The National Tea Party Foundation spokesman David Webb announced on Face the Nation that Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express had been expelled from the foundation over the weekend. The kerfuffle stems from a satirical post that Williams published in response to the controversial NAACP President Ben Jealous' absurd accusation that the Tea Party is racist. [Mark Williams has since taken down the post, but a copy of it is available elsewhere. I refuse to reprint it. It's one thing to suggest that the NAACP embrace of progressive policies is conceptually misguided and counterproductive, but stereotyping an entire race of people in an objectionable reductio ad absurdum argument and suggesting Mr. Jealous is an Uncle Tom are violations of civility and a disproportionate response, unworthy of the Tea Party movement.]
This is not to say that Mr. Jealous is justified in what he had to say. We've seen these smears and exaggerations before. Remember how progressives attempted to suggest at a Palin campaign rally nearly 2 years ago a sole person heard saying "kill him" was referring to Obama, not Bill Ayers, the ex-domestic terrorist? [I always thought the McCain campaign's focus on Ayers was a tactical blunder; what McCain needed to do was to provide a positive message of why people should vote for him, versus why they need to vote against his opponent.] And they tried to portray a rally as racist because maybe one or 2 unnamed people out of thousands allegedly made comments that could be construed as racist?
This is really one of those lessons you were supposed to learn in kindergarten: Don't let other people yank your chain. Mr. Jealous is president of an organization that is all but an anachronism at a time when a man of color has attained the Presidency. How does he make his organization relevant? By getting publicity: as the old saw goes: any publicity is good publicity. No doubt he was aware of the wide news publicity over the so-called 'racist' Palin rallies in 2008; he is probably aware of the reputed ties between Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. It probably took all of two seconds to come up with the concept.
No movement consisting of thousands or millions of people can effectively filter out a tiny number of their members whom turn out to be politically embarrassing; for instance, the recently deceased Senator Robert Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan and later fought the 1964 Civil Rights Act (and his past sins were all but forgotten as Obama himself spoke at the memorial service.) Yet when Rand Paul (R-KY) merely suggested he would have tweaked parts of the act, it became a political firestorm; the hypocrisy of the mainstream media is appalling.
The Tea Party, to be effective, has to stick with a core message and not dilute it with other, more divisive issues. Remember what Santelli's original outburst focused on Obama's mortgage subsidy plan. It was part of a progressive political pattern of rewarding failure and punishing success: Why are you deferring, at taxpayer expense, the day of reckoning for people whom bought a house they clearly can't afford? None of this was really stimulating the economy; it was rewarding people for buying too much house, for not saving enough money, etc. And that feeds future expectations for exercising future responsibility.
The Democrats have long forgotten JFK's key question: "ask not what your country can do for you..." It's now become: "let me tell you what other people must do for you".
Do we have issues of waste and moral hazard throughout the federal government? Of course. But there are a few priorities: Stop the madness of trillion dollar deficits and federal spending euphemized as investment or stimulus; high tax increases designed to make federal expansion permanent; intrusive, omnipresent federal meddling with our liberties and responsibilities; escalating, unsustainable national federal and trade debts imposed on future generations facing a tough global economy; and professional politicians.
But the movement should not get distracted into fighting divisive decades-long policy disputes over civil rights, social conservatism (e.g., abortion), and entitlements. What is salient is progressives using the pretext of a soft economy to misleadingly ram through a radical progressive agenda, including health care, banking, and energy and bake in trillion-plus deficits as far as the eye can see--even as tens of trillions of unfunded entitlements go unresolved.
Jeb Bush in 2012?
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg made news in a Thursday post, indicating his primary concern about a challenge to Obama's reelection in 2012 is--Jeb Bush, George W.'s younger brother, and former two-term Florida governor. Jeb has also been married to a Latina and is authentically fluent in Spanish. The concern is there because Jeb is considered a legitimate conservative whom could do well in the border states and the midwest.
What's truly interesting is that it's virtually a lock that a current or former GOP governor will win the right to face off against Obama: Romney, Huckabee, Palin, Pawlenty, Daniels, Barbour and others. Take, for instance, Rick Perry; one of only 5 Republicans governors and the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas (and only the third in over 130 years) A former Democratic legislator, Perry, running for reelection, is a notorious fiscal conservative and rejected unemployment stimulus money last year; he has also been a harsh critic of the growing imbalance between the federal and state governments and is well-respected by social conservatives. Perry has consistently denied interest in any office other than Texas governor, but he recently routed challenging multi-term US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on an anti-Washington campaign. But Perry could provide undecided Republicans with a fresh candidate and no federal baggage, and as a border state governor, he also can speak to the immigration issue.
I frankly don't buy into Carville/Rosenberg's theory that the GOP are condemned to a generation or two out of power. I also think Rosenberg's characterization of the Latino vote is oversimplistic. Latinos are not simply a one-issue voting bloc focused on amnesty; in fact, Latinos are often heavily Roman Catholic and family-oriented with a hard work ethic, and a number of Latinos are small-business owners. To be honest, most of the Latinos I went to school with in Texas were Democrats, but when I was first attending college it had been nearly a century since the last Republican won the gubernatorial seat and most Democrats I knew were conservative to moderate. A recent poll showed less than 20% of Latinos consider themselves liberal or progressive and more than half as conservative; about two-thirds identify with the Democrat Party, but the statewide Republican officeholders enjoy majority approval ratings.
The Texas approach is instructive to national Republicans. First, if Republicans want to have any measure of success with the Latino community, they need to avoid the hardline stances of a Tancredo or a Hayworth, which is absolutely toxic. I think, for instance, if the Republicans put the blame for the immigration problem on a broken-down temporary worker program (versus hardworking immigrants) and found a way to transition existing workers into a revamped temporary worker/residency program, adopted a more inclusive message, focused on educational opportunity (including alternatives to failing public schools), public safety and small business issues in Latino communities, and pointed out the fact that Democrats have failed to deliver real results to Latinos and have pursued an aggressive social agenda (e.g., pro-gay rights and abortion) contrary to their own cultural heritage, the Republicans could enjoy better support--maybe not the 40-odd percent Bush enjoyed in his reelection bid, but somewhere between McCain and Bush. There's a political reason why the Dems are going after the Arizona Immigration Bill.
I really don't see Jeb Bush's strategy; he would have been a lock in this year's Senate race. It could be that, right or wrong, there is Bush fatigue with a Bush in power 12 of the last 22 years. (The fact that George W. Bush's first book comes out around the time of this fall's election is like an early Christmas gift for Obama.) I'm sure the last thing Jeb Bush wants to do is spend half the time defending his brother's record, and Obama would love nothing more than spending 2012 rerunning the 2008 campaign. Jeb Bush would need to find some way of distinguishing himself from George, not in Florida, where he already stands on his own record, but nationally. There are some obvious ways to do that; for example, Jeb Bush could identify more with his father's foreign policy but supported the Commander in Chief once the decision was reached.
But we see an early test of Jeb Bush's influence, and that is the Senate race this fall. Bush has had some major policy differences with his successor, Charlie Crist. Bush was clearly the power behind Marco Rubio's challenge to Crist. Crist has consistently maintained a lead in most polls since he announced his independent candidacy. If Crist beats a Bush-backed Rubio, Bush's credibility will be undermined.
Political Cartoon
Nate Beeler is spoofing the 2500-page finance "reform" bill, or, as I like to call it, "Dodd Frank-enstein". I wonder if the GOP managed to squeeze in provisions that would rule Ponzi entitlement schemes, like unfunded entitlement liabilities (i.e., social security and Medicare) or state/local pension funds. I nearly lost my patience this morning, listening to some progressive explain how the answer to the problems of the already highly regulated banking system was supersizing bureaucracy and rewarding the Fed, which did SO WELL in restraining easy money prior to the manic stock market and housing market bubbles, with yet even more responsibilities. (You have to wonder if they would make an AA celebration a keg party...) Of course, we needed a 2500-page bill to tell bankers the US government would not stand behind gimmick housing loans with no money down and optional verification of a stable, sufficient income. Tell me, how was it that the federally-backed GSE's were buying up tons of nontraditional mortgage notes and repackaging them for purchase by domestic and foreign investors? Did Mikey from the Life Cereal ads grow up to head up Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? Darn, those private sector banks in the secondary market won't touch our notes; I know--let's talk to Mikey. He'll buy anything... In fact, some have argued that the Fed ALREADY had the ability to clamp down on these loans but failed to exercise it. Just because you create 2500 pages of new regulations doesn't mean the new mandates will be enforced properly.
There were basic insights I had as a professor in dealing with cheating students. I did some things proactively; for example, I often had multiple or makeup tests with resequenced and/or rephrased items. Student reactions to being caught ranged from embarrassment and shame to indifference ("everybody does it") to anger at their loss of face. I really didn't go into an evaluation exercise with an expectation that students would cheat. In many cases, it was like the old game show Concentration (e.g., a quirky response). Almost invariably they all wanted to know how I discovered they had done it. Of course, I realized that they hoped to flatter me into divulging details so they could evade subsequent detection. The point is, even if you made the questionable assumption that government bureaucrats will become efficient and effective at enforcing 2500 pages of convoluted legalese, there are motivated individuals, businesses and lawyers whom will find workarounds.
Quote of the Day
I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
William Hazlitt
Musical Interlude: Chart Hits of 1998
Savage Garden, "Truly, Madly, Deeply"
Madonna, "Frozen" (second favorite Madonna song) ["Like a Prayer"]
Faith Hill, "This Kiss"
Aerosmith, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"
Shania Twain, "You're Still the One"
