The Election of Ronald Reagan, 30 Years On

via the WSJ Political Diary:

Birth of a Revolution

Thirty years ago today Ronald Reagan won the presidency. Few elections have had the monumental economic and foreign policy consequences of the one held on Nov. 4, 1980.

In the decade before Reagan's election, the economy had faltered worse than at anytime since the Great Depression. The stock market lost almost half of its value, mortgage interest rates hit nearly 20% and the inflation rate topped 14%. The word "stagflation" -- high inflation and high unemployment -- entered the lexicon. After the full implementation of Reaganomics -- lower tax rates, less regulation, control of government spending, the taming of inflation -- the economy boomed. Eight million jobs were created over the next decade, and the economy grew at 8% per year.

I asked Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, author of the new book "Rendezvous with Destiny," about the significance of the 1980 election. "Reagan understood what few other politicians of his era did," said Mr. Shirley, "and that is that intellectualism and wisdom are with the American people and not the elitist ruling classes. Reagan and the populist conservatives he led made the elites uncomfortable because they were a threat the existing order. Common sense is intellectualism." Arthur Laffer, Mr. Reagan's chief economist, told me: "Reagan had three priorities and he never deviated from them: cut taxes, slay inflation, and win the Cold War."

One of the Gipper's greatest legacies was the Reagan Revolution, which gave birth to a modern-day conservative movement that continues to thrive three decades later. Tuesday's victory for Republicans was a result of stitching together the Reagan coalition of free-market advocates, social conservatives, Reagan Democrats and independents. Reagan said during the 1980 campaign that "all of our problems . . . are in direct proportion to the overspending in Washington." That sounds a lot like what today's Tea Partier say about Mr. Obama and his $2 trillion spending spree.

"Ronald Reagan was a Tea Partier before the phrase was coined," said Mr. Shirley, "because he knew what the Founders intended, and that was for power to flow upward and not downward."

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Taking Back Congress

Wanna get involved and help turn a few Democrat-held seats into Republican ones?

Check out 40 Seats, a website that has identified the most likely districts to flip this fall and helps to organize people in those areas to aid the cause.

Here's a little bit about the group:

40 Seats is a Political Action Committee (PAC) aimed at returning a conservative majority to Congress in the 2010 election. 40 Seats strategy is to target the most vulnerable liberal incumbents and focus resources on winning those races. 40 Seats fosters volunteerism and connects volunteers with the critical Congressional races closest to them.

Though OL&L readers hail from all over the globe, most of you are from NY, DC, and the Western United States. Know that all of you--including those in NYC--are close to a seat with a vulnerable Democrat incumbent.

If we are to return a conservative majority to Congress, we must translate our enthusiasm into votes and the only way to do that is to organize and get out of the vote. Don't leave it up to your neighbor or your grandma. Get involved. If you can't knock doors, make phone calls. If you can't help transport voters to the polls, blog. If you have trouble putting together coherent sentences, get on that Twitter and do it 140 characters at a time.

Oh, and follow me. Like many of you, I have precious little time to blog like I used to. So I post my thoughts as succinctly as I can on Twitter. It's a great tool for political organizing and keeping up-to-date on all the latest news. Even if you don't intend to say anything yourself (though I'm betting you'll get sucked in), following is a heck of a lot of fun.

We have a chance to have a once-in-a-century change of fortune in the House this year. Don't sit on the sideline and miss out.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Chris Christie For President

If I'm not going to blog regularly (and given research demands, I'm just not), the least I could do is post the occasional video of New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Vote For This Guy

I've never been jealous of Alabama before.

(via Hot Air)

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Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Weekend Edition

Taken in a vacuum, the liberal media's response to the right's response to Obamacare's passage might leave you thinking that no one before in American history has ever been so angry about so little.

They just do not get that something that will give government control over 1/6th of the American economy, expand the Nanny State, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, raise taxes, result in fewer doctors, the eventual rationing of care, reduced R&D (resulting in future lives lost), give access to medical records to a huge and whole new cadre of government bureaucrats, generally reduce liberty is something that would actually make people angry. And they say it as though they've never been angry over anything.

Well, fortunately we have Jonah Goldberg to point out their incredible hypocrisy.

On the scale of anger-to-actual-impact-of-legislation, progressives have got us angry conservatives (but I repeat myself, apparently) beat by a wide margin in their out and out hysteria over the passage of the Patriot Act. Yeah, remember that bill? It's the same one the One and the Democrats in Congress renewed this year, again.

Also, lybberty-approved (unless they are caught in some wrongdoing!) Congressmen Mike Pence and Paul Ryan had fantastic Op-Eds in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times respectively, yesterday. Give them both a read.

Stay angry, my conservative friends.

(image of 'angry conservatives' protesting the bill taken from Thinking The Wright Way)

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Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Thursday

7:00pm: Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorite conservative columnists and a good guy with whom to share a serving of nachos at Appleby's, writes of leftist consternation at the conservative response to the passing of Obamacare:

A lot of people on the left cannot come to grips with the conservative "overreaction" to Obamacare. I don't think it's an overreaction, and I can help liberals understand what's happening. Just consider the Patriot Act. Here was a law that affected a teeny-weeny number of people. Almost all of the horrible things it did never happened. Remember all that teeth-gnashing about searched libraries? Totally bogus.

And yet, people all over the country got their dresses over their heads about the Patriot Act. Why? Well, I would argue partly out of addlepated paranoia, ignorance, and Bush hatred. They would argue it was out of deep-seated principle. Let's compromise and say that for many, it was both, and for a few, it was all about principle.

Well, opposition to PPACA seems vastly more rational to me. By its very design it affects everyone. It costs them money. It will cost them freedom. It will cost our country money, medical innovation, and mounds of debt. It involves far, far more government intrusion into our lives than the Patriot Act. And yet, many of the same people who considered the Patriot Act an American Nuremburg Law think this is one of the greatest moments in American history.

Do you get it now, progressives, why we are so up-in-arms about this little piece of legislation? It really will cost us money, time, freedom, and innovation--which means lives. This is a bad bad bill. By the time its costs are fully calculated and comprehended(the next generation of economic historians), it may well surpass Smoot Hawley.

Like I've said, the Brits declined because the cost to support their welfare state forced withdrawal around the world. This is our future if this thing stands and expands into Euro-social welfare. American decline.

BTW, you really should subscribe to Jonah's "Goldberg File." It's a real treat.

2:28pm: Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a post up with some great quotes and video of Charles Krauthammer, doctor-genius, and Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute, warning about the coming debate about a VAT. If you don't know what a VAT is, I recommend you click the link and read the wiki entry. A VAT might be okay if it were to take the place of existing taxes like payroll taxes, but it won't be. It will be just another revenue stream for the feds to shove big government down your throat.

Meanwhile at Reason.com (free minds and free markets!) Jacob Sullum explains why this healthcare mandate is not exactly, you know, constitutional and why a legal challenge just may be successful.

There's hope yet.

Finally (for the time being), if you are pro-life and thought there was a home for you in the Democrat party, well, sorry, you're wrong. William McGurn explains how Obamacare exposes the Democrat Party as the Party of Death (also, you'll note, the title of a book by Ramesh Ponnuru).

1:37pm BST: The Dark Lord, Karl Rove, provided a good roadmap to electoral victory in his column today. I love the fact that we conservatives love this guy while leftists think he is the devil incarnate. Don't they know? This just makes us love him all the more.

Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.

To keep that from happening, Republican candidates must focus on ObamaCare's weaknesses. It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn't $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.

Republicans have a powerful rallying cry in "repeal, replace and reform." Few voters will want to keep onerous mandates that hit individuals and taxes that hobble economic growth. Rather than spending a trillion dollars on subsidies for insurance companies and Medicaid expansion, as ObamaCare does, Republicans should push for giving individuals the same health-insurance tax break businesses get, which would cost less.

Republicans must also continue to press for curbing junk lawsuits, enabling people to buy insurance across state lines, increasing the amount of money they can sock away tax free for medical expenses, and permitting small businesses to pool risk.

Opponents of ObamaCare have decisively won the battle for public opinion. As voters start to feel the pain of this new program, Republicans will be in a stronger position if they stay in the fight, make a principled case, and lay out a competing vision.

This is as good a place as any to point out something that frequently gets forgotten.

I'm really really tired of people talking and acting as though the left wing of the Democrat party is on par with the right wing of the Republican party.

When the country breaks down 40% conservative, 40% moderate, and 20% liberal, the left wing of the Democrat party is not only a hell of a lot smaller than the right wing of the Republican party, it is a hell of a lot further from the natural ideological center of this country.

So all you self-styled post-partisan centrist moderates, who keep trying to say, "well, they're both extremes and bad" and like to pound on conservative wingers as being as "damaging" and as far out of the mainstream as liberal wingers, you're wrong.

Did anyone (besides me) happen to watch the Obamacare debate (limited, though it was) Sunday night on CSPAN? I think Dan Henninger's characterization of the Republicans and Democrats that night is spot on:

Spring renewal and baseball's new season are upon us, so let's quote the optimism of Yogi: It isn't over until it's over. I thought 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday night in Washington was the Republican Party's finest hour in a long time. When the voting stopped, the screen said the number of Republicans voting for Mr. Obama's bill was zero. Not one. Nobody.

Pristine opposition is being spun as a Republican liability. It looks to me like a Republican resurrection. The party hasn't yet discovered what it should be, but this clearly was a party discovering what it cannot be.

Put it this way: If you produce a bill that Olympia Snowe of Maine cannot vote for, you have not produced legislation "for the generations." You have not even produced legislation that is liberal. You have produced legislation from the left. You have produced once-in-a-lifetime legislation that no Republican from any constituency across America could vote for.

Watching Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Mike Pence I was as happy with Republican leadership as I have been in a long time. Finally some backbone. Finally some principle. Finally they stood up to the Democrats and exposed them as the out-of-touch, tax and spend statists that they are. As Henninger points out, this whole debate puts liberals who aren't employed by the government in a tough spot.

Liberals in the private sector have to come to grips with the fact that what they do for a living is an abstraction to the people they are sending to Washington. Nobody at the top of the party is much interested in them anymore. House and Senate Democrats hammered insurance, pharma and medical-device makers with taxes and intimidation. It wasn't just politics. It was belief. With this bill, the party made the transition from market unionism to Alinskyism, from a politics tempered by the marketplace to one that milks the marketplace.

Count Henninger and myself among those who think "Repeal!" is a good rallying cry in the run-up to the 2010 election. First repeal the Democrats in Congress, then in 2012 the Democrat in the White House then, once he's gone, Obamacare will quickly follow him out the door.

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You Know How Pres. Obama & The Liberal Propagandists Said Conservatives Were Deluded About Government Funding Of Abortion?

They lied to you.

President Obama and other "fact checking" groups explicitly stated that the President's plan (really, whatever Speaker Pelosi put forward) didn't and wouldn't fund abortions. They wrote long articles and gave speeches about how conservative, right-to-lifers were wild eyed and deluded--that abortion was one of the "myths" of the Obama plan that wasn't really true.

You know, that it was a myth just like the death panels were a myth.

Fortunately, there are some life-loving, honest Democrats in the House of Representatives--63 of them, to be exact.

For months, the Michigan Democrat has been threatening to bring down any health-care bill unless the House was given the opportunity to vote to extend the ban on taxpayer dollars for abortion to the new federal programs being created. On Saturday night, Mrs. Pelosi caved and Mr. Stupak prevailed.

The result is one of the few, real up-or-down votes we ever get on abortion—and the only part of the health-care mess that shows any bipartisan consensus. In the end, 63 Democrats and Mr. Stupak joined all but one Republican on an amendment that does two things: prohibits federal funds for an abortion or for abortion coverage; allows (notwithstanding pro-choice propaganda) private insurers to offer abortion coverage so long as tax dollars are not involved.

Not that the press ever noticed. Up until almost literally the 11th hour, Mr. Stupak's push for a vote was treated as a sideshow. Nor was President Barack Obama ever called to answer for his flatly contradictory public statements on the place of abortion (the preferred term is "reproductive health care") in any health-care reform.

Mr. Stupak has just changed all that. On Sunday, the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, sent out an action alert asking supporters to tell Mr. Obama to "make good" on his "promise to put reproductive health care at the center of [his] health care reform plan." She should know: She was standing next to Candidate Obama in 2007 when he declared that "reproductive care is essential care, it is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose."

Unfortunately for Ms. Richards, during his recent appearance before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama promised something different: "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

Notwithstanding the president's promise, page 110 of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill authorized the secretary of Health and Human Services to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. All Mrs. Pelosi's preferred "compromises" left this undisturbed, using what in effect would be a money-laundering scheme to cloak the reality of a federal agency paying for abortion.

But Mr. Stupak stood firm, and Mrs. Pelosi realized something would have to give if she wanted to get a health-care bill passed. So she gave Mr. Stupak his vote—and his victory.

Big ups to Bart Stupak and his 62 fellow, pro-life Democrats.

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William Safire, RIP (UPDATED)

As an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, I did a report/analysis of NYT coverage (especially its op-ed columnists) of Yitzhak Rabin. I read dozens of columns written by William Safire, among others, and was very impressed.

Today he passed away and the United States--the world, really--lost another staunch defender of conservatism.

I've read a lot of obituaries recently, and Safire's, written by the NYT's, Robert McFadden is fantastic.

Also, the AP obit.

UPDATE 28 September 3:58pm MST: The WSJ has a very good tribute to Bill Safire on today's op-ed page. It concludes:

The turning of the years can be cruel, and it is sad to lose men like Bill Safire, Robert Bartley, William F. Buckley Jr., Robert Novak, Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, Jack Kemp and others who did so much to rescue America from the failures of the 1960s and malaise of the 1970s. Yet one reason we note their deaths is the great success they had in life. As Safire would have urged, our obligation is to stop grieving and return cheerfully to the barricades.

May these Happy Warriors RIP.

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Irving Kristol, RIP

The Wall Street Journal ran a bunch of his best quotes (he had many). Here's one:

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . .

It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call "the New Politics" is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one's intense feelings—we must "care," we must "be concerned," we must be "committed." Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.

The Conservative Prospect, June 13, 1975

He wrote that in 1975.

Might as well have written it this year.

For more on Kristol, see here and here.

h/t Scott L.

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3 Conservative, Market-Based Steps To Reform Health Care

(from Gabriel Malor @ Ace)

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Europe Continues March To The Political Right

Remember when everyone said that Europe's politics were a rebuke of the Bush administration?

And then Germany & France, whose leaders opposed Bush, elected conservatives in Merkel and Sarkozy. And Italy elected Berlusconi.

And now the rest of Europe is going right.

Conservatism is dead, conservatism is dead. Long live conservatism.

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Reasons For Optimism

Jonah Goldberg, happy warrior:

The conventional wisdom holds that conservatism is in trouble because the GOP is in trouble. But the two are not one and the same. Indeed, the GOP’s conservative principles aren’t necessarily the main reason for its unpopularity. Arguably, Republicans’ failure to adhere to their principles when in power hurt them more. The most recent Pew Research Center report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes” finds that 37 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while only 19 percent describe themselves as liberal. And conservative principles are still competitive, even after eight years of Bush, a staggering recession, and the most popular Democratic president in nearly a half-century. A majority of respondents say the “federal government controls too much of our daily lives” and that “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”

Obviously, the GOP is not in an enviable position. But conservatives have been in worse shape countless times before. What they have done each and every time is argue their way forward. Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich each mounted conservative victories by making arguments for their cause.

The cliché is that politics is about “addition,” and the GOP needs to add more Hispanics, or gays, or women to its coalition, as if such descriptors define people more than their individual aspirations. Republicans will never win that fight, nor should they try to out-bean-count the Democrats. Persuasion should trump the pandering of “addition.” Conservatives must argue why they are right, not endlessly apologize for their alleged wrongs.

Yes.

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'A Heroic Climb': Goldberg & Steyn On The GOP

Continuing the theme from last week, here are a couple of good articles on the state of the Republican party & conservatism generally. I probably just should have referred you all to these pieces in the first part rather than rambling on myself. Oh well.

First, Jonah Goldberg:

The mainstream perception that conservatives are close-minded and dogmatic while liberals are open-minded and free-thinking has it almost exactly backward. Liberal dogma is settled: The government should do good, where it can, whenever it can. That is President Obama’s idea of pragmatism and bipartisanship: He’s open to all ideas, from either side of the aisle, about how best to expand government and get the state more involved in our lives. Meanwhile, conservatism’s dogma remains forever in flux. We constantly debate the trade-offs between freedom and virtue, the conflicts between liberty and order.

Yup. Conservatives are the dogmatic ones. But wait, there's more:

Also, partisans like to believe that whenever their guy wins, it’s because their ideas have been ratified by the American people, and whenever the other guy loses, they pronounce that the American people have resoundingly rejected this or that idea. Sometimes this is obviously true, but not nearly as often as we like to think. Obama, after all, promised over and over that his administration would provide a “net spending cut.” How’s that going?

When you repeatedly state during your campaign that you want to "cut taxes for 95% of Americans," is that really a mandate to govern as an extreme liberal?

Mark Steyn writes about everything that interests me and does so in the exact manner I would do it--if only I were as witty:

the GOP’s tent has many poles: It has social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, national-security hawks. These groups do not always agree: The so-cons resent the libertarians’ insouciance on gay marriage and abortion. The libertarians don’t get the warhawks’ obsession with thankless nation-building in Islamist hellholes. A lot of the hawks can’t see why the fiscal cons are so hung up on footling matters like bloated government spending at a time of war. It requires a lot of effort to align these various poles sufficiently to hold up the big tent. And by the 2006 electoral cycle, between the money-no-object Congress at home and a war that seemed to have dwindled down to an endless, half-hearted, semi-colonial policing operation, the GOP poles were tilting badly. The Republican coalition is like a permanent loveless marriage: There are bad times and worse times. And, while social conservatism and libertarianism can be principled to a fault, the vagaries of electoral politics mean they often wind up being represented in office by either unprincipled opportunists like Arlen Specter or unprincipled squishes like Lincoln Chafee.

In the Democrat party....

Meanwhile, over in the other tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness: In the Democrats’ parade, whatever your bugbear, government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the GOP can never match.

Once the Democrats are ensconced in government glory, the infinity sided caged deathmatch of lobbying, favor giving, spoils dividing, etc., etc., takes place the & winners--as happens when the Democrat party gets its way--are chosen by the government. We've already seen some of this--ACORN payoffs in the 2010 census, the liberal grab bag that was the spendulous, er, stimulus, the Orwellianly-named "Employee Free Choice Act" (Orwellian because it aims to do exactly the opposite of what the name implies), and will continue with the cap & trade that will no doubt put money in the pockets of "green" people (not martians) who helped get Obama elected. Ditto healthcare.

One last quote from Steyn on Colin Powell:

Consider this cooing profile of Secretary Powell from Todd Purdum in the New York Times back in 2002: “Mr. Powell’s approach to almost all issues — foreign or domestic — is pragmatic and nonideological. He is internationalist, multilateralist and moderate. He has supported abortion rights and affirmative action.”

So supporting “internationalism,” “multilateralism,” abortion, and racial quotas means you’re “moderate” and “nonideological”? And anyone who feels differently is an extreme ideologue? Absolutely. The aim of a large swathe of the Left is not to win the debate but to get it canceled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways: busting up campus appearances by conservatives, “hate speech” prohibitions, activist judges’ more imaginative court decisions, or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the “moderate” and “nonideological” position — even when, in many cases, the “extreme” position is supported by a majority of voters. Likewise, to Colin Powell, it’s Ann Coulter who’s “vicious,” not Michael Moore, who compares the jihadists who blow up Western troops in Iraq to America’s Minutemen and gets rewarded with a seat next to Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the Democratic convention.

Steyn has got some great recommendations on the way forward..... but you're going to have to click the link & read the article to find out.

I'll give you one hint: He's a Happy Warrior; he's optimistic about our chances.

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The Marginalization Of The Republican Party & Other Poppycock

The MSM continues to spin the Specter defection & too many supposedly smart people continue to believe them.

Once again, the problem with the Republican party is not that it has become or is becoming too right-wing, too conservative, too rigid, too doctrinaire, and therefore unpalatable to most Americans. The solution to what ails Republicans is not to become more liberal.

Some interesting info from former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's latest column highlights all of this:

According to Specter and a herd of commentators - many in The Inquirer's pages - the senator's switcheroo is proof of far more than Specter's brute survival instinct; it's proof that the Republican Party is narrow and rigid.

Keep spinning. The fact is that, prior to the stimulus vote, conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey was telling supporters that the chances he would challenge Specter in the 2010 Republican primary were 50-50 at best. The Senate's most liberal Republican would have been the heavy favorite to win the nomination again.

So now we're to understand that Specter has left the small-tent GOP for the broad-minded, tolerant Democratic Party? Alas, voting records tell a different story.

According to the American Conservative Union, in 2008, only two of the 51 Senate Democrats had conservative ratings above 25 percent. But 21 of the 49 Republican senators had conservative ratings of 75 percent or less. Furthermore, 12 Democrats had a conservative rating of zero, while an additional 25 scored under 10 percent. By contrast, only one Republican scored a perfect 100, and a scant seven others scored above 90 percent. (Note that Pennsylvania's other "moderate" senator has a conservative rating of 8 percent.)

Which party has greater ideological diversity? Sorry, but the facts just don't fit the media's fantasy.

I spent 12 years in the Senate. It has one doctrinaire, narrow, intolerant caucus, and Specter just joined it.

The Democratic caucus is a reflection of the leftist special interests that control the Democrat Party. From 1994 to 2004, those interests supported liberal candidates who were too far out of the mainstream to win in competitive states and districts. They regained power in Pennsylvania and elsewhere because Democratic candidates ran as moderates or conservatives, and Republicans abandoned the principled positions that had helped them win.

The public can tell when it's being conned, so it chose to throw out the party that had lost its way. The result: the most hard-left Congress in U.S. history (see previously mentioned ratings).

(emphasis added)

Sorry, Republican-nay-sayers, the facts do not fit your narrative. Republicans did not get tossed out on their ears because they were too conservative or too rigidly right-wing. The fact that Republicans aren't the majority party is not because they supposedly became hostile to moderates & centrists.

The Republican party is far more centrist & moderate in its makeup than the Democrat party. This isn't even debatable. The Republican party is home to more diversity of opinion on all of the controversial questions that divide Americans.

For every pro-life Democrat, I'll find you two pro-choice Republicans. For every traditional marriage Democrat, I'll find you two gay marriage Republicans. For every hawkish Democrat, I'll find you two dovish Republicans. I could do this all day.

I don't point this out as a badge of honor. Sure, I like the healthy debate in the Republican party, but I wish the conservative viewpoint on any given issue would win out more consistently. I think Republicans would still be a majority party if they were more consistently conservative.

I only do this to point out that all the things of which pundits accuse Republicans & blame for their downfall--of all these things, the Democrats are guilty.

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Arlen Specter, Democrat (UPDATED)

In case anyone out there still believed that these guys (& gals) made decisions based on principle, Specter's decision to switch parties should open your eyes. As Karl Rove just got done saying on FNC, this is pure political self interest.

Or, as my brother put it, "I suppose we should always assume self-interest of all politicians, that way these moves never surprise us." He--Specter--saw the writing on the wall with regards to Pat Toomey and made the logical, self-interested decision--he went Democrat.

He did what he had to do to remain in office.

Lots of people are saying that this is evidence that there is no room in the Republican party for people with politics like Specter's. If by "politics like Specter's" you really mean Republican In Name Only, then, the Democrat party is a friendlier place for guys like him--"friendlier" in the sense that they are the party in power, not that they like your positions anymore than the Republican party.

It is not as though Specter was super sympathetic with Republicans on one of the big 3 tent poles in the Republican party--fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, hawkish on foreign affairs/national security. On all of these issues, he is almost a doctrinaire Democrat.

There's room in the Republican party for those who like 2 of 3 or even 1 of 3 (of the 3 tent poles), but if you're moderate-to-liberal on all three of those issues, yeah, the Republican party is not the place for you and good riddance.

UPDATE 5:57pm MST: My friend Dan Kim, for whom I have a lot of respect, addresses Arlen Specter's switch, what it means for the Republican party, & responds a bit to my post.

It's one thing to say that the Republican party holds no appeal to centrists--something which which I heartily disagree--and a whole other thing to say that Specter's defection is emblematic of Republican's lack of appeal to moderates.

Specter moved because Pat Toomey was going to destroy him in the Republican primary. Specter isn't a principled anything--apart from being a principled political survivalist. His quote about not letting the voters of Pennsylvania tarnish his 29 year career by voting him out clearly demonstrates the esteem (or rather, the lack thereof) he holds for the will of the voters. The arrogance manifested by this statement is right in line with what it means to be a career politician.

I didn't like him as a Republican. I like him even less as a Democrat. Arlen Specter is the definition of political opportunism--at least his defection means there is one less opportunist in the Republican party and one more in the Democrat party.


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Quantifying George W. Bush's Hate For Black People

From the Washington Times via K-Low @ The Corner by way of DrewM. @ Ace:

Former President George W. Bush's international AIDS-fighting campaign has reduced by 10 percent the mortality rates in 15 targeted countries, primarily in Africa, and has saved 1.1 million lives, according to a study that for the first time quantified the successes of his program.

The study by two Stanford University doctors showed the treatment part of PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which involves making drug treatment available to about 2 million people, has shown solid success while the prevention efforts under the program have not yet produced the same concrete results.

Remember, Bush is one of those conservatives who "only care about babies before they're born" and couldn't care less about them or anyone else after birth or something like that.


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Shelby Steele: The GOP & Minority Outreach

One of the panel discussions I attended at CPAC dealt with creating a conservative Hispanic coalition. Widely discussed were the many commonalities shared by traditional social conservatives and largely Catholic Hispanic minorities. On every issue--life, family, marriage--Hispanic minorities share the values of conservatives everywhere.

In fact, Hispanic Americans are more socially conservative than their white counterparts (that is, when you consider all white Americans together). Partnerships, at a minimum, based on these principles and shared goals seems like an obvious starting point.

But, of course, immigration raised its ugly head. I won't get into it here--it deserves its own series of posts--but I believe there is a workable solution to this problem, I'm just not entirely sure what it is.

The Conservative argument for resisting minority outreach/appeal is that we don't want to get into the grievance tribalism that afflicts the Left. We are not a party that promises a grab bag of goodies & favors if only your group helps us get elected. We are a party of principles--principles which we believe ought to appeal to people regardless of their race, gender, religion, whatever.

For the record, I believe that, 100%. One of conservatism's great promises is that it promises to view every individual the same way--it seeks the freedom of every individual.

However, within that framework, I believe there is ample room, ample opportunity, to form coalitions that seek common goals. If Hispanics are socially conservative, we can appeal to them with the principles of social conservatism. We cannot assume (wrongly, I believe) that these people somehow know that we see the world the same way they do and seek the same things they seek.

We can appeal to some of these groups without becoming tribal or abandoning our principles. We can and ought to reach out to them by using our principles and showing them how they apply in their lives and are shared by them and us.

In todays WSJ, Shelby Steele examines this question--Why the GOP can't win minorities. It is the most lucid discussion of this topic I have read in a long time. Read it all; here is an excerpt:

When redemption became a term of power, "redemptive liberalism" was born -- a new activist liberalism that gave itself a "redemptive" profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism's classic focus on individual freedom. In the '60s there was no time to allow individual freedom to render up the social good. Redemptive liberalism would proactively engineer the good. Name a good like "integration," and then engineer it into being through a draconian regimen of school busing. If the busing did profound damage to public education in America, it gave liberals the right to say, "At least we did something!" In other words, we are activists

against America's old sin of segregation. Activism is moral authority in redemptive liberalism.

But conservatism sees moral authority more in a discipline of principles than in activism. It sees ideas of the good like "diversity" as mere pretext for the social engineering that always leads to unintended and oppressive consequences. Conservatism would enforce the principles that ensure individual freedom, and then allow "the good" to happen by "invisible hand."

And here is conservatism's great problem with minorities. In an era when even failed moral activism is redemptive -- and thus a source of moral authority and power -- conservatism stands flat-footed with only discipline to offer. It has only an invisible hand to compete with the activism of the left. So conservatism has no way to show itself redeemed of America's bigoted past, no way like the Great Society to engineer a grand display of its innocence, and no way to show deference to minorities for the oppression they endured. Thus it seems to be in league with that oppression.

Socially engineering society in order to assuage one's own guilt does not "redeem" the people you are trying to save (indeed, the unintended consequences of your shiny new program often worsen their condition), it is all about making yourself feel better.

Anyway, read the rest. You'll be pleased to find that Steele does not suggest some convoluted hybrid of leftist tribal politics blended with conservative principle.


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My Man Mitt

In 2008, I supported John McCain in his campaign for POTUS vs. Barack Obama, but it wasn't without reservation. He has always been unreliable, often discarding conservative principles in favor of currying favor from the press.

On balance, I thought, he was a far better alternative to the inexperienced, very liberal, Barack H. Obama.

And he was.

But there was a better one, and his name was Mitt Romney.

Sure, he had a few missteps, was mistrusted by some religious/social conservatives, but he was right on all the important things--foreign policy (Iraq, War on Terror, NKorea, Iran, etc.), fiscal policy (less government, lower taxes, less regulation, etc.), and the social issues (family, marriage, abortion, stem-cell research etc.).

So he was a "convert" on the last point (abortion), so what? So was Ronald Reagan. Don't we want to persuade everyone to value the rights of the unborn? Anyway, that's an old argument. Hopefully one we've moved past.

At CPAC, Romney gave an excellent speech. I wrote a bit about it in my review of CPAC Day 3.

You can read the full text of his speech here.

NRO's editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, wrote an excellent article about the state of conservatism and some of the dustups between Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, and others. But most of the article is about Mitt and the possibility that he runs for President in 2012.

It's tough to look 4 years into the future; if we face the same problems we are today--that is to say, if we have yet to fully overcome them--Mitt could be part of the solution. I like Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin. But how about Romney-Petraeus?

Does that sound like a ticket you'd be interested in?

I don't think anyone else could put forward two more qualified people to deal with all the many problems this country faces right now. Seriously, does anyone have any confidence that Obama can lead us out of this economic quagmire?

The markets sure don't seem to think so. Their daily tracking poll (a constant downward spiral) leaves little doubt. Mitt Romney made a career of this sort of thing. Balancing budgets, restoring profitability, rooting out waste and inefficiency--that's his niche.

And though the model has been derided, how confident would you feel if Petraeus, in the Dick Cheney mould of VP, helped to shape our long- & short-term foreign policy goals? Instead of a complete idiot--Joe Biden (God love 'im)--you would have the guy who literally wrote the counter-insurgent book and has spearheaded our warfighting effort in Iraq and now, Iraq & Afghanistan. Do you think anyone knows how to defend America better than General Petraeus?

Most of this is just rambling speculation and wishful thinking, clearly. Right now I'm focused on 2009--hoping for a Republican win in New Jersey--and 2010--House, Senate & nationwide gubernatorial races.

With any luck, 2010 will look a little like 1994, and 2012 will resemble 1980. Remember, Ronald Reagan lost in the 1976 Republican primary before finally winning it all in 1980.

Romney could do a lot worse than following Reagan's example.


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Absent Bush, Dems Make Straw Man Of Rush (UPDATED)

I should have said, "Democrats & the media (but I repeat myself) make a straw man out of Rush Limbaugh."

That joke doesn't get old.

My man at NewsBusters, Noel Sheppard, wrote up a good piece about recent revelations from the left that they want to make Limbaugh the new Republican bogeyman--used to scare the public into submitting to their nefarious plans.

Well, new revelations suggest that Democrats began a smear campaign against the conservative talk radio host last October, and now it's really caught steam.

Apparently, the Left feared its message would be muted without having George W. Bush to blame for all the world's problems, and Limbaugh made a nice substitute as the object of their disaffection to distract the public from real issues.

Given White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's connections to key media figures such as ABC's George Stephanopoulos as well as CNN's Paul Begala and James Carville, disseminating the hate was a piece of cake.

It almost goes w/o saying that I think their plan will fail--most importantly, because Rush is a far better communicator than George W. Bush. And because Rush already has 20 million regular listeners.

I don't want to say Emanuel & Begala & Carville & Co. are dumb, but this strategy strikes me as pretty stupid. Seriously, folks, when you are the establishment, it doesn't help you to elevate the competition.

I don't think there is a smarter, more persuasive communicator of conservative ideals that Rush Limbaugh. If these people are persuadable, they will be persuaded by Rush.

Note that I'm not talking about the leftist progressives who already hate all things conservative. These people are dead to reason until they realize how much their feel-good policy preferences suck in the real world.

Independents--the same ones who were persuaded about offshore drilling. The same ones who have begun to turn against the spendulus. The same ones who are skeptical about bigger government & higher taxes--these people will turn to Rush and large numbers of them will be persuaded by him.

UPDATE 6:17pm BST: Jonah Goldberg weighs in on El Rushbo's controversial statement that he hopes Obama "fails":

Here we go again. Rush Limbaugh is public enemy No. 1. Liberal bloggers and media chin-strokers are aghast at Limbaugh's statement that he hopes Barack Obama fails. Well, given what Obama wants to do, I hope he fails too. Of course I want the financial crisis to end -- who doesn't? But Obama's agenda is much more audacious. Pretty much every major news outlet in the country has said as a matter of objective analysis that Obama wants to repeal the legacy of Ronald Reagan and remake the country as a European welfare state. And yet people are shocked that conservatives, Limbaugh included, want Obama to fail in this effort? What movie have they been watching? Because I could swear that conservatives opposing the expansion of big government is what conservatives do.

European elites and visiting liberal American backpackers love Europe. All they ever see are the tourist traps. They don't see the vast numbers of welfare state lower class--many immigrants--who live, for instance, in the banlieues of Paris.

These people--and their equivalents in Germany, et al--firebomb the cars of the wealthy every night. And the liberal elites of these countries just don't get it. They think, 'we gave these people welfare and universal healthcare and public housing, what the hell more do they want!?!!'

I don't want to go off on a rant here, because what I have to say on the subject could occupy at least a fortnight's worth of my intermittent posts, but is this what you all want America to look like?

In Europe, the lib elites keep throwing more money at the masses because unlike America, there is no chance in hell of the elites ever allowing the hoi polloi to move up to the next income bracket.

This is why these types of socialist policies should never translate to America: Here, the poor don't stay poor forever. There is a lot of movement from one bracket to the next. That just doesn't happen anywhere else.

If Obama gets his way, it might not happen in America either.


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I Am Pro-Life

If Sarah Palin doesn't become the first female President of the United States, it might be this little girl.

She's now 12 years old, the Constitution requires that she be 35, so, watch for her in 2032.



(h/t The Other McCain)


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