The "McCain Derangement Syndrome" media conservatives, best exemplified by Ann Coulter, posit the theory that perhaps it is better to let the country suffer in tough times by giving the Democrats all the rope they need to hang themselves by electing a dysfunctional Democratic Congress and incompetent President Obama, with an ensuing Phoenix rise from the ashes of a legitimate Reagan-like conservative President in conjunction with a 21st-century "Contract with America" Republican Congress. Better that than having a President McCain get played like President G.H.W. Bush by a Democratic Congress in 1990, forced to accept higher taxes as part of a budget compromise and then get scapegoated for the tax-increase drag on the economy, not to mention his credibility and trustworthiness on conservative principles being disingenuously exploited by a Bill Clinton-style demagogue in 2012. The media conservatives thus worry that the Republican brand will be permanently tainted by idiosyncratic concessions made by the maverick Republican President.
In reality, President Reagan himself was not a purist but a pragmatist. After a large tax cut in 1981, he signed tax increases each subsequent year through 1987, including the 1983 social security rate increase (with an indexed ceiling on income cap). He signed a 1986 immigration bill. With the exception of Justice Scalia, his Supreme Court nominees have been disappointing to most conservatives. He had goals of reducing government and reducing or eliminating the federal deficit, which were clearly not realized. One wonders how the media conservatives would treat Ronald Reagan today, given their knee-jerk reactions to bipartisan compromise as ideological betrayal.
I'm not sure the "conservative formula", i.e., tax cuts, pro-gun, strong defense, pro-life, etc., works anymore. As a matter of strategy, it's obvious, predictable and fairly easy to coopt. For example, McCain talks lower taxes, but Obama claims under his proposal, only $250K or above households will pay more taxes (in a general election, the number of voters in households earning that much is almost statistically insignificant). McCain argues his recommended surge in Iraq has worked; Barack Obama takes advantage of an uptick of violence in Afghanistan to preempt an announcement by McCain for a surge there, claiming the more authentic source of Islamic terrorists are there. There are responses to the Obama's positions, of course. Obama's spending plans simply can't be funded by the bracket tax increase. And Obama's Afghanistan surge policy seems oddly off message with his own anti-Iraq positions, e.g., U.S. policy "breeding" terrorists in the region, not enough troops and resources, etc.
I already written a post on no more stupid celebrity-type ads. There are far more deadly ways to attack the Obama campaign other than resorting to ads mocking Obama's celebrity.
First, let us take Obama's attacking the idea of a gas hike holiday as a gimmick that would undermine the highway trust fund and doesn't amount to much of anything anyway. And then, with a straight face, he wants to give households a $1000 rebate from a windfall profits tax so they can afford energy. There are a couple of points here: first, the gas tax is regressive and affects lower-income people. Second, if we agree that every driver should pay roughly the same amount of usage fee per highway/road mile, then aren't more fuel-efficient vehicles paying less per mile? And which group of taxpayers is more likely to be able to pay the premium required for a more fuel-efficient hybrid or other alternative-fuel vehicle? And going back to Barack Obama's obsession with fuel efficiency, which group of taxpayers are more likely to buy and maintain newer cars with regularly changed air filters, oil changes, new tires, etc.?
If Obama thinks we can afford to issue $1000/household from general revenues, why don't we simply refresh the highway fund for the $70 or so savings from a gas tax holiday? As the national media pilloried McCain and Clinton for supporting the idea of a gas tax holiday, it takes chutzpah for Obama to propose in its place a $1000 giveaway--how does that serve the natural conservation adjustments accommodating higher energy prices?
More to the point, we have to devise a fairer way of upkeeping our highways, whether, for instance, we need a national registration fee and/or flexible toll systems.
Second, I HAVE NOT HEARD McCAIN HIT OBAMA ONCE ON CORN ETHANOL and the effect on food inflation. McCain should hit Obama hard on this point because food inflation is a perverse regressive tax that particularly hits lower-income Americans. To mock liberals' discussion of not being able to drill our way to oil independence, McCain should point out we can't grow our way out of ethanol requirements using inefficient food sources like corn--not to mention the fact that meat producers are getting killed. Obama thinks, apparently, it's OK to give away huge subsidies to Big Agriculture, but not the Big Energy subsidies he voted for in the 2005 Bush-Cheney Energy Bill? Maybe people don't own a car, but they have no choice about the need to eat....
I think my fellow conservatives need to change the nature of discussion on taxes. Taxes pay for goods and services that are essential to our way of life: our need for national security and personal safety, a clean, healthy environment, safe food and drugs, our ability to transact with each other fairly and to address conflicts, etc.
There is no free lunch. Politicians should not be rewarded for deferring tough choices to the next administration or generation. For example, John McCain needs to address whether we can afford to spend our blood and treasure to be the world's policeman whereby other nations enjoy the benefit but not the costs. Do we have any unnecessary foreign entanglements, as George Washington infamously advised us to avoid?
Another salient issue is: Have we been good stewards of the people's money? If businesses must cut staff in tough times, why not the government? Have we stripped redundancy from different agencies? Have we deployed best practices? Have we empowered federal employees while flattening administrative structures? Have we developed metrics on the operational level to the general public to baseline things like time-to-acknowledge, time-to-resolve? Are there ways to utilize technology to shorten critical paths?
Obama is trying to be all things to all people. We have tough choices to make and there are no easy answers like, we'll just take these toy soldiers on the Iraq map and put them on the Afghanistan border. Or, we'll just divvy up the new tax money from the wealthy households in funding all our special-interest legislation. Barack Obama wanted to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, just like Jack Kennedy. Obama wants to deliver his acceptance speech at a stadium, just like Jack Kennedy. But Obama, I knew Jack Kennedy. He was my President. He cut taxes. He stood up to the Soviet Union over Cuba, versus insisting on meeting Fidel Castro without preconditions. He didn't ask me what my country could do for me; he challenged me to do what I could for my country. And you, Senator Obama, are no Jack Kennedy.
