Republicans know what to conserve

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?" So said Abraham Lincoln.Those words are from his Cooper Institute Address on February 27, 1860, in the City of New York, one of Lincoln's most important stepping stones to the Republican presidential nomination and ultimately the Presidency.

The Republican Party had been formed in 1854 in opposition to the plan of the Democratic Party to spread slavery into the western territories. It did so on the basis of the principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal." That principle was, and is, revolutionary in its conception and its application.

It is no small thing to proclaim the equality of all human beings when the existence of oppressive governments and rigid class structures in so much of the world would suggest otherwise. Kings and nobles, warlords and priests, have ground down the liberties of the human race for thousands of years. Yet the human mind can look upon this condition and conceive of the freedom of man based on his natural faculties rather than his political situation.

These comments may seem odd and maybe even ironic as Republicans have been understood as more conservative than the Democrats, their chief rivals for public office. But what is conservative about a principle which has been responsible for overturning monarchies and aristocracies, beginning with British colonial rule in North America, next bringing about the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States, and finally defeating totalitarian regimes in the 20^th century?

Even the most revolutionary regimes are established to last, so their future is always more conservative than their past. The United States is a democratic republic which has survived for more than two centuries. Yet because it is a nation founded in revolutionary principles it has undergone considerable reform, the chief cause of its periodic upheavals and wars.

The current challenge is the threat of socialism at home and terrorism and despotism abroad. The Republican party seeks to conserve our constitutional form of government and our free way of life, to be sure, but its principles are as revolutionary as they ever were. Freedom and equality need a stable and energetic government for their security, even as they are a reproach to governments that overreach.

Just now the Democrat party is actually the more conservative of the two parties as its leaders wish to preserve and extend the modern welfare state. Not satisfied with a federal government that manages the retirement and health care of the elderly, Democrats today seek to usurp all private alternatives in the most expensive federal program yet, universal health care (AKA socialized medicine).

Republicans long ago reconciled themselves to the modern welfare state, but fear its tendency to undermine personal initiative, encourage public dependency and transfer wealth from working to non-working people. They understand that today’s health care crisis is mainly caused by a government/private network which shifts the burden of costs from the consumer to third parties, continually driving up costs and limiting availability.

The purpose of our form of government is to secure everyone’s rights, not to assume the responsibilities which rightfully belong to each of us. Republicans know that America’s combination of freedom with responsibility is revolutionary but wish to conserve it against reactionary and elitist Democrat attempts to turn back the clock to the feudal era, when the common people depended upon the generosity of their supposed "betters."

As revolutionary as free enterprise is in the world, it is the "tried and true" method for promoting prosperity and enhancing human dignity. Democrats believe that the cure for the evils of the welfare state is more of the same. Popular majorities are perpetually tempted to use their political power to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, but the Republican party exists to conserve the free institutions which enable people to prosper without recourse to socialism.

The federal government is now so big–and so costly ($3 trillion annual budget, $10 trillion national debt)–that it may require more than just a holding action to avoid despotism. The Republicans need to "think anew and act anew" (Abraham Lincoln’s phrase) in order to conserve freedom and equality. John McCain’s proposal to encourage individuals, through federal income tax credits, to pay for their health care is a good start.

What we need is the return of limited government and free enterprise, a radical undertaking given the formidable obstacles that stand in the way. But just as Republicans pledged themselves to the ultimate extinction of slavery, so they now would be wise to aim at the withering away of the welfare state. Therein lies the return of our liberty.

The Howard Beal election

It's hard to turn on the TV these days. The news and images from Washington are like a train wreck. The height of hypocrisy: the crooks who made this mess posturing for a bailout on the backs of the taxpayer... looking stern and serious while they sit in gilded offices paid for by the investment banks and mortgage firms -- those that provided them with cheap loans to their poor constituents, while profiting handsomely from complex, opaque financial instruments that no one understands. While Washington slept the market ran wild, fueled by impossibly cheap money and overabundant credit. The Wall Street Journal ran a picture of J.P. Morgan the other day. He looks like a banker: stern, serious, practical. I wonder if he'd have given people $400,000 stated income loans; not a piece of paper to prove their earning or their ability to pay it back. That's what we did in the hyper-fueled lending world of Freddie and Fannie. You need to buy a house. Can't afford it? No problem, we'll cover you. Can you imagine J.P. Morgan doing anything so stupid?

And now comes the final indignity: the "bail out". The House yesterday decided not to pass a $700 billion bailout bill. They did so to prove that we are still a free market. They did so to save their reelection chances. They did so to protest the Bush Administration and their total mishandling of this crisis from start to finish. Whatever the reason: it failed. And rightly so.Does anyone really think that the Bush, Paulson or Bernanke have any idea what is really going on here? Fortune Magazine reported last week that the $700 billion number that Paulson chose has no analysis behind it:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Wow. How comforting is that? We know that markets operate on psychology, and that the large number is designed to provide confidence in the market that the government has a big enough solution to take care of the problem. I understand that.

But I also understand something that George W. Bush and his team have never understood: this is also a political issue during a presidential election. The Bush Administration remains totally tone deaf to the concerns of the American people. While the $700 billion number may calm financial markets, it has shocked, dismayed and infuriated the American taxpayer.

Hello? Is anyone out there? Does George Bush really want Barack Obama to become president? It sure looks that way.

In fact, Bush's handling of this issue looks a lot like the war in Iraq before General Petraeus went to Baghdad. It looks incompetent, poorly planned and poorly executed. It looks just like the mess that Gens. Casey and Abizaid got us into, with American soldiers dying daily amid violence and chaos on the television. Total mis-management. The American people lost confidence in Donald Rumsfeld in 2004. And what did the President do? He held his course, kept Rummy on and took a beating in the 2006 midterm elections. Bush was shocked to take such a shellacking. He didn't understand the level of discontent among the voters then -- and he doesn't understand it now. Americans in vast numbers are angry at Washington. Mad as hell, as Howard Beale famously yelled out the window in the movie Network. And they aren't going to take it anymore.

[photopress:180px_Network12_1.jpg,full,pp_image]

Who will pay the ultimate price for this debacle? John McCain. He's been swallowed whole by this mess and his campaign will never recover. Yes, he miscalculated -- the whole "suspending his campaign" gambit backfired. Frankly, his instincts on the bailout were wrong; his behavior showed him as a legislator. A compromiser. Not as an executive who had to make a tough call in a crisis. He temporized and vacillated.

In fact, McCain missed a golden opportunity: He could have taken the momentum and initiative away from Obama and come out forcefully against the bailout from the beginning. He could have stood up in the debate and said:

I'm against this because I don't believe in taxpayers footing the bill for what is essentially a $700 billion entitlement program. Yes, I know the situation is serious and that we need to provide relief to the credit markets. But there is a better, less-intrusive way to do this: change the "market-based" accounting rules so that firms can revalue their portfolios to something that reflects their true intrinsic value. Provide loans and guarantees that the firms will pay interest on, etc. etc. etc.

But McCain didn't do that. He didn't see the opportunity for bold action and decisive decision-making. He could have put Obama in a corner. And with public opinion running 2:1 against the bailout, the polls would have been on his side.

In the end, this is the kind of crisis that either makes or breaks a candidate. The odds were against McCain from the beginning, but his handling of this issue has fallen short. He was dealt a bad hand by Bush and his bumbling lieutenants; in this case, running against Bush would have been smart for McCain. But it was the kind of "game changing" opportunity that comes about only once in a campaign. If you seize it, you win. If you don't, you lose.

So far, McCain hasn't seized it, and unless Palin pulls out a miracle against Biden and McCain can rally in the last two debates, the Republicans will lose on November 4.

Obama in a landslide?

In a weekend piece from the U.K.'s Telegraph comes a story that should be news to voters in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado: Barack Obama thinks he's going to win the 2008 election in a "landslide".  "Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House. 

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party. "

Obama and his campaign are further convinced that he can win no fewer than nine of the states carried by George Bush in 2004 -- putting him on track to win as many as 340 electoral votes. 270 are needed to become president.

This confidence comes from an assumption that I find dubious: that current polls are underestimating the level of new voter registration that the Democrat's have achieved in their get out the vote drives:

"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

"Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white. "

In my mind the Obama camp is suffering from having drunk too much of its own punch: voter registration drives are notoriously bad predictors of election outcomes. And this is particularly true if the registration drive is focused on young voters -- which Obama's certainly has been. Young voters are famous for saying they will vote and then not showing up on election day.

As far as the "latent racism" issue goes -- I also think it is overstated. In fact, I think that a reverse sort of racism -- of the politically correct variety -- may be upwardly skewing Obama's polling numbers. I have a sense that many voters tell pollsters that they will support Obama because they don't want to come off as racist or "uncool". It is a natural part of our psychology to be attracted to a black candidate as part of a greater social good, and it is part of a politically correct pressure for people to be seen as socially progressive.

But I don't believe this necessarily translates to the voting booth -- when in private, people cast a vote for president. My guess is that race will have less to do with that decision, and that policies and experience will be the determining factor. And on that score, I don't think that Obama has an advantage over John McCain. I believe that the polling doesn't accurately reflect the hesitation many people have about putting an unknown Obama into power, and that a greater percentage of those polled will choose McCain as a safer alternative.

This may not be enough to win McCain the election -- but it should provide some pause to the Obama campaign in thinking that they will win this in a landslide. I predict as close a race as Gore-Bush in 2000 -- unless something dramatic happens on either side to radically upset the balance.

It isn't surprising, however, that Obama is so confident. Afterall, he is the one we've been waiting for. Right?

We need more Lamborns & Schaffers

The GOP picture in Colorado’s 5th congressional district is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster. Editor: So warns Dave Crater, Air Force veteran, CU law student, and founder of the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship. Here's the article developing his logic for that somber verdict:

Loser GOP is Short on Doug Lamborns

“ ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…’ Just what does that mean? Not simply that they introduced something onto this continent. If so, where was it before they brought it in? And how could it be called a new nation if merely transferred? No, ‘bring forth’ cannot mean anything like ‘introduce from abroad.’ Lincoln is talking about generation on the spot. The nation is rightly called new because it is brought forth maieutically, by midwifery; it is not only new, but newborn. The suggested image is, throughout, of a hieros gamos, a marriage of male heaven (‘our fathers’) and female earth (‘this continent’). And it is a miraculous conception, a virgin birth. The nation is conceived by a mental act, in the spirit of liberty, and dedicated (as Jesus was in the temple) to a proposition. The proposition to which it is dedicated forms the bridge back from Lincoln to Jefferson, from the Address to the Declaration…” -- Garry Wills, Inventing America (Doubleday, 1978)

This is unfashionable language. So earthy; so full of male, female, procreation, and midwifery; all a very messy and laborious and old-fashioned business.

It is not even fashionable among many who believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the hieros gamos that produced it. A growing number of such, at least among educated elites, get nervous any time biblical language is used to describe the American founding or the continuing presence and spiritual power of American influence in the world. “Politicizing the gospel,” the accusation goes, or as the misguided authors of the recently published Evangelical Manifesto put it (www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com), the gospel should not be “confused with or reduced to political categories such as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal.’”

Translation: we want Christian engagement with culture and politics, but we are tired of evangelicals being so widely identified as political conservatives. This compromises the gospel. We want civility. We want political choices to be more separate from theological choices so that more political liberals feel more comfortable being around us. We want a definition of “Evangelical,” which should be spelled with a capital “E” like every other religious option is, that is politically bigger-tent. We want to be more inclusive. We are tired of controversy.

Nice stuff, not unlike the “reach across the aisle” language and strategy on which GOP presidential candidate John McCain has built a lucrative national career. Who doesn’t want unity? Who doesn’t want the two sides of the aisle to come together once and for all? Who doesn’t want to be credited with having helped make the group hug happen? Why trouble ourselves with the laborious midwifery of an unfashionably conservative political heritage when an easier, more comfortable route is, at this hour as at every hour, so readily crafted and so ripe for the taking?

If Christ had followed this sure-winner public relations strategy, he might not have gotten himself crucified.

I’m not the only one with a better idea. GOP candidate for U.S. Senate and all-around Republican good guy Bob Schaffer captured it nicely on Saturday in the best applause line of a highlight-laden speech to the Colorado GOP state assembly: “Now, if we’re going to compete successfully against Democrats, we need to have a little bit of introspection and look at our own party as well. We could sustain a little bit of reform within the Republican Party, too. I’ve always believed that principles matter most, and I believe that it’s important even to take on leaders in our own party who have a tendency to drift from those principles that have defined our country.”

Ouch. The normal Schaffer grace, but a shot between the eyes to Republican leaders, all the way up to President Bush, whom Schaffer went on to tell the delegates he had publicly opposed on legislative disasters like No Child Left Behind and McCain-Feingold, which (my comment here, not Schaffer’s) is now hurting McCain’s campaign as badly as it is hurting free speech across the fruited plain. Note this is not any vague Scott McClellan sellout to the left; it is principled criticism from the right.

Schaffer’s simple truth was red meat for a leadership-starved Republican grassroots. Other ringers from Schaffer included a more-sincere-than-usual-from-Republicans-these-days appeal to the “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” of the Declaration – which went nicely with Mrs. Schaffer and the five Schaffer children, three of whom are training to become military officers, standing next to him – as well as a refreshing acknowledgement of the Almighty as the source of all good political things. It was a reference, given it is a piece of political theology almost always heard from conservatives and not liberals and which is the foundation of conservative political philosophy, that might have been a bit too flag-wavey to keep the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto smiling.

Watch Schaffer’s entire speech here.

But this is prologue. I imagine Schaffer would agree that good speeches are nice in their place and discomfitingly rare in today’s soul-starved GOP, but the energy and heart of the Grand Old Party and the larger American conservative movement are forged and proved on the ground, when and where nobody’s watching and applauding, and when the principles we claim to espouse are given flesh and blood by backbone in the trenches. The real question is not whether we can find someone with the combination of guts and talent to give the speech Schaffer gave. The question is whether and where we can find a few more with the spinal stiffness to argue and vote to implement these sentiments in public policy, to do so even when nobody’s applauding and flattering, and to offer no weak, self-doubting apologies or excuses in the process.

Tough stuff. Not nearly as nice as big-tent John McCain Evangelical Manifesto inclusiveness. But as one of the nation’s – indeed, the world’s – favorite evangelical preachers, one who didn’t sign the Evangelical Manifesto and probably wasn’t invited to, is fond of saying, “Hard preaching makes soft people.” Converse: soft preaching may make for good media, but it makes for exceedingly hard hearts. Both may win you an election and get you out of short-term controversy; both will, whether you are an individual or a political party, eventually cost you your soul and your long-term political influence.

Fortunately for restless Colorado conservatives everywhere who don’t just say they agree with Schaffer that principles matter most, but so believe in their heart of soft hearts, Schaffer is not alone in holding high and proud the banner of principled political conservatism. Amidst the back-stabbing, ambition-soaked, slander-drenched, platitude-heavy, hard-hearted Republican atmosphere in El Paso County is an honest and sincere man with real convictions who happens to be a U.S. Congressman.

Name, Douglas L. Lamborn. Born 1954, Leavenworth, Kansas. Schaffer-like, has both a wife and five children. Bachelor’s in Journalism, National Merit Scholar, Juris Doctor, University of Kansas. Colorado House of Representatives, 1995. House Republican Whip, 1997. Colorado Senate, 1998. President Pro-tem, 1999. Impeccable conservative voting record at the state level. U.S. Congress, 2006. House Armed Services Committee, 2007.

According to Congressional Quarterly, through the August 2007 recess, Mr. Lamborn actually did what every Republican candidate for office tells party regulars he/she will do if elected: he voted against the Democratic agenda in the U.S. House more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). One of five members of Congress – that’s 5 out of 535 – to receive a 100% rating in 2008 from the Club for Growth, perhaps the nation’s leading free-market think tank and political advocacy group. “True Blue” rating from the Family Research Council for a 100% voting record on issues of social conservatism. That means a) men get to be completely and joyously satisfied with women as their only marital option, b) women not only get acknowledged as fully equal to this high calling but enjoy the same reciprocal satisfaction in their marital options, and c) cute babies get to be safe in the womb again.

In short, here’s a politico with soul and a soft heart. For his labors, he has two GOP primary challengers, both claiming to believe in all the same things Mr. Lamborn has now spent a decade and a half advancing in public policy via the messy and laborious midwifery always required so to advance. Their reasons for running? Lamborn spends too much money communicating by mail with his constituents. We therefore need to elect his opponents to “show real leadership” and “take our Colorado common sense values to Washington” and “reach across the aisle to get things done” and .

Other vague condemnations and abandonments of Lamborn, both explicit and surreptitious, have been common and ugly throughout the Fifth Congressional and Colorado GOP hierarchies. Lamborn’s resulting distrust of the local GOP structure led him to petition on to the August primary ballot instead of going through the normal caucus process.

Bob Schaffer experienced something of the same royal treatment in 2004, when he ran for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate against moderate beer magnate Pete Coors and was opposed by many of the courageous state Republican leaders who, with no alternative candidate and thus no reason this time to have the proverbial finger in the proverbial wind, are now supporting him.

Yet somehow, even according to Mr. Lamborn’s opponent, Lamborn leads his competitors by at least ten percentage points in current polling. Read more here. Perhaps the grassroots is not as unhappy with Lamborn-style, Schaffer-style principled political conservatism as media pundits and GOP leaders and self-serving challengers would have us believe.

The GOP picture in Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster: persecute and marginalize family-man conservative heroes and celebrate cocktail-party mediocrities. Downplay decades of proven commitment and up-play glowing promises and smooth talk. Talk at campaign stops about what a great conservative and loyal Republican and fan of Ronald Reagan you are; talk on the phone about how useless Doug Lamborns are and how we’ll never be a winner party again until we are rid of them.

The nation was born maieutically, by midwifery, by men like Bob Schaffer and Doug Lamborn. Men like their critics may have won a few short-term victories in government, but their brief time passed and they ended their average lives as outsiders. The Grand Old Party was similarly born in the crucible of antebellum anti-slavery politics, where Abe Lincoln got scalded just as viscerally and irrationally and faithlessly as genuine Lincoln-style conservatives are getting scalded in today’s version of the party Lincoln founded.

Let us not dissemble: the GOP, both nationally and in Colorado, is far enough along its leftward path that only a stark electoral drubbing will awaken the collective party senses and once again create the political and cultural atmosphere where a new Reagan can rise to prominence and conservatives can re-take the party hierarchy, where a party and a nation once again remember the virgin birth – both the one in Bethlehem and the one in Philadelphia – and where both pledge anew, for the defense of a great set of eternal propositions about God, man, and government, not only their words during election season, but their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.