselves share. We as a movement and as a party will need to win back the support of those voters, and we do not suggest that the Right should abandon the idea of a big-tent majority coalition in favor of strict ideological and partisan purity. Nor, if we lose, should we take out our frustrations on the voters.
But when numbers of ordinary, non-politically-obsessed voters have been led astray by the siren calls of Obama and his media and money machines, it is in part because our movement and our Party have suffered a failure of leadership. And leadership is precisely the role that has been forfeited by anyone who has lent their support to Obama's effort to defeat McCain-Palin and take the White House - anyone who could and should have seen the dangers posed by an Obama Administration and raised instead the alarm against the last line of defense standing in his way. We will welcome them back - as voters, as listeners, as followers. But we will never again trust their judgment.
Now, I have a great piece here by Tony Blankley that appears today at Creators Syndicate, and it's entitled: "The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative." His theory about what's going to happen is there will be a brand-new conservative movement that will have to be born if Obama wins because the conservative movement as it exists today is rudderless. You know the names, and I sometimes am hesitant to mention the names because I don't have anything personal here, but you know there are a bunch of people off our reservation in the conservative media and just lately the names being bandied about are Peggy Noonan, David Frum, David Brooks.
I don't know to what extent these people ever really were on our side, to tell you the truth. Christopher Buckley. He's never been a doctrinaire conservative like his father was. He set out to distance himself from his father like all sons do. And Kathleen Parker. Now, these names may not be household names to you, but they are pseudo-conservative writers, and now they're all requested on television all the time 'cause they're ripping Sarah Palin, they're ripping the conservative movement. They've got this new idea of what conservatism ought to be and they're trying to redefine it.
This is the crowd saying the era of Reagan is over. These are the people who are embarrassed by Sarah Palin 'cause she's not an intellectual and she didn't go to Harvard or have a college degree from approved universities and she drops her g's from words like morning and says mornin'. She embarrassing, and I think something else really bothering these people is that they believe that she may become one of the key leaders of the conservative movement beyond 2008 if she and McCain lose this. I've been trying to analyze what's happening to the conservative movement on our intellectual side. By the way, and I don't consider myself on the intellectual side at all; neither do they. Intellectuals are people that have what they think is an IQ and an educational commonality. Of course I'm disqualified from any of that, thankfully so, because I don't have a college degree, I eschewed college to pursue my dreams. But they're all over the place and the realignment here on the conservative side that's taking place is on the basis of so-called intellect.
That's why some of these people are drifting to Obama, he sounds smart, sick and tired of Republican leaders who can't communicate and they don't think McCain can communicate, they don't like the fact that Bush couldn't, and the reason this is happening, people say, "How come the conservative movement is fracturing,?" when there's a blueprint for winning it, 1980, there's a blueprint. McCain is not the blueprint for how Republicans win landslides. Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint. The blueprint's there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint's there. Why are these people ignoring it?
So why all of these "defections," if you will, to Obama from people that you've always thought were conservative? Well, again, these are conservative elites, conservative intellectuals. And they simply are embarrassed that McCain can't speak, in their minds; that Bush hasn't been able to talk; and that Sarah Palin's a hick. They're just embarrassed. So they align on the basis of style, not substance. These people are not associating or drifting to Obama because of his substance. It's not that they've abandoned conservatism; it's that they like the style. They're fed up with no style. Now, would this be happening if there were a strong elected Republican conservative who were showing the way? It would not.
Since there is not a strong elected conservative anywhere, then conservatism right now is sort of like wandering in the distance with every conservative thinking that they're the smartest person in the room trying to show the way to the light. The way to the light is plainly visible. But everybody wants to be considered the smartest people in the room, so they come up with all these new things like "the era of Reagan is over." One of the most recent things going on in the conservative movement is to figure out how we, too, can become distributists... redistributists... redis... redistribute... How we, too, can become smaller. I can't say the word! It just bugs me to say it. We've got people on our side trying to figure out how they, too, can make our party one that wants to re... re... redistribute it! But "smarter," but better. These are people who think the Republican Party has lost the Wal-Mart class because we don't care enough.
We're seen as not caring, so the way to show that we care is to also redistribute wealth, but smarter and better. This would never be happening -- this would never be happening -- if there were an elected genuine conservative who were showing the way. So we're in a vacuum right now. Tony Blankley writes about this today. "The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative." Quote: "Until the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics." Here are the last two paragraphs.
"I suspect that the conservative movement we start rebuilding on the ashes of Nov. 4 (even if McCain wins) will have little use for overwritten, over-delicate commentary. The new movement will be plain-spoken and socially networked up from the Interneted streets, suburbs and small towns of America. It certainly will not listen very attentively to those conservatives who idolatrize Obama and collaborate in heralding his arrival. ... The new conservative movement will be facing a political opponent that will reveal itself soon to be both multiculturalist and Eurosocialist.
We will be engaged in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country. As I did at the beginning of and throughout the Buckley/Goldwater/Reagan/Gingrich conservative movement, I will try to lend my hand. I certainly will do what I can to make it a big-tent conservative movement. But just as it does in every great cause, one question has to be answered correctly: Whose side are you on, comrade?"
So this is what I mean. One step at a time. We're going to drag McCain across the finish line then we start rebuilding the conservative movement. It's going to happen whether he wins or loses but especially if he wins.
http://northerngleaner.blogspot.com/2008/10/rush-on-me-too-conservatism.html
Re my previous post, it goes back to my thoughts in the initial post for this thread. It is not conservatism that has the GOP in trouble. It is abandoning conservative principles and attempting to redefine them--either in the neocon or far right extremist mode or the 'let's drift left mode and fit in better' mode. Conservatism is not left and it is not far right extremism.
We need new leaders who can articulate and demonstrate that much more effectively. Blankley and Rush are absolutely right about that.
Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
Section 9. The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.
No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another.
No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
Section 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.
No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.
Section 8. ... but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Please, feel free to take this utter buffoon as exemplar of proper conservatism. I'll be more than happy to watch as the rest of America (see stats in red above) just pass you by like they did Joe McCarthy.
This shows how Frum took his words out of context and distorted them.
Foxfyre wrote:This shows how Frum took his words out of context and distorted them.
That David. Such a problem child. Barbara must be rolling over in her grave.
First he got that whole "Axis of Evil" thing started, and now this.
