Category: Conservatism 101

Never Take Advice from Your Enemies

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For example, Harry Reid:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to ditch members of the Tea Party and cut a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
Reid insisted it is those GOP internal divisions that are threatening to shut down the government after April 8, in less than two weeks.
“For the sake of our economy, it’s time for mainstream Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and rejoin Democrats at the table to negotiate a responsible solution that cuts spending while protecting jobs,” he said.

First point: No Republican is “threatening to shut down the government.” The House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans. The Senate is controlled by Harry Reid and it is he who, by rejecting the House budget plan, is trying to force a shutdown, which he clearly hopes to blame on the GOP.

(Question: Are reporters at The Hill professionally obliged to report Reid’s dishonest rhetoric in this credulous manner, as if they were stenographers or publicists at a p.r. firm? The Hill‘s Erik Wasson “reports” three entire paragraphs quoted directly from Reid’s press release and it is not until the eighth paragraph of Wasson’s article that he begins to permit the GOP to respond.)

Second point: Republicans are doing a piss-poor job of explaining the shamelessly deceptive game being played by Reid and the Democrats, who are not being directly called out on their use of the federal budget as a political hostage. Every day, in every statement, in every public appearance, Republicans should point out that the current negotiations are the result of Nancy Pelosi’s failure, when Democrats held an insuperable majority in the House, to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2011. Had Pelosi and the Democrats done their job last year, we would not be in our current “crisis” mode, and any attempt to scapegoat the GOP for this situation is nothing but a damned lie.

Third point: If Boehner lets Reid get away with this kind of stuff — driving a wedge into the GOP House caucus — it is Boehner, and not Reid, who is to blame.

The overwhelming Republican victory in 2010 was a clear mandate for reducing the out-of-control deficit spending that has been a deliberate part of the Obama administration’s misguided Keynesian economic policy. In the current budget negotiations, Reid and the Democrats are trying to “win” retroactively an election campaign they lost.

These are self-evident political facts, which are not complex or “nuanced,” and which any taxpayer can easily understand. If Boehner, Cantor and other GOP leaders are unable to articulate these facts, if they let themselves be bamboozled into arguing policy in the phony terms dictated by Democrats, then they do not deserve to be called “leaders,” and deserve the defeat into which they seem to be stumbling.

UPDATE: More stenography from Erik Wasson of The Hill:

Senate Democrats and the White House on Monday were working to finalize a new counteroffer to the GOP on 2011 spending cuts.
The counteroffer would cut an additional $20 billion from 2011 spending on top of the $10 billion already cut by two short-term continuing resolutions enacted this month, sources close to the talks said.

Today is the first time I’d ever noticed Wasson’s byline (he joined The Hill staff in November) and, as in the previous Harry Reid story, here Wasson offers eight consecutive paragraphs of Democrat talking points before making an “oh-by-the-way” gesture toward letting Republicans reply.

What I Said to Pete

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Pete Da Tech Guy took a gander at my recent go-rounds with Little Miss Attila — as I’ve called it, “blogospheric badminton with ‘feminism’ for a shuttlecock” — and expressed his enjoyment of the discourse. So I left this comment at Pete’s post:

Glad you enjoyed the spectacle. Joy is one of my favorite people in the blogosphere, but as a self-described “recovering lefty,” she needs to complete the full 12-step program, which includes rejecting the rhetoric and ideology of the Left.
Conservative women trying to co-opt the “feminist” brand is counter-productive from a strategic standpoint. Women who think of themselves as “feminists” are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. Most women don’t like the “feminist” label and, therefore, the proper conservative strategy is to make liberals own that term and its pejorative radical connotations. Conservative rhetoric ought to be crafted to appeal to the mainstream (i.e., non-”feminist”) woman — for she constitutes the “swing” vote — rather than pandering to whatever sentimental attachment a relative handful of ex-lefties may have to that term.
This is nothing new, nor is it specific to feminism or conservatism. Successful political movements very often require that intellectual activists bite their tongues about the movement’s public rhetoric — intended to sway the undecided — when that rhetoric conflicts with particularistic ideals that the intellectuals (as they typically do) cherish as totems. In the pre-Internet age, such inevitable tensions were generally resolved behind the scenes. Nowadays, blog wars bring these tensions out into the open, at least for those who pay attention to such squabbles.

That goes a bit deeper into Political Theory than is my habit. The gap between the exoteric language of politics (arguments made to rally public support to one’s cause) and the esoteric rationale of politics (the logic of the movement as understood by insiders) is a subject of study that, among conservative intellectuals in recent times, has been most associated with the so-called Straussians. I’m an anti-Straussian.

There is no need for a full-blown discussion of the esoteric/exoteric distinction here, except so far as it bears on the public nature of intra-conservative dialogue on the blogosphere. What offended me very deeply in Little Miss Attila’s initial post — published before I’d commented on the Barbara Kay column — was that it constituted a direct attack upon my prestige within the movement.

By pre-emptively accusing me of “oversimplified fiddle-faddle,” what Attila was proclaiming was: Stacy is an idiot who can make no useful contribution to the discourse. Do not listen to him. Continue reading What I Said to Pete →

Has Alex Knapp Proven Anything?

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“Contrary to my colleague Doug’s description of the Federal government as existing primarily to redistribute wealth, there is actually very little wealth re-distribution in the United States.”
— Alex Knapp, Outside the Beltway

It is not my habit to defend Doug Mataconis, as he and I very often disagree about politics. But Doug’s post, “The U.S. Government Exists Primarily To Write Checks And Redistribute Wealth,” based on an analysis of Office of Management and Budget data by John Merline, was perfectly reasonable. And so the response by his Outside the Beltway colleague Alex Knapp drew my attention.

Knapp employs a chart based on numbers from the Congressional Budget Office:

What this shows is that the fifth quintile (top 20%) of income-earners pay nearly 70% of federal taxes, while earning about 55% of all pre-tax income. Because they also earn about 51% of after-tax income — a relatively small differential between their pre- and post-tax incomes — Knapp says, “See? No redistribution!”

Knapp’s rather limited “proof,” however, overlooks many possible objections. What is a minor cost to a wealthy person, for example, may be a bonanza for a poor person. Bill Gates’s fortune has been recently estimated at $54 billion. If I could get my hands on just one-tenth of one percent of that sum, I’d be a multimillionaire.

Thus, the 4 percent net loss of income share experienced by the top quintile (as estimated by the CBO) due to federal taxation may seem a minor redistribution to them, or to Knapp, and yet it would be a substantial gift if it were lavished directly on those in the bottom quintile — but it most certainly is not. Continue reading Has Alex Knapp Proven Anything? →

We Have Always Been The Party Of No

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By Wombat

This was originally going to be a response to one of the comments in Stacy’s post Hecklers In The Big Tent, but it got a bit long and complicated, so I’m going to throw this up as a regular post without all the linkagery I normally specialize in here.

I think everyone is missing a fundamental truth about the GOP that has pretty much defined the party since the New Deal days. Unlike the Democrats, who have always been about getting and keeping power (and more nakedly so since the New Left took over the party in the 70s), the Republicans have always been a party defined by what it’s against. During FDR’s New Deal, the main thing we were against was the socialism of the New Deal. When the Cold War started, this receded into the background and was replaced by a fairly solid anti-communist stance that left us somewhat rudderless when the Soviet Union collapsed, until the War on Terror came along. This is one of the reasons the GOP has traditionally been supportive of the military and vice versa.

The social conservatives, especially the Catholics who mostly hang out at National Review, didn’t always represent a major factor in the party. They first became a major bloc in the party as the Reagan Democrats of the 80s found themselves marginalized by the radical Democrats’ insistence on legalized abortion with as few limits as possible, and switched over to the GOP. This is not to minimize the role played by evangelical Protestants or Mormons by any means; all social conservatives were and are important to the success of the GOP, and Republicans who ignore them get what John McCain got in 2008: lots of voters staying home instead of being foot soldiers and reliable voters.

Until W’s second term, the fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks have had their concerns given lip service at best, and the back of the hand at worst. Now the spendthrift socialism of the New Left, untempered by a Republican Senate or President, has been made fully operational, and in response the GOP has found another Big Idea to be against. Libertarians, social conservatives and yes, even gay conservatives have found something they can all agree on: the free-spending Democrats need to be expunged, the national debt needs to be reduced, and Uncle Sam’s credit card needs to be taken away. As with Communism, anything that distracts from tackling the Main Enemy needs to be shoved into the background until we have defeated the unholy trinity of New Leftists, public sector unions, and crony capitalists who are driving the country into a pit of over-regulation, hyperinflation, and economic stagnation.

This is why I can’t get too excited over the GOProud flap. As a Catholic traditionalist, I don’t agree with a lot of their positions, but on the other hand, they’re willing to argue about those issues at the state level (where arguments about society and culture belong) while standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches of fiscal conservatism. Considering the treatment usually handed out to political apostates from the GLBT community, I think we should cut them a little slack and accept their support. Especially if we can get them to quit taunting the more thin-skinned social conservatives. 😉

The RINOs have always been with us. There are a lot fewer of them now than there used to be, but we have always had Republicans who liked the power offered by public office (the Washington insiders) or who were more liberal in the fiscal or social sense due to the nature of their state or district. Conservatives and libertarians need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether having somebody on your side 60% of the time is good enough or whether we want to purge them in favor of a possible 75- or 90-percenter who maybe can’t get elected. Yeah, we should always have somebody in the wings ready to threaten them in the primaries if they get wobbly on spending and taxes, but we should pull together in the general elections against the greater enemy — and if they won’t return the favor, we need to run them and their supporters out of the party and keep them out.

Because I’m Stupid, You See

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At what point did youngsters decide that their elders needed history lectures? This is not a moot question, for I find myself being lectured by Conor Friedersdorf:

What’s actually gone on in the United States since the year 2000? For almost eight years, the Bush Administration managed to keep the support of its base, despite pursuing all manner of idiotic policies. And they did so in large part by relying on sycophantic propagandists. Rush Limbaugh himself admitted to carrying water for Republicans during that era despite thinking they were taking the country in the wrong direction. And many pundits, especially on Fox News, behaved even worse. . . .

Friedersdorf then goes on to talk about how “Bill Buckley and George Will helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency” at a time when “The New York Times and the network news ruled the media, and Rush Limbaugh was working as director of promotions for the Kansas City Royals.”

Right. And all this time, Conor Friedersdorf was actively engaged in advancing the conservative cause. He has spent his entire life with his finger on the pulse of the body politic, and is thereby qualified to lecture us about What It Really Means.

Perhaps, as he makes reference to the year 2000, Friedersdorf would care to know what I was doing that year. Continue reading Because I’m Stupid, You See →

Another Kooky Conspiracy Theorist

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Glenn Beck won’t back down. On second thought, Bill Kristol’s right. Mark Levin’s wrong. We’ve got to purge these hysterical extremist wackos or else they might take over the entire Republican Party!

“The communist plan for Hollywood was remarkably simple. It was merely to take over the motion picture business . . . [as] a grand world-wide propaganda base.”

What kind of Kool-Aid-drinking paranoid Bircher nutjob would say something as crazy and irresponsible as that? Continue reading Another Kooky Conspiracy Theorist →

Spare Us Your Sermons

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“We Are All Egyptians,” Nicholas Kristof declares in a New York Times column with a Cairo dateline.

Except we aren’t Egyptians, and the vast majority of us will never set foot in Cairo. For those of us who aren’t traveling the world on an expense account, the Atlantic‘s Clive Crook offers this helpful reminder:

The Egyptian Revolution Is Not About Us

This is very important to remember. Whatever is happening in Egypt — and frankly, I’m not sure that it’s a “revolution” — it isn’t likely to be influenced by anything I write about it, or Rush Limbaugh says about it.

In fact, there appear to be limits even to Barack Obama’s ability to influence events in Egypt, contrary to rumors that the president is planning to walk to Cairo and feed the protesters with five loaves of bread and two fishes.

Despite our apparent impotence, however, there are a lot of people who seem obsessed with the idea that we must watch what we say about Egypt. They seem to believe that only certain thoughts are permissible about Egypt. If we say the wrong thing, or even think the wrong thing, we might somehow influence the situation in Egypt for the worse.

This is a type of psychotic delusion called “magical thinking”: If we think good thoughts about Egypt, good things will happen in Egypt. If only we believe in peace — with all our hearts! — there will be peace.

According to the Magical Thinking School of Foreign Policy, the root cause of Egypt’s miseries is American wickedness. It is the evil in our own hearts — our ignorance, our prejudice — that has caused these tragic events. Therefore, say the magic thinkers, if we will purify our minds, renounce our xenophobic bigotry, cross our fingers and hope for democracy in Egypt, then democracy in Egypt will happen.

Also, you’ll finally get a pony for Christmas. Continue reading Spare Us Your Sermons →

‘In One of the Wiser Posts I Have Seen’

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Eric at Classical Values knows what words to put beside my name in a post about the alleged conflict between social conservatives and economic conservatives.

When (alleged) libertarian Ryan Sager was pushing this “House Divided” angle from one side, I denounced it. And now that some people are pushing it from the other side, I denounce it again.

This allegedly irrepressible conflict between liberty and morality is fictitious, and is never aggravated by people who have the best interest of the conservative movement foremost in their purposes. Go back to my October 2008 American Spectator column, “The Bible vs. the Bailout”:

Some years ago, I was asked to speak to a Christian homeschooling conference — my wife and I have homeschooled our six children — and during the question-and-answer session after the speech, I faced a question for which I was unprepared.
“How has your Christian faith influenced your political beliefs?”
This stunned me into silence for a second. Then I answered: “Well, I guess it comes down to that part about ‘Thou shalt not steal.'”
From there I proceeded to discuss the basic immorality of the welfare state, how it is wrong for government to take money that one man has worked for and give it to someone who hasn’t earned it.
Whereas transactions in a market economy are voluntary and peaceful, the actions of government are essentially coercive, backed with the threat of violence to those who disobey. What government does, it does “at the point of the bayonet,” so to speak. Therefore, the fearsome power of government ought to be constrained to limited and specific purposes — defending the life, liberty and property of citizens.
When government begins to meddle in the economy, picking winners and losers, using appropriations and fiscal policy to transfer money from one group of citizens to another, it divides society into two classes, taxpayers and tax consumers, punishing the former in order to reward the latter.
Such a policy is not merely misguided, it is immoral — indeed, it is sinful, as I told the Christian homeschoolers — and by displaying the spectacle of government engaging daily in legalized theft, the welfare state tends to corrupt the morals of its citizens. . . .

Read the whole thing. My point is that I am an all-around, general-purpose, hidebound reactionary. If I had to pick a “Golden Age” of America, it would be no later than the administration of Grover Cleveland, and quite possibly a good deal earlier.

Nobody can play the “More Conservative Than Thou” card on me. When the passage of Prop 8 in California resulted in outrageous attacks on supporters of the gay-marriage ban, I made pointed reference to Judge Roy Moore’s ruling in Ex Parte H.H. — which is about as hard-core as it gets. And when picking a fight with Conor Friedersdorf over same-sex marriage, I deployed this quote:

“The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is today the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact.”

If anyone cares to research the source of that aphorism, be my guest. Like I said, hard-core.

Pundette recently recognized me for one of her “Thirty Favorite Quotes of 2010” for my Mother’s Day critique of the Contraceptive Culture.

Yeah, I’m against the Pill, too. Like I said, hard-core.

Nevertheless, until we can muster a Supreme Court majority to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut — “penumbras, formed by emanations,” my butt! — we must fight the fight we’re in, on a battlefield not entirely of our choosing, under conditions that put us at a disadvantage.

Thanks to the GOP’s biggest congressional landslide in 60 years, the House is clearly under conservative control. Yet Democrats hold a Senate majority and President Obama is still in the White House. The economy is in the crapper and until that’s fixed, American voters don’t give a rat’s rectum about anything else that goes on in Washington.

Why, then, start a squabble about the inclusion of one group, GOProud, in this year’s CPAC?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

If those idiots don’t get their priorities right, we’re never gonna get back to the good old days of Grover Cleveland.