Any regular reader knows that I've been a critic of Sarah Palin; it's not a case of so-called "Palin Derangement Syndrome", but has more to do with my problem solving approach, my primary focus on competent, constructive, responsible, accountable, long-term policymaking, and a fundamental aversion to political spin, surface-level, short-term accomplishments, and bumper sticker politics. Don't get me wrong; I'm not a political agnostic: I have fundamental conservative principles. I do not believe in a dictatorship by the meritocracy or the elite. I am naturally wary about the law of unintended consequences and moral hazards implicit in any activist progressive agenda on economic liberty. On the federal level, I want to see maximum leverage and multiplier effects on the deployment of national revenues and assets, the national revenue burden should be limited to an as-needed basis, regulations should be focused on issues of fair competition and public safety (not in meddling with personal and business decision-making), the government should be manageable, and any social welfare net should be temporary, focused and limited in nature and augment, but not control, private sector philanthropy and charitable organizations.
There are implications for public policy positions I take; for example, I am seriously concerned about the risks to our standard of living by easy monetary policy, grotesquely large, immoral national deficits, and energy supply imports. The reason I strongly support deregulating oil and gas exploration deals with the fact there is a limited supply of foreign oil exports and growing international demand. We have an out-of-control trade deficit and energy imports are a principal factor; and progressive policies actually aggravate the problem by increasing the amount of oil imported (due to maturing domestic production), over-regulating one of our key export categories (the financial global services sector), and saturating the demand for international investors for Treasury bills to service ineffectual massive national deficits. The result is almost inevitably inflation, particularly cruel to lower-income Americans, sticky high unemployment, and a zero-sum game for domestic spending by the need to service the national debt to bondholders.
If Sarah Palin can draw attention to the oil import problem by leading a chant of "drill, baby, drill!", she makes for a useful idiot. I don't believe we can drill ourselves to energy independence--but we can stop the trend of increasing reliance on foreign supplies, and every barrel we produce is a barrel we don't have to import by bidding up the price for a barrel of oil. The progressives are right that we have to have a long-term alternative solution, but starving the economy of energy supplies over the short term is not a viable solution.
I do think that the Angry Left to a large extent is responsible for creating the Sarah Palin phenomenon with harsh personal attacks on Palin and her family, and the GOP right-wing chivalrously rallied to her defense, i.e., "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". In addition, Sarah Palin's decision to choose life for her Down syndrome baby over eugenic abortion also lit up support to the campaign from social conservatives. I think many people in the lower 48 also have been enchanted by her personal style and her unconventional background. I myself am convinced this bumper stick populism was an accidental development; she noticed that she was drawing large crowds, even bigger than her running mate (not exactly surprising in the sense that John McCain has been in elected office since 1982).
But Sarah Palin's penchant for bumper sticker politics, e.g., "palling around with terrorists", "Joe Six-Pack", "drill, baby, drill", death panels, etc.), her own defensiveness, stubbornness (e.g., repeating a debunked sound bite over her alleged opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere), state of denial and blame-shifting regarding her own performance in interviews and the VP debate, her hopelessly convoluted responses to questions and obviously poor preparation on substantive issues (e.g, "I'll get back to you" regarding McCain's views on regulation?), her vindictive behavior (by going after a former brother-in-law while governor and McCain staffers in her recent best-seller), and political spin (e.g., her pretentious claims to being more qualified than any of the national candidates because of her less than 2 years of experience as governor in a lightly-populated state and her politically correct acceptance of Letterman's joke-related apology, etc.) have further turned me off as a conservative. I think she is playing right into the hands of the Angry Left, such as this well-known production by taxpayer-supported NPR (notice this condescending,"post-partisan" cartoon explicitly attacks prominent Congressional Republicans):
The thing that really annoys me, more than anything else, is this fantasy that McCain represents Republican centrists and Palin Republican principled conservatives (cf, for example, IBD's October editorial; I usually agree with most IBD editorials, but this one is sheer nonsense, and I will address it in a subsequent post). Sarah Palin is hardly a principled conservative, and it's a matter of public record: she was pursuing Congressional earmarks as Wasilla mayor, she supported construction of the Bridge to Nowhere when running as governor, she socked energy companies in the state with a tax increase, and she threw money at alternative energy.
I think McCain saw in her a kindred spirit as a government reformer and a bipartisan politician. I myself am a reformer, and I don't see reform as a litmus test issue; Obama and other progressives (as in the above NPR-produced propaganda piece) will attempt to suggest that corporate or lobbyist support of a conservative candidate is inherently corrupt; there are a lot of good reasons to support conservative candidates, including protection from unnecessary, anti-growth government meddling in the sector or at least mitigating the damage from costly progressive intervention.
Conservatives, on the other hand, see government expansion as inherently corruptible. A classic example was the real estate bubble, which was largely aided by easy money and relaxed mortgage standards, to a large extent reflecting progressive pressure on extending home ownership to lower-income households without a significant down payment. Obama and other progressives pressured mortgage lenders to extend or guarantee such loans, and then after the bubble burst, sought to scapegoat bank "greed"; this was intentionally misleading and disingenuous. Notice the only parties Obama and his cronies failed to blame were bank regulators and federal legislators themselves.
We already know there's a demonstrable difference in fiscal conservatism between McCain and Palin (Alaska also leads the nation in percentage magnitude of net dollars received versus dollars given.) In fact, if we look at the ACU's ratings of national legislators, McCain's voting record has been significantly more conservative than his Alaskan colleagues. Most of the anti-McCain rhetoric is based on his bipartisan initiatives and a handful of votes, including protest votes against the Bush first-term tax cuts (McCain sponsored SMALLER tax cuts, in part because of his concerns about the deficit; the real backlash from other conservatives dealt with his ill-considered class warfare rhetoric)
In any event, as the heading points out, the first Tea Party convention is allegedly paying Sarah Palin a $100K speaking fee to be keynote speaker at the Tea Party convention next month. This is not exactly the "change" I had in mind when I named Rick Santelli my Man of the Year. It is true with state coffers overflowing with oil bubble revenues, Palin increased payouts to Alaska residents (whom, by the way, do not pay a state income tax). (Of course, she didn't refund the US Treasury for Alaskan earmarks as she implied...)
The Tea Party movement, if it wants to be influential, needs to maintain the same nonpartisan stance it had last year, when it refused to let GOP chairman Steele to address its rallies. Perhaps the movement is a little cocky over a recent Rasmussen poll showing a generic advantage of the Tea Party supporters over Republicans at the ballot box. Allowing Democrats to divide-and-conquer a fractured conservative base like Perot's entry into the 1992 Presidential race or the recent loss of NY-23, a district held by Republicans for over 150 years, is not in the best interest of the Tea Party. Nominating a failed politician who quit her only term as governor and earned the lowest ratings of any VP candidate in recent history is counter-productive. In marketing studies, we refer to this as tarnishing your brand image; why would you want to taint your movement with Sarah Palin's polarizing presence? You don't need the drama.
I do understand the movement's desire to go beyond protests. But you have to be very careful. Reagan, for instance, famously wanted to get rid of the Education Department. Twenty years later, Reaganite President George W. Bush not only vastly added to Education Department funding, but he added prescription drug coverage for Medicare (without sufficient funding, of course). What you really need is to go beyond symbolic steps like retiring Minnesota Governor Pawlenty's discussion of a spending freeze (remember how well that worked in the standoff between Clinton and Gingrich, which ended with Gingrich's blinking?) The progressive Democrats are so predictable, it's almost laughable. You know, just as soon as they pass the Democratic Party Health Care bill into law, any attempt to whack costs out of new program is not going to focus on things like process reengineering and eliminating unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and management, but pictures of someone's dying relative, unable to get medical treatment. I suggest that the Tea Party movement consider a new metaphor: a 2011 spring cleaning, decluttering convoluted and obsolete federal regulations and functional redundancy.
Bonus Video: Conservative Art on Display
New Roles for the Governator and America's Mayor?
I suspect that Schwarzenegger is politically radioactive given a suffering California economy and seemingly unending budget crises; still, almost any Republican would be an improvement on Barbara Boxer in this fall's Senate election. (Currently former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is the leading GOP candidate.) What's particularly interesting is that in a blue state, prospective gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and Senator Boxer hold single-digit leads over their likely competition, political novices.
As I'm thinking of how the GOP could provide an imaginative challenge to the Dems this fall (Newt Gingrich is suggesting, of course, a new Contract with America), one thing that intrigues me is an adaptation of the British concept of a shadow cabinet: the Republicans could name their own spokesmen and czars. The focus would be to provide more effective, cheaper alternative public policies that minimize the government footprint.
I would also like to see special attention paid to out-of-control spending and government process re-engineering, more emphasis on state experimentation of policy solutions and post-audits, etc. Republicans need fresh ideas and to confront critical problems like deficit spending and entitlement solvency head on.
I could see a role for Arnold Schwarzenegger in tackling fiscal fitness; could you imagine him saying something like, "I have seen your future, and it's California: Progressives have made promises to government workers that we can't afford; there was no rainy day fund. We have to have the same accountability and fiscal discipline at the federal level than we have to have at the state level. I am here to pump the economy up, get the federal government on a fiscal diet, cutting out government fat and waste and all that stuff. I'm going to be the Government Terminator--I'm going to hand out pink slips and cap and defer retirement benefits; if the private sector and state and local governments have to layoff workers and cut operating hours, so does the federal government. (The true class warfare is the government employee have's and the private sector have not's.) I'm going to shutter government programs that don't work, I'm going to insist on a spending and hiring freeze except for essential services, I'm going to flatten the government hierarchy, with more of a matrix cross-agency resource sharing approach, I'm going to consolidate locations, and I'm going to insist on higher federal worker productivity. This doesn't mean concentrating resources in Washington DC. We should think more of reorganizing various government functions across the US, which would lessen the vulnerability of our national economy and government."
Rudy Giuliani could also leverage his cost-cutting expertise as New York mayor, although I think his effective leadership in renovating a decaying Times Square and various city neighborhoods could also lend a hand at how we can revitalize dysfunctional cities (e.g., Detroit).
I am disappointed that the Republicans were not more imaginative and proactive during the Bush years, and they are now paying a stiff price. The Democrats, of course, are well aware of the 1994 election and will do the best they can to avoid a repeat. Whereas we should rightly target the Democrats for squandering their super-majorities on ineffective overspending and badly chosen priorities, we cannot run on unrealistic expectations of rolling back Obama's programs given his possession of the veto, and we cannot rerun the same old same old (the Bush tax cuts, school vouchers, partial privitization of social security, etc.)
If I was the RNC (do you hear me, Michael Steele?), I would take an entirely different approach. For example:
- Taking the lead from the Tea Party process, launch a listening tour. Yes, I know every progressive under the sun does a listening tour. But unlike these sham listening tours, the Republicans need to make it clear, unlike the Democrats, they really are listening, and their fall agenda will reflect inputs from the people, not an ideological agenda of pushing on a string, like the Democratic initiatives on climate change and health care.
- The primary emphasis for the fall campaign should be on a pro-growth economic agenda and dealing with the deficit.
- I would run a series of spots with an empty chair and a name plate for President Obama in a Republican meeting room. Emphasize the fact that the GOP is ready to talk to Obama anytime, any place without preconditions, and remind voters of his broken promise of a post-partisan Washington.
- I would run spots that focus on misleading Dem characterizations that the GOP legislators did not come to this Congressional session with alternative ideas, e.g., scroll down lists of bills and amendments and emphasize the one that went down by party line votes, without serious consideration.
- Run spots emphasizing that Republicans want the President to succeed in terms of improving the economy and protecting the country, because the country benefits when he succeeds. We are the loyal opposition: we will criticize him when we feel he is wrong, but we will do so respectfully and constructively.
Richard Blumenthal, the popular Connecticut attorney general since 1991, announced as the likely Democratic nominee for Dodd's seat, open since Dodd will retire under party pressure. In fact, Blumenthal was a likely successor for Lieberman's seat if Gore had been elected in 2000.
It should not be a surprise what a conservative like me thinks about Blumenthal's candidacy; in a 2007 post, Hans Bader of libertarian CEI listed Blumental as the worst state attorney general in the United States (which is something, considering the fact that Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former NY governor, and Illinois' Lisa Madigan also made the bottom 10):
Criteria for AG Ratings
1. Dubious Dealings: Using campaign contributors to bring lawsuits. Using the attorney general’soffice to promote personal gain or enrich cronies or relatives. Favoritism towards campaign donors and other uneven or unpredictable application of the law. Ethical breaches.
2. Fabricating Law: Advocating that courts, in effect, rewrite statutes or stretch constitutional norms in order to make new law—for example, seeking judicial imposition of new taxes or regulations, or restrictions on private citizens’ freedom to contract.
3. AG Imperialism /Usurping Legislative Powers: Bringing lawsuits that usurp regulatory powers granted to the federal government or other state entities, or that are untethered to any specific statutory or constitutional grant of authority.
4. Predatory Practices: Seeking to regulate conduct occurring wholly in other states—for example, preying on out-of-state businesses that have not violated state law and have no remedy at the polls.
Report Card Subject: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Attorney General:
Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut: F F F FI also reviewed a couple of other more recent posts, including a (libertarian) Glenn Beck program last March when Blumenthal tries to spin why he didn't go after AIG payments to Senator Dodd but he did go after payment of politically unpopular AIG bonuses, paid under valid legal contracts that were known to and accepted by the government at the time of the bailout. (Beck also explains the misleading nature of the term "bonuses", which in many cases were in lieu of versus an add-on to salary.) I've read enough about this guy that I am thoroughly disgusted, but in fact I bet my Connecticut relatives have voted for him.
I do not underestimate the difficulty that the Republican candidates will have in defeating a well-known opponent whom has, by one report, a 79% approval rating and won roughly two-thirds of the votes in his last 3 reelection battles.The first Rasmussen polls on the race show Blumenthal up by over 20% (although other sources indicate a margin of over 30%).
I am not a political consultant, but first of all, early polling can be deceiving, with a political honeymoon effect. Examples of politicians with sky-high approval ratings who saw them fall to earth include George H.W. Bush (after the first Gulf War), George W. Bush (after 9/11), Sarah Palin, whose ratings had fallen, I believe, to 54% by the time she resigned, and, of course, Obama, whom has fallen from 70% or above to under 50%. I think Dems and independents, who were worried that Dodd wouldn't step down, are rallying behind Blumenthal (not unlike how support for Gerald Ford rallied in the aftermath of the Nixon resignation).
But running for Attorney General is different from running for the Senate. Blumenthal is just another progressive Democrat and will serve as a proxy for public discontent for massive federal deficits and an Obama administration whose stimulus bill is seen as ineffectual, whose handling of the underwear bomber case is being scrutinized, and whose priorities (climate change and health care reform) are increasingly challenged. The Connecticut GOP candidates would be well-served by observing Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown's startling success against the Democratic front-runner, the state attorney general Coakley; the latest poll I've seen on RCP shows Brown with a 1-point lead in a notoriously blue state. This suggests that independents are heavily breaking for Brown (although I would caution that a single poll with a 1-point lead is within the margin of error). Brown is running a shrewd campaign, showing a streak of Yankee independence, avoiding polarizing stands, and putting Massachusetts interests first; Coakley decided to run a prevent defense, deliberately avoiding a one-on-one with Brown to marginalize him. The special election is a week from Tuesday; you still have to respect the Democratic political machine, and turnouts are notoriously poor in special elections (which would favor Coakley), never mind one in the middle of winter.
Musical Interlude: Backstreet Boys, "Incomplete"
