Category Archives: Politics

Going for the political jugular

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One doesn’t usually see this sort of willingness to scrap in Republican politicians. It’s a feisty and effective ad, and one which stands out from the usual run of political advertising in that it actually gives some sense of the candidate’s personality. (Pictures of candidates with family and dogs and/or doing heartwarming things don’t count; that’s just boilerplate.)

The odd thing, if I have my facts right, is that this guy is a primary challenger to a Republican incumbent—though a recent convert, Parker Griffith, who was elected in ’08 as a freshman Democrat. Interesting to see this sort of approach from someone who doesn’t even have his party’s nomination yet. It’s a good way to go, I think.

Why can’t we vote these people out before the ethics charges?

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Two weeks ago today, I cast my GOP primary vote here in Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District for Bob Thomas, who I thought had a real chance to beat the incumbent, Rep. Mark Souder. Ever since moving here, I’ve been hearing Rep. Souder denounced—by conservatives, mind you—as the worst sort of Republican; the only reason he won re-election last time around is that people held their noses and marked his name to beat his pro-card-check Democratic opponent. If Republican voters around here had felt they had the luxury of throwing away a Republican vote in the House, they would have sent him home. Running up to the primary, there was an anti-Souder direct mail campaign going, and anti-Souder TV ads . . . unfortunately, there were also too many challengers, and he took the primary with a plurality. I thought Thomas had a chance to win because he had the money to advertise, but the best he could do was a third of the vote, and that wasn’t good enough; Rep. Souder won.

IN-3 looks pretty stupid for that now.

Eight-term Rep. Mark Souder will announce his resignation Tuesday after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female aide who worked in his district office, Fox News has learned.

Multiple senior House sources indicated that the extent of the affair with the 45-year-old staffer would have landed Souder before the House Ethics Committee.

You know, if all the conservative challengers had been willing to get together, unite behind one of their number, and focus on the big picture rather than trying to grab the brass ring for themselves, we wouldn’t be in this mess. If conservatives can’t even put principle ahead of personal gain at this level, how in the name of all that is right and good are we ever going to reform this blasted party?

Man, I hope Chuck DeVore is paying attention . . .

Meeting the challenge

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In our politically and culturally polarized society, those who care about issues—whether political or theological—tend to end up divided into parties, labeled accordingly, associated with the like-minded, and expected not to deviate. The assumptions of our “side” exist not to be challenged; the questions and challenges of the other “side” (or “sides”) exist to be defeated by whatever means necessary. This is unfortunate, because none of us is perfect; even if we do have the big things right (something which we can never simply assume), we’re bound to have lots of the details wrong, by virtue both of the fact that we still sin and of the fact that we’re limited in our understanding. To catch our errors, we do well to accept the help of those who are most motivated to point them out to us: namely, those people who think we’re wrong about everything.

In the current issue of Touchstone, Christopher Killheffer writes about this with respect to the Christian response to atheism. As he says, when Christians respond to atheists with hostility and the refusal to listen,

aside from what we’re losing in the public debate, we are also missing an opportunity to grow in our own faith, and perhaps even to have our faith purified. If we listen to atheist messages with curiosity rather than defensiveness, we will find that many of them are not simply poking us in the eye; their content is often interesting and may possibly even be useful in helping us better understand what we do and do not believe.

He illustrates his point well from C. S. Lewis and Benedict XVI, showing their willingness to listen seriously to the challenge of atheism, and thus to use it as an opportunity to sharpen and strengthen and purify their faith. As he says, we need that; and if we don’t let those who disagree with us ask us the hard questions, who will?

Your Attorney General at work (updated)

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I posted a comment on this on a friend’s Facebook page and thought I’d note this here as well. It is honestly bewildering to me the way the Left refuses to recognize that the anti-Western wing of Islam, particularly its jihadists, is adamantly opposed to all that liberals profess to believe and hold dear. I don’t want to jump to the negative conclusion and assume that they’re all either moral cowards or secretly enamored of Islam’s totalitarian impulses, so I keep looking for a more charitable interpretation . . . but so far, I have failed to find one.

Update: Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News has an excellent column up about this, pointing out an important truth:

About the same time Holder was refusing to utter the threat that cannot be named in the Obama administration, security officials in Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim nation and third-largest democracy—foiled a plot to assassinate the president and top officials, massacre foreigners in a Mumbai-style attack and create a state governed by Shariah, or Islamic law.

That last goal provides a clue as to who was behind this violent conspiracy, though Attorney General Holder may not be able to recognize it. But it is important to do so because in spite of 9-11, Times Square and every event in between, Americans are not the primary victims of Islamic extremism. Muslims are.

Over the past decade, radical Islamists have carried out successful terrorist attacks in Amman, Baghdad, Casablanca, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Riyadh and Sharm el-Sheikh, to name a few Muslim targets. Muslim civilians and leaders, such as Benazir Bhutto, are their principal casualties. In the countries and forbidden zones where they have been able to establish Shariah rule, Muslim women are treated like chattel, Muslim gays are summarily executed and Muslim girls are doomed to illiteracy and honor killings.

America may be radical Islam’s fount of all evil. But more often than not, citizens of Muslim nations are their first prey.

Holder and the president he serves do no favor to the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims when they refuse to identify our common enemy. You can’t delegitimize what you won’t even acknowledge exists.

Watching the storm roll in

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There has been a lot written trying to project the outcome of this fall’s elections—a task which, as the inestimable Jay Cost has noted, is a lot harder than some people seem to think; but even Cost, who has said his answer to that is “I really don’t know,” opens his latest post by quoting Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain.” Following a list of the troubles career politicians have been having this year, he writes,

This is the thunder on the mountain, the early warning that something bad is about to blow through the District of Columbia. I don’t think there’s anything anybody there can do about it. The people have a limited role in this government—but where the people do possess power, they are like a force of nature. They cannot be stopped.

His colleague at RealClearPolitics, Sean Trende, mapped out the November landscape as it looks from here and concluded,

I think those who suggest that the House is barely in play, or that we are a long way from a 1994-style scenario are missing the mark. A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility—not merely a far-fetched scenario—that Democratic losses could climb into the 80 or 90-seat range. The Democrats are sailing into a perfect storm of factors influencing a midterm election, and if the situation declines for them in the ensuing months, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Democratic losses eclipse 100 seats.

Though Cost is right about the difficulty of prediction in this environment, because we really don’t have anything like good comparables on which to base a meaningful prediction, Trende lays out a compelling argument for his position. Of particular interest is this, from the end of his piece:

The problem for the Democrats is that these voters are packed into a relatively few states and Congressional districts nationwide, diluting their vote share. This is why the median Congressional district is an R+2 district. Thus, the President could have a relatively healthy overall approval rating, but still be fairly unpopular in swing states and districts. The increased enthusiasm that Obama generated among minorities, the young and the liberal is useful, but only if it is realized in conjunction with Democratic approval in a few other categories.

President Obama’s policy choices to date are wreaking havoc on the brand that Democrats cultivated carefully over the past twenty years. Bill Clinton worked long and hard to make it so that voters could say “fiscal conservative” and “Democrat” in the same sentence, but voters are finding it difficult to say that again.

If brand damage is truly seeping over into Congressional races—and the polling suggests it is—then the Democrats are in very, very deep trouble this election. There is a very real risk that they could be left with nothing more than Obama’s base among young, liberal, and minority voters, which is packed into relatively few Congressional districts. It would be the Dukakis map transformed onto the Congressional level, minus the support in Appalachia. That would surely result in the Democratic caucus suffering huge losses, and in turn produce historic gains for the GOP this November.

Now, anyone who’s read much of anything I’ve written on politics has probably figured out that I’m a pretty conservative sort when it comes to politics; so you might think I’d be rubbing my hands with glee at this prospect. You’d be wrong. In fact, I have significant misgivings about it. To understand why, go back to Cost; after predicting a popular revolt at the voting booth this fall, he says,

That’s bad news for the establishment this year. They’re going to wake up on the morning of November 3rd and be reminded of who is actually in charge of this country.

Democrats will be hit much, much harder than Republicans. Even so, it would be a huge mistake to interpret the coming rebuke through a strictly ideological or partisan lens. Yet predictably, that’s what many will do. Republicans will see this as a historic rejection of Barack Obama’s liberalism, just as they saw the 1994 revolution as a censure of Bill Clinton, and just as Democrats saw 2006 and 2008 as admonishments of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. These interpretations are only half right. When the people are angry at the way the government is being managed, and they are casting about for change, their only option is the minority party. The partisans of the minority are quick to interpret this as their holy invitation to the promised land, but that’s not what it really is about. They were only given the promotion because the people had no other choice.

The entire political class needs to understand that the coming events transcend ideology and partisanship. The electoral wave of 2010 will have been preceded by the waves of 2006 and 2008. That will make three electoral waves in a row, affecting both parties and conservative and liberal politicians alike. The American people are sending the establishment a message: we’re angry at the way you are running our government; fix it or you’ll be next to go.

That’s right on, and I don’t think the GOP establishment (or at least most of them) get this. I don’t think they get it because I don’t think they want to. Let’s be blunt here: the Republican Party absolutely deserved the electoral repudiation it got in 2006 and 2008, and maybe even worse than it got. It deserved it because it had abandoned its principles, its philosophy, its ethics, and its commitments, in favor of enjoying power and the fruits that attend thereunto; the hard slap in the face from the voters was well-earned, and should have come as a real wakeup call. I’m not at all convinced it has. As I wrote a few months ago,

I had hoped that the GOP would really internalize the lessons of its defeats in 2006 and 2008, enough to be humbled and chastened, before regaining power, and I really don’t see that as having happened; rather, the misplays, miscues, and mismanagement by the White House that prompted Mortimer Zuckerman to declare that the President “has done everything wrong” have handed them a shot at a political recovery that they have by no means earned. This is very worrisome to me. . . . If they do wind up back in the majority, they’re likely to wind up right back to the behaviors that got them wiped out in the first place. I believe, to be blunt, that that’s exactly what the Beltway GOP is hoping for.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind on that. If 2010 does turn out to be another “wave” election, it will sweep back into (some) power a GOP establishment that’s likely to go right back to carrying on the way they were doing before the voters turned them out. What we need here is not change between the parties, but change within the parties; we’ll likely continue to see power bouncing back and forth between them until we get that, or until something else happens and the current system breaks down.

This in a nutshell is the biggest single reason I support Gov. Palin: she isn’t a part of the machine, and she has a solid history of opposing business as usual in our political system, in her own party no less than in the other one. I applaud her for working to build up and support candidates who similarly are not creatures of or beholden to the political machine, and I devoutly hope she’s correctly picking people who have the character, gumption and understanding to continue to stand against that machine and against business as usual. We need her; we need more people like her in politics—on the liberal side of the aisle no less than on the conservative. Indeed, it may well be that there is no greater need in American politics right now than a Democratic Party equivalent to Sarah Palin. Without more folks like that, the storm that’s coming may ultimately sweep away more than just several dozen political careers that will never be missed.

(Cross-posted at Conservatives4Palin)

The clash of self-righteousness

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Of all the things poisoning our public discourse these days, I think the one that irritates me the most is the assumption—by people on both sides of our political divide—that we and our side (whichever side we stand on) are morally superior because of the policy positions we take. This is of course accompanied by denigration (sometimes sliding to contemptuous mockery) of the other side’s claims to moral superiority. This is, I think, just one more example of the human desire to look down on other people; it’s the use of dogmatic self-righteousness as a justification for arrogance and pride (which is why it so often goeth before a fall). The truth is, if you select a group based on any normal human characteristic—by their job, college, age, gender, pick one—you’ll find saints and knaves both, and a lot of pretty mediocre people in between, in a typical distribution; selecting by political persuasion is no different. Confusing Republicans for Christians or Democrats for right-thinking people (or the flip side of that) is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Of course, I would like to be able to say that the church is an exception to that typical distribution. In some places, it no doubt is. In America, in far too many places, it isn’t. It ought to be, but it isn’t. We must grieve our Lord something fierce; and yet, in spite of everything, Jesus loves the church.

You say that you believe in us—at times, I wonder why . . .

The Golden State in the spotlight

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One of the most interesting stories in politics right now has to be the California Senate race. On the Republican side, Sarah Palin has once again shown her unpredictable streak by endorsing, not the favorite of movement conservatives, California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, but former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who is tainted in the eyes of many conservatives by her association with John McCain. Gov. Palin’s endorsement surprised and irritated a number of folks on the Right, but she has good reasons for it:

I’d like to tell you about a Commonsense Conservative running for office in California this year. She grew up in a modest home with a school teacher dad, worked her way through several colleges, and then entered an arena where few women had tread. Through a combination of hard work, perseverance, and common sense, she proved the naysayers wrong to reach the top of her field, where she led with distinction—facing hard truths, making tough decisions, and showing real leadership through a rocky transition period. Where others had failed, her company had weathered the storm and settled on a stronger new foundation. . . .

Carly is the Commonsense Conservative that California needs and our country could sure use in these trying times. Most importantly, she’s running for the right reasons. She has an understanding that is sorely lacking in D.C. She’s not a career politician. She’s a businesswoman who has run a major corporation. She knows how to really incentivize job creation. Her fiscal conservatism is rooted in real life experience. She knows that when government grows, the private sector shrinks under the burden of debt and deficits. We can trust Carly to do the right thing for America’s economy and to make the principled decisions she has throughout her professional career.

Part of this is that, at least in Gov. Palin’s view, Fiorina is more conservative than conservatives are giving her credit for; and part of it is the calculation that Fiorina has the best shot against Barbara Boxer. But part of it as well is clearly that Gov. Palin values Fiorina’s business expertise and the fact that she’s not an insider to government (though, having been a high-level CEO, she certainly has some D.C. experience and connections), and on that I think she has a point which other Republicans would do well to consider. (But then, I’ve always thought Fiorina was the best candidate in that primary, even with the demon sheep ad.)

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, we have blogger Mickey Kaus mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Boxer (as a “common sense Democrat,” no less; the Left may bash Gov. Palin, but her language has resonance)—and one of his big issues is the unquestioned and unquestioning commitment of the Democratic Party to Big Labor. As he wrote in the Los Angeles Times,

Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It’s been raised again this year by California’s budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees. I think the answer is no. It’s time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism. . . .

Keep in mind that Detroit’s union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It’s democratic. It’s not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out, while UAW members didn’t even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28-an-hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27-an-hour manufacturing jobs? Actually, there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke. Those 4,500 jobs are gone.

Yet the answer of most union leaders to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. This isn’t how we’re going to get prosperity back. But it’s the official Democratic Party dogma. No dissent allowed.

Government unions are even more problematic (and as private sector unions have failed in the marketplace, government unions are increasingly dominant). If there are limits on what private unions can demand—when they win too much, as we’ve seen, their employers tend to disappear—there is no such limit on what government unions can demand. They just have to get the politicians to raise your taxes to pay for it, and by funding the Democratic machine they acquire just the politicians they need. . . .

We need nonretired Democrats who tell the unions no. Or else, perhaps after more bankruptcies and bailouts, Republicans will do it for them.

It will be interesting to see if Kaus gets any traction, or if his message actually bears fruit. I tend to think the answer on both counts will be “no,” and that his warning will go unheeded—but you never know.

On a side note, Kaus follows Fred Barnes with an interesting and disturbing comment on the possible consequences of a Republican victory in November:

Fred Barnes raises the possibility of a “mad duck” Congress, in which Democrats lose their majorities and their soon-to-be-ex Congressmen reconvene in December to pass all the most controversial parts of the Democratic agenda, including an immigration bill and a VAT, before they lose power. … It seems implausible and paranoid, but how, exactly, could it be stopped? … The new laws would be hard to repeal while Obama is in office—if they could ever be repealed. (Once you legalize illegal immigrants, can you re-illegalize them again? I doubt it. The change seems irreversible.) … The only sure solution to Mad Duckism that I can see is for the Republicans to not win too big, leaving at least a substantial number of Dems with something left to lose.

That’s a precedent I hope we don’t see set.

Was this what you had in mind, Madam Speaker?

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Nancy Pelosi famously declared that they’d have to pass the health care bill to find out what’s in the bill. Well, now we’re finding out:

“Turns out ObamaCare means if you like your health plan you can lose it. The president didn’t have to actually strong-arm companies into dumping their employee health insurance because his bill carried financial incentives to virtually guarantee that result,” [Rep. Joe] Barton said. “But something’s very wrong when, like AT&T found out, paying $600 million in penalties will allow you to stop paying $2.4 billion for insurance, leaving both workers and taxpayers stuck. I suppose we can’t know for some years how many thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers will lose their company insurance because of health care reform, but I know that it will be a breach of faith for most of them and a tragedy for some.”