Category: Politics

Dr. Coburn’s Diagnosis For The GOP

Dr. Tom Coburn has a diagnosis for the Republican Party, and their political future looks to be in critical condition. Why?

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and “compassionate conservatism.” If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof “governing” majority, the goal of “compassionate conservatism” was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

He’s right. The GOP got too comfortable with power and lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, it became all about a quest for political power. So far the first instinct of the GOP remains to attack “liberal values” rather than uphold an agenda. While there is much to about the values of the Democratic Party that is worthy of attack, that will do nothing to get the Republicans out of their hole. There has to be a real agenda that the Republican Party stands behind from top to bottom. Just hitting the Democrats will not cut it.

The Senator from Oklahoma has the right diagnosis for the political ills of the Republican Party. There’s no agenda, and without something to lead people towards, you’re not really leading. The GOP is making the mistake of thinking that they can run based solely on a brand that is as tarnished as it ever has been. Instead, the GOP must run a campaign based on a sincere promise to reduce the size but increase the efficiency of government. That requires a sincere effort to fight pork and waste. The Republicans have not embraced a reform agenda, and it is killing them.

The GOP must rediscover its own first principles: what is needed is not a Reagan, but a party of Reagans. The problem is that so far the GOP is not such a party.

Stand For Something, Or Fall Like Nothing

Karl Rove has some sage advice for a GOP in free-fall after some serious losses in Congressional special elections. The loss of the House seat in MS-01 was a sign that the Republican Party has some serious problems ahead of it in 2008. As Mr. Rove notes:

This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker’s Louisiana seat.

Both of those losses can be attributed to bad candidates. But that only shows the GOP can’t take “safe” seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

He is absolutely right. The GOP simply must have an actual agenda for 2008. Just calling their opponents liberals isn’t enough to cut it. The Democrats have run too many candidates with centrist street cred, and at this point too many people have decided that taking a chance on a liberal is better than risking more Republican incompetence.

If this sounds harsh, too bad. The GOP needs an intervention this year, and the grassroots have to give it.

Every Republican officeholder needs to realize that the Republican “brand” has been utterly trashed. Too many scandals, too many times when GOP lawmakers have failed to stand against corruption, too many times when the GOP has failed to connect with what really concerns the American people—all of these things have taken their toll on the future of the party.

Of course, all is not lost. The GOP’s loss is not an inevitability, so long as the party is willing to reform itself. GOP candidates need to be honest with their constituents: the GOP has not been a party of good governance. We failed to stop the growth of government. We failed to keep the American people in the loop on Iraq and our strategy from 2003–2007 was a failure. We failed to uphold home-town values, but ended up following Beltway values.

The road ahead requires reform. To fix healthcare in this country we need real reform, not another failed top-down approach. Republicans can win on healthcare if they start talking not about why a market-based approach is better in theory, but why the average voter will be better off. Republicans can win on the economy with a very simple message: if you have to tighten your belts in times of trouble, then the government should do the same. The GOP must stand resolute on fighting earmarks and government waste.

The GOP can win on the issues, but first they must set the agenda. That means running on principles, not on bashing the other side. The GOP shouldn’t need to spend their resources convincing the American people that the Democrats are radicals who are out-of-touch with American values: if the GOP makes sure that the electorate knows what we stand for, the contrasts will be obvious.

More of the same will not work. The GOP has to set an agenda and defend its principles. 2006 should have been a wake-up call, and if the GOP doesn’t learn from its lessons then they run the risk of a repeat.

McCain’s Climate Change Plan: Great Politics, Terrible Policy

Scott Johnson has a deeply skeptical look at Sen. McCain’s new “climate change” policy

. From a standpoint of policy, that skepticism is well warranted. The political story, however, is entirely different.

The political reality is this: global warming concerns are part of the political landscape now. Too many voters have bought into the hype to stake a position on the theory that climate change doesn’t matter in this election. While that is bad science, that is also the political reality the GOP faces. For that matter, even if there is no man-made global warming, there’s no reason why America shouldn’t be looking ahead to an age of increasing scarcity of oil. The more power America gets domestically from renewable resources, the fewer petrodollars flow into the hands of two-bit tyrants like Hugo Chavez. Some “green” policies make sense for other reasons than environmental hysteria.

The problem with the McCain approach is that it gets the politics right, but makes for atrocious public policy. For example, a “cap and trade” system would necessitate a massive new government bureaucracy and raise America’s energy prices. The Congressional Budget Office has found that the current Lieberman-Warner bill amounts to a trillion dollar tax increase in a time when Americans are already finding it hard to pay for energy. Even more troubling, this tax would be incredibly regressive, its impacts adding more stress to families barely able to pay for heat and fuel.

Republicans should have a plan that reduces our dependence on sources of energy that produce pollution. However, that should not mean abandoning political principles or the rules of basic economics. The GOP should push for more clean nuclear power, tax credits for research and development of clean fuel sources, and should embrace something like Bob Zubrin’s flex-fuel plan (using cellulosic ethanol rather than burning what we eat). There are plenty of economically viable ways for the U.S. to “go green,” but we need policymakers willing to support those sound policies.

The GOP has good reason to grumble at McCain’s energy policy, but the fact that it talks about climate change is not it. It would be nice for more politicians to stand against the bad science behind the global warming movement, but in an election year you have to pick and choose your battles, and this year the GOP needs to have an energy policy on the table to compete on this issue.

The Democrats’ Blue-Collar Dilemma

Jim Geraghty has tonight’s big win for Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. He makes one valuable point for the Democratic echo chamber:

You’ll see the press, and Obama’s surrogates (perhaps I repeat myself) insist that tonight’s result means nothing, and indeed, in the delegate count, the effect is marginal. But superdelegates ought to be sweating. White working-class voters, and various overlapping demographics – the elderly, Catholics, Jews – just aren’t warming up to Obama, and they’ve been the backbone for the party for generations. Liberal bloggers (and Saturday Night Live, and arguably the Washington Post) are responding by suggesting Hillary’s supporters are racist; these people may not be so eager to vote for Obama in November as the pundits insist. Once you insult a voter by calling them racist, they may not be eager to meekly repent by doing as their moral betters in the pundit class demand.

The shameful way that some in the Democratic Party are treating their own voters is shocking. The same sort of political smears usually reserved for Republicans are being used against their own. What will the Democratic message for West Virginia voters be in the fall? “Vote for us, you racist hick morons”? That’s hardly a compelling message for the Democrats.

The Obama coalition of wealthy white urbanites and black voters is not enough to win. The Democrats cannot win when they abandon the working-class voters that make up a critical portion of their base. Yet those are exactly the groups that Obama can’t seem to win.

Their are, of course, good reasons to want to be rid of Hillary Clinton, but her being unelectable is not one of them—certainly not as she keeps defying all the political odds. The Democrats have a choice, go with their heart or go with their brain. I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what course the Democrats are taking.

Obama: Criticizing Me Is Off-Limits

Rich Lowry has a piece on how the Obama campaign is trying to argue that any criticism of Obama is somehow out-of-bounds:

Here are the Obama rules in detail: He can’t be called a “liberal” (“the same names and labels they pin on everyone,” as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can’t be questioned (“attempts to play on our fears”); his extreme positions on social issues can’t be exposed (“the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives” and “turn us against each other”); and his Chicago background too is off-limits (“pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy”). Besides that, it should be a freewheeling and spirited campaign.

This sort of thing will not fly with the American public. Until now, Senator Obama has never run in a truly competitive political campaign. Until just a few months ago, he’s never had to face real political criticism. That his first instincts are to dodge his critics is hardly the sign of a confident campaign. The American electorate deserves more than Senator Obama’s empty platitudes. They deserve to know not only the policies of a candidate, but about their instincts and character. If Senator Obama is unwilling to be forthright with the American people than he should not be running to be their President.

The Party Of Sam’s Club?

Ross Douthat sees the GOP as the party of the middle class. With Barack Obama virtually assured the Democratic nomination, that seems quite possible, as Obama has yet to close the deal with middle-class voters.

However, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the GOP. The Republicans can’t win on populism, partially because the Democrats are better at sounding populist themes and partially because populist public policy is just bad public policy. The GOP has to reach out to the middle class, but they have to do that on their own terms. Just attacking the Democrats just will not cut it, not in an election cycle where a culture of political arrogance has so damaged the GOP brand.

What the Republicans need to do is relatively straightforward: they need to admit that “compassionate conservatism” was a failure and start running on “competent conservatism.” American attitudes towards government are as cynical as ever, and for good reason. The Democrats will try to hang all those failures on President Bush. The Republicans have to use the failure of the Democratic Congress to make the point that the problems with American government run deeper that who is in office.

Sen. McCain is well-positioned to make those arguments, but the leadership of the GOP is not. They want to play politics as usual in a time when playing politics as usual is political suicide. The GOP has to be a party dedicated at every level towards reforming American government. That means having a party leadership that can credibly deliver that message. With only a few exceptions, the GOP does not have the leadership they need to win.

The way to victory in 2008 is for the GOP to recapture the Reagan message: more government does not help the working classes, American strength can be victorious in a turbulent and dangerous world, and the values upon which this country was founded are values which are as vital now as they have ever been. That message works because it appeals to the essential values of the American experience. If the GOP wants to win the middle class (as well as the independents they need to win) they have to give voters a compelling reason to vote for the Republican Party beyond attacking the Democrats. If they can’t offer a competing vision backed with substantive policy, then they will risk a repeat of the 2006 bloodbath, and this time, the stakes are much higher.

Clinton’s Fictional Gas Tax Plan

Sen. Hillary Clinton is pushing her own version of a summer “gas tax holiday”—except that her plan would end up doing absolutely nothing to help consumers. Sen. Obama has been attacking her plan (and McCain’s) as an effort to “pander:”

On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked repeated to name an economist who supports her plan to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax. Either she could not or chose not to. “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” she said, presenting her tax hike plan as a way to life the burden of soaring gas prices off middle class Americans.

Rival Barack Obama has called the plan, which is also backed by Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, Sen. John McCain , “a pander” that won’t solve the high cost of gas. Asked about the gas plan in his interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Sen. Obama, D-Ill., framed the proposal as a “classic Washington gimmick.” “You’re looking at suspending a gas tax for three months. The average driver would save 30 cents per day for a grand total of $28,” claimed Obama.

Although Clinton did not offer her own estimate as to how much relief the holiday would provide, she did try to distinguish her plan from McCain’s. “Senator McCain has said take off the gas tax, don’t pay for it, throw us further into deficit and debt. That is not what I’ve proposed. What I’ve proposed is that the oil companies pay the gas tax instead of consumers and drivers this summer.”

So, what Sen. Clinton proposes is that the oil companies pay the gas tax instead of consumers—and somehow those costs won’t end up getting passed right back to the consumers in the form of higher oil costs. No wonder Sen. Clinton doesn’t want to listen to the advice of people who actually understand economics.

Sen. Obama’s criticisms over the tax aren’t too far off—it is questionable how much a gas tax holiday would actually help consumers, and from a policy standpoint it’s also questionable whether we really want the government encouraging people to use more gasoline than they might this summer.

The Clinton gas tax plan takes the flaws of the McCain plan and magnifies them. At least the McCain plan would actually lower gas prices, while the Clinton plan would just pass the costs right back to consumers. The Clinton plan is definitely a pander—it panders to consumers by pretending to lower gas prices and it panders to anti-corporate sentiment by pretending that the oil companies will take the costs.

Clinton keeps demonstrating that when it comes to economic matters, she’s absolutely clueless—and the fact that she doesn’t want to listen to economists when she formulates economic policy should serve as a reminder why she and the other Democrats not qualified to be deciding this nation’s economic policies.

Hillary Wins PA

Since losing Pennsylvania to Hillary, I hear Obama is so bitter that he’s started clinging to guns and religion…

Looks like the margin will be right around 10%—and more interestingly if you add together all the popular vote including Michigan and Florida, Hillary has the popular vote. Will the Democrats decide to have their superdelegates override the will of the majority of their electorate? Will they do so by disenfranchising two major states in the process?

The Democratic chattering classes are firmly in the bag for Obama, but what we’re seeing is that he truly hasn’t been able to “close the deal” and Democrats should think long and hard about that.

UPDATE: Here’s something interesting. The second Obama stopped his speech, his whole demeanor changed. He looked worried.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin notes that while Hillary Clinton’s speech was rather upbeat, Obama’s negative attacks against McCain made him sound angry and small. Sorry, Sen. Obama, but you haven’t won yet, no matter how badly you’d rather it were otherwise.

Pennsylvania Predictions

Today is the Pennsylvania primary, where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton face off in the first primary in 6 weeks.

The RCP poll average has Hillary up 6% against Obama. Looking at the polls, with one outlying exception, Obama’s support in PA appears to be capped in the low 40s. Meanwhile, Hillary is consistently anywhere from 5-10% ahead.

We saw that late deciders had broken for Hillary in previous contests—this seems likely to hold true in PA as well. There are a small amount of late deciders in PA (less than 10%), but that’s enough to potentially swing Hillary into a stronger finish.

Obama seems capped at the low 40s, and that’s been a constant through the race. Hillary has the most chance at an upside by appealing to whites, Catholics, and men. Obama, as always, will convincingly win blacks, younger voters, and the wealthy.

In the end, my prediction a Clinton win—50% for Hillary, and 43% for Obama. There’s always the chance that this race could be a shocker and Obama could pull ahead, but none of the polls seem to show that. The most likely outcome is Hillary gets a victory, stays in the race, and the Democrats continue to battle for the nomination. Unless Clinton dramatically loses the next few races, the possibility of this race being settled in Denver will remain.

Good News For Team McCain

The AP reports that John McCain has been able to consolidate the Republican base and is even winning some independents and Democrats as well:

Partly thanks to an increasingly likable image, the Republican presidential candidate has pulled even with the two Democrats still brawling for their party’s nomination, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo news poll released Thursday. Just five months ago — before either party had winnowed its field — the survey showed people preferred sending an unnamed Democrat over a Republican to the White House by 13 percentage points.

Of those who have moved toward McCain, about two-thirds voted for President Bush in 2004 but are now unhappy with him, including many independents who lean Republican. The remaining one-third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.

This isn’t all that surprising—McCain has always had strong appeal with independents and some Democrats. In an election season where the Democratic Party is deeply and bitterly divided McCain’s strength among conservative Democrats and independents may be his greatest single asset.

Of course, McCain cannot just rest on his laurels. The American electorate needs a candidate who can provide real solutions to our problems. Sen. McCain must take the lead on healthcare, the environment, fuel prices, and the war. His plan to offer a “gas tax holiday” this summer is the sort of populist plan that could have broad appeal, but Republican policymakers need to do more than offer various tax credits. McCain’s already come out with some promising policy positions on issues like taxes and the environment, but he needs to do more. There’s plenty of time to do that (and that can’t really happen until the Democrats stop sucking all the oxygen out of the room), but it has to be done.

With the GOP base supporting McCain, he can start to reach out to independents at a time when the Democrats are fighting over the liberal base. In a year where the GOP “brand” is hardly in good shape, McCain’s “maverick” cred is extremely helpful. However, McCain will have to walk a tight line between appealing to independents without alienating conservatives. The fact that he’s running against two dyed-in-the-wool liberals will help him, but it won’t get him into office. Make no mistake, even though McCain is in a very strong position right now, this will be a long, hard fight. McCain will need to take some strong substantive positions on key issues, which he so far has not done. The American middle class is worried, and McCain needs to be able to speak to those worries and give them something to vote on other than biography.