What To Love About The Republican Presidential Debates
“I disagree in some respects with Congressman Paul, who says the country is founded on the individual. The basic building block of a society is not an individual. It’s the family. That’s the basic unit of society.” —Former Sen. Rick Santorum, at Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas.
“Well, I would like to explain that rights don’t come in bunches. Rights come as individuals, they come from a God, and they come as each individual has a right to life and liberty.” —Rep. Ron Paul, in reply to Santorum.
Many observers of these primary debates find them pointlessly repetitive; they can’t wait until the field is winnowed to one or two viable contenders.
For my money, I’m glad for this period of wide-open, freewheeling, occasionally ridiculous discourse. Sure, you have to wade through the vacuous nonsense of Rep. Michele Bachmann (“Hold on, moms out there!”); the vainglorious opportunism of former Rep. Newt Gingrich (yeah, I supported an individual mandate—but it was in opposition to Hillarycare!); the charming ignorance of Herman Cain; the slimy evasiveness of former Gov. Mitt Romney; the deer-in-headlights ineptitude of Gov. Rick Perry.
But then you get a gem such as the above exchange between Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.
It gets right to the heart of the matter—to the eternally unresolved tensions within conservatism.
In many ways, Representative Paul has been an indispensable voice in these debates. As Ross Douthat notes, he’s the only candidate who answers each question with “perfect unblinking honesty.”
I love it when he skewers bedrock Republican assumptions about terror suspects (“You haven’t convicted them of anything!”), the bloated Pentagon budget (“You can’t cut a penny?”), and even the lately dominant and tiresome “class warfare” trope (“A lot of people aren’t paying any taxes, and I like that.”).
As refreshingly iconoclastic as he can be, though, Paul is the archetype of the kind of rightist I like least—the arid rationalist. He’s what poet-historian Peter Viereck called “the unadjusted man” or an “apriorist.” He’s filled with tidy abstractions about how the world works. He’s perfectly secure in his convictions and, like every ideologue, he will backfill every hole that the real world presents to those convictions.
Viereck identified this mentality precisely for what it is—radical:
Old Guard doctrinaires of Adam Smith apriorism, though dressed up in their Sunday best (like any Jacobin gone smug and successful), are applying the same arbitrary, violent wrench, the same discontinuity with the living past, the same spirit of rootless abstractions that characterized the French Revolution.
Santorum, virtually alone in the Republican field, gives full-throated voice to the notion of a “living past”—of individuals situated in and nourished by families and communities, by Burke’s “little platoons.” But then Santorum engages in some apriorism of his own. Glimpsing the possible disquiet within his own worldview, he rejects the idea that the United States was founded on individual rights (clearly it was) and says “the family” is the “basic unit of society” (clearly it is). It’s “the courts” and “government” that are burdening the family—no one or nothing else. He brushes his hands and continues merrily on his way.
The guy seems intrinsically incapable of even entertaining notions outside of the box of stale fusionist conservatism. The late Burkean conservative Robert Nisbet, who, in The Quest for Community, saw the “centralized territorial state” and industrial capitalism working in tandem to create “atomized masses of insecure individuals,” is there waiting for someone with Santorum’s sound and humane instincts:
In the history of modern capitalism we can see essentially the same diminution of communal conceptions of effort and the same tendency toward the release of increasing numbers of individuals from the confinements of guild and village community. As Protestantism sought to reassimilate men in the invisible community of God, capitalism sought to reassimilate them in the impersonal and rational framework of the free market. As in Protestantism, the individual, rather than the group, becomes the central unit. But instead of pure faith, individual profit becomes the mainspring of activity. In both spheres there is a manifest decline of custom and tradition and a general disengagement of purpose from the contexts of community.
Santorum’s mind just won’t go there.
And neither, it seems, will his party.
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, October 20, 2011
Making The Court A Priority For Progressives
This week the U.S. Supreme Court opened a new term, for the first time in Barack Obama’s presidency without a new Justice joining the high court. Also this week, two of the Justices testified before Congress in an historic hearing on the role of judges under the U.S. Constitution. A new national conversation about the third branch and the Constitution is gaining the attention of more Americans every day, and it’s one all of us should join.
History shows that nearly every major political issue ends up in the courts. Our nation’s federal courts are where social security appeals are heard, employment cases decided, immigration issues settled, and where Americans vindicate their most cherished Constitutional rights. This year is no different.
This Supreme Court term, lasting through June 2012, promises to be a significant one, with decisions affecting every American. The cases the court will decide this term alone highlight what’s really at stake for all Americans, far beyond any single election or individual term in office.
Consider these important questions the Court is poised to decide: the constitutionality of the Obama Administration’s landmark health care reform legislation; the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance of Americans using GPS tracking devices; the constitutionality of Arizona’s controversial racial profiling immigration law; questions relating to the Family and Medical Leave Act; the constitutionality of religious organizations discriminating in hiring decisions; constitutional questions about the reliability of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases (a key issue in the recent Georgia execution of Troy Davis).
This is a veritable hit parade of issues progressives, independents—indeed all Americans—care deeply about.
Until recently, the courts were generally friendly to progressive public policies. Indeed the federal courts helped to enable the social and economic progress that has made our country stronger and more inclusive over time. Courts were able to do so by adhering to the text and history of the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, and applying the Constitution’s core principles and values to questions of the day.
Conservatives, unhappy with idea that the Constitution guarantees more opportunity all our citizens instead of just for the already privileged few, have in recent years mounted a concerted political effort to remake the federal judiciary in their image: to be more activist and more closely aligned with their political views. Americans used to be able to sleep at night knowing the federal courts were good guardians of our most cherished constitutional principles. Now, the rights many Americans take for granted, like equal access at the voting booth and the ability to challenge discrimination at work, increasingly find a hostile and activist audience in the nation’s courts.
But progressives have a chance to turn the tide. Today, there are a record number of vacancies in our federal courtrooms, as a new Center for American Progress study released this week shows. Unprecedented obstruction by conservative U.S. Senators has led to an abysmal rate of judicial confirmations. This has left a level of empty judgeships not seen at any time under any president in U.S. history. Fully two thirds of the country is living in a jurisdiction without enough judges for the cases that are piling up. It means less access to justice and longer delays in court for the American worker and small business owner.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Progressives need to work together to support making our judiciary more progressive—and to support the confirmation of President Obama’s nominees. It’s time for the judiciary to be a priority for progressives.
The judges progressives want on the bench are judges for all Americans—judges who follow the text and history of the Constitution and apply it faithfully to the questions before them. At a time when the Tea Party is cherry-picking select provisions of the Constitution and discarding others to win short-term political arguments, we need the federal judiciary to be a strong guardian of all of our Constitution’s provisions and amendments for the long-term. With increasingly conservative state legislatures rolling back gains progressives have championed for decades, we need our courts to protect our Constitutional values from the political winds of the moment. These values—liberty, freedom, equality—have driven America’s progress since its founding, and are what make America exceptional around the world today.
Our courts matter for all Americans. And who is on the courts should matter to anyone who cares about the Constitution and the opportunities and protections it promises. It’s time for progressives to unite and support getting more progressive judges on the federal bench. Nothing less than the long term health of our democracy depends on it.
By: Andrew Blotky, Center for American Progress, Originally Published in Huffington Post, October 20, 2011
Why Speak Up When Rush Limbaugh Lies?
Is it useful to object when Rush Limbaugh says something particularly odious on the radio, where he is one of the most successful and influential broadcasters alive? Or does reacting to his screeds have the perverse effect of empowering him? In the past, I’ve ignored him at times, but more often I’ve spoken up. I’ve drawn attention to Limbaugh’s shameful habit of falsely accusing people of racism, the way he compromises his craft to ingratiate himself to powerful Republicans, and his habit of deliberately inflaming the racial anxieties of his audience by lying to them.
Today the Internet is once again asking itself, “Has Rush Limbaugh finally gone too far?” It’s a reaction to a statement he made about the Lord’s Resistance Army, “a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity.” President Obama has sent American troops to help stop the outlaws. It’s perfectly defensible to wonder, as I do, whether we ought to be intervening militarily in yet another country. (I’d say no.) But that wasn’t Limbaugh’s controversial objection. Consistent with the item on his website, “Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians,” Limbaugh told his substantial audience that the president is sending 100 American troops “to wipe out Christians.”
Predictably, the Obama-is-killing-Christians-on-behalf-of-Muslims meme began to spread among rank-and-file conservatives, until Erick Erickson, the Red State founder, found himself forced to respond:
It is ridiculous that I’m even having to write about this, but I am. In the past 72 hours, I have gotten lots of emails from lots of people who should know better asking me if I’ve heard about Barack Obama sending American troops to Africa to go after the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The people hearing the name assume it is a Christian group fighting radical Islamists in the Sudan or some such. It is no such thing.
What Limbaugh said is odious, irresponsible, offensive — but what are you going to do? The man has long since proved that he has no shame. I’ve corresponded with people who’ve been persuaded, by past posts I’ve written, to stop listening to his show, but they’re an unrepresentative few. Are a miniscule number of converts enough to justify talking about his oeuvre?
Perhaps not, unless there is a larger point to be made than the old news that he says indefensible things. In that spirit, I’d like to conclude this post by remarking on Limbaugh’s corrupting influence. We’ve witnessed more than enough controversies like this, where no one is willing to defend the talk radio host’s words, to know his public character and effect on political discourse. We’re not talking about a couple slip ups for which he’s apologized and should be forgiven. The man willfully traffics in odious commentary and has for years and years.
Shame on him, but that isn’t where it ends. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush ought to be embarrassed that they invited Limbaugh to the White House. The Claremont Institute, whose work I often respect, ought to be mortified that they sullied their Statesmanship Award by bestowing it upon Limbaugh. Shame on National Review for celebrating one of conservatism’s most controversial figures in a symposium that didn’t even acknowledge his many critics on the right. In it Heather Higgins remarked on “Rush’s long track record of accurate predictions and analyses,” Kathryn Jean Lopez commented on his “graciousness and humility,” Mary Matalin said “he epitomizes what we all aspire to be, both as citizens and individuals,” Andrew McCarthy claims his message is “always” delivered with “optimism, civility, and good humor,” and Jay Nordlinger asserted that “he is almost the antithesis of the modern American, in that he doesn’t whine.” Every last claim is too absurd to satire, let alone defend.
Shame on The Heritage Foundation for sponsoring Limbaugh’s radio show, and on the Media Research Center and Human Events for honoring Limbaugh’s excellence … and the list goes on, including the millions of people who support his radio show because they agree with Limbaugh’s ideology, even though they’d be outraged if a liberal trafficked in similarly poisonous rhetoric.
Many conservatives complain, with good reason, when they’re caricatured as racially insensitive purveyors of white anxiety politics who traffic in absurd, paranoid attacks on their political opponents. Yet many of the most prominent brands in the conservative movement elevate a man guilty of those exact things as a “statesman” whose civility and humility ought to inspire us! In doing so, they’ve created a monster, one who knows that so long as his ratings stay high, he can say literally anything and be feted as an intellectual and moral role model. So the outrages arrive at predictable intervals. And Americans hear about them and think badly of the right. Movement conservatives, if you seek integrity in American life, if you seek civility, if you seek converts, tear down this man’s lies! He hasn’t any integrity or self respect left to lose. But you do.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, October 18, 2011
Herman Cain Riding High: Dial 9-9-9 For Nonsense
Herman Cain is riding high in the polls. Among other things, his ascent is based upon a charming sense of humour, rousing oratorical skills, a story of moderate achievement in business, zero experience in elected office, which has allowed him to mould a perfectly zeitgest-matching conservative platform untainted by a record of no-longer zeitgest-matching political decisions, and, finally, the bold, clear proposition of the 9-9-9 tax plan. Now that Mr Cain is having a moment in the sun, what had seemed a gimmicky ploy is undergoing serious scrutiny, and we can expect Mr Cain to get hammered on the details of the 9-9-9 plan in tomorrow night’s Republican debate.
Mr Cain touts the simplicity of the 9-9-9 plan, but it is anything but simple. Even after reading about it on Mr Cain’s campaign site, I’m still not sure I understand it. I thought I knew that the plan proposed 9% income, sales, and corporate tax rates. But the corporate tax is not a simple reduction in the corporate tax rate, as I had thought, but a value-added-tax on “Gross income less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment, and net exports.” Anyway, the 9-9-9 plan is not what Mr Cain ultimately has in mind for American tax policy. It is but the first step of a two-step process to replace most federal taxes with a 30% national sales tax, a version of the so-called “Fair Tax”. Why not go directly to the Fair Tax, then? Why the transitional step? Mr Cain’s statement doesn’t really say, though it does seem to imply that the Fair Tax is at present too unpopular to implement. “Amidst a backdrop of the economic renewal created by the 9-9-9 Plan,” Mr Cain says “I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.”
Mike Huckabee, a Fox News presenter and former governor of Arkansas, plumped for the Fair Tax during the 2008 race for the Republican nomination and the plan came in for a lot of abuse by economists and commentators across the ideological continuum. Perhaps Mr Huckabee’s failure to get far with the Fair Tax explains Mr Cain’s choice to campaign on an altogether different tax plan. Perhaps the idea is that he can capture the allegiance of the Fair Tax’s many conservative fans while ducking the criticisms of the Fair Tax by pushing a fresh plan with a catchy name implying super-low rates. But this can only work if (a) the media and Mr Cain’s competition let him get away with advocating the Fair Tax while running on his transitional plan, and (b) the transitional plan stands up to scrutiny better than the Fair Tax has. And this seems unlikely.
The National Review today ran a blistering critique of Mr Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. A selection:
This tripartite scheme makes for a succinct slogan but has little else to recommend it. In particular Cain’s inability to choose between a sales tax and a VAT is puzzling. The two are very similar in their economic effects. The chief advantage of the sales tax over a VAT is that the latter is considered easier for governments to raise, because it is hidden. The chief advantage of the VAT over the sales tax is that it is easier to enforce without stimulating black markets. (Another is that it reduces the risk of taxing business-to-business purchases.) Opting for both as a transitional step means courting the danger of a VAT with none of its rewards: In the first stage, the government would get a new money machine, and in the second it would supposedly destroy that machine and opt for something hard to enforce.
The two-stage scheme is self-defeating in another respect as well. The 30 percent national sales tax, whatever its other merits, would be significantly softer on the poor than the 9-9-9 transitional step, since the larger sales tax includes a “prebate” check to all Americans to exempt the basic necessities of life from being taxed, while 9-9-9 includes no similar provision. Leaving aside whether a major tax increase on people at the bottom of the income scale is a good idea, what is the point of first raising their taxes and then cutting them?
In the last debate, only Rick Santorum noted that Mr Cain’s plan involves the danger of even temporarily handing the government “a new money machine”, a point one would expect to resonate with conservative voters. I expect we’ll hear a lot more of this line of argument in upcoming debates. More generally, the fact that Mr Cain apparently believes it is politically feasible to wipe out the entire status-quo federal tax system in order to move to the 9-9-9 scheme, and then wipe out the entire 9-9-9 scheme in order move to a 30% national sales tax seems to me to draw attention to Mr Cain’s policy inexperience and dazzling political naivete.
That the 9-9-9 plan would cut taxes on the rich while raising them on the poor led Bruce Bartlett to call the proposal “a distributional monstrosity”, a phrase you could imagine Barack Obama using to good effect in a general election. Why would you propose to raise taxes on the poor, making yourself vulnerable to charges of monstrous callousness, when, as the NR editors note, your ultimate plan would only cut them later? Well, you wouldn’t, if you knew what you were doing. It requires only superficial examination to see that Mr Cain’s 9-9-9/Fair Tax scheme is more an ill-considered, hand-waving improvisation than a serious plan from a serious policymaker. He’s winging it, which I supposed makes it all the more impressive that he’s been able to wing it all the way to preeminence in a few polls. But now he’s made himself a target, and an easy one at that, so I doubt Mr Cain will wing it all the way to the nomination.
By: Will Wilkerson, Democracy in America, October 17, 2011
Why Perry’s Backers Won’t Lay Off Romney’s Mormonism
Mitt Romney beats Rick Perry among all Republicans — men, women, young, old — except the “very conservative,” The Wall Street Journal‘s Gerald F. Seib observes. Perhaps that’s why Perry didn’t distance himself too much from Robert Jeffress, the Dallas preacher who called Mormonism a “cult.” And why, as The Daily Beast’s McKay Coppinsreports, another important minister who’s a big backer of Perry has been emailing supporters about the need to start “juxtaposing traditional Christianity to the false God of Mormonism.”
David Lane was in charge of raising money for the national prayer meeting in early August that was the unofficial kickoff to Perry’s presidential campaign. He was among the key Christian leaders who pushed Perry to run, Time‘s Amy Sullivan reports. On October 12, Dick Bott, head of the Chrstian talk Bott Radio Network, emailed Lane that he would be interviewing Jeffress, saying Jeffress was right to question Romney’s faith: “What would anyone think if a candidate were a Scientologist? … Shouldn’t they want to know what the implications were that may flow therefrom?”
On October 13, Lane replied: “Thank you for what you are doing and for your leadership. Getting out Dr. Jeffress message, juxtaposing traditional Christianity to the false god of Mormonism, is very important in the larger scheme of things … We owe Dr. Jeffress a big thank you.”
Coppins says the emails give reason to wonder whether Jeffress’s comments were “a deliberate strategic move by the campaign.” He notes that in other emails, Lane talks about talking with a “key Perry aide” about “the creation of a clarion call to Evangelical pastors and pews is critical and from my perspective is the key to the Primary.”
Lane stood by his comments in an email to “friends” after the story was posted, Real Clear Politics’ Scott Conroy reports. Lane pointed to a story in The New York Times about Romney’s role in his church and how he counseled a young alcoholic “Are you trying to improve, are you trying to do better? And if you are, then you’re a saint.” Lane said that belief was “not Christian.” He continued in his email, “If the secular Press’ bullying over the ‘cult issue’ fails to censor those voices who are calling into question the theological legitimacy of a ‘group sharing belief’ (political correctness for Cult), Romney is going to have to defend his and the Mormon’s ‘bizarre’ Articles of Faith.”
“Polling conducted for the Washington Post and ABC News, Gallup, and the Pew Research Center in recent months has shown between 20 and 25 percent of Americans say they either won’t vote for a Mormon or would be less likely to vote for one,” The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake writes. Social conservative voters in Iowa — where Perry needs to do well in the caucuses — aren’t likely to vote for Romney. But Mormons were a quarter of the voters in Nevada’s caucuses in 2008; 95 percent of them voted for Romney. Politico’s Maggie Haberman observes that “The surest way for Perry to get a second look is for Romney’s negatives to go up — a fact his supporters seem to realize.” After all, as The Journal’s Seib notes, “60 percent of very conservative voters still say they have overall positive feelings about Mr. Romney.”
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