Couple that with a harsher Washington Post piece published in full online (“The party of Ron Paul?” May 24) — which labeled recently adopted planks in the Iowa Republican Party platform “wacky” and “nutty” and gleefully anticipated “a few highly visible fights” erupting over “Paulite positions in the national platform” — and it’s evident the Strib is a more than a little confused about what the Ron Paul revolution is all about.

Let me do what I can to clarify.

First, let’s understand what a “movement” or a “revolution” is. All movements — the Pat Robertson Republican coup in the 1980s, gay rights, women’s suffrage, civil rights and, yes, the Ron Paul movement — follow a common pattern.

Movements all begin at the margins with people who have little or nothing to lose. Unsuccessful movements never expand beyond the sloganeering fringe. Successful movements — those with an intellectual and moral basis — mature to attract a mainstream following.

The gay-rights movement is a great example. Shirtless hunks in leather tutus and motorcycling “Dykes on Bikes” are no longer the point of the gay-rights spear. It’s the gay lawyer/gay accountant, lesbian legislator/lesbian physician — same-sex couples with kids and fundamental concerns about faith, family and freedom — who are now the face of the movement.

Focusing commentary on the remnants of the gay-rights fringe is something the media would never do. But focusing on the fringe of the Ron Paul movement is exactly what the Strib and WaPo commentaries actually do.

Libertarians today are on that cusp between being all about the T-shirt and all about ideas. I was a libertarian before it was cool and a Republican when it wasn’t cool.

As a political force in the 1970s, libertarians had little to lose. They were the folks who couldn’t be Democrats because they believed their money was theirs to spend; but they couldn’t be Republicans because they wanted to spend it on drugs and prostitutes.

Times have changed.

Libertarians today are less about provocative issues and more about reversing the expanding scope of government. Government expansion is bad in itself, but the future consequences are worse: Without defined limits on government, our liberties, our American republic, are truly at risk.

But, says the Washington Post, Americans aren’t buying that argument. If it were, Ron Paul would get more than 15 percent of the primary vote.

The Strib offers its caucus-questioning advice to an implied majority of “voters who believe government remains a useful tool for improving people’s lives.” Unfortunately, that glass-half-empty perspective on the Ron Paul revolution misses a significant point.

In Ron Paul, you have a charisma-challenged old white guy who, without pandering or pushing prejudice, inspires young people with the always sexy message of monetary policy.

A viable presidential challenge built by sticking to principle, not telling people only what they want to hear, is a political story the Strib and the Washington Post would shout from the rooftops — if only the message were a message they wanted to hear.

The power of an idea, personal freedom, doesn’t lie in manufactured popularity.

What about that Paul-inspired “wacky,” “nutty” “constitutional fundamentalism” found in Republican Party platforms?

Sure, abolishing the Department of Agriculture and the Federal Reserve is not going to happen even under a President Paul. But a political party that seriously considers abolishing cabinet-level departments and unaccountable government entities is a political party that probably won’t advocate for a new cabinet-level “Department of the Internet” and is serious about monetary policy.

It’s a party that stands for something.

That brings us to the WaPo admonition that “Paulites” learn to compromise, lest, says the Strib, the philosophical gulf “that’s already proving difficult to bridge by those seeking to govern this state” grows even wider.

One does not compromise principle. It’s a cliché and a fallacy that, given two diametrically opposed points of view, the “truth” must necessarily lie somewhere in the middle.

The Republican problem is buying into the “compromise is good” argument and declaring victory for every move to the left that “could have been so much worse.”

Paulites won’t make that compromise.

Ron Paul delegates to the RNC will support the nominee. However, integral to that support is holding the candidate and the party to the fundamental principles of limited government and personal and economic freedom. Constancy to principle is the ultimate loyalty.

All that said, I urge our media friends to examine the default position that government is good and invite them to think for themselves. The Ron Paul revolution offers the media, the Republican Party and America that opportunity. Take it.

——–

Craig Westover is a Republican activist and a Ron Paul delegate to the Republican National Convention. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigWestover and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/craig.westover.

This article originally appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune May 26. 2012.

As a woman in the United States, I do see a partly unintentional cultural war on my gender everywhere I turn. However, this isn’t one orchestrated by the Romney campaign. It’s one that’s deeply embedded in our culture and fueled by the media itself, the entity which often claims to champion “women’s rights.” I can’t walk through Target anymore without being bombarded with sleek magazine covers of airbrushed women who represent our cultural expression of beauty. Magazines and television shows subliminally say to women that we are not beautiful if we don’t meet the impossible standards set by our culture. They say, “You’re not pretty enough, buy this makeup,” or “you’re not thin enough, lose 20 pounds.” In short, they’re saying “you’re not perfect enough.”

I’m sick of hearing from Cosmopolitan that I’m not beautiful or thin enough. It’s insulting and degrading. Sure, the media also places standards upon men, but they are far less restrictive. In magazines and television everywhere, women face an onslaught of superficially-based warfare.

While there has been significant pushback against the plethora of airbrushing and superficial standards for women in our culture today, it’s still present. The long term effects of these standards still weigh heavily upon women. We are told by the shiny magazine covers that we must be perfect, thin, and beautiful to be “accepted” in society. As women everywhere try to achieve these standards, we constantly come short because we are seeking something we will never achieve. The “perfect” body, face, etc. is an impossible-to-attain social construct. As a result, thousands of women struggle daily with body issues, low self-esteem, and even eating disorders. Additionally, when the image of female perfection is so superficial, women are often not taken seriously because our worth is appearance-based.

In short, “beauty” is synonymous with “ability.” I can say for a fact that it is much easier to succeed as a woman if you are considered attractive. It should not be that way. This is a symbolic statement that says women should be judged based on appearance, not merit or character. America is supposed to be a meritocracy, not a nation where image is somehow a golden ticket for success.

iving as a conservative woman in the United States is even more difficult. While the National Organization for Women (NOW) will charge into battle for liberal women like Sandra Fluke or causes like abortion and birth control, they remain silent in the face of blatant attacks on conservative women. Recently, a video emerged of union members hitting a piñata with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s face on it because of her unease with the labor movement. NOW and other feminist groups had nothing to say on the issue. Talk about being warriors for women’s rights, huh? Then, a sexually explicit photoshopped image of conservative pundit S.E. Cupp appeared in Hustler Magazine, bashing her for her “dumb ideas” such as defunding Planned Parenthood. Hustler publisher Larry Flynt responded to the wave of complaints by defending the article and saying, “that’s satire.” Again, from feminist organizations: nothing. At least several liberal women such as Sandra Fluke have come out in S.E. Cupp’s defense. Conservative women like S.E. Cupp, Nikki Haley, and myself do not receive a defense from feminist organizations (not that we need it anyway) simply because of our political stances. It is an example of another liberal double standard. NOW and other liberal women’s groups are liberal ideologues who are pursuing a liberal agenda under the guise of gender equality.

For liberal women’s groups, the answer to the “War on Women” is taking legislative and political action to support Planned Parenthood, extend abortion, increase the distribution of birth control, etc. Once again, if that’s their weapon of choice, I don’t plan on carrying anytime soon. However, for all women, not just conservative women, there is another solution to the cultural assault on women’s images and the lack of a liberal defense. We need to be the women who are so often neglected in the media: real women. We need to be women of character who hold family values while still fighting for respect from the media. We need to be examples for our sisters, friends, and children. Gender should not determine our place in society.

Culture changes slowly, but it does change. That change begins with us. Our place should be determined not based upon the media’s impossible standards or a liberal feminist ideology. It should depend on merit. I am beautiful, but not because the media tells me I am. I’m beautiful because I value myself no matter who tells me otherwise. I’m a woman, I’m conservative, and I will not take this anymore.

Brooks’s thesis is that the selfish nature of man, in spite of “checks” placed on democratic government, has created the monstrous public debt in the West.  The wrongness starts with this opening volley:

The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.

Unfortunately, the very first words require correction.  We don’t have democracy in either Europe or the United States.  The reasons for that are different in each place, and they matter to the discussion that follows in the Brooks piece.

Democracy and the West

The ancient Greeks endowed us with the word “democracy,” which they pioneered more than 2400 years ago, before the main influences on the modern West had had their day: the Roman Republic and Empire, the rise of Christianity, the ascendancy of Old Testament Law as our common idea of law and the right; the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the rise of the nation-state.

In the period between the Golden Age of Athens and the founding of the United States, the West’s ideas had been refined considerably.  “Democracy” was about participation in government.  Philosophers might debate the proper scope, purpose, methodology, and outcome of government (see Plato and Aristotle), but the ancient Greeks did not have a comprehensive ideology (like socialism) to define and insist on those elements.

Their practical contribution to the Western idea of man and the state was a concept of responsible participation in one’s government.  They were unusually willing (to their peril) to let government’s effects be whatever the participants came up with.  Regarding the nature of man and why he needs government, their legacy to us is theory and debate.  It has been the work of succeeding centuries to institutionalize “answers” on that head.

To call what the Western peoples have today “democracy” is to fatally elide 24 centuries of transformation in our ideas.  Granted, this is done all the time in public dialogue, where “democracy” is used as a shorthand for various other concepts.  But if we’re going to discuss how our perceptions of human nature relate to our arrangements for government, as Brooks does, it is essential to use the right terminology.

The American philosophy of government

Brooks gets it exactly wrong as regards the Framers of the US Constitution.  They didn’t see democracy as desirable, if requiring a check on people’s tendency to vote benefits for themselves.  Using the example of ancient Athens, they argued that democracy was itself the problem: it was a unique accelerator for this evil tendency, and was unsustainable precisely for that reason.

Their priority in any case was liberty; it was not endowing as many of the people as possible with the maximum possible influence over their government.  That’s why the Framers gave us – in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin – a republic: a government that was participatory, but representative and constitutional.

The power they intended to check was the power of government.  The American philosophy of government combines constitutional limitations with separation of powers; checks and balances among the elements of government, including the people as well as the three branches; and the division of government into levels of authority – federal, state, and local.

The kind of republican government the Framers gave us is properly described as limited, constitutional, and federal.  If you remember these three foundational words, you have memorized everything important about the American theory of government.

“Limited” government derives, first and foremost, from the Framers’ idea that our individual rights are endowed by the Creator, that government’s purpose is to respect and secure them, and that government’s scope must not be enlarged to interfere with them.  But the Framers also explicitly saw limited government as government that would not become, in today’s metaphor, a 24-hour ATM for those who like to vote themselves benefits.

The Framers’ precaution against benefits-voting was a limited federal government – government that had no charter to perform the highly corruptible function.  Remember that.  The Framers’ precaution against benefits-voting was limited government.  This concept is the opposite of Brooks’s thesis, so repeat as necessary.

That is why constitutional government is so important.  What the government is not chartered to do, it may not do.  It has to stick to the Constitution.  The Constitution can be amended by the people, but it is intended to be a bulwark against the dangerous enlargement of government’s scope by benefits-voters and other invidious interests.  Our Constitution was written to make it harder to achieve what the Framers called “transient majorities,” which ram things through – like entitlements, ObamaCare, and the EPA – that the nation will come to regret.  The separation of powers and checks and balances are intended to discourage incessant lawmaking, government-enlarging, and benefits-voting.

Federalism is the third and coequal characteristic of American government.  The Framers’ concept was that lawmaking intended to cultivate morality in the people and produce specified social outcomes belonged at the lowest possible level of government.  If the people are going to vote money out of their fellow citizens’ pockets, for things other than national defense and a few federal salaries, they should do face to face with both the beneficiaries and the taxed.  The Framers recognized that government typically ends up doing more than the US federal government is empowered to do by the Constitution; their concept was that state and local governments, with their inherently limited scope, would be the ones doing such things.

Ultimately, the American idea of both man and the state is directly antithetical to Brooks’s formulation.  The Framers’ philosophy was that men and women of character and education would do well with a limited government, which would minimize the temptations of big government for the evil aspects of our nature.  The Framers didn’t despair at all of men’s ability to be responsible and accountable in their lives – they attributed the capacity to having, in the words of John Adams, a “religious and moral” character.  They didn’t frame government to repress a tide of selfish irresponsibility in the people; they framed it to refrain from creating one.

The Framers knew it was a risk to make government as if men could prosper with very little of it – but they regarded it as a lesson of history that more government did not make men or their society better, but typically made them worse.  Contra Brooks, government was seen not as the warden of an incontinent species, but as the servant of a responsible, self-motivating, and self-restraining one.

The European difference

Over in Europe, meanwhile, the Western idea developed along a separate and distinct path.  The very English ideas of restraining government, respecting rights in the people, and dissociating government from apocalypticism were not the main shapers of the continent.  As the Enlightenment began to arm itself and burrow into the culture, divine-right monarchy collided with the rise of comprehensive secular ideologies, from the eerily modern Napoleonic Code to Marxism, communism, Soviet socialism, Fascism, National Socialism (or Nazism), and today’s “democratic socialism.”

Treading a centrist path meant putting new names on old practices.  Where once a king had provided for his people in the name of Jesus Christ, now the modern welfare state provided for the people in the name of enlightened national interest, “fairness,” or “economic justice.”  The governments operating on this premise have run the gamut from Bismarck’s Germany to the Scandinavian monarchies, the French Fifth Republic, and the disaster of present-day socialist Greece.  Europe has fielded parties named “Christian Socialist” as well as “Communist”; the modern continent has governed itself with a mishmash of legacy paternalism and bureaucratic radicalism, an approach that until the past three years was alien to the political consciousness of the United States.

The adjective “democratic” was added to signify that the people were to vote – a refinement adopted partly on the understanding that voting was a way to decide how much would come to a citizen from the state.  It is laughably wrong to suggest, as Brooks does, that modern European governments were set up to restrain the people from voting themselves benefits.  Voting benefits for the people has been the governmental zeitgeist of Europe for the last 150 years.

Classical liberals believing in smaller government and more liberty for the people were always a minority in continental European politics.  There is much to admire and be grateful for in the legacy of Europe, such as the idea of the independent yeoman – a free and responsible actor who has not existed in any other culture – and the idea of government that does not oppress the people, but has an obligation to prioritize their welfare.  The concepts of social mobility, and “capital” that anyone can amass and wield, arose there.  Europe gave the world the enduring model of “middle class man”: man who was neither a serf-lord nor a serf: man who could make of himself what he would, rather than being condemned for life to a single social stratum.

But Europe did not start its modern political run from the same place as the United States.  The essential difference between the continents boils down to the importance to each of dictated outcomes.  The modern, post-Napoleonic European approach to government was social-outcomes-oriented from the beginning and has become steadily more so.  The American mindset is skeptical of government’s efficacy for producing desired social outcomes.  In the distinctively American mindset, the danger of giving government more power to shape and trim the people far outweighs the potential benefit.

It is essential to understand these things.  In America, we still have not bought into the premise of the European welfare-state concept – and the political force of our trademark libertarianism remains powerful.  In his thesis, Brooks posits an ahistorical amalgam of diverse and even opposing political ideas, implying that the US and Europe have been sort of intending and doing the same thing all along – when in fact, that has not been the case.  The reasons matter, and they influence how we vote today.  There is a significant portion of the US voting population that rejects the idea of man and the state on which the welfare state is predicated, and in doing so, traces its roots to America’s unique founding idea.

The American idea and today

Man can govern himself.  He has to do it it carefully and sparingly.  It is outside of the ministrations of government that he develops character and self-discipline.  The less he is governed from without, the better he does in terms of work, saving, providing for himself and his family, using ingenuity, showing compassion to those in distress, and uniting with his fellows in the community to make it better.

Will everyone do exactly this, and in exactly the way each and every one of us would like, if the burden of government is light?  Of course not.  But the great majority of people will perform admirably, and will be free to help those who don’t.  The Framers believed that, and so do I.  And if America’s history demonstrates anything, it is that we are right.

The Framers’ pessimism about human nature was different from that posited by David Brooks.  It affirmed that containing the scope of men’s selfishness is best accomplished with less government, not more.  It did not fear to limit the charter of government on that principle.

The Framers’ solution is the correct one:  have less government.  Walk back from it step by step, if necessary.  Protect the vulnerable who would be hurt if it were done carelessly (e.g., seniors relying on the entitlement programs).  But get it done.  This, right here, is the argument we need to be having.  The answer is right before the noses of the American people.  But we do need “conservatives” who know how to frame the question.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Meet the Candidate:

watch?v=droDXGJ7Dz8

As White House Dossier correctly points out, the RNC should look at the potential here, particularly against the (apparently) non-insane Wolfe.  The challenge comes at an awkward time for the Obama campaign, on the heels of last week’s West Virginia fiasco in which The One was unable to break 60 percent against a federal inmate.  I see enormous potential for mayhem here, especially after the awesome clowning that was Juddmentum.

There’s little to no risk, now that the rest of the GOP field has tapped out.  Think about it, Arkansas Republicans…it’s like a hashtag hijack, only funner!

Crossposted at El Tercer Riel.  Tweeting out of @BonillaJL.

The media has covered a smorgasbord of articles ranging from birth control to women to gay marriage in 2012. Leftists have denounced the GOP’s supposed “War on Women” in recent months for their opposition to the birth control mandate and support of personhood laws in a growing number of states. Meanwhile, liberal groups throughout the county decried George Zimmerman’s “racial motives” for shooting Trayvon Martin before he got his day in court. Zimmerman might very well be guilty as sin but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Then, in a “surprise” (and by surprise I mean, no surprise at all), President Obama came out in support of gay marriage just after North Carolina banned the practice and Gallup reported that just over 50% of Americans support the practice. How convenient.

Strangely, most of the biggest news stories in the US in the months leading up to the 2012 election have been social, not economic, issues. The Obama administration’s focus on these issues is not one of genuine concern. Rather, it is nothing but a political ploy. First, social issues tend to be the most contentious. Supporters and opponents of gay marriage, abortion, contraception, etc. tend to be far apart on the political spectrum and the interests groups are generally well-ensconced in their own opinions. Bringing up these issues ignites the numbed passions of Obama supporters, many of whom have resorted to lukewarm support in the face of the President’s less-than-stellar record. This is a far cry from the passionate obsession of the Obama Zombies during the 2008 election. The Administration is looking for any way to re-ignite theses passions and get their supporters to the polls.

Additionally, the focus on social issues places the spotlight back on the Obama Administration, a spotlight that has been solely focused on the GOP contenders in the last several months. Obama is unable to run on his actual record, considering his history of economic failures. Therefore, the President and his supporters have turned the spotlight on issues which can actually garner some support from his liberal allies (all while ostracizing the right of course). It’s as if Obama woke up last week, looked at his record, and said, “Hmmm rising unemployment, falling poll numbers…OH LOOK GAY MARRIAGE…I can use that.” These social issues are merely a distraction from Obama’s abysmal record. They are also a way to refocus the spotlight on the President and sooth his inflated ego.

What this political maneuver shows is the president’s complete lack of accountability. He’s unable to answer for his faults or stand up for his decisions, even when they have failed. When all else fails and Obama cannot ignore the glaring shortcomings of his administration, he simply blames his predecessor. The economy, partisanship, turbulent world situation…all Bush. (Note: Ignore the fact that the average unemployment rate under George W. Bush was about 5%) Joe Biden took this on last week, blaming Bush for our turbulent relations with Iran. There is certainly a high degree of character deficiency in the White House right now. The President and his blind supporters are unable to take responsibility for anything, evidence of political and personal weakness. It’s tough to stand by your decisions honestly and answer for your failures. Yet, for the President of the United States, it is part of his job description. The President is not supposed to “Pass the Buck.” Unfortunately for us, our current Commander-in-Chief is more than willing to “Pass the Buck…Over there.” Oh look, a political distraction!

Well…THIS is what is going on, the Associated Press has over-weighed it survey toward Democrats. The next two charts come directly from the AP survey document.

That “none of these number may seem a bit high, that’s because it is. I assume they mean people who are members of minor parties. In the 2008 presidential election, minor parties earned 1.42% of the vote. Does the AP really believe that Americans will vote minor parties at a rate 12x larger than they did four years ago?

When you add up the Independents and None of these its comes to 31% Democrat/ 22% GOP/ 46% other, or Democrat +9

When pushed the respondents to the AP poll showed their political leanings:

I will use the totals that AP shows in bold above. However if one totals the Democratic numbers reflected in the chart above it ads to 51% not 49% (the GOP number is correct).

When you include the “leaners,” the respondents are 49% Democrat/37% GOP/14% neither or Democrat +12. Compare those party preferences to Gallup or Rasmussen and the bias becomes evident:

Putting aside the fact that one skews Democrat and the other GOP, both Rasmussen and Gallup reflects a smaller difference party affiliation preferences than either of the two versions of the AP Poll.  With the heavier weighting toward Democrats it is no surprise that the Associated results show Obama way ahead, while the other two show a much closer race and a Romney lead.

Which split is correct? Lets compare them to the results of the past two elections:

The 2008 Election was a wave election for the Democrats, the Mid-Terms were a wave for the GOP. My friend Ed Morrissey (the official research geek of the conservative blogisphere) wrote in a post on Hot Air the giant Democratic wave of 2008 resulted in a D+7 turnout and the 2010 GOP wave resulted in neither party getting a turnout advantage.

One could make a case for the Gallup D+4 as the number is in between ’08 and ’10. You could even make a case for the Rasmussen number if you assume the negative feeling about Obama’s performance will motivate  more people to switch parties and/or more Republicans to show up at the polls.

However there is absolutely no excuse for the Associated Press splits…well there is one excuse, they could trying to skew the result toward Barack Obama.

Jeff Dunetz is Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” , contributor to the Breitbart sites and PJM Tattler, as well as the political columnist for a weekly newspaper called The Jewish Star. Please visit his site “The Lid” for more reporting and commentary (and while you are there click on an ad or hit the tip jar).

The monstrous rise of liberal indoctrination on college campuses threatens not only the students subjected to it, but our future as well. My fellow college students and I are the leaders of tomorrow. How can we face the chaotic world without a proper education and secure environment to exercise our intellectual curiosity? To combat this indoctrination, the remarkably high level of apathy I’ve seen among my fellow college students must be addressed. I am shocked with the number of students who know nothing about how our political process works. Many cannot name more than a few of our elected officials. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard my fellow students say things like “I voted for Obama,” while claiming to “hate” politics in the same breath. Others say things like “I’m conservative but know nothing about current events.” It’s certainly not necessary that all college students need to be political junkies, but a degree of civic education is necessary. Politics can be frustrating, but that’s not an excuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater and ignore current events all together. This is merely a form of self-imposed ignorance. Apathy gives rise to ignorance and this lack of knowledge makes us prey to biased professors and the left-leaning academic culture.

The results of this ubiquitous collegiate apathy are far-reaching. Students, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, rarely “question with boldness” anymore. Without the motivation to pursue truth and accuracy, apathetic students tend to believe what they are taught. They are simply putty in the hands of biased instructors and the liberal collegiate atmosphere. To combat such a force, it’s necessary to arm yourself with the seed of political power: knowledge. Unfortunately, the lack of desire to rise above one’s own ignorance can be crippling. Students rarely desire to find the truth when apathy reins, leaving many college students slaves to their own ignorance.

To a politically active college student like myself, this is particularly upsetting. There are hundreds of students at my university who claim to be conservative, but few actually put their ideology into action. This leaves us with a small, albeit strong, group of conservative students left to fight against the overwhelming influence of the liberal campus culture. How can we fight this war without an army of concerned, intellectually curious college students? Apathy leaves us without the weapon of knowledge or the fuel of intellectual curiosity.

But all hope is not lost. Apathy might be difficult to combat, but we still have a few weapons left in our intellectual arsenal. First, intellectual curiosity needs to be instilled early on. This starts with the family. Parents must teach their children to “question with boldness,” or more accurately follow the words of Ronald Reagan: “trust but verify.” In college, it’s up to the politically interested students to fill the intellectual void caused by unnecessary apathy. We need to educate, encourage, and empower our peers before liberal indoctrination sweeps in. We must be a force of concerned college students if we ever intend to win the intellectual battle. Some believe that it’s safer to remain apathetic, to glide below the radar. However, as our nation slides downhill, we need to ask more of ourselves. Indifference might put off battles, but it never wins the war. We need action, not apathy.

Cross-posted at El Tercer Riel (The Third Rail).

The word “Forward” has been chosen for … yeah, I don’t know. We’ve done anything but move forward under this administration. Perhaps it should have been “Okay Now Let’s Try To Go Forward”. Right, too awkward.

The Washington Times notes that the slogan has long ties to socialism:

The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, “Forward” — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name “Forward!” or its foreign cognates….

The slogan “Forward!” reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

Ann Althouse notes it also has long tiesto … Wisconsin?

“Forward” is the Wisconsin state motto, and I’ve heard it used over and over again by politicians.

Whatever.

One has to assume that “forward” is meant mean to start in a particular direction from the point you now occupy. And that’s where it gets dicey for Obama. What is the point we now occupy from which he’d like to move us “forward”?

Well, shall we make a list to help his campaign?

-Forward to an unemployment rate lower than 8.2% (oh, wait, that was the job of the stimulus.)

-Forward from the first ever credit downgrade (a unique first for a president, no?)

-Forward toward a total debt that is less than our GDP (yeah, that’s not going to happen.)

-Forward toward more government (it does solve all our problems, right? Right?)

-Forward toward more executive “we can’t afford to wait” orders (because now an imperial presidency is a ‘good thing’).

-Forward to more green energy boondoggles (at taxpayers expense, of course.)

-Forward to even less fossil fuel exploitation on federal lands (because, you know, fossil fuel is a fuel of the past.)

-Forward to implementing unconstitutional mandates (if ObamaCare survives, what can’t government mandate?)

-Forward to even more Americans on food stamps (a record to be proud of?)

-Forward to another 4 years of poor leadership (like putting pressure on the Senate to pass a budget? Oh, wait …)

-Forward to another ‘reset’ with our international allies (because they feel so loved right now.)

-Forward to a DoJ that’s even worse than it is now (Fast and Furious? You ain’t seen nothing yet.)

-Forward to a president no longer answerable to the people (you know, one with more “flexibility”.)

-Forward toward a possibility of making additional Supreme Court appointments (frightening to anyone who values liberty).

-Forward with a president who identifies with the values the OWS crowd (just review his record if you don’t get that.)

-Forward with the push to tax “global warming” (its about revenue, not science.)

-Forward with the class warfare “equality” campaign (it means ‘redistribution’, see identification with OWS)

-Forward with other redistributionist schemes (Student loans anyone?)

-Forward with more divisive partisanship from the most partisan president ever (ask Paul Ryan about that.)

-Forward from 2.2% GDP growth and a jobless recovery (ignore the jobs more oil drilling could bring immediately.)

Yes, I know, a partial list (I’m sure you can add to it), but I need to move on.

“Forward”.

I like it. Of course, it’s probably not a good thing when those who want you out of office like you’re new slogan. They probably have an ulterior motive for doing so (yup, that’d be me).

Any bets on whether or not it will be quietly retired soon in favor of another? I mean I’m sure the focus groups loved it, but really? Forward?

This is a bit like the Chernobyl town council declaring “forward” as their slogan after the melt down.

The three headed frogs all liked it.

~McQ

Twitter: @McQandO

For starters, I admire the transparency of the label’s pitchmen, HispanicLatino founder Jesse Treviño, and Texas Representative Richard Peña Raymond (D-Laredo) .  They have no qualms with stating that “HispanicLatino” was born out of a need to carve out a new ethno-political identity for those who traditionally identified themselves as “Hispanic” or “Latino” (more on the difference here).  According to Treviño and Peña Raymond, there is an ongoing war on Hispanics/Latinos, which can only be solved via the creation of a new artificial ethnoracial umbrella.

Never mind that, according to the most recent Pew Hispanic poll, the labels are rejected by a majority of people who would much rather identify by their country of national origin.  Read through the entire poll findings, and you will find that they demolish every one of the premises thay underlie the supposed need for an all-encompassing label.

No wonder, then, that Al Punto anchor Jorge Ramos (who never passes up an opportunity to advance racial grievance in furtherance of the immigration agenda) struggled to keep a straight face during the segment.  When faced with the reality of the Pew poll, Treviño and Peña Raymond had no other choice than to be transparent about the aims of the “HispanicLatino” label.  Ramos went to the Pew poll so many times, that I half expected him to reprise Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s instant classic “…it’s not selling very well“.

If you follow the Pew link and go deeper into the poll, you’ll find that left to their own devices…Hispanics, Latinos, or “ethnic identity to be named later” are just like any of the many ethnic groups that came into this country before them.  The great truth behind the Pew poll is that Hispanics/Latinos have largely resisted the Institutional Left’s attempts to herd them into the uniquely American Hispanic/Latino construct.  Individual Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans, Cubans, et. al are free to assimilate into the mainstream when they do not get sucked into the “Latino” identity, and the Left knows it (as do media institutions that depend on a steady influx of non-English-speaking, non-assimilated individuals for survival).

HispanicLatino is, ultimately, nothing more than yet another naked attempt at herding individuals from all over Latin America into a single monoblock identity for the purposes of political manipulation.  As such, it should be laughed out of the room.

This article is cross-posted at El Tercer Riel (The Third Rail), and a Spanish-language version is available here.

I answer this question multiple times a day. The people who ask this are referring to the fact that my Dad won eleven states, over 900 counties, with over three million votes cast for him. He was Mitt Romney’s primary competition for the GOP nomination. There is often a certain sense of bewilderment when they ask this, but also of respect or even admiration. And don’t worry. I get why this amazes them. Our campaign was overwhelmingly outspent in most states (sometimes more than 10 to 1), we didn’t have the organizational machine of the Romney camp, and we spent months of the race not getting any attention from the national media. In the fall, we were sitting at two percent in the polls and running a presidential campaign with a handful of incredible, dedicated staff and volunteers.  So, is it shocking that we did what we did? Absolutely. Did I believe if anyone could make this happen, it would be my Dad? Yep. We overcame the odds in this race, which is similar to every race he’s won, beating democratic incumbents in the blue state of Pennsylvania.

“But how did you do it this time? What was your secret?”

I hear ya. I could talk about how we strategized about this or that, how we worked tirelessly, or how we stretched every dollar. Fundamentally, our success came down to three things: message, messenger and movement. These aspects are essential to every race that starts at the grassroots level.

A campaign is not simply platforms and policy; it needs a message that inspires people to act. My Dad traveled the country talking about a manufacturing plan to create jobs, a fiscal policy that would lead America to prosperity, ways to make us energy independent, the looming threat of a nuclear Iran, and the importance of the family. He also talked about the importance of our founding documents, that the loss of liberty was the fundamental issue of this race.

My Dad’s message excited the base of the party and spoke to a middle America that was hungry for, well, a kid from a steel town who knows how to work hard. He visited every county in Iowa before the caucus, worked nearly 24/7 with only five days off throughout the entire campaign, and held over 800 town hall meetings nation wide. Americans still value hard work and a real person who is courageous and honest.

With that type of a messenger, we began painting our vision for America. And as any good teacher will tell you, when you begin anything, you talk about what you know. So, we started our campaign out talking about our stories – our immigrant family, our vision for the country, how we got conservative things done in DC, and how we believe in the founding principles that made America great. Then something wonderful began to happen. Our supporters and volunteers believed in the message and that belief turned into action. Money can’t buy that type of genuine enthusiasm. The campaign became about the stories of all the people who came into our lives on this journey. A movement began.

In Iowa, a guy named Chuck volunteered to drive my Dad around to all of his events in a Dodge Ram pickup truck. Chuck is a straight shooting, salt of the earth guy who loves Iowa and its caucus. Even though he’s a top politico in the state, as he’s the former director of the state party, he put the rest of his life on hold to drive the Chuck Truck for our campaign. He believed we could pull off the impossible: a win in Iowa. Hundreds of miles later, his faith was rewarded.

Wendy Jensen was the smallest wisp of a woman with one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known. In spite of her disability, she made over 5,000 phone calls for the campaign in Iowa and passed away right before caucus night. I know she’d be proud of what we all did, together, in Iowa. That night was for Wendy.

In Oklahoma, we met our best volunteer whose name was Nathanial. He had spina bifida. Nathanial made thousands of phone calls from home for the campaign. Yet as we thanked him for his huge contribution, he thanked us for representing his voice.

While in Missouri, a woman came up to my Dad after an event and handed him eight dollars. These were her daily tips from her job as a pet groomer. She told him this was her contribution to protect freedom.

For each of these stories there’s a thousand more. People all across the nation rose up and made big things happen. We even had a song written for us, called “Game On.”

I remember several months ago when a Romney surrogate claimed that all the significant Republicans in the country had spoken about who should be the GOP nominee. There was outrage among Republicans across America, especially among the half of the country who had not voted yet. A trend started on twitter, a hashtag that said #IAmSignificant. This went viral as everyday Americans “endorsed” my Dad for president because, after all, they were significant too. When I heard the comment myself, I couldn’t help but think of Chuck, Wendy, and Nathanial. To us, these everyday Americans were significant. In fact, they were invaluable.

So when people ask me how we ran a grassroots campaign for president and re-wrote the history books on how presidential races are run, well, the answer is simple: we did it together, against all the odds. But, who doesn’t like a good underdog story? Thank goodness for the Ricks, Rockys and Rudys of this world who remind us of what’s really significant and that all things are possible.

Sixty-four years ago today(by the Hebrew calender) Israel declared her independence.  Israel’s independence would have been short lived were it not for the strong will of President Harry S Truman, who became the new Jewish State’s first international supporter, not because of any political stance, but because he thought it was the right thing to do.

When Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Isaac Herzog, visited the White House after Israel declared her independence he told Truman,

“God put you in your mother’s womb so that you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel after 2000 years.”

In a recent speech to AIPAC, President Obama said he had Israel’s back. It saddens me to say I cannot believe that statement.

Its hard to believe that Barack Obama would have made the same decision as Truman, if he was president 64-years-ago today.

Over the past three years he has tossed aside allies such as Great Britain, Honduras and Israel solely to score points with the socialist and Muslim parts of the world. Israel would have been cast aside in deference to the King of Saudi Arabia. He would have tried to negate the UN Partition Plan the same way he tried to pressure Honduras to ignore her constitution.

If, as the old saw goes, personnel is policy…then it is clear that the Obama machine (campaign and labor) has decided that its primary Hispanic outreach target is Central Florida.  Accordingly, they have dispatched their best general to the field.

On Monday, José Delgado (Washington D.C. correspondent for El Nuevo Día) published a piece which featured the Democrat Hispanic outreach key players in Central Florida (Google-translated version here).  I was familiar with some of the names cited (such as Franceschini, who has been active for years, and Acevedo, who is the public face of the Hispanic campaign in the I-4 corridor)…but one name, in particular, was not at all known to me (my translation):

“This is where the battle royal will be fought”, said labor leader José La Luz, whom the AFL-CIO has assigned to work on voter mobilization in Central Florida.

Since the name didn’t ring a bell, I started digging.  It turns out that La Luz is not only a labor legend, but a “proud socialist” with a track record and radical pedigree going all the way back to the ’70s.  Had he shifted to academia, as did many of the radicals of that time period, he’d undoubtedly be one of those “silver ponytails” that Andrew Breitbart alluded to at CPAC.  Instead, he stayed in the field and became a master organizer.

La Luz got his start as a member of the now-defunct Puerto Rican Socialist Party (which had extensive ties to the Castro regime, according to Congressional testimony), and was active in that party’s Connecticut branch.  By 1976, he rose to become a part of the PSP’s Central Committee, and attended the National Hard Times Conference (under the auspices of Prairie Fire and the Weather Underground).  Shortly thereafter, La Luz left the PSP and joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, where he became Chairman of its Hispanic Commission, prior to the merger that led to the formation of the Democratic Socialists of America.  After spending most of the ’90s in Chicago, La Luz officially retured to Puerto Rico as Executive Director of the local AFSCME branch, and successfully oversaw the multi-union organization of 150,000 government workers, and their (successful) campaign for collective bargaining rights.

Fast forward to 2007, and we begin to see how La Luz’ unique experience and skill sets come into play over the course of the past and current election cycles.  Shortly after that particular speech, La Luz (who was, at the time, director of the AFSCME Leadership Academy) became chairman of Latinos For Obama.  As such, La Luz worked in Colorado and New Mexico, driving registration, educating, and mobilizing voters until Election Day.  A month and half before the 2008 general election, he had this to say to People’s World Weekly:

“We are showing how the companies and outfits that exploit Latino workers are the people behind McCain,” said Laluz. Between now and Nov. 4, Laluz said the Obama campaign is registering voters in New Mexico and Colorado and developing lists of tens of thousands of Latino supporters for Obama. “Those lists will constitute the people we bring out on Election Day,” he said.

By now we know that the strategy clearly worked, given that Obama gained 67% of the Latino vote in 2008.  This strategy focused specifically on racial and economic grievances.

La Luz has remained active in the DSA, serving as vice-chair as recently as 2009, and adressing the DSA conventionin 2011 (watch the whole thing if you can spare the time, but if not, then definitely go to 24:11).  In particular, the calls for a tax increase pledge, and the Occupy Spring Offensive bring special insight into what we can expect to see in Central Florida.

If you read through the Nuevo Día piece, you’ll see that La Luz is savvy enough to recognize that the immigration argument might not play as well in Central Florida, but the other elements of the strategy would.

Given the importance of the Hispanic vote along the I-4 corridor, and its national repercussions (let there be no doubt that FL-9 is now the Mother Of All Bellwethers), there was always an expectation that the Institutional Left would go all out.  We also know that the muscle is never far from the smiling face, and the iron is fist never far from the velvet glove.

It is clear that Central Florida’s hispanic battleground (the most important in the nation) is a must-win for the regime, and it has sent its best general to the field.

Stuff just got real.

A Spanish-language version of this post is available at El Tercer Riel (The Third Rail).

Don’t misunderstand – the GSA and other federal agencies should be held accountable for this and other unethical abuses of the public’s money. As The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell outlined on April 19, and again on April 23, this is only one of many publicly egregious wastes of taxpayer money in the bureaucracies in D.C. But when it comes down to it, $820,000 is not even a drop in the bucket of fraud/waste/abuse/duplicity. Here are some of the other, more easily ignored abuses:

First off is simple abuse that is acceptable for the well-connected politician but disgraceful and/or illegal for anyone else – small change, but ultimately emblematic of the systemic corruption in the federal government. Case in point is how former Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) gets a pension and other benefits for the rest of his life, despite resigning in disgrace. President Obama, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, is almost certainly using taxpayer dollars for campaign trips – illegal, but obviously acceptable under both parties. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) was busted for solicitation, but never spent time in jail. He will get a pension and other monetary benefits, same as Weiner.

Antithetical to many conservatives is looking hard at unproductive defense spending. However, the Defense Department is rife with abuse. For example, last October a report by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) outlined how major defense contractors who paid civil fines or settled for amounts of $1 million or greater still received over $500 billion in contracts in the last 10 years. Another report, this one from The Commission Wartime Contracting, estimated that between $31 billion and $60 billion had been lost to poor oversight and/or fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan during our time in those nations.

Outside of fraud, simple inefficiencies abound in the Defense Department. This Forbes piece notes that approximately $100 billion had been spent on weapons programs that were either never used or eventually canceled – all after significant investments. In an informal conversation with a friend who is a military auditor, I was told that a number of contractors take a contract and take a percentage off the top. They then subcontract to another company, which takes a percentage off the top. This subcontractor then subcontracts to another company, and takes a percentage off the top. Finally, several levels down, the contract actually gets fulfilled.

Duplication of federal programs is something that has come to light in the last 15 months. A pair of Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports in 2011 and 2012 found, according to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), “hundreds of billions” of dollars in duplication in the federal government. ABC News reported that the GAO found many programs were not tested for actually accomplishing their stated goals, and the same applied to a number of tax loopholes, credits, etc. (Several aspects of the 2012 report can be found at the first link, including examples of duplication and the report’s Executive Summary.) Here are some of the juicier parts of ABC’s article:

• GAO found the Department of Defense could save up to $460 million every year by undertaking a “broader restructuring” of its military health care system.
• The military came in for special scrutiny: over $10 billion on defense-wide business systems every year; $49 billion in military and veterans health services; and at least $76 billion since 2005 in urgent processing systems for the military.
• Fifty-eight billion dollars at the Department of Transportation [was spent] for over 100 separate surface transportation programs.
• [A]lmost $1 trillion in government-wide tax expenditures listed by the Treasury Department, some of which the GAO found “may be ineffective at achieving their social or economic purposes.”
• [T]he government has neglected to investigate numerous programs, making the expenditure of some funds not only redundant but wasteful. For instance, only five of 47 job training and employment programs surveyed by the GAO had been studied to evaluate whether outcomes were the result of the program itself or another cause altogether.
• “Little is known about the effectiveness of most programs,” the watchdog observed.
• That point also applies to domestic food assistance, where “little is known about the effectiveness of [11 of the 18 programs] because they have not been well studied,” the GAO said. In fiscal year 2008, for example, the government spent $62.5 billion on those 18 programs.

Of course, no critique of the federal government’s spending habits is complete without highlighting simple stupidity. In fiscal year 2011, improper payments totaled $115 billion in, over three percent of the federal budget. According to a press release from Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA): “An improper payment could be an incorrect payment, an over- or under- payment, and could include a payment to an ineligible recipient, a payment for an ineligible service, a duplicate payment or a payment for a service not received.” Medicare and Medicaid represented over half of these improper payments; in Fiscal Year 2010 alone Medicare cost the taxpayers $48 billion in improper payments.

To be fair, $115 billion is less than what was spent on improper payments in fiscal year 2010… but the $115 billion did not account for many agencies that simply fail to report improper payments. According to Platts: “Although not all agencies are required to report improper payment estimates, some agencies that are required to report do not do so.  The most significant agency failing to report is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), although both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the DOD – Office of Inspector General has found that the DOD is at a high risk for improper payments.

The simple fact of the matter is that while Congress and much of the media focuses on the President’s unnecessary and wasteful $52 million gas manipulation task force, or the GSA’s junket, hundreds of billions of dollars are slipping through the system. Perhaps Congress should focus on stopping these abuses of the taxpayer dollars, instead of intentionally misdirecting the attention of the American people to what amounts to literally cents on the dollar of the “fraud, waste, abuse and stupidity” (to quote Senator Coburn) so prevalent in our ever-growing, ever-expensive federal government.

Dustin Siggins is an associate producer with The Laura Ingraham Show and co-author with William Beach of The Heritage Foundation on a forthcoming book about the national debt. The opinions expressed are his own.

Via RCP:

Chris Matthews: Let me ask you about something which is not in the polling, but I want you as experts — Barack Obama is the first African-American president, okay. Is there going to be a reluctance on the part of the voters and the political community that talks politics as we get into November about dumping the first African-American president? Is there going to be something that just wretches people? ‘Wait a minute here, this guy is going to knock out the first guy who got aboard?

Follow the link, where you’ll see Howard Fineman arguing that Obama is held to a higher standard because of his skin color, and you’ll watch as Chuck Todd posits that a Republican To Be Named Later backed out of the race for that very reason.

I respectfully submit that we witness, yet again, the absolute validation of Andrew Breitbart’s final thesis, to wit: that the ambiguous themes of “Hope” and “Change” were really nothing more than ideological beards for the class warfare and racial strife at the heart of Obama’s ideology and subsequent governance.  May I remind you that John McCain run the kind of “submission to history” campaign that Obama so easily crushed in 2008, and which Matthews seems to evoke.

Given the self-evident lack of accomplishment of this regime, there is nothing more left to offer or sell to the American electorate.  There is nothing left but guilt projection.  Whether it’s the fake #WarOnWomen or the economically risible Buffett Rule, the intended result is the same…to shame us into submission.  And now this.  Having abandoned all hope, the leg thrill has now yielded to the guilt trip.

Not only is this tactic useless, but it lacks any factual or historical basis.  May I remind you that after an equally disastrous term, New York City passed judgement on its first African-American mayor.

Bear in mind that New York’s electorate is much more forgiving (and progreeeeesiiiive) than that of the nation as a whole.  Given those realities, I don’t see too many people buying into this phony race guilt meme.  If this is what the media is going with at this juncture, I’m liking our chances.

A Spanish-language version of this post is available at El Tercer Riel (The Third Rail).

Per the Daily Caller:

Rick Santorum’s withdrawal was supposed to have signaled the beginning of the general election, and the end of this cycle’s silly season.  However, there is still an open spot on the Republican ticket, still news cycle to be filled with speculation, and still deadlines to be met…come rain, hail, sleet, or snow.

Until now, I had seen no need to address this fantasy indulged by the D.C.-and-New York-bassed kommentariat, which seems intent on pushing the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuño, for the Vice Presidential nod.  Despite this insistence, I don’t think Fortuño so much as cracks the short list.  Such pieces as these, most recently from The Hill, are not just purely speculative media mind-dealing, they also serve to expose the ignorance of those who are supposed to deliver fact-based analysis.

There is no doubt, given Fortuño’s track record, that Gov. Mitt Romney is right to call him “a solid conservative and a firm leader.” However, I don’t think that neccesarily builds Fortuño’s case for running mate.

The end of any seriousness in The Hill’s piece begins with the notion that Fortuño’s presence would help the party’s Hispanic outreach efforts.  As I’ve noted previously, the coveted “Hispanic vote” is not a monoblock that can be reached with a single message.  Those who think so are usually the ones that have been clamoring for Marco Rubio’s addition to the ticket, as well (despite his continual rejections of the VP nod).  In theory, Fortuño’s impact would likely limit itself to the I-4 corridor, which would be redundant given John Quiñones’ run in FL-9 (and, to a lesser extent, Col. E.J. Otero’s run in Tampa).  In the Northeast, Hispanic voters are used to (and used to voting against) Hispanic candidates.  In the West, there is no factual basis with which to assume that a Hispanic conservative would necessarily bring substantial votes, especially now that Gov. Susana Martínez has tapped out from VP consideration (other than maybe Rubio, I can’t see it).

Fortuño’s executive and Congressional experience best qualifies him to lead Puerto Rico through its particular self-inflicted fiscal challenges, but isn’t a good fit for the Vice Presidency at this crucial historical juncture.  Romney’s running mate is going to have to be able to hit the lame-duck session on the run, and this lame-duck is big enough to choke a horse.  There will be ObamaCare SCOTUS fallout, regardless of the ruling.  In addition, there is a transition whichc hands off the winding-down of two wars…and oh, by the way, Taxmageddon is looming.  This particular transition requires a mastery of the tax and budgeting process that I’m not sure whether Fortuño has attained as Resident Commissioner in Washington, and Tourism Secretary and Governor of Puerto Rico.

Any other election cycle, and Fortuño is definitely on the short list.  But not this one.  Given the magnitude of the mess that is going to need cleaning up, and the need for a clean vetting, I think Romney will play it safe and go with three budget nerds on his short list.  Of these, I expect Jindal to show, Ryan to place, and Portman to win.

A Spanish-language version of this post is available at El Tercer Riel (The Third Rail).

Alan Grayson is the only candidate to announce for the Democrats.  His national fame (or infamy) has given him a natural fundraising advantage, which translates to about $2 million to date according to Sunshine State News.  His finances, the 9^th District’s demographics, and his access to the Obama machine would make him a nigh-unstoppable candidate in any other cycle, and against any other opponent.  But, perhaps, not this one.

FL-9 covers southeasternOrangeCounty, all of Osceola county, and a sliver of Polk County known as Poinciana.  Those who know Central Florida know that this part of town is heavily Hispanic, and that half of that Hispanic population is of Puerto Rican origin.  This is where Democrat math begins to crack up.

 About 40% of FL-9’s voting-age residents are Hispanic, and it’s no secret that Hispanic voters tend to favor Democrats, more so, Puerto Rican voters.  However, most ofCentral Florida’s Hispanics are registered independents, and tend to swing-vote.  Quiñones has a proven track record of appealing to these voters, and has won multiple elections on what is otherwise hostile ground for Republicans.  With a Puerto Rican on the ballot (especially one with Quiñones’ profile), I am hard-pressed to believe that Grayson (who does not currently live in FL-9 but owns a home there) can get the overwhelming majority of Hispanic votes that he’d need in order to return to Congress.  

 The mere possibility of a fifth Puerto Rican in Congress (along with Serrano, Velázquez, Gutiérrez, and Labrador) would potentially dry up any fundraising on the island, and would spook any local politicians looking to come over and stump for Grayson (as did Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi last cycle).  For many Puerto Ricans, ethnic identity trumps political affiliation (Exhibit A: Sonia Sotomayor), and they tend to coalesce around “one of their own”, right or wrong.

 A Quiñones run in FL-9 could throw a wrench into national electoral calculations, as well.  Quiñones would likely affect Hispanic outreach and turnout all along the vaunted I-4 corridor, and could well help oust both President Barack Obama and Senator Bill Nelson.

Marco Rubio’s rise to the Senate proved that (A) Florida is a unique electoral market, and (B) that its Hispanics do not readily respond to Democrat national messaging.  Quiñones’ candidacy would necessarily focus the debate on Grayson, and hog-tie his record to Obama’s, and would rob Democrats of the opportunity to raise the specter of Hispanic racial grievance within the I-4 corridor.

For generations, Democrats have lived by the sword of racial polarization and grievance, and I am thrilled at the prospect that they may now die by it.  If I’m either the RNC, the RNCC, the Florida GOP, or Mitt Romney’s people…I’d look into wrapping my arms (and checkbook) around this guy yesterday.

While some Utah Transit Authority board members argued that the threat of being killed by a train should be enough potential punishment for “distracted walking” around rails, the board decided Wednesday also to impose fines for it.

The board voted 11-3 to create a $50 civil fine for distracted walking around UTA rail lines, and repeat offenses would cost $100. It comes after a rash of train accidents in recent months.

The new ordinance says examples of walking while distracted include — but are not limited to — talking on cellphones, listening to music with headphones, texting, “attending to personal hygiene” or reading newspapers or magazines while crossing tracks.

So taking a call from your wife, reading the paper, or listening to Justin Bieber now merits a $50 fine if a policeman in Utah arbitrarily decides it’s “distracting” you? Isn’t listening to Justin Bieber punishment enough in and of itself? Then there’s “attending to personal hygiene.” What, are they having a big problem with people brushing their teeth on the train tracks? Any government agency that thinks it’s appropriate to fine people for not paying enough attention when they’re walking needs to be taken down a peg or two on general principle.

John Hawkins is a professional writer who runs Right Wing News and Linkiest. He’s also the co-owner of the The Looking Spoon. You can hear more from John Hawkins on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+, You Tube, & at Pajamas Media.

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ON THE BALDWIN/McCULLOUGH MegaCast:
1. At midnight EST Townhall.com publishes Kevin McCullough’s weekly column this week that focuses on President Obama’s statement from the Rose Garden yesterday and asks the important question of whether or not the ‘O’ministration is being purely politically exploitative by weighing in on the Trayvon Martin shooting. From the matter that an eye-witness now seems to back Zimmerman’s original story, to the fact that while President Obama found “his own son’s identity” at stake in the Martin shooting, but seems uninterested in equally harsh crimes committed in reverse. Let’s just say there are plenty of questions about the entire thing. From your perspective: 888.340.3373.

2. Stephen Baldwin, ran across a story this week that seems to indicate a psychologist was aware of Jerry Sandusky’s odd habits years ago, but never revealed anything, and as a result more kids were injured. Stephen’s question is, when do we break that barrier of confidentiality, confidence, trust, in order to do a greater good?

Baldwin/McCullough Resources:

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The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be .
MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking .
The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips
The Unusual Suspect: My Calling to the new Hardcore Movement of Faith .

Even though it’s been weeks since conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called a reproductive rights activist a “slut” and then apologized, the “war on women” has not subsided.

Good. It’s high time that women on the right side of the political aisle joined the battle. And because conservative women’s long-simmering outrage was ignited by the left’s double standard in the Rush kerfuffle, liberals have been in the uncomfortable position of playing defense.

Sure, they’ve turned to an even more aggressive offensive stance (more on that in a bit), but at the outset, they were whipsawed by the reaction of conservative women who, after suffering through years of grotesque, highly misogynistic comments from liberal celebrity pundits, finally had the opportunity to present a litany of these offensive louts’ language for all to see, saying, “Yeah, these filth-spewing commentators deserve the world’s opprobrium–we’re so glad you agree with us at last.” Ahem.

(A quick aside: Politics ain’t beanbag, and when I, and other women I know, speak of “offensive language,” we’re not talking about strong metaphors. We’re talking about language that diminishes women to their sexual natures alone, language that is a variation on either “forget her ideas, she’s one hot fox,” or, “she’s no more than a c***, so why take her seriously?”)

The reaction to conservative women’s pushback during L’Affaire Limbaugh has been amusing, to say the least. The standard liberal meme has been resurrected: liberal commentators, regardless of their offenses, aren’t equal to Rush because of his huge audience and, oh, yeah, he is the titular head of the Republican Party anyway, you know. (Tell that to the various GOP presidential candidates who won the party’s nomination despite harsh criticism from Rush.)

The audience measurement argument puts liberals in the embarrassing position of showcasing “their guys’” low audience numbers, though. Beyond what Nielsen statistics say about the appeal of liberal ideas on the airwaves, however, the question then becomes: exactly where is the cutoff that gives a commentator a pass in the use of offensive language? Is it 900,001 (Keith Olbermann could draw close to 900,000, after all.) How about 1,000,001? (Bill Maher can draw a million.) Even if liberal fellows don’t understand the absurdity of that argument, most women, who’ve ever walked past a construction site to catcalls and whistles, do.

So, now that the hypocrisy has been exposed in the Rush brouhaha, the left has loaded other missiles in their Outrage Artillery to keep the “War on Women” battle alive to their benefit. They’ve been firing off shots about how conservative men want to control women’s bodies (abortion, contraception, etc.). They are dragging out a list of state bills sponsored by conservatives that seek to either limit access to contraception or force women to undergo “invasive” testing before having abortions.

As to the contraception bills, from my knowledge these are a reaction to the HHS mandate dictating that all health plans must cover contraception and abortifacients, regardless whether the coverage violates the religious beliefs of the employers. So they are attempts, perhaps clumsy and (pardon the pun) ill-conceived, to protect First Amendment rights of free conscience. If the White House made a real accommodation with religious entities concerning these mandates, the reactionary bills would probably disappear in a snap. (And, no, the WH has made no accommodation–the same mandate language HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advanced prior to announcing accommodations is still in the law.)

On to the ultrasound bills–there’s been one in Virginia, but they’re popping up elsewhere–proposed laws to force women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds first. I’m not keen on legislating medical practice, but I am sympathetic to the pro-life point of view, even if I don’t entirely share it.

Pro-life advocates believe that abortion is murder. And just as activists such as George Clooney can’t stand idly by while watching people be massacred in Africa, pro-life champions believe they, too, must do everything in their power to stop what they see as the slaughter of innocents.

I admire George Clooney, even without agreeing with him on all his stances, and would never disparage his well-intentioned efforts. Similarly, I admire pro-life activists, even if I don’t agree with all their approaches. Can most liberals say the same?

In fact, the left’s barrage of attacks on ultrasound bills has incensed at least one pro-choice supporter, who argues, quite persuasively, that using inflammatory language (such as “rape”) to describe pre-abortion ultrasounds is harmful to women. Since the vast majority of abortion providers do these ultrasounds anyway prior to abortions, liberals are unnecessarily alarming women about their invasiveness and diminishing their value.

But that’s the real problem with this whole “war on women” the left is using to try to score points against the right. It ignores the reality of women’s opinions and lives just to trounce political opponents. It hides behind the skirts of women, in other words, to fire shots at adversaries, seeking to damage them in women’s eyes.
The reality is that women are not of one mind on reproductive issues. Gallup polls show women fairly evenly divided on abortion, in fact, with 48 percent identifying themselves as “pro-life” and large majorities supporting some restrictions on abortions that liberals traditionally fight tooth and nail– things like parental consent laws for abortions for minor girls, for example. Ironically, I’m sure mothers who hold these beliefs would look at liberal opposition as something of a “war” on them.

But you rarely hear of these divided opinions when the High Dudgeon Industry has fired its first shots. In my cynical view, that’s because those fueling the battle aren’t really all that interested in listening to what women have to say after all…unless it can be used to defeat political opponents.

So, David Axelrod can blithely criticize Rush Limbaugh in one breath, while stammering sophistry about why Bill Maher’s one-million-dollar donation to the president’s SuperPac is okay because….well, because it’s just too darn silly to even repeat here.

Don’t be fooled, sisters. There might be a “war on women” out there, but it’s coming as much from the left who want to silence the half of American women who don’t agree with liberals on abortion policy. According to their “rules of engagement,” these women–pro-lifers or their admirers– deserve to be called any name in the misogynist’s lexicon.
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Libby Sternberg is a novelist living in Pennsylvania. She is a past member of the Vermont Commission on Women. She runs a blog titled Center Right Side. This post originally appeared there.

The drop in oil prices, I do think, makes the conversation about energy more difficult, not less necessary. More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they’re energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we’re going to need now more than ever. But with people not paying $4 a gallon for gas, it means it drops on their priority list. And that makes the politics of it tougher than it might have been six months ago.

It may have taken 3 years, but the President no longer has to worry about people paying less than $4 a gallon for gas – and, wow, just in time for his re-election campaign too. He must be absolutely ecstatic. Not only will this make the conversation about energy easier, he now gets to tout the $100+ billion dollars he’s already spent on creating the energy economy of the future. The solar panels, the light bulbs, not to mention the role his Administration played in bringing the hottest electric car to market. Somehow he pulled all this off, in spite of the political challenges.

If the President is really lucky, we might just be paying $5 a gallon for gas by the summer. Politics will never get any easier than that. His supporters can only cross their fingers and hope they will be so fortunate.

Venezuela had some ships built by Cuba, that world-class shipping industry giant, and the first ship arrived today. Here’s some video from a Spanish-language newsreel for you maritime-knowledgeable readers to appraise the ship,

Looks very modest to me, particularly when you bear in mind that the ship is to be used “for social and military” operations.

Venezuela is the #1 point of departure for illegal drugs. Rumors abound in Venezuela as to what Cuba will do if Chavez dies or loses the upcoming election. New Cuban ships arriving in Caracas are the least of the Venezuelans concerns.

Speaking of Chavez, after promising that he’d return from Cuba after having another cancer surgery, he just tweeted saying he’s aboard the plane bringing him back to Venezuela. The Venezuelan news website Noticias 24 has been running ads all week of Chavez saying “we will live and we will triumph”.

Hugo spent a full three weeks availing himself of that famous “free” Cuban health care, to the tune of an estimated $200,000 to $400,000 per day for his costs and that of his 240-people team.

Chavez and his cronies in Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua may be aiding Iran bypass economic sanctions, particularly since

The fact that Ecuador uses the U.S dollar as its currency means that once the money gets into the country it is automatically injected into the economy. Ecuador’s dollarization plus the SUCRE mechanism together represents a scheme that facilitates money-laundering operations in the region. Considering that Iran and Venezuela support terrorism, that high Venezuelan officials have been designated as “Drug Kingpins” by the United States, that Ecuador has become a haven for organized crime, there is reason to believe that those countries are using Ecuador to launder money from illicit activities such as narcotics trafficking, kidnapping and terrorism.

In other parts of South America, not only is the Argentinian government prosecuting economists who analyze the real inflation rate (not to be confused with the official inflation rate), they are now pulling the plug on live TV interviews on the subject. In the meantime, Argentina will sue any companies involved in oil exploration off the Falkland Islands in an attempt to pressure Great Britain into sovereignty talks.

Where is Margaret Thatcher when we need her?

Closer to home, Mitt Romney is campaigning in Puerto Rico, and so is Rick Santorum. Since PR has a population of more than 4 million people, the 23 delegates will increase Mitt’s lead.

Forget about what Santorum said regarding English and Puerto Rico; the guy who has his eyes on the real issue is not running:
Marco Rubio aced it,

“What’s on people’s minds is what’s on your mind and my mind and everybody else’s mind: How am I going to provide for my family?”

Here’s Marco,

Marco, unlike the current contenders, is the one who has it right.

The answer is, We can’t.  Not in the context of current government.  We bought into this mode of political discourse decades ago, when we decided it was a good idea to set up federal regulatory agencies and unleash them on every aspect of our lives.   When the federal government is empowered by its regulatory charter to take sides on the issue of contraception, then contraception is something we have to talk about.

Anything the people don’t agree on becomes a government issue, if government is chartered to take actions of any sort that imply an opinion on it.  This creates enough problems when the government in question is local.  But when the government in question is the federal government, the implied outcome, no matter what the issue, is a “national policy” on the matter.  As certain rights are enshrined in the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, so advocates wish to enshrine others in federal mandates.

This process is bound to come in conflict with the original concept of American rights, as it has lately done with contraception (a technology-accelerated social factor in today’s America) and religious liberty (a First Amendment right).  And as we might expect, virtually all pundits on the right are reiterating that the issue with contraception and the universal mandate is religious liberty.

But that is only half the picture, and it is fatal – I mean that word seriously, in terms of the survival of our national idea – to speak only of religious liberty, as if it is a disembodied right that can coexist with any size of government.  Catholic objections to funding contraception with mandated insurance premiums are the canary in the coal mine; the real, underlying problem is government so big that it goes around forcing us to do one thing and not another on an expanding host of matters.

The problem is big government.  That cannot be said often enough.  The problem is that we have chartered the US federal government to, in effect, have an opinion on your contraception, Sandra Fluke’s, and that used or not used by Catholics.  When government is forcing us to do things with our money, property, and speech that we otherwise would not do, of course we have to talk about that.  But again, it’s not just an issue of religious liberty.  It’s an issue of the size of government.

That covers liberties of all kinds.  Some conservative writers have been leery of presenting the contraception mandate as a general “liberty of conscience” issue, apparently on the theory that religious liberty is a stronger argument and easier ground to hold.  But that posture itself accepts the premise of government so big that it interferes with the individual conscience on more and more issues.  If organized religious organizations are exempt because of conscience, why shouldn’t individuals be?  How you answer that question is exact information as to how big and intrusive you are satisfied with government being.

The more outcomes you insist on trying to control, the bigger government gets.  America was set up for this day 70 years ago when the federal government used wage controls and tax incentives to induce employers to provide medical insurance.  Other factors from decades back include the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under Eisenhower (it became Health and Human Services in 1979); Johnson’s “War on Poverty” legislation, which provided contraception to low-income women and mandated that at least 6% of federal funding for maternal and child care go to “family planning”; and Nixon’s health industry reforms in the early 1970s, which enlarged federal oversight of private insurance plans and advantaged then-nascent HMOs over true “insurance.”

It is not possible and it will never be possible to grow government every decade, hand more and more things over to it for supervision, and expect to keep our liberties intact.  If government is big enough to declare that objections to contraception are meaningless and that government ought to force private individuals to fund it, there will be a constituency for that.  If it is big enough to preach opinions on sex to other people’s minor children, there will be a constituency for that.  If it is big enough to make the use of salt illegal in restaurant cooking, there will be a constituency for that.  And if government is big enough to suppress dissent by restricting access to the airwaves and internet servers – or increasing the cost of it until individuals and small organizations can no longer afford to use it as an effective vehicle for dissenting opinion – there will be a constituency for that.  There will be a constituency for everything we let government be big enough to do.

We have put together a government this big by incremental steps, and for reasons that were often emotional at the time.  But the future was always foreseeable.  Politicians and pundits predicted as much as 100 years ago that we could not let government take over more and more things, regulate them, and prescribe levels of contribution from us on an invidious basis, without seeing compromised our liberties of thought, speech, and discretion over our livelihoods.  They were right, and those who made fun of them were wrong.  That remains the case today.

The problem isn’t social conservatives.  The problem isn’t social liberals.  The problem is big government.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The left’s governmental approach to sex today involves, among other things, the following:

1.  Advertising it to children through the public schools and encouraging them to explore and participate in it.

2.  Basing policy on the assumption that no solution to any problem lies in individuals restraining or channeling their sexual urges, and therefore even the intractable facts of nature should not be left, with their powerful incentives, to encourage that posture.  It is important, instead, to create an environment conducive to sex unfettered by its natural consequences.

3.  Providing, at public expense, the means to have sex on one’s own terms, but avoid procreation and sexually transmitted diseases.

4.  Providing, at public expense, the means to support children who are born nevertheless.

5.  To adjust the balance between 3 and 4, encouraging and advocating the use of contraception and the resort to abortion.

The suite of policies advocated by the left is designed to encourage sex but limit procreation and STDs.  The social “good,” therefore, is deemed to be unfettered sex, while the social “ills” are the birth of children and the suffering (and infectiousness) incident to STDs.

Let’s compare this moral view and its program construct to the left’s policy attitude toward eating.  In this latter realm, the social “ills” are thought to be obesity and the medical problems that come with it.  But what is the social “good”?  Is there one?  It’s hard to say, because eating – which can be a most enjoyable activity, and far less avoidable than sex – is not, in the left’s moral view, considered a “good” to be promoted on whatever terms the individual prefers.

The left’s governmental treatment of eating is very different from its treatment of sex.  It runs on these lines:

1.  Advertising to children (as well as adults) the evils of certain kinds of food.

2.  Basing policy on the assumption that the people must be nudged or even coerced to eat according to whatever principle is suggested by the most recent studies.  It is important to create an environment in which eaters have to go well out of their way to avoid the choices made for them by government authorities.  The ideal, in fact, is an environment in which eaters can’t avoid the dictates of the government.

3.  Ensuring that the expenses of obesity are, increasingly, born by the public, while fanning political resentment of those expenses, and of the condition of the obese.

4.  Proclaiming that the solution in every case is controlling what people eat, rather than providing for the obese the same publicly-funded relief offered to the sexually promiscuous.

It is hard to make the case that eating a lot is worse than having a lot of sex outside of commitment and marriage.  At the very most, the two practices are a moral wash, one no worse than the other.  Both involve doing discretionary things with one’s body.  Both involve courting well-known consequences.  Both involve the strong potential for inconvenience to oneself and the larger community.  It is making an arbitrary moral judgment, to insist that what causes obesity should be dealt with through coercion and the limiting of options, while what causes unwanted pregnancies and STDs should be the object of solicitude, and public programs based not on denial but on mitigation.

We know that eating in moderation and limiting certain foods generally results in better health than eating, indiscriminately, lots and lots of things we enjoy for only a brief moment.

But we also know that not having sex prevents pregnancy and STDs with unparalleled effectiveness.  We know, moreover, that disciplining our sex drives, keeping sex within marriage, welcoming the children that come from it, and raising them with a father and mother are substantially more effective in preventing STDs, “unwanted” children, poverty, delinquency, addiction, and hopelessness than are government programs to distribute condoms and subsidize abortion providers.

If government treated obesity the way it treats sex, it would encourage schoolchildren to explore their enjoyment of Twinkies, Oreos, and moon pies; it would employ professionals to devise ways of suiting government policies to the principle that our bodies belong to us and we can put whatever we want in our stomachs; it would hold legislative hearings on the overriding importance of the freedom to eat what we want; it would resist the very idea of remedies that involve the individual eating less, or eating different things; it would pay for liposuction, cholesterol drugs, heart surgery, and diabetes-mitigation measures but not for programs of diet and exercise; it would encourage the development of drugs that could prevent fat formation regardless of what one eats; and it would make it a basic human right to be able to eat whatever one wants and have the consequences mitigated by the public.

There really is no case to be made that government should not do this.  If, that is, we accept that government’s current approach to sex and its consequences is appropriate and warranted.

Ultimately, no discussion of these issues would be complete without the observation that if government – and the federal government in particular – wasn’t involved in them in the first place, it wouldn’t matter nearly as much when the people’s opinions and our moral perspectives on them differed.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The Galway Advertiser understands that City Hall’s arts officer James Harrold will commission a scale model of the proposed monument to be made. This will then be presented to the Galway City Council’s Working Group on Public Arts for consideration, and later city manager Joe O’Neill for final approval. The approval of city councillors may also need to be sought.

The idea to erect a monument to Che Guevara comes from a proposal made by Labour councillor Billy Cameron, an ardent admirer of the revolutionary, that a monument be erected in Galway and that the project be undertaken in conjunction with the Cuban and Argentinean embassies to Ireland.

The proposed monument has been designed by Simon McGuinness and it is understood that it will feature the iconic image of Che created by the Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, commonly seen on posters and T-shirts.

Both men were in Galway recently to inspect proposed sites for the location of the Che monument. While no definite site has been chosen it is likely that the Salthill Promenade, possibly around the area of the Atlantaquaria, will be its location.

There should be no room in a beautiful city like Galway, in a free country like Ireland, to honor a mass murdering sociopathic racist Communist whose aim in life was to destroy the very freedoms and rights the Irish have struggled so hard to attain throughout their history. To build this monument, with the aim of making it a tourist attraction, is an insult to the very ideals of the Irish nation and the city of Galway.

Since no definite site has been chosen, it’s still time to stop it.

Here is the Galway City website. You can contact Billy Cameron at bcameron@eircom.net. Please make sure to be polite and civil when you contact them.

Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog.

(h/t Gates of Vienna)

Conservative voters who are alarmed about the direction of government recognize that procedural mechanisms and ephemeral election-year sentiment can’t fix it.  They perceive that our problems with government can only be addressed with moral decisions: difficult decisions made when much is at stake and there are deeply compelling interests in competition with each other.  Moral courage exists for such scary things, and doing the right thing when all of the choices at hand will break someone’s china requires a kind of moral courage that rarely sounds soothing to the ears of a harassed public.  It is more likely to resonate as trenchant, annoying, or painfully necessary.

Many of the voters are down for that this year.  A growing number of them are less put off by the sting of astringent than they are afraid of what will happen if America tries to avoid it.  They aren’t irritated by “moral talk”; they are interested and primed for it.

As regards Santorum’s suitability to this mood, however, a question in my mind is whether moral courage for the hour has to sound particularly theological, oddly detailed, or hectoring.  Along these lines, William McGurn offered Santorum good advice in a column on Tuesday:

[W]hen Mr. Santorum discusses [social] issues, he needs to fold them into his larger narrative about the free society. …

There is, however, one area where Mr. Santorum needs to demonstrate a discipline it’s not yet clear he has. That is the ability to resist the efforts to drag him out of the public questions into the weeds of theological debate.

I would go a bit further and suggest Santorum take a page directly from Ronald Reagan’s book.  This would entail a pivot in emphasis.  John Podhoretz has nicely identifiedwhat we might call Santorum’s “presentation” problem: his tendency, at least in his non-campaign speeches from the past, to dwell on rebuking a fallen America.

The point is central, because rebuke of the past is not a guide to policy for the future – and the “rebuke” theme gets old quickly, as demonstrated by a similar tendency in the current president.  Something like Santorum’s now-infamous “mainline Protestants” comment may get vigorous agreement from a lot of evangelical Protestants, but it isn’t the basis for an action plan or a useful source of vision for national government.  Granted, Santorum made that remark in what was essentially a religious speech at a Catholic college.  But when you’re running for president, your memorable comments need to have a more positive and visionary emphasis.

Fortunately, there’s a lot to be positive about in the American tradition Santorum invokes.  It is also an excellent source of vision.  And one of Reagan’s greatest strengths was in defining and celebrating the important elements of that political tradition: the trademark American idea of government that is limited, constitutional, and federal.

Reagan saved his rebukes for left-wing ideology and policy.  He didn’t approach the American people as a sick society in need of exhortation, even though America was putting up plenty of soft targets in that regard in the 1970s.  Rather, he predicated his political approach on expecting the best of the people.  He spoke often about liberty and small government in terms of their unique power to unleash the people’s virtues.  He couched his message in positive terms, speaking far less about the evils of welfarism, for example, than about the benefits of liberty and opportunity.

With his positive approach, Reagan was unusually convincing on an essential principle: that the people do better with less government.  Santorum may embrace that principle, but it’s not readily associated with him, because he spends so much time talking about things like the societal problems that arise when contraception is considered a cheap “out” from moral decisions about sex and procreation.  He may have good points on that and other topics, but as a practical matter of communication and point-making, those essays in forensic pessimism don’t really advance the argument for political liberty.

Republicans this year should emphasize encouraging the people with reminders of what America was constituted to do right, and what Americans have done right with their freedom.  In 2012, it may be necessary to speak in some explicit detail about the moral principles behind American liberty.  Today’s voters are less likely to have been reared on them than the voters of 1980 were.  But if there’s one thing this primary season has shown, it’s that the voters want that discussion.

That is a tremendous opportunity.  Santorum can seize it best by concentrating on what we’ve got going for us and why we can turn this thing around.  If our focus is on social negatives, and if we are discouraged as to whether we will do good things with liberty and small government, it’s hard to make the case that those conditions frame a better future for the country.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Time has called out Rick Santorum for “wanting to ‘fight the dangers of contraception’.”  Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller sees electoral danger for Santorum in his insistence on discussing social issues and registering committed opinions on them, rather than parrying such questions with a kind of unifying boilerplate.

Lewis isn’t necessarily wrong on the point about electability.  But I see much more danger for America’s future in the fact that so many Americans are now apparently unable to make important distinctions about the operation and functions of government.

Consider the method by which Michael Scherer presents the video of Santorum’s interview with the evangelical blog Caffeinated Thoughts in October 2011.  Scherer includes in his article a transcript of the comments he wants to discuss, and helpfully tells readers to start watching the video at the 17:55 mark.

I decided to watch from the beginning (in spite of the awful audio quality).  Out of context, Santorum’s remarks sound like he might have a plan to “fight contraception” the way Democrats always want to fight something: that is, outlaw it, impose fees and penalties on it, sue the bejeebers out of it in court, sic the IRS and all the other federal agencies and commissions on it, demonize it in the media, teach children in the public schools that it is associated with hate, racism, violence, and fascism, and make movies in which the left’s point of view about it is validated by George Clooney.

But in context, it turns out that Santorum has no plan to do anything with federal law other than ensure that ObamaCare is repealed and that federal money is not used for contraception or abortion.  (Federal money is currently used to fund both.)  Santorum was speaking in October in the Caffeinated Thoughts video, before the contretemps over the ObamaCare insurance mandate for contraceptive services; otherwise, he would presumably have referred to that as well.

To appreciate the context in which his remarks were made, it is necessary to start no later than the 10:00 hack.  The overall discussion is about various social issues (e.g., fatherlessness), and the theme Santorum emphasizes is that a president can shape a national debate on these topics, which profoundly affect the social health of our communities.  He repeats the word “debate” quite a few times.  His examples of positive intervention in such issues come from the local level and involve community groups and local governments.

He says explicitly in the 16:00-17:30 timeframe that laws in Congress are just a small part of what he’s talking about, and his examples of working through federal law – there are only two – are ensuring that no federal funds are going to abortion, and repealing ObamaCare.   He is also explicit, if fleeting, about the federal government not being the right level at which to actually deal with social issues by adopting government policies.

Santorum isn’t coming after your contraception.  He does consider it an issue that affects the health of society, and his hope is to foster a debate on that and other social topics, a rhetorical power he ascribes – along with millions of other observant Americans – to the president.

Many readers will think it’s misguided of Santorum to want to use the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to spark a national discussion on contraception.  But let’s make the minimal effort required to at least understand what Santorum’s position actually is, and oppose it for what it is, instead of taking cherry-picked soundbites from him and reading into them the themes of governmentalism popularized by the left over the last century. The left doesn’t own the idea of “government” and what it’s supposed to do to and for us.

Regarding contraception itself, as it happens, I hold the fairly typical Protestant view that our virtue does not depend on things like contraception being proscribed to us, and that while the unborn child is a human being, his or her human status before conception falls in the category of what Paul calls “disputable matters” (see Romans 14).  Protestants frame the argument about contraception a bit differently from Catholics, although I have sympathy for the Catholic Church’s viewpoint on the larger issue of sex, procreation, and human life.

Ultimately, I don’t know how much social good a national debate on contraception would do, if it were promoted by the president.  I view the federal government, including the presidency, as too compromised and suspect an entity to honestly broker such a debate under current conditions.  (I am very happy for the churches to foster the debate, and indeed, to see the Catholics sticking to their guns.)

But what I do believe is that the government – and the federal government in particular – should have no policy on ensuring the distribution of contraception.  Santorum is right that the federal government should neither fund contraception nor subsidize its advocates’ prowling the land in various guises, encouraging young women to resort to it.  It should not be the policy of the state to subsidize or promote the avoidance of pregnancy, any more than it should be the policy of the state to prohibit contraception.  A government that interests itself in this matter is too big.  It needs to be slapped down hard.

The more things government subsidizes – and therefore promotes – the more likely it is that the actions of government will become topics of religious and moral dispute.  Americans can handle this one of two ways.  We can take the bait every time, getting into knock-down-drag-out fights over the issues as if the only solution is for one side to end up with the weight of government and the taxpayers’ money behind it.

Or we can take the issues out of government’s purview, and let reality, nature, and people’s consciences decide.  We can also reduce the weight of government, so that the cost when government decides to endorse a position – an act that should be rare, and exceedingly so in the case of the federal government – is not unacceptable to those who may lose the argument.  “Tolerance” does not mean “obligation to subsidize,” for example, nor does “unwillingness to endorse” mean “intolerance”; these creeping inversions only make sense to the narrow mind in the context of an all-encompassing government – a context that is unnecessary and avoidable.

I would like to hear from Rick Santorum what his philosophy of government is.  I don’t disagree that the executive has a hortatory function, although I would define the scope of it pretty narrowly.  The problem with wanting to engage the people from the Oval Office on the topic of contraception is that there is so much water under the bridge now:  the mode in which government approaches social issues has been established as overweening “big-governmentism,” on the model exemplified by FDR, Lyndon Johnson’s social legislation, decades of judicial activism, and the geometrically expanding activism of the executive agencies created by both parties since 1952.

What we chiefly need is to disestablish that very convention.  It distorts, often decisively, all our public dialogue on contentious topics.  Can Rick Santorum articulate a philosophy of government that defies this model, to which so many Republicans and conservatives are justly opposed?  Does he want to?

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

“Drain the Jacuzzi!”

“This government isn’t too big to fail, it’s too big to succeed.”

“We don’t want an economy built to last, we want an economy built to grow.”

“This is Obama’s Washington.”

I wonder, however, if one of the points she hammered throughout the speech really registered with her audience.  Her signature line in this speech was “The door is open.”  She meant that political conditions are becoming conducive to a renewed commitment to small government and liberty.  People’s mindsets are changing.  We are not governed by the “rules” of political seasons past; the door is open to choosing our candidates and charting our nation’s future on a different basis.  The door is open to not accepting a continuation of the false compromises of previous decades.

(As I go to press, I see that Tina Korbe picked up on this theme.)

I have referred to those false compromises – “compromises” in which the conservative, small-government side gave up virtually everything – as the “old consensus.”  I see it losing, bit by bit, in this primary season.  People are no longer obediently making their political choices within the parameters defined for them by the professional political class.

This doesn’t mean that the voters have ideal candidates with whom to make their statement against the old consensus.  Santorum and Gingrich both have their drawbacks, as Paul always has.  But a critical mass of voters has recognized that Romney is the old consensus, and they are rejecting it.  The CPAC vote was remarkable for Romney’s 38% — because it wasn’t bigger, because Santorum got 31%, and even Gingrich, in a conclave of the politically connected, got 15%.

Everyone outpolled Ron Paul at CPAC, even though he has regularly won the CPAC vote in the past.  This signals a change in the mindset of politically active conservatives – not merely a new perspective that it’s overwhelmingly important to defeat Obama, but a perspective that the core of the conservative movement is shifting, and we need a serious mainstream candidate because it is a life-or-death matter to be effective in the political process.

That obviously doesn’t mean the CPAC voters think we need a “moderate,” leadership- and media-approved candidate.  If it did, they would have gone for Romney, rather than voting 46% for the mainstream candidates who are not Romney – and who are perceived, in many if not all cases correctly, as less satisfied with and enthusiastically “managerial” about the matter of big government.

But the point to take away is that voter sentiment, as it relates to the meaning of different candidates and the basis of government, is changing.

And that, I think, is about half the reason why Sarah Palin didn’t throw her hat in the ring for this campaign cycle.  Her evaluation of political conditions is remarkably accurate and prescient:  she saw, long before most of the voters did, that the game of expectations itself needed to change, and that only we could do it.

What strategic value was there for Palin in participating in the Cynical Media Slime-fest and All-Out Kick-em-in-the-Nads, mud-slinging, business-as-usual, expectations-on-autopilot primary season?

Six or eight months ago, the sea change in the voters’ sentiments and propensities might have been foreseeable, but it hadn’t happened yet.  Those who think Palin could have won lots of primaries on the basis of pre-primary voter sentiments are wrong, I think.  After all, the business-as-usual approach – Karl Rove tells everyone how bad a candidate is, the media magnify his or her every quirk or mistake, the media and some (not all) of the other candidates pile on with allegations that range from hostile spin to outright falsehood – has so far felled our most conservative candidates.

But in the process, the voters have been changing.  That’s what Palin saw before others did.  Do I think she is counting the days to a brokered convention?  No.  There is no one who could reasonably adopt that as a “plan.”  She won’t run this year; that’s my rational assessment as well as my gut feeling.  (I could of course be wrong, although I think some big conditions will have to change more for that to be the case.)

But if she does run, it will not be because she has changed, but because we have.  There are political conditions in which she could run successfully, and conditions in which she couldn’t.  The latter have constituted our political environment up until the last couple of months.

If the conditions are changing now, I believe that is largely because voters are having to wise up to the flaws in our own thinking by going through this ugly spectacle.  We already knew that the media have no intention of giving our candidates a fair shake, and that many in the GOP leadership want to submarine the small-government conservatives.   What many voters didn’t understand is that if we want to select leaders of character, we have to graduate from high school, and overlook the vicissitudes of “presentation” that sometimes make good people look like buffoons to those who see without humility, mercy, or discrimination.  We have to see with better eyes.  We have to think independently of the jeers embedded in the media narrative.  We have to be wiser citizens, placing in political leadership only the hope that is appropriate to free men and women.

We can’t have a candidate who sounds like Mitt Romney, but will lead the way a small-government conservative would.  That’s not an option.  What we’re doing in this primary season is coming to grips with that reality.  I think Palin knew instinctively that we would have to, before it would make sense for her to jump back into the electoral fray.

But, as I said, I think that’s only about half the explanation.  The other half is that Palin is an evangelical Christian.  She believes God has a plan for her life, and that He gives her a certainty in her spirit about the big choices she has to make.  I suspect she has had a peaceful certainty that joining the campaign as a candidate for 2012 was not something she should do.  If she were to analyze it, she might say that God knows better than any of us how the voters’ concerns and expectations are going to change.

Meanwhile, the door is open.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Who is to be congratulated for the elimination of Cain, Perry, Bachmann, and Huntsman?  The voters.  That’s right.  Sure, the candidates made some mistakes.  The media did everything possible to prejudice voters against them, and that was a crying shame.  But voters didn’t have to let the media or the contrived, somewhat artificial debate process make their decisions for them.

There is good news in all this.  First, the voters really are making the decision.  Second, the voters are starting to think for themselves.  It would have been nice for that to happen earlier, but there’s no time like the present.

Third, with the voters thinking for themselves, candidates who are focused on liberty issues are still on the ballot, and the party dialogue on those issues continues.  I know a lot of people don’t see it this way, but they’re wrong:  the most important thing the GOP can possibly do in 2012 is decide what it is and what it wants.  Self-identified “conservative” voters may be in a national majority according to the surveys, but it has been more than 20 years since we were all pulling together.

The bottom line is that the GOP is not agreed on what the problem is. We’re fighting that out right now – and it’s healthy, if annoying.  One faction says the problem is Obama; the other faction says it’s the way we now govern ourselves, which – no matter who is in charge – cannot avoid oppressing the people with regulation, debt, and crony-enrichment schemes at the people’s expense.  The latter faction is divided between those who see enough prospect for change with one of the candidates still in the race, and those who don’t.  Those who see even Gingrich and Santorum as too reflexively “big government” in their thinking are a growing voice.

The good news is that we are having the debate in a way that matters.  That is very good news.  Never underestimate the power of ideas.  They stick with people, even when it seems they haven’t, and they are the only thing that can motivate people to unite and make positive changes.

The mainstream media don’t depict it that way, of course.  They labor to depict the GOP primary season as a turkey shoot run by Keystone Kops.  But Americans have a choice as to whether they let the mainstream media distribute their opinions to them, like thematic gift baskets, and more and more Americans are choosing to just say no.

I wrote last year about Rick Perry as a candidate of the “old consensus” – my term for the modus vivendi adopted over the last 60 years by Democrats, who were increasingly taken over by progressive statists, and Republicans, who fought a rear-guard action to keep statism from getting too big and expensive.  Under the old consensus, Republicans were largely focused on the monetary and economic expense of statism, and the tacit agreement was that the right would accept as much statism as we could “afford.”  As long as we were growing economically – so this consensus went – we could afford a fairly heavy burden of statism.  Perry, I thought (and still do think), was on the Reagan end of the consensus rather than the Rockefeller end.

But what I see happening in the Republican primaries is an awakening of conservative voters to the disasters invited by the old consensus.  The loss of fiscal integrity and loss of liberty for America are products of the old consensus, and they have proceeded in lockstep: we are losing as much of the latter as we are of the former.  I believe 2012 is the year in which a critical mass of GOP voters has awoken to the reality that the old consensus is a destructive path and is in any case unsustainable.  Voting to continue down it on any basis is voting to remain on course for destruction.

I urge GOP voters not to be discouraged about this.  Ideas outlast everything else.  The idea of individual liberty and limited government cannot be killed.  America has not had a fundamental dispute over basic ideas for a very long time; we have become conditioned to the foggy stasis of bumper-sticker slogans and complacent, rarely-visited idea-sets.  It feels unsettled and strange to truly be debating the relationship of man and the state: to be breaking up those idea-sets and repudiating things supposedly bought into decades ago.  But a movement of ideas is a force of remarkable power, and one that no state power arrangement has ever ultimately withstood.  America’s burgeoning movement of ideas will not expire ignominiously.

The future of liberty on earth depends on what happens in America in the next decade.  If there is any nation on earth that can navigate peacefully back from the brink of statist implosion and loss of liberty, it is the United States. In 2012, GOP voters can rejoice in having alternatives, imperfect as they are, to a big-government statist candidate.  Voters can choose to affect the political process – and possibly the outcome in November – by casting their votes on principle.

Some words to live by as we go forward.  The president doesn’t make us, we make him.  The integrity and character of the people are paramount.  The only sure way to lose a battle is to stop fighting.  America has beaten the odds every time.  We will beat them again.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

This primary season is a fight for the character of the GOP.  The fight is not the perennial standoff between “social cons” and “fiscal cons”; it is a long-postponed dispute over the size and charter of government, and how the GOP will approach it.  It is the most basic possible dispute over ideas about man and the state and their consequences.  It’s also a dispute only the Republican Party could have.  The Democratic Party does not have such a diversity of viewpoint, at least not in any politically consequential way.  The decision about whether America will continue on a fiscally unsustainable path of ever-growing statism comes down to the GOP’s fight with itself.

The Romney wing represents the attitude that America is really OK with the size of government we have now: it just needs better management and some tweaking on the margins.  The Romney wing does not by any means have a class-hostile, socialist vision for the future.  It has no intention of interfering with the citizens’ intellectual liberties, and its view of managerial government is not predicated on the idea that the people need to be coerced (or “nudged”) into collectivist life choices.  It simply sees the existing size of government as compatible with a free-enough life, in the sense that we don’t need to push for significant changes.

The other wing – the one that has been getting behind a different candidate every few weeks – believes precisely that America is not OK with the size of government we have now.  Its main point is that our fiscal and economic problems, and many of our social ones, result directly from the size and interventionist activities of government.  The size of government is the problem – already, today – and if it isn’t fixed, America literally cannot survive as a republic with the intellectual and lifestyle liberties we have enjoyed up to now.

Many in the GOP’s “Not OK” wing have perceived government to be out of control for some time.  But the shock administered by the Obama administration gave the most direct impetus to the Tea Party movement, because it brought home to many Americans how vulnerable we had already become to executive overreach.

For this wing of the GOP, it isn’t enough to put a Republican in charge of the sprawling, momentum-driven executive.  The mere existence of such a gigantic apparat is an already-proven threat to liberty.  A Democrat could be reelected to head it at any time, and even with a Republican in charge, the civil-service army would continue in obscurity to pursue regulatory and money-spending charters issued years or decades ago.  The failure of Congress to pass a budget for over 1,000 days has suspended the legislature’s principal hammer over the executive’s freedom to do what it wants.  As long as government limps along from month to month, on continuing resolutions that are mainly about constituency-tending fights in the House and Senate, Congress cannot gather its will to bargain seriously with the executive over spending priorities.

For the “Not OK” wing of the GOP, what is essential in 2012 is repudiating government on this model.  Nothing is more important to America’s future than that.  The different wings of the GOP have differing views of what constitutes “realism”:  the “America is OK” wing views it as unrealistic to focus on something other than putting up the candidate whom they feel will appeal to the most voters.  The “Not OK” wing sees that as an unrealistic perspective on the current situation.  If government is not reined in – put through an effective bankruptcy proceeding, with its assets sold off and its charter reorganized – then nothing else will matter.

Who is right?  While I am with the “Not OK” wing philosophically, I don’t think it would be the end of America as we know it if Mitt Romney were elected.  But I do believe it would be a grave strategic error for the Republican Party to endorse him early, and silence intra-party dissent as if he represents what America really needs.  A Romney presidency would be no more than a hiatus in deliberately using the state as a steamroller for ideological purposes.  That would be better than 4 more years of Obama, but from the perspective of getting America on a different path, it’s not good enough.

The GOP needs this fight over philosophy of government.  What has to be established in the 2012 primary season is that the small-government vote matters.  If that is not established, the GOP itself will matter little.  Its difference from the Democratic Party will not be sufficient to attract (or keep) membership.

I believe Palin has a strategic view of America’s future that looks beyond the 2012 election itself.  The most important thing now is that the small-government perspective continue to have a chance to express itself on its terms.  If it is silenced in electoral politics, there will be no hope of changing America’s path.  And the only way for it to have a voice is for this primary season to continue on a competitive basis.  That is the mechanism through which the voice of either wing of the party matters to the industry of politics.  That’s where the noise has to be made.

Palin is right.  This is an incredibly “political” year, more so than any year I can remember other than maybe 1979.  Americans are more engaged in political ideas than I have ever seen them.  Obama’s poll numbers aren’t good, but perhaps more importantly, those numbers and others on GOP candidates keep shifting.  People’s choices haven’t been set in stone.  They’re not sure what’s going on, they’re still trying to find a candidate who says what they’re waiting to hear, and they haven’t made up their minds.  The media will do what they’re going to do, but the people are having a separate dialogue with themselves, and it isn’t over.

I believe the GOP would be out of step with the remarkable nature of this year to crown a big-government-as-usual candidate early, on the theory that we need to damp down philosophical debate and concentrate on “campaigning” as early as possible before November.  The campaigning is what is annoying the living bejeebers out of the voters; it’s the philosophical debate that matters this year.  Shutting it down would be a tactical as well as a strategic error.  The only way to force Romney to the right is to keep the primary season competitive.  It’s also the way to keep quality attention on the most important debate America has had on the nature of government since 1860.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The reason Romney hasn’t had that much real political success is that he doesn’t have much in the way of a political philosophy.  When political conditions are set for him by outside agency, he’s an effective manager.  His admirable record at Bain, and his achievement in organizing a faltering Olympics for success, attest to that.  But his record as governor of Massachusetts indicates that in a political role, he accepts existing conditions as given, and seeks merely to optimize certain narrow priorities within them.

He is not committed to political principles, but to management.  The two things are different, and one of the worst mistakes Republicans make is to imagine that management trumps political principle.  In fact, the management focus knuckles under repeatedly to political pressure (see Romney in Massachusetts, Schwarzenegger in California, and generations of big businesses facing political activists).  Only philosophical commitment, based on irreducible and non-negotiable ideas, can stand – or prevail – against the assault of demagogic-statist political themes.

It is clear from his passage on “the very poor, the very rich,” etc, that Romney is operating on the vague, complacent mindset conventionalized by left-trending American politics over the last 80 years: that government must “help” certain demographics, while rebuking others; and that no amount of evidence will induce us to change our definition of “help,” or our assessment of the need for it.

What that means in practice is a “cycle of poverty” welfare regime for the very poor; a symbiotic relationship for government with the very rich; a selective dismissal of the impact of government regulation and taxes on our economic conditions; and an incessant, increasingly expensive use of the middle class as a political football.

Those are the factors that have created our current, untenable situation.  Its greatest impact is – as always – on the poorest among us.  The poor have less opportunity today than they did as little as 40 years ago to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” through enterprise and investment as opposed to narrowly-defined “education” and “jobs.”  And the principal reason is that regulation has them surrounded.  It has suppressed job opportunities, made it harder to set up in small business or as an independent contractor, and jeopardized saving by increasing the prices of the goods and services needed for survival.

Impoverishing the middle class with taxation and job-killing regulation hits the poor even harder than it does the middle class.  The middle class is what ultimately employs the poor, by exercising market demand; if it has less purchasing power, the poor lose jobs and business opportunities.  Forcing the price of goods and services up with regulation also hits the poor harder than it hits anyone else.  Policies that seek to suppress the industries and commercial activities disliked by activists hit the poor harder than anyone else.

Government favoritism, toward unions and big business alike, hits the poor harder than anyone else, because it is based on favoring the already connected, and preventing independent “upstarts” – frequently the poor – from competing with them.  Besides distorting markets and costing everyone more in price terms, favoritism also creates a public debt burden, which hits the poor again by adding to the economic discouragement of the middle class.

A separate but intertwined aspect of this issue is the one Newt Gingrich has spoken passionately about:  the debilitating and demoralizing effect on the poor of the very programs that, in Romney’s formulation, keep them “taken care of.”

I truly don’t think Romney means to be cavalier about the poor.  But his wording indicates that his first political instinct is managerial rather than liberty-promoting.  The two postures pull in different directions.  Governments are perennially inclined to try to manage their people.  They don’t naturally respect their people’s liberties and dignity; they have to be ordered to, and kept under constant surveillance and rebuke.  Romney is not the man to do that.  He appears to see the poor, like a lot of other things, as a managerial problem for government.

In the present case, respect for the people would entail acknowledging and revising policies that are socially destructive, and seeing whoever is poor at a given time principally as a “middle-class in waiting,” in need of liberty and opportunity.  It is still possible to offer public assistance without maximizing the disincentives thrown up by government to enterprise and independence for the poor.  The key is to avoid the deadly idea that assistance programs render the poor “taken care of,” as if the poor are a bill coming due.  The poor are people – the source of all creativity and wealth – who will largely respond to and make the most of the same incentives as the middle class and the rich.  America is, if nothing else, a demonstration of the truth of that maxim.

Romney consistently comes off as having an old-school interventionist approach to government.  He also seems to have missed the right’s whole welfare-vs.-enterprise discussion of the 1980s and ‘90s.  He is clearly not someone who would say that for the good of the people and in the interest of our most precious, most empowering commodity – liberty – government needs to stop doing whole categories of things.  Romney doesn’t reflexively or naturally formulate any comment on policy in small-government terms.

It is not, in fact, conservative to think of the poor as “taken care of” by the destructive, self-perpetuating welfare regime in the United States.  Far better for the poor to have the kind of opportunity, and the buying power of their earnings and savings, that they do not have now, but would have if the load of regulatory overreach, predatory taxation, and constituency-tending-by-overspending were lifted on Americans as a whole.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

So, is Adelson’s money buying Newt’s support of Israel?

Not hardly. One of my readers did a little research and sent me a few helpful links. (Thanks!)

Look at this article from 1998 in the San Francisco Jewish Weekly, titled Resignation of Newt Gingrich means Israel is losing a friend. For those of you readers who can’t do difficult math, that article was written more than 13 years ago, which means Sheldon Adelson’s money played no part in Newt’s opinion on Israel. So far, the best the Forward can come up with is Adelson’s money contributed to Gingrich’s group in 2006. Whoops. That’s eight whole years after we read this:

A Jewish Democratic politico said of Gingrich’s pro-Israel credentials, “I don’t think Newt is acting. I’d like to say he’s full of it, but he isn’t. Yes, he was trying to out right-wing the right-wing Jews, but he’s a true believer. Livingston may say what AIPAC wants to hear, but it’s not in his kishkes. He’s not a true believer.”

Really? A Democrat called Gingrich a right-wing Israel supporter in 1998?

But wait. There’s more! In 1998, Gingrich also called Jerusalem “the united and eternal capital of Israel”

Oh, pshaw. There must be some way Adelson’s money influenced Gingrich’s opinion. Maybe he’s so rich, he has a secret time machine and he went back in time to convince Newt to support Israel?

Or maybe Newt’s been a supporter of Israel for decades. (Also, Newt is pretty damned close to getting the Yourish.com cherished Master of Juvenile Scorn™ designation.)

Speaker Newt Gingrich said today that the White House was trying to blackmail Israel by pushing it toward the negotiating table, but President Clinton said he was only trying to bring about fruitful talks on Mideast peace.

”It’s become the Clinton Administration and Arafat against Israel,” Mr. Gingrich said at a news conference. ”The Clinton Administration says: ‘Happy birthday. Let us blackmail you on behalf of Arafat.’ ”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Forward itself discussed Gingrich’s ties to Israel in the 1990s (buried, of course, in page two of an article using the Gloom-and-Doom Machine profiling his ties to Adelson). On the first page, they date the Adelson-Gingrich relationship back to 2007. This, kiddies, is how you get away with saying that your article is objective because it mentioned the recent and more distant relationships. It is also what is known as “slanting.” But the most important takeaway here is just what I wrote the other day: The only reason the liberal media is jumping all over the Gingrich-Adelson relationship is because Adelson is a Jew who is supporting a conservative Republican, rather than the liberal media-slash-Jewish establishment’s approved causes–which would be liberal Democrats.

Haim Saban influencing Bill Clinton? Not a problem. Sheldon Adelson is contributing to Newt Gingrich’s campaign? OMG, he’s a conservative, somebody stop him!1!!

Your objective media, exposed.

Cross-posted.

Will Weatherford, Florida state representative and spokesman for the Romney campaign in Florida, confirmed this weekend that the Republican-controlled Florida legislature is about to approve a redistricting proposal that will make it much harder for Allen West to be reelected.  Legal Insurrection points out the obvious:

Weatherford tried to hide behind a need to comply with [state and] federal law, but that’s obviously a dodge since there could have been many ways to comply yet not sacrifice West.

To point out some more “obvious,” this is a Republican-controlled legislature.  Did the Republicans allow other GOP-held Congressional seats to be severely jeopardized by the new district lines?  Apparently, only one.  An analysis done for the Washington Post last week indicates that Allen West’s and Tom Rooney’s seats are the ones in the most danger.  Getting positive help from the redistricting are Republicans Dan Webster, Sandy Adams, Mario Diaz-Balart, and John Mica.

Redistricting isn’t as easy as it looks, of course.  But it is not believable that it is either a fully non-partisan process – when anyone is doing it – or that the Florida GOP leadership was neutral as to which seats were jeopardized by their plan.

One possibility is that Republican leaders thought West and Rooney were the most likely to achieve reelection in newly hostile districts.  They haven’t said that, so that’s pure speculation based on trying to put this in a positive light.

Meanwhile, who are Florida’s arguably most outspoken, conservative Republican Congressmen?  West and Rooney.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

…the premise [that “we want everything to be fair”] relies heavily on how we choose to define the word “fair” and what sort of taxes we’re talking about here. (And to be clear, I’m still sorting through some of this because it’s hardly a simple, cut and dried issue.)

I agree that it’s not a cut and dried issue, largely because it cuts across multiple unarticulated premises about human life in general, and the relation between man and the state.  I also got interesting responses from readers at both the Green Room and my home blog.  Reader KGB provided a quote from P.J. O’Rourke’s book Eat the Rich:

So if wealth is not a worldwide round-robin of purse-snatching, and if the thing that makes you rich doesn’t make me poor, why should we care about fairness at all? We shouldn’t.

Fairness is a good thing in marriage and at the day-care center.  It’s a nice little domestic virtue. But a liking for fairness is not that noble a sentiment.  Fairness doesn’t rank with charity, love, duty, or self-sacrifice.  And there’s always a tinge of self-seeking in making sure that things are fair.  Don’t you go trying to get one up on me.

At The Optimistic Conservative, reader Cousin Vinnie asks the following:

At the risk of sounding like a liberal, if you are going to have taxes of any kind, you cannot completely avoid the fairness debate. Is it fairer to tax citizens’ current income (which most folks use to get by day-to-day), their current purchases or other economic activity (which increases the cost of barely getting by as well as living high on the hog), or to tax inheritance (which people probably are not relying on for subsistence)?

The variety of responses and thoughts out there is enlightening.  It is worth thinking long and hard about, that although the Obama administration proposes to “make things fair,” we don’t have a consensus on what fairness is – in the generic – or what anyone should be doing about it.

One of the most interesting aspects of this debate is that relatively few commentators tie the Obama “fairness” argument to the political tactics of collectivist ideologues.  Those tactics were once very well known: take a word or expression that people think we all know the meaning of – justice, democracy, peace, fairness – and appropriate it for militant statist schemes that actually portend something very different.  With this kind of political bait-and-switch fraud, you can gain control over the people that they had no idea they were ceding.  This has been the method of socialists for decades.

In the current case, for example, the Obama administration wants us to focus on “taxes” as we discuss disparities between rich and poor, and to predicate the whole debate on “fairness.”  We think we know what is meant by these terms.

But given the background and the trend of sentiments expressed by Obama and those in his administration, it is entirely reasonable to assess that what is important to them is not “taxes,” specifically, but “disparities between rich and poor,” and the association of “fairness” with giving the central government a charter to intervene in those disparities.  Taxes are a specific case on which to establish a general principle: that cultivating “fairness” requires government intervention.

We are justified in opposing this approach on principle.  But we should also take care to think comprehensively about “fairness” and what that means to communal life.  The public debate today is predicated – and I mean this in a clinical, analytical way – on a kindergarten-level understanding of the concept.  We speak about fairness as if the context is that we all showed up in a kindergarten classroom, and during play time, the bigger or more aggressive kids got hold of all the good play items, and the teacher had to enforce a “redistribution” because that wasn’t “fair.”

Even when conservatives viscerally reject this idea of “fairness” as a model for adult relations, we can’t always articulate alternative ideas about fairness.  The kindergarten model comes to us naturally, early in life, and in my experience, it takes years of upbringing – moral teaching, the cultivation of attitudes and beliefs – to supplant it.  Without that upbringing, we don’t formulate a compelling alternative idea about fairness.  We just keep seeing the world as a kindergarten classroom, in which an authority figure either is or is not enforcing “fairness.”

It isn’t possible to cover the topic comprehensively in a single post, but I propose we start with considering the following questions relating to fairness, as a means of evaluating its place in life and politics.

1.  Is fairness properly cultivated as a condition or an attitude?  The adult world once had a ready answer to that question.  Children were taught that we should take care to be fair with others (the attitude), but that life – in terms of events, outcomes, and other people – wouldn’t necessarily be fair (the condition).

Is it really possible to impose a condition of fairness on the world around us?  It is unquestionably possible for each of us as an individual to behave fairly, to the extent we can manage to – fairly, that is, according to our individual consciences and what we have been taught about how to treat our fellow men.  But no matter how fair we seek to be, there will continue to be unfair outcomes, and many of them will be out of our control.

The P.J. O’Rourke quote gets at a principle of both Christianity and Judaism, which is that God’s primary interest is in the attitude with which each one of us does things.  God can cause any external condition He wants to; His highest concern is our spiritual and moral development as individuals.  The Proverbs are full of instructions to individuals to be fair-minded in various situations, but there is no attainable condition of corporate “fairness.”

The West has had a dichotomous approach, however, to the condition-versus-attitude question.  A very accessible discussion of the twin trends in Western thinking is in Balint Vazsonyi’s 1998 book America’s 30 Years War, which distinguishes outcomes-based ideas of law and human relations from those based on eternal principles for decision-making.

Vazsonyi traces the outcomes-based ideas through early law systems from Hammurabi’s to the Egyptian pharoahs’ and those of Imperial Rome, up to the Napoleonic Code and the modern variants of socialism.  Then, from the Law of Moses through the democratic ideas of ancient Greece, the republican concepts of pre-imperial Rome, the moots of the medieval Germanic tribes, and the pragmatic common-law provisions of the Anglo-Saxon heritage, Vazsonyi outlines persistent threads in the type of law that does not pretend to control outcomes, but rather chooses decision-making methods that will, as far as possible, suppress bias in favor of fair-mindedness.  Hence, for example, legislatures that face reelection often; separation of government powers; 12-person juries and courts of appeal.

(For another synoptic view of Western thinking on this and related topics, see David Gress’s substantially longer From Plato to NATO, also published in 1998.)

The “attitude” focus recognizes human relations and government as interactions in which the moral worth and choices of individuals are paramount; the “condition” focus sees society and government as systems that produce outcomes, and the systems’ mechanisms and outcomes as paramount.

 2.  Are “fairness” and “equality” synonymous?  This question has been widely discussed in America in recent years.  I think most readers have a good idea of the points of argument on this topic; e.g., is it really “fair” for one person to be paid the same as another person who isn’t doing as good a job?  If numerical equality defines fairness, then what about the fact that some people have IQs of 86 and others have IQs of 172?  Do we redress this unfairness by some means unrelated to IQ?  Etc, etc.  This may be a less intellectually challenging question than some others – we all understand that people are different by nature – but it is remarkable how often we allow it to go unasked.

We also prize equality before the law.  But is that mainly because equality is “fair,” or is it because we understand the dangers inherent in the power of the state, and that evil can be amplified through it if the law is allowed to treat individual citizens differently for biased and invidious reasons?  We do think of equality before the law as fair, but the historically demonstrated danger of not having it – the danger to life, property, and social harmony – is the decisive consideration.

3.  In human life or government, does failing to make “fairness” the goal of a proposal inherently mean that the proposal is unfair, or will produce unfair outcomes?  An analogous question would be:  If you’re not on a weight-reduction diet, does that inherently mean that you’re fat?

Consider that men in the United States have to register with the Selective Service Board.  The purpose of this program is to ensure that the US can draft soldiers in a time of need.  It is no part of the purpose of the registration program to ensure “fairness” of any particular kind, but neither is its intention to operate “unfairly.”  Its purpose is narrow and pragmatic: register potential soldiers with the federal government.

Does that make it unfair?  Can it only be fair if those designing the program thought specifically about “fairness” and made specific provisions for it?  If they did so, what kinds of “fairness” must they have taken into consideration, in order for their program or its outcomes to be deemed “fair”?

How about traffic fines?  They are intended to discourage reckless driving.  But they may fall unfairly on the drivers of red sports cars or old clunkers, who attract more attention from the police than drivers of mid-size, late-model sedans.  Should our traffic laws take into account the unfairness of being targeted for driving a Z-Roadster?  Should lawmakers have capped the percentage of traffic fines that can be assessed on speeders driving enormous, belching 1971 Buicks?

4.  Is “unfair” being used to mean “doesn’t favor or disfavor the things I would”?  Very often, we call things “unfair” that are the result of policies we don’t agree with.  Taxation perennially falls under this heading.  It isn’t possible to tax the people without levying a burden.  That’s what government is:  overhead that you have to pay for.  We just have different ideas about the right way to do it.

As an example, I regard a percentage-based income tax that requires the government to know every last cent of a taxpayer’s income as a bad policy – because it encourages government to grow and the people to be complacent about that.  I don’t call it “unfair,” however, nor do I imagine government can function without revenue.  I dislike the policy for reasons other than conventional ideas of “fairness.”

Likewise, others may disagree with a policy of taxing retail sales, seeing that as a discouraging burden on commerce.  Others prefer not to tax real property, viewing that as government holding a hammer over our property rights.  There are many reasons to object to types of taxes, but none of them is nearly as likely to hinge on “fairness” as on policy preferences.

There is no rate or type of taxation that’s absolutely “fair” as opposed to “unfair.”  Different types and rates of taxation, and different kinds of deductions, produce different results.  Some may be good and some bad, but not necessarily fair or unfair.  The percentage-based income tax, for example, has produced an unequal tax code, along with societal acceptance of an interventionist role for government between us and what we earn.  In the private sector, taxing income is a way of taxing production, which translates into suppressing production on the margin.  Are these things “unfair” – or are they dangerous and dysfunctional, from a particular policy standpoint?

5.  Is it possible to “reason” our way into putting “fairness” in the proper perspective, without adopting an attitude about it on principle?  I would submit that it is not.  In neither our personal lives nor in politics can we behave as if our reasoning and bargaining powers will lead us to perfect situational perspectives on fairness.

If we let fairness in the door as a controlling quantity, human history suggests that we will never meet its rigorous standard.  Nothing can ever be “fair” enough, because there will always be someone who isn’t happy with the current conditions, and can point out an undeniable situational disparity of one kind or another.

The sensation of unfairness comes from deep within the human consciousness.  But it cannot be assuaged by any perfect reordering of material conditions.  Indeed, when material conditions are promptly reordered in response to our childhood complaints about unfairness, that only encourages us to base our happiness on specific material conditions – and complain more and more readily at the drop of a hat.  On the other hand, when we learn to deal with unfairness under the tutelage of good-hearted, fair-minded adults, what we come away appreciating is the trust and sense of safety their fair-mindedness engenders in us, even though things aren’t always fair.

Fairness cannot be enforced, nor unfairness requited, by the actions of the state.  Politics doesn’t lead us, through its inherent clash of competing biases, to a universal standard of fairness.  It merely enforces one set of policy ideas over another.  The tendency of all of us to treat each other unequally in one way or another (many of them utterly benign) is not itself a reason for government to intervene between us, but rather for government – which is just other people to whom we have given authority – to be limited in what it can do to us, period.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

If the voters weren’t silly, they would understand that it has to be Mitt Romney, because, well, primary voters were silly and picked Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell over Mike Castle in Delaware, not to mention running with that goofy Sharron Angle in Nevada, and look how that turned out.  You can’t get California and you probably can’t get New York, if you’re the GOP nominee.  But you have a good shot at Pennsylvania and Ohio, Michigan and maybe even Illinois, if you’re Mitt Romney.  Newt Gingrich?  Forget it.  Gingrich can’t even win Georgia.

And the truth is, this analysis isn’t necessarily wrong.  If I had to make a bet, I’d bet that a Newt Gingrich nominated to run for the GOP in November would implode on the campaign trail.  He’d still make a better president than Obama, but his “sticking it to the media” shtick in the debates would lose its luster when he faced Obama.  He comes across as easily annoyed; the feistiness that resonates with voter sentiment in the primaries would weather time and tides poorly.  As between an irritable Gingrich and a cool, scripted Obama, I would predict without hesitation that the latter’s jokes during a debate would come off better.  All things being equal, that is.

As with the O’Donnell-Castle primary outcome in 2010, however, it’s not the voters who are silly.  They know that all things aren’t equal in 2012.  The voters who put Gingrich over the top yesterday believe that we can’t keep going down the same political path in the United States – and that that holds for Republicans at least as much as for Democrats, if not more.  Their perception is that the GOP leadership is invested in the current path of government: that it doesn’t want change; it is not committed to restoring liberty and limited government, but instead is comfortable with the growth of regulatory intrusiveness, and seeks merely to broker pragmatic accommodations to leftist activism as a sort of rear-guard action.

Considering that the GOP has been doing this for most of the last 80 years, the voters aren’t wrong.  They aren’t wrong about Mitt Romney: his record of enthusiastic accommodations to the left is a set of rusty, clanking weights tethered to the back of the Mitt-mobile.  Gingrich and Santorum both have some ‘splainin’ to do as well, but Gingrich has specifically repudiated some of his earlier faux pas (such as the snuggle-up with Nancy Pelosi on combating “global warming”).  He also speaks trenchantly on the issues that exercise the most voters:  federal debt, health care regulation, regulation in general, government intervention in the economy, illegal immigration.

It does matter to primary voters, moreover, that Gingrich “takes it to” the media by rhetorically denouncing the questions posed in the GOP debates.  Voters on the right perceive the one-sided political attitude of the media to be a significant problem for American politics.  And while I don’t get as excited as others do about Gingrich’s little rhetorical broadsides in the debates –responding with broadsides isn’t, per se, a component of leadership – this is another thing the voters aren’t wrong about.  Media bias is a problem, not only in politics but for our public life in general.  People believe a lot of things that aren’t so today because of the particular narratives favored by the major media.  The perception of public assent generated by the media’s formulations produces an environment for government taking actions that jeopardize our liberties.

Many voters are determined not to be ruled by federal executive agencies whose agendas are approved by MSNBC and the New York Times.  These voters are voting for the candidate they deem most likely to reverse America’s slide into precisely that method of government.  That they see such a candidate in Newt Gingrich speaks more loudly about the general state of the GOP than about anything else.  Voters are seeking to break the inertia and conventionalism of the Republican Party; this is, in fact, a power struggle, and one in which I would not bet against the voters.

The famous salvo from South Carolina in April 1861 precipitated a shooting war under old conditions that no longer prevail.  The Union had all the material advantage in that war, as it had the moral advantage in being determined to preserve the national union while ending slavery.

But today’s South is no longer under such a disadvantage.  A political salvo from the South is a different portent now.  Likewise, the Republican Party doesn’t hold a Union-like advantage over its members, nor is there any valid reason for our federal government to hold such an advantage over a law-abiding people.  Today’s “rebel” GOP voters in South Carolina aren’t the slave-regime old guard, they’re the abolitionists.  We need not be deceived that wanting to reverse the encroachments of the federal government, and defeat the plantation mentality in Washington, is evidence of irresponsibility or lawlessness.  The truth is closer to the opposite.

The people have one tool – the vote – by which to express the sentiment that things have to change.  In 2008, Mitt Romney didn’t look all that different from George W. Bush.  The Obama tenure has been a wake-up call that has put Romney in a new perspective: in 2012, he doesn’t look as different from Barack Obama as conservative voters would prefer.  Obama is less an outlier than the end-gamer of the same big-government principles embraced by both major parties over the past 80 years.  We have now seen with our own eyes where those principles lead, and the voters don’t want to go there.  It’s not the voters who need to wise up; it’s the Republican Party.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Romney is not a small-government, limited-government conservative.  He will not go on offense against the dangerous principles on which government is being conducted today in the United States.  This is thought by many to be behind his “electability,” but it makes him the most defensive of potential Republican candidates.

RomneyCare is only one example of Romney’s comfort with big government, but it’s an important one.  Romney has continued to defend the principle of an absolute purchase mandate, levied on anyone with an income and a pulse.  The health “insurance” purchase mandate is not like the mandate for driver’s insurance, because citizens can opt out of being drivers.  But avoiding the health-insurance purchase mandate of RomneyCare requires opting out of life (or leaving Massachusetts).

Purchase mandates are not so much a states’ prerogatives issue as an issue of the principles controlling the purpose and scope of government.  RomneyCare is wrong for Massachusetts because it’s bad government.  Of course people in Massachusetts can choose to levy such a mandate if they want, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.  It puts government in an intrusive role that not only invites but demands a spiraling level of intrusion, one that pits citizen against citizen, rent-seekers against taxpayers, and government against liberty.

The US federal government is engaged today in far too many things that promote all three of these conflicts.  Advocacy groups leverage the EPA to prevent business activities that would generate thousands of jobs.  Both unions and big businesses lobby incessantly for regulations and special laws that will ensure they don’t have to face the consequences of unprofitability.  Yet very often, the conditions that make them unprofitable are themselves produced by regulation, rather than market factors.  These sources of cost to the public purse go increasingly uncriticized; the fiscal disaster, we are told, can only be averted by taking more from the taxpayers and further modifying the taxpayers’ behavior.

Health care is, as always, a prime example of this kind of interplay.  Once the premise of public funding for health care is established, everything anyone does becomes a cost issue for the public treasury.  There are some protected categories of behavior, like those that lead to STDs and AIDS, but constituencies arise for controlling people’s eating habits and fertility, and for proclaiming everything under the sun – including the sun itself – to be a public health hazard.  The urgent necessity of controlling what people do is amplified by the centralized, spiraling cost of health-care disbursements.  Few forms of government-brokered activism are as inimical to individual liberty.

Government – not social or economic dynamics – is now the primary means of pitting citizen against citizen.  This needs to change: the scope and independence of federal agencies and the regulatory impulse need to be dramatically reined in.  We can’t afford for the federal government to continue on the premise of the last 80 years.  The basic premise must change.

This doesn’t mean that the changes need to be abrupt, but they do need to be scheduled and prosecuted with determination.  Only someone who believes that, however, will be willing to make the case, and face down the multifarious opposition to reducing the footprint of government on principle.  Reduction on principle means that government can’t come back in 10 years and start regulating again things that it was ordered not to regulate in 2013 (or tighten regulations that were loosened).  It means that the apparatus for reclaiming an over-regulatory posture won’t even be there in 10 years.

Romney is not the man who will do this.  He has coexisted comfortably with the regulatory premise throughout his public life – even during his years at Bain Capital.  He sees a need to change some regulations on the margin, but he is not an advocate of fundamentally changing the premise on which we now regulate ourselves.

Although it’s not the point of this post, I will suggest, for comparison, what a truly deregulatory posture might look like.  Besides eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, the size and charter of the EPA and other federal agencies, a key shift in principle would be requiring that Congress positively approve every new regulation.  We already have the condition in which Congress sets parameters for the regulatory charters of the various agencies – and that is what has gotten us to the current environment of wild, often incoherent overregulation.  It is a good principle to start with, that whatever forms of regulation Congress doesn’t have time to attend to directly, we don’t need anyway.

Much reduction in the footprint of regulation would flow from that.  I also like Rick Perry’s proposal to reduce the amount of time Congress spends in session.  It is shifts in principle like this that will change the basis of government.  Changing that basis is our only hope for arresting the fiscal freight train headed for the mother of all wrecks.  But Romney is not the candidate who will push for the changes we need.

That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be better than Obama.  He would.  But electing Romney will mean at least four more years of playing on defense:  trying to mitigate the score being racked up by the other side, rather than playing on offense to score touchdowns for liberty and smaller government.  That’s why so many of the voters can’t get excited about Romney.  They know we need someone to lead us in a direction of fundamental change – a shift in the principle of government, back toward the limited-government idea of the Founders, plus a very big reduction in its footprint – and they know Romney won’t do that.

I would put the other candidates (with Ron Paul as an outlier) in this order, as to how much they would push for fundamental change: Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.  All three would go further than Romney would in this regard.  If any of these candidates got a Republican-controlled Congress, we could expect some amount of actual reduction in the persistent basis for regulation.

Romney’s approach would be to tinker with it on the margins.  I will vote for Romney if he’s the choice, just as I will vote for any of the other three.  But what we need is a small-government president who will go on offense.  Defense will only stave off the eventual loss.  And as we see with the Republican apathy over Romney, in politics – unlike football – defense isn’t exciting or motivational.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Vivian: So you don’t actually have a billion dollars, huh?

Edward:  No, I get some of it from banks, investors…

Vivian: And you don’t make anything and you don’t build anything.

Edward: No. No.

Vivian: So what do you do with the companies once you buy them?

Edward: I sell them.

Vivian: … You sell them.

Edward: Well, l… don’t sell the whole company; I break it up into pieces… and then I sell that off; it’s worth more than the whole.

Vivian: So it’s sort of like, um, stealing cars and selling ‘em for the parts, right?

Edward: [ Exhales ] Yeah, sort of. But legal.

Edward Lewis could have added:  “… and I love being able to FIRE PEOPLE!!”  Or so the soundbite-driven understanding of all this would have it.

You’d think Romney’s opponents would know that much of the base they’re trying to appeal to hates demagoguery against business.  When a business isn’t profitable, there are good reasons why it’s better to repackage and repurpose its assets for more profitable use.  Unprofitable businesses aren’t made profitable by political bailouts; they are made dependent and unsustainable.  Businesses like Bain Capital ensure that resources are being put to the most profitable, job-creating uses, given the environment of regulation and taxes that businesses have to operate in.  There’s nothing wrong with the existence of such companies; indeed, they are a positive factor in a dynamic business climate.

But then, Romney is tin-eared himself on some significant things.  He did, in fact, say that he likes to be able to fire people if they’re not performing.  That is a stupid, politically insensitive way to word a valid requirement of a healthy economy.  People sometimes have to be fired, but it’s suspicious for someone to “like” being able to do it.  There is nothing more gratifying than an employee who does well, and in particular one who improves over time, while there is nothing that makes the average boss feel as terrible as having to fire one who simply can’t seem to measure up.

Why couldn’t Romney have said instead that businesses need to be able to fire non-performing employees, even though it’s never any fun to do that?  Apparently because that’s not the way he sees it.  His phrase about liking to be able to fire people is the one that came naturally to him.  It doesn’t mean he’s a cold-hearted jerk who loves to give people bad news, but it is a personality problem for him in political leadership.  ‘80s-era pop psychologists would have said that he is very “objective-oriented”: he resonates to the idea of the goal and the achievement, and gives short shrift to the people.

Republicans do want a better climate for business, but the more abstract, data-focused perspective of a Bain Capital graduate is not necessarily what they are looking for.  I don’t actually want a president who imagines he can boost the bottom line of US companies.  I want one who understands that government policies affect people, largely through the constraints they put on business.  And I want him to respect the rights and dignity of individual people, neither trying to bribe them with goodies nor trying to herd them into programs that he sees as financially smart.  I’m not looking for a president with an opinion on whether a whole bunch of things he isn’t in charge of can be profitable.

Bringing up Bain as an issue has also turned up the fact that Bain profited from a deal in the early 1990s involving a steel company that received a $44 million federal bailout for its pension plan.  While it is demagoguery to equate this with Bain itself receiving a federal bailout, it is still a problem for Romney.  Companies like Bain have been operating in the environment of government incentives, regulations, and bailouts for quite a while now, and Romney’s record is one of being comfortable with that.  (He endorsed the TARP bailout in 2008.)

More and more of the people are not comfortable with it.  It is well and good that Romney wants the government to get off business’s back, but it’s not OK to remove only some constraints while leaving others, and continuing to bail the whole mess out.

Sadly, Romney’s opponents have wasted a superb opportunity to talk about what they think is the proper relationship between business and government.  They have simply jumped on the demagoguery bandwagon, which frankly is cheap and annoying.  If I were crafting talking points, I would address the “liking to fire people” comment graciously – something along the lines of “I’m sure this is what Governor Romney meant to say” – and focus more on Romney’s comfort with the extent to which government regulates business, profits from regulating business, and bails business out so it can keep regulating and profiting.

One last thought.  In contrast to the bloviation-fest precipitated by the Bain Eruption, consider the cool dispatch and intelligence with which the candidates knocked down the idiotic social-issue questions posed by Stephanopoulos and Sawyer in the debate on Saturday night.  The candidates were ready to talk about those issues – irrelevant as they were – with principled specifics.

On the matter of business and government, however, it’s been all big-government complacency on one side, and all mindless demagoguery on the other.  Not a hint of a principled argument about the free market and the appropriate role of government, from the perspective of either a man-and-the-state theory, or a regulation-vs.-the-market theory.

Nothing has made clear like the last 40 months that there is no longer an American consensus on these matters.  The Obama camp knows exactly where it stands.  But the GOP candidates aren’t internally motivated and prepared to make specific cases about it, as they are about social issues.  Yet that’s what the voters are waiting to hear.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.