The Bipartisan Rules

The destruction of the conservative mind

2012-01-24T14:33:00.005-06:00

Newt Gingrich is the Obama-era conservative movement's id, bridging the two most enduringly terrible impulses of modern conservatism.

On one hand, he exemplifies everything that went so terribly wrong with the conservative movement under Bush, as evidenced by his unabashed record of supporting massive federal interventions. He's a disgraced former lobbyist who supported federal education and healthcare mandates, lobbied incessantly for pharmaceutical companies and ethanol interests, once proposed executing people who use marijuana, and supported a prescription drug benefit that has blown a $16 trillion hole in the country's long-term finances.

Every signature initiative that Gingrich threw his weight behind during the Bush era was, arguably, a bill that would garner near-universal support from Barack Obama's Democratic Party in 2012. Based on his record alone, there is nothing remotely "small-government" or "conservative" about Gingrich's professed domestic policy agenda. And this analysis doesn't even touch his toxic theories of executive power and foreign intervention, which are ideas that would have gotten him branded as a lunatic in the age of Reagan.

GIngrich's personal indiscretions and horrendous record of congressional leadership aside, his voting record and policy positions are fundamentally unconservative. For any bloc of Republican voters to find Gingrich preferable to Romney is absurd. It shows that the Republican primary electorate clearly has no idea what it's doing, or who it's voting for.

On the other hand, Gingrich's rhetoric and vitriol is representative of the unhinged rage plaguing conservatism in the age of Obama.

He exemplifies the modern conservative ideal that it is more important to pound the table and call your opponent names than it is to advance conservative policy positions or attempt to limit the reach of government. It is this impulse that led Rush Limbaugh to lump Chris Christie -- a relatively moderate, pro-choice, anti-drug war northeastern Republican -- in with Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump as candidates he could "rally behind," solely because Christie's brash broadsides against Democrats are a YouTube sensation and dovetail, in part, with the hysterics of the other three. Limbaugh -- and many "conservative" voters in South Carolina, apparently -- must confuse speaking forcefully with actual conservatism.

In his South Carolina victory speech, GIngrich referenced Saul Alinsky three different times. He's called Obama a "secular socialist" -- chutzpah for a man who used daughters from his first wife to convince the media that his second wife was lying about his third wife -- and has practiced classic dog-whistle politics by repeatedly invoking the term "food-stamp president." He's implied that various Democrats are in league with Islamic jihadists.

In reality, Gingrich is perhaps the least conservative Republican presidential candidate in my lifetime. If he manages to rise from the dead yet again and topple Romney, it will truly mean the end of the limited government movement as we know it.

Andrew Sullivan falls back into the tank

2012-01-18T11:27:00.007-06:00

Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek cover story has rightly been getting quite a bit of press.

Among others, Conor Friedersdorf had an excellent global rebuttal of Sullivan's piece. But here's mine, which I wrote to a friend the night after he posted Sullivan's column to Facebook.

First: I read Sullivan religiously. I go to the Dish at least twice a day. It's probably the best blog on the internet. So, I like Sullivan. Generally, I think his instincts are good, his analysis is sound and he shares my classical liberal principles. That said, the guy is in the tank for Obama. This goes beyond being a reliable partisan (Eugene Robinson, James Carville) or even having worked for the guy (Robert Gibbs, Austin Goolsbee). He genuinely believes Obama is transformative, as in, he's a great, historically significant president. And he really believes that to his core. It's like he treats Obama as a family member or friend, and he can't stomach anyone, from anywhere on the political spectrum, criticizing him. Now, it's ok for Sullivan to engage in a sort of friendly policy-based self-critique of the president, but when others do it, he throws a fit.

Second: Just because some Republican attacks are ridiculous -- Perry saying the administration is at war with organized religion; Gingrich and the "Kenyan anti-colonialist" nonsense; Romney accusing Obama of going on an apology tour -- doesn't mean they're not always without merit. It's indisputable that government has continued to expand and Obama has done nothing about it. It's indisputable that he created a blue-ribbon fiscal commission, got a serious plan that would have given him bipartisan to meaningfully reduce our long-term debt load, and ignored it. It's indisputable that his non-recess "recess" appointment of Cordray was unprecedented and unconstitutional. It's indisputable that it's outrageous for the NLRB to tell Boeing it can't open a new factory in a non-right-to-work state and then say that it's retaliatory if they even try. On these issues, the president is flat wrong. Just because the tea party has a lot of crazy characters and is largely a partisan echo chamber doesn't mean its critiques of Obama's presidency aren't at times valid. To me, Sullivan tarring tea partiers -- which he does almost every day on the Dish -- gives him a convenient excuse to ignore the kind of president Obama's been.

Third: In his column, Sullivan says that the attacks on Obama from the right AND left are wrong. Read this piece from Glenn Greenwald and consider how thoughtful and devastating the civil libertarian critique of Obama is, from the left. It's unquestionably true that, in almost every respect, continued the Bush policies on executive power, civil liberties and the unconstitutional expansion of the imperial executive. He has continued the war on drugs, launched an unconstitutional war and is now claiming he can kidnap an American citizen and hold him forever -- or kill him. This is outrageous. Bush did things that candidate Obama excoriated him for, and rightly so. But then President Obama turned around and adopted the same policies as his own; liberals like Greenwald have called him on it, as have guys like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Conor Friedersdorf. Sullivan thinks that's "wrong"? It's "wrong" to hold a candidate to not only the words of the Constitution but his campaign promises? Especially in light of his awful record on civil liberties and executive power issues, it's beyond ridiculous to say that Obama is transformative, or he's kept his promises, or even cares what the Constitution actually says, because there's not a shred of evidence to support it. In terms of governance, it's the height of hypocrisy to rip a sitting president for a set of policies, and then completely reverse course and adopt that president's policies wholesale when you take office. I give liberals like Greenwald who actually criticize Obama for these things a tremendous deal of credit, because most liberals' instinct is to either ignore Obama's apostasies or attack people like Greenwald who are criticizing him within the tent. In part, I remember how "dear leader"-ish Republicans were in the Bush era, and it takes balls to criticize a sitting president in your own party.

Fourth: Sullivan says he was appalled by Bush's records on war, debt, spending, and torture. Fine. Those are legitimate critiques. And with respect to just about all of them, they are the central reasons why I think the Bush presidency was so destructive. But with the exception of torture, Obama is as bad or worse than Bush. Bush said he could imprison whoever he wanted for as long as he wanted, but he didn't ever try to make the case that he could kill an American citizen by executive order. When he went to war in Iraq, he at least asked for congressional authorization and tried to make the case that Iraq was an existential threat (it wasn't, but at the time he had a plausible case).

Fifth: This is a trend you see at the Dish regularly, and why I find reading Sullivan so maddening sometimes -- he is obsessed with Obama's "long game." He has it in his head that in 2007, candidate Obama had an 8-year master plan that set out all the fixes to the country's problems by the time his 2nd term would expire in 2016. Where is the evidence of that? He was given a chance to back Bowles-Simpson and refused. He was given several opportunities to strike "Grand Bargains" with Boehner, et al. and walked away. He could have reined in the global militarism that Bush started, and instead has perpetuated it. Give me a break. There is no evidence of a "long game." Especially in the era of hyperpartisanship and divided government, any president who assumes he will be a 2-term president is foolish. If Obama assumed this, he's squandering his supposedly transformative political skills.

Sixth: Sullivan's numbers are just wrong in terms of how much Obama has added to the deficit. We ran a $1T+ deficit in 2011. Now yes, Bush's last budget, FY 2009, did the same. Of course, we're beyond defending Bush here. But the expected budget shortfall for FY 2012 was something in the neighborhood of $700B. Alone that's approaching $2T. And Sullivan says overall in terms of real and expected debt, Obama era budgets will only add $1.4T to the deficit? Really? I wonder where he's getting his numbers.

Finally: Just looking at a survey of seemingly random policies, I don't see how anyone can look at his record and conclude that he's been a success or a great president. His war on whistleblowers is unprecedented. The treatment of Bradley Manning was deplorable. His use of signing statements rivals that of Bush. He's seeking to have a record number of people arrested for using marijuana. And contra Sullivan, Obamacare was not "universal health care." It was subsidies for some people to purchase health insurance, a modest expansion of Medicaid, and a mandate. And on the governance front, Obama will have spent the last third of his term running for reelection.

Sullivan has been smitten with Obama since he burst on the scene and decided to run for president. While Sullivan has a point that some criticisms of Obama are really unfair and stupid, the reality is that he should be judged not according to his critics, but based on what he himself promised while running for president, and the policies he's pursued since taking office. By that metric, the only reasonable conclusion is that Obama has been a failure and must be voted out.

Were Huntsman and Romney the same after all?

2012-01-16T13:31:00.006-06:00

On one hand, count me among those surprised as to why Jon Huntsman never caught fire like the rest of his rivals. Huntsman's record of actual governance was arguably more conservative than anyone else in the field. He was a strong fiscal and social conservative with actual foreign policy experience, having served as an ambassador under three different presidents. But he crafted a campaign narrative as a moderate, despite the fact that he governed from the Reagan playbook more effectively than any Republican presidential contender in recent memory. It's tough to chalk Huntsman's stunning flop up to anything other than poor instincts and a terrible advice.

(More on the "poor instincts" front: First, he obviously started his campaign off by attacking the Republican base on global warming and evolution. That's a move I'd expect out of someone like Romney who has no conservative bona fides. Second, when he sat down with Newt Gingrich at their Lincoln/Douglas forum, he didn't lay a glove on him. At the time, Gingrich was the ascendant frontrunner and, in several states, including Florida, leading the field by double-digits. This was Huntsman's opportunity to lay into Gingrich for his many apostasies. Instead, the two men traded complements all evening, and Huntsman's candidacy ended the night as moribund and unremarkable as when it began.)

On the other hand, much as I would have loved to have seen a Huntsman presidency, it is absurd that he endorsed Mitt Romney this morning. Huntsman's entire campaign was centered around tearing down Romney in New Hampshire, and just days later he reverses and endorses him? Of course politicians pander; we've come to expect that. And of course one-time challengers end up endorsing their party's nominee once the primary has finished. But we are barely out of New Hampshire, and the holes in the frontrunner's candidacy are myriad and well-defined. A week ago, Huntsman was bludgeoning Romney for flip-flopping on a laundry list of issues and implying that his incessant pandering was a betrayal of the public's trust. Now, Huntsman is apparently a surrogate. I'm not sure if the word "shallow" does this about-face justice.

Certainly, Huntsman is concerned about his brand, and pulling out after a semi-respectable 3rd-place finish in New Hampshire means his campaign will have ended on a nominal upswing. Fine. He is undoubtedly concerned with protecting the Huntsman brand for the next election cycle. But why Huntsman had to endorse Romney immediately after quitting shows that he doesn't care one bit how demagogic his actions appear. What are his supporters supposed to think?

If his 120-hour turnabout tells us anything about Huntsman, it's that he's more like Romney than he'd like us to believe: He'll apparently say anything, or do anything, to keep his political prospects alive.

Ron Paul rising

2012-01-12T21:15:00.000-06:00

Third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire.

The story of this election season is unquestionably Ron Paul. Paul has routinely been doubling, if not tripling (as he did in New Hampshire) his vote share from 2008.

This means his ideas are taking hold.

As Pat Buchanan suggested today in his column for The American Conservative, Paul has the donor base and intestinal fortitude to contest every Republican primary as rivals like Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry drop out. Unlike say, Newt Gingrich, Paul won't run a scorched-earth campaign to destroy Mitt Romney, even if he's set up to take on Romney one-on-one. Instead, he'll likely continue to stump as the happy warrior, pushing his ideas even as mainstream "conservatives" race to denounce them as "isolationist" or "kooky."

The reality is that, on deficits, entitlements, executive power, excessive overseas adventurism, and yes, the Federal Reserve, Paul has been a prophet of doom.

One of the beautiful things about the Paul campaign is that it lays bare the fallacies of not just modern liberalism, but what nowadays passes for American conservatism. Paul crystallizes the very best of the party of Goldwater and Reagan -- economic liberty, free markets, upward mobility, respect for the unborn -- but also rejects the statism has passed for conservatism in the post-Reagan area. His ideology demands absolute fidelity to the Constitution, rejecting the aggregation of executive power, unconstitutional (and frankly, unconservative) adventurism overseas, civil liberties violations and the draconian, destructive war on drugs. Paul rightly does not limit his critique of the imperial federal government to Obamacare or the NLRB or massive deficits, but rightly excoriates his fellow Republicans for creating an unconstitutional big-government behemoth in the form of the National Security Apparatus, fed by the military-industrial complex.

It is these contradictions that have made it so hard for me to embrace someone like George W. Bush or Mitt Romney. The fact that Ron Paul is not only on the scene, but more popular than ever and becoming a respected elder statesman before our very eyes, is a beautiful thing for liberty.

Is the Tea Party dead?

2012-01-08T16:53:00.010-06:00

It's a legitimate question after self-described conservatives resurrected Rick Santorum's political career in Iowa and virtually ended the presidential aspirations of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

Most movement conservative leaders -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Sarah Palin, Erick Erickson, you name it -- talk of the Tea Party as a constitutionalist small-government force, a reaction to the Obama presidency, yes, but in many ways, a repudiation of eight years of Republican misrule.

But why would a movement obsessed with shrinking the size and scope of the federal government vote in a plurality for Rick Santorum?

I've written before that my biggest problem with the tea party is that, with several gleaming exceptions (Rand Paul, Mike Lee, etc.), its small-government critique ends at the water's edge. When it comes to civil liberties, executive power, unconstitutional wars and nation-building, there is nothing remotely "small-government" about the likes of Palin, Limbaugh, Marco Rubio or Eric Cantor. In some cases (Rubio) "tea partiers" advocate for an expansionist, imperialist foreign policy more befitting of a Woodrow Wilson Democrat than a Ronald Reagan conservative.

Minimally, even if tea partiers don't expressly advocate for a Wilsonian foreign policy like Rubio does, tea partiers willfully blind themselves to the extremism of the Bush administration on these policies and how extra-constitutional the imperial executive has become.

But what most polling generally demonstrates is that even on domestic or economic matters, the tea party is nothing more than the Republican base writ large.

Case in point: Santorum voted for the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society, voted to authorize the federal government to intervene in the Terri Schiavo fiasco, voted five different times to raise the debt ceiling, has a torrid history of being tied to lobbyists, supported federal intervention in education policy and was a congressional leader during the Bush era when deficits began to spiral out of control. There is nothing remotely conservative or "small government" about Rick Santorum's domestic political record. Yet in a 7-way vote, Iowa Republicans who "strongly support" the tea party voted in an overwhelming plurality for Santorum. The second-biggest beneficiary of their support? Newt Gingrich at 17 percent, whose big-government record has been rehashed ad nauseum.

As Will Wilkinson noted in this smart post, perhaps Iowa conservatives don't know much about Santorum's big-government record. But the support for Santorum over someone like Ron Paul demonstrates that -- at least in Iowa -- the tea party can be bought by using anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, "pro-family" rhetoric, regardless of whether the candidate has a record of actually attempting to limit government at all.

Recent South Carolina polling also shows a weird trend. In this CNN poll released Friday, respondents who said they support the tea party supported Romney -- universally regarded as the field's "moderate" even back in 2008 -- at a rate of nearly one in three. Gingrich -- again whose record of expanding government, sometimes unconstitutionally so, needs no introduction -- was at 23 percent and Santorum at 20. These are perhaps the three most notorious big-government Republicans not just in the field, but in the entire country, and three out of four South Carolina tea partiers support one of them. Perry, by contrast, garnered just 6 percent of the tea party's support. This is absurd.

The only conclusion I can draw from this data is the same conclusion many liberals have reached: That the tea party is nothing more than a subset of the partisan Republican base, simply dressed up with new phraseology. This conclusion isn't intended to be hostile or pejorative, but rather is based on my evaluation of the voting records of the candidates self-described tea partiers say they support.

Especially now that Bachmann is out of the running, and with the possible exception of Santorum, I'll be voting for whoever the GOP happens to nominate. But let's stop kidding ourselves about the tea party.

Last night was a terrible night for Mitt Romney

2012-01-04T18:25:00.000-06:00

Mitt Romney "won" the Iowa caucuses last night by 8 votes. Eight.

Over Rick Santorum, who is mostly broke, completely unable to self-finance a multi-million dollar campaign and who -- despite relentless retail politicking -- was polling in the single digits until last week.

The order of finish is irrelevant. Last night cannot be spun as a Romney "victory" in any reasonable way.

Romney has outspent and out-organized every other candidate by a considerable margin. As a 2008 contender, his name recognition is the most widespread of any of the seven contenders. He has been running for president for the last five years. To the extent a Republican "establishment" exists -- the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Fox News contributors, former congressional surrogates and so forth -- it is firmly and unquestionably behind Romney. He enjoys every imaginable advantage.

And yet he won by eight votes?

Romney finished in second in the caucuses in 2008, taking 25% of the vote. Mike Huckabee won with about 36 percent.

In 2008, he faced a comparatively formidable field that included John McCain, Rudy Guiliani and Mike Huckabee. Any of these men would be considered frontrunners in the much weaker 2012 field. The 2012 field is, as Ross Douthat noted, the weakest field of contenders of either major party in a generation. And even with Jon Huntsman ignoring Iowa entirely and Michele Bachmann's support evaporating, Romney managed to secure less of the caucus vote this time around.

Romney should have blown this field out, taking at least a third of the caucus-goers. Instead, he performed worse than he did in 2008.

This demonstrates that the real winners of the Iowa caucuses were Santorum and Ron Paul, who both have been ignored by most media outlets and brushed aside by the "establishment" (again, to the extent one exists). The fact that either man was within a mile of Romney speaks to both their retail politicking skills, the degree to which their respective messages appeals to a strong, core group of followers, and how unhappy the majority of the party is with Romney.

In a normal political climate, Paul and Santorum shouldn't have come anywhere near Romney -- this is especially true if one tunes into talk radio or opens the Wall Street Journal.

This shows that Romney is an incredibly susceptible frontrunner, no matter how much cash he may have in the bank. I've said it many times: If he can't convince a conservative primary electorate to vote for him, I have a hard time seeing how he'll run competitively against an incumbent president who, despite declining approval ratings, voters generally seem to like personally.

The conventional wisdom is that Romney is the most "electable" Republican in the race, but the more voters see of him, the less they seem to care for him.

His support should be peeling away rapidly. It won't, but that's only because Republicans are content parroting the "electability" argument -- which falls apart when it's time to count the votes.

Ron Paul for the Republican nomination

2011-12-21T16:42:00.004-06:00

A Ron Paul endorsement might be the last thing you'd expect from someone who offered a full-throated endorsement of John McCain in 2008.

But the country is much different four years later, and it's considerably worse off.

The housing bubble burst. National debt is expected to reach 100 percent of GDP by 2020. The entitlement crisis continues to loom. The federal government has claimed the novel power to coerce citizens to engage in private economic activities, such as purchasing private health insurance. The military-industrial complex has transformed into a bipartisan phenomenon. So has the thirst for endless war in the Middle East. The president has claimed the power to assassinate American citizens by executive order and will soon have the power to detain American citizens indefinitely, without trial.

Ron Paul represents a complete rejection of the last 11 years of Republican misrule.

George W. Bush was the most fiscally destructive president in American history. He ran up record deficits, passed an unfunded prescription drug liability and sat idly by as the Federal Reserve inflated the money supply, leading to the bursting of the housing bubble and the collapse of the markets. Ron Paul has promised to seek $1 trillion in cuts from the federal budget in 2013. Democrats call this "draconian." I call it fiscal responsibility.

The two "leading" contenders for the nomination, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, famously supported Barack Obama's cherished individual mandate to purchase health insurance. This is fundamentally unconservative, and the idea that a "conservative" could support such a policy is blasphemous. Ron Paul's conception of limited government and maximum liberty puts him at odds with Gingrich, Romney and Obama. He appears to be as upset with the idea of an individual mandate as me.

The war in Iraq cost 4,500 American lives, 30,000 other American casualties, 100,000 Iraqi civilians and about $1 trillion in American dollars. Once on the verge of a post-Saddam civil war, Iraq is spiraling toward a perpetual state of illiberal democracy, where Christians are persecuted and flee, the country is becoming Balkanized, political corruption is rampant and Iran -- America's supposed sworn worst enemy -- has gained considerable political influence.

Every Republican contender believes that America should launch another war against Iran and repeat our mistakes in Iraq. I'm supporting Ron Paul because he thinks this is absurd.

Every Republican contender supports sweeping federal laws codifying marriage, banning pornography and generally legislating morality. I'm supporting Ron Paul because he thinks the 10th Amendment still means something.

Every Republican contender supports President Obama's method of putting American citizens on "hit lists" without a shred of due process, and every contender appears to endorse the Imperial Executive's supposed power to indefinitely detain American citizens without access to counsel, a trial or even a formal charge. I'm supporting Ron Paul because he's read Amendments 4, 5 and 6.

Today's Republicans like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have more in common with Woodrow Wilson than Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley.

Conservatism demands an adherence to the Constitution's very words and a respect for the separation of powers that the Constitution has enshrined.

Aside from Jon Huntsman, who seems intent on alienating the Republican base, there is nothing fundamentally "conservative" about any of Ron Paul's challengers. The rest of the field is made up of big-government Republicans who would return America to the destructive era of George W. Bush, where the president enjoys unchecked executive power, deficits spiral even further out of control and the country pursues a foolish, Wilsonian foreign policy. I've had enough of that for one lifetime.

Paul's critics claim that he isn't electable. But according to whom? A recent Public Policy Polling report showed Paul running dead even with President Obama in Iowa, a state that John McCain lost by nine points in 2008. A CNN poll released today showed Paul performing equally as well as Mitt Romney in a hypothetical matchup with Obama, and nearly ten points better than Gingrich. Additionally, because of his staunch libertarian stance on executive power and foreign policy issues, Paul has the ability -- utterly unmatched by any of his competitors -- to carve into Obama's liberal base. The Glenn Greenwald/Russ Feingold vote is up for grabs, much as the Pat Buchanan/Conor Friedersdorf vote would be up for grabs if the contest putted Feingold against, say, Michele Bachmann. Paul could be the great fusion candidate so many liberals and libertarians have dreamed of, to run staunchly against the Bush/Obama perpetual warfare machine. We haven't ever seen a candidate like him on the national stage.

The more I write, the more this becomes a no-brainer for a conservative like me. I don't agree with Paul on everything -- I think his call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve contradicts conservatism's adherence to gradual structural change and a respect for existing institutions -- but I agree with him on far more than any of his rivals. The people who discount Paul as a serious general election candidate do so based on little to no hard evidence that he would make a poor nominee. To the contrary, given the country's fiscal crisis, the unpopularity of the president in most quarters outside of hardcore partisans and Paul's famous fidelity to the Constitution, it is just as likely that Paul wipes out Obama in a landslide.

Newt Gingrich hates the Constitution

2011-12-18T18:15:00.007-06:00

Back with a vengeance.

Newt Gingrich has emerged as the "conservative" alternative to Mitt Romney. Right.

Over the remainder of the primary season, we could probably dedicate a post a day to some of the absurd, statist, fundamentally unconservative things Gingrich says.

The idea that Gingrich is "conservative" is truly laughable.

If you believe this, you are stupid, ill-informed and a sucker for cheap political demagoguery.

In the 1990s, Gingrich supported a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, which would be the centerpiece of Obamacare 15 years later.

He appeared next to Nancy Pelosi in a cap-and-trade commercial sponsored by an Al Gore-funded outfit.

He took $1.6 million of taxpayer money from Freddie Mac during the height of the housing bubble, all while endorsing its business model and the idiotic liberal ideal that, irrespective of a person's credit history or income, everyone should own a house -- things for which Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann have rightfully excoriated him.

He pushed congressional Republicans to pass the budget-busting Medicare Part D in 2004, while taking money from Big Pharma. Medicare Part D was the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society.

This is arguably just the tip of the iceberg, but I'm getting tired of not addressing what I just read 10 minutes ago.

On Face the Nation this morning, Gingrich doubled down on his outrageous idea that Congress should have the power to subpoena federal judges whose decisions they oppose. Not only did Gingrich reiterate his support for idea -- which is a completely unconstitutional usurping of the separation of powers doctrine -- but he endorsed the use of the federal marshals to haul these judges into the Rotunda. This is truly outrageous. A President Gingrich's first act would apparently be to put the Constitution through a paper shredder.

Furthermore, Gingrich told Bob Schieffer that he is running for president to stop federal judges from encroaching on the president's commander-in-chief powers.

This is outrageous. It should make any liberty-loving American sick to his stomach. The judiciary is charged with enforcing the Constitution, and it admirably curbed the grave excesses of the Bush administration during its unconstitutional assault on the Bill of Rights. Even Antonin Scalia and John Roberts -- conservative jurisprudence's two shining lights -- levied harsh criticisms of the unprecedented powers. Does Gingrich really believe what John Yoo and Dick Cheney believe -- that the Constitution is suspended, and the president can do whatever he wants, so long as the president says we're at war?

We should be thankful that someone so grossly unfit for the presidency comes across the American stage so infrequently. He believes that the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine should be junked, that the president should be able to operate without the constraints of the Constitution, and apparently, that big government can and should be used for "conservative" ends. And who is the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn't "conservative"? Gingrich, of course. Despite the fact that this man is so delusional and so outrageous, he is remarkably self-assured, such that many conservatives actually buy this nonsense. If Newt Gingrich is the nominee, it should be the end of American conservatism as we know it. Gingrich's deluded ideal of America has more in common with a Middle Eastern banana republic than it does the vision laid out by the Founders.

The fact that Republicans actually consider him the conservative alternative to anybody is sickening. The people who believe this are fools. Gingrich represents everything that Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan opposed. Even as much as Barack Obama -- and perhaps, arguably, more -- Newt Gingrich is an enemy of the Constitution.

Debate reax

2011-09-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney was the clear winner. It's obvious that he has cemented himself as the moderate/electable alternative to Perry and Bachmann, and he won nearly every exchange with Perry due to his superior intellectual firepower. I've written here before that he is a dishonest, unprincipled hack, but I'll admit he had a fine showing last night, impressively trading punches with Perry from the get-go. He handled serious questions about Bain Capital with great skill. My concerns about Romney's viability in the general election are quickly disappearing. I think his business acumen would dwarf Obama on stage.

Jon Huntsman had an outstanding performance. While he demonstrated seriousness in the first debate, he was clearly a bit wooden and nervous. Last night, he was phenomenal, turning in one of the best debate performances I've ever seen. I liked that he took on Perry and Romney directly and contrasted his own, more impressive, economic record with theirs. Down in the polls, Huntsman is clearly trying to goad Perry and/or Romney into a fight to raise his profile. I've said before that I think Huntsman's ultimate goal is the nomination in 2016 or 2020, and he's obviously facing an uphill climb to peel away voters from the Romney machine. But last night's performance was fantastic, and I hope he stays in the race.

Michele Bachmann was laughably bad. Even next to an intellectual lightweight like Perry, she shrank deep into the periphery. She clearly is becoming a fringe candidate like Gary Bauer or Al Sharpton, which is precisely what she is. Pressed for a regulation she'd eliminate as president, Bachmann gave a tired, rehearsed line about Obamacare. While Obamacare is terrible policy, her answer was a complete copout, demonstrating that she has no clue about any other regulation that she'd repeal. Like Sarah Palin, she throws out tinny lines and soundbites without fully understanding what she's talking about.

As good as Ron Paul was in the previous debate, he was equally awful last night. Paul looked all of his 76 years, railing against FEMA, Social Security and the Fed, and failing to string together his libertarian narrative as he did so masterfully last month. If the moderators were attempting to paint Paul as an anti-government crank who shouldn't be trusted to sit next to the red phone, they did a superb job. He looked terrible. And despite what the polls might say, I cannot imagine some of these responses playing well against Obama in the general. Next to Obama's cerebral detachment, Paul will look hysterical and reactionary. He would make an excellent president, but after performances like this, I fear he'd be a terrible nominee.

Newt Gingrich was, as usual, abysmal. How a man who has been married to three women and cheated on two of them, and who was thrown out of Washington in disgrace 13 years ago, can proselytize like this is beyond the definition of chutzpah. His legacy is wasted potential, hypocrisy and unbounded egotism. Gingrich's attack of the moderators (and the "Liberal Media") for trying to flush out differences between the candidates was beyond absurd. It's a debate.

Herman Cain has a plan. Really. You can read it on his website.

Rick Santorum was his typically arrogant, aggrandizing self. I'm proud of the Republican Party that he remains on the fringe.

And finally, Rick Perry. He was underwhelming. He proved himself a lightweight when compared to Romney and Huntsman. His Texas jobs record, while facially impressive, has thousands of holes (massive oil and gas reserves, no state income tax, etc.). Despite the lines of attack being obvious from the opening, Perry stumbled badly several times when confronted with the spots on his record. We've written here before about Perry's serious deviations from conservative orthodoxy on issues like eminent domain and healthcare that are deeply disconcerting. Last night, I saw far too many resemblances between Perry and George W. Bush. The inability to match a smarter opponent (Romney) on policy. Heated rhetoric instead of policy prescriptions. The same lack of intellectual curiosity. What Perry has going for him is that many conservatives don't care about these things. They're more concerned with rhetoric than results -- hence the veneration of the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who have never accomplished anything meaningful in terms of conservative public policy, and the distrust of Mitch Daniels and Hunstman, who have sterling conservative records that would make any Reaganite proud. Conservative bloggers likely will deem Perry last night's winner because he was combative and, probably, because he reminded them of Bush. But that's no solace for me. I will certainly vote for Perry against Barack Obama if he's the nominee. But I wish the Republican base would stop cheerleading for candidates like this.

The growing case against Rick Perry

2011-08-25T12:29:00.005-05:00

I've been mostly apathetic about Rick Perry's entrance into the GOP primary, if for no other reason than none of his principal challengers thrills me. It's well-documented that I'd like to see the nominee come from the lower tiers -- specifically, Ron Paul (who is arguably a borderline first-tier candidate despite being completely ignored by most media types), Gary Johnson or Jon Hunstman.

Although Perry's entrance has thrilled many seeking an electable alternative to Michele Bachmann and a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, several damaging elements of Perry's record have emerged very quickly. While Romney's missteps are well-documented and have been discussed here ad nauseum, Perry is largely considered far more conservative than Romney, so his record is, as of yet, unimpeached.

First: In 2006, Perry supported a trans-Texan highway that would ostensibly link up the populous cities in the east to the sparsely populated west. To secure land on which to build the highway, Perry proposed gobbling up myriad property owners' homes through eminent domain. This reflects the worst excesses of the Kelo v. New London era, where state governments are held to an absurdly low standard when asked to justify why citizens should be thrown off their land. In the opinion of most conservatives (see the O'Connor/Roberts/Scalia/Thomas dissent in Kelo, for starters), the state must clear an exceptionally high bar, and have a deeply compelling interest, when taking private property through eminent domain. Building a "highway to nowhere" is far from a sufficient justification. West Texas is a notoriously sparse place, one of the most remote areas of the country. As such, Perry's initiative represented big government at its most dangerous. Property rights are sacrosanct. But apparently not to Rick Perry.

Second: While decrying the tyranny of big government, Perry is highly deferential to that same tyrannical government on matters of law and order. He exemplifies the maddening dichotomy that has enveloped 21st century conservatism: A distaste and even fear of intrusive government on the one hand, and ultimate deference to the Security State on the other. Perry vetoed a bill that would have spared mentally retarded defendants from the death penalty, despite Supreme Court decisions from time immemorial that require a minimum level of cognition in order to impose capital punishment. Since he took office a decade ago, he has seen fit to only reduce one death row inmate's sentence to life in prison, despite rampant evidence of prosecutorial misconduct nationwide. Perhaps most critically, Perry engaged in the most depraved sort of underhanded executive abuses regarding Cameron Todd Willingham. WIllingham was accused of setting fire to his home killing his wife and daughters. After he was convicted, and shortly before the execution, Willingham's lawyers provided Perry and his forensic science commission (who are appointed and serve at the pleasure of the governor) a report from an arson expert appearing to exonerate Willingham, and demonstrating that the prosecution's evidence and methodology was deeply flawed. The commission began to review the case after investigative journalists cast serious doubt on Willingham's guilt, and hired an investigator who was scheduled to give the commission a report. Shortly before the investigator's testimony, Perry dismissed the chairman and replaced three members of the commission. Willingham's appeal was subsequently denied, and he was executed in 2004. Whatever one's opinions about the death penalty, Perry's conduct was inexcusable and disgusting. That shouldn't be how "justice" is done in America.

Third: Perry once mandated that all 11- and 12-year-old girls be vaccinated with HPV while there were still serious questions about the drug's efficacy and safety. This was a mandate handed down from above without regard to parental control or local choice. Even the most genuine public health arguments are exactly those which have been made by liberals in defending Obamacare. To his credit, Perry now admits this was a mistake. Irrespective of whether mandating a vaccine is good policy, the equally damaging element of the story that Perry cannot possibly explain away is that one of the lobbyists pushing for the order, and who worked for the vaccine's manufacturer, once served as Perry's chief of staff and has since helped found a PAC for the purpose of elevating Perry to the presidency. This is cronyism of the worst kind.

Finally, Perry has engaged in embarrassing double-talk on the Tenth Amendment. Just weeks before announcing, Perry correctly, and admirably, told an audience that states should pass their own laws concerning gay marriage. Perry correctly pointed out that many Texans would not want to live in New York, and most New Yorkers probably would not care to live in Texas either. But shortly after announcing, Perry did a Gingrichian reversal, promising to impose a federal gay marriage ban if elected president. This is ludicrous and laughable. Someone must ask Perry whether he has read the Tenth Amendment lately. Even assuming the best, Perry was transparently pandering to a family-values audience. Assuming the worst, Perry is yet another Bachmann, mouthing support for the Constitution when it suits him and tossing it out the window when it doesn't.

The impression of Perry as a staunch, torch-bearing conservative is far from accurate. The press -- especially conservatives like the Wall Street Journal editorial board, National Review, Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity and yes, even self-described water carrier Rush Limbaugh -- must hold his feet to the fire and demand answers about his record, parts of which would not be out of place on the resume of a liberal Democrat.

Exit Pawlenty

2011-08-15T10:11:00.004-05:00

A year ago at this time, I would have been crushed if you had told me that Tim Pawlenty quit the presidential race after the Iowa straw poll.

Today, I frankly couldn't care less.

Tim Pawlenty ran an awful campaign. Despite building an infrastructure as early as 2009 to rival Mitt Romney's, hiring talented former McCain/Bush hands and accruing an impressive conservative record in Minnesota, Pawlenty badly underperformed in virtually every poll and never earned the "frontrunner" status so many tried to bestow on him. Lacking Romney's deep pockets or McCain's force of personality, Pawlenty had nothing to hang his hat on when Michele Bachmann entered the race and zoomed past him.

Pawlenty should have been a top-tier candidate, and instead was left fighting with the likes of Rick Santorum and Herman Cain in the also-ran bracket.

And good riddance. A pragmatic conservative who earned an "A" rating from the Cato Institute and coined the term "Sam's Club Republican," Pawlenty swung horrendously hard to the right once he announced his candidacy. He and Romney, embarrassingly, seemed intent on climbing over each other to reach Bachmann/Limbaugh territory. Pawlenty nauseatingly adopted neoconservative dogma on empire issues, promising never to cut a dime from the Pentagon's bloated budget, arguing that the Libyan military action was too weak and attacking Barack Obama for "alienating" Israel -- a ridiculous charge.

We remarked that Pawlenty seemed to be adrift, pandering to crowds that -- at least on foreign policy issues -- he didn't really understand.

In 2009, we assumed the primary rationale for his candidacy would be a sort of conservative pseudo-populism, highlighting his union background and blue-collar roots, and touting his record of job creation in Minnesota. Instead, Pawlenty tried to play culture warrior and McCain lapdog at once. In a time when unemployment is over 9% and voters are seeking economic results, this approach was baffling. Pawlenty gutted the entire rationale for his candidacy at a time when that message would have been so well-received.

Overall, Pawlenty's candidacy was a huge disappointment. He badly underachieved, pandered to a segment of the electorate that is much smaller than he assumed and became a hysterical reactionary.

Although many pundits and even Pawlenty's rivals are lamenting the exit of a genuinely civil guy, I fail to see how the race isn't better off without him.

Debate post-mortem

2011-08-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

Last night's GOP debate was highly entertaining and, surprisingly, informative. Here's a few observations:

1. I thought Tim Pawlenty had an excellent performance. I would have liked more specificity when he was going after Mitt Romney, but he did precisely what he needed to do. He criticized after Romney for his myriad missteps in Massachusetts and Bachmann for her nonexistent legislative record. He successfully painted Bachmann as a fringe voice rather than a real policymaker and leader. This was critical, because Pawlenty desperately needs a strong finish in the straw poll this weekend to keep his campaign viable.

2. After Pawlenty was through with her, Bachmann looked lost and defeated. This was the first time I can remember that Bachmann has had to face open hostility -- in the first debate, she went unchallenged and was the star -- and it was obvious. I haven't read any post-debate reaction, but I believe she took an enormous hit last night. It's offensive that Bachmann thinks she is even remotely qualified for the presidency, so I'm thrilled to see other candidates willing to step up and take shots at her.

3. I was also interested by how fixated Rick Santorum was on Bachmann. Santorum obviously thinks that he and Bachmann are going after the same segment of voters. If he would ease up on the culture-warrior shtick, voters might actually see a politician who grasps the nuances of public policy better than most of his competitors. Perhaps Santorum knows that the more he slobbers over social issues, the less likely it is that he will have to explain his vote on Medicare Part D.

4. The last point on Bachmann: I genuinely don't understand how true "conservatives" can line up behind her. She hasn't ever accomplished anything, so how do you know how she's going to govern? I can understand tea partiers lining up behind the likes of Jim DeMint, Rand Paul or even Pawlenty. But Bachmann? Is the tea party really about rhetoric and not results? If so, that would explain its fixation with Bachmann.

5. Herman Cain doesn't belong here. He has such a laughably poor grasp of public policy that I almost felt sorry for him. He is embarrassing himself and his party by continuing his campaign. I don't know that a less-informed man has ever taken a debate stage.

6. Newt Gingrich's obsession with trying to fit every world event into some grand historical puzzle is both dishonest and annoying. The next debate drinking game should be based on Gingrich's use of the phrase "in my lifetime." I give Republican primarygoers a great deal of credit for not buying his nonsense.

7. Chris Wallace's line of the night, to Jon Huntsman: "At the risk of raising Speaker Gingrich's ire, I'm going to ask about your record, sir." Brilliant.

8. Huntsman seems like the forgotten candidate after all the fur flying, but he is clearly a serious person concerned with serious things. Even if he is only truly running for 2016, he made an excellent first impression last night. Additionally, his record demonstrates that he is more conservative than John McCain or George W. Bush, so any suggestion that he's not "electable" in a Republican primary is completely off-base. I would be thrilled with Huntsman as the nominee.

9. While I have concerns about his electability, Ron Paul has powerful conservative ideas, and my agreement with him on so many issues will make it hard for me to vote for anyone else. Paul has studied monetary policy for three-plus decades, criticized the Bush administration long before it was in vogue for conservatives to do so, and regularly points out the folly of our interventionism overseas. Our country would be in a much better place if we had listened to Ron Paul in 2002 and 2003. Everyone seems to be obsessed with Gingrich as the "ideas man," but I have yet to see a candidate demonstrate such a deep understanding of the issues that have befallen American as Paul.

10. Finally, once again, where was Gary Johnson? He was a successful two-term governor of a blue state who cut taxes and annually ran balanced budgets. Bachmann has been in Congress for five years and never authored a single bill that has been signed into law. The fact that Johnson is a marginal candidate and Bachmann -- until last night, at least -- is considered a frontrunner is truly absurd.

Is Michele Bachmann fit to be president?

2011-07-20T16:37:00.000-05:00

The story of Michele Bachmann's migraines is sweeping the internet.

Politico had a wide-ranging story this morning citing several sources close to Bachmann, who confirmed that Bachmann has suffered several serious migraines during her time in the House that have affected her ability to work. The sources confirmed that Bachmann occasionally has to close the door to her office during the workday and lie down on the floor, in the dark.

Bachmann pushed back on the migraine issue last summer, alleging that while she suffered from them, they didn't affect her ability to legislate, but these new revelations have resuscitated the story. Due to Bachmann's original denials, this story has suddenly become much bigger than it needs to be.

I frankly don't care whether Bachmann suffers from migraines. I certainly hope she gets relief and stops having them, because I understand they are miserable and utterly debilitating. But it doesn't affect my evaluation of her fitness to be president one bit.

Michele Bachmann is unfit to be president because in five years in Congress, she has never drafted a bill that has been signed into law. She is unfit to be president because she routinely engages in wild conspiracy theories and name-calling. She is unfit to be president because, like Sarah Palin, she is woefully inexperienced. She is unfit to be president because she wraps herself in some parts of the Constitution (2nd Amendment) while completely ignoring others (4th Amendment). She is unfit to be president because her short, utterly unremarkable congressional career demonstrates that she would rather grandstand than legislate.

Bachmann is also unfit to be president because, when pushing back on the migraine story, she argued that migraines wouldn't affect her ability "to be commander in chief." It is not the president's primary constitutional responsibility to be commander in chief. Bachmann's job as president would be to take care that the nation's laws are faithfully executed. The Constitution -- which Bachmann claims to venerate -- states that the president is only the commander in chief of the armed forces -- not the entire country -- and the plain language of Article II indicates that the commander in chief power only vests once Congress declares war. If Bachmann believes her primary responsibility as president is to be in charge of the military, that is yet another strike against her.

Whether she suffers from migraines is irrelevant.

Any conservative who even fathoms voting for Bachmann for president is a hypocrite, since much of the conservative case against Barack Obama in 2008 was based on his nonexistent legislative resume and laughable inexperience. Now, many tea partiers are ready to elevate Bachmann -- who manages to have even fewer legislative accomplishments under her belt than Obama -- to the exact same office they said Obama was unfit to hold.

Musings on the debt-ceiling showdown

2011-07-14T10:34:00.008-05:00

It's no secret that this site is an avowed opponent of big government and believes that America's debt crisis is solely a function of out-of-control spending and government profligacy in virtually every area the state infects.

The fact is that out-of-control discretionary spending, unfunded wars and a looming entitlement crisis are pushing America to the brink of fiscal collapse. Both Republicans and Democrats share equally in the blame. George W. Bush -- enabled by first a Republican Congress, then a Democratic one -- doubled the size of the national debt in just eight years. Despite his assurances that he would do something about the deficit, Barack Obama has managed to be even worse than his predecessor, with his last fiscal budget clocking in with a $1.4 trillion deficit. Democrats in Congress have even failed to pass a budget. Short of taxing the rich and shrieking about rich yacht owners, the Democrats have done little to demonstrate any concern whatsoever with the massive fiscal crisis. President Obama -- as with the perpetual warfare state, executive power and civil liberties -- has completely ignored Candidate Obama's own words. Given that Obama promised to cut the deficit in half in four years, his presidency has been an utter failure.

But I was bitterly disappointed to see Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor walk the GOP away from a plan that would cut the deficit by an estimated $4 trillion over the next decade. Here's why:

1. Big-picture legislation requires compromise. There is not a single piece of significant legislation passed in the last 50 years that did not require each side to give, even a little.

2. Ronald Reagan, the ultimate conservative icon and the greatest president of the 20th century, presided over some sort of tax increase 11 times in 8 years. For conservatives to suggest -- as Cantor has implied -- that any tax increases are completely off the table because they are "not conservative" is preposterous. It's yet another example of the 21st century Republican Party wrapping itself in only part of Reagan's legacy while completely ignoring others.

3. Politically, Republicans (again, particularly Cantor) need to be careful about defending taxes and loopholes, such as the capital gains tax, that benefit only the wealthiest Americans. While most Americans do not want marginal rates to increase, the GOP is playing a very dangerous game by appearing to align themselves behind policies that only benefit the rich.

4. We've noted this before, but it is highly misleading for Republicans to suggest that the way to a balanced budget is through tax cuts, as Tim Pawlenty has. Marginal rates increased incrementally in 1993, and due to a combination of increased revenue and spending cuts, the government was running a surplus by 1999. That increase was reversed by the Bush tax cuts in 2001, and in FY 2002, the government began running a budget deficit and has never recovered. It is so mind-bogglingly stupid for anyone to suggest that cutting taxes automatically increases revenue, or raising taxes cuts revenue, that I cannot take them seriously.

5. Just so we are clear, my ideal tax reform would include 2 items: (i) throwing out the entire tax code, including all tax breaks and loopholes; and (ii) instituting a flat tax of 22 percent, applied equally to individuals and corporations.

6. For conservatives to suggest -- as Gov. Pawlenty has implied -- that it would be better for the U.S. to default on its obligations than to raise the debt limit is as unconservative a policy as one could concoct. Conservatism values stability, order and reason; it eschews radical change. And if the U.S. government defaults, it would throw the global financial market into upheaval. This is not in any way conservative. It is suicidal and stupid.

7. Since he took office, President Obama has engaged in egregious demagoguery on Social Security, but the fact that he put not only Social Security, but Medicare, on the table is significant. This has upset liberals like Glenn Greenwald, who have shrieked about taking money out of seniors' pockets and giving it to Wall Street.

8. The most critical part of any long-term deal is revamping Social Security and making it sustainable. As such, please ignore the atrocious AARP ads.

9. Finally, most damning to the Republicans: In March 2011, the House GOP blasted out a fantastic, in-depth study of comparable debt crises that had taken place over the past several decades across the globe. The report found that successful policy solutions to these crises had an average ratio of about 85% spending cuts to 15% revenue increases. In March, this was considered the "conservative" avenue. It has recently come to light that Republicans walked away from a package with a ratio of roughly 83/17. Minimally, walking away over such a small change in ratio makes the GOP look petulant at best, and hyper-partisan at worst.

Michele Bachmann's "constitutional conservatism"

2011-07-10T11:18:00.014-05:00

She may be the rising anti-Romney, but contrary to her campaign tagline, Michele Bachmann is no "constitutional conservative."

For Bachmann, the actual words of the Constitution don't matter, outside of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, and the Tenth's exhortation that the powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states. Perhaps she also likes Article I's commerce clause limitation on Congress, or Article II's commander in chief language.

What I'm certain of is that Bachmann is no big fan of Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6 or 14. If she actually took the time to internalize what those parts of the Constitution actually say, her critique of federal power would sound a lot like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.

This past week, Bachmann pledged to support an outright ban on all pornography, a position that is patently violative of the First Amendment and Stanley v. Georgia, a 40-year-old case holding that the government cannot regulate the private possession of pornography.

George W. Bush claimed the novel power to break federal wiretapping laws, in obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. Since time immemorial, jurisprudence has required a warrant before the government infringes on one's privacy. But for Bachmann, allowing the president to break the law is allowable under the Orwellian defense of Keeping Us Safe.

I have yet to hear Bachmann bring up the "state secrets" doctrine, extrajudicial assassinations, Jose Padilla or Yaser Hamdi. The plain language of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause notwithstanding, I have never heard Bachmann levy one complaint against the Imperial Executive's war on liberty.

Bachmann further has never levied a Constitution-based complaint against the Bush administration for its myriad violations of the Sixth Amendment's notice, speedy trial, right to counsel or confrontation provisions.

Ironically, Bachmann's "Pledge" also violates the Tenth Amendment which she claims to hold so dearly, in that it usurps the traditional rights of states by pushing a federal gay marriage ban, instead of allowing for federalist, state-by-state self-determination.

Conservatives -- mainly tea-party types -- love to wrap themselves in the flag and wave around copies of the Constitution, but when you dig into what the Constitution actually says, it's quite obvious that if you love the Constitution, you've ceased being a Republican.

Republicans claimed the president has unlimited wartime powers. Republicans claimed the president could break federal law without consequence. Republicans claimed that the president could designate someone an "enemy combatant" and make them disappear. Republicans -- led by John Yoo, championed by Dick Cheney -- crafted the most constitutionally destructive powers in our republic's history. And Republicans, led by Bachmann and the likes of Mike Huckabee, are pushing a "Pledge" that would impose a sweeping set of "family values" on individual states, federalism be damned.

If Michele Bachmann was truly a "constitutional conservative," she would conclude that the type of government championed by the 21st century Republican Party has very little in common with the text of the actual Constitution. Bachmann's critique would not include just President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, but George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales. It would include not only the folly of intervention in Libya, but also the ill-advised war in Iraq. It would include not only Obamacare, but warrantless wiretaps, extrajudicial renditions and yes, a "Pledge" that aggregates federal power.

If Michele Bachmann takes Conor Friedersdorf's advice and runs at Obama from the left -- not only criticizing the Libyan intervention, but also his ridiculous conception of the "state secrets" doctrine, his presidential assassination program and the absurd executive powers he has claimed -- then perhaps I could take her claims of "constitutional conservatism" seriously. As it is, Bachmann has almost as little in common with the Constitution as Obama.

Tim Pawlenty's awful foreign policy

2011-06-29T16:23:00.003-05:00

Tim Pawlenty is becoming a bad joke.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, Pawlenty established himself as the clear ideological heir to John McCain, giving remarks that could have been lifted wholesale from any of McCain's speeches over the last two decades.

That's not meant as a compliment.

First, he continued the outrageous argument, proffered by McCain, that the president should be able to wage war unrestricted by Congress. He seems to believe, as McCain does, that any Congress that attempts to discharge its responsibilities under Article I of the Constitution and exercise its rights under the War Powers Resolution hurts the country, puts our troops in danger and is generally unpatriotic. The plain language of the Constitution and relevant federal law notwithstanding, Pawlenty's argument is strikingly similar to that of the Bush administration, which would have the president alone determine the scope of his Article II power and remain unbound by pesky federal laws. This is at its heart a fundamentally un-conservative position, and one that would have abhorred James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. To argue that the president is somehow above the law, or alternatively, that Congress' power to declare war is meaningless, is absurd. If Pawlenty seriously believes this, that alone should disqualify him from being president.

Second: By a strict application of Pawlenty's metric, we can reasonably assume that a Pawlenty administration would launch military interventions nearly everywhere across Africa and the Middle East beginning in 2013. How America can finance such operations, both in terms of blood and treasure, is something that Pawlenty should probably explain. To examine the last decade's worth of misadventures and conclude, as Pawlenty apparently has, that they have been worth it -- and that the efforts should be replicated in countless other venues across the globe -- requires a suspension of reality that I'm not willing to engage in.

Third: Pawlenty's argument that it is the responsibility of the United States to impose democracy overseas blatantly ignores the effects of democratization in Arab countries. In nearly every place where elections have been liberalized -- Lebanon and Gaza being two examples -- extreme factions deeply hostile toward America have filled the vacuum. In Egypt, neocons like Pawlenty have shrieked about possible rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Does Pawlenty seriously think that a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood would serve America's interests better than did Hosni Mubarak? Does Pawlenty really think that we'd be better off if an elected Islamist party replaced the Saudi royal family? It's one thing to pander, which I seriously hope is all Pawlenty is doing -- but If he genuinely believes that the United States is better off with democratically elected radical Islamists in power across the Middle East, it demonstrates such poor judgment that it again should automatically disqualify him from the presidency.

Finally, as Conor Friedersdorf astutely noted, Pawlenty's logic suffers from an inherent contradiction: According to the governor, the United States has wrongfully backed dictators and despots in the Middle East for the last six decades, and the current U.S. policy is deeply flawed, but only the U.S. has the moral clarity to help the world lead the MIddle East out of darkness. It is a contradiction so blatantly obvious that it's hard to believe Pawlenty's advisers didn't at least alert him to how ridiculous his argument is.

Tim Pawlenty appears to be a nice guy, but the evidence is becoming overwhelming that he is so disconnected from reality, so shamelessly willing to pander, and so fundamentally unserious, that he would be a terrible president.

Jon Stewart vs. Fox News

2011-06-28T09:54:00.003-05:00

With its cable-news competitors disappearing in the rear-view mirror, it appears that Fox's biggest rival is now Jon Stewart's crew at The Daily Show.

Stewart has struck a nerve over at Fox, and I'm glad he has. His recent interview with Chris Wallace is the second time in recent weeks I've seen Stewart face down a Fox News personality and come away unscathed. Both Wallace and Bill O'Reilly claimed that they were asking questions, in part, to "understand" Stewart better. But frankly, the fact that either man can't seem to understand their guest -- especially Wallace, who is probably the best Sunday morning host of the post-Russert era -- demonstrates a thickheadedness as to precisely what role Stewart actually plays in public life, and more critically, a massive blind spot to the shortcomings of their employer.

Not surprisingly, neither Wallace nor O'Reilly has been able to rebut Stewart's charge that Fox is a sharply ideological organization that uses real journalists like Wallace as mere window dressing.

Frankly, it's impossible to view Fox News as simply a news organization. Certainly, Wallace and Shep Smith are tremendous journalists. They are among the best -- if not the best -- at what they do. But Fox's business model is not built around them. Bill O'Reilly consistently has the highest-rated show on cable news. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are routinely in the top five, and Greta van Susteren is often sixth or seventh. Bret Baier's program (rated #2 behind O'Reilly), a hard newscast for the first half-hour, turns into a hyperpartisan talk show during the last 20 minutes. Fox still gives a massive platform to Mike Huckabee and at one time, employed five potential Republican presidential candidates (Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and John Bolton).

If Fox didn't hold itself out as "fair and balanced," and simply embraced the fact that it is a deeply ideological organization, I doubt Stewart would care much. For instance, MSNBC runs out a comparable lineup of partisan hacks (Schultz, Matthews, O'Donnell, Maddow) every night, and those shows are likewise that channel's biggest draws. Creating a biased product is not itself objectionable, but when that organization goes out of its way to squeal about the bias of other news outlets (how many times a day do you hear the term "mainstream media"?) it's outrageous and hypocritical. To its credit, MSNBC doesn't bother pretending to be objective. This is embodied by its slogan, "Lean Forward," an obvious nod to the term "progressive."

Attempting to rebut Stewart's charge that Fox is a deeply ideological organization, Wallace told Stewart that Roger Ailes gives no marching orders from above. But what Stewart missed when responding to Wallace is that Ailes doesn't need any. The Obama-era Fox News Channel is built on the back of deep-seated partisanship. True, objective journalists -- Wallace, Smith and to a lesser extent, Baier -- are not the moneymakers. Rather, the primetime lineup is where Fox gets its identity and generates its revenue. Hannity was elevated from the co-host of a left/right debate show to arguably the face of the network after his mousey liberal counterpart was given his walking papers. Beck's weepy populist shtick was well-known when Ailes hired him away from Headline News. The "all-star" panels on Baier's show are always, without exception, heavily slanted rightward. And the revolving door of established Republican politicians on Fox's payroll speaks for itself. To Wallace's argument, of course there aren't company-wide memos. Ailes' hiring decisions more than suffice.

Conor Friedersdorf, in writing about the Stewart/Fox battle, pointed out the most glaring difference between Fox and its main antagonist, the New York Times, is that Times publisher Bill Keller will appear anywhere, anytime, to discuss the factual integrity of his reporters' stories. Can anyone imagine Roger Ailes taking to the airwaves to address some of the things Glenn Beck has said?

Certainly, one has to read "mainstream" outlets such as the Times with an eye toward ideological bias of the reporters and editors. There's no doubt about that. But Fox is another animal entirely, fabricating entire storylines -- the Ground Zero "mosque," or rapper Common getting an invite to the White House, or "death panels" -- on purely ideological grounds. The Times doesn't do that. Fox does it regularly.

Whether it started with the Clinton impeachment or the acrimony of the 2000 election, we are simply in a different news era. Each organization has its own biases, and the 24/7 availability of news on both TV and the internet has allowed people to pick and choose their sources. Fox News does journalism a disservice by holding itself out as a purely objective media organization only interested in delivering the hard facts to its customers.

Regardless of what you think of his ideological predispositions -- and frankly, I don't care for them -- Jon Stewart is exactly right.

The strange case of Tim Pawlenty

2011-06-14T14:11:00.005-05:00

At the beginning of 2011, I was convinced that Gov. Pawlenty possessed all the attributes -- social conservative, strong fiscal record, eminently likable -- to secure the Republican nomination. Frankly, after watching snippets of the debate last night, I think Pawlenty is this year's version of Fred Thompson: Conservative and excruciatingly unremarkable.

On Sunday, Pawlenty used Fox News Sunday as a platform to try the "Obamneycare" handle, referencing the obvious similarities between Mitt Romney's healthcare bill of 2006 and what eventually became Obamacare. It was simultaneously clever and accurate, potentially the first real criticism of frontrunner Mitt Romney that would actually stick.

But when John King teed it up for Pawlenty last night, the governor embarrassingly backtracked, saying that he was simply repeating Obama's words, and repeating his "I won't be the first to criticize" shtick, which is already getting plenty old.

Last cycle, Romney dealt with virtually an entire field -- John McCain and Mike Huckabee, in particular -- who openly disdained him. As a consequence, Romney fielded criticism from all sides. If the 2008 candidates had simply played nice as Pawlenty apparently intends to, I have no doubt Romney would have walked away with the nomination. But because politics is inherently bloodsport -- and because Romney is so fundamentally phony -- the criticisms stuck and Romney wound up a distant third.

I've resisted calling Romney a "front-runner," because I believe his core support in New Hampshire is soft and because I think Republican primarygoers can see right through his phoniness, but after last night it's clear there is no one in Romney's league. With Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush and Haley Barbour out of the picture, and Chris Christie still on the sidelines, there isn't a single candidate who should scare him. The nomination is Romney's to lose. Unless he starts to field attacks from serious rivals -- e.g., Pawlenty -- he will win the nomination in a cakewalk.

That brings me to my next point: If Pawlenty doesn't distinguish himself from the field, his modest fundraising portfolio and snooze-inducing persona will keep him buried as others -- Michelle Bachmann? Jon Huntsman? -- zoom by him. Once the great white hope of the anti-Romney movement, Pawlenty is starting to sink, and he has nothing but his own unremarkable candidacy to blame. Romney's organization and fundraising apparatus have him badly outgunned. If Pawlenty does not begin attacking Romney directly -- as McCain and Huckabee did in 2008 -- then he won't win a single state.

Last night was Pawlenty's opportunity -- sharing the stage with Romney for the first time -- to take the fight directly to his opponent. Instead, he cowered and backtracked, suggesting that he doesn't have the stomach for a brass-knuckles campaign. Romney is his principal opponent and a fundamentally dishonest one at that. If Pawlenty can't take the fight directly to Romney, then how can conservatives trust him to stand up to Obama in the general election?

(And by the way, this is a very legitimate concern, the dismissiveness of some pundits notwithstanding. The president is popular enough to survive a Republican opponent who plays nice, especially one like Pawlenty who voters have never seen before. The Republican nominee needs to attack Obama's demagoguery, his statist worldview and his general contempt for the rule of law.)

Every candidate -- even ridiculous ones like Herman Cain and Bachmann -- can articulate the basis for his or her candidacy. Pawlenty hasn't, because it isn't clear that he has anything to offer voters other than the fact that he doesn't offend any of the traditional Republican constituencies. The best thing anyone can say about Pawlenty is that he is a lot of voters' second choice.

At times, Pawlenty's political instincts -- going on the Daily Show, announcing his opposition to ethanol subsidies and Sunday's clever criticism of Romney on national TV -- are very good.

But at his core, Pawlenty appears to be a meek, mousey, conventional politician who can't stomach a fight and has very little to offer voters who are desperately searching for an alternative to his principal rival.

Pawlenty in Iowa: Win or go home

2011-06-10T14:53:00.005-05:00

Many, including yours truly, have assumed that Tim Pawlenty -- a former two-term governor of a blue state who has received high marks from both fiscal and social conservatives, and seems to be eminently likable -- would establish himself as the top alternative to Mitt Romney. While Romney continues to poll reasonably well nationwide, however, Pawlenty remains mired in the mid-single digits, often polling worse than the likes of Herman Cain.

While Pawlenty has a campaign infrastructure in New Hampshire, his partisan pandering won't play well there. Such behavior never does. While Romney (who of course has pandered even more than Pawlenty) lost there in 2008, his second-place finish was due to John McCain capturing the middle. Without a viable candidate running to Romney's "left" -- in quotes because Romney's record demonstrates that he's actually the most liberal candidate in the field -- and because voters in New Hampshire accurately view Romney as a northeastern moderate rather than a red-meat conservative -- I see no scenario in which Pawlenty even comes close to winning the Granite State. In fact, given the emphasis Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman appear to be placing on New Hampshire, and the state's receptiveness to Ron Paul's message, it's entirely possible that Pawlenty finishes outside the top 5.

As a result, the Iowa caucuses are absolutely critical. If Pawlenty doesn't win there, I see no logical path to the nomination. Romney is cunningly ignoring the straw poll so he doesn't become a victim of elevated expectations in the likely event that he wins the straw poll and then underperforms again in the caucuses. In presidential politics, perception is everything.

And before Pawlenty wins the Iowa caucuses, he probably has to win the straw poll.

In the era of the 24-hour news cycle, the press is obsessed as never before with the horse race. Often, policy prescriptions are condensed into insufficient soundbites or ignored altogether. Any poll that is released becomes immediate "Breaking News" and sweeps across the blogosphere. This helps cement the imagine of someone like Romney -- who has high name recognition, despite being merely acceptable, at best, to most conservatives -- as a "frontrunner," while someone like Pawlenty or Huntsman -- who are known by very few voters outside their home states -- as underachievers. Another example of this horrendously stupid process is Donald Trump, who, before he announced he wasn't running, was typically blowing Pawlenty away in the polls, despite the fact that he had no campaign infrastructure, made outlandish statements and wasn't ever considered to be a serious candidate.

As a consequence, the story becomes -- or at least, will soon become -- why Pawlenty, Huntsman and others are struggling so badly in the polls. Eight months away from the Iowa caucuses, this is truly absurd. And it's almost entirely the fault of the national press, who believes that it's more important to discuss the latest poll results rather than exploring the differences between the candidates on issues like Libya or Afghanistan.

But the consequence for someone like Pawlenty is that bad poll results are magnified, because he is widely considered to be a "first-tier candidate" along with Romney and perhaps Sarah Palin. As a result, anything less than an outright win in the Iowa straw poll will be viewed as an enormous disappointment, and feed the narrative that Pawlenty's campaign has severely underperformed.

John McCain's contempt for the rule of law

2011-06-08T16:06:00.005-05:00

Buried deep in George Will's excellent excoriation of President Obama's handling of the Libyan conflict is this remarkable quote from John McCain:

“No president has ever recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, and neither do I. So I don’t feel bound by any deadline.”

McCain was referring to the provision of the WPA that mandates that, if the president does not seek a congressional declaration of war and initiates a conflict abroad, he must provide an explanation of his actions to Congress within 90 days.

Even coming from a man who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate and recently called the Libyan jihadists "my heroes," this is perhaps the most absurd thing McCain has ever said or done.

I wasn't aware that the Constitution -- which specifically endows Congress with the right to declare war -- shields the president from the application of a law if the president or his lackey Congress decides not to "recognize" it. Perhaps the senator would be kind enough to advise us of the constitutional provision upon which he relies.

An avowed opponent of "judicial activism," McCain's position on the WPA is particularly outrageous because -- in McCain's view -- the legislature and the president alone determine the laws that apply and those that don't. McCain urges a sort of extra-judicial congressional activism that is unprecedented and is probably the most extreme theory of checks and balances I've ever read. Under this twisted logic, we may as well scrap the federal judiciary.

On the other hand, McCain's solution is always "more troops" or "more war," so the fact that he isn't bothered by an illegal, unconstitutional war launched in a country where America has no strategic interest at stake isn't surprising.

McCain has an unquenchable, self-righteous thirst for war, which causes him to demand that American troops fight and die solely to fulfill his own lust for foreign adventurism and so he is able to grandstand against "isolationists" on the Senate floor. Perhaps McCain is now coming around to his old rival Obama, who obviously shares his desire for pointless, illegal interventionism abroad and his utter contempt for the rule of law.

From a strictly foreign policy perspective, McCain may well have turned out to be the most destructive president since Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps his 2008 defeat was a blessing in disguise.

Suspension of reality and the cult of Sarah Palin

2011-06-07T14:25:00.014-05:00

We've written here before that Sarah Palin inspires a fervent cult of personality that most resembles the Obamatrons who swept Barack Obama into the White House in 2008. As we've noted with respect to both Palin and Obama, policy rarely matters to their followers -- Palin and Obama are the policy.

In that vein, this piece of Palin-worshipping drivel from a gentleman named AWR Hawkins embodies the worst excesses of the Cult of Palin. It's aptly entitled, "Can Sarah Palin Really Beat Barack Obama? 'You Betcha.'"

Hawkins' thesis boils down to this: The "mainstream media" and the "Republican establishment" are giving Palin short shrift because on her vaunted bus tour, she is spreading a patriotic message and connecting with Americans who can't help but fall in love with her. Hawkins' his piece is typical of the horrendously illogical zealotry that has spread throughout a small, but powerfully vocal, minority of Republican voters.

First: As George Will has repeatedly pointed out, there is no such thing as the "Republican establishment." And if there is such a thing as the establishment, Sarah Palin owes everything to it. She is an elite confection, plucked out of obscurity for no other reason than John McCain's reckless desire for a potential game-changer on his ticket. Without the establishment -- certainly encompassing McCain, Steve Schmidt (McCain's campaign manager and an old Bush/Cheney hand) and Charlie Black (who has spent the last two decades as a Republican lobbyist and kingmaker extraordinaire) -- Sarah Palin is still an unremarkable one-term governor from the smallest state in the union. Other "establishment" figures who have lauded her bona fides include Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh.

Point 1-A: If there is a "Republican establishment," it is madly disjointed to the point of being woefully ineffective. In the 21st century, the conservative blogosphere writ large carries equal, if not greater, weight than typical establishment-type figures such as the Wall St. Journal editorial board, National Review or John Boehner. Who precisely is the "Republican establishment"? And have Palin disciples forgotten how powerless this "establishment" was when McCain and Mike Huckabee -- both considered apostates by "the establishment" -- combined to win 70% of the primary electorate in 2008?

Second: Carping about the Republican establishment -- or the "mainstream media" -- allows Palin acolytes to avoid addressing very serious concerns about Palin's experience, the myriad ethical complaints that continue to follow her, her poor performance when facing precisely the same hostile press that George W. Bush faced every day for eight years, and most critically, the apprehension that true-blue conservatives seem to have about whether Palin is actually qualified for the presidency. This is the height of intellectual dishonesty, because I have yet to hear a Palin devotee make a compelling case that she is fit for the office.

Third: To address Hawkins' thesis directly, there exists not a shred of evidence that Palin would have a prayer against Obama in the general election.

I've made this point when discussing Mitt Romney's chances against Obama, which, frankly, I believe are well under 50 percent: If Romney had, and continues to have, trouble convincing conservative primary voters that he is an acceptable choice, how can he expect to rally a much more moderate general electorate? Currently -- in a field that doesn't include Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Mitch Daniels or Donald Trump -- Palin is polling at approximately 17 percent, this despite the degree to which she dominates nearly every news cycle. In January, Palin's nationwide unfavorables were at 56 percent. She consistently has the highest negative marks even when only Republican voters are polled. And, critically, she is such a known quantity that it will be considerably more difficult for her to swing those numbers versus someone like, say, Tim Pawlenty or Herman Cain. It is difficult to see how she has any path to the Republican nomination should she choose to run, especially since all signs point toward Michelle Bachmann laying the groundwork for a campaign.

In a general election matchup, the evidence is overwhelming that Palin would not be competitive against Obama. While Palin would assuredly win Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming, it is conceivable that she would lose the other 43 states and suffer the worst loss since Ronald Reagan routed Walter Mondale in 1984. In swing states, she polls abysmally -- by far the worst of any serious Republican contender -- against Obama. She would lose by 7 points in Ohio; 9 in North Carolina; 11 in Virginia; 13 in Nevada; 14 in Florida; 16 in Iowa; 19 in Colorado; and a whopping 29 in New Mexico. It's important to note that George W. Bush carried all but Iowa and New Mexico in 2004. Not only would Palin underperform Bush's reelection effort in all eight of those states, but she'd badly outperform McCain's futile 2008 run as well. An ABC News/Washington Post poll -- the most recent on the hypothetical matchup -- has Palin losing to Obama by a 55-40 margin. In fact, the last four polls pitting Palin against Obama in a hypothetical matchup have Palin losing by an average of 18 points.

While Palin may be a culturally familiar, admirable figure to Hawkins and others, her acolytes ignore all evidence when insisting that she could take down an incumbent president whose approval ratings have settled in around 50 percent. Her nomination would assure Barack Obama a second term -- precisely why all conservatives should line up behind her strongest opponent.

Tim Pawlenty mans up

2011-05-24T11:11:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, in a post lamenting Mitch Daniels' decision to forego a presidential run, I expressed my disappointment with what I believed to be Tim Pawlenty's willingness to adopt Bushian dogma on a series of critical issues, and my resulting disapproval of his rightward swing.

But yesterday, Pawlenty -- who has gotten nowhere by pandering -- demonstrated serious political courage by announcing his opposition to ethanol subsidies ... in Des Moines, Iowa. In 2008, John McCain made it very clear that he thought that ethanol subsidies were a waste of money, and as a result, he didn't even bother campaigning in Iowa. Pawlenty, on the other hand, probably has to win Iowa outright to have a serious chance at the nomination. As a result, his verbal takedown of King Corn was a very bold -- and perhaps politically foolish -- move. Today, he will be in Florida to announce his support for raising the retirement age and means-testing Social Security -- both positions that were championed by Daniels. And he'll be speaking to an audience that is made up, in part, of senior citizens. These are courageous moves, demonstrating a willingness to put principle over politics that we haven't seen from Pawlenty in months. He deserves great credit for taking these stands, especially as his presidential campaign isn't even two days old.

There is a Mitch Daniels-sized hole in the race. Daniels' Saturday night/Sunday morning announcement rocked the Republican field and eliminated the party's most electable candidate. At this point, with Santorum and Gingrich demagoguing, Romney flip-flopping, Cain broke and the libertarians quiet, there is a massive hole in the middle of the party. Pawlenty's recent statements demonstrate an intention to drive a truck through it.

Pawlenty rose to prominence in the national discussion by being a reasonable, likable, pragmatic governor. It is clear his pandering has not paid off. If he jettisons the demagoguery and can co-opt the Daniels message, he will be very difficult for me to ignore.

Daniels is out

2011-05-23T14:48:00.003-05:00

In a very discouraging piece of news yesterday morning, Mitch Daniels' family torpedoed his presidential candidacy before it ever got off the ground.

Daniels would have been both the most conservative and the most electable candidate in the Republican field. We've written glowingly about his six-plus year record transforming Indiana into one of the most business-friendly states in the union -- as well as the most fiscally solvent. Not only is the best candidate now out of the running, but the quality of the debate will be markedly worse because of it. Daniels is a serious man. While fiercely principled, he doesn't alienate moderates and independents with foolish name-calling. He doesn't shift in the wind like Romney, doesn't pander like Palin, doesn't demagogue like Gingrich and doesn't stake out put-on hawkish positions that make him look silly like Pawlenty. He is a real adult, a real conservative and has serious intellectual gravitas.

Now that Daniels is out, I frankly have no idea who I will vote for. Gary Johnson would be a tremendous standard-bearer for what I want the GOP to morph into, but his libertarianism won't play well in either Iowa or South Carolina, and I refuse to waste my vote on a candidate who doesn't have a serious chance at the nomination. To that end, I suspect I will half-heartedly pull the lever for whichever candidate emerges as the electable alternative to Romney. This probably means either Jon Huntsman or Pawlenty. I have great reticence supporting Pawlenty because of his foolish statements on Libya, his support for waterboarding and his stated refusal to cut a dime from the Pentagon's budget. These are serious issues, and Pawlenty's sudden hawkish stands on each -- that more closely resemble reflexive verbal diarrhea than coherently constructed policy statements -- suggest to me that he hasn't studied these issues very closely. The more Pawlenty talks, the more he sounds like a neoconservative trying to pander to a conservative base that -- at least on foreign policy issues -- he doesn't seem to understand very well.

Huntsman, on the other hand, will no doubt be tarred for his service in the Obama administration and his ideological support for cap and trade. He is making a trip to Kennebunkport for a "kiss the ring" session with President George H.W. Bush, and with Daniels out of the running, to make his case for access to the expansive Bush support network. Huntsman's record as governor of Utah, while not quite as sterling as Daniels', is still impressive, and he seems on the surface to be a fine man to represent the party. My fear is that his affiliation with Obama will cause him deep trouble in Iowa and South Carolina.

It is difficult to overstate how discouraging Daniels' decision is for the Republican Party. Without his measured, affable, wonkish presence, the Republican debates could turn out to be unwatchable train wrecks. He would have been an outstanding president, perhaps the one prospective candidate whose record demonstrates an ability to tackle our massive fiscal crises. It seemed like a perfect marriage of man and moment, and the fact that Daniels has chosen not to pursue it is unspeakably disappointing.

The manufactured outrage over Israel

2011-05-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

At the risk of being tarred as an anti-Semite for my lack of reflexive, unqualified support for everything Israel does, my reactions to President Obama's speech yesterday, and the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations generally:

1. Obama's speech was an unremarkable extension of the Bush and Clinton doctrines and broke very little new ground. A two-state solution is something that both Presidents Clinton and Bush pushed and has been at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for two decades. I appreciate the president's willingness to state the objective publicly, but for either side -- liberal or conservative -- to suggest the president's speech marks a change in mid-east policy is silly.

2. Let's keep in mind the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the first place. Israel was created by a U.N. charter in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust. While the land was of course historically the Jewish homeland, the Bible references a Palestinian presence there at least 500 years before Christ. So this idea that the Palestinians have no claim to any territory whatsoever -- especially when Israel the nation-state is only 60 years old -- is truly absurd.

3. How do Republican-AIPAC conservatives (Bill Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Mike Huckabee) expect to achieve peace in the Middle East, other than by carving out a small Palestinian state? They are in favor of expanded settlements, they are in favor of the blockade of Gaza (which also, arguably, violates international law), they were in favor of the flotilla raid, and they are stridently opposed to a two-state solution. So I'd posit this question: How do you plan to achieve peace? And as a follow up, for what reasons are Palestinians not entitled to a separate state?

4. Israel is not owed America's unfettered, reflexive support. Last May, the Israeli navy attacked a flotilla off the coast of Gaza in international waters, killing citizens aboard a ship carrying a Turkish flag. The attack happened in international waters and violence only started when the Israeli commandos stormed the tiny ship. This was an act of war, no matter who perpetuated it. We wrote here at the time that if the flotilla had entered Israeli waters, then the commandos' actions would have been taken in defense of the Israeli homeland. But the attack did not happen in Israeli waters. If you supported the Israeli navy in that endeavor, then it demonstrates that you put the interests of Israel over the rule of international law. And it demonstrates that you are a fanatic. To hold that Israel is above the scope of international law is deeply offensive, because I doubt that you would even make such a claim about America.

5. I am an American. I love my country. I view the world through American-tinted lenses. If a country's strategic interests are aligned with America's, I'd like the president and the State Department to cultivate a positive relationship with that country. I'm all for international engagement, free trade, free-flowing diplomacy, and the like -- and yes, that includes a close, vibrant relationship with the State of Israel. But when a country's interests diverge with America's -- and where that country, like Israel, takes explicit steps to break international law and infuriate critical allies in the Middle East, such as Turkey and Egypt -- that country deserves a rebuke. It is no different than Hosni Mubarak -- an American ally for three decades -- deserving a similar rebuke for his violent crackdown on the Egyptian protests several months ago. American support for Israel -- just like American support for every other country on the face of the planet -- should only extend as far as Israel's conduct furthers America's strategic interests. To argue otherwise is to argue that Israel's interests are superior to those of America's. And to argue otherwise calls your patriotism into serious question.

Rick Santorum, too, might be retarded

2011-05-17T13:31:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, the former Pennsylvania senator took time off from talking about man-on-dog sodomy to discuss "enhanced interrogation techniques" (read: torture) on Hugh Hewitt's radio show.

Speaking of the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden -- and John McCain's recent comments that the identity of bin Laden's trusted courier were not obtained through torture -- Santorum launched into one of the stupidest monologues in American political history.

I don't, everything I've read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation.

This is absurd. There isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that torture, or enhanced interrogation, led to the identification of bin Laden's courier. I don't know what "shows" Santorum has been watching, but they are probably found in the "fiction" section of the public library. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that the critical information was gleaned using standard, humane interrogation tactics that comport with both U.S. and international law. At best, Santorum is deeply confused. At worst, he is an outright liar.

The next part is priceless, and even dumber.

And so this idea that we didn't ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, [John McCain] doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they're broken, they become cooperative.

Right. A man who was subjected to torture for five and a half years doesn't understand how torture works. Rather, Rick Santorum, lobbyist, former senator and moralist proselytizer extraordinaire does. McCain has said and written, time and again, how the prisoner will do or say anything to make the pain stop. McCain occasionally relates that once when he was tortured, and his interrogators asked him about the identities of his squadron leaders, he gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line. The torture stopped.

As McCain himself noted, the only evidence concerning the waterboarding of Khalid Shiekh Mohammed is that, when waterboarded, he gave his interrogators false information about the identity of bin Laden's courier. Instead of being convinced by the torture to play ball with American interrogators, he went the complete other direction, and gave false information.

I genuinely don't understand the strange obsession with torture that has gripped the Republican Party in the wake of 9/11. Against all reason and evidence, hard-headed fools like Rick Santorum continue to maintain that but for torture, bin Laden would still be alive. This is preposterous, and completely false.

Rick Santorum shouldn't be trusted with a lemonade stand, much less the presidency.

Thoughts on the GOP field

2011-05-16T14:58:00.012-05:00

In the vein of Ross Douthat, some comments on the prospective Republican field:

1. Even if it increases the odds of a Mitt Romney nomination, I'm quite happy about Mike Huckabee staying out of the race. His fiscal legacy in Arkansas is disastrous, and he'd represent nothing more than a return to Bushism -- cementing the GOP's desire for statism at home and foolish interventionism abroad. And the last thing the Republican field needs is yet another culture warrior beating the social issues drum; Rick Santorum's sermonizing in the South Carolina debate was difficult to stomach, and Huckabee comes off as a snarkier version of Santorum. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but he was a terrible governor, he'd be an even worse president, and he'd be an absolutely horrendous face for the conservative movement.

2. Donald Trump is a self-aggrandizing clown.

3. I frankly don't see the Jon Huntsman candidacy going anywhere. While I'm sure Huntsman is a fine man, he is a pro-choice, pro-cap-and-trade, Obama administration official who happens to be from the same state as Mitt Romney and like Romney, happens to be Mormon. Hunstman's presence in the race will probably be most damaging to Romney -- which is good -- but his best chance of success is in 2016, not 2012. If he runs now, the attack ads (see above) write themselves, and he runs the risk of entering the 2016 race weakened by the beating he took in 2012, much like Romney still bears the scars of 2008 that exposed how deeply flawed he was (and still is) as a candidate.

4. Mitch Daniels is going to run, but as Douthat noted, there is no incentive for him to announce his candidacy now. Huntsman has yet to formally announce -- Romney technically does too -- and there is no reason to jump in at this early stage and risk silly attacks by culture warriors like Santorum and Newt Gingrich; the Iowa causes are still 9 months away. While he no doubt will have access to Haley Barbour's formidable Rolodex and his own web of Republican bankrollers, Daniels needs to develop a campaign infrastructure and formulate a strategy before he wades in.

5. Gary Johnson would be a fantastic standard-bearer for the Republican Party; Conor Friedersdorf once described him as "Ron Paul, but without the baggage." He is a fantastically likable, articulate fellow who has a genuine wonky side and seems passionate about the expansion of individual liberty. He vetoed hundreds of bills as governor of New Mexico and -- unlike Paul -- comes across as measured and sharp. I frankly think that Paul is doing a disservice to the libertarian cause by staying in the race and splitting the libertarian vote with Johnson. While I like Paul a great deal, he is not a viable contender for the nomination, and it's clear that Johnson has a much better shot at being competitive. If Paul endorsed Johnson and threw his support behind his friend, I frankly think Johnson would be a serious top-tier contender, especially in such a splintered field.

6. The general-election viability of the putative Republican field, from strongest to weakest: Daniels, Huntsman, Pawlenty, Romney, Johnson, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, Cain, Palin.

Mitt Romney's exceptional dishonesty

2011-05-13T12:43:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, Mitt Romney tried, and failed, to tackle the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: The 2006 Massachusetts healthcare plan that he signed while governor, and why it looks awfully similar to President Obama's signature legislation of 2010.

To review, the two plans have the following provisions in common:

1. An individual mandate to purchase insurance, assessing tax penalties for failure to comply
2. An employer mandate
3. Subsidies for low-income individuals to purchase insurance
4. The expansion of Medicaid
5. The creation of a government-run bureaucracy called an exchange that regulates premiums
6. Prohibition of denials based on pre-existing conditions

Hat tip: The Wonk Room, via Andrew Sullivan

/bangs head on desk.

Yesterday, Romney began a full-on propaganda blitz to convince his audience, and the electorate at large, that his plan was markedly different from Obamacare. This is patently false, as has been pointed out by not only the liberals at Think Progress, but the libertarians at the Cato Institute. To argue that Romneycare is any different in any respect from Obamacare is exceptionally dishonest. They are the same bill.

Romney's most demagogic argument has been that while Romneycare was an attempt to help people get and keep insurance, Obamacare was a "government takeover of healthcare." This is absurd. Romney may as well have called Obamacare "green cheese" and it wouldn't make any difference to the substance of his argument or the arguments of his critics. What Romney calls, or how he describes, the two plans is irrelevant. The proof is in the actual policies advanced in the respective bills, and in every important respect, Obamacare and Romneycare are identical.

Romney is the most dishonest politician I have seen in my lifetime. His lack of principle is beyond offensive. Putting aside whether he may be objectively competent to handle the office of the presidency, his misstatements (yesterday's speech being only the latest of which) and myriad brazen position changes should disqualify him before the race even begins.

"Compassionate conservatism" and the war on drugs

2011-05-11T17:21:00.002-05:00

Many more articulate than me, including Daniel Larison and E.D. Kain, have ripped apart Michael Gerson's mindless hit piece decrying Ron Paul's opposition to the war on drugs.

Gerson, of course, was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and now takes to the Washington Post's op-ed page to blast his particularly annoying brand of "compassionate" (read: big-government; see also, paternalistic) conservatism.

I won't rehash the myriad arguments against the war on drugs, most of which are extraordinarily compelling. Rather, Gerson's op-ed demonstrates precisely why the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush was destructive not just to the Republican Party, but to centuries-old conceptions of individual liberty.

Gerson's piece, straight out of the Terri Schiavo/stem cell/internet gambling moralist playbook, exemplifies what can properly be called the "conservative" position on drug prohibition. His argument essentially boils down to this: The government can ban cocaine, marijuana and even internet gambling, because those things are bad for you.

But what Gerson and his Bushian ilk miss entirely is that this is precisely the same logic that President Obama and liberal Democrats used to justify the individual mandate to purchase health insurance that was slammed through Congress last year. As David Boaz of the Cato Institute has noted, conservatives' idea of personal responsibility entails the individual making the decision about which health insurance plan to purchase (or whether to purchase insurance at all), and living with the consequences of those decisions. What is so offensive about Obamacare is that this idea of "personal responsibility" is turned completely on its head, wherein a government decree requires the citizen to engage in a certain activity, because that activity is good for him.

In the exact same way, Gerson and statist Republicans desire to regulate what Americans put into their bodies due to an offensive brand of paternalism, rooted in the deep-seated belief that the imperial state knows what's best for its citizens. This informed, among other things, the Bush administration's war on internet gambling. It is the same in every compelling respect to the Obama "personal responsibility" doctrine that says that government can, and should, mandate that individuals act a certain way, or engage in a certain activity.

Gerson's column -- in addition to being intellectually dishonest in the ways set out by Larison and Kain -- pushes an exhausted, offensive brand of moralistic statism that is antithetical to the tenets of liberty, and at which true conservatives should recoil.

Erick Erickson might be retarded

2011-05-07T17:33:00.001-05:00

We've written here before about Mitch Daniels' sterling, nearly unimpeachable record as governor of Indiana. In a time of fiscal crisis, Daniels is cementing himself as the party's chief fiscal hawk.

A few days ago, Daniels traveled to Manhattan to meet with a swath of journalists from across the political spectrum. Among those participating were former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, whom I adore, and the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru.

This certainly jarred Red State's Erick Erickson.

Surrounded by people across the spectrum, the liberals seemed to like him better than any of the other Republican candidates out there. Well, there you go.

This is incomprehensibly stupid. Because a liberal like Hendrik Hertzberg happened to like Daniels personally, that must mean Daniels is a liberal. It's been fascinating to watch the bottom layer of the right-wing noise machine -- Erickson, Levin, Limbaugh -- criticize Daniels as insufficiently conservative simply because he doesn't make outlandish statements or engage in partisan demagoguery. Never mind his record, which indicates that he would govern as the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan. We -- and others -- have seen enough of Daniels to know that he simply isn't a name-calling bomb-thrower. (Watch this episode of MitchTV for a glimpse of the man.) Liberals no doubt like him because of his calm, easygoing manner, much like Republicans are fond of the arch-liberal Joe Lieberman because he similarly doesn't engage in hyperpartisan sabre-rattling. Does Erickson really think that Daniels is a closet liberal? He should check out what Democrats in Indiana think.

But more so, when asked who he’d call at 3 a.m. for foreign policy advice, given the choice between John McCain and Dick Lugar, he went with Lugar. I don’t think I need to remind you that, as Jenn ably notes, Lugar “has run interference for President Obama on foreign policy issues such as START.”

Apparently securing loose nuclear material in a state that has a robust trading partnership with Iran is not a high priority for Erickson. Listening to President Reagan's national security team apparently isn't, either.

The title of Erickson's post? Mitch Daniels: The Anti-Tea Party Candidate

I'm not sure what the tea party has anything to do with Daniels' sit down with Noonan, et al., but if Erickson wants to engage on this topic, I'm glad to. Daniels outlawed all collective bargaining by all public-sector employees on his first day in office. He balanced the budget, paid off all Indiana's outstanding debts and restored its long-lost AAA bond rating, all without raising taxes. He has, almost singlehandedly, transformed his state into the best business climate in the Midwest. At CPAC this year, he referred to our mounting national debt as "the new red menace." So what about any of that indicates to Erickson that Daniels is "anti-tea party"? These are precisely the concerns around which the tea party has coalesced. What Erickson and other self-appointed opinion leaders apparently long for is a Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, whose records demonstrate little to no adherence to conservative principles, and who are forced to resort to demagoguery and name-calling to make up for their laughable records. "Conservatives" like Erickson really don't care about actual conservative governance, hence the relentless apologies for George W. Bush's big-government statism, the adoration of Sarah Palin and her non-existent record, and the overwhelming disdain for people, like Daniels, who have a thoughtful, educated mind.

Erickson and his ilk followed Bush over a cliff, and three years later, all they seem to care about is plummeting toward the bottom as fast as possible.

Bill Kristol, wrong yet again

2011-05-04T10:02:00.001-05:00

There is so much wrong with this email from Bill Kristol to Politico's Ben Smith, regarding Sarah Palin's foreign-policy views, that it numbs the mind.

Kristol: My other thought: The surge in Iraq works.

Well, yes. But as we've noted here before, and has been discussed ad nauseum by the likes of thoughtful conservatives like Ross Douthat, Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Larison, the idea that Iraq was an unqualified success to be duplicated elsewhere is absurd. We were told that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. We were told wrong. We were told that he had close ties to al Qaeda and/or a role in 9/11. We were told wrong. We were told he was a clear and present danger to the United States. We were told wrong. In addition to the attack in hindsight being completely baseless, the Iraq adventure cemented Iran's status as chief antagonist in the Middle East and removed its greatest enemy, a man against whom Iran went to war in the mid-1980s. If the objective was to increase Iranian hegemony and influence in the Middle East, Iraq can be considered a success, but I doubt Kristol feels that way. Not only has Iran's regional influence been elevated, but its influence inside of Iraq has been greatly furthered by the murderous Shiite cleric ad-Sadr, who has the blood of hundreds of American servicemen and thousands of innocent Iraqis on his hands. Finally, Iraq and Abu Ghraib have proven to be enormous recruiting tools for al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden explicitly stated that it was his intention to weaken the United States by drawing it into a global war against Islam, so it is difficult to imagine him doing anything other than cheering the American invasion. So to put a fine point on it -- and putting aside the issue of whether the surge was a success -- Kristol is living in an alternate reality if he thinks America is better off since having gone into Iraq.

The surge in Afghanistan works.

Is this a statement of fact or an objective? There is no evidence that the Afghanistan "surge" has worked in any credible respect.

The world obviously needs American strength and leadership more than ever.

Kristol and other neocons perpetually spout tinny lines like this, which don't mean anything unless "American strength and leadership" is defined. If it means launching attacks against any nation that doesn't offer absolute support for American objectives, or against any nation that isn't a western democracy, then he has a vastly different idea of "American strength and leadership" than Ronald Reagan. As we've said before, the answer for Kristol is always "more troops" or "more war," regardless of the facts on the ground, regardless of how reckless such action might actually be, and regardless of whether such a projection of force would actually be detrimental to American interests. It is an incomprehensible foreign policy and would cause America, both economically and militarily, to crumble in on itself. And it ignores the plain reality that revolutions must by nature be organic.

And now everyone (even Palin, to some degree) decides, hey, time to back off? It’s foolish substantively and politically.

What is foolish is continuing to sabre-rattle for war despite the horrific misadventure in Iraq, the muddled quagmire of Afghanistan and the complete lack of an objective in Libya. If backing off from random, haphazard, foolish military adventurism abroad, which has harmed American interests in the world's most critical region, is considered "foolish," then consider me and most Americans foolhardy. Most Americans are tired of this idiotic brand of foreign policy.

bin Laden: post-mortem

2011-05-03T15:23:00.001-05:00

Literally and figuratively, a post-mortem following the death of OBL:

1. There is no limit to the incredible power and razor-sharp precision of the American military.

2. This is the biggest achievement of Barack Obama's presidency.

3. Donald Trump begins the week with egg on his face and all over his five-dollar haircut. While the president was answering silly questions about his birth certificate last week, he was apparently finalizing the groundwork of the raid that killed bin Laden. Obama comes away looking presidential, and Trump leaves looking like -- as usual -- a clown.

4. As we've written here before, any implication that Obama is somehow "weak on terror" is patently false and has no basis in fact. In addition to ordering the capture or killing of bin Laden, he ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan, refused to close Guantanamo Bay, proffered absurd theories of executive power under the state secrets privilege, ordered the assassinations of American citizens abroad and denied basic constitutional protections to the Wikileaks mole. These activities are either continuations or extensions of existing Bush policies. In nearly all cases -- with the exception of Afghanistan -- they are also unconstitutional and/or illegal.

5. During the 2008 campaign, Obama stated in no uncertain terms that he would order American troops into Pakistan to track down OBL. He kept his word.

6. In response, John McCain criticized Obama's desire to infringe on Pakistan's sovereignty. By implication, if McCain was president, bin Laden would still be alive.

7. The fact that bin Laden was hiding just 40 miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, in a private residence several times bigger than any home within miles -- and had been doing so since at least August 2010 -- is troubling. Pakistan is a repressive police state and its intelligence service is virtually omnipotent. It is very, very hard to believe that high-ranking officials in the Pakistani government weren't aware of bin Laden's presence.

8. Therefore, the fact that the CIA flagged this particular home as a possible hideout -- without any help from Pakistan whatsoever -- speaks to both the skill and resourcefulness of the CIA and the suspiciousness with which we should view the Pakistani leadership.

9. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was very critical of the American effort to kill OBL, as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. This was somewhat surprising, as Musharraf's rule was marked by consistent cooperation in the US-Pakistan relationship. Musharraf was the victim of multiple assassination attempts for his cooperation with America. I would think that -- especially given the fact that Musharraf nearly lost his life for his relationship with America -- the current Pakistani leadership would deserve at least a passing rebuke for letting bin Laden sit under their noses for months, if not years.

10. I genuinely hope that bin Laden's death will begin a national discussion on what precisely we are doing in Afghanistan, whether there is a tangible, realistic endgame, and whether the United States should be engaged in such nation-building. While bin Laden's death changes very little about the nature of the current conflict, perhaps it will push popular opinion toward a withdrawal.

Mitch Daniels' opportunity

2011-04-27T12:49:00.009-05:00

We've written about the Indiana governor in this space before. Mitch Daniels is arguably the best governor in the country, boasting a record replete with cutting taxes, streamlining government, putting the screws to wasteful spending and paying off all of Indiana's outstanding debts. When Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced that his state would be forced to raise income taxes across the board, Daniels called a press conference the next morning and taunted his neighbor to the west, pointing out that under his leadership, Indiana has transformed itself into one of the most business-friendly states in the Union.

Daniels is a fundamentally serious man. Short, balding and bland, he nonetheless possesses what George Will has called "the charisma of competence." Unlike the rest of the Republican field, Daniels has never sought out presidential speculation, and in fact has often shied away from the spotlight; instead, it's been leading conservatives like Will and David Brooks who have highlighted his masterful record and sterling resume as evidence of presidential material. In other words, the spotlight has found him.

Although serious conservatives make the least noise, there are millions who would love Daniels if they knew more about him. He has the intellectual gravitas that is lacking in Palin, Trump and Santorum and would make the likes of Gingrich, Romney and Pawlenty look like demagogues in any debate.

He demonstrates a masterful grasp of both the nuances of public policy making and the fundamental underpinnings of the conservative cause as espoused by Burke, Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan.

If Daniels chooses to run, the division of the Republican primary vote will be truly bizarre: Daniels' record indicates that he is arguably the most conservative candidate in the prospective field, but because of his intellectual gravitas and serious manner, he could take the lion's share of the moderate vote that went for John McCain and Rudy Guiliani in 2008.

We've written here before that we believe there is a massive gap in the center of the Republican Party. Romney, Pawlenty, Gingrich and Santorum have repeatedly attempted to one-up each other and demagogue each and every national issue. Donald Trump is either engaged in a massive publicity stunt or truly is a clown. John Thune, the unremarkable but serious senator from South Dakota, announced in February that he would not run. Despite his massive fundraising network, Jeb Bush appears unwilling to jump in. And just yesterday, Daniels' close friend Haley Barbour announced that he won't seek the nomination, either. In a prepared statement, Daniels said he would have gladly supported Barbour's candidacy if he ran.

Instead, with Thune, Bush and Barbour on the sidelines, the spring and summer of 2011 could be Daniels' moment to finally step into the spotlight and brandish his formidable record. Barbour will likely endorse him; Bush has been very complementary of Daniels in recent weeks in light of Daniels' sweeping education reforms. Daniels has even received kind words from tea party types like Dick Armey. Columnists like Will, Brooks and Ross Douthat have been pushing him to run for months. With Indiana's legislative session nearing a close, is it finally time?

We're pulling for the governor to throw his hat in the ring. He would be an outstanding president.

A rejection of Bushism

2011-04-25T11:54:00.015-05:00

Ron and Rand Paul represent a rejection of the destructive ideals of George W. Bush.

Over the past decade, the GOP, led by liberal wolves in sheep's clothing, has badly lost its way. In the Bush Era, conservatism came to represent interventionism abroad, statism at home, an executive abusive of civil liberties, and a disdain for fiscal prudence.

All the while, Ron Paul -- a lonely opponent of the Iraq misadventure in 2003 and a devout fiscal hawk -- banged his drum on the fringe of the party. His views on Iraq particularly were so unpopular that he was once banned from speaking at CPAC.

But since Bush left the scene and the Obama administration entered, Ron and his son, Rand, became heroes of the tea party movement and grassroots conservatives nationwide.

The Pauls' message is one of individual liberty and governmental restraint, both truly conservative ideals. During his short time as Kentucky's junior senator, Rand has called for cuts to both the Pentagon budget and the tens of billions shelled out to rich allies abroad. The Pauls demonstrate a fundamental grasp of the economic calamity that America faces at home and the folly of needless intervention overseas.

George W. Bush was a conservative in name only, a liberal statist masquerading as a crusader for family values. His administration spit on the legacy of Ronald Reagan, destroyed the Republican Party and gifted the White House to the most unqualified president in American history. His inherently destructive policies threw us deep into debt, destroyed America's credibility abroad and made America less free.

It's refreshing that as Republicans attempt to escape Bush's long shadow, Ron and Rand Paul remain stalwart, unapologetic defenders of liberty.

Donald Trump, presidential candidate?

2011-04-20T12:34:00.005-05:00

What is Donald Trump's endgame?

On the one hand, Trump is a notorious self-promoter, and perhaps creating the scuttlebutt that surrounds a possible presidential run is all that piques his interest.

On the other, Trump is certainly doing what presidential candidates typically do -- criticizing the incumbent president, opining on public policy and consulting with potential advisers. He appeared at CPAC a few months ago and will speak at the Iowa Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day dinner in June.

I actually think he's going to run.

However, Trump's idiotic foray into the birther controversy demonstrates both a lack of seriousness about what a presidential campaign requires and a stunning ignorance of a topic that is litigated only by the most extreme of wingnuts. Charles Krauthammer recently compared Trump to Al Sharpton, describing him as a "sideshow" and "clown." Krauthammer isn't far off. Instead of focusing on his own well-documented business achievements, Trump's first real foray into national politics was to question Obama's birth certificate. The national press has rightfully focused on this enormous bit of idiocy, because, again, if someone attempts to litigate this in the court of public opinion, he doesn't deserve to be considered as a serious candidate in the first place.

Unfortunately, given his astronomical name recognition and bombastic personality, Trump will probably make considerable noise in the first few primaries. Much like that of Mitt Romney, Trump's personal fortune will allow him to weather early defeats and remain a candidate as long as his ego allows.

I seriously doubt that Republican primarygoers will nominate Donald Trump, but this is the same group of people that blindly followed George W. Bush for eight years.

Obama vs. Ryan

2011-04-14T09:05:00.002-05:00

By courageously making the first move, Paul Ryan ensured that any discussion of deficit reduction would begin on Republican turf.

It's nice that, for the first time since 2008, President Obama appears concerned about the deficit. Unfortunately, after endorsing a budget with a shortfall of nearly $1.5 trillion, it would take a yeoman's effort to simply get us back to Bush-era deficit levels.

While Obama was right to take partial aim at Medicare and Medicaid and put a bullseye on the Pentagon, he mentioned Social Security only in passing, which suggests to me that he doesn't have the political stomach to discuss cutting the third rail at all. Any discussion of long-term budgetary coherence must begin with Social Security, because while Obama is correct in saying that Social Security hasn't added a dime to the national debt, the long-term projections beginning in about 2040 are awful. This program, as currently constructed, will bankrupt us. Period.

Ryan, conversely, will probably have to give on some of his proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. While the programs need to be restructured, some in the center appear to be shocked by how deep some of his proposals are willing to go. Additionally, as we've written here before, Republicans will need to give up the dogmatic belief that our fiscal woes can be cured without raising taxes -- especially the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% that will expire on January 1, 2013. While Ryan deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth has been, the fact that he proposed literally no new revenue increases is sort of laughable.

I'd expect that there is enough common ground here that a bipartisan consensus can be reached. Both parties want to radically streamline the tax code; both parties believe Medicare and Medicaid should be revamped; and I'm guessing both parties can probably agree that the Pentagon's budget can at least be reigned in a little bit.

The standard liberal line is that the deficit can be cured by soaking the rich. The standard conservative line is that it can be cured by defunding Planned Parenthood, NPR and the Department of Education.

If the Obama/Ryan debate is America's first step toward moving past those petty limitations, then good on them.

Required reading: Libya

2011-03-23T14:20:00.004-06:00

Several of the best takes on Libya have been by Daniel Larison -- here, here, here and here.

Our takedown of John Bolton's incomprehensible case for war here.

Andrew Sullivan wonders why the Obama administration didn't see the Arab League's about-face coming.

George Will plays 20 questions.

Glenn Greenwald blows apart Obama's claimed war-making powers. More relentless Greenwald here.

Douthat.

And Newt Gingrich is a complete demagogue.

Hats off to Haley Barbour

2011-03-21T16:57:00.000-06:00

The Mississippi governor excites me much less than Mitch Daniels, but Daniels' old Reagan administration buddy is beginning to win me over.

With Daniels busy in Indiana, Tim Pawlenty tacking hard to the right and John Thune having announced he won't run at all, there is an enormous gap on the center-right of the Republican electorate. Is Barbour pouncing?

If Daniels doesn't run, there is no candidate outside of Ron Paul who will argue for an end to the perpetual warfare state, push for cuts at the Pentagon and talk seriously about fiscal responsibility. These are fundamentally conservative ideals, and mainstream Republicans -- even "frontrunners" like Mitt Romney -- won't touch them.

On March 15, Barbour made waves by pushing for cuts at the Pentagon and questioning why American troops remain in Afghanistan nearly a decade after 9/11. On March 19, he delivered a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration's foray into Libya's civil war.

His best line thus far has been this: "Anybody who says you can't save money at the Pentagon has never been to the Pentagon. We can save money on defense and if we Republicans don't propose saving money on defense, we'll have no credibility on anything else."

Again, it's our belief that there exists a huge swath of serious Republican primary voters who are interested in a responsible message such as this. We thought it would be carried by Pawlenty, who has a sensible, blue-collar appeal, but he's scampered to the far right of the party on almost every major issue. Among other things, Pawlenty has publicly stated he won't cut a dime from the Pentagon.

Barbour and Daniels have said they don't want to run against each other. With Daniels busy in Indiana, can it be that Barbour, of all people, is rising?

The Cato Institute has been mildly critical of Barbour's record over the years, remarking that despite his conservative reputation, "his tax and spending record over seven years as governor has not been very conservative." Cato criticizes the fact that Barbour passed a cigarette tax and a tax on hospitals in 2008-2009, but later admitted that Mississippi was running short on revenue.

That said, Barbour's biggest negatives are less policy and more image-driven. A former lobbyist, he has accurately described himself as fat, white and Southern. In a party that absolutely must move beyond the stereotype embodied by George W. Bush, will voters in the general election go for a portly, white-haired former lobbyist who speaks with a thick southern drawl, no matter how competent or gregarious he might be?

Regardless, Barbour's recent statements demonstrate a seriousness not only about the size and scope of America's fiscal problems, but also about the folly of Bushian interventionism overseas.

These are debates that the Republican Party simply must have, and if Haley Barbour is the messenger, then so be it.

We have no business in Libya

2011-03-18T14:57:00.006-06:00

The John Bolton column that we destroyed on Tuesday is just one of hundreds of incoherent, overly partisan and/or emotional cases for military intervention in Libya. Yesterday, the Obama administration made its first real misstep with respect to the crisis in the Middle East, by reportedly pushing the U.N. Security Council to approve the enforcement of a no-fly zone in Libya.

The misstep was enormous, and could prove to be the biggest mistake of a presidency that is already littered with dozens of them.

As we've said before, the United States has absolutely no strategic interest in Libya whatsoever. During the leadup to the Iraq war, President Bush at least attempted to make the case that because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (he didn't) and had a shady alliance with al Qaeda (didn't have that either), he was a clear and present danger to American security. President Obama has not attempted to do this, because any suggestion that Qaddafi is a threat to the United States is laughable.

As we also noted, Qaddafi has been a reliable partner in combating radical Islamic extremism in Libya -- once a hotbed of terror -- and in fact has been critical of Saudi Arabia for what he perceives to be acquiescence of Wahabi extremism.

But there are more problems with a Libyan intervention.

If, to liberals, Iraq was an unwarranted war -- despite the fact that Saddam was a butcher who killed by some estimates 300,000 of his own people -- what is it that makes Libya different? Qaddafi, while a despot, doesn't have nearly the abysmal human rights record of Saddam. Why is intervention suddenly warranted? And why wasn't it warranted in Iraq?

What is the strategy in Libya? Is it merely the implementation of a no-fly zone? Is it the removal of Qaddafi from power? Is there even a plan at all?

What is the consequence if Qaddafi wins? If the rebels reach his stronghold, he will fight back. And then what? Does the UN send boots into Libya to aid the rebels? Where does the mission end?

What is the consequence if the rebels win? Does the administration or the international community care to understand what potentially dangerous factions are lurking amongst these "freedom fighters"? How can we be certain that a new government, if one exists, won't be worse than Qaddafi? (We can't.)

Going forward, what is the new standard for military intervention? When organic uprisings happen again, and happen they most certainly will, does the UN (or President Obama) plan to support similar intervention?

If Saudis take to the streets of Riyadh, and if the Saudi royal family engages in despotic acts similar to Qaddafi, then what will America do?

This is the problem with engaging in countries on the sole basis of "humanitarian" grounds. We are set up to look like fools in other countries where American interests are directly at stake.

And the most critical one for Americans: Does Congress' power to declare war mean anything anymore? The last time Congress declared war was in the 1940s. The imperial executive has now sent us into war in Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya while completely sidestepping the constitutional requirement of congressional approval. As Andrew Sullivan noted, Congress is entitled to a meaningful, open consultation as to the president's use of military force. Contrary to the position of the Bush administration, the president's commander in chief powers are neither unlimited nor open-ended.

Finally, the president's explanation that Qaddafi is destabilizing the region is laughable. The protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen are equally if not more destabilizing than what Qaddafi is doing. There is no rational argument to be made that what's going on in Libya was worse than what has happened recently in those countries. So why in the world is military intervention suddenly warranted?

The administration has showed great restraint to this point, but is sadly bending to the pressure of liberal humanitarians and neocon interventionists, and succumbing to the noise machine to implement a policy that will serve no strategic American interest whatsoever.

The best-case scenario is that the threat of international intervention will convince Qaddafi to back off. The more likely scenario is that the United States will be bogged down in yet another unwinnable war in the Middle East, further over-extending our military and leading to even more unnecessary American casualties.

John Bolton's incoherent case for war

2011-03-15T17:44:00.003-06:00

The short-term U.N ambassador and self-styled presidential candidate has taken to the interwebs to pile on the Obama administration for its refusal to intervene in Libya.

Bolton: First, Gadhafi has never faced his richly deserved retribution for numerous acts of terrorism against innocent Americans.

Perhaps Bolton's former boss, President Bush, should have thought about this before normalizing relations with Libya back in 2005. A question for Bolton: As these State Department cables indicate, and as is common knowledge in foreign-policy circles, Qaddafi has actually been a reliable partner in combating radical Islamic extremism. So is making sure Qaddafi sees "his richly deserved retribution" worth helping install an Islamist government made up in considerable part of the very extremists we've spent the last decade fighting?

Bolton: U.S. victims of Gadhafi’s terrorism still deserve to be avenged.

Maybe. But this isn't a serious foreign policy. If not for Qaddafi's assistance, brokered by the guy who put John Bolton on the map, it is quite likely that northern Africa would be much more friendly to al Qaeda. This sentence suggests that a Bolton administration would be focused on carrying out a foreign policy that is based not on strategic American interests but rather on the sole policy of serving retribution. Using Bolton's twisted logic, perhaps Obama should lob a few ICBMs at China for its support of the Viet Cong 40 years ago.

Bolton: Second, either a Gadhafi victory or a protracted, low-grade civil war, both of which are entirely possible outcomes, could again make Libya a base for terrorism.

Wrong. The State Department cables note:

"Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent. Muammar al-Qadhafi's criticism of Saudi Arabia for perceived support of Wahabi extremism, a source of continuing Libya-Saudi tension, reflects broader Libyan concern about the threat of extremism. Worried that fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the GOL has aggressively pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam."

There is no recent evidence to suggest that Qaddafi's policies have relaxed the atmosphere for al Qaeda. In fact, the Economist article we cited a few days ago demonstrates that Qaddafi has treated radical Islamic extremists and Western-looking democratists as a singular enemy, which has led to the strangest of alliances among Libyan rebels. If Libya is "a base for terrorism," it is assuredly in spite of Qaddafi, not because of him. Furthermore, Bolton's concern that Libya may become "a base for terrorism" is precisely why it is such a terrible idea to intervene at all. Right now, Libya is not a base for terrorism. So why intervene?

Bolton: Of course, there is no guarantee that a successor regime to Gadhafi would not also support terrorism, but given a choice between Gadhafi and uncertainty, uncertainty is more likely to be the safer choice.

This is incomprehensibly stupid. Given the choice between a leader who has been a key strategic partner in the war on terror and a successor regime that might be made up of Islamic extremists, the successor regime that might be made up of Islamic extremists is the safer choice? That might be the most illogical sentence in the history of the internet.

Bolton: Options include a no-fly zone (now belatedly endorsed by the Arab League) and possibly a no-drive zone for Gadhafi’s military vehicles, plus recognizing Libya’s opposition as its legitimate government.

A "no-drive zone"? I'd offer the following questions to Bolton: What support for invading Libya and installing a "no-drive zone" do you find in either codified international law or in statements from Libyan rebels or the Arab League? What is the objective standard a Bolton administration would implement for putting boots on the ground in a foreign country? How can you be certain that whatever interim government replaces Qaddafi will be equally as willing to partner with America in combating radical Islamic extremism? If you can't, why are you agitating for yet another Arab land war? When American troops die, and die they will if your "no-drive zone" is implemented, what explanation would you offer to the American public? Most critically, other than your lust for retribution, what strategic interest is advanced by spilling American blood and treasure in Libya?

John Bolton embodies the worst neoconservative excesses of the Republican Party. His unfortunate presidential candidacy will ensure that the destructive ideas of Bushism will live on, at least for one more election cycle.

Romney, the total fraud

2011-03-14T10:32:00.011-06:00

We've described Mitt Romney here before as the Republican John Kerry -- a rudderless, unprincipled demagogue who will say anything to get people to vote for him.

But that is insulting to Sen. Kerry.

Romney's entire case for the presidency hinges on conservative voters ignoring his record as governor of Massachusetts. It also hinges on voters ignoring his cringe-inducing position changes.

The idea that Romney is somehow the clear conservative alternative to anybody is laughable and has no basis in reality.

First, and most critically for 2012: Romney cannot be a credible opponent of Obamacare, when his Massachusetts healthcare plan is nearly identical, in all major respects, to the recent federal bill. If conservatives (rightfully) believe that Obamacare was an unwarranted government intrusion into the private marketplace that will cause costs to spiral out of control, then how can Romney's backers (such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity) explain their support for a man who worked to pass what was in all major respects an identical bill?

Furthermore, Romney's handling of the healthcare issue has been abysmal. He needed to do one of three things: (i) apologize for its passage and admit that the bill has completely failed to control costs in Massachusetts; (ii) stand resolutely behind his bill and make a case for why government intervention in this regard -- both at the state and federal levels -- is necessary; or (iii) refuse to discuss healthcare policy altogether. Regardless of his choice, Romney should, under no circumstances, have tried to distinguish his Massachusetts bill from Obamacare, because again, in all credible respects, they are identical. Instead, Romney has attempted the impossible: He has not only discussed healthcare, but led the charge in criticizing the Obama plan. He has stood behind his bill, while attempting -- and failing miserably -- to distinguish it from Obama's. All the while, Romney has continued to hinge his case for the presidency nearly entirely on his "pragmatic manager" argument, pointing to his legislative record of so-called accomplishments in Massachusetts. But his shining triumph was the healthcare plan. This is an utterly incoherent case for to make for oneself, and conservatives who can't see through this facade are unspeakably stupid.

Second: Romney is no social conservative. Truth be told, this does not upset me in the least, but his blatant pandering to the Mike Huckabee-Tony Perkins wing of the party is pathetic. Despite his newfangled discovery of the social conservative cause, there is a mountain of evidence -- starting with Romney's own words -- demonstrating his willingness to shift with the wind.

Third: Romney has changed his position on other critical issues that cause me to seriously question not only his capacity to tell the truth, but his commitment to the conservative cause. During the 2008 primaries, Romney made a bailout to American automakers a key part of his platform, ostensibly to curry favor in his adopted home state of Michigan. Just two weeks after the presidential election, however, Romney wrote this shameless op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that a bailout of Detroit was inappropriate and would cause the American auto industry to collapse in on itself -- the same bailout, incidentally, that he had argued for nine months earlier. And on fiscal issues, while it's true that Romney balanced the budget in Massachusetts, he raised taxes and fees to do so. So what exactly does he believe?

Finally: Romney's shameless reinventions will contribute to his inability to connect with voters and seem likable. He has transformed himself from moderate northeastern governor (2003-early 2007) to across-the-board conservative (mid-2007-2008) to anti-Obama culture warrior (2009-early 2010) to the regular guy who hasn't worn a tie in over a year (now). Not wearing a tie? Romney is worth $200 million. He is anything but a regular guy. Is he dense enough to he think that taking off the tie will help him connect better with farmers in Iowa?

There is no dispute that Romney's resume is impressive and that, on paper, he is eminently qualified for the presidency.

But he has shown himself to be little more than a shape-shifter, demonstrating a stunning lack of principle that is uncommon even in Washington.

Whether Romney possesses the qualifications to be president is one thing; whether he has the character and backbone to handle the pressures of the office is quite another.

In defense of doing nothing

2011-03-11T16:53:00.000-06:00

As George Will astutely noted yesterday, many conservatives' belief that government is inefficient and ineffective ends at the water's edge.

Much of the rhetoric coming from the Republican Party recently is horrifically stupid. Presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and -- God help us -- Newt Gingrich have criticized the Obama administration for one thing or another since Tunisia set off the Middle Eastern powderkeg six weeks ago.

The criticism from Romney, et al. has been that Obama failed to prop up an important American ally in Egypt -- thereby leading to the bogeyman threat of the Muslim Brotherhood seizing power -- but also that it -- wait for it -- didn't move fast enough in calling for the ouster of ... another recent American ally, Libya's Muommar Qaddafi. As folks who read newspapers are aware, President Bush normalized relations with Libya back in 2005 after Qaddafi sought America's good graces. Since that time, Qaddafi has been reasonably cooperative in combating radical Islamic jihad in his backyard. Securing the help of Qaddafi -- long an enemy of the United States -- and normalizing relations with Libya was one of the Bush administration's few shining moments in foreign affairs.

Conservatives shrieked about the Islamist bogeyman that could fill a power vacuum in Egypt, sadly defined by this outrageous Glenn Beck clip warning that Mubarak's ouster would lead to the global Islamic Caliphate. What these conservatives failed to understand is that the Egyptian military -- which has called the shots in Egypt since the beginning of the Eisenhower administration -- is far and away the most powerful institution in the country. Of all the countries in which to suspect a jihadist coup, Egypt is probably the one where such a happening would be of the least concern.

To the contrary, this excellent feature from The Economist demonstrates that the anti-Qaddafi rebels in Libya, in fact, include a considerable number of radical jihadists. During his reign, Qaddafi has lumped Islamists with liberal democrats, creating an odd alliance of both fundamentalists and Western-looking democratists. A problem with intervening in Libya -- among many others -- is that there is no true face of the opposition. In Egypt, it could be said that Mohamed ElBaradei was the de facto leader of the anti-Mubarak forces. In Libya, the opposition is much more disjointed, and as the Economist feature notes, includes a sizable number of Islamist radicals hostile to American interests.

But what many conservatives -- such as Pawlenty -- are encouraging the Obama administration to do is to help overthrow a key regional ally in the global war on terror, and give money, weapons and supplies to a potentially hostile enemy that sympathizes with al Qaeda and would likely have few qualms providing safe harbor to those who wish to do America catastrophic harm.

The inconsistency in Pawlenty, et al.'s criticisms of Obama evince sheer political opportunism and rank demagoguery.

But the most compelling reason to stay out of Libya? America has no stake whatsoever -- NONE -- in a Libyan civil war. American troops were recently in the middle of another civil war -- in Iraq, circa 2006 -- and we sacrificed blood (to the tune of 4,000 of our finest men and women) and treasure for little to no strategic gain.

I've spoken glowingly of Pawlenty before, and I've thought, other than Mitch Daniels, he would make the best president of the current Republican contenders. But yesterday, in criticizing Obama's "incoherent" response in the Middle East, Pawlenty said that he would initiate a "pro-American, pro-security, pro-defense" foreign policy. (This must contrast with the Obama administration, which is presumably anti-American, hopes al Qaeda will hit us again and would rather see north Africa overrun by radical Islamists.) Again, there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that Obama has mishandled the Middle East in any way. Pawlenty is quickly becoming a laughingstock by pandering so blatantly to the Gingrich/Palin/Beck wing of the party.

To the contrary, Obama's ad hoc response to the organic uprisings -- and his understanding that it is not always a given that the United States can (or must) intervene to effectuate "change" -- is a refreshing departure from the absymal square-peg/round-hole doctrine of forced democracy and neoconservative interventionism that was the hallmark of the Bush administration.

President Obama has gotten most things wrong in his presidency, but his response to the violence in the Middle East is not one of them. If Pawlenty hasn't learned any lessons from America's misadventures in Iraq, then he shouldn't be president.

Fiscal conservatism vs. Grover Norqust

2011-03-09T15:53:00.000-06:00

Politico highlights a burgeoning divide in the Republican Party between fiscal hawks and anti-tax zealots. The debate is framed as a battle between two conservative giants with otherwise unimpeachable fiscal credentials: Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform.

In the story's second paragraph, Carrie Brown cuts to the chase:

Norquist says it’s simple: No new taxes means no new taxes. Under no circumstances should Congress raise new revenues to solve the problem, he says.

Coburn usually would agree. But when it comes to taming the $14 trillion debt — a challenge Coburn has called “a matter of national survival” — he won’t rule it out.

Later, Norquist argues that, "You can't [cut the deficit] with tax increases. The only time the deficit comes down is when you refuse to raise taxes and you rein in spending."

Norquist is completely wrong for two reasons.

First, the premise on which Norquist's argument is based is patently false. Marginal tax rates have been raised twice in the post-Reagan era -- in 1990, when George H.W. Bush infamously broke his "read my lips" pledge, and in 1993-94, shortly after Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress took power -- and the deficit either flatlined or decreased. Whether coincidental or not, the federal budget was not only balanced several years later, but began running a surplus in 1999.

Of course, George W. Bush and a largely Republican Congress cut marginal tax rates in 2001 -- the last year the federal budget was in the black -- leading to abrupt and immediate budget deficits.

Again, whether these fiscal happenings were coincidental or not, Norquist's argument that slashing tax rates is the only way to balance the budget finds absolutely no support from recent history.

Second, Norquist's "starve the beast" argument -- the idea that Congress will spend less if it has less money in its coffers -- also completely fails as a matter of recent historical precedent. Despite the tax increases passed in 1993, domestic discretionary spending rose an average of less than 3 percent per year during the Clinton presidency. Despite the tax cuts passed by George W. Bush in 2001, domestic discretionary spending rose an average of nearly 10 percent annually during the Bush years -- more than three times the rate under Clinton. And lest conservatives think, that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq contributed to this spike in spending, (i) the above-referenced numbers do not take into account military spending, which is not considered "discretionary" and (ii) even the Pentagon's budget numbers did not reflect the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq, because those wars were infamously put "off-budget" by the Bush administration -- the United States has been funded solely by "emergency supplementals."

Therefore, Norquist's argument that "starve the beast" policies work is simply unsupported by the facts. If he bothers to pick up a newspaper and read -- which I assume he does -- I genuinely don't understand how he can still make "starve the beast" arguments with a straight face. If he has been asleep since 1988, perhaps I understand where he's coming from. As it were, Norquist has led the anti-tax charge for two decades.

Grover Norquist and like-minded anti-tax zealots do a fundamental disservice to their country when they ignore the approaching fiscal calamity in an effort to score quick political points and popular acclaim for what is an inherently destructive tax policy.

Bill Kristol and the endgame

2011-03-08T13:00:00.001-06:00

Having cheerleaded for every American war for the last quarter-century, it's difficult to fathom what Weekly Standard editor and Fox News "all-star" Bill Kristol wouldn't support in the way of military intervention.

In the above-linked article, Kristol lambasted the dose of realism provided by defense secretary Robert Gates, when Gates noted, correctly, "In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined.'"

Kristol: Is it right to characterize an attack on the Qaddafi regime’s air defenses and airplanes, and the execution of a no-fly zone that would protect the Libyan people from Qaddafi, as “an attack on Libya”? Can’t we distinguish a regime that’s lost whatever legitimacy it once had from the nation that regime is destroying and the people that regime is terrorizing?

These are the same arguments -- offered by American liberals for decades to justify spending American blood and treasure in countries where the United States has virtually no strategic interest, and in the Bush era, were suddenly co-opted by the neoconservative right -- that led to the horrendous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Of course, this is fine with Kristol, as he always seems to think the answer is "more troops." But does Kristol -- who has never served in a presidential administration, on a Senate staff or in the military -- seriously think that an attack on Libya's air defenses would spare all civilian casualties? What portion of international law does Kristol cite to justify yet another invasion and attack of a sovereign nation? (That would be none.) What justification would Kristol suggest that the president offer to the American public when, inevitably, American blood is spilled in Libya? And most critically, what possible interest does the United States have in a Libyan civil war? Furthermore, as Pat Buchanan astutely noted, would neoconservatives like Kristol advocate intervening on the ground in Libya to beat back tanks and land forces that will be sent to strike the Libyan people, when Qaddafi inevitably does so?

Kristol: In many respects Gates has been an improvement as defense secretary over his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.

In many respects? How about in all respects? Rumsfeld might well turn out to be the worst defense secretary in history.

Kristol: But he’s doing his president, and his country, no favors now. He has said for a while he wants to retire. Let him go, with all appropriate felicitations and salutations. And let someone take over as secretary of defense who believes in the missions in which American forces are now engaged, and who does not shy away from the understanding that American power is a crucial force for good in the world.

Does Kristol really believe that American power has been a transcendent force for good in Iraq, where, at the lowest end, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion? Very quietly, the Iranian-backed Shiite cleric al-Sadr has risen to power, and Iraq is devolving yet again into a state mired in near-civil war. Last week in Afghanistan, 12 innocent boys were murdered by American forces outside their village, causing a nationwide anti-American uproar. The United States remains bogged down in a glorified nation-building exercise, with no identifiable end in sight, with the principal objective -- the removal of the Taliban from power -- having been accomplished nearly a decade ago. What possible evidence does Kristol have that the Arab peoples even want us intervening in their part of the world?

So goes the degeneration of the neoconservative mind. The fact that any sane American -- much less one as plugged into foreign policy matters as Kristol -- can urge, yet again, to intervene in a foreign country where (i) no American citizens are in danger and (ii) America has no identifiable interest whatsoever, is both preposterous and sad.

If the Republican Party hasn't learned its lessons from the awful decision to invade Iraq and get bogged down in an unwinnable war with no endgame in Afghanistan, then its time in the wilderness should continue until it has.

Will Romney be the nominee?

2011-03-07T13:00:00.011-06:00

Daniel Larison thinks so, as does Jim Antle.

I continue to be skeptical.

Larison and Antle's points are well-taken, and are some of the same that I've made before in explaining why Sarah Palin has little chance at the Republican nomination.

First, Republican voters tend to gravitate toward candidates who are electable, and there is a perception -- one that I believe is incorrect, frankly -- that Romney will have a good chance of knocking off the incumbent president in the general election. (My theory: If he struggled to convince conservative voters that he was a better alternative than John McCain -- who talk radio and the base loathed -- and Mike Huckabee -- whose record as a profligate spender in Arkansas was outrageous -- how will Romney possibly convince the general electorate that he is a preferable alternative to a sitting president who remains personally quite popular?)

Second, the establishment vote is a critical in a Republican primary, and even in 2008, Romney had considerable establishment support. Romney not only has a ton of money of his own, but also has the backing of Republican elites who are so often kingmakers.

Third, it seems to be Romney's turn. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and John McCain all came in second in a particular Republican primary, and in the next open primary cycle, they became the nominee. Romney effectively finished second to McCain in 2008 (he was second in total delegates when he suspended his campaign; Huckabee, who stayed in the race longer, technically ended up with more delegates), and there's a very clear perception that he's the frontrunner.

On the other hand, I believe Larison especially glosses over Romney's flaws.

This idea of "Romney as frontrunner," while admittedly borne out by polling data, seems to ignore the lessons of 2008.

As noted above, Romney had great difficulty connecting with Republican primarygoers in 2008, and there's no reason to think he won't have the same problem in 2012. Romney will have to battle with Tim Pawlenty -- who probably would have won the nomination in 2008 had he ran, has a clear conservative record of governance in a blue state, and is unfailingly likable; Newt Gingrich, who led the party for a decade and whose name recognition is off the charts; Haley Barbour, who will have money and establishment support of his own if he runs; Mitch Daniels, whose "charisma of competence" is only exceeded by his sterling record as Indiana governor; and yes, his old nemesis Huckabee. This will be a deeper field than Romney faced in 2008. While Barbour and Daniels have vacillated on running, it's quite clear that Pawlenty and Gingrich will be all-in. Both of these men are exceedingly more conservative candidates than either McCain or Huckabee, Romney's two chief rivals in 2008.

Second, Romney's incessant, embarrassing pandering has left the moderate vote up for grabs. Given the endorsements of Daniels by the likes of George Will, Ross Douthat and David Brooks, it's clear that the more moderate, pro-competence wing of the party will rally around the Indiana governor should he run. (Now, granted, Daniels co-opting this segment of the party will not be because Daniels is particularly moderate -- as we've noted here, he might actually be the most conservative guy in the field -- but rather because he has steadfastly refused to pander.) Based on his outrageous statements about Obamacare, his demagoguing of every major foreign policy issue and his new book full of red meat, Romney is clearly making a play for the conservative vote -- but this is the same group that largely backed him in 2008. The bottom line is that Romney won't have the conservative/establishment vote all to himself this time around -- he will have to battle with Pawlenty (who is believable and genuine) and Gingrich (who, if his political instincts get the better of him, will tear into Romney even more vociferously than did Huckabee).

Two sub-points here:

One, Romney would have been much better positioned in 2012 if he had marketed himself post-2008 as the serious, thoughtful venture capitalist, not some sort of right-wing panderer obsessed with calling the president names. I, personally -- though I find his stunning lack of principle offensive -- may have swallowed my bad feelings from 2008 and supported him. But because he has swung so hard and fast to the right, I have no interest whatsoever in voting for the man.

Two, point one cannot be overstated. Despite the rhetoric from the Limbaugh/Palin/Fox News noise machine, the moderate conservative vote is alive, well and up for grabs. How else to explain John McCain's 2008 candidacy? If Daniels co-opts the McCain vote and Romney has to split the conservative vote three ways with Pawlenty and Gingrich (or, four ways with Palin/Barbour/Huckabee), Romney's math becomes quite problematic.

Next: Romney didn't have to deal with the specter of his awful healthcare bill last time around. Romney simply isn't a credible opponent to Obamacare, since, as we and others have noted ad nauseum, the central features of Obamacare and Romneycare are strikingly similar.

Fourth, Romney's icy personality and incessant demagoguery make him an easy target for his primary opponents, simply because very few of them seem to like him personally.

Quite frankly, I think Romney would lose convincingly to Obama in the general election for a number of reasons, including but not limited to (i) the power of the incumbency; (ii) Romney's inability -- unlike, say, Daniels -- to convincingly make the case for conservatism; and (iii) his phoniness.

Despite Romney's massive cash advantage in 2008, most Republican voters saw right through his facade and voted for the one candidate who gave them a chance against the Obama tidal wave.

Much like 2008, a vote for Romney in the 2012 primaries is a vote for almost-certain defeat in November.

The clear conservative choice

2011-03-04T12:24:00.002-06:00

Mitch Daniels is the best governor in America.

When he took office in early 2005, Indiana faced a $200 million deficit and hadn’t balanced its budget in seven years. Four years later, all outstanding debts had been paid off, and after four consecutive balanced budgets, Daniels' Indiana was running a surplus of $1.3 billion to cushion it against the recession.

Under Daniels' watch, Indiana has its fewest state employees since 1978. The state has the lowest effective property taxes and the third-lowest per capita spending of any state in the union. Indiana has reclaimed its long-lost triple-A bond rating.

He is as tough as Chris Christie on state spending, though he's done it much less bombastically.

On his first day as governor, Daniels signed an executive order banning collective bargaining by state employees. This was in 2005 -- six years before anyone heard of Scott Walker.

Shortly thereafter, he put a 120-day moratorium on new school bond issues. He required school boards across the state to show cause if they proposed any project costing more per square foot than the national average.

“More than $40,000 to teach someone how to read?" he once quizzed a reporter. "Any school district that can’t do it ought to face consequences.”

Fundamentally, Daniels gets it, as this Weekly Standard piece demonstrates.

“I want citizens to understand,” he said. “When people start demanding we spend more money, they’re saying, ‘We want to raise your taxes.’ And the citizens should say, ‘Okay, tell me. Which one of my taxes do you want to raise?"

Presidential primaries are full of shape-shifters (Mitt Romney, John Kerry), panderers (Newt Gingrich, John Edwards) and demagogues (Sarah Palin, Howard Dean). Mitch Daniels is none of those. He won't set a crowd afire with a stirring call to arms, and probably won't be interested in tossing much red meat to the base.

But as George Will has said, Daniels has the "charisma of competence" and pushes "conservatism for grown-ups."

That's because Daniels' record as a true fiscal conservative speaks for itself.

It's stunning that Daniels has received any criticism from any quarter of the Republican Party, considering he best embodies the ideals of Ronald Reagan -- low taxes, limited government and free markets.

And it's laughable that a self-styled "true believer" like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would endorse anyone else. If you are a true Reaganite, Daniels is your man. Perhaps a case can be made for Tim Pawlenty or Haley Barbour (if he runs), but lining up behind anyone else is nonsense.

Daniels has risen to prominence not due to rhetoric or personal charm, but on sheer results. By contrast, Romney's case for the presidency entirely hinges on him convincing voters to ignore the type of governor he was in Massachusetts.

Daniels has accumulated a mountain of evidence to suggest that he would be a tremendous president.

He doesn't need rhetoric -- he's delivered results.

UPDATE: Don't get me wrong: I love -- LOVE -- Chris Christie. He, almost singlehandedly, is responsible for exposing public-sector unions for the corrupt bloodsuckers that they are. If Christie ran for president and Daniels didn't, the big man from Trenton would be my clear-cut first choice. That said, as Jay Gatsby notes here, Daniels is fundamentally much more conservative than Christie. Daniels wants to overturn Roe v. Wade; Christie has said he wouldn't "shove" his pro-life beliefs "down people's throats." Christie has expressed support for public-sector collective bargaining; Daniels outlawed it six years ago. Christie is a virtual Democrat on gun control; Daniels is a pal of the NRA. Simply more evidence that the Egghead Wing of the GOP is more concerned with rhetoric than results.

Mike Huckabee is a disgrace

2011-03-02T09:38:00.008-06:00

As if his disastrous fiscal record wasn't enough to destroy his case for the presidency, Mike Huckabee is cozying up to the Birther movement.

The telling exchange:

INTERVIEWER: Don't you think it's fair also to ask him, I know your stance on this. How come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth cer - why Mr. Obama did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate. It's one thing to say, I've -- you've seen it, goodbye. But why go to court and send lawyers to defend against having to show it? Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?

HUCKABEE: I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits --

INTERVIEWER: Of Winston Churchill.

HUCKABEE: The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

And this guy wants to be president?

Several things.

First: Huckabee immediately backpedaled hard, claiming that instead of "Kenya," he meant "Indonesia." Of course, Obama did spend a few childhood years in Indonesia, but that can't be what Huckabee meant because the Mau Mau Revolution happened in Kenya. If he meant Indonesia, he wouldn't have referenced the Mau Mau Revolution in the first place. Huckabee is a smart enough guy who chose his words carefully and by doing so, knew exactly what he was doing. The wild conspiracy theories about Obama on the Right center around his secret birthplace in Kenya. If nothing else, this was the proverbial dog whistle.

Second: Huckabee seems to be latching onto the "Kenyan anti-colonialist" nonsense that Dinesh D'Souza peddled a few months ago in Forbes. As we pointed out at the time, this narrative ignores Obama's anger toward his absent father, his admiration of his American grandparents, his use of the American military and overreaching executive power abroad, and his general proclivity to become a creature of any institution he joins. This is precisely where the conservative movement has fallen down post-2008. There is a mountain of policy evidence that Obama has been an awful president, but instead of arguing policy, D'Souzas, Becks and Huckabees would rather tar the president as a cultural outsider. To Huckabee, that is Obama's greatest sin (probably because Obama's economic policies line up nicely with Huckabee's record as a profligate spender, and Huckabee knows he won't get anywhere arguing about fiscal records).

Finally, and most disturbingly: Huckabee appears to be dipping his toe in the water of the Birther movement. It is simply insane for a candidate for the presidency to do anything other than offer a sharp rebuke of any suggestion that Barack Obama is not American-born. There simply exists not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that the president wasn't born in Hawaii. For Huckabee to even imply otherwise demonstrates a willingness to demagogue in the worst way to curry favor with fringe elements of a movement that would otherwise reject his pathetic record as governor.

This needs to stop. Mike Huckabee and his ilk -- George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove -- are engaged in a crusade to destroy the Republican Party. Idiocy such as that peddled by Huckabee yesterday cheapens the movement of Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan, making the rest of us look like fools.

Change we can believe in, part 112

2011-02-23T09:33:00.009-06:00

President Obama seems hellbent on convincing me to vote for "generic Republican" in 2012.

Despite a Republican opposition whose leadership has done little but obstruct for two years, Obama continues to remind Americans why John McCain was the correct choice in 2008.

Most recently, Obama's astounding entrance into the Wisconsin standoff between public employees and Republican Gov. Scott Walker demonstrates three things about him.

First, the president can't help but engage in small-bore firefights that have typically been beneath his predecessors. This strange obsession has manifested itself in the White House's battles with Fox News and Politico, and the president's awful commentary on Harvard Professor Gates, which culminated in the offensively juvenile "Beer Summit." There are some fights the president simply should stay out of -- and a budget battle in a state deep in the red is one.

Second, his reflexive, unfettered support for unions demonstrates that, as Chris Matthews pointed out a few months ago, Obama acts like he's still the liberal Democratic senator from Illinois, not the President of the United States. The same tired liberal streak that led him to introduce union-backed killer amendments to the McCain-Kennedy immigration compromise in the Senate continues to reappear in spades in the White House, no matter what the facts might be. Wisconsin is facing a staggering budget shortfall, and its state employees enjoy some of the most generous benefit packages in the nation. Gov. Walker was popularly elected to cut spending and fix Wisconsin's budgetary issues. He is not a dictator. He was given a mandate, and he is carrying it out.

Third, and most critically, it demonstrates that Obama has absolutely no conception of the seriousness of our country's fiscal problems. He passed a trillion dollar "economic stimulus" bill that was little more than a Christmas tree for liberal interest groups, defrayed most spending until the following calendar year and was laughably ineffectual. He put together a blue-ribbon deficit-reduction commission, and when its proposals received broad bipartisan support, he completely ignored them. He just proposed a budget that would run a deficit of more than $1.5 trillion. That's trillion, with a "T". When Republicans began to discuss entitlement reform, he engaged in rank demagoguery. He has managed to govern with an even worse fiscal agenda than that of George W. Bush, who was arguably the most fiscally disastrous president in history.

A crisis is sweeping the country. Not just Wisconsin, but Florida. California. New York. New Jersey. And yes, Obama's home state of Illinois. Governments everywhere have made lavish promises to their employees, and the bill is coming due. The same is true at the federal level with respect to Social Security, which will not be solvent by 2042. Period. This is not in dispute. And instead of seriously -- and nobly -- considering the Simpson-Bowles framework, which was floated months ago, Obama pretends that there isn't a crisis at all. These issues will bring the federal and state governments to their knees. It's already happening, right under our noses. And the president either doesn't care or is too fundamentally stupid to realize it.

Inexperienced, weak and gutless. Barack Obama is all three.

Mike Huckabee would be a terrible president

2011-02-22T10:31:00.008-06:00

But for those of you pining for a third Bush term, he unquestionably remains your man.

Earlier this week in a telephone conference with reporters, Huckabee strongly implied that he had neither the funding nor appetite for a 2012 presidential run.

On the one hand, Huckabee would be the most direct threat to a Sarah Palin candidacy, and would deeply cut into her support among the egghead wing of the GOP. These are the Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins-type culture warriors, who believe that the Republican Party should be the political wing of Christianity, whose allegiance to Israel outpaces their allegiance to the United States, and whose only qualification for membership in the GOP is that they don't want gay people to get married. This, unfortunately, is a huge feather in the cap of the Palin camp.

On the other hand, Huckabee would be a terrible president.

After his upset win in Iowa in 2008, he said that his victory was likely propelled by the same power that took five loaves of bread and two small fish and fed thousands of people.

As George Will wryly asked, "God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf?" Will spoke for reasonable people everywhere when he said that someone so delusional shouldn't come anywhere near nuclear weapons.

Mike Huckabee was a fundamentally unconservative governor. In his eight years at the helm in Arkansas, spending went up a total of 66 percent -- three times the rate of inflation. During his last two years in office, the Cato Institute gave him a "D" and an "F." Huckabee claims that he cut taxes 90-plus times as governor, but policy wonks have pointed out that many of those "cuts" were very small-bore measures that had little to no impact. The fact is that he had to raise taxes repeatedly to pay for his expansionistic agenda.

Huckabee represents the worst of the Republican Party -- a singular focus on social issues; mouthing support for Ronald Reagan while spitting on the Gipper's legacy with statist solutions that would make many Democrats blush; and a condescension toward an educated mind.

Huckabee may be entertaining on the stump and play a mean bass guitar, but he would make a terrible president.

The folly of democratization, Ctd.

2011-02-11T15:07:00.010-06:00

Daniel Larison over at The American Conservative -- perhaps the web's foremost purveyor of realpolitik -- has informed my thoughts on Middle Eastern democratization more than any other writer.

Larison has written a number of compelling columns about why "free and fair elections" in Egypt are a fool's errand, one of which we cited on February 8 that in fact references President Reagan's policy toward democratic forces (and the pro-American dictators the forces were seeking to overthrow) in Nicaragua and the Philippines.

In short, I agree with nearly all of Larison's points when it comes to American foreign policy abroad. The policy pushed by the Bush administration post-9/11 of "square-peg/round-hole" democracy -- and America's role as democracy's deliverer to the oppressed -- is a terrible idea for many reasons. First, the American military -- as demonstrated by the obstacles encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is simply not capable of toppling repressive regimes, then engaging in long-term nation-building, one country after another. Less than half of the world's recognized states even pretend to be democratic, and short of drafting another 10 million adults into the armed forces, there is simply no way to functionally put this "democracy agenda" into practice. Second, post-9/11 proponents of democracy -- and those who cheer the Egyptian protesters in the streets -- completely ignore the consequence of what has happened when Arab peoples have been afforded "free and fair elections." In Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq (al-Sadr), Iran (Ahmadenijhad) and Gaza (Hamas), serious anti-American forces have gained a foothold on power anytime they have secured a place on a ballot.

As Larison noted, time and again, Bushian democratizers ignore the consequence of leaving governance to Arab popular opinion.

In a 2009 poll of Egyptians conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, 60% of respondents believed that government "should be based on a form of democracy that is unique for Islamic countries." Seventy-five percent of respondents agreed that "there should be a body of senior religious scholars that has the power to overturn laws when it believes they are contrary to the Quran." And 34 percent said that a non-Muslim should not be allowed to run for president. In a more recent poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a very narrow plurality of Egyptians (36 percent to 29 percent) believe their country should have good relations with the United States, and over half of respondents say they do not trust America at all. A clear plurality of respondents (34 percent to 19 percent) believed that Egypt should either abrogate its peace treaty with Israel "and join as a full partner in the 'resistance front' against the Zionist entity" or distance itself from its relationship with the United States, versus opposed maintaining American ties. Similarly, nearly as many respondents (15 percent to 19 percent) said Egypt should restore full, friendly relations with Iran and Syria versus maintaining its relationship with the United States.

As Larison has implied, in many cases in the Middle East -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan and probably Egypt as the most noteworthy -- autocracies are in the best interests of the United States because, quite simply, ruling regimes are much more friendly toward the United States compared to the Arab street. At the risk of painting with a broad brush, this fact is actually quite obvious based on the above survey results from Egypt. Additionally, as Larison has expressly pointed out, when democracy is tried in developing or Middle Eastern countries, often the more extremist candidates seem to rise to power.

I genuinely empathize with the aspirations of those brave Egyptians who have taken to the streets. But I am an American, and my sole allegiance is to the country I love so deeply.

If it is in America's best interests that an autocrat remain in power, then it must be so.

On Egypt and democratization

2011-02-08T11:57:00.008-06:00

With President Mubarak's recent announcement that he will not run for re-election in September, the popular energy dedicated to regime change in Egypt has begun to dissipate. To be sure, some protesters have vowed to remain in the streets until Mubarak leaves, but at this point, that appears to be a futile exercise. The strongman has agreed to step down, and the incoming leadership -- however fragmented by opposition factions -- will likely replicate many of the same policies that Egypt has followed during the Mubarak era. This ostensibly includes maintaining the existing peace treaties with Israel, and more critically, maintaining a cordial relationship with America. As Fareed Zakaria astutely noted in an excellent cover story on the Egyptian uprising, the popular Egyptian military will serve as a buffer to ensure that any change in civil society is only incremental.

This is an exceptionally good result for the United States. Certainly, bleeding-heart liberals and the Bushian pro-democracy/square-peg-round-hole crowd are frustrated by the fact that the wishes of the Egyptian populace will be largely unrealized. But while many of Mubarak's tactics in quelling the uprising have been reprehensible, the fact remains that Mubarak has been a tremendously valuable ally in stabilizing the Middle East, thwarting radical Islamist extremist elements in his own country and co-existing with Israel. It is simply in America's strategic interests that his regime, or a similar one, stays in power.

In virtually every place this "democratization" has been tried in the Middle East, regimes have appeared with serious and severe anti-American sentiments and policies. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is the dominant political party. In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Mutdaqa al-Sadr wreaks havoc. In Afghanistan, the Taliban remains reasonably popular. In Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadenijhad enjoys support among the poor, the uneducated and the deeply religious. And in Gaza, the Palestinians are governed by Hamas. Each of these political parties or figures is enormously antagonistic -- sometimes outright hostile -- to America. It is patently obvious that it would be in the best interests of the United States if, for instance, a Mubarak-like strongman came to power in Lebanon, displacing the democratically elected Hezbollah.

In short, to say that as a general rule, democracy promotion in the Middle East is in America's national interest simply ignores the results of democratic elections.

Just two days past Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, it's important to remember what shaped the Gipper's foreign policy. As Daniel Larison noted, he was most certainly not a Bushian democratizer, but rather evaluated every foreign regime with one question in mind: What is in the best interests of the United States?

Larison writes:

Far from supporting Nicaragua’s ostensibly popular (and, post-1984, elected) government, Reagan was dedicated to overthrowing it. One of the main examples Guardiano uses to praise Reagan shows that Reagan was not only unsympathetic to popular movements when they posed a perceived threat to U.S. policy, but also that he actively tried to defeat them. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood remained only one force among many in a new regime, a new Egyptian government would almost certainly be much less interested in security cooperation with the U.S., and some or perhaps most members of any new government are going to look askance at U.S. policies. Put another way, the less influence the military has on any future Egyptian government, the less cooperative it is probably going to be. For some Americans, that is an argument in favor of regime change, but it simply doesn’t make sense to argue that empowering the Muslim Brotherhood helps “roll back radical Islam.” If “rolling back radical Islam” is the goal, it is hard to see how empowering some fairly radical Islamists will do that.

Newt Gingrich is an idiot

2011-02-03T15:58:00.009-06:00

Once the smartest man inside the Beltway, the former Speaker's stunning descent into the deep end of Palinesque egghead populism continues.

Today, when asked his opinion of the Obama administration's response to the upheaval in Egypt, Gingrich said "I don't think they have a clue. It's very frightening to watch this administration."

I can't imagine a place on the internet more bitingly critical of President Obama's domestic policy and his assaults on civil liberties than this site. But to say that he's operated in a "frightening" manner is just plain demagoguery.

To this point, the administration has carefully avoided both extremes -- calling for Mubarak's immediate ouster (which would raise the ire of King Abdullah of Jordan and the Saudi royal family -- both enormously important American allies, and create a huge power vacuum that, as Gingrich and many others on the Right have noted, might be filled at least in part by the Muslim Brotherhood) and standing with Mubarak due to his relative passivity toward Israel (which would throw the Arab street into an anti-American uproar). Obama has done plenty wrong thus far in his presidency, but he has thus far managed a delicate balance between expressing support for both the protesters publicly, and a besieged American ally privately.

As Daniel Larison correctly noted, Egypt is a sovereign nation of more than 80 million people. Exactly how much do administration critics think Obama can accomplish by meddling in its affairs?

If Gingrich is going to criticize Obama's conduct, then he has to tell us what he would do instead.

He can't. That's the problem. Since he reemerged on the political scene a few years ago, Gingrich has done little other than critique and demagogue. Does he have the capacity to do anything else?

As if cheating on his second wife while railroading President Clinton through impeachment proceedings and calling a sitting president a "Kenyan anti-colonialist" weren't enough, Newt Gingrich has given voters yet another reason to ignore his laughable case for the presidency.

Joe Lieberman's police state rolls on

2011-02-02T13:17:00.004-06:00

Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins continue to push an awful bill that would give the president "emergency powers" to shut down the internet.

Presumably, such powers would only be exercised in a "national cyber emergency."

Or, as Conor Friedersdorf pointed out, they could be exercised anytime the president wants to engage in a wanton abuse of power, because the bill expressly prohibits judicial review.

Remember: The recent history of presidential abuses in the White House is remarkable. Richard Nixon covered up a break-in of the Watergate building and resigned the presidency in disgrace as the House was about to impeach him. Bill Clinton lied under oath about his relationship with a White House staffer and similarly obstructed the ensuing federal investigation. He became the second president in American history to be impeached. And George W. Bush brazenly broke federal wiretapping laws and continues to brag about it.

The introduction of the Lieberman-Collins bill -- especially in the wake of the horrendous theories of executive power created by the Bush administration -- demonstrates a complete and utter ignorance toward the natural proclivities of our elected leaders to engage in gross (arguably criminal) misconduct while in office.

The Lieberman-Collins bill also evinces another terrible excess of the Bush years -- the desire to shield the president from any semblance of judicial review. Under this bill, the president's authority to shut down the internet could not be reviewed by any court in the nation. Bush argued that his "commander in chief" power could not be limited by judicial review, and Dick Cheney argued that the president alone determined the scope of his powers under Article II. Barack Obama's Justice Department has engaged in similar attempts to shield executive power abuses from judicial review, arguing that the president can unilaterally order the assassinations of American citizens abroad, and by using the "state secrets" doctrine as an affirmative defense to any action that challenges the president's conduct of the War on Terror.

And now this? Giving the president the power to shut down the internet?

Coincidentally, we wrote in this space last week about Lieberman's lust-filled obsession with federal power. Whether it's forcing citizens to engage in private enterprise, allowing the president to break federal law without consequence, or giving the president the power to completely shut down the internet, Lieberman's ideal of America has more in common with the Soviet Union than it does the country envisioned by the Founders.

Joe Lieberman is the ultimate enemy of individual liberty.

THIS -- not Obamacare or the scary congressman from Wisconsin who wants to take away your Social Security -- is the ultimate threat to liberty in the 21st century. Anyone who thinks otherwise (Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, House Democrats) is a fool.

Hats off to the likes of Friedersdorf, Radley Balko and the folks at Reason and Cato for highlighting these abuses, and doing the work that the American news media shirks.

Crisis in Cairo

2011-01-31T11:44:00.008-06:00

The Chairman remarked to me yesterday that of all the foreign policy crises of the past five years, the upheaval in Egypt is probably the most difficult to navigate.

As a purely theoretical matter, I'm sympathetic to the Bushian ideal of imposing democracy the world over. But what Bushians, compassionate conservatives, neocons and the idealist Left seems to ignore is that, where democracy has taken hold in the Middle East, the results have been directly adverse to America's interests. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been in power for years. When Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were afforded free elections in 2006, they chose Hamas -- a legitimate terrorist organization -- as their ruling party. In Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadenijhad still enjoys strong support among the poor, the uneducated and the deeply religious. In Iraq, Mutdaqa al-Sadr -- an enormously popular opposition figure who rose to prominence in the wake of the American invasion -- has ordered attacks that have killed hundreds of American servicemen, not to mention thousands of innocent Iraqis. The Taliban is still well-represented in the Afghani parliament.

Democracy has consequences. And the most likely consequence in the event of a Mubarak exit is that the Muslim Brotherhood -- elements of which are highly threatening to Israel and avowedly anti-American -- would fill the power vacuum. Because the Brotherhood has done its work underground during the repressive Mubarak regime, it has by far the best-organzied opposition group.

At this stage, backing Mubarak is fool's errand. If the Obama administration does this, it will both inflame the Arab street and prop up a regime that is likely to fall anyway. Mubarak has sent his family to England, disbanded almost the entire Egyptian cabinet and does not have sufficient control over the military to quell the unrest in his streets. The better course of action is to privately express appreciation for Mubarak's allegiance to the United States over the past three decades, work to ensure his public yet uninhibited exit, begin negotiating with Mohamed ElBaradei and other key opposition figures, and move quietly to help an interim government -- helmed by ElBaradei or someone else -- set up some sort of election scheme in 6-12 months.

Hats off to Rand Paul

2011-01-28T23:52:00.004-06:00

The Kentucky senator unveiled a budget proposal this week that would slash the federal budget by half a trillion dollars. Included in his proposal are, among other things, a $20 billion reduction in foreign aid -- which includes eliminating the $3 billion in military aid that the United States provides to Israel annually.

No doubt, we'll hear the Bill Kristols, Joe Liebermans and Norman Podhoretzes of the world shrieking about the invaluable linkage between the two nations, and some likely will suggest that Sen. Paul's proposal evinces anti-Semitism. To many pundits, there is nothing more important than the American-Israeli relationship, and they are offended anytime anyone -- from any party -- questions why this relationship is so expensive.

I suppose Sen. Paul and I are on the wrong side of American popular opinion, but I frankly don't care -- and I hope he doesn't either. Israel, like Britain, Australia and our other close allies, is a sovereign nation with plenty of resources and a stable economy. It has arguably one of the three most powerful militaries in the world and is more than capable of defending itself. Additionally, if given the choice, most Americans would likely support a wide number of programs, both domestic and foreign, because their irresponsible elected leaders haven't explained that such programs have to be paid for.

America's fiscal house is in disarray, and hats off to Sen. Paul -- a legitimate, true-blue conservative -- for sticking his neck on the line for something he believes in.

While his proposal probably has no chance of passing, his candor is refreshing, and I hope more Republicans follow his lead.

At the very least, a discussion of our blind, blank-check support of Israel is one worth having.

Good riddance, Joe Lieberman

2011-01-25T13:15:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman -- once, this site's preference for Sen. John McCain's vice-presidential nominee in 2008 -- has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2012.

In light of his announcement, pundits from both sides have lauded Lieberman's "bipartisanship" and "centrism" in an age of increasing partisan polarization.

For those of us who believe in individual liberty, however, Lieberman was a nightmare.

On domestic issues, Lieberman is a clear-cut liberal, voting in lockstep with the Democratic Party on virtually every major issue of import. His 2008 rating (on a 100 scale) from the American Conservative Union was eight. His lifetime rating is a shade over 16, putting him, unbelievably, to the left of Harry Reid (lifetime rating of 18). That is absolutely absymal -- because it means that for 21 years, he has voted for the liberal position more than four times in five. Recently, Lieberman voted for the bloated, wasteful "economic stimulus" of 2009 and was a key cog in securing the passage of Obamacare early last year. He has been a careerist booster of labor unions. He has favored government censorship of movies and video games. The NRA has given him a lifetime rating of "F." He has opposed even partial privatization of Social Security.

In short, Republicans who give Lieberman credit as some sort of palatable centrist who only goes off the reservation occasionally are kidding themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lieberman has co-opted the worst excesses of the 21st Century Republican Party. He openly supported the Bush Administration's position that the Geneva Convention does not apply to al Qaeda -- a legal fiction rejected by the Supreme Court in 2006. In the wake of the Wikileaks scandal, Lieberman used his Homeland Security chairmanship to pressure various American media outlets into not publishing certain leaked documents, and to pressure websites like Amazon.com into ending business activities with Wikileaks -- actions that bordered dangerously close to full-on censorship. Since 9/11, has urged the United States to go to war against not just Iraq, but also Syria, Yemen and Iran. This past July, Lieberman co-sponsored the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, which would give the president "emergency powers" over the internet -- and in arguing for the bill's passage, Lieberman argued that because the communist Chinese government has a similar power, the president should too. Equating the American presidency with a totalitarian dictatorship is nothing short of outrageous.

This isn't to say Lieberman shouldn't be commended for certain stands -- it took genuine political courage to endorse McCain over Barack Obama in 2008 and support the surge in Iraq in 2007. Lieberman, like McCain, understood that once we were in, withdrawal in Iraq would sink the country into a certain civil war. He was among the Gang of 14 that has been so celebrated on this site. These positions undoubtedly made him very unpopular among the liberal base.

But by and large, Lieberman's record taken as a whole represents everything that has gone so horribly wrong with public policy. He has consistently supported a bloated, activist government in both the domestic and foreign-policy arenas, one without any reasonable limitations -- by its ability to coerce you to engage in private enterprise (Obamacare), by pressure on news outlets to censor news stories (Wikileaks) and its desire to deny you the most basic due process rights (virtually every civil liberties issue of the last ten years).

Joe Lieberman's America is not an America in which I would want to live -- where the federal government has the power to snoop, imprison and torture without consequence; where private citizens can be coerced into engaging in private economic activities; where a growing welfare and entitlement state aggregates revenue like a cancer; and where the American vision of the Framers is consigned to the ash heap of history.

By supporting the absolute worst excesses of both parties, Lieberman somehow became a champion of the Beltway class. It's a sorry statement about the state of our political affairs that Joe Lieberman is greeted as a hero in virtually every corner of Washington.

The country will be better off -- and the Constitution will be safer -- with Lieberman back in Connecticut.

Good riddance, indeed.

Obama's year ahead

2011-01-18T10:14:00.006-06:00

Happy New Year.

We've seen an encouraging post-Election Day trend from President Obama -- namely, that he seems to be following President Clinton's lead and moving toward the center. Evidence of this is abundant -- the tax-cut compromise, a free trade agreement with South Korea, a non-proliferation agreement that received the blessing of virtually the entire Republican foreign-policy establishment, and a final report from his Deficit Reduction Commission that was embraced by most deficit hawks (including Tom Coburn).

We wrote in 2008 that due to the myriad crises facing the country at his inauguration, Obama would have the chance to be a very good president. In short, he could be as Clinton, but without the moral/ethical problems. Unfortunately, Obama refused to compromise on either the budget-busting stimulus or the healthcare bill, blowing through his political capital, angering Republicans and leading to a historic defeat at the polls. Simultaneously, he managed to take a page from the Jimmy Carter playbook and ignore the stagnant economy, instead focusing his attention on healthcare, a colossal error in judgment.

Obama must realize that he can't accomplish much of anything without considerable Republican support, as the GOP now controls the House and 7 more seats than they did last month in the Senate.

As a result, I expect that the president will actually have a very good year, and his approval ratings will stay above 50 percent. His response to the Tuscon shooting was presidential and gave him a much deserved (albeit perhaps short-lived) bump in the polls. A Republican Congress will serve as a check on his liberal excesses, and it's likely he will find common ground on issues like tax reform and education policy. Replacing Rahm Emanuel with Bill Daley (fresh off his stamp of approval from the Chamber of Commerce) was encouraging.

I've believed all along (and written in this space before) that Barack Obama is a shape-shifter -- the second coming of Bobby Kennedy to leftists (borne out clearly by his Senate record), a messiah to formerly disengaged college kids, the great hope of the black community and a post-partisan healer to independents and Republicans. During his journey to the White House -- and really, throughout his entire political career -- Obama has tried to be all things to all people, and in November 2008, these disparate factions coalesced around him and delivered the presidency.

He has largely failed at the business of governing. However, he has shown himself to be nothing if not adaptable to circumstance, which is why I expect a Clinton-like move shuffle toward the center. Already, we've seen an uproar in the liberal blogosphere over his tax-cut sellout and an uproar from big labor on the South Korea free trade agreement. Paul Krugman and Nancy Pelosi opposed the recommendations of Simpson-Bowles. Obama simply realizes that if he wants a second term, he must co-opt the center. At least, I hope he realizes it.

I haven't approved of the job the president has done thus far, but there clearly is plenty of time for him to turn it around.

As a consequence, the Republican primary -- which will begin in earnest in just a few months -- will be critically important. Will Republicans trot out an old retread, like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee or Rudy Guiliani? Or will they nominate a pragmatic fresh face like Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels or John Thune? Will they nominate a wonkish problem-solver (Pawlenty, Daniels, perhaps Romney on a good day) or a hysterical reactionary (Gingrich, Palin)? WIll the message appeal to independents, or will it simply be about tax cuts, guns and "repeal-and-replace"?

History has showed us that voters don't like to change presidents mid-stream, and tend to favor letting incumbents return to the White House during uncertain times. This was true with Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2004. Bush was busy bungling a war, and voters still gave him a second term. This means that the GOP must nominate a serious, pragmatic candidate who can match Obama's rhetoric and personal appeal and win over the independent voters who decide every election.

Republicans underestimate Obama at their peril.

Year in review

2010-12-31T09:32:00.009-06:00

This will be our 87th and final post of 2010.

The story of the year is, without a doubt, the Republican takeover of the House and the near-takeover of the Senate. We warned against the Republicans reading the election results as a mandate and instead termed it a "revolt." We lamented the exit of Russ Feingold, the last great civil liberties crusader.

We officially discarded our John McCain Fan Club cards.

We applauded the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission.

In case there was any doubt that President Obama's policies are largely an extension of the Bush administration's, it was erased with this astonishing theory of executive power. While we slammed his abhorrent conception of the state secrets privilege, we gave a thumbs-up to START. We tried to crystallize our thoughts on Iraq -- still a work in progress.

It seems like ages ago, but healthcare reform -- if you want to call it that -- passed back in February. Our thoughts in opposition here. On Memorial Day, Israel killed 19 civilians aboard a tiny ship floating toward Gaza. A month earlier, we had begun to unpack our instincts as to why Israel isn't entitled to unbridled deference from the U.S. government.

We eviscerated Elana Kagan, Arlen Specter, Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist, Chris Dodd, Glenn Beck, and of course, Sarah Palin.

I've begun to long for the 1995-1998 period, when a Republican Congress teamed with a centrist Democratic president to comprehensively reform welfare, make markets freer, cut the size of the federal bureaucracy and balance the budget. Will Obama follow President Clinton's lead? Or will he and the GOP back into their respective corners and continue the food fight that consumed most of 2009 and virtually all of 2010?

Here's to finding out in 2011.

Why Republicans are wrong on START

2010-12-20T10:23:00.005-06:00

Virtually every high-profile congressional Republican has come out against the New START treaty, which will reduce the arms arsenals of both the U.S. and Russia and most critically, put into place a verification regime to track Russian nuclear material -- which has been completely unaccounted for since the end of the Cold War.

Led by Arizona's John Kyl, many conservatives have announced their opposition to the treaty. Never mind that if it was 2007 and President Bush had negotiated its terms, New START would have the support of virtually the entire Republican caucus.

Mitt Romney's position is particularly offensive. Daniel Larison pounds him here. But what I'm most interested in addressing is Romney's laughable comparison of our current missile defense system to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

Romney's position -- no doubt, culled from Kyl and others -- is that we cannot give up our missile defense shields throughout Europe, simply because President Reagan refused to budge on SDI in 1985. In 1985, SDI was merely a glimmer in Reagan's eye, but he instructed Defense officials to move forward on trying to create a defense shield that could shoot down Soviet missiles from outer space.

But it's important to realize why Reagan refused to give up SDI -- because it's something Romney, Kyl and the rest of the conservative national security apparatus appears to completely miss: Reagan didn't budge on SDI because missile defense is in and of itself inherently sacrosanct; rather, Reagan didn't budge because he knew that the Soviets didn't have the technology. The tone of Gorbachev's negotiating style at Reykjavik -- initially making enormous concessions, and closing with a sly caveat that all Reagan had to do in order to secure these obligations from the Soviet government was to promise to abandon SDI -- indicated to Reagan that the Soviets were stunned by the concept of a space shield. When Gorbachev demanded he scrap SDI, Reagan famously walked out.

Comparing START in 1985 to New START in 2010, it is obvious that the Russians have the exact same technology as the U.S. Reagan was unwilling to halt SDI because he knew that America had a critical technological advantage; 25 years later, SDI has been consigned to the ash heap, and what is at issue is a missile defense shield of the same type that the Russians already possess.

Ronald Reagan was abhorred by sophisticated weaponry and believed that the biblical prophecy of Armageddon would eventually come about as a result of a nuclear arms race. Once you actually take the time to read about Reagan, it's impossible to overstate how frightened he was of nuclear weapons. Deep into my third book on Reagan, I am convinced that the Gipper would have supported New START.

It seems that Reagan's longtime Secretary State agrees. In this Washington Post op-ed -- co-authored by Jim Baker (Reagan's chief of Staff and President George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State), Lawrence Eagleburger (a longtime Reagan and Bush State Department official, who briefly served as Bush's Secretary of State after Baker's resignation), and the incomparable Colin Powell (who also served under both Reagan and Bush) -- George Shultz sets out what he calls the Republican case for START.

Romney, et al. seem to only invoke Reagan when it's convenient for them.

Much like the tax cut debate and the deficit reduction commission's recommendations, the question is not whether New START is a perfect treaty, because by that lofty standard, virtually nothing is worth voting for. Rather, the proper question is whether New START will make us more secure and whether it is preferable to doing nothing.

The answer is an obvious yes.

Does Gary Johnson know better?

2010-12-15T10:02:00.010-06:00

The 2012 dark horse and libertarian favorite comes out against the bipartisan tax cut extension because -- wait for it -- the Bush tax cuts aren't made permanent.

Not because it would add to the short-term deficit. Not because the unemployment benefits aren't being paid for.

I really hope the former governor of New Mexico knows better.

Johnson said that Americans sent a message last month that the problem is government spending, not government revenues. Ostensibly, Johnson believes that Congress will be happy to find a trillion dollars to cut somewhere in the federal budget.

I'm sorry, but this is fundamentally stupid position as we've pointed out innumerable times before in this space. If the Bush tax cuts expire, taxes will go back to Clinton-era levels -- during which America enjoyed years of balanced budgets and the largest peacetime boom in history. I'm genuinely confused as to what is so objectionable about this.

I suppose I'm a realist in this regard. Even the greatest president of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, wasn't able to engineer balanced budgets -- and in fact, doubled the size of the national debt in eight years -- by cutting taxes and crusading against wasteful spending. While Reagan certainly transformed the way most Americans view the regulatory apparatus of government -- and arguably set the table for the Clinton-era reforms that slashed the federal bureaucracy by 20 percent -- the cuts in spending (again, largely discretionary) weren't nearly enough to offset the massive cuts to federal revenues.

The "starve the beast" theory many conservatives hold -- which argues that Congress will necessarily cut spending if lower tax rates force it to tighten its belt -- has been proven false time and again. Anyone who argues to the contrary has spent the last 30 years with his head up his ass. This has never happened, period. Most legislators are focused on the near-term, and it's much more politically palatable to both cut taxes (or at least, prevent tax rates from going up) and not cutting anything of substance, or, more critically, adding new programs without paying for them.

Furthermore, as we've noted in this space, many conservatives' unyielding fight to protect the Pentagon's wasteful, bloated budgets -- which are now nearly triple 2003 levels -- gives them little to no credibility on fiscal issues.

Back to Gary Johnson: I get it. I don't want taxes to go up either, especially during the early stages of a fragile economic recovery. But anyone who argues that tax rates -- which have literally never been lower -- can't go up on anyone is fundamentally ignorant about the size and scope of our long-term fiscal issues and blind to the way Congress operates.

Reflections on Rudy

2010-12-10T10:58:00.000-06:00

Daniel Larison contemplates a Gary Johnson primary bid in 2012 and assesses whether an apt comparison is Rudy Guiliani in 2008. Larison notes that both men are pro-choice, which in any Republican primary, is a tough road to travel. More critically, here's what doomed Rudy:

First, Guiliani built his entire candidacy around the fact that he happened to be the Mayor of New York City during a catastrophic terrorist attack. While the country appreciates Rudy's leadership, that didn't automatically qualify him to be president. Second, he wasted his frontrunner status by ignoring the first three primaries and instead focusing all his energy in Florida. McCain's victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, plus Huckabee's victory in Iowa and near-miss in South Carolina, swung many millions of Republicans toward one of those two candidates. Each of McCain and Huckabee made a compelling case for his presidency to either one side of the party or the other. Third, McCain's voting record and quixotic blend of economic conservatism and -- at the time -- western libertarianism -- captured the vast majority of Republican moderates. Even when his campaign was nearly bankrupt, McCain hit the pavement and the town hall circuit making the case for his candidacy. Rudy stayed home, and those (like me) who wanted a more moderate Republican nominee ended up falling in line behind McCain. Fourth, it's tough to build one's candidacy around being tough on terror when, again, the primary opponent is John McCain.

So what can Johnson learn from Rudy's mistakes? First, start campaigning NOW. It's a fool's errand to pin one's hopes on a primary further down the line and allow opponents to gain press coverage, supporters and money. Johnson needs to shoot for a top-four finish in Iowa and then angle for a top-two finish in New Hampshire. Second, don't become a caricature. Joe Biden noted that every sentence Rudy utters includes "a noun, a verb and 9/11." Guiliani, the only real social liberal in the Republican field, apparently believed he had to tack hard to the right on everything else, and he came off as inauthentic. In 2012, I suspect a third way may be more popular than it was in 2008. Third, explain to GOP voters that while you might be personally pro-choice, your view of constitutional jurisprudence is the same, so there would be no difference in the judges you'd appoint. Fourth, and most critically, begin to line up endorsements from the likes of Ron and Rand Paul. Ron, in particular, has suggested he won't run if his friend Johnson does in 2012.

Will Gary Johnson be the Republican nominee in 2012? Probably not. But his candidacy would be a blast to watch, and I think he would make a terrific president.

Compromise kudos

2010-12-07T09:17:00.005-06:00

An "attaboy" to President Obama and congressional Republicans for agreeing on the framework of a deal that will both extend the Bush tax cuts for an additional 2 years, and extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 months.

Liberals are -- somewhat understandably -- upset by what they believe to be Obama's capitulation to the GOP on the tax cut issue. To be fair to our liberal friends, Obama ran on the premise that he would support a middle class tax cut but that he would strongly oppose any extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Some Democrats -- namely, Chuck Schumer and Anthony Weiner -- wanted Obama to frame the debate in a different way. Instead of allowing Republicans to -- correctly -- argue that hundreds of thousands of small businesses who file as S-corporations would see a tax hike at the end of the calendar year, Weiner wanted to exempt all small businesses from the hike and instead target the tax increases at individuals. SImilarly, Schumer suggested that the debate be framed as a "millionaire's tax" -- that is, if you make less than a million dollars, you'll keep your rate under the Bush tax cuts. Both the Schumer and Weiner ideas would have, admittedly, been savvy political maneuvers that would probably have won both the left and the middle -- but it's not clear that Obama would have been able to extend unemployment benefits by January 1.

And, with Republicans threatening to hold up unemployment benefits unless tax cuts were extended across the board, I'm guessing the president felt his hand was forced.

He certainly looked defeated during his press conference yesterday afternoon.

(By the way, can these things even be called "press conferences"? It seems that Obama is even slipperier than George W. Bush when it comes to taking reporters' questions. When was the last Barack Obama press conference, anyway? 2005?)

By engineering this deal -- which is, I think, a straight-down-the-middle compromise -- the president avoided a major fight and secured the extension of unemployment benefits for an additional 13 months. With the unemployment rate sitting at 9.8%, this was no small feat. Unemployment benefits, as has been astutely noted, are almost always pumped dollar-for-dollar back into the local economy for necessaries such as food, clothing and housing, so there is at least a modest stimulative effect to such an extension.

On the other hand, it would have been an abysmally terrible idea to impose a tax increase as our country continues its slow climb out of a recession. I'm not sure what liberal Democrats who pushed for across-the-board tax increases think will happen if hundreds of thousands of small businesses see tens of thousands of additional dollars go out the door in taxes. THEY STOP HIRING! AND THEY FIRE PEOPLE!

One final word: Republicans cannot expect to be taken seriously as the party of fiscal responsibility if, in two years, they argue for a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts. I wanted to address this in a future post, but it bears mentioning now. There is an implicit argument made by conservatives that if taxes go up -- for anyone -- then the economy will immediately fall into a recession. But that certainly didn't happen during the Clinton presidency, when taxes on the top 5% of wage-earners rose from 36% to 39.5% -- instead of a recession, America enjoyed the longest peacetime economic boom in history. And yes, those tax increases set the table for a series of balanced budgets that were promptly obliterated by Bush and the Republican-controlled Congresses of 2001-2006.

Scarborough annihilates Palin

2010-12-01T09:26:00.003-06:00

My favorite conservative goes after my least-favorite. I love it.

The column is absolutely a must-read, and simply recapping or doing a large-scale copy-and-paste job won't do it justice. Just go read the thing.

We've slammed Palin's ignorant, hysterical, faux-folksly, patronizing brand of anti-intellectual populism here many times before. I was content to just let sleeping dogs lie.

But like Scarborough, Palin crossed a line for me when she referred to President Reagan -- the greatest president of the 20th century and the intellectual figurehead of the conservative movement -- as "an actor." He wasn't just "an actor." He was the president of the Screen Actors' Guild for six years. He spent eight years after that as GE's ombudsman, traveling the lecture circuit and meeting with tens of thousands of employees. He not only served out an entire full term as California's governor (gasp! A full term!), but ran for a second and was re-elected easily. He nearly took down an incumbent president in the 1976 presidential primary, and outperformed a stellar, crowded field of candidates to earn the 1980 nomination and, of course, become the 40th President of the United States. While so doing, Reagan invented modern conservatism and turned American politics on its head for the first time since the New Deal. He created the modern conservative movement.

For any Republican to criticize Reagan for anything other than the deficit or Iran-Contra is an unforgivable sin, and to dismiss this great man as an "actor" is offensive.

Palin also attacked George H.W. and Barbara Bush as "blue bloods." As Scarborough notes, this also is absurd, considering the former president voluntarily enlisted in the military shortly after his 18th birthday, and spent his entire adult life dedicated to the service of his country. He is a man of grace and integrity from whom a know-nothing like Palin has much to learn. For Palin to attack good and decent people like the Bushes is inexcusable, petty and unbecoming.

Palin's recent remarks are further evidence that she is nothing more than a cartoon, spitting tinny, cliched lines at crowds she doesn't really understand, singlehandedly furthering the intellectual decline of modern conservatism, and feebly attempting -- and failing -- to burnish her own laughably thin resume by taking shots at two of America's greatest leaders.

Sarah Palin is a disgrace.

Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2010-11-30T13:03:00.005-06:00

I always considered the John McCain, circa 2006, position on DADT to be the correct one -- whether gays and lesbians are allowed to openly serve in the military is a decision that is best left to military commanders. When Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks ruled the Pentagon, perhaps DADT was the right policy. But now that Robert Gates and Mike Mullen are in charge, I'm not quite sure why a repeal of the law is so objectionable.

Most of the GOP thinks that homosexuality is morally repugnant, and I agree -- but to craft public policy -- especially policies that could have a profound effect on national security -- around this belief strikes me as irresponsible and short-sighted. Much like the conservative argument against gay marriage, I have yet to hear a single conservative articulate a compelling secular purpose for preventing gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military.

Barry Goldwater, one of the heroes of this site who rightfully earned the name "Mr. Conservative," was so abhorred by the Moral Majority crowd that his parting wisdom to the GOP was largely a warning to keep the moralizers like Tony Perkins and Pat Robertson at arm's length. He spent his last years in a constant battle with a Republican Party that he believed had been co-opted by these zealots. Ronald Reagan was famously ambivalent about dealing with homosexuality in public policy, and specifically rejected an anti-gay plank from the GOP platform in 1980. These are the two greatest conservative leaders in history, and any reasonable reading of their records would indicate that they would support a repeal of DADT -- or at the very least, wouldn't care one way or the other.

Why then is it the "conservative" position to support DADT -- or even stiffer policies?

If the military brass says a repeal is necessary -- and Gates and Adm. Mullen do -- then why shouldn't the law be repealed?

For further support of a DADT repeal, the Washington Post reports:

"According to a survey sent to 400,000 service members, 69 percent of those responding reported that they had served with someone in their unit who they believed to be gay or lesbian. Of those who did, 92 percent stated that their unit's ability to work together was very good, good, or neither good nor poor, according to the sources. Combat units reported similar responses, with 89 percent of Army combat units and 84 percent of Marine combat units saying they had good or neutral experiences working with gays and lesbians."

Like Goldwater, I continue to be confounded by the necessity of singling out homosexuals with respect to public policy. I fail to understand how this is the "conservative" thing to do, and continue to wait for an articulate conservative to make the case against DADT repeal.

I think I'll be waiting awhile.

Why we rip Republicans

2010-11-29T14:25:00.001-06:00

I'm a conservative. I believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest president since Lincoln. I believe Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson were two of the worst. I believe that President Obama deserved the rebuke he received at the ballot box several weeks ago.

My frequent, often searing, critiques of the Republican Party are much different than that which might be found at liberal blogs like the Daily Kos or Huffington Post. Rather, I agree with the fundamental underpinnings of conservatism as espoused by Edmund Burke, William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan -- limited government, individual liberty and the importance of existing institutions in providing stability and order.

My issues with the Republican Party, therefore, are not ideological in nature, but rather rhetoric- and policy-based. My criticisms often arise out of things that I believe the GOP does, or stands for, that are fundamentally un-conservative. For instance:

The Gang of 14. In 2005, the Senate was poised for a monumental showdown over a handful of President Bush's judicial nominees whom the Democrats had threatened to filibuster. Senate Democrats threatened the filibuster; Senate Republicans (the majority party at the time) threatened to change the rules and thereby eliminate the 200-year-old filibuster in its entirety. This made no sense and was as fundamentally abhorrent to ideological conservatism as anything one can imagine. Thankfully, a bipartisan group of 14 senators, led by John McCain and Robert Byrd, struck an agreement whereby the Democrats would vote to invoke cloture on three of the 11 nominees, and the Republicans would vote against the rule change. Crisis averted. McCain, et al. were slammed hysterically by right-wing bloggers and talk radio hosts for being insufficiently partisan. Never mind that engineering a rule change for purely political gain is one of the most fundamentally radical things a Senate could ever think to do.

Neoconservatism. As Pat Buchanan pointed out in his excellent book, Where the Right Went Wrong (published in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq), conservatism historically eschewed a radical, interventionist foreign policy. While Ronald Reagan was a strident anti-communist, the Reagan White House believed in containment and only intervened militarily when democratic governments were in danger of falling to pro-communist forces (e.g., Nicaragua). By contrast, the 21st century neoconservative cabal -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, et al. -- views the American military as the world's policeman, with many prominent "conservative" leaders now pushing for attacks on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. Neoconservatives have adopted the dogma of the Bush Doctrine, a silly black-and-white post-9/11 enunciation that the United States has the authority to attack any country that isn't fully and completely compliant with the anti-terrorism dictates of the imperial American presidency. In many cases -- especially with respect to the American Enterprise Institute and AIPAC -- the unabashedly pro-Israel bent of many American think tanks inform their foreign policy stances, arguably, to the detriment of the United States abroad.

Tort reform. In 2004, President Bush came to my backyard in Madison County, Illinois, and argued for a federal tort reform bill that would place caps on damages in medical malpractice suits. This policy is supported by virtually every Republican at the national level and, shockingly, by many Democrats. Despite the fact that 28 states now have some form of "tort reform" on the books, and despite the fact that verdicts and settlements have gone down over the past 20 years, malpractice premiums continue to rise. Instead of regulating the fundamentally corrupt malpractice insurance industry, Republicans would rather shut legitimate litigants out of court. By passing federal tort reform statutes that would make it more difficult to sue, or would artificially cap damages in personal injury suits, Republicans would likely run afoul of the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a jury trial. Additionally, and more fundamentally, federal Republicans completely ignore the guiding principles of federalism as espoused by none other than Reagan himself.

Civil liberties. While Republicans shriek about "death panels" and socialism, they turn a blind eye to rank civil liberties abuses that have taken place at the hands of the very federal government they profess to mistrust. President Bush claimed that his wartime powers were unlimited by the Constitution, claimed the ability to imprison and torture American citizens without access a lawyer, a jury trial or even a formal criminal charge, and overtly broke federal wiretapping laws in the name of "national security." Republicans didn't bat an eye. As a result, President Obama has been emboldened, ordering the assassinations of American citizens abroad by pure executive fiat, attempting to gain unfettered access to citizens' unopened emails, and blocking entire lawsuits challenging his overreaching federal programs under a laughably broad, fundamentally abhorrent conception of the state secrets privilege. The same conservatives who claim that the government will pull the plug on "Granny" are seemingly willing to give a blank check to the government when it comes to tapping their phones, breaking federal laws and making their fellow citizens disappear.

Budget issues: The Bush administration's profligate, out-of-control spending has been well-documented in virtually every corner of the internet. It's no secret that George W. Bush inherited a $200 billion surplus and blew it nearly immediately -- and again, the budget numbers never included the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, which were considered "off-budget." In 2010, conservatives -- who blindly followed Bush for 8 years -- have suddenly recalled their commitment to limited government and fiscal responsibility once a Democrat returned to the White House. These conservatives seem to think that repealing Obamacare, banning earmarks and eliminating "waste and fraud" will balance the budget and solve our fiscal crisis. Nothing is further from the truth. Obamacare was scored as deficit-neutral by the CBO and earmarks make up less than $20 billion a year. Conservatives who believe defense and entitlement programs are off-limits from budget cuts are only kidding themselves and are clearly not serious about fiscal responsibility. Furthermore, and more critically, conservatives seem unwilling to reconcile the inherent contradictions between their desire for a balanced budget on one hand, and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and a blank check from the Pentagon on the other. Again, fiscal responsibility is the hallmark of conservatism, a fact that has sadly been erased from the Republican platform since Bush came to town.

Why I like Pat Buchanan

2010-11-22T11:30:00.000-06:00

"After Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people are not going to give the establishment and War Party a free hand in foreign policy. Every patriot will do what is necessary and pay what is needed to defend his country. But national security is one thing, empire security another.

Why should Americans, 65 years after World War II, be defending rich Europeans from a Soviet Union that has been dead for 20 years, so those same Europeans can cut their defense budgets to protect their social safety nets?

President Eisenhower told JFK to bring the troops home from Europe, or the Europeans would wind up as permanent wards.

Was Ike a closet isolationist?

Almost $14 trillion in debt today, we borrow from Europe to defend Europe, borrow from Japan to defend Japan, borrow from the Gulf Arabs to defend the Gulf Arabs. And we borrow from Beijing to send foreign aid to African regimes whose U.N. delegations laughed and applauded as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the General Assembly that 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government. Have we lost all sense of self-respect?"

Link here.

Do they have ANY ideas?

2010-11-17T12:00:00.000-06:00

I'm just riffing here, so give me two minutes ...

I made the mistake of watching the Senate Republican leadership -- McConnell, Kyl, Alexander, Barrasso and Thune -- address the congressional press corps after the announcement regarding the new Republican leadership.

Meet the new boss -- same as the old boss.

(First off, John Thune is an impressive physical presence. He has to be at least 6'5", and towered over his colleagues. While he looked a little uncomfortable making his short remarks, that guy looks like a president. For whatever reason, voters of all stripes go for that sort of thing. He is my dark-horse pick for the 2012 nomination, especially if Mike Huckabee doesn't run. He's so popular in South Dakota, the Democrats didn't even bother spending any money against him.)

After all five senators made their remarks, McConnell took half a dozen questions. In response to five of them, his answer was simply, "That's something we'll discuss." The only question McConnell actually answered was whether the Republican caucus hoped to repeal the healthcare law, to which McConnell responded in the affirmative.

Do these guys have any ideas? I mean that in all seriousness.

Of course, on the one hand, there are many, many Republicans who have great ideas. Read any of these (see here, here or here) profiles on Mitch Daniels, who I hope will be the next president. Paul Ryan's Roadmap is a thing of beauty. Chris Christie is just awesome. Among others, Ross Douthat and David Brooks are conservative pundits who are brimming with ideas. At one point, Newt Gingrich was this way too.

The problem is that these guys aren't the leaders. As long as McConnell and Boehner are in charge of the congressional Republican caucus, the stonewalling will continue. McConnell has been an avowed opponent of banning soft money in campaigns and has been a voracious earmarker -- only seeing the light 48 hours ago when the base put immense pressure on him. This is a man with no significant legislative accomplishments, who rose to the chairmanship of the RSCC -- the office that determines what campaign money gets spent on which candidates -- within his first term in the Senate. His entire Senate career has been marked by aggregating power not to advance the conservative cause, but rather, simply for power's sake. McConnell understands that because he hails from arguably the most conservative state in the union, the consequences of this attitude toward governance are negligible.

Remember McConnell's appearance on the Sunday talk shows in August? Ten weeks before the election, when pressed, McConnell refused to tell David Gregory what the Republican agenda would be. He played coy, telling Gregory that he -- and the voters -- would have to wait until after Labor Day to hear the Republican platform. This was politics at its worst from the man who was asking voters to make him Senate Majority Leader.

The Republican Party is not out of ideas, per se. Ryan and Daniels, among others, have plenty. But I see no agenda being pushed by the leadership that is anything but pro-Washington, pro-rich and obstructionist.

The totality of the McConnell agenda unfortunately appears to be repealing Obamacare -- even the popular parts, like the ban on lifetime maximums or the ability of twentysomething children to temporarily buy into their parents' insurance plans.

This might be a good way to score cheap political points during the next 18 months, but if voters said anything two weeks ago, it's that they're sick and tired of politics as usual.

And McConnell's career has been defined by nothing if not that.

The GOP follows him at its peril.

Why I'm finished with John McCain

2010-11-16T11:22:00.003-06:00

Today was the last straw. I've had it with the one-time hero of this site, John McCain.

He picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. At the time, readers of this site will note that I actually endorsed the move. As I explained later, however, I assumed -- incorrectly -- that Palin possessed at least a minimum standard of knowledge and competence about the world. I viewed her as a female Tim Pawlenty or Bobby Jindal. I'll admit I was completely wrong. As Andrew Sullivan has astutely noted, McCain is singularly responsible for Palin's rapid ascent on the national stage.

He admirably fought for comprehensive immigration reform in 2005, realizing that an imperfect solution was better than no solution at all to the country's immigration problem. But in trying to beat back a primary challenge from the buffoonish JD Hayworth in 2010, McCain seemed to make a hard-line stance on immigration his defining issue, culminating in the laughable "just build the danged fence" ad. As we've noted previously, immigration has never been a McCain issue. This was rank demagoguery.

In the past, he's also taken a reasonable stance on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, making it his firm position that whether to repeal that policy should be left to the discretion of the military brass. Both the Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, support repeal. But now, McCain is angrily leading the filibuster to stop a repeal from going to the floor of the Senate. While there might be dissenting voices at the Pentagon, the two most important people at the Pentagon support repeal. By his own standard, McCain's position utterly fails as, again, sheer demagoguery.

Between 2004-2006, McCain went on a one-man crusade against wasteful defense spending, no-bid contracts and fraudulent deals between the Pentagon and its biggest defense contractors. He called out former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his stonewalling of the Senate's investigation into alleged corruption -- pressure to which Rumsfeld ultimately capitulated, proving McCain right. With little to no fanfare, McCain admirably rose to the occasion time and again on behalf of the American taxpayer, understanding that there is a difference between money spent for national security purposes and money that is just spent on the military. It was precisely because of feats like these -- for which McCain received virtually no publicity or political gain -- that we believed McCain would make an outstanding president.

Today, unfortunately, McCain criticized Sen.-elect Rand Paul for daring to suggest that in order to get America's fiscal affairs in order, Congress must consider cutting the Pentagon's budget. McCain said this evinced "isolationism." No word as to whether McCain will similarly attack his good friend Tom Coburn for the same transgressions after this searing op-ed in the Washington Examiner where Coburn, citing the comments of none other than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mullen, warned:

Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible. We need to protect our nation, not the Pentagon's sacred cows.

Amen.

There is a brewing civil war in the GOP over defense spending, with actual fiscal conservatives like Paul, Coburn and Pat Toomey on one side, and McCain leading the charge on the other.

And with that, he has lost me. McCain has engaged in embarrassing double-talk and proven himself to be just another politician who will do anything and say anything to get elected. Why should I continue to support a man like this? As we've noted, McCain didn't need to do this -- Arizona Republicans, while admittedly not thrilled with McCain on every issue, showed no inclination of taking Hayworth seriously in the Republican primary, and McCain won by 25 points.

We wrote a few days ago that conservatives must understand and reconcile their inherently contradictory pushes for a balanced budget and a blank check for the Pentagon. This is a distinction that has apparently since been lost on John McCain. The days of the happy warrior hunkered down in his Senate office late at night, ginning up trouble and holding bureaucrats' feet to the fire, are long gone. The American taxpayer has lost a hero, and the Senate has lost one of its most fascinating, important characters.

McCain could have entered his twilight years as a statesman, the most respected member of the Senate, and an honest bipartisan broker at a time when America so desperately needs such leadership. But the maverick is long gone. In his place is an angry, demagoguing fool who likely -- and rightfully -- will simply fade out from American politics and be forgotten.

Good riddance.

America, eat your vegetables

2010-11-12T09:31:00.007-06:00

Hats off to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson for their brilliant work as co-chairs of the president's Deficit Reduction Commission. In their report released earlier this week, they've made some very controversial recommendations.

They've also made partisans on both sides very uncomfortable.

It's refreshing to get such tough, reasonable talk after what was an almost unbearable election cycle in terms of hackish rhetoric.

Partisans on both sides have lambasted the commission's recommendations -- David Limbaugh, here; Paul Krugman, here; Nancy Pelosi, here; Grover Norquist, here.

Paul Ryan approves. Ross Douthat approves. So does Andrew Sullivan. So does the Brookings Institute. And holy s***, the New York Times editorial board has even endorsed it.

Look. We've written here many times before that our country is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Both Republicans and Democrats share the blame in driving America to the precipice of disaster. In order to get our fiscal house in order, both Republicans and Democrats must accept that we have to tackle this problem in a bipartisan fashion.

This is why Krugman's column, linked above, is so offensive. He indicts the commission's "conservative bias," whatever that means, and more critically, denounces any and all suggestions to curb benefits in Social Security or to raise the retirement age -- never mind the fact that the system is completely unsustainable and will be bankrupt in 2042. Krugman also completely ignores the fact that the commission called for deep defense spending cuts -- about $100 billion by 2015 -- and recommended that Social Security be both means-tested (a liberal policy) and that the cap on earnings taxed for Social Security purposes be completely lifted (an even more liberal policy).

I operate by the maxim that when partisans of both sides are upset by something, it's probably a good idea.

Krugman has offered no plan for reducing the deficit and getting our fiscal house in order, and in fact, seems to be one of those economists who gleefully doesn't believe a fiscal crisis exists at all.

On the other side, conservatives must swallow hard and reconcile the inherent contradictions between fiscal responsibility on one hand, and blank checks for the Pentagon and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the other. This is simply an incompatible, incoherent set of policy proposals that most conservatives wear like badges of honor. Hats off to Rand Paul and Tom Coburn -- perhaps my two favorite senators -- for targeting the great waste at the Pentagon.

The bottom line is that the time has come to make difficult decisions. I applaud President Obama for creating this commission, putting Erskine and Simpson in charge, and for making this a bipartisan discussion.

But it's now time for the president to do something he hasn't done much of yet -- lead. America needs it.

Election reax - 3) Palin

2010-11-11T11:40:00.003-06:00

It was delicious to see Sarah Palin's two most beloved candidates -- Joe Miller in Alaska and Christine O'Donnell -- go down on election night.

If the 2010 midterms set the table for the 2012 primary, I'm not sure there was a bigger loser than Sarah Palin. It seemed that where she threw her weight around -- Alaska, Delaware and California with Carly Fiorina -- Palin's candidates lost. In Delaware especially, Palin's backing of O'Donnell over the much more moderate -- and critically, more experienced, respected and electable -- Mike Castle was a huge blow. For the most part, other 2012 contenders -- Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, most notably -- seemed to back more electable conservatives, e.g. Marco Rubio in Florida.

At the beginning of the year, we wrote here about what we believed Sarah Palin should do in order to establish herself as a serious presidential candidate. In short, we urged her to run against Lisa Murkowski, get back to the business of governing and re-establish herself as a serious political figure as Hillary Clinton did in 2000. We were nearly certain Palin could beat Murkowski in the Republican primary and cruise to a general election victory.

Instead, Palin has done the exact opposite. Since election night in 2008, she quit the Alaska governorship in the middle of her first term; engaged in outrageous rhetoric about "death panels"; became an "analyst" on Fox News; coined the term "lamestream media" and has refused any and all interviews outside of talk-radio hosts and her cushy cable news gig; wrote two books; shamelessly and repeatedly used her Down Syndrome son as a campaign prop; and asserted herself as the leading voice of the hysterical opposition.

It is now to the point where I can barely stand to hear Palin talk. She is so uninformed, so ignorant, so reactionary, so inauthentic and so cliche that it it's almost impossible to sit through even a snippet of a speech or interview.

Certainly, many in the GOP base admire Palin personally and respond well to her rhetoric opposing the Obama administration. This is not disputed. But there is a huge chasm between feeling those sentiments and supporting a Palin presidential run. Even the most partisan Republicans have a difficult time disputing the fact that she isn't fit for the presidency. In what is shaping up to be a very impressive field of candidates in 2012, I personally don't believe she stands a chance against the likes of Pawlenty, Romney, John Thune, and if he runs, Mitch Daniels. We explained here and here that Republican voters typically go for the safe, experienced play; are more concerned than Democrats about electability; and that the Republican establishment wants nothing to do with her.

Additionally, and perhaps equally as critically, the highest-profile candidates she backed in the 2010 midterms lost -- and in O'Donnell's case, lost badly. The losses sustained by Miller, O'Donnell, Ken Buck in Colorado and Sharron Angle in Nevada demonstrated to the GOP electorate the folly of electing candidates who don't appear senatorial or presidential. It showed the folly of Palin's line of "thinking," which ostensibly posits that the most culturally admirable "commonsense conservative" should be the nominee in every case, regardless of experience or electability. I'll continue to maintain that the tea party cost Republicans control of the Senate.

Everyone expected Palin to cash in on her popularity after the 2008 election. It's disappointing this is the road she's chosen. Her strategy and irresponsible rhetoric cost her party control of the Senate, and she should pay the price for it.

Tyranny in America

2010-11-10T11:22:00.006-06:00

We've referenced President Obama's poor civil liberties record in passing here before, but I'm not sure we've ever devoted an entire post to it. This is surprising, because it's one of the critical reasons we believe the Obama presidency has been such a disappointment.

Glenn Greenwald and others have written about the Obama administration's absurd position on extrajudicial killings. That is, the Obama administration has claimed the novel power to order the assassination of natural-born American citizens by sole virtue of the fact that someone in the executive branch has deemed that person a "threat" or an "enemy combatant." This of course is shockingly similar to the Bush administration's claim that it had the power to capture and imprison American citizens without access to a lawyer, a jury trial or even a formal charge.

Barack Obama spent his entire presidential campaign railing -- rightfully -- against the executive power abuses of the Bush administration. Now, this alleged former constitutional law professor has jumped in with both feet and embraced the very abuses he condemned for so long. This is the height of hypocrisy.

On Monday, the Obama administration argued before a federal court judge that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans abroad that the executive branch has unilaterally deemed a threat. This claimed "power" is so patently offensive that it almost doesn't merit a response. To the extent a court would require one, however, the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment says this:

"... nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

It is difficult to imagine a governmental power that is more outside the bounds of the actual language of the Constitution than the ability of the president to unilaterally determine whether an American citizen lives or dies. Of course, there exists an a very broad exception for the battlefield, which no one -- not even the ACLU, who is prosecuting this case on behalf of the father of a targeted American citizen -- claims is illegal or unconstitutional. What is at issue are those situations outside the context of armed conflict, when an American citizen abroad might be sitting at home, at work or at a coffee shop.

The Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU put it thusly: "If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state."

The Obama administration effectively argues two points: First, it has this power. (It most certainly does not under the clear language of the 14th Amendment.) Second, it argues -- even more laughably -- that its power is a plenary executive power that is unreviewable by the courts. It has invoked the longstanding "political question doctrine," an exception courts typically use to dismiss lawsuits by private citizens because what is at issue -- typically things like gerrymandering or political appointments -- are political matters that are better resolved by voting than legislating by judicial order.

But this absurd expansion of the political question doctrine takes the ancient idea far beyond any previous conception. It is unsupported by facts or logic, and finds no support in constitutional jurisprudence of years past.

The Obama administration has also claimed this "power" falls under the state secrets privilege, which is typically a device used by the government to shield documents from discovery that might be sensitive to national security. But in this context, the Obama administration is claiming that its entire program -- the entire basis for this lawsuit -- is a state secret, and therefore the judiciary cannot review it. This is absurd. Patently, offensively, laughably absurd.

Through it all, the Obama administration remains steadfast in its belief that no matter the basis -- the political question doctrine, the state secrets privilege or otherwise -- it retains the power to ignore the very language of the Constitution and kill American citizens abroad -- simply because the president says so.

If tyranny means anything, it must certainly mean this.

The president took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. He is failing his country and failing the institution of the presidency. He is failing those voters who he patently lied to in 2007 and 2008. He has betrayed his oath.

Claiming the authority to unilaterally execute an American citizen, without affording due process and without judicial review, is an impeachable offense.

Of all of Barack Obama's failings, this one is paramount.

Election reax - 2) Voter revolt

2010-11-08T11:41:00.001-06:00

Certainly, Republicans have much to be happy about in the wake of last week's landslide at the polls. Republican leaders and conservative commentators have hit the nail on the head by pointing out that voters are unhappy with the direction of government and the policies pursued by the Democrats in Washington in particular.

Much like the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, the GOP was the beneficiary of a populace angry at a government it saw as too big, too ambitious, too wasteful and flat-out incompetent.

The GOP runs the risk of reading this election as a mandate, however. The only edict the voters delivered is that they are sick of Washington.

Barack Obama came to Washington promising to change politics as usual, and instead has shown himself to be yet another creature of Washington, cutting backroom deals with labor unions and Big Pharma, assaulting civil liberties and shattering promises about naming lobbyists to serve in his administration. In this regard, we've noted that Obama is much like George W. Bush before him, who came to office promising to be "a uniter, not a divider." Of course, Bush turned out to be one of the most polarizing presidents in history who left office with a historically low approval rating, effectively gifting the opposition party complete control of government upon his exit.

Voters served notice on the Bush administration and congressional Republicans in 2006 and 2008 that they were not only sick of deficit spending and the skyrocketing deficit, but also the incompetence exhibited in the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans came to be viewed as big-spending politicians who were less concerned with governing competently and more concerned with making mountains out of social-issue molehills like gay marriage and Terri Schiavo. Through it all, Bush became a sort of caricature -- stubborn, obstinate, out of touch and completely paralyzed as the housing bubble burst, the financial markets crumbled, and America shed jobs by the thousands.

And in 2010, voters let Obama and the Democrats know how unhappy they've become with the new party in charge. When Obama took office in January 2009, it was almost unthinkable that the electorate would rebuke this administration so harshly. Even I've been surprised. After ramming through the "economic stimulus package" and swatting away Republican efforts to meet in the middle on a smaller, less economically cumbersome package, Obama made the biggest mistake of his presidency -- choosing to focus on healthcare rather than jobs. The stimulus failed to do much of anything, and Obama spent his remaining political capital on an issue that, as FactCheck.org has noted, is much less dire than liberals would like voters to think. It's still unbelievable to me that the Obama administration made this choice. It was an enormous political miscalculation. And they paid an enormous price.

Voters are sick of it. They want responsible, adult leadership. They want to be spoken to like adults. And quite frankly, I think they want their leaders to be direct and honest. How else to explain the immense popularity of America's two best governors, Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels?

Republicans now have a choice. They can spend the next two years trying to repeal the healthcare bill and investigating the Obama administration's sausage-making, or they can legitimately try to get America back to work. If the White House is unwilling to work with them, voters will see it. But it is a recipe for disaster to re-litigate last year's battles. While voters may not have approved of the healthcare bill, they remain out of work and the economy shows no signs of turning around. They don't want politics. They want solutions.

If Republicans return to the stalemating ways of the past, voters will rebuke them harshly in 2012, and potentially return Obama to a second term. A lot falls on the shoulders of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Their party's fate, and the fate of the as-yet-undetermined 2012 presidential nominee, rests in their hands.

Republicans were simply the beneficiaries of voter anger last week. In 1994, they ran on a platform, the brilliantly crafted and appropriately titled Contract With America. In 2010 -- again, much like the Democrats did in 2008 -- they simply ran as the anti-incumbents. It worked. But with Republicans recapturing the House and nearly evening the margin in the Senate, voters expect them to be productive.

Election reax - 1) Feingold

2010-11-05T11:59:00.005-06:00

I'm not sure why my most noticeable sentiment on election night was disappointment that Russ Feingold will not be returning to the U.S. Senate after three terms.

Although we expected him to lose, we still wrote of our hope that the progressive/libertarian Frankenstein from Wisconsin would make an 11th-hour comeback. It didn't happen.

This short piece on Feingold by Reason's Hit and Run blog is highly recommended.

I consider myself somewhere between a conservative and libertarian. Aside from abortion, I don't care about social issues. I find myself agreeing with the conclusion of Andrew Sullivan and others that marijuana should be legalized. But I opposed the health-care bill and the wasteful stimulus. I agree with virtually all conservatives that the recent Congresses have spent wastefully and taken our country dangerously close to the precipice of fiscal calamity. Defense should be cut, and entitlements need drastic, deep reform. I'd love to abolish the Department of Education, and I think the United Nations is a joke.

And most critically, like Feingold, I am abhorred by the executive power abuses and civil liberties violations of both the Bush and Obama administrations. Neither anyone in my party, nor many in Feingold's, has had the guts to stand up to these abuses, for fear of voter backlash, or being branded "weak on terrorism," or both.

If you're a civil libertarian, Feingold was your man, one of your precious few allies in Congress. The establishment of both parties doesn't care about these issues, and without Feingold rattling his familiar sabre on the Senate floor, it's likely the establishment will care even less now that he's on his way out.

Despite ridicule from both sides, Feingold has been the most remarkably principled legislator I've ever seen. He opposed the PATRIOT Act in 2001; then he was the lone vote against the war in Iraq in 2003; then he slammed the Bush administration over warrantless wiretaps, torture and the denial of due process rights to Americans like Jose Padilla. And when he believed Obama was continuing the Bush-era practice of secreting intelligence reports from Congress, Feingold went after him, too.

Evidence of Feingold's civil libertarian bent can be found as far back as 1996, when he was one of just 16 senators to vote against the Communications Decency Act, which would have criminalized "indecent" material on the internet -- a bill which the Supreme Court eventually struck down as unconstitutional.

He campaigned as a deficit hawk in 1992 and is an avowed opponent of earmarks. While an unabashed supporter of a single-payor healthcare system -- something I'm not even sure President Obama would go for -- he was nearly impossible to pin down on any given issue -- partnering with John McCain on campaign finance reform and Chris Dodd to block immunity for telecom companies -- and was once voted the least predictable vote in Congress.

He was a liberal, and I disagreed with him at least 70% of the time. But we shared a common passion -- the rule of law, and the rights of normal Americans to go about their lives without unconstitutional interference from an imperial executive. For this, had I lived in Wisconsin, I would have gladly worked hard for Feingold's campaign. When a cause is so passionately pursued, party affiliation doesn't matter.

I'll miss him greatly.

I'll close with two quotes.

First, Feingold's impassioned remarks on the PATRIOT Act, made on the Senate floor just six weeks after 9/11:

"Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. ... But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die."

Finally, H.L. Mencken's description of the great Senator Robert LaFollette fits Feingold's political career like a glove:

"There is no ring in his nose. Nobody owns him. Nobody bosses him. Nobody even advises him. Right or wrong, he has stood on his own bottom, firmly and resolutely, since the day he was first heard of in politics, battling for his ideas in good weather and bad, facing great odds gladly, going against his followers as well as with his followers, taking his own line always and sticking to it with superb courage and resolution.

Suppose all Americans were like [him]? What a country it would be! No more depressing goose-stepping. No more gorillas in hysterical herds. No more trimming and trembling. Does it matter what his ideas are? Personally, I am against four-fifths of them, but what are the odds?...You may fancy them or you may dislike them, but you can’t get away from the fact that they are whooped by a man who, as politicians go among us, is almost miraculously frank, courageous, honest and first-rate."

Election predictions

2010-11-01T08:23:00.006-06:00

It's far from novel to point out that the GOP is on the cusp of enjoying one of the most lopsided election nights in decades.

As Scott Rasmussen correctly points out here, however, voters' anger toward Washington isn't a vote for Republicans, but rather a vote against Democrats and the Obama administration.

I'll have much more on this after the dust settles.

In the meantime, the predictions:

House of Representatives

The GOP needs to pick up 37 seats to regain control of the House, where the Democrats currently enjoy a 255-178 advantage (with 2 vacancies). They will do this with ease. The invaluable Real Clear Politics believes that a staggering 224 seats are already leaning Republican or safely Republican, to only 168 such seats for Democrats. Forty-three seats are "toss ups" -- and unbelievably, all but two of these are currently held by Democratic incumbents. I'll adopt the familiar maxim that, when given a choice in a toss-up election, in general, voters will tend to vote for the challenger. This is especially true in a "wave" election -- such as 1994, 2008 or yes, 2010 -- when the party in power is so wildly unpopular -- and in the House, where congressional members are much more beholden to their leaders' wishes than in the Senate. Picking up all but two of the toss-up seats seems a bit much, but I expect Republicans to take at least half of the 43. Even only taking 22 of these seats would give the Republicans a commanding 243-192 advantage, nearly an identical flip from the current makeup of the House. Thus, the Republicans would gain 65 seats. This comports with the projections of RCP (currently projecting a gain of 66-67 seats); Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com believes Republicans will end up with a 232-203 advantage, which would reflect a gain of 54 seats; however, he noted here that a gain of 70-80 seats isn't out of the question.

Senate

First, a few races:

Missouri: Here in Missouri, Democrat Robin Carnahan is in a comparable spot to Jim Talent in 2006: A victim of a wave election, and being tied to an unpopular president without regard for the fine work she's done as a public servant. Roy Blunt -- who represents a large swath of the conservative downstate Missouri area, and who's served as Republican whip forever -- is managing to bury Carnahan by simply tying President Obama around her neck, much as Claire McCaskill was able to do vis-a-vis Talent and President Bush in 2006. Blunt has creeped toward and above 50 percent in most polls, and it seems highly unlikely that Carnahan can come back from such a steep deficit.

Wisconsin: Sadly, civil liberties crusader Russ Feingold -- a strange ally of this site -- appears headed for defeat. In recent years, Feingold has been rated as the least predictable vote in the Senate; as we've noted, Feingold is a wonderful senator for those of us who care about the Constitution. Republican Ron Johnson has eclipsed 50 percent in nearly every recent poll, with Feingold languishing in the mid-40s. It's unlikely that a three-term incumbent who hasn't hit 50 percent in any poll in months will be able to make a comeback from such a deficit. Feingold will lose by 7, and the country will be worse off because of it.

Illinois: Democrat Alexi Gnkasdjafklasdfkalsdfa hasn't been ahead in a poll since Rasmussen gave him a 44-43 lead on October 11. Since then, undecideds have begun to break toward Mark Kirk, a moderate Republican congressman from the Chicago suburbs, and an early ally of John McCain's presidential campaign in 2007. Kirk should win Obama's old seat by 5 points, and we'll be delighted to see him in the Senate.

Nevada: Unfortunately, both candidates can't lose. Real Clear Politics rates this race a pure toss-up. However, examining the polling data, undecideds have begun to break hard for Sharron Angle, leaving Harry Reid fighting for his life. Reid hasn't hit 50 percent in a poll since September 1, while Angle hasn't been below 47 since October 11. The fact that a candidate like Angle can top the sitting Senate Majority Leader speaks volumes about both the anger toward Washington and what voters think of Harry Reid, who many years ago, was considered a moderate. Angle wins by 4.

Delaware: Tea partiers, you're retarded. You flooded the Republican primary and voted for a woman who has never held elected office over over precisely the type of Republican that NEEDS TO RUN IN LIBERAL STATES. You are truly, undeniably stupid people. Why you would rather send a standard-issue liberal to the Senate, rather than a moderate Republican, is beyond comprehension. Next, you'll no doubt be crusading to cost your party the presidency in 2012 by voting for Sarah Palin.

The current makeup of the Senate is 59-41, with Massachusetts' Scott Brown as the 41st Republican vote and Joe Lieberman typically caucusing with the Democrats. Real Clear Politics rates 48 seats as safe or leaning Democrat, and 45 as safe or leaning Republican (the latter includes, unfortunately, Wisconsin). That means that in order to retake control of the Senate, Republicans must win 6 of the 7 seats rated as pure toss-ups -- California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia. We've noted above that the GOP likely will win in Illinois and Nevada. Further, we fully expect former Club for Growth'er Pat Toomey -- a true-blue fiscal conservative if ever there was one -- to defeat Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania. We expect Ken Buck to defeat incumbent MIchael Bennet in Colorado. That takes Republicans up to 49.

However, West Virginia Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin -- who has recently creeped above 50 percent --will keep his state's Senate seat in Democratic hands. The last 5 polls have given him at least a 3-point lead, and Republican John Raese has only been ahead in one of the last 12 polls. Similarly -- and despite her unpopularity outside of her liberal base -- Barbara Boxer will be very difficult to knock off in California. Carly Fiorina would be a wonderful senator, but the polling data simply doesn't indicate that she will have much of a chance, as most data shows the incumbent Boxer settling into a 3-to-6-point lead as undecideds break. Boxer's will be the 50th vote. And we expect Democratic incumbent Patty Murray to defeat Dino Rossi in Washington, which would ultimately give the Democrats a 51-49 hold on the Senate.

I want to point out one last thing. I fully expect Joe Lieberman to run as a Republican in 2012. The GOP establishment can very easily make it clear to Lieberman that if he wants Republican support, he must begin to caucus with them and vote for Mitch McConnell or Jim DeMint as Senate Majority Leader. Lieberman understands that he probably can never run as a Democrat again, despite his liberal domestic agenda. Lieberman could conceivably be that 50th vote. And again -- DELAWARE TEA PARTIERS COST THE REPUBLICANS THAT SENATE SEAT BY NOMINATING CHRISTINE O'DONNELL. Republican Mike Castle was poised to handily defeat Chris Coons; Castle had won nine consecutive statewide elections -- one as governor, and then the next eight as Delaware's lone congressman. Now that Joe Biden has ascended to the vice-presidency, Castle is arguably the most popular politician in Delaware. And tea partiers drove him out because he wasn't sufficiently ideologically pure. It is undisputed that Castle would have won the seat. Instead, the absurdly underqualified O'Donnell will probably lose to Coons by 30 points.

Yes, it makes so much more sense to make a statement about ideological purity, as opposed to GAINING CONTROL OF THE SENATE -- which a Castle victory, it turns out, would have almost ensured.

Well done. You people are fundamentally stupid.

2012 odds: Part 2

2010-10-26T09:27:00.002-05:00

We're continuing the rundown of BetVega.com's odds for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

We discussed the supposed frontrunners -- Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal -- here.

Now, the supposed longshots:

Tim Pawlenty: 10-1

Of the possible choices to lay money down on, Pawlenty at 10-1 is clearly the best bet. I see he, Romney and -- if he runs -- Mitch Daniels, eventually rising to the top of the heap. To prepare for his run, Pawlenty has (i) announced he won't seek a third term as Minnesota's governor; (ii) shelled out favors (money, appearances) on the campaign trail; (iii) made appearances everywhere from the Daily Show to Fox News, and (iv) most critically, wooed the big-dollar donors that are imperative to a successful presidential run. Pawlenty also will play well in his neighbor to the south, Iowa. He's a wonderful story -- the first person in his family to graduate from college -- and projects the kind of common-sense conservatism that Republicans desperately need to to take down Barack Obama. And unlike his principal rival, Romney, Pawlenty is a heckuva likable guy.

Mark Sanford: 12-1
Charlie Crist: 12-1

Yeah, right. Sanford was a rising star in the Republican Party until a bizarre episode involving an Argentinian mistress torpedoed his career. If Eliot Spitzer can make a comeback, perhaps Sanford can too -- but definitely not in 2012. Crist, likewise, is doing his best to destroy his carefully manicured career in the Republican Party by mounting a third-party challenge to the wildly popular Marco Rubio's Senate campaign. While the Democrat involved, Kendrick Meek, doesn't stand a chance despite Crist and Rubio bludgeoning each other, Crist has managed to turn every conservative in the country against him, including me -- and I'd probably vote for him if I lived in Florida. We explained here why Crist's decision will backfire on him.

Rudy Guiliani: 15-1

After deciding not to challenge Kristen Gillibrand for the New York Senate seat, Rudy's career is probably finished. He ran an abysmal campaign in 2008 and, even if he had competed seriously before Florida, it's not clear voters would have cared much for a guy who, as Joe Biden pointed out, made sure every sentence included "a noun, a verb and 9/11."

Newt Gingrich: 15-1

This is the most intriguing name of the lot. I still haven't decided whether Gingrich -- tossing out terms like "secular socialist" and "Kenyan anti-colonialist" -- is actually running for president or just trying to sell books. The pros? He's probably the smartest man in Washington and is an absolute idea factory. He has serious conservative credentials and formidable intellectual gravitas. The cons? While he was impeaching President Clinton, Gingrich was busy cheating on his second wife. He was thrown out of Washington in disgrace. His enemies list is a mile long -- and it includes a lot of Republicans. His bombastic rhetoric is completely unpresidential. There are a lot of skeletons in this closet, and Newt would be best served to keep the door closed.

David Petraeus: 15-1

Minimal analysis necessary here. With economic issues likely to remain paramount in 2012, a career military man won't have a shot. Petraeus could be an outstanding choice for Secretary of Defense, however.

John McCain: 20-1

As much as we still admire the Senior Senator, he will have no interest in taking a third shot at the presidency at age 75.

Jeb Bush: 20-1

If his last name was "Smith," the popular former governor might be at the head of the 2012 field. Perhaps in 2016, Bush could be a formidable contender, but voters will remain spooked by his surname. It's impossible to overstate how badly George W. Bush damaged the Republican brand, and his brother is paying the price.

Ron Paul: 20-1

The libertarian stalwart will most likely run, make noise and fight to the bitter end. On the one hand, Paul has been a prophet of doom on the growth of government -- criticizing the Bush administration long before it was the hip thing to do -- Iraq, civil liberties and bailouts. On the other, his haphazard answers make him seem erratic, and some of his policy prescriptions -- such as his insistence that America return to the gold standard -- are simply nutty. Despite his strong showing in the CPAC straw poll last year, Paul has neither the resources nor establishment support to make a serious run for the presidency. But he's still good for the party.

2012 odds: Part 1

2010-10-25T10:18:00.004-05:00

This morning, I ran across a site that, just days ago, posted the purported odds for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

According to this site, BetVega.com, these are the favorites:

Sarah Palin: 3.5-1

No way. We've taken this up here before. Palin won't win the nomination for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: (1) serious inexperience; (2) intellectual vapidity; (3) a lack of high-dollar donors; (4) high unfavorables, even among Republicans; and (5) Republicans' propensity to make the safe play (e.g., Dole in 1996, Bush in 2000, McCain in 2008). Furthermore, why would Palin want to leave the cushy Fox News/scripted rally/book-signing circuit? She's made millions since quitting the Alaska governorship in July 2009 and can pick and choose the interviews she gives. She won't have any such luxury if she seeks the presidency.

Mitt Romney: 4-1

A much safer bet than Palin, Romney will no doubt be a serious contender in 2012. He is everything Palin is not: Experienced, smart, a favorite of the high-dollar guys, and excruciatingly boring. I still don't think Romney will wind up with the nomination, however, simply based on the fact that John McCain -- reviled among many quarters of the right -- trounced him in 2008 despite Romney's bottomless finances. Romney simply doesn't get voters excited, and there is something fundamentally inauthentic about him that simply bleeds through the TV. Even when Romney was the allegedly clear conservative choice in the race and had the backing of the entire talk-radio circuit -- Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, et al. -- he still finished a distant third behind McCain and Mike Huckabee. When Romney faces a true-blue conservative -- and there will be several of them in 2012 -- he might get lost in the shuffle. And that doesn't even take into account the problems he will face when health care reform comes up.

Mike Huckabee: 5-1

Huckabee ran a marvelous campaign in 2008 to finish second behind McCain. But this also is a bad play for several reasons. First, as was pointed out in 2008, Huckabee was not a particularly conservative governor during his tenure in Arkansas. Second, if Sarah Palin runs, a chunk of his 2008 social conservative base will fall in line behind her instead. Third, like Palin, Huckabee has a cushy gig on Fox News and unlike the uber-wealthy Romney, Huckabee doesn't have a sizable personal fortune to run on. Fourth, Maurice Clemmons.

Bobby Jindal: 6-1

By demonstrating stoic, forceful leadership during the Gulf oil spill, Jindal made most people forget about his abysmal response to President Obama's State of the Union address in January 2009. I'm bullish on Jindal for 2016, but think 2012 might be a bit too early. He's super smart and an excellent governor, but I'm afraid he'll get swallowed up in the upcoming field. Even if a Republican topples Obama in 2012 and Jindal has to wait until 2020, that's plenty of time -- he'll only be 49 on election day.

The rest will be taken up in part 2 ...

The dangers of entitlements

2010-10-19T13:21:00.005-05:00

The French are lazy -- leaving work to riot over a proposed hike in the retirement age from 60 -- SIXTY! -- to 62.

France's nationalized pension system is on the verge of bankruptcy. Along with excessively long vacation allowances, a fully socialized healthcare system and laws that make it extremely difficult for employers to fire their workers, France is the model for what American conservatives abhor about liberalism in its purest form. The uproar in France demonstrates the danger of cradle-to-the-grave dependence on government programs and how parasitic humans can be.

Unfortunately, this poisonous mindset has pervaded the American left on entitlement issues. Most critically, President Obama's unbecoming demagoguery over the looming Social Security crisis has its roots in the very socialism that to which the French rioters subscribe -- the president would rather engage in a fear campaign and levy outlandishly unfair charges about his political opponents, instead of trying to reform a system that is so obviously broken.

An entitlement crisis is sweeping the country at the state level, as among others, Illinois is facing a massive budget shortfall as a result of outlandishly generous promises made to teachers, police officers and state bureaucrats. The New York Times examined this phenomenon here.

If congressional Democrats continue to follow their president's lead, and if Republicans are too squishy to stand up to such antics, the crisis in France will be at our doorstep soon.

Iowa = Palin's kryptonite

2010-10-07T10:31:00.004-05:00

We've written here recently that we don't consider Sarah Palin to be a serious contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

As Rudy Guiliani can attest, being competitive in either Iowa or New Hampshire is absolutely critical to one's ultimate success in a presidential campaign. In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore each won Iowa. In 2004, John Kerry -- at the time, considered a mid-tier contender -- finished a close second in Iowa in a crowded field and won in New Hampshire. In 2008, John McCain won big in New Hampshire, giving him a head of steam to cruise to victories in South Carolina and Florida. Barack Obama also won big in Iowa, and Hillary Clinton never quite seemed to fully recover after finishing a severely disappointing third in the caucuses. (The only reason a loss in Iowa didn't hurt McCain was because the Senior Senator -- an avowed opponent of ethanol subsidies and thus, an enemy of virtually the entire Iowa agricultural industry -- didn't even bother campaigning there.)

The bottom line is that there is no recent precedent for a candidate not winning in one of the first two states and going on to win a major party's nomination.

Sarah Palin will not be competitive in New Hampshire, period. New Hampshire voted for John McCain twice -- in 2000 and 2008 -- and the candidate who closest approximated Palin's place in the party in 2008 -- Mike Huckabee -- barely campaigned there, instead spending most of his time in the much more socially conservative South Carolina. New Hampshire voters are famously independent, a sort of pseduo-Tory mix of center-left social views and center-right economic views. They are revolted by tired, partisan cliches and instead demand face-to-face engagement. If there's a conservative Republican who can win in New Hampshire, it will likely be Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels (should the latter choose to run). Of course, Mitt Romney will be competitive there, but calling him a "conservative Republican" is a stretch. Palin would be better-served following Huckabee's model by avoiding New Hampshire entirely and focusing on her much stronger chances in South Carolina.

So what about Iowa? Some have suggested that Palin's folksy shtick might play well there. Here's why they're wrong:

1. Like New Hampshire voters, Iowa voters demand engagement. In 2008, Barack Obama was a force on the ground, shoring up his already strong ground game with the powerful force of his personality. Palin, to the contrary, only is visible at highly scripted rallies, doesn't do interviews that aren't on Fox News and doesn't have a sufficient breadth of knowledge to engage with voters who have legitimate concerns. There is no precedent for someone of Palin's ilk to win in Iowa.

2. As we've noted before, Barack Obama was so successful in Iowa in large part due to his phenomenal ground game, a well-funded and excellently organized grassroots network of students, labor leaders, retirees and everyone in-between. While Romney and Pawlenty have quietly built apparatuses based on the Obama model, Palin has done nothing of the sort. The people who make comparisons between Obama in 2006-2008 and Palin at the present time miss the critical fact that Obama was able to gain such a massive head of steam not because he was some sort of cult hero, but rather because his GOTV operation was so sophisticated.

3. As a corollary to point #2, Palin is approaching her presidential run in a rather cavalier way. Instead of doing the hard work of lining up the traditional GOP heavy hitters and organizational gurus (as Romney and Pawlenty have done), Palin has instead spent her time touring the country and endorsing candidates like Joe Miller in Alaska, Carly Fiorina in California and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. Her hope, of course, is that these individuals will reciprocate her support in kind in the 2012 primaries. Not only is she banking on these candidates to get elected, but she's also banking on their endorsements of her to be so massively popular that public opinion will swing in her favor. However, this is an idiotic way to build a presidential campaign, for no other reason than there is absolutely no evidence that, for instance, anyone in Iowa cares who Joe Miller is, or what he thinks.

4. Iowa voters already like Tim Pawlenty. Voters in the northern part of the state are especially familiar with the reasonable, salt-of-the-earth Sam's Club Republican governor of their neighbor to the north.

5. If candidates drop out before Iowa or shortly thereafter, there isn't a single Republican candidate who will endorse her. Palin will be an island in the campaign, much as Romney was in 2008. Unless and until Palin is the clear-cut frontrunner, there isn't a single other contender who will offer his support. Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels and Mike Pence will fall in line behind one of each other. Huckabee and Thune, likewise. Gingrich is admittedly a wild card, but he understands that his position as the intellectual poobah of the party will be shredded if he endorses Palin over, say, the uber-cerebral Pawlenty. And if Ron Paul is around, he'll keep swinging 'til the bitter end.

6. She's going to say something stupid. She always does.

The battle for the Senate

2010-10-06T12:59:00.006-05:00

Thanks to the voters of Delaware bringing the crazy and nominating a candidate who has never held elected office, it will be a tall order for the GOP to re-take control of the U.S. Senate. Additionally, given the transformation of the filibuster from a sparingly used procedural mechanism into a full-fledged legislative club, the Democrats' agenda has been thwarted since Scott Brown's election to the Senate in January. Because of this, the determination of who actually controls the Senate will be rather anticlimactic. Regardless, there are a few races we're interested in:

In Missouri, Roy Blunt appears to have established a reasonably safe lead outside the margin of error in nearly all of the latest polls. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan seemed to be making headway with her ads tying Blunt to the TARP bailout and Jack Abramoff and painting him -- accurately -- as the consummate Washington insider. Carnahan's problem in this race is twofold: First, she's a Democrat, and running in what is clearly shaping up to be a "wave" election. Second, she's no outsider herself, coming from a family that boasts a former governor, a former Senator, a congressman and a brother who is a gazillionaire wind-farm investor. Unlike in places like Nevada, Wisconsin or Florida, Missouri voters are quite familiar with everyone on the ballot here. You can read here why I refuse to vote for Blunt, who as House Republican whip was one of the Bush administration's key enablers. I doubt I'm done blasting him either.

In the race to fill President Obama's old seat, congressman Mark Kirk is vying to knock off state treasurer Alexi Giannilazskjzmlbfs. As of today, Real Clear Politics rates this one a toss-up. Both men have had their share of issues -- Kirk was inexplicably caught lying about his military service in Iraq, and Giasdkalsfdapdfpaz has had myriad questions to answer about the abrupt collapse of his family bank. Kirk is a moderate Republican from the Chicago suburbs who was an early and key backer of John McCain's candidacy during 2007-2008, and precisely the type of candidate Republicans need to cultivate in traditionally blue states. We're pulling hard for him.

Finally, in Wisconsin, Russ Feingold looks to be in deep trouble. We've written before about our affinity for the civil liberties crusader. Local businessman Ron Johnson -- virtually unknown before winning the Republican primary -- has begun to consistently poll above 50%, and his RCP advantage is 9 points. This isn't insurmountable, but Feingold is fighting an immensely difficult uphill battle -- (i) he's an incumbent seeking a fourth term; (ii) he's considerably more liberal than the majority of his state on virtually every economic issue of import; and (iii) he's a Democrat. Voters know what they're getting with Feingold, and although he's made noise during his time in the Senate as a deficit hawk and an outspoken opponent of earmarks and pork-barrel spending, he is fairly classified as a tax-and-spend liberal. Again, we'd like to see Feingold return to the Senate, simply because the number of Senators who seem legitimately concerned with civil liberties is quite thin.

Why Obama isn't Clinton

2010-10-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

Peter Beinart offers this excellent piece on Bill Clinton's move toward the center after the 1994 midterms, and why Barack Obama is quite unlikely to follow Clinton's lead.

Beinart notes that during his time as governor of Arkansas, Clinton was aligned with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which had been at war with the party's liberal base for years. Clinton not only governed as a centrist in Arkansas, but he campaigned as a deficit hawk, promised middle-class tax cuts -- at the time, a heresy for a Democrat -- and vowed to end "welfare as we know it." It was only when he swung left -- pushing health care reform and Don't Ask, Don't Tell during the first half of his first term -- that he set the table for the GOP to sweep back into power. After his party's 1994 defeats, Clinton turned the eyes inward, and seemed to understand that his defeats came about because he deviated from what had gotten him elected in the first place. He then set into motion a series of policies, including welfare reform, the Al Gore-led National Performance Review and most critically, his crusade for a balanced budget, that led to the longest peacetime boom in American history.

While Clinton and Obama both campaigned as centrists in 1992 and 2008, respectively, there is one critical difference between the two: Clinton actually was one, while Obama simply used trans-partisan vagueries to get elected. Anyone who knew anything about Barack Obama knew this image as a bipartisan healer was a fraud. This was a man who managed to rack up the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007 and wrote more autobiographies (one) than serious pieces of legislation during his utterly inconsequential Senate career.

If you were shocked that Obama swung to the left upon taking office, seemed completely unable to stomach bipartisan compromise and engaged in comically hyper-partisan demagoguery, you simply weren't paying attention to what he's been his whole political career.

Now, Obama will be faced with a nearly identical situation that Clinton encountered in January 1995: A Congress controlled by Republicans. And it's up to Obama as to how he will govern. Will he reach out to the GOP and find common ground on deficit reduction, green energy issues and entitlement reform? Or will he continue to dispatch surrogates to blast the GOP for being obstructionists? The president is the one who sets the tone. It's up to him.

These days, after a big-government Republican and an old-time liberal Democrat have spiraled us deep into debt and governed ineffectually, I've begun to long for the days of Clinton, the last legitimately decent chief executive. To say Clinton was a great president is missing his obvious flaws -- he pushed for an even more sweeping health care reform package than did Obama; his foreign policy during 1993-94 was disjointed and misguided; and, obviously, he betrayed his country's trust in the Lewinsky scandal. But in terms of his efficacy as a chief executive, Clinton was everything Obama was not. Clinton was willing to listen to Dick Morris and examine the flaws of his first two years in office. Obama still seems to be in love with his own celebrity, has built a team of yes-men who apparently don't disagree about anything, and genuinely believes the country is just as liberal as he is. In short, he is laughably out of touch, while Clinton was anything but.

That's why "triangulation" isn't coming back, and why the Clinton coalition that Obama so masterfully rallied in 2008 is irreparably broken.

Q&A time: The responses

2010-09-30T09:18:00.003-05:00

That was quick. Answers in bold.

1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).

To me, defense is the very last thing that should ever be cut from a budget. At the same time, stuff (like these jets) that are doing nothing but taking up space for years should be phased out, and depending on the sensitivity of the technology onboard, sold to Afghanistan in helping them establish an Air Force (this assumes they'd be interested of course).

2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?

While it would help, it's clear some programs would have to be cut. I'd say cut programs with education and green energy. The federal government doesn't have any business running the education system (it's a local/state issue), and green energy simply is a low priority.

3 and 4. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ... Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?

If you want to balance the budget tomorrow, you either cut EVERYTHING or raise taxes. If you're willing to make balancing the budget a process, I don't think taxes need to go up. As I'm willing to make this a process, we begin by repealing Obamacare which takes care of a bit of the deficit. From there, less government jobs at places like the Dept. of Education.

Those were precisely the answers I expected.

There will be more questions soon. I can't help myself.

Question and answer time

2010-09-29T17:22:00.000-05:00

Today, a Facebook friend sarcastically wondered why congressional Democrats would push back a vote on the Bush tax cuts until after the election. This friend -- a card-carrying member of the Palin/Limbaugh/Hannity wing of the Republican Party -- regularly makes disparaging comments toward Democrats on his Facebook page, which normally is fine with me, but he seems to be fond of recycling the cliches he hears on Hannity's show or from Palin's stump speeches. This is not a particularly insightful guy, and, I suspect, one that isn't able to grasp the disconnect between criticizing the size of the budget deficit and his own thirst for an extension of the Bush tax cuts.

To that end, I asked him the following four questions:

1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).

2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?

3. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ...

4. Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?

Answers to come ...

Tyranny in America

2010-09-28T15:25:00.007-05:00

We were out in front on this one.

The Justice Department is claiming that it cannot be sued in federal court to enjoin its program that targets American citizens overseas for assassination (Glenn Greenwald here.) In effect, the Obama administration is arguing that the program is itself a state secret, which cannot be legally challenged in court, thereby taking a position that totally guts the due process clause of the 5th Amendment because it would serve as an automatic, absolute bar to lawsuits challenging the legality or constitutionality of the program. This absurdly expansive conception of executive power might even make Dick Cheney blush.

We linked Conor Friedersdorf yesterday.

Today, Radley Balko:

You can’t even make the weak argument that the executive at least has to claim this power in the course of protecting national security. Because it doesn’t matter. Obama is arguing that he has the right to keep everything about these executions secret—including the reasons they were ordered—merely by uttering the magic phrase “state secrets.” In other words, that this power would only arise under a national security context is deemed irrelevant by the fact that not only is Obama claiming the president’s word on what qualifies as “national security” is final, he’s claiming the power in such a way that there’s no audience to whom he would ever need to make that connection. So yeah. Tyranny. If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact ... I can’t think of it.

Now: The question is whether the Cato/Reason contingent -- supplemented from time to time by the Ron Pauls and the Russ Feingolds -- will rise up to stop this constitutionally abhorrent practice that has become, sadly, business as usual in Washington.

This is precisely what is wrong with the Limbaugh/Palin/Levin wing of the Republican Party: It shrieks about things like Obamacare, cap and trade and taxes as unconstitutional encroachments on liberty, when in actuality, the most clear and present danger to American liberty in 2010 charges on, right under its nose.

Random musings

2010-09-27T15:45:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama and George W. Bush are more alike than even I originally thought. We all know that both Obama and Bush spent wildly, drove up the deficit and assaulted civil liberties. But both actually have substantive policy appeal to the opposing party that their opponents' blind hatred makes it impossible to see. Bush was actually a liberal, big-government interventionist on domestic policy -- something most Democrats ignored because of his military adventurism. Obama is almost a mirror image of Bush on civil liberties and executive power issues. Obama has claimed the right to assassinate U.S. citizens abroad by pure executive fiat, pushed an offensively expansionist view of the state secrets privilege, refused to shut down Gitmo and has actually increased drone attacks in Pakistan. But ask virtually Republican, and they'll tell you Obama is a terrorist sympathizer -- or worse.

This is hardly a novel observation, but I've been chewing on it for awhile -- the inability of the U.N. to do anything meaningful in Sudan demonstrates just how worthless it is. Wasn't the U.N. designed to prevent exactly that?

Several outlets have recently written up on this site's early favorite for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Mitch Daniels. Have a read here and here.

The litmus test for whether you're a thoughtful conservative or a hysterical reactionary is your opinion of this Dinesh D'Souza piece. Our reaction here.

I'm still not sure what to make of the tea party. Is it an amorphous, organic grassroots uprising? Or is it controlled and bankrolled by elites like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck? On the one hand, tea partiers tend to echo my criticisms of Obama's domestic policy. On the other, I haven't heard a single tea partier offer up a serious solution to addressing the country's long-term fiscal problems.

Republicans seem to think that repealing Obamacare and eliminating earmarks will make the deficit go away. Hmmm. Not quite.

On that topic, check out this atrocious demagoguery by John Boehner.

John McCain will coast to a sixth term in the Senate, but at what cost? I'm beginning to change my tune from this earlier piece. The fact that he's out in front on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is just absurd. We expected McCain to track back toward the center once he dispatched JD Hayworth; the fact that he is painting himself up as some sort of anti-immigration, anti-civil liberties crusader is sad. Because that's not the real McCain. At least it didn't used to be.

Daniel Larison thinks Mitt Romney is the 2012 frontrunner. Andrew Sullivan thinks it's Sarah Palin. I think they're both wrong. There is no frontrunner yet.

The greatest threat to liberty in 2010 isn't Obamacare, cap and trade, tax hikes or even al Qaeda. It's the imperial national security state. Conor Friedersdorf agrees. Glenn Greenwald explains (in much greater detail than we did, above) how Obama is simply reprising the Bush policies.

If Obama manages to track toward the center -- e.g., suspending the payroll tax -- and happens to realize how abusive his administration has been of civil liberties, I'd seriously consider voting for him in 2012 over the likes of Palin, Huckabee or Thune. Two thoughts on that. First, I originally wrote "track back," but that would imply Obama has been in the center before. That's obviously not the case, so a moderation of his domestic policy is, let's say, less than likely. Second, what's perhaps most ironic is that it is precisely because of his adopting of the neoconservative dogma on national security and executive privilege matters that I find the entirety of his agenda so repulsive -- and therefore, I don't have the stomach to vote for him.

Conservative soul-searching

2010-09-24T11:51:00.000-05:00

In the wake of the GOP's banishment to the political wilderness after the 2008 bloodbath, it's evident to me that the party has split into three general factions.

The first group are those who follow the George W. Bush/Colin Powell theory of domestic governance. These are Republicans who either support massive government intervention like Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind (as Bush did) or those that explicitly reject the Goldwater/Reagan model (as Powell did in announcing his endorsement of Obama in October 2008).

The second group are the tea partiers -- those people who are simply reflexive reactionaries, hysterically opposing everything the Obama administration says or does, believing absurd conspiracy theories about ACORN rigging elections or Obama being a crypto-Marxist, and -- most critically -- refusing to understand the inherent discrepancy in clamoring for lower taxes and cutting the deficit. This group doesn't have any ideas beyond deregulation, cutting spending without pointing out specific areas to cut, and the continued feeding of what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex. And it was specifically for this group that the GOP's utterly inconsequential Pledge to America was written.

The third group is made up of people like Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Ross Douthat. Tim Pawlenty was firmly in this group until he began running for president; now, he's dipping his toe in the water of group number two. Newt Gingrich was in this group as well, until he decided he could make more money writing a book. This group doesn't go to rallies, doesn't devour the latest conservative book of the month (Palin's, Romney's, Newt's, Levin's, etc.) and doesn't tune in to Limbaugh. Most importantly, these are the Republicans who (i) have ideas like Paul Ryan's wonderful Roadmap; (ii) have turned a critical eye inward to assess what precisely went wrong from 2001-2008; and (iii) are willing to confront the reality that cutting the deficit and rescuing the country from the looming fiscal abyss will require tough decisions.

If folks like us have our way, the 45th President of the United States will come from this third group. Notably, many people from the first and second groups seem to like Ryan and Christie, especially. They like Daniels the more they learn about him. It's up to the Republican rank-and-file to decide what kind of leader they want. Do they want a demagogue like Palin, who spends her time spitting recycled, tinny cliches and calls her opponents names? Do they want a Romney, who has changed his position on virtually every issue and ebbs and flows with public opinion? Do they want a Huckabee, who, like Palin, has personal charm, but focuses on "family values" and has no real conservative credentials? Do they want someone from the first group like Bush, who drinks the neoconservative kool-aid on foreign policy and largely ignores the guiding principles of fiscal conservatism on domestic matters?

Or, will the Republican Party follow an adult with ideas? Daniels, Pawlenty and Christie are men who have governed in states Barack Obama won in 2008 -- Minnesota and New Jersey in particular are solidly blue -- yet have done so in a fundamentally conservative manner, balancing their state's budgets, injecting new life into their states with cutting-edge policies (read this excellent profile on the wonderfully wonkish Daniels), talk to voters like they're adults, and -- not surprisingly -- have become supremely popular as a result.

These are the men the GOP needs to follow. We don't need Palin's demagoguery, nor Bush's "compassionate conservatism," nor Beck's outlandish conspiracy theories. We need Daniels. We need Ryan. We need Christie. Republicans might well take back the House in the fall, and the Senate and the White House in 2012, but there is no good model for Republican governance in Washington, and virtually no hope for a transformative Republican agenda, save for Ryan. Rather, John Boehner and the congressional leadership will continue to talk a good game about fiscal responsibility, but will refuse to stand up and explain to voters the disastrous fiscal path the last two administrations have set us on.

Responding to Sullivan, cont.

2010-09-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

Here, we addressed Andrew Sullivan's contention that Sarah Palin was not only a serious contender for the 2012 nomination, but the near-unstoppable frontrunner.

To his credit, Sullivan routinely links those columnists who disagree with him, namely on the issue of Palin's prospects for the presidency. Today, he addresses the contentions of a favorite of this site, Ross Douthat. Douthat's remarks here.

Sullivan's comments in italics, mine in regular type:

Ross may be right, but I think he ignores just how much more radical the GOP base has become since 1994 (snip)

Maybe. We've noted ourselves that the popularity of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin among some corners of the conservative movement is based, at least in part, on either cultural horror at Barack Obama or a fundamental, deep-seated hatred for the other party. I'd also stipulate that GOP has become more radical in the foreign policy realm since 1994, as the Bush administration adopted the neoconservative obsessions with Iraq and torture, put many of the Wolfowitz/Kristol ideas into practice and thereby made them mainstream Republican thought. However, the GOP still stands on a tax-reduction, pro-business, pro-life platform. It's been anti-Don't Ask, Don't Tell forever. The message of fiscal responsibility -- and again, when it gets to the business of governing, things admittedly always seem to change -- rises above all else, regardless of the basis for the opposition to the other party. Everything else is secondary to that.

Therefore, that said, this has two consequences in the primaries. First, everyone -- not just Palin -- will be gleefully slamming the Obama administration for its fiscal irresponsibility. Every Republican believes this -- Palin is simply the one out front right now at tea parties and campaign rallies. By November 2011, the entire field of candidates will be climbing over one another to make this point. Second, Palin's record as a small-government deficit hawk is shockingly thin (some would argue it's non-existent), and not surprisingly, doesn't quote comport with her rhetoric. To the contrary, both Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels managed to balance their respective states' budgets by lowering taxes. Palin's record as governor is no more impressive than, say, Huckabee's or Barbour's. If her entire message is fiscal responsibility, she'll get swallowed up. And truth be told, that's been her entire message thus far.

In addition, the opposition to Barack Obama is approached only by the seething hatred conservatives had toward Bill Clinton. Clinton was viewed among mainstream conservatives as a draft-dodging, tax-raising secular liberal who was, at his very core, a horrible person. Does no one remember the Clinton presidency? Does no one remember the awful things that were said about him? The personal attacks on Obama are simply par for the course.

... how enraged they have become over the years by what they see as condescension and betrayal by their own elites (snip)

Again, maybe. But Daniels, Pawlenty and Huckabee hardly qualify as elites. And as Peggy Noonan has pointed out, Palin is an elite confection "who may as well be a bon-bon." So if conservatives are truly enraged over elite condescension in the party, why in the world would they fall in line behind Palin? To me, this logic suggests that Palin will actually lose support to, say, Mike Huckabee. Virtually every conservative has talked about the party losing touch with its ideological roots.

... and the rise of Fox News and the Malkin/Reynolds blogosphere and Levin-style talk radio.

This logic assumes that all talk radio listeners/Fox News viewers are a bovine herd. Yes, it's a big problem that so many conservatives refuse to read or listen to anything that isn't run through the Fox filter first. But if the big-microphone elites were so powerful, wouldn't Mitt Romney have won the 2008 nomination in a cakewalk? Rush Limbaugh has spent his entire career criticizing John McCain. In slamming the Senior Senator, Glenn Beck actually said Hillary Clinton would be a better president, and Ann Coulter said HIllary was "more conservative." Levin, Malkin, Hannity and virtually every other major talking head on the right spent the better part of a year trying to convince their readers and listeners that McCain was a closet socialist and the most fundamentally un-conservative guy in the field. Romney was endorsed by virtually every major conservative outlet. McCain cruised to the nomination anyway, and the noisemakers' favorite son, Romney, finished a distant third, never really mounting a serious challenge (remember, Romney outspent Huckabee 15-to-1 in Iowa and still finished second). Sullivan and others imply that there is some sort of powerful Fox-Limbaugh-Palin conspiracy at work, when in reality, this conspiracy is either impotent or doesn't exist at all.

I also think that the people to whom Palin appeals will be as economically distressed in 2012 as they are now, since their jobs are overwhelmingly the ones that are gone for ever.

Sullivan doesn't offer any evidence of this, in part, because I don't think any exists. To the contrary -- based on my conversations with various members of my own family, and friends whose families support the tea party movement -- I'd wager that despite the heated rhetoric, the vast majority of tea partiers are actually middle-class. Palin isn't holding rallies in, for instance, Detroit, because those are places unserious folks such as her dare not go.

In this corner of the blogosphere, we fully expect Palin to run -- she very obviously considers herself presidential material -- but again, fully expect her to get crowded out by the adults.

Suspending the payroll tax

2010-09-19T11:54:00.005-05:00

I'm baffled that in a political system where the party in power is desperate for a jolt to the economy, and the other is singularly focused on tax cuts, the idea of a payroll tax holiday has somehow slipped through the cracks.

The refusal to even publicly broach this issue demonstrates two things -- severe partisan gridlock and Barack Obama's unwillingness to lead from the front.

Suspending the payroll tax for any period of time would, of course, immediately put money back in the pockets of ordinary, hard-working Americans.

President Obama has refused to even publicly address the subject. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, while warning the White House to leave the Bush tax cuts alone, have been eerily silent on the issue. Obama seems unwilling to move forward with this wildly popular idea, a policy that seems to be naturally trans-partisan. Instead, the White House has suggested that they may support a tax credit for research and development, something that, while perhaps worthwhile in the long-term, won't have any stimulative effect on the economy for at least 6-12 months.

Boehner and McConnell have also been mute on the subject, which is why Obama should pounce. Six weeks from what is shaping up to be a bloodbath of historic proportions, the Republican leadership understands full well that they will likely reap huge rewards on election night regardless of whether they express any interest in working with the White House on anything of substance. Boehner and McConnell understand the unpopularity of the Obama agenda and the futility of the administration's feeble attempts to spur economic recovery.

And this precisely is why Barack Obama could perhaps save himself and his party politically by pushing ahead with a payroll tax holiday. Boehner and McConnell would then have two choices -- either sign on and publicly legitimize the president's idea, or oppose the plan and generate the strange spectacle of Republicans opposing tax cuts.

I would be willing to wager that 80% of voters would support a payroll tax holiday. McConnell and Boehner must be fearful of being put in a situation where they have to choose between legitimizing the president's policies six weeks from election day or opposing a clearly stimulative tax cut. The problem is that Obama is clueless as to how popular a payroll tax holiday would be, or spineless to stand up to the loud minority of his party that would oppose such a policy.

Thereby, Obama will continue to dig his party's grave, doing nothing to stem the overwhelming tide that's building against the Democrats.

Palin paranoia

2010-09-17T11:45:00.001-05:00

I'll admit that we've been guilty of slamming the former half-term governor one too many times. Unlike some of her other critics, however, we aren't particularly worried about her prospects as a presidential contender.

Here at this site, we admire the work of Andrew Sullivan, but we think he's dead wrong that Sarah Palin is an unstoppable force in 2012.

Sullivan is wrong for the following reasons:

First: While Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney are quietly building both grassroots support and support among the Republican kingmakers, Palin has done nothing of the sort. Sullivan routinely makes the incorrect parallel between Barack Obama in 2008 and Palin in 2012 and suggests that Palin will enjoy a similar trajectory. Obama became such a force primarily because of his enormous apparatus in Iowa. This was a highly organized, well-funded operation staffed with political heavyweights like David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Tom Daschle. Palin has nothing of the sort. In fact -- other than making random endorsements of political lightweights like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller -- Palin hasn't done anything in preparation for 2012. if she believes that a handful of endorsements will swing the nomination her way, she's dead wrong.

Second: Conservative elites abhor Palin and realize she's unelectable. Mitch Daniels is making the rounds. Pawlenty and Romney have already done so. If Haley Barbour jumps in, he will no doubt have his share of high-dollar bankrollers. The GOP elites -- at AIPAC, the Heritage Foundation, the Wall Street Journal, investment bankers, oil barons, old Reagan & Bush hands -- are the ones who are the kingmakers. Unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party is made up of seemingly hundreds of interest groups like the NEA, the ACLU, labor unions and the NAACP that only the most impressive candidates (basically, Clinton and Obama) can pull together. This is precisely why small-dollar donors can be so effective in the Democratic Party (Howard Dean in 2004, Obama in '08) but not even make a dent in the GOP (e.g., Ron Paul) -- the Democratic Party is often fractured, and the GOP isn't.

More on this point: Every single Republican candidate has either been a political veteran who wins the nomination simply because it's "his" turn (Nixon in 1968, Bush in 1988, Dole in 1996, McCain in 2008) and/or has received the blessing of the party kingmakers. This was particularly manifested with George W. Bush's campaign in 2000. Bush wasn't a particularly devoted conservative, nor was he even well known at the time he announced his candidacy, but he was able to bury the rest of the field precisely because the blessing of the kingmakers meant he effectively had unlimited pockets. In 2012, Palin will not be as fortunate, because conservative elites want nothing to do with her.

Third: The tea party crowd, from whom Palin draws the vast majority of her support, aren't new voters. In fact, we've noted here before that the tea party is simply an appendage of the Republican base. Again, Sullivan's comparison between Obama '08 and Palin '12 is off on this point. Obama drew out millions of new voters to the polls -- people who had never been politically active before and many who had never even voted. Palin won't be able to do the same thing. Her supporters are people who vote routinely. Although a few may be newcomers, most are not. Sullivan and many liberal critics who seem to be horrified by Palin assume that Palin has single-handedly drawn hundreds of thousands of voters out of the woodwork as Obama did. But there's no evidence of this at all.

Fourth: Palin isn't the only fresh face in the primaries. Sullivan seems to suggest that the partiers are dying for someone new after the Bush years and McCain's candidacy, for which they were lukewarm, at best. By this logic, Palin will get swallowed up by Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty and John Thune -- three very competent, reasonably young men, of whom most tea partiers have probably never heard. Mike Huckabee, if he runs, will siphon many votes away from Palin -- they will be going after the same wing of the party, and Huckabee is a fantastic campaigner. Additionally, if tea partiers are looking for someone new, isn't it just as likely that they'll tire of Palin? I'm already seeing signs of this in my own family, and the primaries are still a year away.

Fifth: Republican voters aren't as stupid as Sullivan implies. John McCain was clearly not the most "conservative" option in 2008 -- that distinction probably would have gone to Duncan Hunter or Fred Thompson -- but he and Mitt Romney -- a moderate governor of a blue state who at one time was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage -- became the two front-runners. It's probably no coincidence that McCain and Romney were arguably the two most electable candidates in the general election. Republicans understand that primaries have consequences -- grasping it much better than their Democratic counterparts (who support candidates like Howard Dean and John Edwards). While I would have supported Mike Castle in a heartbeat and am dumbfounded that he was defeated by O'Donnell in Delaware, there is a huge chasm between a few thousand votes in tiny Delaware and a presidential campaign. In fact -- again, based on my experiences and conversations with my own family -- I'd wager that while many voters might love what Palin has to say, admire her personally and will even support her causes (e.g., Miller, O'Donnell), they understand that she's simply unfit for the presidency.

Finally: Christine O'Donnell is going to lose in Delaware, period. O'Donnell's victory will cost Republicans a Senate seat that, had Castle been their candidate, they were almost assured of winning. There will be a backlash over this -- because O'Donnell won't just lose -- she'll get clobbered by perhaps 20 points. The GOP establishment will be sure to make clear that O'Donnell's candidacy was solely responsible, and it will be interesting to see how many conservative opinion leaders (the WSJ, George Will, Charles Krauthammer) make note of this as well. Republicans don't like to lose elections -- especially in years when there is a real chance to take back the Senate from Barack Obama's scary Marxist empire. Whether the rank-and-file will punish Palin, or tune her out, as a result of the drubbing O'Donnell is likely to take remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Daniel Larison agrees.

More on conservatism's descent

2010-09-15T17:25:00.005-05:00

A few days ago, we pulverized Dinesh D'Souza's outlandish characterization of the president as a "Kenyan anti-colonialist."

We've made this commentary before, but it bears repeating in light of D'Souza's nonsense being repeated by, among others, Newt Gingrich, who these days styles himself presidential timber.

Modern conservatism has come to embody the following: a characterization of Barack Obama as a Marxist, a Muslim, a Manchurian candidate, or all three; an economic policy comprised entirely of a demand for tax cuts; an energy policy comprised entirely of demands for more offshore drilling; an unwillingness to reconcile the inherent contradictions in tax cuts and deficit reduction; a crusade against not just radical Islamic extremists, but even moderate Muslims like Feisal Abdul Rauf; the support for a massive, Orwellian national security state; and a willingness to defend a president who claimed an absurd, unconstitutionally overbroad conception of executive power and who, in the execution of those supposed powers, openly broke federal law.

It's bitterly disappointing to observe conservatism's steep descent. I'm thoroughly convinced that, as Lindsay Graham has noted, Ronald Reagan would have a tough time winning a Republican primary in 2010.

It is also incredible to watch the Democratic Party slip even deeper into irrelevance by governing so ineffectually and being so out of step with the times. As we've said before, Barack Obama will probably be a one-term president, and before he can do any more damage, the GOP will almost certainly re-take control of the House this fall.

The good news? There are still a few responsible adults in the Republican Party, such as George WIll, Peggy Noonan, Ross Douthat -- and one of them -- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels -- might well be the nominee in 2012.

Godspeed, Governor.

Why Russ Feingold is worth voting for

2010-09-14T12:57:00.008-05:00

The senator from Wisconsin, facing the fight of his political career, is one of the most liberal politicians in the country. On domestic matters, Feingold is a classic redistributionist who, among other things, is an unabashed supporter of a single-payor health care system.

But when the discussion turns to civil liberties and executive power abuses, there is no stronger defender of our Constitution.

I rarely vote for Democrats and can't think of another candidate with a (D) behind his or her name that I would consider supporting, but Feingold is a glaring exception because of the pugnacity with which he takes on issues that the vast majority of politicians, including most members of his own party, seem too scared to address.

I highly recommend Glenn Greenwald's fantastic piece on Feingold, found here. Greenwald describes Feingold's immense value as a civil liberties crusader much better than I ever could, but below is an example of how, in the wake of 9/11, Feingold was light years in front of the rest of us:

"Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists.

But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die."

-Sen. Russ Feingold, October 25, 2001

The conservative movement bottoms out

2010-09-13T10:35:00.003-05:00

Dinesh D'Souza calls the president an "anticolonial Kenyan" here. This piece is spreading like wildfire in the conservative blogosphere.

D'Souza's language in italics:

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back.

That's some pretty absurd revisionist history. Non-defense discretionary spending rose nearly 10 percent per year under George W. Bush, three times the rate of that under Bill Clinton. Just because Bush styled himself a "Republican" and was a culturally admirable family man doesn't mean he was some sort of small-government crusader. Under Bush, the government: (i) created the Department of Homeland Security and a massive national security and domestic surveillance apparatus, (ii) outlandishly expanded the once-limited state secrets privilege and imprisoned and tortured American citizens while denying them the most basic of due process rights; (iii) created a huge unfunded prescription drug mandate (Medicare Part D); (iv) passed No Child Left Behind, which would have made most liberals proud; and (v) doubled the national debt in just eight years. And D'Souza implies the era of big government started in January 2009? Please.

More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill?

Other than the fact that American presidents have been talking about this since Nixon? Could it have anything to do with the fact that our dependence on foreign oil puts us at the mercy of the rest of the world? Bush threw out lines like this and got applause. Obama throws out lines like this and gets called un-American.

The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little.

If the whole point of D'Souza's article is to paint Obama as un-American or extremist, D'Souza utterly fails here. Keynesian policies are supported by a majority of Democrats.

But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.

Yes. This precisely explains the surge in Afghanistan and his decision to send unmanned drones into Pakistan on kill missions -- something even Bush didn't do.

But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism.

First, how in the world does one "represent" a cause? D'Souza doesn't explain this at all, simply opting for a conclusory statement with no factual support. Second, D'Souza never defines "anticolonialism." Is it the idea that African nationals find it offensive to be ruled by a government located in another hemisphere? Third, if so, D'Souza fails to explain what is so objectionable about this "anticolonialism." Finally, what we know about Obama is that he adored his mother and he met his father exactly twice. This type of identity, "he's not one of us" politics is just flat-out wrong. What happened to just arguing about policy?

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder.

This is just absurd. This paragraph comes immediately after D'Souza explains how Obama Sr. viewed America and viewed the world. D'Souza simply makes a flat, conclusory statement with no factual support, no direct examples of how this alleged worldview has manifested itself in the president's policies and simply pronounces the president guilty by association. He imputes Obama Sr.'s motives and ideologies directly to the president, with no causal connection explained between what Obama learned from his father -- who he met twice -- and his policy prescriptions. And again, if Obama really views "America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation," would he have ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan?

Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash.

D'Souza is even wrong here. As Ross Douthat has noted, the fact that the Obama administration hasn't been able to nationalize the health care sector isn't because Obama isn't that liberal, but because Obama is a calculating politician who knew that a single-payor system (or even a public option) wasn't politically feasible. It's not because Obama is a political moderate. D'Souza gets this completely backward, which suggests to me that he hasn't been paying attention for the last 18 months.

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more.

The top tax bracket is 36%. That's not half, and it's not even close. The stated policy of the Obama administration is to let the 2001 tax cuts expire, thus raising the top tax bracket back to 39.5%, which is where it was under the Clinton administration. D'Souza needs to get his facts straight. If wanting to raise taxes makes you an anticolonialist, then how does D'Souza explain the policies of Bill Clinton? Or the tax increases under Ronald Reagan?

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism.

Again, this is just intellectually lazy and takes no skill. D'Souza simply preys on the fears and cultural unfamiliarities many conservatives have vis-a-vis the president. D'Souza offers no factual support for any of these conclusions, simply implying that, well, Obama's father would have believed this. Like we've said before, how can you argue with someone who spouts these things? D'Souza clearly isn't concerned with facts or sound logic, making a proper response almost impossible.

Nine years on

2010-09-11T09:40:00.005-05:00

"On an early December morning many years ago, I watched my father leave for war. He joined millions of Americans to fight a war that would decide the fate of humanity. They fought cruel and formidable enemies bent on world domination. They fought not just for themselves and their families. They fought for love of an idea: that America stood for something greater than the sum of our individual interests.

From where did the courage come to make the maximum effort in that decisive moment in history? It marched with the sons of a nation that believed deeply in itself, in its history, in the justice of its cause, in its destiny. Americans went into battle armed against despair with the common conviction that the country that had sent them there was worth their sacrifice. Their families, their schools, their faith, their history, their heroes, had taught them that the freedom with which they were blessed was worth fighting and suffering for. Those who came home returned with an even deeper civic love. They believed that if America was worth dying for, then surely she was worth living for."

-Sen. John McCain, Worth the Fighting For

Leviathan

2010-09-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, the civil libertarian side of the blogosphere was in an uproar over this 55-page opinion rendered by the Ninth Circuit, giving the Obama administration a watershed victory in its fight to unconstitutionally expand the legally dubious "state secrets" privilege. The plaintiffs, led by the ACLU, will almost certainly try to take their challenge to the Supreme Court.

The state secrets privilege has historically been a way for the federal government to shield certain documents from discovery in any number of cases, under the premise that such documents were a sensitive governmental secret or critical to national security. As a rule, it was limited to discovery disputes and the disgorging of documents that might in theory endanger the country.

Under the Bush administration, everything changed. As a part of the Bush White House's assault on civil liberties -- along with extra-judiical renditions, the PATRIOT Act, Jose Padilla, Yasir Hamdi and warrantless wiretapping, just to name a few -- the administration quietly expanded their conception of the state secrets privilege from a way to shield documents in discovery into a full-blown defense to lawsuits brought by private citizens to stop illegal governmental actions such as warrantless wiretapping. Most observers expected the Obama administration to roll back these abuses, and in particular, its conception of the state secrets doctrine.

Instead, in the above-cited case, the Obama administration has moved ahead full-bore with this patently offensive argument. By citing a laughably overbroad conception of this once-limited privilege, the Obama administration has argued that even if it (a) breaks federal law -- which it does every time it taps a citizen's telephone without a warrant in contravention of FISA, or (b) worse yet, imprisons someone without the right to counsel, a jury or even a formal criminal charge, it is wholly insulated from immunity simply because it is the government. The administration is effectively asking the judiciary, "Trust us. It's a secret." This is antithetical to the most well-settled constitutional ideals of divided government and limited executive power.

Of all the things that would make the Founders would roll over in their graves, this is the most repugnant.

The above cited Ninth Circuit decision has planted the seeds of what Hobbes termed the Leviathan. The ever-expanding national security state -- mining data, monitoring phone calls, blocking not only documents but entire lawsuits through an absurd conception of governmental privilege and ordering the extra-judicial killings of American citizens abroad by executive fiat -- has no identifiable boundaries.

What's perhaps most disturbing about this issue is that of all the issues where Democrats might have chosen to capitulate to the Cheney-Kristol wing of the Republican Party, this is the most critical -- and the most dangerous. It is unbelievable to me that any red-blooded American, who loves and believes in the Constitution, could find this abuse of power permissible.

I'd expect such behavior from George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales. I can't believe I'm seeing it from Barack Obama and Eric Holder.

The imperial executive lives. And the national security state -- the most clear and present danger to the constitutional freedoms the Founders set out for us -- continues to charge on, unimpeded.

UPDATE: This outstanding editorial from the New York Times sets out the case against the state secrets doctrine and the Obama administration more eloquently and concisely than I could ever do. This might be the first time I've ever cited an editorial from the Old Gray Hag, but perhaps this is evidence of the shaky liberal-libertarian alliance on executive power abuses many have hoped for.