Conservatives

[Disclosure: I worked with the Doug Hoffman campaign. However, the views here are my own. I have not discussed this at all with the Hoffman campaign.]

The bottom line on NY-23:

• Doug Hoffman just won the Republican Primary. The general election is next year.

• There are two broken, corrupt, arrogant political parties we need to defeat.  We beat the Republican establishment in 2009.  We'll beat the Democratic Party in 2010.

• NY-23 is not really about Conservatives VS Moderates.  It is about the Establishment VS the Movement.

What happened in NY-23:

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that blue state Republicans had to nominate a "not too hot, not too cold" candidate - what my friend Max Borders called a Keynesian political strategy of tweaking the policy variables until you get a candidate whose positions seem most appealing to the most people.  Like Keynesian economic tinkering, it all works very well....until some fundamental shift reveals the underlying artificiality, and it all falls apart.

Political parties gain power by standing for something appealing.  But when a party gains power, it loses definition.  Rather than standing for something appealing and well-defined, they try to stand for anything appealing enough to win.  But you can only tinker so much before you destroy the brand that people had elected, and then you become the minority again.

The minority is where Parties and movements go to be reborn.  There, they have to figure out who they are, and what their mission is.  You can't storm the castle until you're all facing the same direction and focused on the same goals.  Sometimes - as in NY-23 - that involves telling the establishment "Thank you, but our mission is in another castle" (If I might borrow political wisdom from Super Mario Bros).

The establishment GOP - the NY GOP, the NRCC, the RNC and a few prominent Republicans - got behind another establishment GOP type in Dede Scozzafava. In any other recent year, she would have sailed through.  Not in 2009.

The public - including moderates, libertarians and alienated Republicans - has grown much more nervous about Democratic governance.  The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of the sparks that are flying, but it goes far deeper than that, and the establishment GOP has been oblivious to, or dismissive of, these sparks. With Dede Scozzafava, the establishment Republican Party threw gasoline on top of the sparks and a brushfire erupted.  The result was the quintessential "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" campaign of Doug Hoffman.

What NY-23 Is About

The story of NY-23 is not "conservatives beat moderates" or "conservative loses to Democrat".

The story of NY-23 is "the Right starts dismantling the Republican establishment."  This is about how the Republican Party is defined and who defines it.

Right now, the movement wants the Republican Party to be defined by opposition to big government. Gradually, as new leaders arise, we will demand that the Republican Party be defined by its own solutions, as well, but rebuilding is an incremental process. We can hammer out the policy agenda and the boundaries of the coalition later.

For now, our job is to disrupt the establishment GOP.  If we beat Democrats while we're at it, great. But the first priority is to fix the Drunk Party - the Living Dead establishment Republicans. They're history. They just don't know it yet.

NY-23 was the first shot in that war.  It was a direct hit.  Next year, we start storming the castle.

Everyone assumes Scozzafava's exit from the race guarantees Hoffman's victory.  Why?  If her 20 percent move to Owens instead of Hoffman, the Democrats get a blowout victory.

So what reason would a Scozzafava supporter have to move right instead of left?  Vocal conservatives have gone out of their way to insult moderates, denigrate them as RINOs and do everything possible to make clear they are not wanted or needed in the Republican party.  Putting Scozzaffava's scalp on the wall is being protrayed as a major victory for conservatives over moderates.  Now they are counting on these same moderates to put party loyalty over ideological preferences and swing their 20 percent of the vote to Hoffman instead of Owens. 

If I ived in New York 23, I would be voting for Hoffman regardless of whether Scozzafava stayed in the race or got out; but I would also recognize the legitimate place for moderates in the Republican party.  I would also be spending the next 2 days trying to communicate with Scozzafava moderates rather than attacking them and definately put an end to the victory dances over her electoral corpse.

In Virginia, Bob Mcdonnell has maintained open respectful communicatin between conservatives and moderates.  He is stomping the liberals into the ground.  In New York 23 Conservatives have persued a scorched earth campaign against the moderates.  On Tuesday, we will learn whether or not they have gone too far.

Conservatives may win NY23; but I think the Virginia campaign provides a better roadmap for long term progress.

He has baffled the mainstream news media and taken the Senate Democrats by surprise, all in plain view of the American people. That man is our own U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions.

While the talking heads on network TV for weeks have warned that Republicans risked losing Latino voters forever if they challenged Judge Sonia Sotomayor during the current nomination hearings, Senator Sessions pulled the wool over their eyes and took a different tack.

His disarming Alabama charm and incisive questioning put Sotomayor on the defensive; she has been in a full retreat from every boneheaded liberal position she's taken. She even tried to stealthily distance herself from her infamous "Wise Latina" remarks of several years ago. Senator Sessions wouldn't let her off the hook.

Not even New York Senator Chuck Schumer's "Mr. Fix-it" tactic could help Sotomayor. The damage was done.

Thanks to Senator Sessions's excellent preparation and coordination with other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor and the Democrats have sustained some direct hits on their credibility in a very public forum. Live television coverage has revealed to American voters just how disengenuous the liberal agenda really is. Legislating from the bench and going against the laws of the land aren't popular with a vast majority of Americans, except for a tiny minority of liberal activists.

Sotomayor is the choice of liberals, especially Democrats in the U.S. Senate who now have 60 members, a filibuster-proof majority. Senator Sessions has so far done a stellar job of making sure the American people have a clear picture of just who this Sonia Sotomayor is and what kind of Supreme Court Justice she will be. For that, we should be most grateful.

As an Alabamian, I am especially proud of the leadership of Senator Jeff Sessions at a time when many are looking for bold Conservative leadership.

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I have listened carefully to the Health Care debate currently raging all across this country.  There are two things that I have realized, after listening to the only people who really count – the American citizens – 1.  Most Americans want more affordable health care, with a wide range of choices and options; 2.  The politicians in Washington continue to ignore the wishes of the people.

Congress and the President continue to focus on a mandated plan, one that will require every American to have health care and will penalize those who don’t, with some politicians advocating fines of up to $1,000 per person, for those who don’t have coverage.  In typical Washington “speak” no one really wants to discuss the cost of such a system, or the reduced care that will surely result.  I don’t believe for a minute that the American people will accept a system like the Canadian system or the system in Great Britain.  A wait of six months for urgently needed tests and surgery is simply unacceptable.  In Canada, many Canadians wait even longer, and end up opting to go to the States for the surgeries they need. 

I believe strongly in the genius of the American people.  They know what kind of care they want and how they expect to pay for it.  They know that they do not want a single payer government operated system.  Why in the world would we trust politicians and bureaucrats in Washington to manage our health care system?  They haven’t been able to handle any of the major problems facing our country.

The American people know that one of the most basic things we need to do as a nation is to teach preventative health care measures in schools and to parents and families.  The key to improving health in America is to create an atmosphere of healthy behavior. Teaching young children how to take care of their bodies and teaching young parents and families the importance of healthy diet and exercise is a starting point.  We need to get our kids out of the habits of eating unhealthy foods and sitting for hours in front of the television or computer. Changing the collective attitude of the American people is vital.  We need to give people information that changes the way they think about an issue. 

Your health is like a dashboard.  If the only thing you ever look at is your speedometer, and you don’t bother to look at the oil gauge and the water gauge, you can get into serious trouble.  You may think, “hey, I’m going the speed limit” but that’s not the point.  That’s how fast your car is going, not how well it’s running.  Health is the same way – you can’t just focus on weight – you need to look at your cholesterol levels, hemoglobin AIC, blood sugar and blood pressure as well.

No, preventative health care measures won’t reduce the cost of health care, at least for a generation, but it is a necessary step.  We must also take steps to reduce the costs of employer provided health care.  Our businesses can’t compete in a global market when they face demands from employees for more and more coverage without any regard for the costs.  That is simply human nature – when a person isn’t paying for something, they want the very best they can get.  I believe that we must transition from an employer based system to a consumer based system. 

Right now, health care in America is reactive and is geared towards intervening in catastrophic situations.  We should be focusing on preventing those situations from occurring.  The whole system is upside down.  It’s like our government is focused on putting Humpty Dumpty back together again instead of keeping him from falling off the wall.  Our healthcare system is based on a broken egg concept.

Tax credits, reform of medical liability, adopting electronic record keeping, expanding health savings accounts, making health insurance tax deductible, and making health insurance more portable from one job to another, and from state to state all will help lower costs and make health insurance more affordable.  We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care.  We do need more individual control of health care options. 

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Not to undermine the administrators since apparently my log-in had been blocked, but for any members of this organization which claims to be a conservative site and which is in some areas would like to email me with any questions on Barry Goldwater or John McCain (since I lived in Arizona over 45 years, and campaigned for Senator Goldwater, and graduated one year ahead of Cindy McCain from the same grammar and high school), please let me know.

I am an expert on both "Republicans" and also was a member of the Republican Party for many years, until the first Bush, and also have much local information about both candidates that is a little more enlightening than what you will find in the media.

My blog is also available for any interested Constitutionalists, at www.backupamerica.org.

Good luck to you on your mission of the "Next Right," but I do think the Republican and Democratic labels are long, long dead.  And Goldwater and McCain are as different as night and day, and after Keating, Senator Goldwater did not have much good to say about Senator McCain - and that "general" information can be found online.

Oh, and there are many, many homeless veterans in Arizona now due to the support Senator McCain has for the illegals along with Ms. Napolitano, who was also my Governor for six, , and for which blame can be laid directly on his misrepresentation of Arizonans on this issue for years - so much so that Phoenix now has the distinction as the "Kidnapping Capitol of the World."

If any are interested in either the blog, or any further information on the fractured party, Arizona is fundamental in what has occurred there, since Senator McCain really was not an Arizonan, but a politician who simply moved to Arizona after his marriage to an Arizona native.

Again, good luck on trying to change this beleagured party, but there is not a shred of true "Republicanism" left in it at this point, and has not been for quite some time.

 I'm relatively new to this website, so feel free to disagree with what I'm saying.  However, particularly in the last week, I have noticed the level of constructive dialogue in the comments threads dropping rapidly as partisan anger increases.  Several posters seem intent on using nothing but ad hominem attacks instead of calmly and intelligently addressing their legitimate policy and philosophical differences.

It is not my role to police this forum, nor would I want to do so: I am just an observer and an infrequent commentator here.  However, I am grateful to have this forum as a place to read constructive ideas about the growth and development of conservative politics, and this forum is tainted when it becomes nothing but a pissing contest between who can repeat their mindless invective the most times.  This applies equally to posters on both sides of the political aisle.  

I have no authority here, and I would not be surprised to see the comments thread on this post filled with angry comments denouncing me for saying this.  That's cool.  All I am suggesting is that we focus on issues rather than personal attacks.  Hell, we're all anonymous on here anyway, and it's not like anyone is running for office, so we should feel free to discuss issues without being burdened by trying to tear down anyone personally.

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated” -Mark Twain

The Republican party is undergoing a rapid and drastic change. As we speak, all sorts of factions vie and joust for preeminence within a party that seems to be deflating overnight. People associated with the party for a long time look about them in disbelief, as if after an airplane crash where there seems nothing at all recognizable left of the original vehicle, just little pieces strewn as far as the eye can see.

It is speculated that the GOP have become the new Whigs, and will inevitably be cast aside in favor of a one party state into the foreseeable future. Of course, this sort of speculation is frivolous.

What happened to the GOP becomes clear with the benefit of some distance from the tremendous shifts of the 2006 and 2008 elections. It is linked to a massive shift across the board amongst our media, political class, and intelligentsia that has been so big as to have gone almost unnoticed until now.

The problem with the GOP from an electoral perspective in both 2006 and 2008 stem from a fairly simple source, but that source is deeply rooted and readjustment will inevitably be painful.

As a Congressional staffer, I worked on Capitol Hill, and saw the GOP leadership in the House from a relatively close vantage point. As a member of my generation, and coming as I do from California, I found the culture of Washington DC to be unique, and that found within Republican areas of Congress even more so. That is the first clue as to what went wrong for the party

Washington is anachronistic. The culture is a leftover from an earlier age. While the rest of the nation is culturally very firmly in the 21st century, the area inside the Washington DC beltway is probably approaching the 1980s or so. This cultural divide is a result of necessity, it is the natural effect of the machine that Washington is and the function it serves.

For decades, we were every bit the Republic. We sent our representatives to Washington based largely on our estimate of their judgment, with no idea what issues they may have to face in the years until the next election, and we judged them based on what we thought that they had done, based largely on the reports of a few media outlets and the statements they released themselves. Since the machinery for more direct government simply did not exist, this was the best system we could use, and it worked quite well for a very long time.

In the resulting culture within Washington itself, something I call the “cult of the gentleman”, and more negative people describe as an “old boy’s club” developed. It was the logical creation of our very political system, and it too had it’s uses. In this system, a person sent to Washington had to be a “gentleman” to get anything done. A gentleman was somebody who was first and foremost loyal to his friends, who stood absolutely on his word to his close associates, and who closed deals with a handshake, not a contract, and certainly never a press release. Because representatives were there to act as independent agents on behalf of the voters, and could receive but little input from those voters thanks to distance and technological limitations, they were effectively on their own. They had to rely on their own judgment exclusively, and since the landscape of Washington is composed of other such persons, the first skill they had to know was how to be a gentleman, so as to get along with the other Washingtonians, so that they could get something done; because you could not accomplish anything if you could not sign others on to your initiatives.

This is where “horse trading” comes from. Elected agents would agree to support one another, just as bloggers today mutually link to one another for support. One would vote for the bill his friend proposed, not based on the contents of that bill, but based on his relationship to it’s author. In return, one of his bills would be supported. This was logical, since politicians could rely on face to face contact with people they spoke to every day, and had to rely on one another’s word, just as their constituents relied on them based on their word.

What has happened in the last ten years is a technological revolution in America that is easily as significant as the opening of the first newspaper presses in the American Colonies. This change was rapid, and it has not yet reached the full extent of it’s tremendous impact on our whole civilization. Suddenly, average voters are able to track, through a constant stream of information coming onto the internet, the activity of their representatives in far greater detail than ever before. Suddenly people could speak back quickly and efficiently in real time, and they could use the internet to organize rallies and political activities all by themselves, coming together like the crystal in saline solution; spontaneously, with only a small spark.

In the old Washington, you voted for the bill your friend proposed because he was close and your constituents were far away. It is quickly changing into a situation where your constituents are close and your friend is far away; separated by the barriers to human interaction we all experience as information flows at us in an ever increasing stream. This utterly changes the paradigm for Washingtonians, but they are the last to realize it.

What we ourselves do not realize is the extent to which this has shifted the political game in the United States. Nor do we understand how irrevocable that shift has been. Both the Democrat and Republican parties have for many decades had two fundamental factions within their ranks; “personality politicians” and “ideology politicians”. To a greater or lesser extent, virtually every politician of any party can be placed in one of these two categories.

A personality politician runs on his personality, he makes the case that he can be trusted with the power to represent a given region because of his inherent judgment, character, or wisdom. The ideology politician makes the case that his ideology (which he will elaborate if he wants to be successful) is one which most closely represents the people of his district. This is a divide long understood and written about by political scientists; the obligation of a politician to try to accurately represent his constituents or the obligation of a politician to use his own judgment. There is no one answer to this, it is not black and white, and a politician will always have to strike some balance between what he perceives to be the will of his constituents and what he perceives to be the right thing to do.

As a result of far greater technical ability to follow every word and action of politicians, via people recording them with cellphone cameras, vloggers following them with palmcorders, and the old established leakers and journalists of days gone by, we have become a far more well informed body politic than previously. The result is the triumph of the ideological politician over the gentleman politician.

Now, traditionally, an ideologue was mistrusted in Washington, because they necessarily saw everything through the lens of their ideology. Nobody wanted to work with a guy who lived his life as a result of a political ideology. Why is this? Just think about it, you may vote for a guy who does nothing but spout his political ideology, and who becomes fiery and enraged when somebody strays from the political line, but would you want to have a drink with him in the Republican Club (or local bar)? Even more to the point; would you want that guy in your living room all the time? No, gentlemen, though ideologically slippery, were far and away more congenial to be around, and even when standing in opposition to you, were ready to go out for cocktails after the day’s joust was over. Thus, ideologues gained a reputation as people who couldn’t be taken seriously. They could raise an angry mob back home, but in DC, they couldn’t get anything done, because they estranged people.

But you say, if we are “closer” now to our politicians than we were, shouldn’t the gentlemen be rewarded for being personable? In answer, I ask if you have ever read the comments on your average youtube posting. We do not consider the internet to be equivalent to sitting in the bar with someone or we wouldn’t treat online postings the way we would a bathroom wall at a truck stop. We would never think to write on any part of our homes what we write on online forums. No, we are incredibly critical, often hostile, and always highly ideological when online, and are personable, quiet, neighborly, and uninterested in politics when we meet our neighbors mowing their lawns. That is the America of the 21st century.

Simply put; he is rewarded who can consistently put forth an ideology and intelligently defend it, and is rewarded more to the extent that that ideology is broad and consistently fits with the facts of our world. What a gentleman politician can explain eye to eye in a cocktail lounge inside the Beltway sounds like absurd flip-flopping when he explains it in writing to an online critic. In this environment, ideology is king.

The Democratic party has already dealt with this revolution, but the GOP is only going through this transition now. Back in the late 1990s, I was very surprised at the degree to which the Democratic party was beginning to drift leftward. This accelerated rapidly after President Clinton left office, and I was puzzled, and incorrectly assumed (based on 20th century political calculus) that as they moved hard to the left, they would alienate the center, which they needed for national office.

You saw personality politicians in the Democratic party left behind (Sen. Joe Lieberman is a perfect example). I knew something significant was going on when the Democrats could nominate Lieberman as Vice Presidential nominee for the 2000 election, only to abandon him as too centrist in 2006. How could a party move that much, ideologically speaking, in so short a time? How could Al Gore run as hard left as he could, for as long as he could and still be sidelined and honestly be probably too moderate for today’s Democratic party? How could Hillary Clinton have been undermined and ultimately toppled from the left in 2008? Even more interesting is why the Democrats could move so hard to the left and win such a big majority in the 2008 election if the entire nation has not shifted very much?

Clinton lost in 2008 because she was using the old calculus; you have to win the middle, and personality is more important than consistent ideology. Simply put, in the no holds barred debate forum of today’s America, a politician who consistently maintains a single ideological stance over time will win out over one who does not. Just consider the case of the criticism of Hillary’s vote on the Iraq war. Just look at Barack Obama’s voting record. He is as rock-ribbed liberal as you can be. With so many easy to use online rating systems and sites that describe every vote a politician ever made, it is easy for bloggers and pundits, and anybody else to look at a voting record boiled down to hard facts. It is easier to defend a consistent record from critics who disagree with your premises than to defend an inconsistent record from people who question your judgment.

If we analyze any one vote to make a demonstration, we should look at the most important vote cast by the Republican majority since the decision concerning the Iraq war; the financial services bailout vote of August 2008. In this vote, the GOP was split. The party divided neatly between those who stood by the Bush administration, and those who stood by Republican ideology. Tradition would dictate that a party stand by a guy they had gone to lunches with and spoken to face to face, and who was probably 75% kosher ideologically from a GOP standpoint, not that they would throw an old colleague and fellow gentleman to the wolves the first time he makes a major break from the party line. Tradition was wildly out of date in 2008, as the Democrats, still reeling from their own internal bloodbath, knew perfectly well.

The Republicans were left behind because of the nature of being in power in Washington. Remember where I said the Democratic shift accelerated after the end of Clinton’s Presidency? When a party is in power, they are very busy; they are working with other members of their party inside Washington. Ideas are bouncing from the Republicans in the House and Senate to the White House, back over to the Congress, and being churned over and put into laws or discarded. The fast pace, and volume of work to be done in running our nation do not allow a lot of time for reflection. White House staff consider it normal to suffer a rolling staff turnover as people burn out after a year or two in those conditions. In this environment, with the best and brightest in a party occupied by their jobs, there is no time or energy left for a rethinking of the party itself, and traditionally, this has led to a party too long in power getting out of touch with the country.

In this case, it isn’t just a matter of being out of touch, but a small matter of the most significant communications revolution since radio taking place across the world. The Democratic party was out of power and therefore subject to the rapid changes. This was well documented by the media, who speak of the “netroots” movement. What is not being considered is the truth that this revolution in two way communications is not limited to the left wing in politics, nor is the Internet as a whole liberal; certainly, despite the impressions given by early internet being linked to academia, it is far less liberal than the major conventional media outlets such as newspapers or television.

This brings me to predictions. We see today that the steady, individually tiny, and collectively overwhelming pressures of rapid feedback are utterly transforming our conventional media. Newspapers are increasingly obsolete. If a columnist wishes to be heard, he can make a blog like everybody else and his writing will stand on it’s own merit, not his ability to fight a bureaucratic battle within a little news company hierarchy. If he complains that he needs money, let him make a blog as well. Successful bloggers have found ways to make more money blogging than the average columnist makes writing columns. We, the blogosphere, feel no pity for the newspapers.

Major television, no matter how big the mother company, is not immune. MSNBC was moved further faster, but we see CNN also polarizing in their editorial outlook hard to the left, while Fox polarizes more and more to the right. All the media outlets are giving up the idea of “objective” journalism in favor of the far more honest understanding that everybody has some kind of bias one way or another and it is better for everybody if that bias is known in advance and not concealed. This is precisely what is effecting politics as well. We want reliability and predictability from our politicians and news anchors, not so much personality. This was the death of John McCain, whose war hero record was necessarily non-ideological, and therefore necessarily irrelevant to the principal debate. While Obama could defend a consistent stance, even if it was no the same as the majority of the country, McCain had none. We respect those we disagree with utterly but who honestly believe what they believe and stick to their guns; we do not respect those who seem to have no philosophy whatever.

This is why the GOP seemed like the party of the old boy’s club. This is why the party seemed to have no ideology at all. This is why the GOP leadership seemed to betray the country on the most important legislation in a lifetime, when it so obviously was opposite their ideological stance against out of control government, and it is why the Democrats are veering so hard to the left in so many ways in so short a time.

McCain lost the Presidency when he came back to Washington, suspended his campaign, the nation held it’s breath, and then instead of siding with the vast majority of voters against both an unpopular President Bush and his opponent, he simply echoed both of them on the bailout issue, losing his credibility and watching his poll numbers evaporate. At that moment, his campaign was lost and they knew it.

As a result of this new world, the GOP will re-form. It will do so even if it does not want to, but will be forced to by the will of the American people to have some check on the other party. The Republican ranks will be purged of those who cannot consistently defend their ideology or even explain what it is. Gentlemen will be brutally dropped, just as we saw in the bloodbath that left a former Democratic nominee for Vice President end up supporting the opposite party’s nominee for President only eight years later. What happened amongst Democrats will now happen on an accelerated time scale with the GOP, and it will look messy, but in the end, the party will be reborn far more fit, far more in tune with today’s America, and ultimately, since we have not lurched to the left as a nation, with very good prospects considering that all this is taking place in a center-right country.

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It is interesting to note how liberals, when discussing some problem, often speak in terms of programs in order to fix those problems.  Got a housing problem?  Start an affordable housing program.  Got a hunger problem?  Start a nutrition program.  Got an energy problem?  Start a renewable energy program.  These programs are, of course, intended to fix the problems for which they were designed to address.   Consider housing; specifically, the current problem of high foreclosure rates.  Obama has proposed dealing with foreclosures with his housing program.  If an individual wanted to take advantage of this plan, he/she would have to meet the qualifications.  The intention, of course, is that those needing the help would meet the qualifications.  But that isn't always going to be the case.  Some people who ought to be helped won't qualify, for one reason or another; and some people who oughtn't be helped will still qualify anyway.   To use an analogy, government is attempting to cast a wide net to catch fish; no matter how big the net, government won't be able to catch all the fish, and it will end up catching some turtles too.

But if you think about it, "the housing problem" is really composed of a bunch of little problems.  "The housing problem" includes Bob & Judy and their family who, sadly, are being foreclosed on because Bob just lost his job and Judy was just diagnosed with cancer and now has huge medical bills.  That's sad and these people are worthy of help.  But "the housing problem" also includes Vince the house-flipper who got in over his head and now is looking to be bailed out from his bad choices.  "The housing problem" includes Reginald the owner of beachfront resort housing who is rich enough to weather the housing bubble, but, if the government is going to be handing out free money, is more than happy to take a share of it.  "The housing problem" includes Farmer Joe who, during the days of $4/gal gas, put all his eggs in the ethanol boom, and, now, finds himself and his farm overleveraged and doesn't know if he'll be able to keep his farm that's been in his family for generations.  Will Obama's housing program help all these people?  Will Obama's housing program help any of these people?  Maybe 3 out of 4?  We don't really know.

So, naturally, conservatives complain that Obama's program will end up helping people like Vince and Reginald (possibly), and liberals defend Obama's program pointing out that it will help people like Bob & Judy and Farmer Joe (probably).  Conservatives and liberals scream at each other: "You want to bail out the irresponsible!"  "You want to throw poor people into the streets!"  But this shouting match misses the real problem inherent in Obama's housing program, or any housing program for that matter.  To use the fishing analogy again, it's not that government is casting the net too wide, or is using too fine a mesh of net, to catch aquatic life that shouldn't be caught.  The real problem is that government is using only one net.  It has conceived of the problem in the singular form - "the housing problem" - and has designed a singular solution in order to fix it.  Sure the solution may have different components with different strategies, but it is still conceived in response to a singular problem.

And herein lies the real contrast between conservatives and liberals.  We conservatives are less inclined to view these problems as singular nouns.  We understand that there is no single best solution to any of these problems; what will help Bob & Judy will probably not help Farmer Joe, and vice-versa.

So what is government to do?  Well, government could, in principle, tailor its solution to meet the needs of each individual person who ought to be helped.  With the fishing analogy, it would be equivalent to throwing away the net and individually selecting each fish to be caught.  And this solution, while possible in principle, is just not feasible.  Besides, a government which had this sort of immense power is not one that I care to live with.  So this is why conservatives are knee-jerk opposed to new government programs. It's not that we don't want "the housing problem" to be solved.  It's that the government program won't actually solve the real underlying problems (plural) for which it has been designed to solve.

 This is something I've been grappling with for a while.  Any suggestions or advice would be most welcome.

The Conservative Paradox (note: this is equally problematic for liberals as well; just flip the factors around and you have the same situation)

Conservatives believe in limited government: people work best when they are unconstrained, and government should be as small as possible to minimize restraints and allow people to live their lives as they so choose.  We endorse this behavior particularly in the marketplace, as we believe the free market allocates resources much more effectively than government oversight.  Even if some types of spending are irresponsible or even morally wrong, the free market punishes and rewards behavior better than the government does, so it should be left to act unfettered.

But...

A good majority of conservatives believe that the government should regulate moral behavior such as same-sex marriage, abortion, drug use, etc.  We believe that these practices are inherently wrong and threaten society at large, and that a responsible government eradicates these ills by outlawing them.  

So...

If I have stated these two goals correctly, they seem to contradict each other on their face: in one instance we want a small and non-intrusive government, and on the other we want a powerful and far-reaching government.  Why do we feel that people are perfectly capable of economic self-governance but need the government to make their moral decisions for them?  (The flip side is equally damning for liberals: why can you trust people to make their own moral decisions but don't trust them to know how to spend their money?)

Personally, I do have deep personal beliefs about the moral issues that the culture wars have been and are being fought over.  Having said that, though, I feel uncomfortable with granting the government the power to make these decisions.  I don't really want Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi deciding my moral convictions, and would rather that be a private decision informed by my church, my family, my own reading, etc.  

Any comments, thoughts, criticisms, etc. are welcome.

I am still trying to digest what everyone agrees was an important speech by Rush Limbaugh to CPAC attendees on Saturday. It was, perhaps, the most entertaining political speech I've ever heard. But a speech that will last for decades and make an impact on the conservative movement? No one knows. But we can try and judge it based on some solid principles of what makes a good political speech.

I have often pointed to Theodore H. White's definition of what goes into the making of a good political speech - the moment in history when the speech is given, the background or "framing" of the speech, and the words themselves. In these respects, Limbaugh hit a stand up double and, with a little more effort, may have stretched it to a triple. The moment in history was ripe; conservatism at sea, rudderless, and uncertain of itself in the age of Obama. The backdrop - the CPAC convention with just about everyone who is anyone in the conservative movement present and paying attention (exceptions include some more moderate conservatives frozen out by the movement) as well as mass media coverage. But the words themselves meandered aimlessly at times as Limbaugh treated the address more like an extended monologue from his radio show rather than a well crafted, carefully thought out political speech.

Newt Gingrich also spoke to a large, enthusiastic crowd at CPAC but didn't get half the coverage of Limbaugh despite a speech that, in many ways, was even more important than Rush's tour de force. The difference in the two speeches was striking. Rush eschewed a teleprompter - to his detriment I think while Newt used the device to say exactly what he meant to say. Meanwhile, Gingrich had his ideas bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, churning and frothing on the surface until they were laid out like a picnic lunch, cogently and coherently by a master conceptualist. Limbaugh's speech was more volcanic- erupting against Obama and the Democrats emotionally while flowing effortlessly from pop culture conservatism to a more thoughtful but still generalized critique of the Obama administration.

The juvenile confrontation yesterday between Limbaugh and RNC Chairman Michael Steele, placed in the context of Limbaugh's extended remarks at CPAC, would lead one to believe that there is the possibility of a civil war erupting in the GOP between the grass roots and the elites. That may yet happen. However, I think it much more likely that war will break out between movement conservatives like Gingrich and "party men" like Limbaugh.

Who is Rush Limbaugh? And why did the only other speech of note at the conference - New Gingrich's much more thoughtful but flawed critique of conservatism - not receive the massive attention devoted to Limbaugh?