Back to Basics

Modern political liberalism is a lot like the old triangle trades of the 18^th century, in which crops were traded for manufactured goods which were then used to buy slaves, which were then sold to planters in exchange for more crops.

On the modern liberal plantation the formula has changed to “bigger government = more people dependent on (or at the mercy of) government = more votes for politicians who will further expand government”.

It’s a heck of a way to run a country, but liberals have gotten a lot of mileage out of it.  Obamacare is just the latest example.  It is one of the ultimate triumphs of political liberalism in America, which is why Joe Biden whispered to Obama at the signing ceremony that it was “a big f@*&ing deal”.

Joe was right, which means that the current Supreme Court case is a big deal too.

The impact of how the Court ultimately rules will reverberate across the country and impact every citizen and their relationship to every level of government from this point forward.

At its essence the case has nothing to do with health care.  It’s all about whether or not our Constitution has any limits.  Are there real boundaries to federal power, or are they just made up on the fly?  Is Congress able to determine the scope of its own power?  The founders would be aghast that we even have to ask such questions.

If Obamacare survives it will be a green light to every imaginable liberal pipe dream of federal government growth.  It would essentially say that “Congress can do whatever it wants, so long as it can somehow be defined as regulating commerce”.  That’s not the government that our Constitution gave us, and it’s not one that most Americans want to live under.

Our Founding Fathers distrusted power, especially centralized power, which is why they wrote the Constitution.  But if everything can be extrapolated to impact “interstate commerce”, then there truly is no limit on what Congress (and government) can do, which kind of makes the rest of the Constitution pointless.

One of the most amusing things about the recent ObamaCare hearings is the reaction from the media.  Their shock when they had to report that a majority of justices took a dim view of the bill’s constitutionality, and that they had the audacity to ask tough questions of Obama’s lawyer was hilarious.

They were incredulous that anyone could seriously be skeptical the notion that the federal government can do as it pleases.  It’s the same mindset that led Nancy Pelosi to stare blankly and ask “are you serious?” when asked if Congress really had the constitutional authority to pass Obamacare.  (Yes, Nancy, we are serious).

The case will be one of the most consequential in modern American history for several reasons:

From a regulatory standpoint, Obmacare represents thousands of untold new regulations and attendant bureaucrats.  Just think of each of the different elements of your life that could relate to health care, (your diet for example), and you have an entirely new sphere of potential government regulation.

Now that we are in the middle of another presidential election season, the issues that the campaign will eventually be fought over are beginning to take shape.  We are sure to hear a lot about health care, mandates, entitlements, debt, deficits and stimulus(s).  There are even some made up issues, like contraception, created out of thin air by Democrats in order to replace issues that they are losing the American public on (like abortion and religious liberty), in an attempt to scare women into thinking that Republicans want to ban the pill.

But think for a moment about what we are not hearing much about anymore.  It’s an issue that, for a few decades, liberals seemed physically unable to shut up about.  The issue is gun control, and for this (and recent election seasons) it has been the dog that hasn’t barked.

Modern day Democrats have had an ongoing infatuation with gun control.  It seemed that, whatever the problem, guns were the cause; and more gun control was the solution.  But a funny thing happened on the way to liberal Nirvana, the American public didn’t go along.

Consider some findings from a recent Gallup poll:

• Support for an outright ban on handguns is at an all time low of just 26%
• More Americans oppose (53%) rather than support (43%) a ban on semi-automatics (or so-called “assault riffles”), a flip from the peak of Democrat led gun hysteria in the 1990’s
• Fewer Americans than ever – just 43% – say gun laws should be “more strict”, while 44% say “less strict” and 11% say “kept the same”
• And 60% say that we should better enforce current laws, with only 35% supporting passage of more laws

Keep in mind that this trend continues to grow in a pro-Second Amendment direction, despite massive coverage of school shootings, or of a sitting US Congresswoman being shot in public.  It would seem that Americans don’t have much of an appetite for the hysteria that liberals and the media have tried to build in the wake of such tragedies.  The “pass a law to make it stop” argument doesn’t cut it anymore, so Democrats aren’t pushing for them.  At least not openly.

That’s not to say that a huge percentage of Democrats don’t want more restrictive gun laws, or even a ban on handguns.  They do; they are just not stupid enough to say so right now.  They can read polls just like everyone else, and they know that guns are a dangerous campaign issue.

Since they know that they can’t take on the gun control issue directly, they have shifted gears.  For example, they created a program to intentionally let guns be purchased illegally (by so-called “straw-buyers”) and “walk” to Mexico and into the hands of drug lords and other criminals, where they were promptly used for what one would expect, drug related violence and murder of untold numbers of Mexican citizens and several US law enforcement officers.

It was called “Fast and Furious”, and the idea was to be able to prove that the guns were purchased in America – under supposedly lax gun laws – as a pretext to bring on new restrictions of what type of guns can be sold in our own country.

In 2008, Mitt Romney bested John McCain in both the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses by huge margins, and was part of a three-way split in Missouri.  Just a week ago he lost all three.  So what’s different in 2012?

The fundamental difference between the current race for the Republican nomination and the 2008 version is that Romney is viewed as the “least conservative” of the field – vs. 2008, when McCain held (or at least shared) that title.  The result?  Romney has had a harder time attracting conservatives, and many of them have spent the better part of the last year trying on other candidates.

Given Santorum’s recent wins, and his new status atop some national GOP polls, it should be a validation of his strategy to stay focused on conservative issues.  For Romney and Gingrich, it should remind them that they need to lay off of attacking each other and get back to the issues.  Everyone knows that both of them (and a good many of their supporters) think that the other is suspect.  Some think both of them are.  Some even have suspicions about Santorum.  But, baring divine intervention, one of them will be the Republican nominee, and as they say in NASCAR, “you’ve got to run with what you brought to the track”.

What we do know is that turnout is down in most states from ’08, (except in South Carolina), which points to two things: first, the campaigns as a whole are less organized than they were four years ago, (with a far greater reliance on debates and free media); and second, the party base is less excited about which one ends up becoming the nominee than they are about beating Obama in November.

Which brings us to conservatism.  Simply put, this is what excites the base, not the candidates, which is as it should be.  It is the reason they got involved in politics and in the Republican Party, and it has the happy coincidence being in sync with the largest segment of the electorate.  In other words, it’s good for what ails us politically.

For the third straight year in a row, Gallup’s annual survey of American political ideology shows self-identified conservatives comprising the largest segment of the electorate, at 40%, with moderates coming in at 35% and liberals at 21%.  In other words, we only need to win a third of the moderates and it’s over.  Interestingly, it also shows that the number of political independents calling themselves conservatives has increased from 30 to 35% since Obama was elected.

From the ballooning national debt and failed stimulus programs, to a lousy economy with an 11% real unemployment rate, not to mention Obamacare and regulations that command religious groups to violate their faith, the political ground is well prepared.

If Republicans lose in November, it will NOT be because there weren’t enough Americans that believe in conservative principles to carry the day.  It will be because our party – specifically our nominee – didn’t do what was necessary to frame the election as a choice of two very different sets of principles.  That it didn’t make the election a referendum on Barack Obama and all that he represents.  Period.

As many of us spend time each day becoming more frustrated with the political news and our country’s direction, it is worth noting that our country is (for now) a self-governing democratic-republic, which means that the people who are ultimately responsible for our situation are those who participate in our wonderful little experiment.

Let’s face it, self-government, whether in the personal or political sense of the term, requires some common sense.  And our country suffers from an overabundance of stupid people – and too many of them have voter registration cards.  There, I said it.

Just how stupid are we?  Several years ago a Gallup survey found that: 43% don’t know that the “judicial” is one of the three branches of government; 41% don’t know that their state (and every other state) is represented by two US Senators; 53% don’t know what the “Bill of Rights” is; and 66% can’t identify the document containing the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”.

In 2006 and 2007, a multiple choice civics exam was administered to over 28,000 college freshmen and seniors by the National Civic Literacy Board.  The freshmen (AKA, high school graduates) failed each year, and the seniors, after four years of higher education, failed each year as well.  In 2008, the same group tested over 2,500 adults of all backgrounds and 71% of them also failed.

In addition to general civic ignorance, the study found that “college made graduates more liberal, while greater civic knowledge led adults to be more supportive of America’s constitutional traditions”, (which might explain why so many schools give civics short shrift, especially since so much of liberalism’s gains come at the expense of the Constitution).

The study also demonstrated that greater civic knowledge was the leading factor in encouraging a higher level of civic involvement beyond just voting, such as attending political meetings, contributing or volunteering for a campaign, lobbying an elected official, or just writing a letter to the editor.  (Again, not the type of thing the average liberal politician wants to encourage).

A study in the 2001 Annual Review of Political Science found that “Despite huge increases in the formal educational attainment of the US population during the past 50 years, levels of political knowledge have barely budged.  Today’s college graduates know no more about politics than did high school graduates in 1950″.  (This testifies to the fact that we have a “quality” problem, not quantity.)

Their shocking conclusion?  That “the successful study of America’s history and institutions is the key to informed and responsible citizenship”.

All the while that we are teaching less civics, (half of the states don’t require it in high school), we are constantly encouraging the less civically inclined to engage in two of the most fundamental aspects of citizenship: voting and jury duty.

Of course it is politically incorrect to suggest (and no less true), but those who are unfamiliar with the basics of how our government should function are more easily “bribed” with their own money to vote for certain politicians, and are more malleable by trial lawyers in the hunt for big verdicts.

Given that we all usually have room for improvement in our lives, resolutions are always a good idea.  They are even more important when there is so much to be gained (or lost) for not bettering ourselves.  So it is with this coming election year for conservatives.

With that in mind, the following resolutions are offered up for conservatives everywhere in 2012:

#1) Don’t be a cannibal.  No matter who you are for in any given race, don’t “go cannibal” on fellow conservatives over who they support.  You might win for the moment, but you’ll lose productive relationships in the long run.

As for the presidential race, whoever the Republican nominee is, he will not be perfect and will probably be “high maintenance” from a policy standpoint.  But as a movement, conservatives are much better prepared to deal with such politicians than in years past.  And remember, ANY Republican president, no matter how squishy they may be, will have absolutely no choice whatsoever but to sign a bill repealing Obamacare.  To borrow a phrase, keep your eyes on the prize.

#2) Focus on voter turnout.  It’s almost a cliché to say that “this is the most important election of our lifetime”, but clichés are usually clichés because they’re true.  In this case, it’s really true.  It’s really important in terms of building on the 2010 elections and taking the next step to advance the conservative agenda.  But it’s critically important in terms of stopping the Obama agenda.  We sincerely hope to do the first, but we absolutely MUST do the second.

Elections are about turnout, plain and simple.  If we don’t turn out the votes and we let conservatives stay home, we will lose.  We can’t let that happen.

#3) Get local.  Remember, the presidency isn’t everything, and neither is Congress.  Who do you think ends up running for Congress anyway?  It’s usually the guy (or gal) who has already served on a school board, city or county council.  If you want to have a long term impact on the upper levels of politics, then you need to have a greater impact over who’s playing at that level to begin with.  And that means you need to get local.

The local levels are important in their own right, (you pay property taxes, right?), but they also serve as the farm team for the big leagues.  Don’t ignore them.  Plus, races at that level have the benefit of being easier to influence.  A little money and organization in these races goes a long way.  A coordinated effort by conservative groups to let their members (whether they live in such a district or not) know who they have endorsed and where to send their money can have a bigger impact on Joe Smith for State House than it ever could on Suzzie Smith for Congress.

King Solomon put it best when he said “there is nothing new under the sun”.  And so it is with politics.

Even now, political history is repeating itself.  We have a Democrat in the White House giving speeches about how America is losing its spirit in the midst of a recession and high unemployment – just like Jimmy Carter in his “Malaise speech” in 1979.  And we have polls indicating that what Americans are really getting tired of is the President.  Again, just like with Carter.

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 42% of the public approve of Obama’s job performance – fewer than any other president at this point in office since the dawn of polling.   And the opinions are pretty strong.

According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, only 23% “strongly approve”, while 38% “strongly disapprove”, leaving Obama fifteen points in the hole when it comes to those who have any passion to their opinions.  Further, 3/4ths of voters think that the nation is on the “wrong track”, and over half of the country still opposes his biggest legislative success, ObamaCare, and want to see it repealed.

Of course none of this bodes well for re-election, which explains Obama’s reach for another historical retread – class warfare.

For decades, liberal political strategy has been built around buying large segments of the electorate with government largesse and, more often than not, doing it with borrowed money.  Obama’s problem is that his administration comes at a time when most everyone has realized that the national credit card is maxed out, and that the bank won’t increase the limit.

This is creating political turbulence.

Whether with the Tea Party or the Occupy movement, what we are seeing is just a taste of the social and political upheaval that is the inevitable result of the financially inevitable rollback of the bloated welfare state.  The Tea Party is tired of paying for it and having liberties trampled under the feet of big government, and the Occupy crowd demands that the coddling nanny state continue to grow and that the checks keep coming.

Someone is in for a disappointment.

Keep in mind that it was the philosophy of Obama and the Occupy crowd that helped get us here.  Liberals (with an occasional assist from big government Republicans) grew government and pushed us deeper in debt.  They pushed reckless policies which inflated the housing bubble that supported the credit card economy, and then led to its popping.  Now they are upset with having to reap the fruit of their own philosophy, so they angrily demand more of it in order to fix the problems it has created.  (I’m drunk!  Give me another drink!)

In a cosmic justice kind of way one is tempted to let the baby have its bottle, but for the fact that we have to live here too – and they want to stick the rest of us with the tab.

The political result is Obama’s need to dust off the old class-warfare, divide and conquer strategy, where you seek to define “us” as being an overwhelming majority being set upon by a small “them”.  (Giving us the 99% vs. 1% rhetoric)

But the rhetoric doesn’t match reality.

One of the great things about American politics is that it often doubles as entertainment.  Given that most of network and cable television has devolved into so-called reality TV, it is getting pretty hard to distinguish between “entertainment” programming and political “news” coverage – especially where the occupy Wall Street protests are concerned.

On one hand we have strangers living in a house together with hidden cameras, arguing and having casual sex, and on the other we have what looks like a bunch of camping trips gone bad – complete with no showers, drugs and casual sex.

The former are usually paid to display their foolishness, so they know why they are there.  But the later really can’t give a cogent explanation of why they are there and what they want to accomplish, other than that they are mad at “the man” and that they won’t leave until they get what they want.

Some members of the media, along with helpful liberal politicians, have compared them to the Tea Party, but there is very little in the way of comparison.  The Tea Party protests were large, law abiding and about something other than sleepovers, specifically a political agenda of limited government and less spending.  The Occupy crowd is smaller, mob like and unfocused.  Further, their campsites have been the scene of assaults (sexual and otherwise), theft, drug abuse and sanitation hazards.  And yet, the Tea Party was compared to “angry mobs”, while these people represent America?  Please.

Recently, Democrat pollster Douglas Schoen conducted the first extensive survey of the Occupy protesters and, among other things, discovered the following:

Only 15% are actually unemployed, (meaning the other 85% must have union jobs giving them time off to protest).  And 98% say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, while 31% went even further, saying they would support open violence.

75% supported Obama in 2008, but now 51% disapprove of him, (since he’s obviously not radical enough).  65% think that government should provide everyone with health care, college education and retirement benefits, no matter what it costs.  Oh, and they support raising taxes on “the rich”, which they refer to as the “1%”, while claiming that they represent the other “99%” of America, (obviously having very little understanding of just where the bulk of tax revenue comes from, much less job creation).

Schoen also points out that what is binding them together is “a deep commitment to left wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies…”  In other words, they are the heart and soul of the modern Democrat Party.

It has been entertaining to watch some of them develop at least a little respect for private property when their own computers, phones and other comforts of home were stolen by fellow campers.  They even got their noses out of joint when homeless people started showing up in the chow line looking for a free lunch.  (Why, the very idea!)

It is worth noting that this “movement” appeared at about the same time that Barack Obama is trying to (re) kick-start his flagging political fortunes by proposing a tax increase on “the rich”.  And isn’t it strange that these would-be class warriors so readily embrace all of the benefits brought to us by the evil corporations and the establishment that they want to bring down?  Or that their protest marches to evil Manhattan billionaire’s homes managed to skip liberals like George Soros?

To all of the current (and potential) Republican Presidential candidates, here’s a tip: focus on Obama.  When we do, we win.

Remember, we are living in a country that is rejecting Obama and everything he stands for.  Poll after poll show him at the lowest ratings of his career, and election results from Scott Brown’s upset Senate win in Massachusetts, to November 2010, to the recent special elections in New York and Nevada prove that over and over.

Just as they say that the number one rule in real estate is “location, location, location”, the number one focus of this election should be “Obama, Obama, Obama”.  Period.  End of strategy.  As we evaluate the candidates, conservatives should choose the one who does the best job of doing just that.

Recently however, our candidates have been too focused on each other, instead of staying focused on Obama and how they would draw a distinction between his failures and conservative principles.

But Republicans don’t need the candidates to tell us what their opponent’s weaknesses are.  We’re all too familiar with them.  And as the process continues we’ll all have to come to grips with them and decide which of them we each feel does the least offense to our principles.  No one is perfect and we’ll all compromise somewhere in choosing a candidate.

But the important point here is beating Obama.

Make no mistake, this process is not about making a statement, or insisting on 100% orthodoxy and then going down in flames.  In that case, all we will have done is hand liberals the political means to continue remaking America in their own image.

ObamaCare won’t be repealed without a Republican in the White House.  Period.  So we have to win – and our candidates have to do their part and stop attacking each other.

For example, we don’t need one candidate suggesting that they have forgotten more about Israel than one of their opponents has ever known; or giving the impression that another is dragging little girls off to inject them with mental retardation drugs.

We don’t need any of the candidates buying into liberal talking points that it is somehow a heresy to refer to Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme”, especially when it is obvious to every conservative in America that it is; and we don’t need any candidate telling those of us with certain convictions about illegal immigration that we “have no heart”.

We don’t need any of them telling us how much we need to be upset with another one for mandating health insurance while he was governor; or that he may have changed positions on some important social issues.  We know.

We don’t need any of them reminding us that any of their competitors used to be a Democrat.  We know.  But some of our conservative best friends “used” to be Democrats – including Ronald Reagan.

During the 1992 Clinton campaign there was a famous sign hanging in the campaign headquarters exclaiming “It’s the economy, stupid!”, reminding everyone that the focus of the campaign was that the economy (George Bush Sr.’s economy) was terrible, and that it was all his fault.

Fast forward sixteen years and Obama ran his campaign on a similar notion, but now, three years into his first term and looking towards re-election, things are worse and blaming George W. Bush just won’t cut it.  So, for Obama, it’s all about the politics.

His recent “jobs” speech to Congress was, at its root, about just one job: his own, and his attempts to keep it.  The whole point was to have a prime-time TV opportunity to set the lay of the land for the coming re-election campaign.  His reading his “plan” from a teleprompter on national TV to members of Congress who are capable of reading it for themselves was neither capable of nor meant to accomplish anything else.

But why the sudden urgency on Obama’s part?  That the economy has been awful is nothing new.  Quite the contrary, it is something all Americans have seen and experienced first hand for several years (except maybe those who work for the government).

So again, why now?  As it turns out, it wasn’t a set of new economic indicators that drove Obama’s need to look busy, but rather new political indicators.

Obama ended the month of August with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, (Gallup put him at just 40% approval).  The same held true for his standing with young voters, Hispanics and women, three voting blocs that were crucial to his 2008 election.  Only 40% of Independent voters approve of the job he’s doing, while 54% disapprove: putting him upside-down by -13%.  The most recent bi-partisan “Battleground Poll” reported that only 26% of voters said they would “definitely” vote to re-elect him.  And the Rasmussen poll’s approval index put those who “strongly approve” of Obama at just 19%, while 45% “strongly disapprove”: a difference of -26%, which means that there are a lot of people who are really passionate about seeing him lose next year.

You can almost overlay Obama’s poll numbers on a timeline along with the introduction or enactment of his policies.  The more he has proposed or done, the worse he does in the polls.  It seems that the “new” has worn off and Obama fatigue has set in.

Things have gotten so bad that there is a new iPhone app, called the “Obama Clock”, which keeps track of what can only be viewed as negative metrics: Obama’s approval rating, the national debt, the unemployment rate, the price of a gallon of gas and the housing price index.  It’s currently the number one reference application for iPhones.  How fitting that the tech-savvy 18-35 year old voters who gave Obama two-thirds of their votes in 2008 now have an app to keep better track of his failings.

As every element of modern life moves towards more customization and individual empowerment, government stands alone as the only major entity moving in the opposite direction.  And liberals, (i.e., Democrats and some Republicans), are its only salesmen.

Innovation and new technologies have led to increasingly rapid advances in products and services that are centered around consumers and their personal preferences.  These changes in turn have upended existing industries and business models and created new ones, the result being that many of today’s biggest and most innovative companies or services, (such as Facebook, Google, i-Tunes, YouTube, etc.), didn’t even exist (or just barely) when the War on Terror began in 2001.

Computers continue to get better, smaller, faster and cheaper, with multitudes of customizable options.  Phones have evolved into a combination of phone, stereo, camera, camcorder, TV and hand-held computer – all at a fraction of what only one of those individual devices used to cost, much less all of them.

The winner in this sea change is of course the consumer, who gains access to more choice and better quality at a lower cost.

But then there’s government, which continues to become more expensive, bloated and uniform, rather than innovative, primarily because it has what it doesn’t allow businesses to have: a monopoly.

Granted, there are many things that, due to finances, can’t be customized for everyone.  Roads come to mind, (despite the delusions of some drivers).  But the point is that choice benefits consumers and weakens any monopoly.  If your services are no longer the only game in town, and if people don’t need what you’re selling, then they don’t need you – which is why government tends to outlaw its competition.

Government by nature isn’t very good at innovation, much less so when you factor in millions of unionized employees. But since this is true, why make things worse by constantly broadening the scope of government’s power over our lives?  As we’ve seen over and over, the reason things are as they are is not due to the preferences of the customers (or citizens in this case), but rather because of the power held by those who decide, (read: politicians and government employees).

What’s interesting is that the party of big government has recently taken pride in being the party of the i-Phone generation, with Obama capturing 2/3’s of the support of voters under age 30 in his 2008 presidential campaign.  But how many of those voters would buy an i-Phone that only had one app on it?  Or visit an app store with only one app for any given product or service?  Such a “store” wouldn’t last very long, which is why Apple has hundreds of thousands of applications for sale in its store.

One has to wonder how much longer it will be before elements of the Democrat base see the obvious contradictions between their relationship to government and everything else in their lives.  How long before the i-Phone generation starts to wonder why they can’t get their education, health care or retirement plan the way they want vs. being restricted to unsuccessful, one-size-fits-all models?  And given the normal libertarian views of youth, how long before the next generation of protest music begins?