Jay Reding.com

Computer security researchers have found evidence of botnets of hijacked computers sending pro-Ron Paul spam. It’s long been known that Paul supporters frequently spam online polls, skewing the results so much that online political polling has been rendered even more worthless than it was before. However, this is a new low in American politics.

I believe the Paul campaign when they say that they have no knowledge of these spamming operations, but if that proves not to be true they should receive the fullest possible FEC sanction. It’s not likely that they’d take such a risk, but it does speak rather badly of them that A) their supporters would do such a thing and B) they appear to not to be taking a particularly strong stand against it.

This also reflects rather badly on Ron Paul supporters, some of whom are nice people with a sincere commitment to their candidate, but the majority of which keep making the others look like irritating trolls who spout inane conspiracy theories and generally make pests of themselves. The Paul campaign has benefitted greatly from all this online activism, but it’s quickly reaching the point of diminishing returns. There’s a difference between effective advocacy and trolling. Many of Paul’s online supporters don’t seem to grasp the difference, and the ones that do end up looking bad in the process.

Also harmed in all of this is online politics in general—the more that online services can be gamed, the less relevance they have to American politics where spamming physical polling places is much harder. (Though not impossible, as places like Chicago seemed to see a number of people come back from the dead just to vote over the years.) Politics isn’t about who can win the next meaningless internet poll, it’s about who can actually win elections, and when all the hype dies down, Ron Paul’s support in the real world is just as low as his polling would suggest.

Michael Gerson has a piece that tries to paint the GOP as a party caught between libertarianism and Catholic social thought. As he explains it:

There are, in fact, two belief systems contending for the soul of the Republican Party, but one is not liberalism. The two intellectually vital movements within the Republican Party today are libertarianism and Roman Catholic social thought — a teaching that has influenced many non-Catholics, including me.

The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules — free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government — asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread — it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.

The problem that Gerson runs into is that he assumes that government is the proper institution for “racial reconciliation, the problems of addiction or at-risk youths, or the economic prospects of the poor.” The whole point of the modern conservative movement is the realization that the imprecise and blunt tool of government is specially the worst instrument for dealing with those societal ills. Programs like “The Great Society” failed because they relied on the coercive power of government to achieve ends that cannot be met by a government program. No government program can create racial reconciliation because racial animus is a personal issue and government cannot—nor should it—have the ability to change the human heart. No government program can cure addiction because the only way to cure addiction is for addicts to want to get treatment. No government program can truly fix the economic prospects of the poor because government interference in the market exacerbates rather than cures a lack of upward mobility.

Government is, in short, the wrong tool for the job.

Catholic Social Thought does not require the sort of top-down solutions that Gerson seems to advance. In fact, such solutions violate a key tenet of Catholic social teaching, the principle of subsidiarity:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

– Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931

Gerson is right that Catholic social thought, as well as conservatism, includes a duty to help the less fortunate. However, that duty is a personal one. Giving more money to government isn’t compassion. There is no such thing as compassion-by-proxy, and there certainly is not such a thing as compassion through advocating higher levels of taxation by others.

Gerson asks what help an “anti-government” conservatism offers to America’s inner cities? To that question the response should be, “what help has years of fostering a culture of dependence on government been?” Gerson misses the point of the last few decades of modern conservatism—dependence creates poverty, while encouraging self-reliance reduces poverty. It was this principle that drove Gov. Tommy Thompson’s efforts at welfare reform, which in turn inspired the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The result of those reforms was to get millions of people off the welfare rolls and away from the downward spiral of more and more dependency.

While there is no doubt that Gerson’s motives are pure, he does not understand the basis of Catholic social thought, especially the concept of subsidiarity. There is a reason why Catholic social thought matches the two concepts of solidarity and subsidiarity as one. Neither one works without the other. Standing in solidarity with the poor isn’t enough if one tries to pass off that solidarity through impersonal organizations which subsume those small institutions that hold the social fabric together. Subsidiarity only works when individuals work with those smaller organization in solidarity with those in need.

Does the conservative movement need to be stronger in social concerns? Absolutely. Does that mean abandoning conservative principles? Absolutely not. Liberalism lacks an understanding of subsidiarity. Conservatism as an ideology is one that recognizes the value of subsidiarity at its core. Moreover, conservatives are no slouches on the solidarity part, as witnessed by evidence that conservatives, especially religious conservatives, are more likely to give to charity.

Big-government conservatism isn’t compatible with core principles of Catholic social thought, and it’s not especially conservative either. American compassion is not expressed by the size and scope of government, it is expressed by the compassion of individuals and small groups to effect real change. To disturb that “right order” Pope Pius XI described in Quadragesimo Anno is to lose sight of not only the principles of conservatism, but the principles of Catholic social thought as well.

Der Spiegel has an interesting op-ed that argues that the Democrats need to turn towards the right to win in 2008. It contains a rather interesting argument:

This is why voters aren’t just interested in their own tax bracket but also in the tax brackets of those richer than them. This is why higher estate taxes are so unpopular not because they actually affect the voter, but because they could affect the voter. The voter doesn’t want to see the person he aspires to be punished or treated poorly. What it comes down to is that most voters live their lives on the left side of the political spectrum, while their dreams lie to the right of their reality.

In short, elections are not won at the center, as is so often claimed, but slightly to the right of center. In Germany, the conservatives have won 10 of the 16 parliamentary elections in the country’s postwar history. In the United States, the Republicans have won seven of the last 10 presidential elections. In the US, the Republicans are simply better at promising a brighter future, as former President Ronald Reagan showed with his simplest of pledges: “It’s morning in America.”

Now, there’s a wide gulf between postwar German conservatives and American conservatives, but the point still stands. The Democrats’ rhetoric is all about how terrible America is: we’re in a financial crisis, the war in Iraq can’t be won, government is incompetent, the aliens are coming, etc. Of course, the only real solution to all those problems just happens to be to elect Democrats.

On the other hand, the conservative message has always boiled down to those who work hard can find success and government shouldn’t stand in their way. Reagan’s “Morning in America” optimism was exactly what the country needed after years of “Whip Inflation Now” buttons and “malaise.”

Is it true that most Americans want to be rich? You’d better believe it. Does that effect their voting habits? I’d be strongly inclined to believe that too. Prominent “progressives” like Thomas Frank keep wondering why people who aren’t “rich” by any stretch of the imagination keep voting Republican. (Which is the question he asked in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas?) Part of that is because the appeal of the Republican Party is not about an appeal to the upper classes, but part of it is because there’s a stronger correlation between Republican voting habits and the entrepreneurial spirit than between voting GOP and class.

People who think that they’re in control of their lives tend to vote Republican. It’s not hard to see why: if you believe that you’re in control of your own life you’re less likely to see government as a savior for your problems. As the article points out, the appeal of Fabian socialism wrapped in “social democracy” is petering out across the globe:

Despite producing respectable candidates like Edwards or Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the last French election, left-leaning social democrats hold power hardly anywhere in the world. Voters listen to them, nod their heads in agreement, but they don’t vote for them. The analysis of “Two Americas” Edwards presented in the 2004 presidential election was brilliant, but it was ineffective.

Why? People already know about the cramped conditions of their own lives. What they want to know is how to expand those conditions and improve their circumstances. Recognizing this need, Schröder reduced unemployment benefits and made the rigid German labor market more flexible. Instead of doubling welfare benefits, Blair redoubled the government’s efforts to do away with welfare. And instead of handing out subsidies, Clinton produced a budget surplus. Even former President John F. Kennedy, a man idolized by many today, was hardly a leftist. His take on the issue of economic equality was clear: “Life is unfair.”

There’s a message here for the Republicans: don’t get mired in gloom. Reagan’s optimism worked because it wasn’t forced. The American people still have the same pioneer spirit that founded this country. It’s why we’re the world’s most vibrant economy, why we have more Nobel Prize winners than any other country, and why we won the Space Race and the Cold War. The candidate who will win in 2008 will be able to tap into that.

Der Spiegel has it right—leftism doesn’t play well in this country and never has. Economic populism has not elected a President in post-war America, mainly because that sort of economic populism conflicts with the can-do spirit of this country. Across the globe, the old appeals are failing as post-modern economies discover that the old theories of social democracy and a government-backed social safety net are illusions. When the French elect a President that is to the right of many in the Democratic field it says something about just how retrograde a course the Democrats are taking.

America has always been an optimistic country, and while our politics are mired in pessimism, the successful candidate in 2008 will the candidate who paints the best picture not of what’s wrong with American, but what’s right.

David Brooks offers an intriguing argument that “the happiness gap” is a major factor in political attitudes today. Brooks suggests that while Americans are generally quite happy personally, they’re deeply skeptical about the state of American institutions. Brooks thinks that what the American people want is neither liberalism’s nanny statism nor conservatism’s limited government:

These voters don’t believe government can lift their standard of living or lead a moral revival. They want a federal government that will focus on a few macro threats — terrorism, health care costs, energy, entitlement debt and immigration — and stay out of the intimate realms of life. They want a night watchman government that patrols the neighborhood without entering their homes.

This is not liberalism, which inserts itself into the crannies of life. It’s not conservatism, suspicious of federal power. It’s a gimlet-eyed federalism — strong government with sharply defined tasks.

I think that there is something to this argument. The overall tone of the electorate is generally hostile: neither party is doing particularly well. The President and Congress are in a race to the bottom in terms of approval ratings. People are rightly sick and tired of the state of American politics today.

The candidate who will win 2008 will the be candidate who can offer the most compelling solutions for dealing with America’s real problems. While that statement might seem like a no-brainer to most people, neither political party seems to really get it. The Republicans have the strong rhetoric on terrorism, but have been saddled with a war that they’ve never been able to convincingly support. The Democrats have their social issues, but their proposed solutions generally involve the progression of: 1) hike taxes, 2) ???, 3) Everyone’s Happy! If only we could tax al-Qaeda to death both parties might be happy.

Given Brook’s thesis, one gets an explanation for the seeming boom in popularity for candidates like Ron Paul. After all, he’s the candidate least likely to bother most Americans individual lives. He also happens to be a raving nutcase who thinks that bringing back the gold standard is a really great policy. What people see is someone at least talking about breaking the silly status quo of partisan bickering. (And Paul does have bipartisan appeal—he brings in the nutballs of both parties together. 9/11 “Truthers” and people who think that George Wallace was soft on Communism now can find common cause together…)

What the country needs is a pragmatic leader who is willing to stand above the din and tell both sides to stop acting like children and get back to work. The Republicans have some candidates who can credibly do that, although right now they’re too busy trying to shore up their base to make the right moves. On the Democratic side, the heir apparent is Hillary Clinton, a woman who embodies the very nastiest of American politics and has the political instincts of a 13-year-old girl. The most credible Democratic candidates—people like Joe Biden or Chris Dodd have about a snow-cone’s chance in Hell of getting the nomination. The only real challenger to Clinton is Barack Obama, a man who’s policy principles are about as indistinct as they come. It’s one thing to spout a bunch of platitudes, it’s another to actually be able to make them happen. (And as for John Edwards, I think this says it all about his credibility as the leader of the free world.)

In the end, Brooks’ argument seems to mesh with the evidence. People don’t necessarily want less government (although they should), they just want government that’s actually competent. At the same time, people don’t want more government, they generally want to be left alone. Neither party is offering what the American people really want, and it may be a while before either of them wake up to the fact that the reason why there’s such wide distrust to politicians of both stripes is because neither party is behaving in a very trustworthy manner.

U.S. News‘ Capital Commerce blog notes the Democrats’ radical plan to skyrocket American tax rates. The Rangel plan would not only repeal the Bush tax cuts, but would create the largest tax hike in history, adding increased transaction costs to nearly every activity. The effect of such a reckless plan would be disastrous for the American economy. As economist and former White House advisor Lawrence Lindsey notes:

What’s more, if you eliminate the income cap on Social Security taxes—as some Democrats have proposed—Lindsey explains that “then we’re 60 percent.” The top tax bracket when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 was 70 percent. Reagan then cut it down to 50 percent with the 1981 tax cuts and then to 28 percent with the 1986 tax reform package. “And remember,” Lindsey continued, “$200,000 was the cutoff for the 70 percent bracket back then, which would be like $400,000 today. And they would be taking the 60 percent bracket to income levels well under half that number.” Lindsey, who once wrote a fascinating book while at Harvard University about the Reagan tax cuts called The Growth Experiment, went on to joke that Dems were planning to run the “Shrinkage Experiment.”

The Rangel tax plan demonstrates the Democrats’ pathological love for raising taxes. It returns the death tax, it removes capital gains tax cuts, it raised taxes from the cradle to the grave. If it moves, the plan adds more taxes on it. (If it does nothing, there’s probably a subsidy involved somewhere.) It repeals over a quarter-century of growth-sustaining economic progress to return the country back to the days of stagflation and moribund economic growth.

Cutting the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is not in itself a bad idea. Replacing it with equally misguided alternatives isn’t any better. The AMT phase-out can easily be offset by reductions in spending, corporate welfare, and subsidies. Unfortunately, Congress runs on spending, corporate welfare handouts, and wasteful subsidies.

America does not need higher taxes, it needs government that stops consuming all it sees. It needs less bureaucracy and more innovation. It needs an education system that actually works. It needs fewer roadblocks to saving and investment. Raising taxes not only doesn’t provide for those needs, it actually contradicts them. We don’t need more government spending, we need fiscal discipline in Washington. Giving Congress more money to play with is about as responsible as having Mark Foley lead a Boy Scout troop.

The Democrats keep proving that they’re one-trick ponies. The Rangel tax plan has been described as a wonderful gift for the GOP, which it would be if the GOP were smart enough to capitalize on it by tying the abolition of the AMT to reductions in wasteful spending and entitlement reform. However, that would take a measure of political courage, and no one in Congress seems to have that anymore.

We need a saner tax system in this country, one that does not punish productive economic activity. Saner does not equate to “more,” no matter what Rep. Rangel would think. The Democrats are once again showing their cards, and this is a warning sign to the country of what we could expect if the Democrats dominate in the 2008 election. The GOP needs to get a plan out there, push it hard, and set the tone for a more responsible fiscal agenda. Not only would that be good politics, but good policy as well.