Jon Henke's blog

The legislative bribery happening over the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations bill (mentioned a few days ago) is ramping up. Democrats are pairing politically unpopular items together with the more essential items and outright earmark bribery in order to get the whole thing passed.  And now, the White House is "turning to vulnerable Republicans and telling them he can get the DCCC to "go easy" on them next year if they vote for the Supplemental tomorrow. And Eric Cantor's office is really pissed."

Sources tell me Republicans will make this vote a campaign issue for Democrats in 2010 (details below).

This puts some of the Democrats in a very difficult position (See Red State for more on that), and some of them are gradually deciding to vote no on the legislation. There is bipartisan resistance to this bill, and Jane Hamsher is doing a good job whipping the vote over at Firedoglake.  She has the current whip summary here. 

Most importantly, Hamsher notes that "Blue Dogs are scared about what might happen in conservative districts if they cast that vote for a $100 billion European bank bailout."

I can confirm that.  Earlier today, I asked a senior Republican campaign operative in Washington, DC about this bill,  I was told that, yes, "Republicans will be watching how these Members vote on the War Supplemental", and it "will be a campaign issue" for many Democrats. 

I was given a list of names they're watching closely, as well.  Suffice it to say that Congressional Democrats are going to have to sever the elements of this supplemental and vote on them individually, or else they will be handing their opponents some very potent ammunition for 2010.

A vote is not far off.   Phone calls help.  Red State has a list of legislators you can call.

For Republicans, the words "Ronald Reagan" have become code for "policies and election results I like" (whether or not Reagan-era policies and election results match those of the speaker).  Republicans remember Reagan so fondly because his ideals were powerful, poignant, and his rhetoric was red meat for limited government/national defense Republicans.  Indeed, I suspect we often remember him more for his soaring rhetoric than for the specific details of his governance.

John Harwood's New York Times story, Republicans Rethinking the Reagan Mystique, contains some interesting points.

That’s not to say Republicans disavow Mr. Reagan’s achievements, which include cutting tax rates, presiding over the successful conclusion of the cold war and, as Mr. Obama noted, boosting morale after a period of national self-doubt. [...]

What’s needed instead, said Reihan Salam, co-author of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” is “something new — the anti-Obama, anti-Reagan.” [...] Mr. Salam said he favored a new prototype of Republican leadership that projected humility rather than grandeur, understated competence rather than soaring rhetoric and vision. [...]  

There is also the arrival of a new slate of pressing issues. It has been 20 years since Mr. Reagan’s plea to “tear down that wall” was answered by the fall of Communism. The 70 percent top income tax rate Mr. Reagan called confiscatory now stands at half that level. And the cultural appeals he made to blue-collar voters and evangelicals have lost their immediacy, displaced by economic concerns. Many remember that Mr. Reagan identified government as “the problem.” But today an increasing number of voters look to the government for security and stability.

The problem with the Republican fixation on Ronald Reagan - and Republicans say "Reagan" like Smurfs say smurf - isn't with the ideals of limited government that Reagan espoused in 1980.  The problem is that Republicans never evolved past the 1980's.  The conservative movement that arose in the 60's and 70's reached maturity in the 1980's.  That period became the conservative movement's frame of reference; the experiences, lessons and skills learned up to that point became the Republican Party's hammer, and when all you have is a hammer...

The result is two problems...

• Republicans are still trying to fight the same fights, even though the situation has changed.  It's one thing to mobilize people around tax cuts when you're cutting the top rates from 70% to 28%.  It's a lot harder to persuade people to vote on the difference between 39.6% and 35%.  Republicans are still trying to run against the vulgar great society liberalism of 1979, but (for a variety of reasons) that's just not as relevant to voters.

 

• Republicans are still offering the same solutions.  But over the last few decades, the viable Republican solutions have generally been passed.  Republicans are left advocating "limited government", but they either (a) have no idea how to actually accomplish it (thus, all the kvetching about "spending cuts", yet Republicans can only manage to find a few billion dollars per year), or (b) they're too beholden to interest groups (business money, elderly voters, etc) to stake out a position that would accomplish their goals (lest it endanger campaign funding, a seat in Florida or the mid-terms).

Republicans don't have to abandon Reagan.  Republicans just have to evolve beyond the 1980's.  Unfortunately, the culture, infrastructure and people that reached maturity in the 1980's may now be a barrier to evolution - not because their intentions are malign, but because they are adapted to a strategic and tactical era that has passed.

Paul Krugman makes a very good point about the dominant conservative media being full of "conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric".   That's true (e.g.), and it's a genuine problem for the Right.  I'm not sure the Right has come to terms with just how destructive an echo chamber is - and has been - to perceptions of reality and propriety (and yes, the Left has dived into their own rhetorical sewer, but tu quoque is no excuse). 

However...

The ongoing efforts to conflate the Tiller and Holocaust Museum murderers with the Right, conservatives or Republicans - or to imply that criticism of government is responsible for these murders - is absurd and offensive.  Would the critics change their political views if it turned out that one of the killers was a left wing militant?   No.

What's more, it's not something any of the critics actually believe.  Recall their outrage when Andrew Sullivan suggested that a fringe on the Left would fight against the US.  Of the idea that this fringe on the Left would "ramp up its hatred in the days and months ahead", Duncan Black said, "Sullivan was one of the earliest adopters of the idea that the most appropriate response to September 11 was to figure how to to use it to pit American against American."

We've come full circle.  The Left is growing comfortable with the role of dominant bully.

And contra some on the Left, objections to the DHS Report (both the Left and Right wing reports) were legitimate.  The objection is not that they DHS studied the potential sources of violence, but that they made political generalizations ("the DHS description of these groups seems excessively broad with the potential for mischief").  It was political profiling.

Let's conclude with two central ironies:

• The Left strenuously objects to connecting President Obama to socialists and William Ayers; meanwhile, they want to lump all conservatives in with militant radicals.

 

• Meanwhile, as Doug Mataconis points out, "Conservatives who object to being tied to Von Brunn were eagerly associating Obama with Ayers and Wright."

 UPDATE: Jesse Walker makes excellent points, as well. (via Instapundit)

I've written before about the problem of legislative collusion - the horse-trading process by which legislators bribe each other at our expense, creating de facto campaign donations for incumbents and sacrificing quality, oversight and accountability for political expedience.  Few things would do more for rational, good governance than unbundling legislation.

Today, we have a perfect illustration of the problem.  Congress is considering the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act.  This is supposed to be a bill that provides funding "for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pandemic Flu" (PDF).  However, politicians like to use consensus bills as a trojan horse to slip in more controversial items.  So, this bill now contains billions for the IMF (globalizing the bailouts!), multi-billion dollar earmarks from Rep. Murtha (which the military says are "not needed") and other unrelated, indulgent spending.

Few of those things would get a majority vote by themselves.  But throw them all into the pot, and....

Well, actually, it's still uncertain whether it will pass.  Blue Dog Democrats realize that voting for this will be a big problem for them, come time for reelection. (Good luck running against the "He spent your money to bail out European banks" ads)

So, according to sources on the Hill, the White House has sent Rahm Emanuel to "stuff everyone with so much pork that they have to vote for the supplemental."  And the Texas delegation is "refusing to vote for the supplemental unless Obama forces Rick Perry to take the stimulus money". 

A few phone calls never hurt.  Via Red State, here is a list of Congressmen who should learn how their districts feel about this bill.

Many of the most prominent voices in the Republican Party appear determined to behave like children.

At some point, Republicans have got to start demanding their leaders behave like adults instead of demagogues and buffoons.  We need at least one grownup party. 

The Columbia Journalism Review has a good piece on the state of media on the Right - particularly what's happening online.  This strikes me as a very clear-headed view of where we are and what our problems are.

For roughly the last twenty-five years, conservative opinion journalism has generally followed Ronald Reagan’s eleventh commandment: thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. [...] And when they have criticized Republicans, it has usually been from the right. [...] 

An even more interesting—and potentially important—aspect of this emerging ethos in conservative journalism is an acknowledgement of the need to close the reporting gap that has long existed between liberal and conservative publications. Many liberal journals, most notably Mother Jones, prize muckraking investigative reporting. The Nation funds in-depth reporting at numerous publications through its Nation Institute Investigative Fund. The Washington Monthly has a long history of burrowing deep into the public-policy-making process and lobbying. Talking Points Memo, one of the more evolved liberal news sites, won a Polk award in 2007 for its work unraveling the U.S. Attorneys firing scandal. 
 Conservative publications, in contrast, have generally opined, with the occasional whimsical reported dispatch. Breaking hard news was simply not in their DNA. Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who briefly worked at National Review, wrote an article suggesting that this gap hurt Republicans in the election because they were not as able to drive news stories, and that it has also led to more liberal journalists than conservatives joining mainstream publications. Martin attributed the difference to one of tradition: liberal journalists grew up aspiring to be hard-nosed investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein, while conservatives grew up suspicious of mainstream papers and aspiring to be the next William F. Buckley Jr.

The whole thing is worth reading, but it boils down to this: The Right has been busy criticizing the media; the Left has gotten busy building it.  The Left's new movement is making the news that the Right's old movement spends its time reacting to.

Eric Scheie wonders why everybody is afraid to use the S-word.

A question which has been plaguing me lately is whether it is possible to have a legitimate debate over socialism without sounding like a rabid, hysterical, over-the-top, far-right conspiracy theorist. [...] Unfortunately (as I have pointed out in several posts), the "s" word is so fraught with problems that it might be too contaminated to use. [...]  At what point can nationalization be said to have taken place? By what standard is government ownership of 72% of a company less than "true" socialism?

Andrew Samwick has also wondered the same thing: "People complain that the word "socialist" is being inappropriately used to demonize attempts at restoring economic growth.  That may be true in many cases, but how is the label not valid here?"

The Right's inappropriate and ridiculous over-use of the word "socialism" as an all-purpose bludgeon has made it understandably toxic, but not everybody is afraid to call the thing what it is.   See Open Left's Chris Bowers...

• "...we have reached national consensus on nationalizing industries, which is the literal definition of socialism and big government..." - Sept 06, 2008
 
• "GM bailout: more actual socialism! ... Conservatives have been throwing around the charge of "socialism" a lot lately. However, for those keeping track, the General Motors bailout plan is actually socialist."  - June 01, 2009

NOTE: The fact is, American has always had a mixed economy, as do all modern, developed economies.  The question is not one of category - capitalism or socialism? - but of degree.

UPDATE: At The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz makes a very good point...and a useful distinction.

It's fair to call the General Motors deal or the AIG takeover examples of socialist policy; government is directly intervening in a private concern. But it's not fair to say that the Obama administration is socialist per se because socialism is an -ism, a system, a guiding philosophy, and it's clear that putting the government in charge of private production is not the Obama administration's guiding philosophy.

As I noted above, the real question is one of degree.  Obama is not socialist.  But he is more comfortable with centralizing economic power.  As that centralization proceeds, the focus of public interest will shift from "how do we fix the immediate economic problems?" to "how do we fix the problems we created when we tried to fix that temporary problem?"  That is when the pendulum can swing back towards decentralization and individual empowerment.

I really dislike the false choices being posed to the Republican Party right now.  "Principles VS Reform" and "Conservative VS Moderate".  No.  We need reforms to make the principles more viable.  We need a policy agenda that wins the moderates.

And no, "cut taxes" won't do it.  Hope is not a plan.  In recent years, tax cut rhetoric without concurrent, viable plans for addressing the spending problem has become a pretty good sign that a politician is unserious.  But that couldn't go on for ever.  The deficits are catching up with the rubes.

So, Michael Barone is singing my song here.  I'll excerpt at length, because this is really important.

If opinion is arrayed along a single-dimension, left-to-right spectrum and clustered in the middle in a bell-curve pattern, then a party on the right needs only to move a few steps toward the center or just beyond to convert itself from minority to majority status.  But the world is a lot more complicated than that. ... Success in politics often comes not from readjusting one's stand to conform with current opinion, but in redefining what is at stake and reframing issues so that you have majorities on your side.

So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different "center" -- not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets. [...]

Defenders of these decisions might reply that if Republicans were running this system (as they were, at least in part, until Jan. 20) there would still be political favoritism, just with different favorites. But that's the point. When government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable. [...]

After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of "Had enough?" and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.  The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider.

Recently, Democrats have won on promises to "empower" people.  But Democrats are much more concerned with entitlements than empowerment.  Progressives mostly succeed in making progress towards Washington, DC.

This disparity between rhetoric and action is a major opportunity for the Right.  Republicans can take advantage of it with an agenda that actually empowers people.  That means government closer to the people, more freedoms of choice, more accountable politicians and more transparent decisions.

A Republican who can run on all of that will encounter stiff resistance from the Republican Party, and sometimes even the conservative movement.  But the status quo is death.  And the people maintaining it are dying. 

Republicans need more of the intellectual policy wonk types representing the Right, and it seems to me that Rob Portman is one of the more impressive Republican politicians. As Chris Cilliza said, Portman is one of the "rare breed of politician who is equally conversant -- and skilled -- at policy and politics."   We should encourage that.

Naturally, the Left prefers to discourage it, so they're rolling out the BS against Portman early. 

This is how a lot of the upcoming House and Senate races will go.  The mud and innuendo will be flung online, and the Left will attempt to define Republicans early at the grassroots digital media level where the Left generally has a substantial infrastructure advantage.

Has the Right been approaching politics wrong all along?  The Right has not figured out good policy means to accomplish its limited government & individual freedom ends.  The Right has been good at being anti-Left, but unsure what to do once it gains power. So what has been the problem?

Friedrich Hayek's essay, Why I am Not a Conservative, contains a few points the Right should consider carefully.

Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. [...]

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. [...] By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position.

The implication of Hayek's position is that conservatism can never achieve the vision of genuine individual freedom - it can only oppose the Left.  If that is the case, then who can achieve limited government?  The Compassionate Conservative approach has been tried, miserably (though some, like Douthat and others advocate variations on it).  The religious right seems inclined towards a Christian Democrats approach (Huckabee, et al).  There is the "energetic" and "ambitious" "national greatness" approach advocated by those like David Brooks, Bill Kristol & John McCain.  LIbertarians and many independents/moderates are inclined toward a, you know, libertarian approach.  And there is also a more moderate libertarian parternalism approach that recognizes a role for government in addressing economic issues and market failures, but focuses on optimizing defaults and preserving choices.

So, a question: If conservatism is more of a social and cultural tendency, rather than an effective political philosophy, then what should be the driving political philosophy for the Republican Party?   (NOTE: This does not imply that the Republican Party becomes inimical to conservatives; only that the "movement" be driven by a political vision, not a social/cultural tendency)