The Eve of the American Reawakening

The following is an excerpt of a speech that Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) delivered to the Council for National Policy in Washington DC. Click here to read the entire speech.

To those who say we should put the Reagan era behind us – I have a better idea. Let's put the Bush era behind us.To those who say we should redefine our principles, I have a better idea: we don't need to redefine our principles; we need to return to them.

To those of the Republican establishment, who misled our party for years, who dismantled so much of what Ronald Reagan accomplished and now tell us "the other side has something" and we have nothing. To them I can't improve upon Cromwell's words: "You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing; it is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You shall now give way to better men. Now depart and let us have done with you, I say, in the name of God, GO!"

"The other side has something and we have nothing?

"What is the something the other side has – that some say we have to be respectful and mindful of?

Statism. Shortage. Paternalism. That's their "something" that seems to so overawe and over-impress these scions of a failed party establishment

Statism, Shortage and Paternalism is what we are told to be mindful and respectful of? I don't think so.

Their statism is "something" so extreme that the entire national debt accumulated from the first day of the George Washington administration to the very last day of the George W. Bush administration will literally double in the next five years and triple in the next ten.

The tax increases already proposed to support it will rob every family of more than $2,500 from its purchasing power every year. We're supposed to respect that? The American people don't respect it. The American people know that you cannot spend your way rich; that you cannot borrow your way out of debt and you cannot tax your way to prosperity. And they know that if you live well beyond your means today, you must of necessity live well BELOW your means in the future. And that's not a future we want for our children.

Their entire policy is predicated on maintaining shortages of everything from health care to energy and then using the force of government to ration that shortage according to their own whims. The "something" that they propose to solve their government-induced shortages is having bureaucrats tell us what medical treatments our kids may have and when they may have them; raising energy prices until we bicycle to work; telling us what kind of light bulbs to use, where to set our thermostats, when to use our appliances.And then there's Paternalism. That's what Rick Santelli was talking about. When your neighbor buys the house he can't afford – it's now your job to pay his mortgage. When the fraternity brothers of Paulson and Geitner party their investments into the ground – now it's your job to cover their losses. When the reckless country-clubbers of General Motors and Chrysler give away the farm to the UAW – now it's your job to make up the difference, and by the way, now it's Barney Frank's job to tell you what kind of car you may buy.

That is the "something" that seems to send these self-described "New Republicans," into paroxysms of awe and policy-envy.That's the "something" that some people are so deathly afraid of saying "NO" to. Churchill said, "Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word "NO." Let that not be the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of parliamentary democracy ... There, in one single word, is the resolve which the forces of freedom and progress, of tolerance and goodwill, should take."

What is the "nothing" that we have that so dismays and disgusts these same messiahs of mediocrity – this "nothing" that's convinced them that we must wean ourselves from our unseemly nostalgia with such irrelevant has-beens as Reagan, and Lincoln and Jefferson – I add the others because they stood for exactly the same principles as Reagan.We stand for freedom.

We stand for abundance.

We stand for individual responsibility.

Freedom. Abundance and Responsibility. That is our platform.

Those who call that "nothing" are the same failed leaders who disdained it during the Reagan years and dismantled it as soon as the Reagan years were over.

They stand for statism. We stand for freedom: The God-given right to enjoy the fruit of our own labor; the right to raise our children according to our own values; the right to express our opinions and our faith freely and without reserve; the right to defend ourselves and our families; the right to enter into voluntary associations with each other for our mutual betterment without an army of busy-bodies telling us what is best for us.

They stand for the rationing of shortage. We stand for abundance: what happens when free men and free women enjoy the liberty to go as far as their desire, talent and imagination can guide them and as far as their labor, industry and enterprise can take them. Societies prosper when freedom protects the rights of each of us to decide on our own what we will produce and what we will consume. Government exists to protect the conditions that produce abundance, not to ration shortages that government has caused.They stand for paternalism. We stand for personal responsibility. That means you stand by your promises. That means you tell your customers the truth about your products and investments. It means if you bring a child into the world then by God you look after that child. And it means if you make a bad decision, you set it right and you learn from it – and you realize that the bad decisions we all make from time to time is the price we pay for the freedom to make all the good decisions in our lives.

Freedom. Abundance. Responsibility. Ladies and Gentlemen, that ain't "nothing." That's everything.

A Conservative Brand

By Ernest Istook

Washington Times - Feb. 8, 2009

A few years ago we said goodbye to the Oldsmobile. It went the way of the Pierce Arrow, Plymouth and Studebaker.

Some believe conservatives and Republicans will be the next brands doomed to follow into extinction. They forecast death by suicide for the GOP and extinction via political climate change for conservatives. 

But let's not bury either group beside the Whigs and the Mugwumps. Republicans and conservatives overlap but are not identical. Yet they need each other to flourish because Democrats own the liberal brand. Unless they have a conservative brand, Republicans will have no brand at all. 

Most conservatives believe that America will back them if they simply stand firm on their principles. But that's not enough because today's liberal dominance in Washington reflects American attitudes more than we'd like to admit. The economy, demographic shifts and having a skilled liberal communicator as president make it insufficient for conservative officeholders to abide by their principles. 

John F. Kennedy's famed inaugural speech challenge has been flipped upside-down. Asking "what you can do for your country" is redefined to mean supporting big government rather than a call to self-responsibility. 

Conservatives must accept the burden of educating a nation whose core founding principles have been eroded by left-leaning media, Hollywood and political correctness, and damaged by conservative misbehavior. 

Fixing our brand requires that we educate, communicate and advocate differently. The lower-tax message won't resonate with the millions of Americans who already enjoy zero-income-tax liability, thanks to conservative efforts. Those voters ask, "What have you done for me lately?" 

The high cost of Congress is the way to re-establish the appeal to personal pocketbooks. We need a kitchen-table agenda that reflects both the concerns of the moment and timeless principles. "Economic stimulus" benefits are worth less to families than if Washington halted the policies that keep jacking up prices (often in the name of helping children or, more recently, to protect the planet). 

This consumer-oriented conservative approach should focus on how government has escalated the costs of everything from health care to energy, food and more. Programs and subsidies touted by the left are often an effort to offset and mask these high prices. 

The approach is not new. Ronald Reagan convinced the nation that government was often the problem, not the solution, and he told stories to back it up. Today, there's even more proof than in Mr. Reagan's time. 

The most recent energy bill made food, cars, gasoline and even light bulbs more expensive. Washington has caused soaring medical bills and health insurance, washing machines that have doubled in price, and "lo-flo" toilets that don't flush right. Automakers projected the bill would raise car prices by $5,000 to $7,000 per vehicle — an extra burden Detroit doesn't need. 

Such details are readily available but only rarely exploited. When candidate Barack Obama told a newspaper that "under my [energy] plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," it went almost unnoticed. Why does the left keep subsidizing alternative energy? It costs more (even after subsidies), causing higher fuel bills and lower mileage. Ethanol subsidies diverted so much corn that food prices soared. 

A 2004 government report admitted that federal regulations cost our economy at least $1.1 trillion each year. That's $3,666 per person, so it's more than $15,000 for a family of four — in addition to taxes. Federal red tape is also a huge reason why health care is so expensive. For each hour spent with patients, our doctors, nurses and their staff must spend equal time doing the paperwork dictated by 135,000 pages of federal health care regulations. Then there's government's role in the mortgage meltdown that started our economic nose dive. 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development decreed that big chunks of mortgages must be issued to borrowers with poor finances. The requirement started at 12 percent of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages in 1996. By 2008, that had more than doubled, to 28 percent. 

The true price of big government should be told to families who sit around their kitchen table to consider their finances. The full cost goes beyond taxes; it's also an issue of freedom. Congress' bright idea to ban incandescent bulbs is especially galling. Smart shoppers can buy them for under 25 cents each, but the new curly-cue fluorescent bulbs run $2 or more. 

But even if they last eight times longer and save energy, I resent Congress telling me I've got no choice. Plus, since the new bulbs contain mercury, we're given special rules to dispose of broken or burned-out bulbs. 

For conservatives to succeed, it's not enough to find new thinkers to replace the likes of William F. Buckley. Strong voices must come from elected leaders, to demonstrate how thought can be translated into action. More than a political leader, Newt Gingrich was and remains an educational leader. The same with Dick Armey. The loss of those two smaller-government champions greatly diminished the Republican majority in Congress. They've not been replaced in that role. 

Even if the right can duplicate President Obama's campaign mastery of modern communications, the message must resonate. After all, smaller, less-intrusive government would indeed be "change." Conservatives must educate and communicate better. But without something worthwhile to say — unless we stand for something — all efforts will be wasted. 

The neglected message is that big government is the cause, not the solution, for many of our current problems. That message should be told as Mr. Reagan always did it, with a good story and a smile. Optimism is the final key ingredient to carry the day. 

• Former Rep. Ernest Istook, Oklahoma Republican, calls himself a "recovering congressman" after serving 14 years in the House of Representatives. His e-mail address is eistook@gmail.com.

No Permanent Majorities in America

By Michael Barone

January 03, 2009

As we approach the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, I have been thinking about the differences in the basic character of our two historic parties -- the oldest and third oldest free political parties in the world (number two, at least by my count, is the British Conservative Party).

Democrats are now hoping that their party can achieve something like permanent majority status. They can take heart that their presidential candidate won by a wider margin and their party has larger congressional majorities than the Republicans had when they entertained similar hopes four years ago. But there is reason for caution, and not just because the Republicans fell so far short. And the reason lies in the difference in the basic character of the parties.

 

The Republican Party throughout our history has been a party whose core constituency has been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Northern Protestants. Today, it means white married Christians. Yet such people, however typical, have never made up a majority in our culturally and regionally diverse nation.

The Republican core constituency tends to be cohesive and coherent (though sometimes, like now, quarrelsome). But it has almost never been by itself enough to win. As some Democrats like to remind you, Republicans have lost the popular vote for president in four of the last five elections.

The Democratic Party throughout our history has been the party whose core constituencies have been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be something other than typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Southerners and big city Catholics. Today, it means blacks and singles and seculars and those with postgraduate degrees. Such people, while atypical, potentially make up a majority. But they often do not have a lot in common -- and when they have differences over highly visible political issues, they are hard to hold together.

As some Republicans like to remind you, Democrats have lost seven of the 11 presidential elections since their landslide victory in 1964.

Partisan enthusiasts look forward to their side achieving lasting majority status. Others might take counsel from the political scientist David Mayhew, who casts doubt on whether permanent or long-lasting majorities are possible. When you look closely at the supposedly permanent partisan majorities of the past, they fade from view.

Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1860 to 1892. But Democrats won majorities in the House for most of that period after the Southern states were readmitted to the Union. Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1896 to 1928. And they held congressional majorities for most of that time, as well. Yet they won almost nowhere in the South, and at the time their dominance was by no means taken for granted.

And what of the New Deal Democratic majority from 1932 to 1968? New Deal Democrats took a hit in the off-year elections of 1938, and polling suggests the Republicans would have won in 1940 if domestic issues had been paramount. Instead, voters re-elected Franklin Roosevelt as a wartime president in 1940 and 1944.

Harry Truman, too, benefited from a foreign issue -- the successful Berlin airlift -- in 1948, and John F. Kennedy campaigned in 1960 as the most determined of Cold Warriors. The Democrats held Congress during almost all this period. But as liberal historians note mournfully, liberal Democrats had effective majorities for only a couple of years from the 1930s to the 1960s.

All of which suggests to me that the more natural state of partisan politics, in this country at least, is something less like party dominance and more like uneasy equilibrium. Equilibrium that swings to one side or another from time to time, as it has swung in varying measure to Democrats in 1992 and 2008 and to Republicans in 1994 and 2004.

Because of their basic character, both parties have difficult tasks in assembling and holding together majorities -- Republicans, because their core constituency is off-putting to those whom it defines as something other than typical Americans; Democrats, because of the difficult of holding together what is usually a very diverse and conflict-prone coalition.

Barack Obama now has that task. He has shown unusual skills and the capacity and willingness to stress what he has in common with those on the other side of the partisan divide. But already rents are appearing in the Democratic fabric -- over Rod Blagojevich, same-sex marriage and the unions' card check bill. My guess is that Obama will hold his majority together for a good long while, but not forever.

Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.

When Liberals Rule the World

Published on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicle

Stats Say The GOP is Dying. But Red-Staters Are Breeding Like Drunken Ferrets. Who Wins?

By Mark Morford

Here's the good news: The Republican party is dying. Slow, painful, twitching, secreting war and intolerance and desperation like a fetid gas, snarling and gagging like Jabba the Hutt being choked by the hard chain of progress and hope and relaxed social mores and an upcoming Generation Next that seems to sense that screaming about gays and women's rights and Muslims and drugs actually doesn't do much to move the human experiment forward in the slightest.

Is this not delicious? Is this not cause for rejoicing? According to Pew Research, the percentage of young 'uns age 18 to 25 (a.k.a. Generation Next) who identify with Republicans has been in steady decline since the early '90s, and now hovers around a meager 35 percent, down from a high of 55 percent in the Reagan-toxic early-90s, and is still dropping, whereas fully 48 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds now lean Democratic ... and rising.

Seems Generation Next tend to be more socially liberal and much less worried about the trembling "sanctity" of the failed nuclear family, and are overall less inclined to align with a particular religion. Indeed, it almost makes you want to weep and sigh and go buy a large grass-fed free-range organic hybrid vibrator.

Ah, but there is a flip side. A counterargument. A dark cloud of righteous bleakness and it looms like a giant synthetic cheesecake-scented Glade PlugIn of potential misery.

It is this: According to another set of data, for the past 30 years or so, conservatives -- particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain -- have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more.

It's true. The reason? Why, God loves babies, of course. White American babies, most especially. Also: issues of space, religion, sexual orientation and, of course, conscience. Or, you know, lack thereof.

One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won't want to give up the Ducati and the plasma and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren't procreating like they could/should be.

Conservative Christians, of course, have no such conscience. Among the right-wing God-lovin' set, there is often little real awareness of planetary health or resource abuse or the notion that birth control is actually a very, very good idea indeed, and therefore it's completely natural to worship at the altar of minivans and SUVs and megachurches and massive all-American entitlement and have little qualm about popping out six, seven, 19 gloopy tots to populate the world with frat boys and Ford F-150 buyers and food court managers.

I always assumed it might actually be a good thing that conservatives breed so mindlessly, because all those unhappy neocon kids, all those repressed misled tots grow up and eventually begin to (well, sometimes) think for themselves and ultimately do what any good kid does: rebel against their parents' silly dogma and become a bit more open-minded and hopeful, right?

Not exactly. Apparently, according to the research, four out of five kids actually stick with the political affiliation of their parents, generation after generation, with religious conservatives far more unlikely than their liberal brethren to allow their kids to develop the capacity for independent thought (given how it's so, you know, dangerous to America). Also, one word: homeschooling. I'm just sayin'.

So then, the big question: How can these two major demographics exist at the same time? How can we be enjoying the slow death of the GOP along with an impressive surge in young Democrats, and yet simultaneously be undergoing this quiet toxic swelling in ranks of the army of conservative autobots? The logic breaks down all over.

It seems impossible. Either we are we headed toward a new dawn full of smart social liberalism, perhaps leading to concomitant ideas of peace and tolerance and a newly evolved American identity, or there is another massive group lurking in the shadows, entirely overlooked by Pew Research, a seething army of religious conservatives who are working like a spiritual STD to force us backward once again, much the way the Bush regime brutally reversed decades of social, environmental, fiscal and international progress and made war and isolationism and megachurch evangelicals the lords of the playground for a shocklingly painful blip of time.

Hell, maybe it's both. Maybe what we're getting with these two sets of data is simply a glimpse of the next two major phases of the culture, the next two major swings of the sociopolitical pendulum, in sequence.

In other words, maybe we are indeed headed into a delightful progressive liberal phase, one with the potential to radically, even permanently change the way we view gender and identity and family and even America's role in the world.

But then the sad recoil. The clench, the terror, the loud screeching from all those red-state kids who are being taught right now to despise change and fear alternative views and see anything that's not wrapped in the flag or the Bible or a McDonald's wrapper as evil and dangerous and worthy of derision/elimination.

Or maybe there's another possibility. Perhaps it's something even more wild and delicious and improbable, and we are all, liberal and conservative alike, evolving more toward social progressiveness merely by default, not through social engineering or political maneuvering or reactionary Christian dread but merely as a nearly unconscious by-product of the times. In other words, maybe everyone is trending more progressive and open merely by existing on this planet today, almost despite ourselves.

I know. Completely idiotic. I must be totally drunk.

Option 3 is, of course, the most likely: Both sets of data are full of flaw and misinterpretation and wishful thinking. Neither is completely correct and by the way statistics are for dreamers and acidheads and pollsters and should be thrown over the shoulder, like salt, right before you go back for another Xanax and a beer.

And hence we are, as ever, simply a mad intoxicated mishmash of reactions and beliefs and ideologies, a God-obsessed sex-crazed drug-lovin' sociopolitical train wreck of a country that doesn't really know its ass from a hole in the ground or its God from a burp in the sky.

Personally, I'm going with the new liberal dawn thing. Hell, it doesn't hurt to dream, right?

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

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