This is the third time this month I've had to respond to Grunwald's rants (see here and here), which are little more than repackaged pedestrian anti-GOP talking points. Time's editors do not do a decent job moderating his tone, stridency, and one-sided presentations. The GOP can speak for itself; I have never been active in the GOP; I left the Dems in mid-1980's (the final straw was the partisan trashing of the late Judge Robert Bork), but in reality it had more to do with the fact there are no conservatives left in the Democratic Party, at least on the federal level. I have always been a fiscal conservative and pro-life, but it wasn't really until I started on my MBA part-time that I became a philosophically consistent conservative. It had nothing to do with my professors (in fact, I recall that my late marketing professor commented that I came across as too strident in one deliverable); I don't recall any of them discussing public policy or their own views, even my dissertation chairman. It had more to do with my learning more about business and economics. I would infer most business professors and administrators I met were centrist to progressive (especially female professors). (I generally did not talk politics; my inference has more to do things like serving on an admissions committee, my dealings with students violating academic honesty policy, faculty recruitment experiences, etc.) I'm nominally registered as a Republican because the party leans more to the free market and conservative principles and generally runs more conservative candidates. And I have been sharply critical of a number of GOP politicians, including former President Bush.
Let's start with Grunwald's opening salvo:
It's easy to see why Republicans are freaking out. The electorate is getting more diverse, less rural, more educated, less evangelical--in short, less demographically Republican. It's also getting less hostile to gays, gun control, even government--in short, less ideologically Republican.What a load of crap! First of all, the percentage of progressives nationally (i.e., Obama and other federal Democratic leadership) is roughly 1 in 5; conservatives are nearly double that. Second, more philosophically consistent conservatives like Ron and Rand Paul are very popular with young people; young people realize that the Baby Boomers are leaving them with an unsustainable debt and programs.
"More educated, rural"? Obama won the no-high-school diploma vote 64-35 while Romney edged among college graduates 51-47. Romney also won the majority of voters earning $50K and above and did better in suburbs and small towns. (It depends what he means by "more educated"--Obama did win among those with graduate degrees, not surprising given progressive groupthink in academia, but only 55% of them.)
But let's take a look at the demographics a different way: Blue state California did not gain Congressional seats for the first time in decades after the latest census; all 10 states losing seats tilted Democratic with 5 of the 8 gaining seats tilting GOP (Texas, Utah, South Carolina, Georgia and Arizona) and 2 of the other 3 are purple (Nevada and Florida) with the GOP competition in statewide races for governor and the US Senate. A clear majority of states have GOP governors, and the GOP has won control of the people's chamber, the House, for 14 of the last 20 years after being shut out for the prior 5 decades.
You just had a Presidential campaign where the challenger won half the states, the personally popular incumbent came away with millions fewer votes, and the incumbent barely won a number of battleground states by 5 points or less; the challenger had to fight for the nomination, was heavily outspent after clinching the nomination and was out-organized. The wealthy challenger was tailor-made for Obama, whom had been running a populist class warfare campaign for years; he was not particularly charismatic, had a reputation as a flip-flopper, and his critique of ObamaCare was muted by a conceptually similar program in Massachusetts, RomneyCare.
So what do I make of Grunwald's absurd rant, at best wishful thinking? A lot of it is based on surface-level read of demographics, polls and elections. Let me take a simple example: gay marriage in Maryland, a blue state. The heavily Democratic legislature passed it, and a Democratic governor signed it, but enough petitioners signed to put the issue on the ballot. It barely made a majority vote; just like in California's Prop 8, black voters backed traditional marriage. Ironically, the difference came from northern Baltimore suburbs, which went for Romney, not Obama! This should not be surprising; probably a majority of people whom believe in minimal government don't agree with my pro-life and traditional marriage positions. I don't consider myself "anti-gay"; I believe in traditional marriage but I also don't want to recognize polygamy either. I've favored domestic partnerships/civil unions for gays, and I don't believe in the government intruding on the private sex lives of consenting adults.
Let me also point out that the pro-"gay marriage" forces heavily outspent the traditionalists, and the advocates were trying to redefine the issue as a vote on "religious liberty" and a referendum on tolerance: despite of (or because of) black opposition to changing marriage, they most prominently featured a black clergyman. Very few commercials featured gay couples themselves. Why were they trying to reframe the issue in a heavily blue state?
"The world is complex". The Spanish-speaking Bush brother governors did better in attracting Latino voters than Romney; McCain also championed immigration reform. I would caution people against a simplistic assumption that Latinos are Democrats. Let's recall what torpedoed the 2007 immigration bill was union resistance to temporary work visas. This should not be surprising; it was the FDR Administration under union pressure that expelled 500,000 Mexican workers during the 1930's and it was JFK/LBJ whom ended the Braceros program because of fears Mexican workers were undermining compensation for domestic farm workers.
It's not the only squabble between special interest groups of the Democratic coalition: consider labor union opposition to anti-fossil fuel environmentalists; there are a number of good-paying jobs in the domestic energy exploration and development industry.
And, of course, Grunwald doesn't care to point out labor union memberships are near their lowest point in decades, and long-overdue union and public sector labor reforms have been implemented in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan.
"Less hostile" to gun control? To be fair, Grumwald's column was written before last week's votes killing gun control in the Senate (not that it ever had a prayer in the House to begin with). There was a national revulsion to a class of first graders being murdered by a madman. But we live in a republic which protects certain fundamental rights from majority abuse, including the right of self-defense: the Second Amendment has been upheld by SCOTUS. I think there was the feeling that something needed to be done. The problem is that none of the measures would have prevented the Newtown massacre; there was a failure in school security. The weapons were stolen. The fact is that overall violent crime has declined--despite expiration of assault weapon bans.
A lot of polls are methodologically questionable. Some polls prior to California's enactment of Prop. 8 predicted a landslide defeat
So ever since President Obama gave them a second drubbing, despite a supposedly disqualifying unemployment rate, GOP elites have admitted that America isn't producing enough angry old white guys for them to win national elections, that they can't be the party of no or the Tea Party party or the stupid party. That's progress! The problem is figuring out what needs to change.Drubbing? He won 51.1% of the popular vote vs. 52.9% in 2008, and only marginally improved over Bush's reelection. It is true that FDR won a landslide reelection despite bad employment numbers, but Carter and Bush Sr. lost their reelections after suffering recessions in their terms. I will point out everyone agrees Romney won the first Presidential debate (on the economy).
"Angry old white guys"? What garbage... There's a public record on the Tea Party, a legitimate grassroots movement, and its rallies versus the chaos of the contrived Occupy Wall Street movement. We are not the divisive ones running class warfare campaigns. Some of us are passionate in our pro-liberty principles, but not 'angry'. The leftists are far more personal and abusive in their attacks than anything I've seen on the right. The Tea Party is a movement, not a political party. And I consider myself an amateur political humorist.
Bobby Jindal (re: "stupid party") has been quoted out of context: "A majority of American voters think that the government is trying to do too much. They want smaller government yet they still voted for President Obama – that means we’re not winning the conversation. We’re not presenting our ideas. We’re not in that debate as well as we should be." He's basically saying the GOP has the better ideas, but has been lousy in selling them. I have written a number of analyses on the campaign: I think there are many reasons for the loss, including poor organization and strategy and the Obama campaign put Romney on the defense early. I do think that Romney marketed himself wrong; he was selling his resume and thinking the listless economy made his case for him; he was overly detailed--he violated the KISS principle. I also think that it's complex--the devil is in the details of what to cut. Plus, Obama was able to play the uncertainty card.
"The Party of No"? This is rich for an uncompromising majority which routinely voted down GOP changes on party-line votes and passed ObamaCare without a single GOP vote; you have a President whom failed to support the majority recommendations of his own bipartisan deficit reduction committee, including all the GOP senators on the commission.
So they're pushing more of the voter-ID laws and other purported antifraud measures that they designed to suppress Democratic turnout in 2012. Some of them even want to gerrymander the Electoral College: in Virginia, GOP apparatchiks proposed replacing a winner-take-all system with rules that would have given Mitt Romney nine of the state's 13 electoral votes even though Obama got more actual votes."Purported antifraud"? In fact, there were record turnouts for minority voters. We are often required to provide similar identification at airport security, new employee paperwork, or even making a bank transaction. Many states automatically process voting registration with drivers license processing. Plus voters are able to vote absentee. Almost all instances of voter fraud involve Democrats--including multiple ballots cast.
"Gerrymamder"? Strong unsupported allegation. Districts ate supposed to be drawn to include equal numbers of citizens/voters. Ir's possible that there were higher turnouts in Dem districts. Three of the 11 districts are held by Dems; since Grumwald says 4 votes for Obama, that includes 2 winner-takes-all, which means at least one Dem district went for Romney. But Romney barely lost Virginia.
What makes this particularly egregious of Grumwald is Democrats have argued the same point when they've been on the other side of a close election loss. Two states currently break out as per the Virginia plan: Maine, a blue state, and Nebraska, a red state. Grumwald has a problem with the concept of federalism, period. The whole idea is to force a more balanced election, otherwise candidates would pander to urban centers.
[The GOP] shouldn't make repulsive comments about rape, question Obama's birth certificate, brag about their unwillingness to compromise or suggest that 47% of their fellow citizens are moochers.First, rape is a reference to the leading GOP US Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana last fall whose campaigns ran off the tracks when the pro-life candidates were given a question about abortion and pregnancy from rape, an extremely rare event. Neither candidate made a comment about rape, which is a criminal act. It had to do with a pregnancy resulting from rape. The federal government has very little to say about abortion or murder, local/state issues. The political candidates, who were veteran elected officeholders, fell into a predictable trap designed to make them look like extremists. Notice how Obama, who stonewalled the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, has sidestepped questions of abortionist Gosnell's little shop of horrors, including keeping jars of severed aborted babies' feet. Which would most people consider more repulsive--a clueless Congressman talking about rape and fertility or breathing babies having their spinal cords intentionally severed by a doctor?
"Obama's birth certificate"? That's a red herring. I think Trump was the only candidate whom pursued that issue, and he dropped out early.
"Brag about their unwillingness to compromise"? This deals with a McConnell quote out of context: :
McConnell: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.
NJ: Does that mean endless, or at least frequent, confrontation with the president?
McConnell: If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him....I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.
Here’s how McConnell explained his remarks in a speech after the election, when Republicans had taken over the House of Representatives and made huge gains in the Senate:
“Let’s start with the big picture. Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office. But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things. We can hope the President will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it. And it would be foolish to expect that Republicans will be able to completely reverse the damage Democrats have done as long as a Democrat holds the veto pen.”"47% of their fellow citizens are moochers"? the fact is nearly half of workers do not have a vested interest in efficient operation of government because they do not pay a penny of income tax. Even payroll taxes--mandatory retirement plans--can be offset by earned income tax credits and/or other government benefits.
They've rebranded themselves as an antideficit party after creating huge deficits in the Bush era, even though they've continued to push deficit-exploding tax cuts. After four years of their fighting unemployment benefits, highway projects, Wall Street reforms, disaster relief, insurance protections, millionaire tax hikes and other popular policies, it's a tribute to their political skills that Republicans remain as competitive as they are.First, Bush's tenure included two recessions. Obama, whose end of the recession ended just 5 months in office, has added more to the deficit in his first term than Bush in 2. Second, the GOP Congress has been the only one which has achieved budget surpluses--for 4 years; Dem-led Congresses have run an unbroken string of deficits running for decades.
"Deficit exploding tax cuts"? Obama extended the 3/4ths going to the lower tax brackets. Apparently Grumwald is not aware that deficits=revenue-spending. Revenues hit an all-time high during Bush's second term and the full tax cuts were in effect. What changed? Spending... The Dems have added $1T to annual spending since 2006--unpaid for. Upper end tax hikes will bring in only about $80B, if that per year, barely a down payment on trillion dollar deficits.
"Fighting unemployment benefits"? Intentionally misleading. An unprecedented 2 years of payments so generous, it paid not to find lower-wage work. The GOP objected to the nature and extent, not the concept.
"Fighting highway projects"? No state bailouts: they are morally hazardous.
"Wall Street reform"? The real failure was in government which has perverted free enterprise with guarantees, etc., and in existing heavy government regulation. The reform did not deal with the entities that used TARP, e.g., AIG, the GSE's, the automakers. No one on Wall Street thinks it will be effective--and it established "too big to fail" which is the worst form of crony capitalism.
"Disaster relief"? No, the GOP supported Sandy relief--just not all the unrelated spending attached. Plus the GOP wants to reform the flood insurance program.
"Insurance protections"? It has more to do with the need to privatize operations not part of core government competence. Government routinely fails to establish and maintain reserves, and subsidizes premiums.
"Millionaire tax cuts"? Economic activity is affected by marginal costs. We are not talking flat rates, but progressive rates. Lower high rates in the 1920's, 1960's, 1980's, and 2000's resulted in higher government revenues, and in many cases, based on magnitude, higher economic growth.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. You would think Time would know better than hire a partisan hack to write op-eds.
