Tag: conservatism

The GOP Ties Itself to the Trumptanic

Donald Trump is now the presumptive GOP nominee. Nikki Haley has officially dropped out of the race leaving no one to stop Trump on the GOP side. The GOP has once again chosen to tie itself to the dumbest man in American politics, an adjudicated rapist, and a man who is facing 91 felony counts and goes to trial on some of them very soon. It is altogether likely that before the GOP Convention the nominee for the Republican Party will be a convicted felon.

This is stupidity of epic proportions. It’s not as though the GOP can claim ignorance of who Trump is. There is zero hope that Trump will surround himself with decent, smart, civic-minded people. At this point the only people willing to join Team MAGA are the idiotic, the irrecoverably power-hungry, and the extreme. It’s not even the JV team anymore, Trump has surrounded himself with a coalition of paste-eating freaks. And what Trump wants to do is remake America in the same way he remade the GOP—into a tool of his own boundless self-aggrandizement. Another Trump term would be a Trump term with zero guardrails, which is a recipe for absolute national disaster. To call it potential national suicide is no longer hyperbole at this point.

If the American experiment is to survive, Donald Trump must be defeated. The GOP is a dead party—it is a shambling corpse that is being worn as a skin suit by Trump. The GOP has no policies, no ideas, no thoughts, no vision. It is just a mass of grievances. All it wants to do is “own the libs” which quickly equates to “owning” even its own members who are not sufficiently affixed to Trump’s ample derriere.

I do believe that Joe Biden will be reelected as President this November—he certainly deserves to be. And the GOP deserves to die as a party. A party this thoroughly incompetent, this thoroughly corrupt, a party that sees Donald Trump and says “this man represents everything about me” is a party that has no business existing. As someone who is prudentially conservative the GOP is not a conservative party. Perhaps some day a new conservative movement will rise from the ashes, although I suspect it will be a generation or more before that happens.

The GOP tied itself to Trump. God willing it will go down with him.

Who Is To Blame For Trump?

At The Federalist, Ben Domenech persuasively argues that the failures of Barack Obama led to the rise of Donald Trump:

It is no accident that President Obama’s America has given rise to Donald Trump. It is an America that is more tribalist, where people feel more racially and religiously divided; more politically correct, where people feel less free to speak their minds; and it is an America where trust in the nation’s elites, whose skills are credentialed but unproven, are at historic lows.

That is all true. American institutions are seen as failing—and often are failing—because those running those institutions have bought into the left-wing mindset. The academy is devouring itself in a furor of radical leftism. The press, with a few exceptions, is monolithically left-wing. Government exists to feed itself, not to serve the public. It is true that if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

Time and time again, conservatives have embraced people with few qualifications other than they tell conservatives exactly what they want to hear.

But that’s not the sole reason that Trump, a man who is neither conservative nor a patriot, is leading the GOP field. Conservatives cannot blame Trump on Obama or the media—Trump’s supporters are supporting him of their own free will. They are choosing to embrace a man who routinely spits on basic conservative and even American values. Yet no matter how idiotic Trump acts, they still support him.

We Have Met The Enemy, And It Is Us

Conservatives must accept the hard truth that Donald Trump is a monster of at least part of our making. Yes, he’s a reaction to the failures of Obama’s left-wing agenda. But time and time again, conservatives have embraced people with few qualifications other than they tell conservatives exactly what they want to hear. Sarah Palin showed immense promise when she was initially picked as John McCain’s VP—but she flamed out in a spectacular fashion not only due to a hostile media, but because she was woefully unprepared. From there, the GOP has embraced candidates who have little experience but throw more chum in the water than Shark Week: Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Ben Carson, the list could go on. These candidates enjoyed fame not because they were qualified for public office, but because they told conservative activists what they wanted to hear.Donald Trump is just that trend taken to its inevitable extreme. Trump is playing on the crudest themes possible—hatred of immigrants, fear of terrorism, economic insecurity. He’s taken the traditional Democratic playbook of using fear to whip up partisan fervor and has taken it to the right.

Yes, Ben Domenech and others are correct in stating that Trump is a reaction to seven years of failure and a President who seems blithely disinterested in fundamental American values. Someone like Trump was going to inevitably come along. But that doesn’t mean that a significant plurality of the GOP had to embrace such a toxic buffoon. Instead, major figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingram have embraced Trumpism. Even though Trump routinely flouts basic constitutional principles—like calling for Bill Gates to shut down the Internet—he gets a pass because he’s against Obama and the mainstream media. For more, National Review‘s Charles C. W. Cooke has an excellent piece on the many ways that Trump shreds the Constitution in favor of his own brand of dime-store authoritarianism.

That’s simply no reason to support a candidate. Trump is not qualified for office—he speaks with the intellectual fluency of a 12-year old. He has no clue about world affairs. It’s one thing to be rude and abrasive, but Trump takes that to a pathological extreme. Trump is likely to abandon every single one of his newfound “principles” once he gets the power he seeks. Conservatives who embraced him in this race would be the first ones he would screw over if, God forbid, he were to come anywhere near the White House.

We didn’t have to fall for this. As conservatives, we not only should stand for a smaller government, we should be standing for quality government. That means we should be holding our political leaders to the highest standards possible. The office of the Presidency should represent the best of the American people. Yet conservatives would further diminish the Presidency to carnival barker in chief just because it would give the media and the left-wing establishment a poke in the eye.

It’s Time to Get Serious

I hate to agree with the left-wing media—but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Trump is a danger. He is a danger to the nation and to the Republican brand. No doubt many in the left-wing media are pushing the GOP to reject Trump precisely because they know that will make them less likely to do so. But no matter what the left-wing media thinks, conservatives are bound by morality and principal to act.

Conservatives must reject Trump, and moreover they must reject the empty populism that Trump represents.

It is a choice of one or the other. Either we as a political party and a movement stand on behalf of enduring American values or we stand with Donald Trump. Because America’s values are in democratic pluralism, and Trump stands for dividing the country by race and religion. America’s values are with free enterprise, and Donald Trump is the poster boy for the same kind of crony capitalism that has ruined this nation. America’s values are based on personal responsibility and individual morality. Donald Trump is an amoral, areligious, and irresponsible blowhard with a thin skin. Put bluntly, Donald Trump is a whiter, blonder Obama.

If the Republican Party and the conservative movement embraces Donald Trump, it will destroy itself on the altar of Trump’s insatiable egotism. We will have demonstrated that we don’t really have principals—we’ll fall for any old huckster who tells us what we want to hear. The future will belong to the left, and President Hillary Rodham Clinton will take this country so far from its founding principals that it may never be able to recover.

We can’t blame the media for our embracing Trumpism. We can’t blame Obama for embracing Trumpism. The blame lies with us and our unwillingness to put principals ahead of pissant politics.

If Trump takes the entire conservative movement down with him—and he has every ability to do that—we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Leviathan Unchained

Harold Meyerson, writing in The American Prospect argues that Americans are “hypocrites” because we dislike regulations in general, but like specific regulations:

Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a survey that revealed what Pew termed “Mixed Views of Government Regulation.” But “mixed,” in this case, means anti-regulatory in matters of ideology and pro-regulatory in practice. Asked whether they believed that government regulation of business was necessary to protect the public or that such regulation usually does more harm than good, just 40 percent answered that regulation was necessary, while 52 percent said it did more harm than good.

But then came the specifics. Pew asked whether federal regulations should be strengthened, kept as is, or reduced in particular areas. When it came to food production and packaging, 53 percent said strengthen, 36 percent said keep as is, and just 7 percent said reduce. In environmental safeguards, the breakdown was 50 percent strengthen, 36 percent keep as is, 17 percent reduce. In car safety and efficiency, the split was 45, 42, and 9 percent. In workplace safety and health, it was 41, 45, and 10 percent. And with prescription drugs, it was 39, 33, and 20 percent.

This is hardly a new discovery—public opinion polls have shown similar results for decades. In general, Americans dislike government regulations, but they want stronger regulations in specific areas.

The Overreaches of the Regulatory State

Meyerson thinks that this is hypocrisy and that Americans are “in denial.” Meyerson misses the point:
when Americans are directly effected by regulations, they oppose them. But it’s easy for Americans to want those “other guys” to be regulated. And in fact, the numbers are not that heavily weighted towards more regulation. A plurality thinks that there’s too much regulation, a slightly larger plurality thinks that there are two little. A smaller plurality thinks that the amount of regulations are fine the way they are. Together, the number of people who want fewer regulations or the status quo outnumber those who want to expand the regulatory state.

And as the regulatory state grows and the state and federal level, we will likely see the number of people wanting to roll back government regulation rise. Take these examples:

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

Imagine what will happen when something like that becomes commonplace. It’s one thing for a government regulator to go after “big corporations” with stupid and destructive regulations. But the second those stupid and destructive regulations effect the average American, it will be time to break out the tar and feathers.

And the school-lunch police aren’t the only example of regulatory insanity going on in America today.As one Nevada farmer found out, the regulatory state doesn’t give a damn about common sense or your rights:

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can. Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food. We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.) Again, a call to Susan and another negative response. Okay, so let me get this right. So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?! Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.

There was nothing wrong with the food, other than it didn’t meet the purely bureaucratic whims of the health inspector. And this wasn’t one deranged idiot going off on a whim: the state health inspector was constantly on the phone with her superior, who not only ratified each decision, but was apparently calling the shots.

This is the face of government regulation in America: it’s not about protecting people, it’s about power and control. Was the state protecting that elementary school student from anything? No, the options she was later given were worse than what her parents had packed. Was there any danger to the guests of that Nevada farmer? No, but because the government doesn’t want any deviation from their narrow rules, they acted like tinpot dictators and made the farmers throw away the food and pour bleach on it.

In a sane world, the people responsible for those decisions would be fired immediately. But this is not a sane world. It’s a world where too much power has been abdicated, too much common sense abandoned, and too much authority ceded ever upwards. And that is why Americans hate regulation—and as more Americans experience this kind of rampant idiocy, the number of Americans who see the regulatory state as the enemy will only increase.

And when Americans say that there are too many regulations on small business, they are absolutely right. Take for example what happened to a small business trying to operate a beer garden in Arlington, Virginia. Government bureaucrats at the local level are ofter just as rapacious and just as foolhardy as their compatriots on the state and federal level. For another example, watch this video outlining the many needless hurdles a small business owner has to go through to open an ice cream parlor in San Francisco.

We talk about how important it is to foster the growth of small businesses and how critical it is to get Americans working again. But as the above examples demonstrate, our system of massive government overregulation costs jobs and takes thousands of dollars out of the economy and into the hands of the government apparatchiks who administer this maddening system.

So yes, it’s easy for the average American to say that someone else should be regulated—given that the media has turned big corporations into mustache-twirling villains at every opportunity it’s no wonder that a plurality support more regulation. But when Americans look at the issue of regulation holistically, they see the reality that regulations hurt more people than they protect.

Meyerson thinks that the problem with America is that government isn’t powerful enough. But a government powerful enough to make BP, GE, or any other company do whatever government wants is a government that is powerful enough to make you do whatever government wants. And that doesn’t even get into a discussion of regulatory capture. Big business doesn’t hate government regulation—they’ve learned to use it as a cudgel to beat down competition before they can rise up to challenge the established players. That beer garden in Virginia can’t afford an army of lawyers and lobbyists to negotiate with the regulators—but a chain restaurant can. What is the result of this nonsensical regulatory overreach? Fewer small business and more powerful big ones.

American’s aren’t hypocrits—at least not in the way Meyerson accuses them of being. Rather, Americans need to understand that the same sort of regulatory insanity that causes schoolchildren to be given chicken nuggets or farmers to have to throw away perfectly good food is no less idiotic and no less harmful when it’s applied to big corporations.

Reagan At 100

This Sunday marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President and the “Great Communicator.” Reagan’s Presidency still shapes American politics even though he left office over 20 years ago. Conservatives continue to idolize him, and even liberals (including President Obama) try to take on his mantle from time to time.

But why? What is it that made Reagan stand out?

The Great Communicator

Reagan had one of the rarest gifts: the ability to take complex political philosophy and communicate it clearly and effectively. Take Reagan’s 1964 masterwork A Time for Choosing:

Even though this speech is over 40 years old, it still stands the test of time. It encapsulates the heart of conservatism as a political philosophy in a way that is clear and straightforward. Reagan had a singular talent for taking complex political ideas and distilling them down to their essentials. Few politicians have such a gift. He didn’t need to rely on the cheap political tricks that have become a standard in political rhetoric. He was a master political communicator, and there are only a few who come close.

But what sets Reagan apart from the rest was that he was not only a great communicator, but he was a man of ideas. Far from the “amiable dunce” that was portrayed in the media, Reagan’s voluminous writings and notes from his radio addresses show that Reagan had a mind like a steel trap. He was fascinated with the details of public policy and how policies effected everyday Americans. From health care to taxes, Reagan spend years studying the details of public policy.

And there is a lesson there: Reagan did his homework. It’s not enough to be a skilled communicator: in order to be a truly effective President, you have to know the issues. Reagan had years of experience: as Governor of California, as a radio host, and as political candidate. He was able to explain the issues so clearly because he understood the issues himself in depth.

The Liberator

But ultimately, Reagan was more than a political icon. He was one of the instrumental figures that helped end the Cold War. It’s easy to forget that even in the 1980s, many in the West thought that the Soviet Union would be with us for decades longer. But Reagan spent much of his life fighting the evils of Soviet Communism. He had the moral integrity to call the Soviet Union what it was: an evil empire. Just as now, the foreign policy establishment didn’t have the courage to stand up for principles of human rights. But Reagan pushed on regardless.

And this tenacity helped fell an empire:

When Reagan told Gorbechev to “tear down this wall” it sent shock waves through the Iron Curtain. Ironically, the State Department, and even some in Reagan’s own Cabinet thought that those words should have been removed. But Reagan insisted they remain, and a seminal moment in Cold War history was born.

It isn’t fair to say that Reagan singlehandedly won the Cold War. But he was instrumental in the process of tearing down the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union may have collapsed from its own internal contradictions—Reagan was right that Marxism-Leninism would be consigned to the ash heap of history—but it could have lingered on for decades.

The Optimistic American

But ultimately what made Ronald Wilson Reagan such a lasting figure in American politics is that he embodied the optimism of a nation. He saw America as that shining city on hill, and it came through in every speech. Reagan wasn’t a cynic who saw political power as its own end. He wasn’t another self-serving politician. He was an optimist who believed that America’s best days were still ahead.

And that is why Reagan is remembered so fondly today, even by his former critics.

Today, more than ever, we need leadership possessed of Reagan’s optimism and spirit. In a time when many Americans are worried about the state of the economy, the state of the world, and feeling like the American dream is slipping away, Americans are looking for someone who still sees this country as that shining city on the hill. They are looking for someone who still sees America’s best days ahead—and for whom that isn’t just an applause line.

There are few in politics that combine Reagan’s essential optimism, his knowledge of the issues, and his ability to reach out to the average American. Many have been called the next Reagan, but so far none have lived up to the reputation of the 40th President of the United States. Reagan’s cowboy boots are not easy to fill.

One hundred years after his birth, Reagan remains the paragon of modern Presidents, an almost legendary figure. But we should be careful not to let Reagan the legend overwhelm Reagan the man. There is much to be learned from Reagan’s career and Presidency, but in the end future leader should not ask “what would Reagan do” but “how would a leader like Reagan apply enduring principles to the problems of today?” (Which doesn’t exactly fit on a bumper sticker.)

So, even though it’s late, happy birthday to President Reagan. May his optimism inspire the next generation of American politicians to carry forward the principles that he defended in an amazing political life.

Reading Conservatively

Five Books, a great and very interesting bookblog has a list of the five best conservative books as rated by some luminaries of the conservative movement. The list is what you’d expect—F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom came out as number one, followed closely by Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and De Toqueville’s Democracy in America.

But this got me thinking—a dangerous thing indeed! What would be my top five list of the best conservative books of all time?

So here are my rankings for the top five books on conservatism. Of course, some of them are part of the classic canon of conservative thought, but others a little more modern and accessible. After all, as important as Edmund Burke’s political and social thought is to the principles of conservatism, it’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d load onto your Kindle for a long weekend.

  1. The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk

    This is not easy weekend reading, but Russell Kirk’s book is one of the most important works for those wanting to understand modern American conservatism. It brings together some of the biggest luminaries like Edmund Burke and John Adams as well as some brilliant but obscure thinkers and weaves them into the foundation of a lasting ideology.

    If you are a conservative, you need to read this book to understand what the basic principles of conservatism really are. If you are not a conservative, this book is essential to understanding what conservatism is actually about. It is a seminal work. This, along with William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, are the foundational works of modern American conservatism. It is a master’s class in conservative political thought in one volume, and well worth reading and digesting.

  2. Parliament of Whores by P.J. O’Rourke

    This is one of my favorite books, one of the books I’d take with me to a hypothetical desert island, a book that I could read again and again. It is a trenchant and uproariously funny satire of American politics, and even though it dates from the early days of the Clinton Administration, it’s still relevant to today’s politics. If you were going to give one book to a friend to try to convert them to conservatism, this would be the book. It’s accessible, funny, and does a great job of explaining why conservatives believe what they do.

  3. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton and Rose Friedman

    Another classic, and also very accessible. Milton Friedman, of course, is a giant among conservative economists, and this is a very rare work&madsh;a book about economics that’s easy to read and easy to understand. Milton Friedman ties the concepts of individual liberty and economic liberty together and makes a persuasive case for why they are truly the same thing.

  4. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak

    But what about the poor? What is the moral case for free markets? This book is the Theory of Moral Sentiments to Friedman’s Wealth of Nations. So many critics of conservatism accuse conservatives of not caring about the poor, of not caring about others, etc. But this book explains why these arguments miss the mark. Michael Novak is a theologian, and he approaches the topic of capitalism from a Christian perspective, but his moral insights are universal. Conservatives believe in economic freedom because a state that respects human rights will inevitably be capitalist—because democratic capitalism is the only system of government and economics that truly respect human rights. If that argument seems bizarre to you, then you need to read this book.

  5. Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

    I had to include at least one novel, and this is a largely-forgotten classic. So many political potboilers owe their existence to this book. It’s a tautly-written thriller that explores the inner workings of the U.S. Senate in the days before JFK. So many novels owe their existence to Drury—he is the forerunner of thriller writers like Tom Clancy and Dan Brown. Advise and Consent is the story of a President who nominates a Communist agent as Secretary of State, a conflicted gay Senator, and plenty of backroom wheeling and dealing in the Senate. It’s a book that’s over 50 years old, but still holds up quite well—perhaps even better now than in 1959.

Passing Blame To The Wrong Party

Daniel Larison, of the paleo-con American Conservative takes a look at the woes of the GOP and the conservative movement and puts the blame on national-security conservatives.

It wasn’t that the Bush Administration went on an orgy of spending that made a mockery of conservative principles, or that social conservatives had a message that tended to alienate rather than include, it’s that the the strong national security message of the GOP caused them to lose:

Like their short-sighted cheerleading for a “surge” in Iraq, which failed on its own terms, and their subsequent carping this year that the Pentagon budget increase is too small, the mainstream right’s apologies for torture are not only morally bankrupt but also divorced from the reality of the intelligence, or lack thereof, these methods provided. Much as liberals needed their internal critics to challenge the welfare status quo over the last three decades, conservatism desperately needs similar internal dissent concerning the warfare state. But there is almost none.

One reason for the lack of dissent and accountability is that the majority of the GOP was deeply implicated in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, the signature failure of national security conservatives. To a large extent, the party has defined itself around the ideological fictions used to justify and continue the war long after the country had turned against it. This process was aided by the disappearance of antiwar Republicans in Congress. Never numerous in the first place, most have been replaced by Democrats during the past two cycles.

Now, this argument is wrong, but it isn’t fundamentally wrong. It is wrong on the facts. The surge did work, it worked better than had been expected, and as a testament to how well it worked, the Obama Administration has not disavowed it. President Obama, were the Iraq issue as toxic as it is claimed, could have withdrawn all U.S. troops ASAP. Instead, Obama’s war strategy is not that much different than what a President McCain’s strategy would have been—a gradual and conditional withdrawal over the next year to two years. Moreover, the Obama Administration is hardly rejecting the idea of a hawkish foreign policy. During the debates, Obama needled McCain about getting bin Laden. Hardly the act of someone who wants to push for a more restrained war. Obama has been sending more drones into Pakistan, even though such actions may be dangerous. Rather than de-escalation, Obama plans to put more troops into Afghanistan and has signaled a muscular U.S. foreign policy.

The truth of the matter is, doves don’t win elections in the U.S. Muscular foreign policy is widely accepted by both political parties in the United States. The idea that the GOP lost because they embraced “hegemony” is something only someone inside the intellectual bubble of academia could take seriously.

Moreover, Larison divides the GOP into three wings: social, fiscal, and national security conservatives. The reality is that both social and fiscal conservatives also tend to be national security conservatives. There isn’t a separate wing of conservatives that believe in a strong national defense but not social issues or fiscal ones. Rather, both socially-minded and fiscally-minded conservatives tend to be interested in national security issues. That’s why it’s not that surprising that Evangelicals tend to be supportive of “torture” against suspected terrorists—there is no hard and fast line between social conservatives and national security conservatives. The Reagan coalition was largely built around national security issues, and a strong national defense has been one of the common issues shared by a vast majority of Republicans and conservatives.

There is, however, an element of truth here as well. The GOP lost in large part due to the war in Iraq, a war that was never convincingly explained by the President and suffered from poor management from 2003–07. The “surge” was the product of the Administration finally listening to the people fighting the war rather than dictating from the top down. President Bush never convincingly explained why we were in Iraq so long and why the sacrifice of American blood and treasure was worth it. There was truth in the adage that we were “fighting them over there rather than over here,” but that logic was never followed through.

The GOP has many problems, but “interventionist” foreign policy is not one of them. The Obama Administration continues to play lip service to the idea of a more “humble” foreign policy while still engaging in interventions abroad. Isolationism has not played a major role in U.S. politics since the end of World War II, and for good reason. America’s superpower status demands world leadership, and we can’t have one without the other. If the GOP becomes a policy that abrogates its positions on a muscular U.S. foreign policy, they will lose. While Iraq hurt the GOP in 2006 and 2008, the GOP’s foreign policy positions helped re-elect President Bush in 2004 when Kerry’s weakness on national security proved to be fatal.

The real lesson here is that if you’re going to fight a war, fight it well and keep the American people fully engaged in the conflict. To argue that the lesson conservatives should learn from the last election cycles is to abandon a deeply-held and popular principle of conservatism and embrace a discredited and dangerous isolationism is to learn exactly the wrong lesson.

Winning on Principles

The New York Times has a look at the ideological battle within the Republican Party as the GOP deals with their drubbings in 2006 and 2008 and the Spector defection. Meanwhile, David Frum offers his own suggestions on rebuilding the party.

Everyone looks at the GOP’s problems through the lens of “conservatives” versus “moderates.” That is the wrong way to look at the issue: what this battle really is about is “principles” versus “politics.” The moderates want the GOP to play towards what they see as the political “center”—or the left. The principle-minded factions wants the GOP to stand on a bedrock of principle.

The moderates have a point. If you want to win as a party, you go where the votes are. It’s classic Anthony Downs, the voters fall along a bell curve and the party that can capture the most votes in the middle will win the election.

But the problem is that if the choice is between the Democrats and the Democrats-Lite, why not vote for the real thing? If Republicans start advocating for more government control, they lose the conservative and libertarian wings of the party and end up losing anyway.

There has to be room for both. The GOP cannot win by turning its back on its principles, but it has to be able to advocate for those principles. Being the best conservative in the world does absolutely nothing unless the GOP cannot get others to understand the importance of that stand.

That is the problem with the GOP today. They have no ability to connect with the average voter. They’ve lost the popular imagination, they’ve lost their political “brand” and there is no message coming from the GOP today. Even when they do have a point, they are so ham-handed in making it that they end up hurting each other.

All is not lost. Obama is a mule—a rare character that comes out of nowhere, establishes power, but leaves no lasting coattails. Obama is a rare individual, which makes him dangerous to the GOP, but the more the Democratic Party becomes a cult of personality, the worse off they are. Obama becomes largely irrelevant no later than 2016, and by then the sheen will be off. If the GOP hasn’t gotten their act together by then, they’ll have gone the way of the Whigs. Now is the time that the GOP needs to regroup and experiment.

That is what the GOP ultimately needs to do. They can’t be afraid of failure. They’ve already failed, now is the time to be bold. Yes, the GOP needs to stand on its principles, but what they really need to do is win on those principles. That means trying everything they can to advocate for their values and seeing what sticks. As badly as Michael Steele’s first weeks on the job has been, at least someone is trying new tactics.

Politics is cyclical, and the Democrats are already sowing the seeds of their own downfall. They will grow complacent and arrogant (and have already), and the GOP will get their opening. Exploiting that weakness will take time and trial. But the Republican Party must learn to stand for something and be able to make that stand one that others will join. That is a tall order, but it is the way politics work in America. Politics is cyclical, and any claim of permanent Democratic majority status is as premature now as claims of a permanent Republican majority in 2002 were then.

Why Small Government Is Better For The Little Guy

Hardvard economist Edward L. Glaeser has a fascinating and provocative piece on what he calls “small government egalitarianism”:

In the 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on a “New Freedom,” opposing Teddy Roosevelt’s big-government Progressivism. While Roosevelt wanted the government to manage monopolies, Wilson wanted trust-busting and less protectionism. Wilson perceptively noted the dangers of too much government: “If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?”

Wilson’s warning could not be more prescient. Look at the “stimulus” bill snaking its way through Congress. It is positively loaded with pork for special interests, handout for big donors, and only a fraction of it will go to the sort of crucial infrastructure projects that were supposed to be its very purpose. The “stimulus” bill could not be a better example of why Big Government hurts the poor. Even setting aside the issue of whether government spending creates jobs at all, this bill certainly won’t put enough people to work to make even a dent in the skyrocketing unemployment lines. Instead, billions of dollars will go to the politically well-connected and unscrupulous. The difference between Bill Blogojevich and most of Congress is that Blagojevich got caught.

Small government is good government. Small government helps the American worker because it does not allow the kind of concentrations of power that we have now. Why do big corporations spend billions on lobbying Congress to tilt the law in their favor? Because Congress has the power to tilt the laws in their favors. The reason why the Founders deliberately created a limited government of enumerated powers is to prevent the kind of naked interest-buying that we see now. The more power you give the government, the more incentives there are for government to use their power for their own advantage.

With Congress’ approval at a historic low, the idea that the case for small government is no longer worth making seems absurd. If anything, now is the best time to push a vision for a government that is smaller, more responsible, and more accountable. That such a government would ultimately be more equitable is a beneficial side-effect.

Politically, the Republicans should be doing what Sen. McCain threatened to do and “make famous” every single pork-barrel project in the “stimulus” bill. The message here is simple: tens of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs every day and Congress is paying off its campaign contributors with pork. Americans should be disgusted by the performance of Congress right now. The myth that this trillion-dollar boondoggle is anything but a case of Congress acting like robber barons of old should be laid to rest. Congress wants to claim that they’re “creating jobs”, but instead they’re giving more and more cash to the same politically well-connected actors.

This is precisely why small government is so crucial to having a more equitable society. If Congress were only allowed to spend money on truly national projects there would be no ability to send pork to campaign contributors. Big Government does not produce an more equitable society, it rewards those who side with the politically powerful. Small government benefits the people because it doesn’t allow Congress to game the system to benefit their own interests.

Take a simple but common example. When new regulations come down from all the federal agencies, have John and Jane Doe on Main Street had any opportunity to shape that new rule? Of course not, even if they compulsively wade through each daily edition of the massive Federal Register to see what rules are being proposed the most they can realistically do is send a strongly worded letter. Can Washington interest groups shape that rule? They pay lobbyists great amounts of money to do exactly that. Can business interests shape that rule? Absolutely, and they have their own army of lobbyists for just that purpose. So is it any shock that John and Jane Doe are under-represented in the process?

It’s a myth that “big business” and powerful special interests love small government and hate regulation. Why should they? They have the clout in Congress to make sure that the regulation benefits them. They can use their political connections to steer millions of taxpayer dollars to them. They can benefit from the access they have to Congress and even the White House. They know that P.J. O’Rourke’s great maxim is correct: “when buying and selling is legislated, then the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.” The bigger and more intrusive government is, the higher the barriers to new competitors. Look at the most heavily-regulated markets in this country: they tend to be dominated by a handful of large players who can use their access to lobby government to keep those regulations in place. They benefit the most from the regulatory state, and they have every interest in seeing Big Government stay big.

If you’re a little player, like a “Mom and Pop” operation, forget it. The costs of regulatory compliance are too high. If you can’t afford the lobbyists, you can’t play the game, and you get squashed.

That is why we need smaller, less intrusive, and more accountable government. We need to reduce the incentives for the big players to game the system and increase the chances for small players to enter the market. That way the benefits go to the best and the brightest, not the most politically well-connected.

Here is where liberalism fundamentally gets it wrong: government regulation of the market will never produce equality. It will only benefit the big players. If we want a more egalitarian and equitable society we cannot put in place barriers that keep the small players out. Glaeser is right, and the case for small-government egalitarianism is one that needs to be made now more than ever.

Bush’s Legacy

Tomorrow, George W. Bush rides off into history. The left is breathing a sigh of relief, their Emmanuel Goldstein is gone (although soon they will find another). Bush leaves an unpopular President—but so did Harry S. Truman. In many ways, Bush and Truman have had similar trajectories. Both began their terms in a time of war, and both made unpopular decisions. Like Truman, Bush will likely be vindicated by history. The narrow-mindedness and ravenous partisanship of Bush’s critics will become less and less relevant as time goes on, and a more fair-minded exploration of Bush’s legacy can begin.

George W. Bush has been systematically turned into a monster by the media. Bush the man has been obscured.

As a point of disclosure, I am only partially a fan of the President. His performance after September 11 was a masterstroke. The decision to invade Iraq was the correct one based on what was known at that point in history. At the same time, Bush’s second term was a disaster. When the President nominated the comically unsuitable Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, it was clear that Bush’s instincts for loyalty had become a flaw rather than a benefit. It was Gen. Petraeus and Sen. McCain that pushed for the surge against a recalcitrant Rumsfeld and Bush. The surge is what won the war in Iraq, and Bush only belatedly endorsed it. The Katrina disaster should not have been laid at Bush’s feet, but putting Michael Brown as the head of FEMA was unquestionably bad judgment. Bush’s tax cuts helped restore the U.S. economy and created millions of jobs. His wasteful spending and statist policies hurt the economy.

Where Bush has failed the most is where he abandoned conservative principles. The left wants to paint him as a radical conservative activist. The truth could not be more radically different. Bush dramatically expanded the size and scope of the federal government. He pushed for a massive increase in entitlement spending under Medicare Part D. He dramatically increased federal spending at nearly all levels. Hardly a fan of deregulation, it was under Bush’s watch that the ill-considered Sarbanes-Oxley bill was passed into law, a bill which dramatically increased the regulation of business. The picture of George W. Bush as laissez-faire radical could not be further from reality.

At the same time, Bush’s tax cuts helped keep the 2001-2003 recession from deepening. They helped America create millions of new jobs. Without them, it’s likely that Bush would never have been reelected. Those tax cuts put money back into the hands of working Americans. While Bush’s economic policies were flawed at best, it was not because of the tax cuts, but because of too much emphasis on state action.

The war in Iraq remains controversial, and will for some time. It seems quite possible that the Hussein regime systematically misled the entire world into believing that they had WMDS. It seems quite possible that the Hussein regime was lying to itself about what it really had. That is unsurprising for an dysfunctional autocracy like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. What did not happen is some sinister conspiracy to “lie” about WMDs to settle some personal score or gain access to oil. The Bush Administration weighed what evidence it had and made a decision based on that evidence. The evidence turned out to be deeply flawed. But the image of a Bush Administration hell-bent on war that was discarding mountains of contradictory evidence has no basis in reality. If Leon Panetta tells President Obama that a country has WMDs and terrorist ties and there is a “slam dunk” case for it, the same principle should apply. A President should never give the benefit of the doubt to this nation’s enemies. A President’s job, first and foremost, is to act on the evidence available and act decisively. President Bush did that, and President Obama should do the same.

This war against Islamist terror will continue. The supposed excesses of this war have led to an America that has not suffered another attack, no less a greater one than that visited upon us on September 11, 2001. We are not living in a fascist dictatorship, the Constitution has hardly been shredded, and our civil liberties remain. The hysteria and fear over this war came less from the President and more from his critics. Yet one unassailable fact remains: we have not been attacked since that fateful day. The plans of terrorists have been foiled, their leaders captured or killed, their hideouts destroyed, their money supply imperiled. Modern terrorism is sui generis, and the Bush Administration responded not be repeating the failed methods of the past, but by treating it as the serious threat it was. Did they always get it right? Of course not, but no Presidency could have been expected to. In facing an evolving and dangerous threat, this Presidency did what it could to keep this country safe. After the attacks, it seemed almost assured that we would be attacked again, and harder. Today, those attacks almost seem like a distant memory. We have the vigilance of the Bush Administration to thank for that. For all the flaws of their approach, it worked.

George W. Bush has been systematically turned into a monster by the media. Bush the man has been obscured. Yet George W. Bush is hardly an unfeeling monster. He is not the caricature that he has been made to be. That he has not defended himself is curious, but perhaps he does not think it his role to do so. Instead, the real George W. Bush is a complex character, motivated by an abiding sense of loyalty and faith, but also harmed by those same instincts. Hardly the unfeeling party-boy of the media’s funhouse-mirror image, the real President Bush is the man who would go to Walter Reed and comfort injured vets, rarely making a media event out of it. If we are to learn anything from the past eight years, we must first move beyond the crude image of President Bush painted by an ideologically homogenous media and see the real George W. Bush.

Sadly, it will likely be years before that happens. But history will judge the 43rd President of the United States with far less ideological rancor than there is now, and when his legacy is remembered it won’t be through the distorted lens of a partisan media, but with the hindsight of history. With that hindsight, the legacy of George W. Bush may be far different than what we would think. Like Truman, Bush may be remembered as a President who did what was right, but not what was popular.

On Buckley And Obama

There’s a brouhaha over Christopher Buckley leaving National Review after his endorsement of Barack Obama. Buckley, like his father, is a brilliant and witty writer, but it seems hardly surprising that he’s getting such a reaction from conservatives. Buckley’s sin isn’t heresy, it’s shallowness. His endorsement of Obama hardly makes a conservative case for Obama. His critique of McCain is that somehow McCain has become “inauthentic” and his case for Obama is that he has a “world class intellect.”

Plenty of other wrongheaded individuals were brilliantly smart—and even though Sen. Obama is unquestionably smart and capable, he represents the antithesis of everything conservatism stands for. Conservatism is an ideology that desires limited government—Obama supports an even more dramatic expansion of government that what we have seen in the last eight years. Conservatism rejects cults of political personality—and yet Obama is skating by largely on the force of his personalty than the substance of his ideals. Conservatism rejects immenatizing the eschaton—that might as well be Obama’s campaign slogan.

That Mr. Buckley is so haughty in his folly demonstrates that while he has his father’s wit, he appears to have lacked his judgement.

This argument demonstrates exactly why Buckley’s judgement is so mistaken:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

If Buckley’s judgement is incorrect, and Obama is exactly what every bit of his record suggests—an unrepentant and unabashed leftist—what would the result be for the country?

Conservatives made the mistake of putting their trust in a politician rather than in their ideas over the past eight years. Making the same mistake again won’t be any better for the country.

Buckley ends his piece with “As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.” God save us from such poor logic.