Pete's blog

Here is McCain strategist John Weaver trashing conservatives:

"If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=d4eb658f-725c-4c95-be3a-263a73a16de7

Weaver has no business lecturing the GOP on tolerance and moderation.  The McCain campaign that he was part of ran on a nasty, silly and divisive strategy.  Calling the McCain strategy socially conservative would be unfair, since that would imply an appeal based on shared principles and policy preferences.  It was really a strategy of identity politics that tried to divide Americans based on region and residential pattern. This strategy treated rural voters like morons ("hey look, Obama called Palin a pig or something!") and didn't mind implying that urban voters were something less than fully American for not living in "the heartland".  The Weaver-guided McCain campaign responded to the financial meltdown by suggesting making a Cuomo SEC chairman and suspending the campaign in order to... well I still don't know. 

Then Palin became the scapegoat for the McCain campaign's own divisive, incompetent and issueless strategy.  Now Weaver is trying to get himself a little good publicity (and rehabilitate his own reputation among right thinking people) by postioning himself against Palin Limbaugh and Cheney. 

But nothing has really changed.  Weaver isn't appealing to any actual principles or policies.  He isn't making any arguments that Americans can relate to their lives.  He is manipulating cultural symbols in order to provoke an emotional response (Limbaugh, Palin, Cheney, eek!). The only change is that he is now hustling liberal journalists, moderate Republicans and reformist conservatives rather than the rural and exurban middle and working classes.  Guys like Weaver are worse than worthless.

David Frum on the news that Jon Huntsman is becoming ambassador to  China http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=b2289d5c-d34e-48bc-817b-ccf1682a6049

What is striking is Frum's demand that social conservatives need to do the giving in, if the Republicans are to win again.  As National Review has pointed out, it is tough to see how social conservatives are responsible for the last two Republican defeats.  2006 was a foreign policy driven election and 2008 was an economy driven election.  Social conservatism (rather than a rural/exurban identity politics) was not prominent as part of the GOP campaign in either election.  The one time abortion became an issue in the campaign (after the Rick Warren thing) Obama found himself on the defensive. 

Frum's timing is especially bad considering the release of the new Gallup poll that shows movement in the pro-life direction http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/Abortion.aspx?version=print  This doesn't mean social conservatives have it made.  The poll is ambiguous in many ways, but it does show that an incrementalist and principled pro-life politics is hardly a burden for Republicans. 

David Frum has been hoping to get a pro-choice candidate on a national ticket for a while now.  He supported Giuliani in the 2008 primaries and in a recent column (which was mostly wise advice) he suggested that Tom Ridge would have been a good choice as McCain's VP running mate. http://www.theweek.com/article/index/95947/How_to_rebuild_the_GOP 

I think Frum has it mostly backwards.  The GOP has not lost becuase it overemphasized social conservative issues in the last two elections.  It had overemphasized rural/exurban identity politcs, had had no coherent economic agenda, and had been discredited by foreign policy incompetence.  Job one is crafting a compelling free market economic agenda.  Without that you have nothing.  Job two is incorporating a style of social conservative politics that is more sensitive to urban and inner suburb voters (stop implying that they don't live in the "heartland" and thats only the first thing), and based more on principle than regional chauvinism. 

In fact, rather than sticking it to pro-lifers, truly moderate Republicans might join them in  dramatizing Obama's abortion extremism when it comes to an unlimited licence for late term abortions.  Whatever their ultimate differences with the more consistent pro-lifers, perhaps moderates could work tactically on an issue where moderates and social conservatives could agree and Obama's radical social liberalism leaves him with only a smallish minority of public opinion. 

Connor Friedersdorf on an argument about Limbaugh and Hannity over at NRO's The Corner http://theamericanscene.com/2009/05/12/no-one-on-the-corner-has-swagger-like-rush

Friedersdorf  argues that he cannot understand why conservative journalists who can be sharp in their critiques of politicians or other conservative journalists are often so reticent to attack the Limbaughs and Hannitys.  I suspect that as a journalist himself, Friedersdorf knows part of the answer.  Guys like Limbaugh and Hannity speak to an audience of millions and tens of millions of people who think of themselves as conservatives.  Most conservative opinion journalists are read by thousands to maybe several million.  The Limbaughs and Hannitys can, by citing your article, spread your work to a general audience that does not read the comparatively small circulation political magazines.  Several months ago, Jonah Goldberg noted that sales of his book spiked after appearing on the Beck show. 

This puts conservative journalists in a tough postion.  With the rest of the media fairly hostile to the extended exposition of conservative ideas, the Hannitys Limbaughs and Becks are among the few ways for conservative journalists to get their message out the general public (if only the conservative leaning general public that makes up the audience for those shows).  You can't  really do that if you have alienated the hosts.  This means being very diplomatic in how one handles those hosts.  You don't want to defend error, but if you are too harsh, then a large fraction of conservative leaning America will know you only as that fake conservative who attacks Limbaugh because he wants to be invited to liberal cocktail parties. 

Rich Lowry and the National Review editorial board are actually masters of diagreeing with Limbaugh while not anatagonizing him.  This National Review editorial is an example of masterful journalistic diplomacy http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU5OTMwMDRkODYwMzExYzY0NGJjMDY0ZTA3NzU0YmQ=  and here is Rich Lowry on Limbaugh http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmYyOTAwYjQzYTcxY2MyOWQzMTY5MWFhOWQ2OWMwN2E=

Great article by Yuval Levin and James Capretta on the coming fight over healthcare reform http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/476phyyl.asp 

Some takeaways from the article:

1.  Any attempt to insitute a pay or play system should be attacked as pushing people out of their current  plans (where they are usually satisfied with the care though not the cost) and forcing them to go to a government plan where their care decisions will be left up to that year's budget process and government bureaucrats.  Pay or play will mean losing your current plan and trading it in for government mandated rationing.

2.  Obama will try to use Congress as a screen.  The ugly details of the reform will be hashed out by the Democratic members of Congress.  The Republicans should not let Obama off the hook.  The worst part of any plan that seems to have the support of the congressional Democratic leadership should be laid at Obama's feet.  The political target of the Republicans should not be Pelosi or Reid or some back bencher who is sponsoring the legislation.  The target should be Obama and Obama's plans that will reduce the care that tens of millions of Americans are  getting.

3. Conservative popularizers like Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity should go to school on Levin and Capretta's reform proposals and begin familiarizing the public with how a more free market oriented approach could cut premiums, and increase availability to the uninsured.

So now Colin Powell wants the GOP to be more pro-tax and pro-spending on top of his ealier social liberalism http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/05/06/colin-powell-bashes-rush-limbaugh-sarah-palin-gop

It would be tough to figure out what would distinguish this party from the Democrats or what it would offer social or economic conservatives to get them to stay or to get liberal Democrats to leave their home party.  The best that this Specterized party could hope for would be to become a rest home for apostate liberal Republicans like Specter, Jeffords, and Powell himself.  This party wouldn't win many elections, but at least all of those horrible conservatives would be gone.  And isn't that the most important thing?

If General Powell has some constructive policy suggestions about how the Republicans can distinguish themselves from the Democrats, I want to hear them - even if I disagree with them.  A thoughtful discussion should be welcome.  But  his latest statement combined shots at personalities (Palin and Limbaugh) with zero substance except for a vague me-tooism on domestic policy.

A Powell platform for the GOP might have a better shot at gaining adherents if there was a...Powell platform.  And Republicans might be more inclined to listen if he tried to pitch his message to Republicans and not to liberal journalists looking for one more excuse to kick the Republican party.

Joh Nichols over at The Nation   ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090518/nichols2?rel=hp_currently   )   has a worthy and mostly fair appreciation of Jack Kemp's attempt to increase Republican support within the African American community.  With Jack Kemp gone, perhaps it is time to talk about what was right and what was wrong with Jack Kemp's attempt to sell Republican conservatism to the African American community.

There was much to like about Jack Kemp's strategy.  Kemp was persistent in the face of his own party's indifference to his efforts and the depth of the black community's distrust for conservative Republicans.  His approach was optimistic, policy oriented and interested in getting real life results.  He was honest about what conservatives had done that have alienated African Americans.  Kemp's  approach was by far the best African American outreach strategy the Republicans had in the 1990s.

But that is damning with the faintest praise.  For early 90s Republicans, there was a latent suburban/rural Republican majority that was only awaiting the right strategy to be mobilized - as it was in 1994.  Kemp's strategy of aggressive African American outreach would have used up resources (especially the candidate's time) in return for questionable results.  It must have seemed like a better idea to spend that time in the suburbs with voters who were less suspicious of white conservatives.  The result was that conservative Republicans are almost as alienated from the African American community now as in 1964 when the chief political spokesman for conservatism had just voted against the Civil rights Act of 1964. 

But there were also problems with Kemp's approach.  The policy basis of Kemp's appeal to the African American community was too narrow.  Enterprise zones and public housing vouchers ar fine ideas in themselves, but they are not the kind of things of which party switches are built.  There was in fact something a little otherwordly about Kemp's approach.  Where neighborhoods were swamped with violence, an approach that led with (rather than incorporated) tax and regulatory breaks seemed delusional.  To the African American middle class that had left those neighborhoods, those policies had limited application.  The enterprise zones would be someplace else.

A conservative politics that seeks to make real gains among African Americans is going to have to be a broad politics.  It should incorporate the best of Kemp's supply side ideas.  It should take on failing schools.  It should include appeals on health care reform.  It should also include appeals on the social issues especially on issues like partial birth abortion .  It should should always emphasize real results and real principles.  It should explain how health insurance premiums will come down, how students will have more oppurtunities as adults, how late term abortion stops a functioning heart and destroys a brain that can feel pain.  And it should do so in ads on African American oriented media and in appearances in areas with large African American populations and do it year after year after year. 

It will also have to be tougher that Kemp was willing to be.  Any real attempt to win over large numbers of African Americans will result in blistering and often unfair counterattacks.  The Democratic party is very attached to its 5-to-1 (and more) margins among African Americans. Any real outreach attempts will be met with cries of racism and personal attacks on those who make them.  There will be attempts to change the subject to Willie Horton and welfare queens.  The 2000 James Byrd ad is one example of what we might see.

Republicans will have to hit back hard on the issues.  Positive appeals will have to be matched with negative appeals.  Republicans will have to explain how Democratic policies mean bills piling up on the table, viable kicking fetuses aborted, wondering if a a change in jobs will cause a break in coverage in which any medical emergency will financially cripple your family and schools where your kids get less than the preparation they need to compete for the jobs that you know are within their potential.  The Democrats will try to paint Republicans  as the party of racism.  Okay, politics is tough.  Then again, that is what they are already doing.  Republicans must paint Democrats as the party of self-serving and destructive interests and of comfortable social radicals.  This will be playing the game rougher than Kemp ever wanted to, but it will have to be part of any effective strategy.

The Republicans would have been better off following Kemp's outreach strategy in the 1990s.  At the very worst, they would be where they are now.  They would probably be at least a little better off.  But to make real gains, Republicans must come up with an agenda as broad as real politics, and fight for African American voters like they are a costituency worth the fighting for. 

Obama's release of the the interrogation memos made the enhanced interrogation techniques described (most famously waterboarding, but also walling and sleep deprivation)useless since terrorist suspects would know the limits of the milder techniques.  He also opened up the interrogators themselves to congressional investigation and as much as called them torturers on national television last night.  Obama himself won't be targeting these officials.  The lead will be taken by congressional Democrats and maybe by Attorney General Holder.  Obama might even make some sympathetic noises about the forthcoming troubles of the interrogators.  But it will ultimately be Obama's responsibility and he should be held politically accountable.

Obama's policy on detainee treatment has been much more radical than it need have been, even given his objections to waterboarding.  He could have abandoned waterboarding (and more quietly even the milder enhanced interrogation techniques) while sticking up for the people who implemented the program under the legal understanding of the time.  Obama instead not only abandoned but also revealed the whole of the program and left the people who served twisting in the wind.  The sensitivity to terrorist suspects and the indifference to those who questioned the terrorist suspects is striking.  It should be a political disaster in the making, but Obama could get away with it..

Obama likes to operate by indirection and to let others take the heat for him.  He stayed out of the stimulus drafting process, which allowed him to take credit for what was popular in the bill, while letting congressional Democrats take the hit for the bill's less popular features.  He got a liberal big spending bill without getting dirty from all the waste that big spending in big haste produces.  Republicans thought they were being smart by attacking Obama for not being sufficiently involved in the budget process.  This only demonstrated what creatures of Washington the congressional Republicans had become.  Normal people don't care about the tick toc details of the budget process.  Normal people saw bickering members of Congress and a President who was above the ugly fray.  Obama got away with the fact that the fray was of his making and served his purposes.

And he may be doing it again.  The slow motion persecution of the interrogators (if it happens) will be conducted by committee chairman from safe Democratic seats, and by Eric Holder claiming the professional responsibility of his office - we know how much Holder cares about those things ,what with his treatment of the Office of Legal Counsel during the D.C. congressional voting controversy.  They will be the first targets of conservative wrath, but that would be a strategic mistake.  Obama's own decisions will have set these events in motion and he should be seen to bear the brunt of the responsibility. 

I think that if the issue is put squarely, Obama is not on the side of public opinion.  I have only anecdotal evidence, but I am struck by how many people I know who really like Obama, have contempt for Republicans, but are ambivalent about waterboarding and are incredulous that techniques like walling (where a terrorist suspect is shove up against a  wall) and sleep deprivation should be out-of-bounds when seeking intelligence from a terrorist suspect.  Opinon polls like Rasmussen's http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/58_say_release_of_cia_memos_endangers_national_security  show that  58% of the public is against further investigations of detainee interrogations.  

If the investigations do happen, every difficulty faced by the interrogators who folllowed the laws and procedueres as they were understood at the time should be placed at Obama's feet and not those of his henchmen.  Obama needs to be held accountable for the sick absurdity of his choices, which would have things so much easier for terrrorist suspects, and so much harder for those who (to the best of their knowledge) lawfully tried to protect us from them

Much of the media coverage of the Arlen Specter party switch has presented Specter as an oppurtunist who became a Democrat because he was afraid that the was going to lose the Republican primary.  I was surprised how much CNN focused on the polls showing Specter losing to Toomey among Pennsylvana Republicans as being crucial in Specter's decision. 

Good for CNN.  This is a big improvement over the "flinty, brave, New England principle" nonsense that the media gave us when Jim Jeffords switched parties. 

I'm looking really hard for the rays of sunshine these days - in this case more like a stray photon.

tomllewis's thoughtful post on Jim Tedisco's defeat in NY20 http://www.thenextright.com/tomllewis/ny20-campaign  points to the real diificulty in crafting a winning Republican message in this environment.  Even with the benefit of hindsight it is tough to come up with a strategy that one could say would have strongly improved Tedisco's chances of winning. 

tomllewis suggests that Tedisco would have been better off being against the Obama stimulus the whole way.  I agree, but the popularity of the stimulus was in flux during most of the stimulus debate.  The popularity of the stimulus bill slid in the early stages of the debate  and then went up again after Obama's prime time press conference.  If one can put principle aside (call it "going Arlen"), one can see why Tedisco would have trouble figuring out how to play public opinion.

I'm not sure that opposing the stimulus, absent some plausible alternative that offered people real life benefits, would have helped Tedisco that much anyway.  He could have offered some version of Lawrence Lindsey's payroll tax cut (  http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29125/pub_detail.asp  )  Offering an alternative that held out tangible benefits for working people would have given Tedisco a base from which to attack the waste in the Obama stimulus without seeming mindlessly negative.  

On one hand I sympathize with Tedisco's decision to temporize on the Obaba stimulus. He was making up his political strategy in real time, with public opinion in flux.  The stakes were high.  It must not have seemed like a good time to go hunting around America's conservative think tanks looking for policies that could shake things up.  But it turns out that a commitment to principle and a mastery of attractive well thought out policies can be more expedient than poll driven oppurtunism.

Check out Meghan McCain on the Rachel Maddow Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZVT9KXzjEI  Watch the last couple of minutes where she admits she has no clue about economic issues.  No shame in that by itself, but it does point to the absurdity of her "moderate" politics. 

The idea that the Republicans should move left on social issues to win over more socially liberal voters is a superficially attractive one, but it comes with quite a few problems.  First what to do about  the more socially conservative voters who will either turn to third party politics or (more likely) just not turn out to vote?  That problem might be resolved if there were a much larger number of social liberals who were salivating to enter Republican politics but for the party's stance on abortion or whatever.  I don't see those people out there and for the very good reason  that even if you were a social liberal and the Republican party really did move left on social issues, what compelling economic policy does the Republican Party have that will cause you to shift party?  There might be an consituency out there that hates Obama's economic policies so much that they would switch parties if only the Republicans changed their platform to pro-choice on abortion, but I don't think it is a very big one - certainly smaller than the social conservatives who would be lost.

That doesn't mean that conservative should do nothing to win over more socially moderate voters.  For starters they could drop all the talk about "The Heartland" and "The Real America" which is so alienating to voters in cities and inner ring suburbs.  Telling people they don't live in the real America is a good way to make sure they don't listen to anything you have to say.  One of the problems that conservatives are facing is less their policy positions than that they are presenting conservatism as a form of  rural/exurban identity politics. The McCain campaign's use of Sarah Palin is an example of this but it shows up causally in a lot of conservative rhetoric and it tells many urbane, college educated voters that the Republican party isn't really about you, but go ahead and vote for us anyway. Relearning to speak respectfully about urban and inner suburb America would be  much less costly than changing a bunch of positions on social issues.  You might even find that some of those people outside the "The Heartland" agree with you.

The writer Reihan Salam pointed out that Republicans can't and probably shouldn't be trying to win among voters for whom social liberalism comes first.  We already have a more socially liberal party and Republicans will never be able to outbid them for commited social liberals .  But Salam pointed out that Republicans might be able to compete for voters for whom social liberalism comes third or fourth.  For whom abortion means less than a cheaper and more portable health insurance policy.  That means (among other things) that if Republicans had a compelling economic message and adopted a less alienating tone, they could make gains among some socially liberal voters while remaining the more socially conservative party.

But it isn't easy coming up with a compelling economic agenda.  If Meghan McCain were serious about expanding the Republican party, she might want to spend more time with Yuval Levin, Robert B Helms ( at http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all,scholarID.29/scholar.asp ) and Lawrence Lindsey (at http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all,scholarID.81/scholar.asp ), and less time trying to chase social conservatives out of the party or into silence.

The problem is that like a lot of media annointed "moderate" Republicans, she is a  lot more interested in social liberalism (or maybe just anti-social conservatism) than in economic conservatism and in fighting an intraparty civil war than in expanding the party.