Specter’s Pyrrhic Self-Preservation

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is now officially becoming a Democrat. There isn’t much of a shock to this—Specter has always been an erstwhile Republican, and he would have lost in the Pennsylvania GOP primary to Pat Toomey. Specter’s argument that somehow the GOP has moved too far to the right for his liking is really just political cover—this is all about his own political self-preservation.

The problem for Specter is that there’s a good chance that he won’t win the Democratic primary. As NRO’s Jim Geraghty notes, why would the Democrats want a former Republican with a lifetime ACU rating in the 40s who opposes the union-backed “Employee Free Choice Act” and has ties with President Bush? Pennsylvania Democrats don’t need Arlen Specter nearly as much as Arlen Specter needs Pennsylvania Democrats.

The GOP should have gotten rid of Specter in 2004 when they had the chance. Specter’s claim that the GOP has moved too far to the right is based largely on his vote on the stimulus bill—which is opposed by far more than just Republicans. The GOP needs to remake its image, and jettisoning the old guard is probably better in the long run. What is needed now is a party that is more self-confident in their ideology and in their policies. The GOP right now is at war with “moderates” who barely identify with Republican principles and hard-liners who have failed to identify with the American people. That’s not a good position for a party to be in, especially not with a Democratic Congress and a President who could be caught on national TV greedily consuming a mewling infant and still get a 60% approval rating.

The GOP needs to get its act together and fast. Doing so without excess baggage is probably better over the long term, even if it is a huge problem over the short term. Specter was not the sort of person who could motivate the GOP base or the American people. His party switch hurts the Republicans in the short term, to be sure. But it is quite possible than even this Hail Mary play won’t be enough for Specter to keep his political career afloat.

Some People Just Don’t Get It

Bill Maher flaunts his ignorance once again over the issue of the Tea Party protests. Like many who live in a comfortable cocoon of left-wing orthodoxy, Maher fails to understand that the reaction to the Obama Administration is about matters of substance. Maher rants:

t’s been a week now, and I still don’t know what those “tea bag” protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who’s going to win “American Idol.” But it wasn’t tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that’s when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because … well, nobody knows. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Even though they’re not quite sure what “it” is. But they know they’re fed up with “it,” and that “it” has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

Mr. Maher, here is what “it” is, in a way that even you can understand:

This is what President Obama is doing to this country. Former President Bush was fiscally irresponsible enough, but what Obama is doing is sheer madness. Trying to use government to fix the economy will not work. The bailouts are failing. The housing market is still in the toilet. Lenders are still holding back. If that isn’t a reason to be worried about the future, then it is time to pull your head out of the sand and look at the numbers.

When it was politically convenient, liberals pretended to care about the effect of massive deficits on the future of America. Now that Obama is in office, who cares about a few trillion here or there?

The Tea Party movement is not a partisan movement. There is great anger at the GOP for not leading on the issues of our time and allowing government to grow out of control during their tenure in office. This is a protest based on principles: in fact, it is a protest based on the classically republican principles that the United States should have a limited federal government of enumerated powers.

Maher, like many, think that just because Obama won an election, that means his policies are 1) popular and 2) right for the country. Neither are true. Winning an election doesn’t vindicate your policy prescriptions now any more than it did in 2004. Obama’s ham-handed handling of the economy, his Quixotic campaign against the Bush Administration on torture, and his constant prostrations before America’s enemies from Iran to Venezuela all demonstrate how radical he truly is. His popularity is being supported by a fawning media and a public that is hardly paying attention. Obama’s gotten the same honeymoon that most new Presidents get. But in time, his star will fade, as all Presidents do.

When that happens, the arrogance of Mr. Maher may come back to bite him. Politics in America is cyclical, and given the radical course that President Obama has set for this country, it may well be the Tea Parties that get the last laugh.

What Steele Means

Marc Ambinder has a perceptive take on the election of Michael Steele, the first black Chairman of the Republican Party:

Did Republicans choose Steele as a token? Some RNC members will think so, as will many skeptical Democrats. But Steele won this thing by himself. The RNC is a fractious, uncooperative bunch. And Steele patiently politicked his way through six ballots. Just a few hours ago, my correspondent Will DiNovi saw Steele and Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell face to face in the hall. “I know we’ve disagreed on a lot of things,” Steele was telling him. Blackwell waited a little — then he endorsed Steele.

Steele’s election won’t help the party attrack black voters immediately, but if Steele sets the right tone, he could help the party compete for them in the (way) future. As GOP strategists have always known, and noted, somewhat dyspeptically, it’s white suburban voters, particularly women, who are responsive to a diversity message. The RNC isn’t diverse yet; only five black delegates were chosen to attend the national convention. Steele was disgusted by that. It prompted him to run.

Steele’s election is a good thing for the GOP. What the party needs is a transfusion of new blood, and it needs it now. The GOP has painted itself into being a regional party of the West and the South. Granted, those are the parts of the country that are growing, but that’s not enough to win. Steele’s ambitious plan to make the Republican Party competitive in the Northeast is what’s needed. The GOP cannot cede any territory to the Democrats. Republicans should be making inroads with socially conservative black voters in the inner cities, but they have never really bothered to make that outreach. Steele seems likely to change that.

What the GOP should not do is abandon social conservatism. Yes, it should abandon the form of social conservatism that they have now, which is reactionary and offputting. Instead of preaching hellfire and damnation, the GOP needs to recast social issues as kitchen table cultural issues. The GOP approach has been to allow themselves to be painted as bigots—and sometimes with just reason—rather than cast social issues as issues that affect the average voter. People don’t care about the effect things have on some amorphous “society” they care about raising their kids. If the GOP wants to stay relevant, they can’t become a shadow of the Democrats and abandon their values, but they must make those values relevant to voters. Again, Steele is more likely to get this than most.

Perhaps Steele will fail. However, what is important is that the Republican Party not remain stagnant. That is a sure path to failure. The Republican “brand” is tarnished and is in bad need of reformation. The same people who got the party into this mess will not get us out. Thankfully, Steele is a reformer with a great deal of vision—and vision and reform are precisely what the GOP needs.

Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

Sen. Ted Stevens, perennial embarrassment and convicted felon, has narrowly lost his Senate seat. Had the GOP been sensible, they would have asked him to resign—and it was that lack of sense that has contributed to the waning fortunes of the GOP over the past few years.

There is no excuse for corruption. Not cleaning house was a major mistake. Losing Stevens’ seat puts the Democrats closer to a filibuster-proof majority, but the Republicans were fools to rely on him in the first place.

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

Via the incomparable James Lileks comes a map that should send chills down the spine of every Republican:

A county-by-county map of the 2008 election results.

Even though this election was relatively close, the map does not show that McCain did very well in spreading his message nationwide. The Republican Party cannot hope to win as a regional party any more than the Democrats could. The task for the coming years will be in crafting a Republican message that can resonate beyond the Bible Belt of the country.

The good news is that this country remains a center-right country. There are still more self-described conservatives than liberals, and the center remains persuadable. If Obama over-reaches—and with a strident liberal Congress that is quite likely, the Republicans can come back again. This isn’t necessarily a realigning election that presages a Democratic majority for years to come any more than 2004 was the same. The normal political cycle of realigning elections in this country seems to be dramatically shortened thanks to mass media and technology. Republicans shouldn’t be consigning themselves to defeat yet.

But we have to admit that this map shows a massive problem. The strategies of exploiting cultural wedge issues and national security won’t work anymore. The Karl Rove playbook worked in 2000, 2002, and 2004. It didn’t in 2006 or 2008, and it won’t work in 2010 and 2012. The Republican Party needs to broaden itself and admit that it has a problem reaching out to the center.

Granted, the 2008 result was largely due to two factors: President Bush’s unpopularity and Barack Obama’s immense political skill. Those factors aren’t going to repeat themselves again—and in 2012 it could be a skilled Republican like Bobby Jindal versus an unpopular President Obama. But even if that is true, the problems with the Republican Party are structural, and need to be fixed.

I don’t pretend to have the right answer. There’s going to be gallons of ink and gigabytes of blog posts figuring out where to go next. What I do know is that something has got to change, and the Republican Party will have to adapt to a changing political climate. That does not have to mean compromising on our values—Republicans can win in places like the Northeast without compromising on key values. But it’s also going to require the GOP to do more than try to use cultural wedge issues to their partisan advantage.

In a democracy, parties can and should win and lose. Politics is cyclical, and the Republican Party has done much to put themselves in this position. The goal moving forward is to rebuild the party for a post-Bush world. There can be a Republican renaissance, but only if the party and its constituents are willing to make it happen.

Examining The McCain Defeat

In the aftermath of the defeat of the McCain campaign, Republicans are trying to figure out not only what went wrong, but what to do in the future. This is a conversation that is a long time coming. From 2000 on, the GOP was unified around George W. Bush. From about 2005 on, Bush was as toxic as a mortgage-backed security. Political movements based around single individuals do not tend to last, and by hitching their wagons to Bush, the Republican Party sowed the seeds of their own downfall. (Note that the Democrats are doing the same with Obama now. Sic transit gloria mundi.)

The failure of the McCain campaign must be tied to the failure of the Bush Presidency. He fought on a completely uneven playing field. The media was in the tank for Obama, and the Democratic machine was energized. But that doesn’t excuse the mistakes of the McCain campaign. They had the right message in the “Country First” theme, but they never really used it effectively. McCain could have won, but it would have taken an incredibly smart campaign to have done it. Instead, the McCain campaign went for the tried-and-true techniques of Bush 2000 and 2004—in a political climate that could not have been more different.

How McCain Could Have Won

The first step that a candidate has to do is understand the political climate. McCain never really had a handle on it. The American public was furious with Congress. Congress’ approval ratings were at the level usually associated with used-car salesmen and dirty diapers. The “politics as usual” of the last 8 years was creating the perfect climate for someone to run against the Beltway.

Obama was “change.” McCain should have been “reform.” With an incredibly unpopular Congress, McCain could have easily ran as the candidate who would clean up government. That’s why the Palin pick was, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the right pick. But the McCain camp never really used her in the right way. Their “maverick” message was nice, but it wasn’t substantive enough. They let the media paint the picture of Sarah Palin, and they lost control of the only one truly brilliant tactical choice they made. The Palin situation could have saved McCain, and it gave him his best numbers, but they never built on the momentum she generated.

When the financial crisis hit, what did McCain do? He ran to the Beltway, and pushed through another pork-laden Beltway deal. I agree with Todd Zywicki that the bailout was the moment where McCain cruised to failure. It undercut McCain’s credentials as a reformer. The “suspension” of his campaign never went anywhere, and McCain never capitalized on it in the way he should have. It made him look panicky and indecisive, which only made Obama’s too-cool-for-school demeanor more attractive.

What should McCain have done? I think the idea of a suspension was not played right. He should not have suspended his campaign, but gone to Washington. He should have demanded that Congress pass a clean bailout with no pork but lots of accountability. He should have stood against both the Congress and the President and opposed the final bill. He should have clearly and convincingly said that his choice to do those things was based on a rejection of the usual politics in Washington. If the bailout passed (which it would have), he should have continued to use it in every speech as a sign about how the whole system in Washington is broken.

If this had been an election about generic “change” versus substantive reform, McCain could have won. But McCain’s campaign was too orthodox to defeat the Obama juggernaut. They ran a stereotypical Republican campaign when they should have run a campaign that pit McCain as the experienced leader that would clean up Washington. McCain’s campaign executed their strategy quite well, all things considered, but their strategy was simply the wrong one at the wrong time.

Stand Up, And Keep America Strong

Today is Election Day. For weeks we’ve heard how Barack Obama is going to be the next President of the United States. Now is the time for every good man and woman in this country to take their stand. John McCain is a man of honor, wisdom, and patriotism. He nearly gave his life in service of his country, and while he isn’t perfect, he will help keep this country strong. Every Republican and conservative needs to vote today, and they need to vote for John McCain.

We know what the stakes are. We can either have a government that is responsible to us or a government that tries to be responsible for us. McCain, imperfect as he is, will fight the abuse of earmarks. He will fight government waste, tooth and nail. He will clean out the sewer of Washington D.C. and root out corruption. We need that now more than ever.

John McCain has never bowed to tyrants. He will stand up to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Putin. He will not flinch in supporting America’s interests abroad. He will fight al-Qaeda with vigor, and he will not give them an inch of ground in Iraq. He is the only candidate in this race who has truly fought for us. The men and women of our Armed Forces trust John McCain, and we dare not let them down.

Our economy is in crisis. We cannot have higher taxes, more intrusive regulation that benefits Democratic special interests over the common good, and a system of government that thinks it’s Robin Hood. McCain realizes that. Obama does not. Obama will take his cues for Herbert Hoover by raising taxes and engaging in economic protectionism—the very actions that made the Great Depression great. He will make the economy even worse. McCain will keep taxes low, support growth-enabling policies, and help America recover. The choice could not be more clear.

When it comes to the defense of the unborn, the choice could not be more clear. Obama is part and parcel of the abortion culture. He has failed to stand up for infant protection. He supports the judicial monstrosity of Roe v. Wade. A few misguided individuals think that Obama will support life, despite his record. They are wrong—dead wrong. McCain is absolutely solid in his support for life, and every pro-life voter should vote their conscience and vote for McCain. He is the only consistent choice on this issue.

This country does not need a cult of personality. It does not need empty promises and mindless slogans. Hope is not a plan, and change is not a direction. John McCain offers substantive reform, real policies, and a real plan for America’s future. It is time to stand up for the values that have made us a land of opportunity.

Now is the time to stand up and be counted. John McCain needs our help, and far more importantly America’s future needs our help. We must not allow this country to go in the wrong direction, and John McCain will hold the line as he has always done. It is time for him to go on one last mission on our behalf.

The Loyal Opposition

Glenn Reynolds has a letter from a Republican who isn’t about to give an Obama Administration the benefit of the doubt on anything:

I consider myself a libertarian/conservative. Like many people of that bent, I was uncomfortable with Bush when he was nominated. But Al Gore’s increasingly-erratic behavior during the 2000 election made me hope Bush won.

Once Bush won, and it became clear that the Florida democrats were trying to steal the election, I became something of a Bush loyalist. Throughout his first term, I took note of all the really horrible things that were said about him, saw that a large portion of the left would rather see Bush fail than see America succeed, and was alarmed by the complicity (and often, participation) of the MSM and mainstream Hollywood. It wasn’t far into his second term that I succumbed to Bush Fatigue, due to his inability to make the case for his foreign policy to the American people, and his inability to find the veto pen. He has truly been a terrible steward of the Republican brand, and because of this, the Conservative and libertarian causes are suffering.

I’m no fan of McCain , but as I dislike Obama (and love Palin), I’ll be pulling the lever for McCain in November.

This is surely small of me, but if Obama wins, I plan on giving him as much of a chance as the Democrats gave George Bush. I will gleefully forward every paranoid anti-Obama rumor that I see, along with YouTube footage of his verbal missteps. I will laugh and email heinous anti-Obama photoshop jobs, and maybe even learn photoshop myself to create some. I’ll buy anti-Obama books, and maybe even a “Not My President” t-shirt. I’m sure that the mainstream bookstores won’t carry them, but I’ll be on the lookout for anti-Obama calendars and stuff like that. I will not wish America harm, and if the country is hurt (economically, militarily, or diplomatically) I will truly mourn. But i will also take some solace that it occurred under Obama’s watch, and will find every reason to blame him personally and fan the flames.

Obama’s thuggish behavior thus far in this election cycle – squashing free speech, declaring any criticism of his policies to be “racist” (a word that happily carries little weight with sensible people these days), associating with the likes of Ayers, Wright, and ACORN – suggests that I won’t have to scrape for reasons to really viscerally dislike Obama and his administration. And even if he wins, his campaign’s “get out the vote fraud” activities are enough to provide people like me with a large degree of “plausible deniability” as to whether he is actually legitimately the president.

I’ve seen a President that I am generally-inclined to like get crapped on for eight years, and I’ve seen McCain and Palin (honorable people both, despite policy differences I may have with them) get crapped on through this election season. If the Democrats think that a President Obama is going to get some sort of honeymoon from the folks who didn’t vote for him, as a wise man once said: heh.

Prof. Reynolds finds this depressing. So do I.

Granted, I understand the sentiment behind it. Whatever Sen. Obama’s personal qualities, his policies will be devastating to this country. The Democratic Party has consistently and disgustingly put loyalty to party over loyalty to country, especially on Iraq. They have corrupted the Constitutional role of the Senate from “advise and consent” to playing partisan games with the Judiciary. They have acted like children with petty and childish attacks against the President—and even engaged in fantasizing about the assassination of President Bush. Individual Democrats may be honorable and patriotic, but the machinery of the Democratic Party is to be reviled.

Given all that, why would Republicans want to be like them?

That sort of thing didn’t help the Democrats in 2004, and it won’t help the Republicans—especially with our one-party media covering for the Democrats at every turn. The politics of hate are not the path towards a better country. What the Republicans need to do as a party, and what conservatives need to do as citizens, is become a loyal opposition.

I’ve been harping on this for a while, but it remains true—the Republican Party has to stand on principles to win. We have to uphold our principles in everything we do. That means that Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill need to uphold the highest standards of ethics and fiscal restraint. That means that people like Rep. Don Young, Sen. Ted Stevens, and Sen. Larry Craig need to be politely told to start acting responsibly, or leave. If the party machinery won’t do it, then the grassroots needs to take control of the party machinery.

We need to fight a war of ideas, not a war over politics. We are losing the war of ideas. We are letting the left define us. Conservatism is not an ideology of the rich, it is an ideology that encourages people to be rich. The American Dream will never be achieved by punishing the successful. Our strength comes not from the size and scope of our government, but from the ingenuity and spirit of our people. No government program can ever hope to do as much good as the American individual. Government is merely the most inefficient way of aggregating the power of the individual. We must be prepared to redefine our message, not spend all of our time engaged in stupid kneejerk politics.

The American people are sick and tired of politics as usual, and Barack Obama is nothing more than a typical machine politician. If Obama wins, the American people will be desperately hungry for a real alternative to what Obama will have brought upon them. The Republican Party had better be ready with a real and relevant alternative. We had better rediscover our principles, and be willing to stand firmly upon them.

There are far more important things to do than engage in the sort of childishness that marked the last 8 years of Democratic rhetoric against Bush. We are above that sort of thing, and if we want to win and save this country from taking a leap backwards down The Road to Serfdom we had better be able to do more than just attack the other side.

What McCain Needs To Say Tonight To Defeat Obama

John McCain will attend tonight’s Presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi.

McCain has an opportunity to take Obama out, and it looks like he is going to go for it. The way he can do this is to run against the “politics as usual” in Washington. His dangerous political gambit this week can pay off for him, but only if he makes it work tonight. That is his “must-do” for this debate.

Here is what he needs to say in his own words: the American people are sick and tired of politics as usual in this country. They are sick and tired of a lack of leadership from Washington. The choice to suspend the campaign was a necessary one because partisan politics has to come second and the country has to come first.

But moreover, he needs to go on the offensive. Here is what he can do to deliver the knockout punch. Republicans won’t like this, but it will help McCain win. The argument is this: for the last eight years we have had a political culture that put politics above country. Sen. Obama’s decision to carry on his campaign while the economy was collapsing was just like President Bush sitting back while the levees collapsed in New Orleans. President Bush said “heckuva job, Brownie.” Sen. Obama has Jim Johnson, one of the architects of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disaster as his campaign advisor.

We don’t need another four years of politics first. When the country is in crisis, politicking is not the right response.

That will provoke Obama like nothing else. It may offend some Republicans, and it is somewhat unfair to President Bush. But McCain is not Bush and has to distance himself from the failures of the Bush Administration.

He can turn this whole series of events against Sen. Obama. He can make this debate a turning point. He can turn this into Obama’s Katrina, if he has the guts to do this. I know he does.

The question is will he?

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty thinks that agreeing to the debate was mistake as it undercuts McCain’s message. If a deal emerges today, perhaps not. It is a risky move, but that can be erased if McCain handles the aftermath well enough. Obama thinks he has the upper hand here, which means he’s going to go into this thing cocky. McCain needs to be able to turn that against him.

McCain’s Gambit

When I heard of McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign and go to D.C. to work on the bailout, I had two reactions:

This is the dumbest thing a candidate could possibly do.
This was a brilliant move that will help cement McCain’s “Country First” theme in a way that nothing else could.

I still don’t know which it is.

Sen. McCain may be on to something here. People are sick and tired of Washington politics. We talk about the President’s abysmal approval ratings, but Congress’ are even worse. As this nation faces the greatest economic crisis we have faced since the Great Depression, we need real political leadership in Washington.

John McCain went back to D.C. and did his duty. Barack Obama ended up having to go back to D.C. at the behest of the President, and missed an opportunity to join with McCain on this issue.

I’m leaning more towards the “politically brilliant” theory—but McCain needs to take the step of connecting this to the larger “Country First” theme of his campaign. Either as his introduction to the debate or in a major address tomorrow, he needs to state very clearly why he took the action he did. All he needs to say in essence is that his country needed a leader, and that call was far more important than playing politics. If he can get that message out, I think this will be a political win for him.

McCain acted admirably in doing what he did. Even Bill Clinton said as much. Politics aside, his actions were right because we don’t need more politicians blowing smoke up our collective asses. We need men and women willing to put the national interest above getting elected. If we had a spirit like that in Washington all along, we would not be in this crisis right now.

If this was a political move on McCain’s part, it was an incredibly gutsy move. Something tells me that it was not. This was John McCain being John McCain. If he can explain himself well and demonstrate that quality of his character in the next few days, it could go a long way towards ensuring that Sen. McCain becomes President McCain.