Political Hay
If It’s True, It’s Not New
David Frum’s project for the Republican future. A new majority or old minority?
Give Barack Obama credit for this much: he’s made “change” such a popular buzzword that even Republicans want a piece of the action.
Candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee wrap
themselves in the mantle of change. A supporter of former Ohio
Secretary of State Ken Blackwell urged “members of the RNC who
are supporting other ‘change’ candidates” to vote for his man. A
Washington Post political blogger
says former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is the candidate
of change.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also agrees that his party needs to “change” and “adapt” if he is ever going to become majority leader again. McConnell supports the incumbent RNC chair, Mike Duncan, who presumably also likes change.
This political environment prompted political writer David Frum to make a change as well. At the beginning of the Obama administration, he shut down his blog on National Review Online — where he’d been standing athwart his colleagues on such topics as the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin — and set up shop at a website called the New Majority. This new site is “dedicated to the reform and renewal of the Republican party and the conservative movement” as well as “building a conservatism that can win again.”
Frum and his fellow New Majoritarians are particularly concerned about the shrinking Republican base. Just five years after some polls found parity between Republicans and Democrats, Gallup has determined that Democrats now outnumber Republicans by the biggest margin since 1983. Frum concludes, “The news is so very bad that there will be only one possible response from our party leadership and our radio talkers: Ignore it.”
It would indeed be folly for a political party to ignore the fact that only 28 percent of the American people identify with it. The trouble with the New Majority, however, is that the site’s contributors are often more specific about what’s wrong with that 28 percent than about the kind of voters Republicans can win. Don’t expand the GOP — dissolve the party and elect another.
Perusing the site, one learns that “rigid social-issues conservatives” are “the primary internal obstacle to Republican renewal nationally.” Or that social conservatives, the largest single voting bloc in the GOP, are disloyal Republicans on account of a few contrarian bloggers. (By the way, when did “peacefully annexing Mexico” become part of the Republican platform?) Or that we should be worried when the Today Show says House Republicans voted against the stimulus plan because it didn’t contain enough tax cuts.
The last bit is a reader comment rather than a blog post, but it nevertheless shows a representative mindset at work: “Now imagine if the GOP did not have such a knee-jerk opposition to spending and actually thought strategically. The lede could have been ‘Republicans voted against the measure because it did not include enough large infrastructure projects and lacked imagination.’”
Yes, that’s definitely what the Today Show would have said about it.
Although former FCC chairman Michael Powell appeared on the site to lament the Republican Party’s lack of racial diversity — in an entry that contained more general complaints about the GOP’s fuddy-duddiness than specific policy proposals — the constituencies the New Majority seems most aimed at are white, educated, upper-middle-class voters in the Northeast. Republicans need to move on from the Southern-fried “Bush/Cheney/Rove/DeLay-era” and replace it with the moderate Republicanism of Henry Stimson.
In other words, we need a Republican Party that can win Greenwich, Connecticut and Lincoln, Massachusetts again: Meet the new majority, same as the old majority. Or the old minority, actually. When the GOP had its Rockefellers and Saltonstalls and Lindsays, Republicans lost most elections. The level to which Republicans are now sinking was the norm for the pre-Reagan Republican Party.
More recently, Chris Shays, Sue Kelly, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Leach, and Connie Morella were not purged from the party by censorious, single-issue conservatives. They were thrown out of office by their own voters. Chafee, like Arlen Specter an election cycle before him, beat a conservative in the primary. The most liberal Republican senator went on to win 94 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of conservatives that November. But he was defeated just like his more conservative colleagues.
Perhaps, then, the problem is the Republican Party’s intolerant conservative national brand. Except the GOP of the 1990s — with leaders like Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Tom DeLay — were more socially conservative and more antigovernment in their rhetoric than the Republicans of the dreaded Bush era. And still the Northeast elected Rudy Giuliani in New York City, George Pataki in New York State, Bill Weld in Massachusetts, Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Almond in Rhode Island, John Rowland in Connecticut, and Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey. All were pro-choice social liberals, though Giuliani, Weld, and Whitman emphasized their conservative credentials on taxes, balanced budgets, crime, and welfare.
What did Republicans left, right, and center have in common in the 1990s that all party factions lack now? Back then, the GOP could run against entrenched Democratic majorities that had governed badly. Now, fairly or unfairly, George W. Bush is regarded as a presidential failure of almost Carter-like proportions. The Iraq war, unpopular even after the surge, is one of the biggest reasons for the aura of Republican failure. Yet the war is seldom questioned on the New Majority, suggesting that at least some issues are above political considerations.
The New Majority massages the prejudices of its intended audience — the independent voters described by John Avlon as “fiscally conservative, socially progressive and strong on national security” — as much as Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter play to theirs. It is frustrating to see commentators with so much to say about policy waste their talents on politics, trying to build a new majority by insulting the old one.
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (77) | Leave a comment
Related Articles
More Articles by W. James Antle, III
More Articles From Political Hay
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/30/if-its-true-its-not-new
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
H/T to National Review Online
ADVERTISEMENT
Bob| 1.30.09 @ 7:04AM
Failure always brings out the finger pointing, and this is no different. The underlying factor that Frum, Powell and other fiscal conservatives won't talk about is that they consider social conservatives to be dumb. It is not that they are religious, it is that they eschew higher education, the use of solid analysis, and are intolerant to the beliefs of others. They back candidates who are not very bright or knowledgeable. They are too polite to say this. I'm not. The responses and postings on this site only tend to validate this point of view.
In most ways, from a psychological perspective, social conservatives are not that different from left wing environmental whackos who believe in the deity of global warming. They believe government should mandate action just as social conservatives believe government should mandate action on abortion and gay marriage.
Any party dominated by these kinds of extremists will lose. Obama won because he ran to the middle. Most of the people here talked about how "liberal" he was, but he convinced enough voters that he was intelligent and sensible (code word for "moderate").
In this environment of recession and profligate spending, Republicans should be the "adults" who could bring sanity. But the current crop of Republicans are chosen by a much smaller base of registered Republicans who vote more on a candidates view of abortion and gay marriage than fiscal conservatism is the problem.
The problem is not "conservative values" but is the intolerance of "religious values". What Frum, et. al., and many of the RINO's have in common with the social conservative crowd, is that they have a strong belief in fiscal conservatism, a strong military, and individual responsibility. A party based on these principles AS A PRIMARY COMPONENT could win. A party controlled by social conservatives is doomed to minority status.
Crusader| 1.30.09 @ 7:28AM
Man I knew half-way through this editorial that Bob was going to be the first to comment. I don't even have to read his comments to know it will be something along the lines of (cue Mr Mackey voice from "South Park")
"So-cons are stupid, mm-kay? Ya see children, so-cons are bad, mm-kay? They want to push their religion down your throats, and that's bad mmm-kay? So-cons are the reason republicans can't win, mm-kay? Republicans should move to the middle mm-kay?"
OK Bob/Mr Mackey we get it!
Anyway I didn't read his comments but for anyone who has how many times did he use the term "anti-intellectual?" I say the over/under is 4.
Robert Rosencrans| 1.30.09 @ 7:39AM
People are concerned about their wallets and Obama convinced the public he could do something about the economy. Obama picked up some votes with the Iraq issue and Guantanamo, but the majority of the voters voted the economy.
Ironically, in some ways, he looks like Richard Nixon, whose policies lead to economic failure in many ways and paved for the way for bigger failure with Jimmy Carter.
Obama's comment on executive bonuses sounds eerily similiar to that Nixonian concept of wage control which during Nixon's term, were accompanied by price controls.
Although there are groups who vote the side bar issues that impact social issues, many citizens vote the economy because no other issue affects them so highly.
I've observed a few polls where the public is 70% against the Obama stimulus plan. Therefore it would seem wise to vote against it. It's sure to fail or have limited impact.
In the meantime let's go back to the days of wage and price controls, indicating to me at least that government controls and central economic planning never work, and that Obama's Stimulus plan will the next of a long line of ill conceived plans that are doomed to fail.
Note particularly the mention of the 700 million dollar bailout (gift) of Lockheed, etc.
http://www.mises.org/story/1875
Well, we have had two years of Nixonism, and what we are undergoing is a super-Great Society -- in fact, what we are seeing is the greatest single thrust toward socialism since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. It is not Marxian socialism, to be sure, but neither was FDR's; it is, as J. K. Galbraith wittily pointed out in New York (Sept. 21) a big-business socialism, or state corporatism, but that is cold comfort indeed.
There are only two major differences in content between Nixon and Kennedy-Johnson (setting aside purely stylistic differences between uptight WASP, earthy Texan, and glittering upper-class Bostonian): (1) that the march into socialism is faster because the teeth of conservative Republican opposition have been drawn; and (2) that the erstwhile "free-market" conservatives, basking in the seats of Power, have betrayed whatever principles they may have had for the service of the State.
Thus, we have Paul McCracken and Arthur F. Burns, dedicated opponents of wage-price "guideline" dictation and wage-price controls when out of power, now moving rapidly in the very direction they had previously deplored.
And National Review, acidulous opponent of the march toward statism under the Democrats, happily goes along with an even more rapid forced march under their friends the Republicans.
Let us list some of the more prominent features of the Nixonite drive -- features which have met no opposition whatever in the conservative press. There took place during 1970 the nationalization of all railroad passenger service in this country. Where was the conservative outcry? It was a nationalization, of course, that the railroads welcomed, for it meant saddling upon the taxpayer responsibility for a losing enterprise -- thus reminding us of one perceptive definition of the economy of fascism: an economy in which big business reaps the profits while the taxpayer underwrites the losses.
There took place also the Nixonite fight for the SST [Supersonic Transport] boondoggle, in which $300 million are going to follow a previous $700 million of taxpayers' money down the rat hole of gigantic subsidy to an uneconomic mess. Bill and Jim Buckley can find only ecological pollution as an argument against the SST -- an outright looting raid upon the taxpayer without even a flimsy cover of "national security" as a pretext.
The only argument seems to be that if we do not subsidize the SST, our airlines will have to purchase the plane from -- horrors! -- France; on this sort of argument, of course, we might as well prohibit imports altogether, and go over to an attempted self-efficiency within our borders. How many SST's might be purchased on an unsubsidized market is, of course, problematic; since the airlines are losing money as it is, it is doubtful how much revenue they will obtain from an airfare estimated at 40% higher than current first-class rates.
And then there is the outright $700 million gift from the U. S. government to Lockheed, to keep that flagrantly submarginal and uneconomic company in business indefinitely.
And then there is agitation for the friendly nationalization of Penn Central Railroad. Senator Javits is already muttering about legislation for the federal bailing out of all businesses suffering losses, which is the logical conclusion of the current trend.
Neither has any note been taken of the Nixon Administration's plan for tidying up the construction industry. Many people have scoffed at the revisionist view (held by such New Left historians as Ronald Radosh) that the pro-union legislation of the twentieth century has been put in at the behest of big business itself, which seeks a large, unified , if tamed labor union junior partnership in corporate state rule over the nation's economy. And yet the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which in effect compulsorily unionized the railroad industry in exchange for compulsory arbitration and a no-strike policy, was put in at the behest of the rail industry, anticipating the later labor policy of the New Deal.
And now the construction industry has gotten the Nixon Administration behind a similar plan; all the members of the present small but pesky and powerful construction unions are to be dragooned into one big, area-wide industrial union, and then to be subject to massive compulsory arbitration. The fascization of America proceeds apace.
To top it off, the Administration is readying two socialistic "welfare" measures of great importance: one further socializes medicine through nationwide major medical "insurance" to be paid by the long-suffering poor and lower-middle class Social Security taxpayer. And surely it is only a matter of time until the disastrous Friedman-Theobald-Nixon scheme of a guaranteed annual income for everyone is forced through Congress, a scheme that would give everyone an automatic and facile claim upon production, and thereby disastrously cripple the incentives to work of the mass of the population.
In the area of the business cycle, it should be evident to everyone by this time, the Administration, trying subtly and carefully to "fine-tune" us out of inflation without causing a recession, has done just the opposite; bringing us a sharp nationwide recession without having any appreciable impact upon the price inflation. A continuing inflationary recession -- combining the worst of both worlds of depression and inflation -- is the great contribution of Nixon-Burns-Friedman to the American scene.
While it is true that a recession was inevitable if inflation was to be stopped, the continuing inflation was not inevitable if the Administration had had the guts to institute a truly "hard" money policy.
Instead, after only a few months of refraining from monetary inflation, the Administration has been increasingly opening the monetary floodgates in a highly problematic attempt to cure the recession—while at the same time failing to recognize that one sure result will be to redouble the chronic rise in prices.
But now the Administration has swung around to the Liberal thesis of monetary and fiscal expansion to cure the recession, while yelling and griping at labor and employers not to raise wages and prices -- a "guidelines" or "incomes" policy that is only one step away from wage and price controls. This direct intervention is supposed to slow down the wage-price spiral. In actual fact, the direct intervention cannot slow down price increases, which are caused by monetary factors; it can only create dislocation and shortages.
Pumping in more money while imposing direct price control and hoping thereby to stem inflation is very much like trying to cure a fever by holding down the mercury column in the thermometer. Not only is it impossible for direct controls to work; their imposition adds the final link in the forging of a totalitarian economy, of an American fascism. What is it but totalitarian to outlaw any sort of voluntary exchange, any voluntary sale of a product, or hiring of a laborer.
America's Great Depression
Anatomy of a crisis
But once again Richard Nixon is responsive to his credo of big business liberalism, for direct controls satisfy the ideological creed of liberal while at the same time they are urged by big business in order to try to hold down the pressure of wages on selling prices which always appears in the late stages of a boom.
While we can firmly predict accelerating inflation, and dislocations stemming from direct controls, we cannot so readily predict whether the Nixonite expansionism will lead to a prompt business recovery. That is problematic; surely, in any case we cannot expect any sort of rampant boom in the stock market, which will inevitably be held back by interest rates which, despite the Administration propaganda, must remain high so long as inflation continues. All in all, how much more of Nixonite "anarchism" can freedom stand?
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), economist and historian, was editor of Libertarian Forum, the archives of which are now online. Attend our conference on "The Economics of Fascism," October 7-8, 2
Bob| 1.30.09 @ 8:16AM
Robert, you said this:
"I've observed a few polls where the public is 70% against the Obama stimulus plan."
The only polls I've heard about support Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123196999580982953.html
There was a poll mentioned by the AP that said this:
"It also found, they said, that 71 percent think it's unfair to give refund checks to people who do not pay federal income taxes."
It is this kind of sloppy analysis that leads to the wrong conclusions. The AP article did talk about "most" respondents thinking that the stimulus plan was too expensive, but that is framed as a plurality, not a majority, and it does not indicate they are against the stimulus bill.
You also conveniently did not mention the primary difference with Nixon in regards to complaining about bonuses. With Nixon, the government did not invest in these companies while currently, we "own" a good portion of these companies. If we are investing in these companies, we should have a say in their use of our funds. If we are not investing, we should not. It would be nice to see some objectivity here, but it seems we rarely get that on this site.
Robert Rosencrans| 1.30.09 @ 8:36AM
Bob: You seem dedicated to proving to all that you are a pluperfect asshole. Yes, I said that. I never pretended that the comment or the article was comprehensive. One thing you forgot to mention is how many medications you're on. Here's a Rasmussen poll that shows public support for the Obama plan has slipped to 42%. In the meantime you must enjoy being the human equivalent of a pretzel. Without the salt.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/public_support_for_economic_recovery_plan_slips_to_42
Forty-two percent (42%) of the nation’s likely voters now support the president’s plan, roughly one-third of which is tax cuts with the rest new government spending. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 39% are opposed to it and 19% are undecided. Liberal voters overwhelmingly support the plan while conservatives are strongly opposed.
Curly Smith| 1.30.09 @ 8:41AM
I can't imagine why the GOP base is shrinking... the GOP has been doing everything that it can to marginalize the Conservatives that once constituted its base for the past 15 years. Democrats run as Conservatives and win, Republicans run as PlunderCrats and lose. I just can't imagine why. As the author points out, the Reagan Revolution that brought the Republicans from permanent minority party status was an aberration. The ruling elite of the Party has always hated Conservatives because by definition Conservatism limits the power of the ruling class clowns. Congressional public approval was 9% in the last poll that I recall, the vast majority know that Congress is the largest criminal enterprise in the country and Frum thinks that Congress needs more power. I just can't imagine why the GOP is losing.
Bob| 1.30.09 @ 8:48AM
Robert, I'm trying to make a larger point -- that Republicans need to be less ideological and more analytical/intelligent about their positions. You were intentionally misleading in your comment and probably got it from a blog somewhere. If you make decisions based on faulty information, you will get faulty strategies.
There is a huge opportunity here to bring in a heavy dose of fiscal conservatism. You will not appeal to new adherents by misleading them. The truth is on the side of fiscal conservatism, so why not be honest and objective about it?
Republicans should have the upper hand when it comes to the economy, but don't because they've pursued strategies, like tax cuts, that have not worked. It is time to tell the truth and get back to fiscal conservative basics and forget about ideological statements that appeal only to the most anti-intellectual among us.
Robert Rosencrans| 1.30.09 @ 8:52AM
Bob: In addition to your other qualities, you also appear to be a pathological liar. I simply offered an opinion based on what I know. Other adults read it and then determine how factual it is or is not. When it is offered as an opinion it is not misleading when other adults can determine the factuality of a comment. Frankly, when you make observations like that, you sound like a child.
Bob| 1.30.09 @ 8:57AM
So, Robert, you think it is fine to post misleading facts to make your point? Adults would check their facts before posting. Children need to learn how to do that. Justifying it by saying that the FACT you presented was actually an OPINION, is beneath you. Just admit you were wrong and you will check your facts in the future. That's what an adult would do.
D| 1.30.09 @ 9:09AM
I find David Frum insufferable, but I was curious as to what he was up to and went to the new site. Nothing there but the same old bitchin' and whinin' about the Christian and/or social conservative wing of the Republican party.
I don't know who he wants in his new majority, but good luck to him. I am glad to have him off of National Review, if anything.
And I'm sure he appreciates the publicity here at AmSpec, because I haven't seen much splash from his launch.
Robert Rosencrans| 1.30.09 @ 9:13AM
Bob: The term misleading facts is an oxymoron. You on the other hand are simply a moron. Congratulatons! You've achieved something.
Michigan-Matt| 1.30.09 @ 9:23AM
Mr Antle must be beaming in the alien signals these days in order to write something as bold-faced absurd as "They (referring to moderate GOPers who, as maybe Mr Antle might term them, RINOs) were thrown out of office by their own voters".
Umm, no Mr Antle. Many of those moderate GOPers were tossed out by arch-conservative advocacy groups like Club4Growth that undercut and undermined their political support and worked tirelessly to turn rank-file GOP voters against them. They lost their races because the real RINOs (soc-cons sitting on their butt on Election Day) abdicated the field to the Obama frenzy.
The conservatives need to stop trying to rewrite history with some finger-pointing at all those big bad liberal GOPers who took the Party astray... and get honest --at least with themselves... later, maybe, with voters. And, Mr Antle, you ain't even at the First Step of Recovery yet: admitting your errors.
Frum and others are trying to move the Party away from the ills that got us into the wilderness.
The effort is to take the GOP in a direction that won't cater to Nativist bigots bashing immigrants, won't pander to self righteous, self-absorbed fundamentalists seeking to remake the world in their image rather than God's and a Party that won't shirk the responsibility of acting on the world's stage to appease some nuthead, anti-UN, militia marching weekend wannabe warriors playing in the woods with toy guns and paint balls.
Come Mr Antle, tune out the alien signals and come back to reality.
Jeremy Jester| 1.30.09 @ 10:12AM
Conservatives, social or otherwise, should be *conservative* enough to realize that the government cannot (and should not attempt to) legislate morality. Government is not the answer to the moral woes our society faces. Those answers are found within responsible individuals, within families, within the lessons that may be gleaned from our nation's history, and our founding principles. Unfortunately, there are many factions within the GOP that would rather grow the size and scope of government (and thus hold political power) than stand up for and espouse the tenets of individual freedom, liberty, and those founding principles. They seek less to be leaders and more to be rulers holding the power to govern.
Karl Spence | 1.30.09 @ 10:20AM
The election of President Barack Obama demonstrates that Republicans are unwise to try to win elections without focusing on crime, punishment and the restoration of law and order.
It also shows the inadequacy of the GOP’s strategy of countering liberal judicial activism solely by promising to appoint only “strict constructionists” to the federal bench.
To regain the majority, Republicans needn’t sacrifice conservative principles in a bid for mass appeal. We simply need to remember what part of conservatism has the greatest mass appeal. Millions of Americans, including millions who usually vote Democrat, are fed up with crime. Nixon, Reagan and the first President Bush all owe their landslide victories to that fact.
It’s a mistake to think that because crime has receded from its crest of the early 1990s, it can’t fall further. Republicans can make crime a potent issue again, by making sure everyone understands that the crime rates we know today are not normal. Crime remains, per capita, more than twice what it was in 1960. In our time, crime has killed more Americans than died in World War II. Its toll dwarfs that of 9/11 --- it even dwarfs that of the terrible Indian Ocean tsunami.
And yet a means of crushing this Great Crime Wave is readily at hand. For decades now, evidence has been accumulating that capital punishment is a strong deterrent when executions are actually carried out. The trend of research has become so pronounced that even The New York Times felt obliged to take notice of it: “According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.” (“Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate,” NYT, Nov. 18, 2007.) And when executions aren't carried out, what then? Republicans should hammer home the awful truth: The lives of future murder victims are thrown away each time a convicted murderer’s life is spared, and this adds up to thousands upon thousands of innocent Americans killed in preventable slayings, year after year.
Saving those lives, however, means taking on the Supreme Court, for under its rulings capital punishment is hardly ever enforced. In the past 40 years, murderers have killed more than 760,000 Americans, and just over 1,000 of them have paid for their crimes with their lives. In other words, capital punishment’s opponents get their way nearly 99.9 percent of the time.
The Court's interference with the death penalty is one of the clearest, and most destructive, examples of judicial activism --- the interpretation of the Constitution, on points where its original meaning is clear, in a sense deliberately contrary to that meaning so as to obtain a political result favored by the Court. The activist judges and their apologists say that’s a good thing, that’s how a “living” Constitution “grows and evolves.” But as the federal judiciary’s control over such questions grows, the ability of the American people to practice self-government withers. And for many of the weakest and most vulnerable among us --- those who lack the wealth and status to protect themselves against violent crime --- the price for that incapacity is being paid in blood.
Hence the connection between my two main points: Crushing crime requires reversing judicial activism.
When the GOP lost its congressional majority in 2006, I wrote that “the Republican response to judicial activism has been merely to promise the appointment of right-thinking justices who, it is hoped, will reverse the activist rulings, or maybe qualify them or trim them in some way, or at least not inflict more and more of them on us as time goes by. That approach, it should be obvious by now, is too slow, too passive and too uncertain to do any good.” Now that the GOP has lost the White House too, I should add that the judicial-appointments approach is not only obviously inadequate, it’s no longer available. Now is the time to consider a more effective alternative.
Bear in mind that Americans last November did not endorse judicial activism. Though they elected a president who promises them more of it, they also rejected the current No. 1 item on the activist agenda, gay marriage. So even with the Democrats running Washington, Republicans who attack judicial activism directly can expect to gain popular support. And by putting their attack in the form of a constitutional amendment, Republicans can avoid every pitfall of the judicial-appointments approach.
Unlike that approach, a constitutional amendment can immediately restore We the People’s authority over the Constitution. It can quickly free us from judicial activism’s ill effects while ratifying those changes the Court made for us (such as the overthrow of Jim Crow) that we should have made for ourselves. It can give proper constitutional authority for much of what the federal government is already doing, even as it releases state and local governments from the extraconstitutional constraints the federal courts have imposed on them.
Call it the Fair Construction Amendment, after a phrase from John Marshall, and fill it with the words in which Marshall, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington decried judicial activism. Then enjoy the fun as debate over the amendment becomes, not a fight between Ted Kennedy and Robert Bork, but a fight between today’s Democrats and the Founding Fathers.
If the Republican Party went so far as to embrace such an amendment, results might be very great indeed. Talk about shaking things up! “Progressives” would be aghast, but ordinary Americans might be delighted by the prospect of suddenly regaining their right of self-government on issues ranging from abortion, pornography and gay marriage to reverse discrimination, school prayer and, most importantly, to crime, punishment and the restoration of law and order. And because the adoption of a constitutional amendment requires action not by President Barack Obama but by Congress and the states, this would affect political races up and down the ballot only a year from now. It would throw a monkey wrench into every Democrat’s campaign, from top to bottom. We could wind up electing more Republicans than ever. And then, change really would come to Washington.
Whether such events materialize or not, my first point bears repeating: Crime is an issue that unites conservatives with the great majority of their countrymen. The Grand Old Party can win again, and win big, if it can offer people a real hope for real change in how we deal with the violent predators who have brought so much injustice, poverty and grief into American life.
clashseeker| 1.30.09 @ 10:35AM
Chaffee lost by a thousand or so votes in little Rhody. If, 84 instead of 74 per cent of conservatives voted for him he wins. Conservatives simply want and will settle for nothing less than 100 per cent control of the GOP. Chaffee was a man who made me gag, but I voted for him. The guy that took his seat is Sheldon Whitehouse ; he is a complete shill for trial lawyers and unions. Linc was not afraid to stand up to these guys. But, not enough for conservatives is it ? You really think a conservative can win in Rhode Island ? They cannot win in Ohio anymore, for goodness sake it's over for you people. Such denial is frightening. But, there are people in the northeast quite concerned about the madness of the democrats. Why can't we work out a way to reach them and be non threatening to them as republicans first, and conservatives or whatever else second. pay attention to the young people who did not vote or voted against Obama. What are they all about.? Well, they do not want the conservative preacher man in their face, but not for a second do they want Pelosi and Obama and the rest deciding every detail of their lives for them. The dems offer them all the freedom in the world when it comes to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and expanded freeloading promises, but ask for total control of most all else. This is a voting block up for grabs, the non ivy league youth, the non pc youth, They may not be regular church goers; they may have piercings and tattoos , but they do not wanna be controlled by a big government hack, or a community activist. Same for many blacks and hispanics . You conservatives just do not get real people and how to relate to them. Third party is the way to go.
Face in the crowd| 1.30.09 @ 11:00AM
One needs to ask, what’s taking the Republicans so long so long? This article is fascinating for two basic reasons 1) it’s concise and on point, and 2) the Republicans (of which I am part) are NOT being concise and on-point, and supporting conservative principle. An interesting article on Newsvine points to a concern with elected Republicans – why are they not voicing the same concerns? Here’s link to article – very interesting and also “concise and on-point.” Obama's First Daze - Aborting 3rd World Children, $819 Billion in Pork, Flawed Appointments, and a Friendship Note to a Terrorist Nation ...and so the Obama Presidency begins http://lael.newsvine.com/_news/2009/01/29/2369283-obamas-first-daze-aborting-3rd-world-children-819-billion-in-pork-flawed-appointments-and-a-friendship-note-to-a-terrorist-nation-and-so-the-obama-presidency-begins
Angelo Zenga| 1.30.09 @ 11:05AM
The Republican party faces a major dilema, on the one hand the electoral success of the 90's has been delivered by the conservative base, while on the other hand it needs to make gains within the African American and Hispanic comunities if it wsishes to emerge as a contender for power. Right now the Democrats with the help of the mainstream media has successfully painted the GOP as the party of old white men. I think that the party should rebuilt on its conservative principals, which clearly sets them apart from the Democrats. Electing Micheal Steel a conservative African American as chairman would do both reinforce Conservative principals dear to the base, and an overture to the African American community. As such, the party needs to use the Larry Elders, Star Parker, Walter Williams and the other Conservative African Americans cometators to promote this conservative agenda. Where is Lt Colonel Allen West, who ran a excellent campaing in Fla 22nd District? He and other GOP candidates ought to be given a far greater role in the party, and show that there is room for others in the Republican party. I think that what Mr Frum, David Brooks and Ms Noonan are proposing is a Democrat "lite" party for the GOP, and that I am afraid will not work
Les Grossman| 1.30.09 @ 11:29AM
I wish Mr. Frum luck with his new party. Surely, he will be more at home with the Democrats and the 'What About Bobs' of the world. I am hopeful that Noonan, Parker and Brooks will follow Frum and Bob to the new promised land. Adios, amigos (and you too, Bob).
Bob| 1.30.09 @ 11:30AM
Robert, I see that you and Hausfield have devolved into name calling because your arguments are not based on fact and you don't have any non-selective data to back you up. This proves that your arguments are intellectually bankrupt -- just opinions in search of facts rather than analysis in search of the truth. The sooner Republicans face the truth, the better the chance that the country can become fiscally conservative.
Angelo, putting a token black in the RNC role will not work. During this last election cycle, Republicans thought that putting in a woman as VP would help them with the women's vote. Initially, those Hillary supporters (almost 30% of them) polled for Palin. But after her interviews with Gibson and Couric, almost all of them returned to Obama. When polled, those women indicated not only did they think she was unqualified, but they disagree with her stance on choice. In the end, it was ideology that was important, not the chromosomes. The same is true for blacks in the party. They have never been seen to be representative and will not be seen that way in the future. The turn off is not fiscal conservatism, it is social conservatism. The party IS becoming one of old white men -- that is not the media, that is just fact. Did you know there were fewer blacks at the Republican convention than any time in recent history? Out of the thousands of delegates, only 36 were black.
By the way, Frum, Brooks and Noonan are NOT proposing a Democrat "lite" party. In terms of fiscal conservatism and individual responsibility, they are just as far right as anyone else. Their disagreement is the turn off for social conservatives. Considering them Democrat "lite" is sloppy thinking.
Crusader| 1.30.09 @ 11:52AM
I like when pretend conservative say the gubmint should not legislate morality. What about murder, rape, theft? There are laws against them. Are they not moral issues? Should they be left to families to work out?
Maybe my morality says its OK to kill someone who pisses me off. Why should you shove your morality down my throat and tell me I can't? Do you have a good answer to that?
Flapjack Johnny| 1.30.09 @ 11:55AM
Bob: You sound like you know a little about a lot. Your proclamations of genius on your part could be taken as a sign of mental illness. Watch out, there's a sign up ahead, Twilight Zone!
Joe Marier| 1.30.09 @ 12:03PM
Couple comments.
First of all, I was kidding about the Mexico thing. Sorry if that was unclear, and if you think such things shouldn't be joked about, I'll respect that.
Secondly, social conservatives are the largest bloc in the GOP, yes. And you don't get to 46%, and only 1% third party participation, in a year like 2008, without the strong social conservative support that McCain got. The point I was trying to make, and that I will continue to make, is that the Republican party will need to win back the social conservatives that sat on their hands in '06 and '08, and no longer identify as Republicans, along with gaining strength in socially liberal areas.
The fault is not with Dreher, Shea, and Kuo speaking their minds; that's their right, and they do it well.
Pat| 1.30.09 @ 12:12PM
When you read these articles, you don't know whether to be angered at the self-delusion and childish rationalizations of the Republican Party or to be seized with rueful amusement over their perpetual failure to get it. The greater majority of Americans did get it however; the Republicans got their butts kicked - and beyond all odds they managed to alienate both the centrist liberals and the mainstream conservatives in one fell swoop - which takes some doing for professional politicians.
The Democrats are rubbing their hands together in glee, impatiently waiting for 2010 to complete the massacre. Fearful for their own survival, the Republicans have finally noticed they possess a backbone and have gone all "conservative" lately, pushing for a newly re-discovered fiscal responsibility - can they get an Amen on that?
As a business, the Republican Party is bleeding money and working hard on their recently revised marketing plan to regain their former loyal customers. Why Conservatives continue to shop Republican is a good question - being the old Sears mailing catalog within an internet world doesn't bode well for future Republican Party draft choices.
Angelo Zenga| 1.30.09 @ 12:23PM
Bob, the chairmanship of a party is not a token position, as Chair Steale would be able to shape opinion. You mention that it is a fact that the GOP is party of Old white men, I submit to you that this is a vision promoted by the media. Take Pawlenti, Jindal, Bohner, and Palin, match that with Kennedy Byrd and Reid who is the party of the white old guys? Yet most average Americans on Main Street think that the GOP is the party of old white guys. As far as Frum and his group being fiscally conservative and socially conservative, and wanting to turf the social conservatives out of the party, Ronald Reagan would not have won the nomination of the GOP, and consequently two walloping majority wins, without them. Fiscally Conservative and socially progressive is Democrat Lite, no matter how you want to look at it. The Democrats have decided to go Liberal left, Republicans need to offer an alternatrive and that can only be a true Conservative party.
Jeremy Jester| 1.30.09 @ 1:24PM
Crusader,
Morality does have multiple meanings and your absolutist example fails to hold much water. Murder, rape, and theft are not codes of conduct that are acceptable to society at large, nor are they acceptable under the law of the land and the authority granted to the government by the people. Abortion is often viewed as an extension of murder by those that oppose it. Abortion supporters choose not to take that view, hence morals also become a synonym for ethics and the discussion of what is ethical or moral. As to those morals that cannot be legislated...those are the morals which we prescribe or desire to hold up as an *ideal* code of conduct. More the subjective sense of morality in an individual's "perfect world" rather than the concrete or objective morality that operates in the "real world".
The Deuce| 1.30.09 @ 1:39PM
Perusing the site, one learns that "rigid social-issues conservatives" are "the primary internal obstacle to Republican renewal nationally." Or that social conservatives, the largest single voting bloc in the GOP, are disloyal Republicans on account of a few contrarian bloggers. (By the way. when did "peacefully annexing Mexico" become part of the Republican platform?)
You gotta love the reasoning of the New Majority types.
When the right-leaning libertines, who are a minority of the Republican party, abandon it en masse to vote for Obama, the New Majority guys conclude that we need to throw the social conservatives overboard to get them back.
When a very small number of social conservatives, who are on the whole the largest and most faithful Republican constituency, abandon the party to go independent, the New Majority types conclude that we need to throw the social conservatives overboard because they are traitors.
I'm just curious: Is there any possible scenario under which the New Majority idiots *wouldn't* consider throwing the social conservatives overboard to be the best plan of action, or is it just programmed into them like drones?
Chuck| 1.30.09 @ 1:50PM
D, I agree with you in the idea of not knowing what David Frum actually wants. Maybe I do not read him enough, but he never seems to offer up any tangible, specific alternatives. I just seem to hear "don't listen to Rush and Mark Levin." But never any specificity in where Republicans need to go. Another example is his obsession with Sarah Palin. But during his whole anti-Palin campaign, he neve roffered up an alternative. And lastly, while he never supported McCain as the nominee, McCain seemed to be the poster child of Frum's ideas. And after the fqact, it is very easy to see how terrible of a candidate he was.
From what I gather from Frum, I can only guess that what he is really saying is that Republicans' path to power is to get on board with abortion, stem-cell research, Global warming, and gay marriage. Whether these are legitimate issues to debate or not, I personally don't see an embracing of these things as really making a difference.
Also, I do not honestly believe that a majority of people posting on that sight are Republicans. Many of them are liberals, who vote democrat, telling republicans how they think our party should be. But even if we listened to them, does anyone honestly believ those people will then start voting for us?
M Falatko| 1.30.09 @ 2:12PM
Hummmmmm!! Let me see Mr. Frum and others who hate us social conservatives. 1980 - Reagan- fiscally conservative, socially conservative, strong on defense - Republicans 44 states, Dems 6 states; 1984 - Reagan again - Reps 49 states, Dems, 1 state; 1988 - Bush 41 - socially conservative, fiscally moderate, strong on defense, strong Reagan coattails - Reps 40 states, dems 10 states; 1992 - Bush 41 on his own - Reps 18 states, Dems 32 states; 1996 - Dole - strong on defense, socially moderate, fiscally moderate - Reps 19 states, Dems 31 states; 2000 - Bush 43 - socially conservative, fiscally liberal, strong on defense - Reps 30 states, Dems 20 states; 2004 - Bush 43 - Reps 31 states, Dems 19 states; 2008 - McCain - strong on defense, socially moderate, fiscally incoherent/liberal - Reps 22 states, Dems, 28 states. I have news for Mr. Frum and those like him. We know the formula that works. Contrary to his belief, the country didn't change the party did, and in the wrong direction. We lost because we forsook our conservative principles, the message that won landslides for the presidency and a majority in Congress. Now we have members who want to take us even further away from that winning message. Heaven forbid!!!! OOPS!!!!! Excuse me for being one of them social/religious conservatives (with three degrees from top schools by the way)
Crusader| 1.30.09 @ 2:17PM
JJ, my "absolutist" example? You said you didn't want socons legislating morality. Who's absolutist? I simply pointed out that morality is the basis for law. When you start wordsmithing or using semantics (morality vs ethics) that's when you start getting "laws" like hate crimes legislation that punishes thought (although only if that derogatory thought or word is directed at a protected class--blacks, homosexuals, muslims, etc). The government's job is to pass laws that protect or guarantee life, property, and freedom, not encroach on it. That is immoral.
Also, just because abortion supporters choose not to take the view that abortion is not murder doesn't make it so. You said it in your first post and you basically say it again here, that morality means different things to different people. I argue that there is an absolute morality or Truth. Guys like you bend morality to either fit the situation or maybe relieve guilt.
Since you didn't answer my question I will ask a different one, using your abortion example. You choose not to see abortion as murder so I assume to you abortion is morally correct. What if I believe that old people are a drain on society and we should kill them all. My "morality" tells me their life is an inconvenience to me, much like the baby in the womb is an inconvenience to the mother. Would you be OK if a law was passed that said something like an adult child of an elderly (65+) parent can kill that elderly parent if the elderly parent becomes an inconvenience to the adult child? It is morally acceptable. That cool?
William R| 1.30.09 @ 2:27PM
Why on earth would the Iraq war be mentioned on New Majority. Its founders told us in the spring of 2003 that conservatives opposed to the war were unpatriotic and anti semitic.
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum031903.asp
jose goldfinger| 1.30.09 @ 2:48PM
Good to see that Bob is back and up to his old tricks. Bob, you may recall, has the novel belief (some might say insane belief) that taxes are not related to revenue. His pronouncements on other matters are of equal value. Keep em coming Bob and don't let anyone tell you that you're nuts.
A Balrog of Morgoth| 1.30.09 @ 3:14PM
David Frum is a tool.
Anyone who bases their support of the GOP solely on the GOP's willingness to keep social conservatives from "legislating morality" is making a false choice.
There will never be enough squishy moderates to legislate anything on their own. Their role is that of kingmaker, between two competing ideologies-socially conservative and socially liberal.
If you refuse to support the socially conservative bloc, you are, by default, handing the power to "legislate morality" to the socially liberal.
As I said, David Frum is a tool. One with delusions of grandeur.
Theresa Marier Weiler| 1.30.09 @ 3:28PM
Speaking as Mr. Marier's older sister, I can state unequivocally that he was being tongue-in-cheek about peacefully annexing Mexico. He doesn't believe in "peacefully annexing" anything. I have been "peacefully annexing" his stuff for years, and he has not been too happy about it.
P.S. Joe, those books I "borrowed?" They're never leaving my shelf. Suck on that, bro! Your noogie is in the mail.
Dai Alanye | 1.30.09 @ 4:05PM
In assessing which way the Repubs ought to go we really should keep in mind that McCain, weak candidate though he was, could have pulled this one out had he done two things correctly.
1. Oppose the bailout.
2. Use Sarah Palin effectively.
Instead he chose to lose honorably (according to his own standards.) Poor chap. May he and David Frum enjoy one another.
W. James Antle III | 1.30.09 @ 5:48PM
Umm, Michigan Matt, every single person I mentioned lost in the general, not the primary. So you can't blame the Club for Growth for their losses. Can you come up with a comparable list of people who were primaried by the Club and whose seats were then lost? Or are you listening to your own alien signals?
churchill| 1.30.09 @ 10:33PM
A permanent minority GOP that adheres to true SOCIAL and fiscal conservative principles is vastly superior to a "moderate" version that will never win in any substantial numbers the votes of the various minority groups they so covet - and fail to deliver anything desirable for those remaining "small government" and "traditional values" voters that remain in control of their senses in Obama's brave new world.
While these (admittedly theoretical conservative GOPers) would never mass the amount of votes to completely control the agenda, they would at least be a lock-stepped force to be reckoned with - and might score a few minor victories along the way. This situation, while far from ideal is vastly superior to the atrocity of GOP congressional ownership we viewed from 1994 on.
Amtrak, PBS and NPR still around? No child left behind? Vast numbers of GOP SCOTUS appointees yet still we retain a impossible-to-find-in-the-text-of-the-constitution federal right to infanticide? Congratulations GOP, your failure is truly un-matched in the history of planet earth.
I hope you enjoy your permanent minority status as much as I enjoy staying home and not caring about politics on many election days to come.
GreginOkinawa| 1.31.09 @ 12:24PM
Mr. Spence-
If one runs a campaign against crime now-a-days, they get labeled as racists...
Richie Aprile is #1 | 1.31.09 @ 3:58PM
David Frum should re-read his own book- "How We Got Here". As of a couple of years ago, he was pretty adept at identifying the destructive effect of liberalism. Now he is a "me-too" republican. The first task for the right, is to clean out conservatism, reclaim the GOP, and then Government.
The hell with Frum and his wife.
Alan Brooks| 1.31.09 @ 11:26PM
Bob doesnt get that it's not education social conservatives dont like, it's Gore Vidal intelleckshoo-els they rightly mistrust. And the Jesse Jacksons and...
only intellectuals could be so out of touch...
Ran| 2.1.09 @ 8:00AM
Mr. Antle,
Perhaps Mr. Frum's brave New Mediocrity group will win over a few 'moderates'... who knows? Bold Pastels are in. If Frum fails there, he could always take the "conservative" spot at the NY Times. ... someone will have to entertain the RINOS.
Personally, I'd avoid the 'grass' and go straight for the grass-roots Conservatives. There are quite a few of us who have abandoned the GOP, looking to come home. Libertarian, Constitutional, even Bircher parties are better than the pastel pink RINO party of the Bush years.
Reagan's days are over, but Ronnie's passion lives on. There is nothing 'dated' about individual responsibility, freedom, limited small government and vigorous national defense. It is 'pink' that is passé.
Pingback| 2.1.09 @ 9:03AM
Old, White, Southern, and Uneducated « The Moral Compass links to this page.
Quartermaster| 2.1.09 @ 6:24PM
IN the last 30 years Republican success has been led by two groups, the fiscal and social conservatives. The party will go into minority status if either is marginalized.
One thing needs to be realized about Frum, he's the idiot that used National Review Online in an attempt to read out of the party the very people that have born the brunt of political battle for over 40 years simply because they dared question the wisdom of what Bush was doing in Iraq. To try this with people that have laid their lives on the line for this country in the past, unlike, what Taki terms "the little Frummer boy," who is more than willing to fight to the light child in Omaha, to do this marked the man has a nihilist that had no one's interests at heart, except maybe his own.
Bluntly, the problem with the Reps has been a goodly dose of nihilism themselves that caused an abandonment of what the party had come to stand for. Bluntly, that was something that the big government conservatives, also known as Neo-Conservatives, had injected into the body of the party. It was straight from the hawkish wing of the Democrat party, something was tolerated by the Reps who would rather lose in a genial fashion than to stand up like men and get something done for the country. Instead, the liberal Republicans stood for the same thing the Dem left did, just a little, a very little, more moderately.
Bob and Frum can carry on all they like, but the Republican victories over teh last 20 years came as a result of the social conservatives involvement. They still carry the load, but not much more when you get political morons like Bob and Frum running around telling the world the very people that got you victory are the problem. The problem is with the "New Majority" idiots who have little connection to reality. Their real home is with teh Democrats. They simply don't have enough attachment to reality or history to realize they want to take the party back to the days of Bob Michael, Rockefeller, and Dirksen. On the scene, but little more.
So go join the moronic Frum. You won't like the result when you get marginalized. The worst of it - it will be self inflicted.
Nick| 2.2.09 @ 12:43AM
Quartermaster,
Amen brother!
Michigan-Matt| 2.2.09 @ 9:59AM
Quartermaster, Nick... oh yeah, just what the GOP needs... more idiots like Tom Delay and Duke Cunningham and Denny Hastert and Larry Craig advancing the "soc-cons" agenda to restore American Morality! God, do you guys ever, ever learn --something, anything at all? Politics, you dolts, is about winning office, getting to majority, advancing policy. Not about running "a principled campaign". Not about being true to your rosey-glass eyed remembrance of Ronnie and Nancy's hey days.
The soc-cons put the GOP into the MINORITY. They drove voters from the Party. They drove moderates and independents to the center-Left. They ruined the conservative movement... they ARE the problem, not part of the answer.
The Party needs a big tent, sure. But it doesn't need any more of these yah-who soc-cons in leadership positions, calling the shots, setting the agenda or sending the message. We had enuff of TeriSchiavo and FMA.
For the survival of the Party, enough of that nonsense and the purity tests and social limtus tests and gleeful torching of incumbent GOPers who don't carry a soc-con's waterpail. Enough!
Or are you guys really intent on taking the Party down to a 15% share of the electorate? You're killing us here.
Michigan-Matt| 2.2.09 @ 10:47AM
Mr Antle offers: "Umm, Michigan Matt, every single person I mentioned lost in the general, not the primary. So you can't blame the Club for Growth for their losses."
For what's it worth, we were speaking about GOP incumbents generally, Mr Antle. We could name several moderate GOP incumbents that have suffered a political loss from the Club4Greed's appetite to purge the Party of RINOs... maybe MI-7th CD Joe Schwarz and Timmie-2-term-Walberg rings a bell? Timmie lost to a moderate Democrat who better represents the center-Right base in the 7th CD. Yeah, that's progress the PArty can do without. Right?
If not, how about US Senator Linc Chaffee? Club4Greed's "intervention" in that race which turned the seat over to Democrats. Nice move, Club4Greed.
Or Steve Pearce in New Mexico... that seat is now in the hands of Democrats. Ditto to the Club who thinks it's helping make the GOP stronger. We may not get a chance at that seat until 2036. Great job! Super going!
And on and on we go... even tho' the Club4Greed hasn't been endorsing all that long... they gotta' a whooper of the record of beating up incumbent RINOs at the expense of the GOP everywhere. Of course, it'd help if we could see what the Club4Greed has been a-doing but they got a little federal problem with filing campaign reports, eh?
I wasn't responding to your short list, btw Mr Antle. I think the more important point is the revisionist history tucked neatly into your opening paragraphs... the one about whether or not rigid sco-cons are a hinderance to the Party or a help?
Don't get me wrong: the Party isn't debasing its conservative political roots... fiscal conservatives, strong hawks, limited govt, etc will all be part of a conservatism that can win in the New GOP. And we can debate whether the Clubbing4Greed group is a fiscal conservative group or a reactionary soc-con group hiding behind the white bedsheets.
My point: it's just that carrying the water pail for reactionry soc-cons who remained seated on their collective couch or pew this last election doesn't merit them a place in setting the New GOP agenda.
Jeremy Jester| 2.2.09 @ 12:40PM
Crusader,
Your assumption would be incorrect. I consider abortion to be murder based on what Biology 101 tells us about reproduction in general and human reproduction in particular. Those many texts tell us life begins at the point of conception and there follows a gestation period and then birth. Pretty simple and straightforward actually.
It would seem that the injection of "compassionate conservatism" was the attempt of certain social conservatives and evangelical voters to turn Christianity into a political movement. I have to disagree with my fellow believers and coreligionists efforts and that disagreement leads to my generalized statement that "morality cannot be and should not be legislated". Their effort (while inflating the size and scope of government) is merely the other side of the coin in which liberals construct hate crime laws.
Nick| 2.2.09 @ 2:18PM
Michigan-Matt,
Can't you make an argument without throwing up straw men? Cunningham & Craig were not leaders in the party or the soc con movement. So quit making things up.
And just because I'm against mushy moderates like Frum and yourself from leading the party, doesn't mean I support what happened under the Republicans the last 8 years.
When congress and the president started busting the budget caps, I was livid. When Delay held the vote on prescription drugs open for 3 hours, I was furious. Your propaganda campaign to blame soc cons will not work, the history is to clear.
Reagan ran as a soc/fiscal small gov. conservative and won 2 landslides. H.W. Bush kinda did in '88 and beat a wimpy lib. Then as president he talked of the NWO, raised taxes, & gave us Souter. He didn't govern as a soc/fiscal con and, along with the revenge of Perot, lost to bubba the pervert.
Meanwhile Newt & co. took control of congress. Something that hadn't happened in 48 years, thanks to moderates like you. Dole ran as squishy moderate and lost. G.W. Bush ran as a "compaionate conservative", which we now know meant big gov con. After 8 years of crime and perversion Bush barely won. 4 years later, in the middle of a war, he squeaked by again.
It is clear when Republicans run as soc/fiscal conervatives they win big. If they govern as soc/fiscal they get reelected in landslides.
Nick| 2.2.09 @ 3:13PM
Michigan-Matt,
You wrote:'And we can debate whether the Clubbing4Greed group is a fiscal conservative group..." No we can't.
The Club for Growth's only two issues are taxes and spending. That's all they care about. They have gone after "Republicans" that vote as tax & spend democrats because their districts are so liberal. Like Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican because he couldn't win in a democrat primary.
So it sounds like you want to excise both social/religious cons and fiscal cons from the party. So who does that leave to fill the ranks of this "Great Majority" you're going to win with?
By the way, what is "FMA" and why have you had "enuff" of it? We all know why you've had "enuff" of Terri Schiavo. Because people like you don't care when innocent human beings are killed.
Think about this Michigan Matt: You'd better hope if you ever find yourself in a emergency room struggling for life, the doctor doesn't think like you do. Or he might decide your quality of life would be so poor, so expensive, you shouldn't be saved. And how would anyone know he did so, after the fact?
W. James Antle III | 2.2.09 @ 7:06PM
Michigan Matt, the list you have supplied seems quite a bit shorter than mine. This is why I suggest that it is your history that is selective and amounts to cherrypicking.
And even the list you supply has problems. Yes, Lincoln Chafee had a primary opponent in 2006. But he beat that opponent and went on to win 94 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of conservatives in November. He still lost, but not because of the Club for Growth.
Polls showed Heather Wilson, who barely held on to her House seat in 2006, faring as badly as Pearce in New Mexico. Had Chafee somehow been reelected, it is not entirely clear from his comments that he would have continued to caucus with the Republicans.
Your allegations about the Club for Growth's ideological orientation are false, but you do raise a point: Their successful primary challengers do tend to be socially conservative because they need that bloc of voters to mount a successful primary challenge. Which suggests that purging the one group of people who still reliably vote Republican isn't some great way to "build" the party either.
Michigan-Matt| 2.2.09 @ 7:37PM
Let's see if you're right, Nick? Not about any emergency room make-believe drama you'd like to write... but on the issue at hand.
Club4Greeders aren't soc-cons, eh? Let's take the Club4Greed's positioning in the 7th MI CD race in 2004... they said the incumbent --a highly decorated, CIA-trained VietNam war hero, skilled surgeon and multiple election winning joe-6-pack kind of guy who helped steer Michigan to sweeping property tax reform, downsizing of state govt, strong military and defense advocate... he was too RINO for the Club4Greeders. Skip the fact that he represented at least 58% of the CD voters in a series of offices before Congress. Plus, they didn't care too much for his "tolerance" of gay people, inner city youth or his lack of spine when it came to cutting federal govt programs in show-me, inside-the-beltway demonstration votes intended to evidence the Club's muscle on Capitol Hill.
To wit, the boys from Club4Greed dumped money into his district to soften him up before the primary, lined up soc-con groups to join them in their White-sheeting of the incumbent, recruited a fundo-reactionary bigot as well as helped 3, possibly 4 moderate-right candidates to fill up the primary and take votes away from the incumbent... but we won't know how much until the Club releases it's complete campaign reports from the period... federal investigations aside. The Club's spin of the incumbent's STATE legislative record pushed reality out the window. In fact, the Club4Greeders knew he wasn't vulnerable on tax & spend issues, so they went negative on social issues and their farRight tool boi, RevTimmieWalberg, played along. Not soc-cons, eh?
Yeah, great "fiscal" conservatives those Club4Greeders. Kind of like calling DailyKossacks "patriots"; it stands reason on its head. Of course, the hand-picked choice couldn't stand up to voter inquiry and the solidly GOP seat is now in the hands of a moderate Dem who may have it for 3-4-5-6-7 terms if he wants --including redistricting seats in the future.
Soc-cons like DukeJailMeCunningham and Tom"NoModeratesNeedApply"Delay took the Congressional GOP caucus to the hard, farRight... paraded a series of soc-con "agenda" items before Congress and the press and made the GOP look like a group of JohnBirchers fresh from a hanging or some subset of mega-church dwellers infected by greed's goodness and godliness. Good God, Nick, LarryCraig ran part of his election on being opposed to gays, gay marriage and the moral decay in America... as underscored by those "fiscal" conservatives over at da'Club.
Eight years of that trash and it took scandal after scandal to get the bums tossed. But there was more than a little damage to the GOP brand in the process. Hispanics hate us for the slander and pander games of the farRight nativist bigots used under the guise of opposing immigration reform. Blacks found nothing in the Congressional GOP soc-con's agenda item of reducing, restricting and reforming affirmative action and minority contracting benefits. Women --other than those at home, barefoot, preggies or wearing a burka-- found great cause for pause and concern in the Congressional GOP's lack of interest in education, fixing the health insurance industry, keeping families strong and working, etc.
Think about this, Nick: if Congressional soc-cons had just stuck to their core GOP tenet of fiscal restraint, lower taxes and smaller govt... they'd still be in power and maybe Romney or someone else would be in 1600.
Congressional GOP soc-cons took this country and the Party for a long, scarey ride. To let soc-cons set the Party's agenda today would be to reward the very people who put the Party into a minority status. Bush 43 didn't have a single, major scandal --unlike Clinton's many or Reagan's most notable ones. The soc-cons put us in the wilderness and, when loyalty mattered (like in these last few elections) the soc-cons were the first in line to tsk-tsk, turn their backs and let the Party be damned... after nearly ruining it with their silly litmus test issues.
Nick, you're just plain old wrong and no amount of spin or revisionist history is going to change reality. The GOP played into the hands of the soc-cons by parading a series of soc-con agenda items with the hope of bringing a ready-to-vote, knee jerk segment to the polls. But we lost a great deal in listening to those types. It canNOT happen again.
phesoge| 2.2.09 @ 9:04PM
if the GOP would promote states to handle the abortion issue and gay marriage issue they would be much better off then promoting NEo COns like Bush and Palin who are discgrace to the original replublican ideal of Limited Government, Civil Liberties, Free Trade, Sound Money, and a foreign policy of non interventionism not this war mongering and nation building crap.
Nick| 2.3.09 @ 2:17AM
Michigan Matt,
What, are you Joe Schwarz's nephew? Or more probably you were an aid and lost your job, huh?
I'm from Michigan also. Schwarz is a putz. He was McLame's campaign guy in 2000. I'm glad he(you?) lost.
If he was so conservative why was his ACU rating 58% ?
Why do you keep bringing up Duke Cunningham? Unless they were aware of his heroic tales as a fighter plane jock in Vietnam, most social conservatives didn't know who Duke was until he got indicted. So why do you keep implying he was some soc con leader? Quit lying. Same goes for Craig.
McLame was GW Bush without the evangelical-itis (since you see religion as a sickness). He's a big gov hawk. His big issue, earmarks, are $10 bil in a $3 tril budget, big deal. You losers got the moderate you wanted and now want to scapegoat soc cons for your loss. Not going to happen.
If you want a party that promotes Shamnesty, perversion, affirmative action, education, socialized medicine, and baby killing; I've got news for you: It already exists, it's called the democrat party! Don't let the door hit you on the way out, bleeding heart.
Pingback| 3.13.09 @ 11:15PM
Nativist. The American Spectator : If It’s True, It’s Not New | Buy Bust Enhancer in links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
belbek | 7.14.09 @ 11:04PM
If you want a party that promotes Shamnesty, perversion, affirmative action, education, socialized medicine, and baby killing; I've got news for you: It already exists, it's called the democrat party! Don't let the door hit you on the way out, bleeding heart.
asdasd| 8.4.09 @ 3:16AM
cmc audio rca has a food-thickening, emulsifying, Shaped,
cmc audio rca
Water, stability, and so on. Add in the food CMC, food production can be reduced into
wbt audio rca
This to improve the food-grade and improve the taste of food, but also to extend the shelf life of foods,
audio rca
The food industry is an ideal food additives, can be used in a variety of solid and liquid beverages
wbt rca
, Canned food, candy, cakes, meat, biscuits, instant noodles,cmc, fast food cook
wbt binding posts
, Frozen food, snack and milk, yogurt, peanut milk, tea, fruit juice and other food
wbt rca type sockets
Production of.
wbt rca type plugs
hjhg| 11.19.09 @ 10:06PM
MKV Converter,
Convert MKV File
Trackback| 12.6.09 @ 8:17AM
rhode island credit repair, on rhode island credit repair, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
easily| 4.5.10 @ 12:01AM
Blu ray Ripper Mac is the latest software that allows Mac users to rip Blu ray DVD on Mac OS X.
UKNorth | 11.3.10 @ 3:34AM
he countenance of North Face Jackets Perdana Menteri pGFP saudara, dan teknologi inovatif While greater than the North Face the Dalaia tersusun jubah Outdoor kasut sepasang Dan, Polartec, LLC pemaju of Dan, Dan, North Face UK Akan pengeluar Polartec pemasar laid to my charge to be North Face mens given to Hari untuk mengetahui pengaruh Parfum: North Face Jacket Kishtwar ufti of Dan Tahun pada North Face Clothing.
Louis Vttion handbags | 12.9.10 @ 1:44AM
Hmm communism another delicate issue that causes dispute even between people that share the same opinion.
Loved the article and do agree with George's interpretation of it.
I come from a communist country so I guess my opinion is a bit blurred, but to be honest I believe that every social system has problems whereby the people suffer