Libertarian Glenn Beck had a recent headline-making interview with CBS' Katie Couric, where he admits that he preferred [my words] "Bosnia bullet-dodger" Hillary Clinton over "3AM goes to voice mail" Barack Obama, might have voted for Clinton over McCain (following Coulter's previous lead), and then, in an unforced, stupefying blunder, says that Obama would have made a better President than John McCain. [What is it about Katie Couric interviews, where she unwittingly makes high-profile conservatives like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck come across like blithering idiots?] That's all we need: another sound bite for the media-savvy White House Propaganda New Media office. (I'm sure that Glenn Beck will now get solicitations from the fundraising group "Conservatives for the Reelection of Obama". No doubt they'll have a quorum call in a phone booth near the White House.) I haven't made the rounds of the Angry Left websites like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, but I'm sure that they'll gloss over what Beck really intended to get across and reduce it all to an "I-told-you-so" sound bite out of context.
In a manner of speaking, this is similar to Rush Limbaugh's earlier poorly explained faux pas about wanting Obama to fail; you know, when Limbaugh or Beck have to explain themselves (like Beck tried to do in his television show earlier this week), it's like a comedian trying to explain a joke (e.g.,Letterman's bad taste Alex Rodriguez joke several weeks back involving Palin's eldest daughter, unwed mother Bristol). We are talking about media professionals, many of whom have been on the air for years; they should know the risks of off-the-cuff remarks.
McCain Derangement Syndrome
Before getting to what Beck and Coulter really meant to say, let's first establish McCain's politics and why the media conservatives despise him.
As Beck pointed out in yesterday's broadcast, he agrees with John McCain on most issues. In fact, according to American Conservative Union lifetime ratings, Clinton or Obama voted against conservative positions over 90% of the time, while McCain votes the "right way" 4 out of every 5 votes. Why would any sane conservative prefer a progressive President, especially given a tax-and-spend Democratic-controlled Congress? The answer is, you don't; even Beck and Coulter recognize that, but they are trying to draw attention to themselves by making a larger point at McCain's expense. It's not politics--it's personal. Progressives, of course, are eager to "divide-and-conquer" their conservative opponents and aren't particularly interested in Beck or Coulter's larger point.
This has more to do with McCain's bipartisan and populist streak--which, of course, Beck misleadingly distorts out of context. McCain, for instance, talks about being inspired by 3 former Republican Presidents--Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. With Teddy Roosevelt, McCain is primarily identifying with Teddy's military experience (note Roosevelt's attack on Wilson's foreign policy as weak--sound familiar?), his reformist streak and hatred of corruption (wherever it might be found--city party bosses, Big Business, Big Labor, etc.), his view of the government as modulating between extremes (e.g., McCain's bipartisan streak), and his emphasis on conservation. There is no doubt that Beck is particularly aiming at Roosevelt's progressive politics (particularly towards the end of his Presidency), including a significant federal government footprint in the economy. However, in historical context, Roosevelt was responding to a number of scandals at the time-- not unlike the situation following the rash of corporate scandals earlier in this decade resulted in Sarbanes-Oxley.
It is true there are certain strong parallels between the two, including Roosevelt and McCain's support of campaign reform, their position on a fair tax burden for the middle class, their disdain for government waste and relevant cronyism, and McCain's attempt to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after their accounting scandals. I personally believe that Roosevelt would have been shocked by the lack of transparency in the so-called "stimulus bill" and the omnibudget spending bill (along with several hundred earmarks), the lack of balance of power between the branches of government, an attempt by the Democrats to grab market share for the government in health care insurance reform at the expense of the private sector, the hint of penalizing small business if they don't cover health care insurance (where large businesses have an unfair cost advantage) and/or tax bracket hikes affecting small business owners, the unprecedented federal deficits, and Obama's weak, vacillating foreign policy.
The ironic point of all this is that the Democrats last year attempted to portray McCain as a hardcore deregulator and scapegoated an alleged lack of regulation for the economic tsunami. McCain never really satisfactorily addressed these incompetent charges (and Palin seemed totally blindsided by the obvious question in a national interview and took a pass). Any reformer by nature is trying to regulate or modify regulations. Sometimes regulations have been economically inefficient--for example, in the past, we've had trucks or airplanes sometimes running empty one way because of arcane regulations; we had minimum commissions for stock transactions, far above brokerage costs. The problem is--regulations often outlive their usefulness, due to new competition, technological advances, etc., and aren't "intelligent enough" to adapt to the changing economy. McCain was justifiably proud of his part in helping deregulate obsolete restrictions that, in fact, cost ordinary Americans money in the form of higher shipping, airline ticket, stock transaction, and other costs.
As for Democrats focusing on Wall Street "greed", inadequate regulations on things like credit default swaps and the like: we need to point out that the New York Democrats, eager to promote a crown jewel of their economy, the financial services industry, were anxious not to fetter the industry from introducing and selling new products to compete in the global market, and President Bill Clinton had a hand in promoting and signing some long-overdue reforms into law. Congressional Democrats also participated in overview of the financial markets, Fannie Mac, Freddie Mac, and the like, and heavily pressured banks to make mortgage loans available to riskier lower-income people, including those without a traditional down payment. The point is, we had a collective partisan failure to address whether new products were comparably regulated to protect consumers, whether the use of derivatives for bank reserves was acceptable, whether mortgage-backed securities were properly diversified, whether GSE's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying too many risky mortgage notes, etc.
Going back to Beck and other media conservative critics: putting McCain in the same category as former GOP Senator Arlen Specter and the Maine senators (whom have ACU score in the 50% neighborhood) is intellectually dishonest. So is trying to identify McCain "progressive politics" with that of Obama and Clinton. If Beck believes that McCain is operating from the same principles as his Democratic rivals, or that McCain, with at least three times the Senate experience, a history of bipartisanship and much more extensive military and foreign policy expertise and experience, would be a "worse" President, he's in sore need of a reality check.
If Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter truly believe electing the most liberal President in the history of the United States presiding over Democratic-controlled Congress with huge majorities in either House is in the best interests of the United States, they are not true conservatives or patriots. Are they saying that they could not anticipate a spending spree by Democrats which may take decades to liquidate? Are they saying it's going to be easy for a Republican Congress to undo all the growth in the federal bureaucracy and burdensome regulations?
McCain Derangement Syndrome
The antipathy of media conservatives (e.g., Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck and others) against McCain is due to his "sins"--his two floor votes against the Bush tax cuts, his advocacy of campaign reform, his compromise version of cap-and-trade, his support of embryonic stem cell research, his leadership in the Gang of 14, and especially his pursuit of immigration reform.
I want to discuss the latter point in particular, because as a pro-business conservative, I believe in immigration reform. While the media conservatives focused on border entry issues and "rewarding" illegal entry, they've completely missed the big picture; There had been a functioning system for migrant workers until the early 60's, when labor unions forced a program closure. In addition, there is a phenomenon called chained immigration, whereby an immigrant is naturalized, relatives from their home country are given preferential treatment, at the expense of other, more qualified candidates (e.g., professionals, English-speaking, etc.) The grand bargain in 2007 between Kennedy, McCain and others was to limit chained immigration (to the immediate family) and increase the weight of merit-based factors (and also to reform an antiquated immigration quota system)--and a viable, legal visiting worker program. Obama and most Democrats opposed most of the concessions granted by Democratic negotiators, including limits on chained immigration, changes in merit-based factors, and (because of their union special interest group) any temporary worker program. Instead, the focus by the media conservatives has been on Republican concessions, which they have provocatively termed as amnesty for illegal entry. One of the key motives for illegal entry is the lack of a viable, legal visiting worker program.
The effective nature of media conservative attacks on illegal immigration have given the Democrats a no-lose situation. The labor unions win from any crackdown on foreign-born workers, and the Democrats benefit from resentment of target ethnic group voters. In fact, since Pete Wilson used the immigration issue to win his last race as California governor, the GOP has routinely been shut out of statewide elections (with the exception of Governor Schwarzenegger), in large part because of overwhelming Latino support for the Democrats. How much did the media conservatives hurt McCain last fall? Unlike Obama, who undermined the compromise by trying to strike Democratic concessions from the bill, McCain made a valiant attempt to get immigration reform passed, and his reward, due to resentment from media conservative rejections of reform, was losing a significant market share loss of Latino votes from Bush's 2004 numbers.
The Real Motive/Strategy Behind the Beck/Coulter Critiques
Ann Coulter sees the problems that the Republicans faced while in power resulted from the sins of ideologically suspect Republicans, like John McCain; Ann thinks the proper strategy is giving the Democrats all the rope they need to hang themselves, preparing the way for a new generation of ideologically pure Reaganite Republicans. I do not know if Glenn Beck espouses a similar vision, but it's very clear they both question the authenticity of McCain's conservatism.
It's not surprising to see challengers motivated by ideological differences--for example, incumbent Presidents Truman (1952) and Johnson (1968) bowed out, while Carter (1980), Ford (1976) and Bush (1992) received surprisingly strong primary challengers and eventually were defeated for reelection. More recently, Senator Joe Lieberman, former 2000 VP nominee, was defeated by Ned Lamont for the 2006 Democratic nomination of the Senate seat from Connecticut, largely due to Lieberman's hawkish views. (Lieberman subsequently ran as an independent and won.)
I don't think it's in the best interests of the American people to elect leaders whom are not flexible. And, in fact, I think most popular leaders have been flexible. For example, Ronald Reagan agreed, after he took office as California governor, to a state tax hike to balance the budget. As President, he agreed to an increase in payroll taxes to "fix social security", signed immigration reform legislation, and presided over huge federal deficits. Similarly, George W. Bush, who scores highly among most media conservatives, presided over budget deficits and a huge increase in government operations and regulations, even when he had GOP control of Congress in 2003-2006, expanded Medicare with prescription drug coverage, advocated the ill-fated immigration reform--and then pushed one of the most massive federal interventions ever during last year's economic tsunami.
Yes, I know Glenn Beck will argue that he also criticized the Bush Administration. But the media conservatives are applying a double standard. I don't recall Beck arguing that Gore or Kerry would have been a better President.
McCain Derangement Syndrome
Before getting to what Beck and Coulter really meant to say, let's first establish McCain's politics and why the media conservatives despise him.
As Beck pointed out in yesterday's broadcast, he agrees with John McCain on most issues. In fact, according to American Conservative Union lifetime ratings, Clinton or Obama voted against conservative positions over 90% of the time, while McCain votes the "right way" 4 out of every 5 votes. Why would any sane conservative prefer a progressive President, especially given a tax-and-spend Democratic-controlled Congress? The answer is, you don't; even Beck and Coulter recognize that, but they are trying to draw attention to themselves by making a larger point at McCain's expense. It's not politics--it's personal. Progressives, of course, are eager to "divide-and-conquer" their conservative opponents and aren't particularly interested in Beck or Coulter's larger point.
This has more to do with McCain's bipartisan and populist streak--which, of course, Beck misleadingly distorts out of context. McCain, for instance, talks about being inspired by 3 former Republican Presidents--Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. With Teddy Roosevelt, McCain is primarily identifying with Teddy's military experience (note Roosevelt's attack on Wilson's foreign policy as weak--sound familiar?), his reformist streak and hatred of corruption (wherever it might be found--city party bosses, Big Business, Big Labor, etc.), his view of the government as modulating between extremes (e.g., McCain's bipartisan streak), and his emphasis on conservation. There is no doubt that Beck is particularly aiming at Roosevelt's progressive politics (particularly towards the end of his Presidency), including a significant federal government footprint in the economy. However, in historical context, Roosevelt was responding to a number of scandals at the time-- not unlike the situation following the rash of corporate scandals earlier in this decade resulted in Sarbanes-Oxley.
It is true there are certain strong parallels between the two, including Roosevelt and McCain's support of campaign reform, their position on a fair tax burden for the middle class, their disdain for government waste and relevant cronyism, and McCain's attempt to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after their accounting scandals. I personally believe that Roosevelt would have been shocked by the lack of transparency in the so-called "stimulus bill" and the omnibudget spending bill (along with several hundred earmarks), the lack of balance of power between the branches of government, an attempt by the Democrats to grab market share for the government in health care insurance reform at the expense of the private sector, the hint of penalizing small business if they don't cover health care insurance (where large businesses have an unfair cost advantage) and/or tax bracket hikes affecting small business owners, the unprecedented federal deficits, and Obama's weak, vacillating foreign policy.
The ironic point of all this is that the Democrats last year attempted to portray McCain as a hardcore deregulator and scapegoated an alleged lack of regulation for the economic tsunami. McCain never really satisfactorily addressed these incompetent charges (and Palin seemed totally blindsided by the obvious question in a national interview and took a pass). Any reformer by nature is trying to regulate or modify regulations. Sometimes regulations have been economically inefficient--for example, in the past, we've had trucks or airplanes sometimes running empty one way because of arcane regulations; we had minimum commissions for stock transactions, far above brokerage costs. The problem is--regulations often outlive their usefulness, due to new competition, technological advances, etc., and aren't "intelligent enough" to adapt to the changing economy. McCain was justifiably proud of his part in helping deregulate obsolete restrictions that, in fact, cost ordinary Americans money in the form of higher shipping, airline ticket, stock transaction, and other costs.
As for Democrats focusing on Wall Street "greed", inadequate regulations on things like credit default swaps and the like: we need to point out that the New York Democrats, eager to promote a crown jewel of their economy, the financial services industry, were anxious not to fetter the industry from introducing and selling new products to compete in the global market, and President Bill Clinton had a hand in promoting and signing some long-overdue reforms into law. Congressional Democrats also participated in overview of the financial markets, Fannie Mac, Freddie Mac, and the like, and heavily pressured banks to make mortgage loans available to riskier lower-income people, including those without a traditional down payment. The point is, we had a collective partisan failure to address whether new products were comparably regulated to protect consumers, whether the use of derivatives for bank reserves was acceptable, whether mortgage-backed securities were properly diversified, whether GSE's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying too many risky mortgage notes, etc.
Going back to Beck and other media conservative critics: putting McCain in the same category as former GOP Senator Arlen Specter and the Maine senators (whom have ACU score in the 50% neighborhood) is intellectually dishonest. So is trying to identify McCain "progressive politics" with that of Obama and Clinton. If Beck believes that McCain is operating from the same principles as his Democratic rivals, or that McCain, with at least three times the Senate experience, a history of bipartisanship and much more extensive military and foreign policy expertise and experience, would be a "worse" President, he's in sore need of a reality check.
If Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter truly believe electing the most liberal President in the history of the United States presiding over Democratic-controlled Congress with huge majorities in either House is in the best interests of the United States, they are not true conservatives or patriots. Are they saying that they could not anticipate a spending spree by Democrats which may take decades to liquidate? Are they saying it's going to be easy for a Republican Congress to undo all the growth in the federal bureaucracy and burdensome regulations?
McCain Derangement Syndrome
The antipathy of media conservatives (e.g., Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck and others) against McCain is due to his "sins"--his two floor votes against the Bush tax cuts, his advocacy of campaign reform, his compromise version of cap-and-trade, his support of embryonic stem cell research, his leadership in the Gang of 14, and especially his pursuit of immigration reform.
I want to discuss the latter point in particular, because as a pro-business conservative, I believe in immigration reform. While the media conservatives focused on border entry issues and "rewarding" illegal entry, they've completely missed the big picture; There had been a functioning system for migrant workers until the early 60's, when labor unions forced a program closure. In addition, there is a phenomenon called chained immigration, whereby an immigrant is naturalized, relatives from their home country are given preferential treatment, at the expense of other, more qualified candidates (e.g., professionals, English-speaking, etc.) The grand bargain in 2007 between Kennedy, McCain and others was to limit chained immigration (to the immediate family) and increase the weight of merit-based factors (and also to reform an antiquated immigration quota system)--and a viable, legal visiting worker program. Obama and most Democrats opposed most of the concessions granted by Democratic negotiators, including limits on chained immigration, changes in merit-based factors, and (because of their union special interest group) any temporary worker program. Instead, the focus by the media conservatives has been on Republican concessions, which they have provocatively termed as amnesty for illegal entry. One of the key motives for illegal entry is the lack of a viable, legal visiting worker program.
The effective nature of media conservative attacks on illegal immigration have given the Democrats a no-lose situation. The labor unions win from any crackdown on foreign-born workers, and the Democrats benefit from resentment of target ethnic group voters. In fact, since Pete Wilson used the immigration issue to win his last race as California governor, the GOP has routinely been shut out of statewide elections (with the exception of Governor Schwarzenegger), in large part because of overwhelming Latino support for the Democrats. How much did the media conservatives hurt McCain last fall? Unlike Obama, who undermined the compromise by trying to strike Democratic concessions from the bill, McCain made a valiant attempt to get immigration reform passed, and his reward, due to resentment from media conservative rejections of reform, was losing a significant market share loss of Latino votes from Bush's 2004 numbers.
If you are going to pick a fight over McCain, at least pick the right fight. The 2007 immigration reform bill, even if you opposed it, never passed. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were passed, despite McCain's votes against them. McCain/Lieberman cap-and-trade bill never became law.
The Real Motive/Strategy Behind the Beck/Coulter Critiques
Ann Coulter sees the problems that the Republicans faced while in power resulted from the sins of ideologically suspect Republicans, like John McCain; Ann thinks the proper strategy is giving the Democrats all the rope they need to hang themselves, preparing the way for a new generation of ideologically pure Reaganite Republicans. I do not know if Glenn Beck espouses a similar vision, but it's very clear they both question the authenticity of McCain's conservatism.
It's not surprising to see challengers motivated by ideological differences--for example, incumbent Presidents Truman (1952) and Johnson (1968) bowed out, while Carter (1980), Ford (1976) and Bush (1992) received surprisingly strong primary challengers and eventually were defeated for reelection. More recently, Senator Joe Lieberman, former 2000 VP nominee, was defeated by Ned Lamont for the 2006 Democratic nomination of the Senate seat from Connecticut, largely due to Lieberman's hawkish views. (Lieberman subsequently ran as an independent and won.)
I don't think it's in the best interests of the American people to elect leaders whom are not flexible. And, in fact, I think most popular leaders have been flexible. For example, Ronald Reagan agreed, after he took office as California governor, to a state tax hike to balance the budget. As President, he agreed to an increase in payroll taxes to "fix social security", signed immigration reform legislation, and presided over huge federal deficits. Similarly, George W. Bush, who scores highly among most media conservatives, presided over budget deficits and a huge increase in government operations and regulations, even when he had GOP control of Congress in 2003-2006, expanded Medicare with prescription drug coverage, advocated the ill-fated immigration reform--and then pushed one of the most massive federal interventions ever during last year's economic tsunami.
Yes, I know Glenn Beck will argue that he also criticized the Bush Administration. But the media conservatives are applying a double standard. I don't recall Beck arguing that Gore or Kerry would have been a better President.
