In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King
Lightning Round
- First Non-Protestant GOP Nominee? I'm somewhat amused by this story abstracted on CNN's webpage today. I've made frequent references in this blog to the fact that Mitt Romney and Jim Huntsman are Mormons; what people may not remember from the 2008 campaign is that not only did candidate Barack Obama feel compelled to give a speech about religion, but Romney did, too. It was a big deal when the first (and only) Roman Catholic President, JFK, was elected in 1960. (Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is Catholic, about 2% of Americans are Mormon, and just over 50% are Protestant.) Religion has become less of a factor since JFK had to fight off bigoted allegations that as President he would be a puppet of the Papacy. (The Pope's authority is in matters of faith and morals. To put things into context, several prominent Catholic politicians hold a pro-abortion choice positions in direct contradiction to the Church's consistent opposition to abortion since the earliest records of the Church: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Joe Biden, the late Ted Kennedy, former Governor Mario Cuomo, etc.) The Supreme Court today boasts a majority of Catholics on the Court (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, and Sotomayor), a long way from the token Catholic seat on the court, but no one is predicting that the unconscionable Roe v Wade decision will be overturned anytime soon.
In any event, the GOP has never nominated a Mormon or a Catholic (Santorum and Gingrich, a recent convert). I am Catholic, but I have been highly critical of Santorum and Gingrich over the last week or two in the blog. I know evangelical conservatives have concerns about LDS (Mormons), but I see some of the same attitude towards Mormons targeted in the past against Catholics. Mormons share some of the same family values and virtues (self-reliance, hard work, etc.) as conservative Catholics. I respect our next President, Mitt Romney, as a highly competent, patriotic, decent man whom will restore leadership and common sense to the White House so lacking during these last 3 years of failed, irresponsible, dysfunctional, spendthrift progressive experimentation.
- "Don't Tell Me Words Don't Matter." (I have to smile here because we had the first plagiarist Presidential ticket I can remember: between Obama's hypocritically reflexive unattributed sound bite lifted from Deval Patrick and Biden's takeaway from Neil Kinnock.) In 1968, Martin Luther King said, "If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter." At the MLK Memorial in the National Mall, the inscription beneath a 30-foot statue of King reads: ""I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness." So the Interior Department announced today that the inscription would be changed (presumably to the original quote). I"m somewhat amused that an inscription beneath a statue becomes a national news story, but as a writer, I pay a lot of attention to attributing original sources, and I sometimes edit what other writers say (mostly to reorganize and streamline for clarity, but not the meaning. Poetess Maya Angelou is correct: the edits convey a sense of vanity MLK did not intend; MLK wanted to draw attention to his causes, not to himself. I do not know how this out-of-context quote got approved in the first place, but I AGREE with the Interior Department decision: better late than never...
- SBA a Cabinet-Level Position? Thumbs DOWN! Let me point out (additional discussion below) that the GOP is the home of small businesses; I have mentioned in past posts that my maternal grandfather (and godfather) was a mom-and-pop grocer in eastern Fall River, MA, and a staunch Republican in a notoriously liberal Democratic state. (He and his younger brother dissolved the business at retirement age. My grand-uncle had no dependents, and my mother, an Air Force NCO wife, and priest uncle weren't available to take over the reins.) Any faithful reader of this blog is one of my trademark sayings is: "If there's one thing Obama knows, it's symbolism." I think Obama sees this merely as an extension of his class warfare rhetoric at a higher level of granularity: "small businesses GOOD; big businesses, BAD". It's little more than an artificial extension: the fact is, government regulations and taxes constitute an undue, major burden on small businesses that don't have the scalable revenues and resources that Big Business has to deal with them. In fact, Big Business sees crony relationships with government as a competitive weapon. This blog has been focused at lower, not higher levels of granularity. At the same time, I believe in a consistent, more manageable set of rules with a minimal government burden on business across the board, and I don't believe in punishing business success with progressive levels of government obtrusiveness. This would yield organic, intrinsic growth policies, not Obama's logically incoherent "pick winners and losers" philosophy, which by its very nature introduces uncertainty into the economy.
With this move, Obama is back to his old trick of putting lipstick on a pig. [For new readers, Obama used this saying right after Sarah Palin's selection in 2008, a thinly-veiled slap at Palin, with whom Obama was somewhat obsessed, comparing running his national campaign with Governor Palin running the state of Alaska. You had the predictable denials, e.g., pointing out Obama had used the saying in the past, but in this case, he used it after Palin was notably quoted saying "You know the difference between a hockey mom [i.e., Palin's oldest son played hockey] and a pit bull? Lipstick." Anyone thinking Obama's use of "lipstick" was a coincidence is living in Obama's 57th state: the State of Denial. I now routinely use the expression to mock Obama as payback, most recently in my Political Humor feature where I wrote an ad lib about Obama putting lipstick on Miss Piggy (defending public funding of a television network), as a deliberate double entendre (government pork).] Inviting the SBA administrator to Cabinet meetings is mostly symbolic:
"Paul Light, Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University described Cabinet-level status as "a formal designation that only Congress can make by giving the individual and the agency a particular level in the executive pay structure." He explained that Mills' future attendance at Cabinet meetings is purely symbolic and will in no way affect her pay grade unless Congress passes additional legislation."
I urge the House of Representatives to REJECT any attempt by the President to establish the agency itself into Cabinet level status. The reasons are obvious; it has NOTHING to do the worthiness of small businesses in the country--it has everything to do with expanding the bureaucracy. Recall the difficulties Reagan faced in trying to reverse a prior spinoff of the Department of Education. (Remember Rick Perry infamously had an "oops moment" in identifying three Cabinets to eliminate in a government reorganization? Education, Energy, Commerce?)
The SBA is an independent federal agency, and Obama has posed a disingenuous smoke screen of small-scale government reorganization in a transparent attempt to justify an eventual intent to promote the agency itself. I should point out that the new GOP House in 1996 failed an attempt to dissolve the agency, and there were repeated attempts during the to starve the beast with budget cuts. Perry and Gingrich in Fed Up! pointed out during the split government of the 1980's, federal spending still doubled and only 12 of 94 programs targeted for elimination were. There was hard work to trim the $2B SBA budget down to $85M--only to see the Dems blow up the budget again. (There are various reasons for opposition but consider the fact that you have government subsidized loans, which are intrinsically morally hazardous (HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE GSE BANKRUPTCIES?), you have government contracts being awarded to politically-connected groups, say women and minority-owned companies, etc.) But let's quote one relevant small business group I find authentic on the President's actions:
"Despite the President’s lip service to small businesses in announcing his plan, it is unlikely to help job creators in any meaningful way. If the President really wants to help small businesses succeed, he can start by shrinking the agencies most responsible for standing in the way of their growth, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. Unfortunately, the President has consistently opposed meaningful regulatory reform, and we are skeptical that his plan to shrink the government will help tear down regulatory obstacles his agencies continue to impose." - Susan Eckerly, Senior Vice President of Federal Public Policy, National Federation of Independent Business. (THUMBS WAY, WAY UP!)
Does that mean that certain small business groups used to sweetheart contracts and subsidized loans are going to willingly wean themselves off the federal teat? Of course not... Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League frets that the real aim of the consolidation is to eliminate sweetheart contracts (I wish!) while he points out that there are bigger pots of money to trim elsewhere in the budget: "It has nothing to do with shrinking government but has everything to do with eliminating contracting programs for small businesses." (Apparently Mr. Chapman has been watching those AARP ads which say, "Hands off the 60% of the federal budget dealing with entitlement spending; there's enough waste in the rest of the budget...") Todd McCracken of the National Small Business Association likes the idea of a one-stop shop for business but worries that small business interests may be deprecated in the consolidation with other programs or agencies. Steve Caldera of the International Franchise Association fears that the free market won't work (my phrasing), that banks won't lend to small business based on the merits of their business plan/model and government-subsidized/guaranteed loans.
Let me be clear: the government needs to get out of the banking business. What will help small businesses more is shrinking the government footprint, simplifying and devising lower, fairer tax structures without special interest loopholes: eliminating or spinning off nonessential services; and not competing with the private sector for resources by shrinking BOTH government spending and taxes). Government is now in a vicious circle of escalating unsustainable spending--more and more loans: student loans, housing, etc. We don't progress by arguing for our fair share of the federal teat. No one thinks in adding another floor to the federal government's house of cards that THEY'RE going to be responsible for supplying the straw that breaks the camel's back. Small business owners: you are not doing yourself any favors by relying on the unsustainable growth of the federal government. Instead of accepting the government's Procrustean solution, we taxpayers need to prescribe our own Procrustean approach to limited government.
Maybe It's in the Blood? I'm Just One Franco-American...
I think one reason I tend to be more empathetic on the issue of Latino immigration was the nature of the Quebec diaspora from the 1840's to the 1930's:
Certain early American centers of textile manufacturing and other industries attracted significant French-Canadian populations, like Lewiston and other bordering counties in Maine; Fall River, Holyoke and Lowell in Massachusetts; Woonsocket in Rhode Island; Manchester in New Hampshire and the bordering counties in Vermont.I found this interesting relevant quote:
There are several theories as to why Franco-Americans have found it difficult to win statewide elections [in Maine]. One is that during the first half of the 20th century, Mainers of French Canadian heritage traveled back and forth to Quebec so often that either they did not register to vote, or they were not interested in events outside their communities.The reason I'm mentioning this topic now was that I think I was listening to a report on Fox News during the lead-up to the New Hampshire primary, and there was a discussion of fellow Catholic Rick Santorum aiming at the Franco-American area around Manchester (just cited). This intrigued me; now to be honest, since I was born an Air Force brat, I really wasn't immersed in Franco-American culture other than I started kindergarten speaking only French and Mom cooked certain distinctive pork dishes like cretons (paté) (my mom has a different recipe using cinnamon; we normally ate it sandwich style: hands down, my favorite thing in the world to eat; I haven't had it in years and Mom doesn't make it anymore for dietary reasons) and tourtière (pie). (For a website on the heritage of 1 in 20 Americans, see here.) Most of my siblings married outside our heritage, although one of my brothers-in-law is also Franco-American and related to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin).
My folks and relatives almost never spoke of politics; the rest of my family was overseas the Christmas break I turned 18 and visited my retired grandfather. One of the few times he ever raised a political issue was notable; for some curious reason, he lectured me on the evil of abortion (which was preaching to the choir, and I didn't have a girlfriend at the time), and he seemed a little too proud, in my judgment, watching me register for selective service on my birthday.
I'm not going to go into a history of Franco-Americans here; there's an unfinished post I started on the topic, but suffice it to say many Franco-Americans in my parents' home community were mostly Republican until the 1928 election. This made sense from the perspective, for example, the textile mills worried about foreign competition and favored tariffs. (Anyone who doesn't know where I stand on tariffs hasn't been paying attention; I'm a classic (economic) liberal, i.e., free trade.) What happened in 1928? The Democrats nominated Al Smith for President, the first major Catholic candidate. (You always wonder what would have happened if Smith had been elected, instead of setting an opening for the disastrous election of FDR in 1932, one of the worst tragedies in American history. I criticized Hoover in a recent post, but to the credit and wisdom of both 1928 candidates, they came to oppose the New Deal.) Getting back to the Franco-American community, in large part, they never looked back, and the predominant registrations since then have been (blue collar or what media conservatives often call "Reagan") Democrat, although certainly not progressive Democrats. The party affiliation is so ingrained that I remember buying this autobiography of a Franco-American woman through the Internet about 2 or 3 years back, and the first thing I noticed on opening the book was a prominently displayed photo of the author proudly posing with John Kerry (whom speaks French). I seriously thought about returning the book immediately.
National Review had an interesting post excerpting a recent Boston Globe article about Bush's 2004 campaign in Maine and the possibility of grabbing one of Maine's electoral votes:
The Bush campaign is working the area hard, trying to cut into the Democrats' traditional advantage among the state's large conservative French-Catholic community. Once reliably Democratic, many of Maine's Franco-Americans are now part of the state's dominant voting bloc—independent-minded ticket-splitters.
"The reason Maine is now in play is that Bush is close to having about 30 percent of the Franco vote," said Christian P. Potholm, a Bowdoin College professor, Maine pollster, and student for 25 years of Franco-American voting patterns in the Pine Tree State. "If you reach that, you almost always win."Potholm wrote an interesting book I've seen excerpted in Google Books called This Splendid Game. I found an interesting quote:
Second, it appeared to me that Franco Americans were Democrats in name only; they basically believe in the Republican values of small business and less government interference and disapproved of governmental social engineering...Another article I recently read attributed the defeat of the year 2000 physician-assisted suicide measure in Maine to the (pro-life/Catholic) Franco American vote. Other articles reference some traditional American values of self-reliance, hard work, initiative, etc.
I cannot claim to speak on behalf of my fellow Franco Americans (maybe not even members of my family). But there are some sensitivities that I mentioned in posts around Obama's inauguration. There was a lot of resistance in the Northeast to the Quebec diaspora, to these breeding Catholic invaders from the North, and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized the immigrants. You find related references like this:
Franco-Americans of the North have sometimes identified themselves as White Niggers, affirming sympathies between minority French communities and black groups.I have been a fierce critic of Obama, but it's not personal: it's tragic. I think he absolutely blew the opportunity of a lifetime. And history will judge him for that. Sometimes you have to be intelligent and acknowledge what you're doing isn't working. Instead of griping about a party minority blocking the passage of partisan legislation, an intelligent person will try to work with the opposition and fashion a legitimate compromise. There is a political risk to compromise, but that's what leadership is all about: you have to put the interests of your country above your ideology. Nixon was staunchly anti-Communist, but Nixon found a way to open dialog with China. Probably no Democrat could have done this, worrying about being seen as soft on Communism. There is no sense of compromise in this man; he basically kicked the legs out from under 2007 immigration reform, and yet is shamelessly pandering for Latino votes this fall for an agenda he knows is dead on arrival.
I find plenty to criticize in Romney. But I'm not trying to force-fit someone into my ideal view of character and ideology. That person doesn't exist. I learned a life lesson the last year I played organized baseball as a teenager. (I wanted to try out for high school baseball, but my high school didn't field a team.) I may have mentioned this incident once or twice in a past post, but it's highly relevant to the discussion.
I'm a southpaw (left-hander), although I'm fairly unique in the sense I've always been able to throw a baseball equally well from either hand (actually harder using my right arm but better control from my left). I don't think I've ever thrown left with a football. In any event, anyone who knows baseball realizes that left-handers are basically deployed as pitchers, first base, and the outfield. (I also think one of the oddities in my baseball experience is that I played all of those positions except pitcher in one game. A coach briefly flirted with the idea of making me a pitcher because he was impressed with the speed I had for a natural sidearm type motion; he wanted me to throw from a top-down motion.)
In any event, I was at first base in one of my last games, and my fellow infielders were throwing wildly to first base--I mean YARDS, not feet, off (in either direction), in the dirt or over the bag. I think if the game happened today, somebody would have put it on Youtube already. It would have been funny to look at, but it was happening to me--I was having to chase down balls in open areas away from the right field line. And the crowd was booing ME--not my fellow players. I didn't yell at my teammates for their throwing errors, but I was thoroughly demoralized.
The coach came over when we finally closed the inning and starting yelling at me, trying to shame me into stepping up my defense, threatening to pull me out of the game if I didn't get it together. (This was a bluff on his part because we had exactly 9 players suited up for the game and all of us were playing.) I then said something he didn't expect: I called his bluff. "Go ahead and pull me out; this isn't fun anymore." He looked absolutely stunned--and then calmed down and said the smartest thing I've ever heard any coach say at any level. I'll paraphrase in my own way: "Play first base like you play the outfield; field the throws wherever they are thrown and then beat the runner to first base." In other words, I couldn't change the performance of my fellow infielders--but I could change the way I played first base. I had watched lots of major league games and thought I know all there was to know about playing first base, but I don't think I ever heard of someone covering first base like an outfield position. It was out-of-the-box thinking, it was, as Thomas Kuhn (not to be confused with Bowie Kuhn) would say, a "paradigm shift". I don't know or care how unorthodox it looked on the field, but it WORKED. I played the rest of the game like I was a Golden Glove first basemen--nothing got past me.
The point here is the coach realized his approach wasn't working and adapted; I saw my approach to playing the position wasn't effective, but I was open to advice and I adjusted.
But I look at Obama hit his head in the same wall time and again: I can't help but wonder. Me, when that happened, it was my first or second time playing first base and I hadn't practiced at the position before. When Obama does it, it's like "if the people don't agree with me, it must be that I'm not communicating the point well enough; I'll try and try again until they finally get it." It never seems to even cross his mind that he's the one not catching on--not the average American. Or its the opposition's fault because they aren't arguing from principle like I am but simply for political reasons. (It's just incredible how absolutely clueless and presumptuous progressives can be!)
Getting back to the original point: what would I say the GOP needs to do for this fall's election? Avoid red meat issues (I would HOPE that the GOP bans any candidate from saying the world "amnesty" for the rest of the year--I have already written on multiple occasions how I would handle the issue--focus on things like "catch-and-release", sanctuary cities, and federal reimbursement to the states for failed border protection: stop trying to make aliens scapegoats for failed federal policy). Have a positive message. Emphasize traditional American values of self-reliance and thriftiness. Avoid judging Obama in a negative way: contrast his promises or rhetoric and his record, e.g., Gitmo. Point out he won the Nobel Peace Prize and started bombing Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya without a declaration of war. Point out he hasn't cut a bloated federal budget by even 1% while piling up by far the highest single-term deficit in American history. Don't argue the repeal of DADT--but the President's priority in pushing it. Argue why, with 85% of Americans with health insurance--which they like--and guaranteed emergency medical services, regardless of ability to pay, the President decided it was more important to push health reform, financial reform and climate change legislation than economic policies, including no movement in business tax and regulatory reform. There are 10 million legitimate reasons to criticize the Obama Administration without resorting to issues or tactics which turn off independents and moderates. ABOVE ALL, IT IS CRITICAL FOR THE GOP THIS FALL TO STRESS THEY WANT TO FIND BIPARTISAN SOLUTIONS WHENEVER POSSIBLE AND STOP THE ONGOING TRENCH WARFARE WITH DEMOCRATS. They want to deliver what Obama promised and utterly failed to do--change the tone in Washington. If 12% favorable ratings for Congress are registering at all, the GOP needs to focus on that statistic like a laser beam. It's NOT the GOP's turn to play polarizing politics like the Democrats did in the 111th Congress; the GOP has to improve on that dismal record and make it clear they understand the message of the 2010 election: listening to the American people.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Styx, "Don't Let It End"
