The Incompetence of the Republicans

I am relieved to see that Rick Santorum lost by a wide margin in the Illinois Republican primaries.

I realize that some people might make the honest mistake of supporting Santorum over Mitt Romney because unlike Romney, Santorum seems to be at least distinguishable from Democrats. It is certainly true that Romney is a dreadful candidate; he is an unprincipled milquetoast, a disgusting compromiser, the creator of the Obamacare prototype. As a president, he might do a little less damage than Bush and Obama have done, but would do nothing to reverse our headlong plunge into the abyss.

Nevertheless, the support of Rick Santorum over Romney (or even Obama) cannot withstand a moment’s sober reflection. Think about what Santorum’s campaign actually means.

The United States is today buckling under an economic crisis caused by decades of devastating regulations, monetary manipulation, taxation, and government debt; we are consumed by an avalanche of government intrusion that is taking over (or has already taken over) every aspect of our lives: our health, our food, our cars, our energy, our education, our future. And, in the midst of this unprecedented abrogation of freedom—the wholesale trampling of individual rights and the dismantling of America before our very eyes—Mr. Santorum’s basic belief is . . . Americans are still too free.

Somewhere in the country, Mr. Santorum fears, a man and his wife are making love, not for the purpose of procreation, but for the very pleasure of it—and Santorum feels it would be the duty of his federal government to step in and “talk about” this fell “danger.”[1] Somewhere in America, to the horror of Rick Santorum, consenting adults are producing and consuming pornography in the privacy of their own homes—and it is these Americans that are the real menace to our country, and upon which Commander-in-Chief Santorum would declare war. 

And beware! Somewhere in the United States of America, Santorum observes in dismay, individuals are (gasp!) pursuing their own happiness, a prospect that is so counter to Mr. Santorum’s theocratic viewpoint that he cannot bring himself to believe the authors of the Declaration could have meant anything by this freedom to pursue happiness but the “freedom” to dutifully submit to God.[2]

This is pure evil—as anti-American and anti-life as it seems possible for a mainstream figure (i.e. one who is not a jihadist or serial killer) to be. I have difficulty comparing the extent of Santorum’s evil to that of Barack Obama—both are so monstrous, it is like trying to estimate the size of the Milky Way galaxy while being in it—but I think in the long run a Santorum presidency would be even more destructive than a second term of Barack Obama. And that is saying quite a lot.

I cannot help but marvel at the sheer incompetence of the Republicans to put forth even a mediocre candidate for the presidency. Obama’s first term has provided an unusual clarity to our situation—namely, that the battle of our times is between socialism and capitalism, government controls versus personal freedom, collectivism versus individualism, mindless self-sacrifice versus rational self-interest—and Obama is clearly, nakedly on the wrong side across the board. I would think that in selecting any American citizen at random one could come up with a candidate preferable to Obama—and yet the Republicans have given us Romney and Santorum. Disgusting.

NOTES

1. “Santorum then promised that, as president, he’d decry contraception. ‘One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country,’ he said. Noting that many Christians think contraception is okay, Santorum continued: ‘It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to . . . how things are supposed to be.’”[emphasis mine]

From a Boston Globe opinion piece, “Santorum’s contraception deception,” 21 Mar 2012, http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-21/opinion/31215572_1_contraception-republican-rick-santorum-religious-beliefs.

2. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03zFTTqHScI.

A Dirty Word

Shortly after formally announcing his entry into the pool of Republicans running for president, Newt Gingrich appeared on "Meet the Press" to present his views, presumably for the purpose of motivating Americans to vote for him in 2012.

Mr. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House who led a conservative resurgence in the 1990's, said the Republican Medicare plan was "too big a jump" for Americans and compared it to the health care overhaul championed by President Obama. 

"I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change," Mr. Gingrich said . . . "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," he said. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."[1]

It would be hard to improve upon these few sentences in articulating a thoroughly middle-of-the-road position. In case there were any lingering thoughts that the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994 signaled anything revolutionary about the man himself, Mr. Gingrich wishes to reassure us that he is fundamentally a compromising milquetoast--which is to say, he is a suitable Republican candidate.

The essence of Mr. Gingrich's position is that in the midst of rampant federal spending, meddling in the economy, and regulation of every aspect of citizens' lives--all of which has been increasing alarmingly for at least the last two presidential administrations--the proper position to take is: hold the line. The problem, according to Mr. Gingrich, is "radical change" itself, not whether changes are for good or ill.

The real evil of Mr. Gingrich's position can be found in the last words that I quoted: his reference to a "free society." The implication of Gingrich's statement is that anything "radical"--even the restoration of freedom and individual rights in America, which today is about as radical as anything I can imagine--would constitute an undesirable "imposition" upon citizens. I have made the point many times that Republicans are far worse than Democrats in that they ostensibly defend liberty, free markets, capitalism but then ultimately compromise the principles to which they give lip service. This is dreadfully destructive because it undermines liberty; it guarantees all the failures of the welfare state while ensuring that freedom gets the blame. At least Democrats have the honesty to be overt enemies of freedom.

The most alarming part of Newt Gringrich's remarks is that it makes me wonder if his calculations might be correct. He is surely a savvy politician so it is troubling that he has the confidence to present himself as a Washington compromiser in the face of a Tea Party movement that, though far from consistent, is the only bright spot in the political landscape. Can it really be true that so few Americans recognize the peril of the massive government intrusion--the precipitous withering of freedom--that has taken place under Bush-Obama? Can it be true that Republicans will rally around a message of compromise? I hope Mr. Gingrich has guessed badly.

I was encouraged by a recent Reuters special report (hat tip to HBL) that showed that conventional Republicans continue to be punished for plodding on with their compromising ways. The article hit the nail on the head: "The trouble is while compromise is a trademark of Washington politics, to many Tea Partiers it is a dirty word."[2]

The Reuters article included a cute quip that actually revealed more than it may have intended. "'The Ohio state Republican Party would screw up a free lunch in a soup kitchen,' said Ralph King of the Cleveland Tea Party."[2] Perhaps so. However, the real question is not why the Republicans would "screw up" a free lunch but why they are driven to offer a free lunch in the first place. A "free lunch" is a product and apt symbol of the "progressive" socialist policies that have plagued America off and on for more than a century. A "free lunch"--which constitutes the forced "redistribution" of property from those who have earned it to those who have not--is a symbol proudly held aloft by Democrats and (usually) rejected by Republicans. But to the continuing shame of Republicans, even as they decry the "free lunch" they give it moral sanction. Lip service aside, Republicans act at root upon the same principles of collectivism and sacrifice that underpin the Democrats: the idea that the needs of the poor, the elderly, the "underpriviledged," etc. trump the rights of individuals. Republicans routinely invoke the rights to life and liberty in their speeches but compromise at every turn, ultimately asking meekly for simply a little less sacrifice than their Democratic colleagues demand. 

If the country is to be saved, it will not come about by simply taking the foot off the political accelerator pedal as we plunge toward a full-blown welfare state, which is what Republicans are currently offering. It will require a widespread cultural shift away from a morality that holds sacrifice as a virtue, either proudly or apologetically.

NOTES

1. “Gingrich Calls G.O.P.’s Medicare Plan Too Radical,” The New York Times, 15 May 2011, “http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/us/politics/16gingrich.html?scp=1&sq=Medicare%20Plan%20Too%20Radical&st=cse”.

2. "Special report: Stuck between the Tea Party and a hard place," Reuters, 17 May 2011, "http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE74G37C20110517?irpc=932".

Rhoads, Hsieh, and Cushman on Midterm Elections

I came across three very good articles on the topic of Tuesday’s Republican victory (or to be more precise, I should call it Tuesday’s Democratic defeat).

In the first article, Jared Rhoads reported that he voted against Democrats across the board:

Since I am emphatically not a registered member of the Republican party, allow me briefly to explain.

My votes were cast with one goal in mind: to stem the tide toward statism and in so doing buy more time for rational ideas to take hold in the culture. On the surface, that means limited government, lower taxes, lower spending, and less regulation. More deeply, it means individual rights.[1]

In another article, Paul Hsieh advises the Republicans to understand what swept them into office. Their victory is decidedly not a mandate to compromise and deliver “ObamaLite”:

The 2010 vote was a powerful message from Americans rejecting the socialist policies of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid -- including the bailouts, the out-of-control federal spending, the higher taxes, and the nationalized health care scheme.

Voters elected Republicans to halt and reverse these policies -- not compromise to pass watered-down versions of those same bad ideas.[2]

Nor is the victory a green light to impose “social conservative” values:

The Republicans’ electoral rebound has been driven by millions of independent voters like the Colorado small businessman Ron Vaughn, who told the New York Times, “I want the Democrats out of my pocket and Republicans out of my bedroom.”[2]

Finally, at American Thinker, Charlotte Cushman urges the Republicans not to compromise with the Democrats to “find common ground” with policies that are disastrous for America:

We have been taught than compromising is a virtue, that in any conflict, we must concede things to the other side. . .

Finding common ground means that both sides agree on some fundamental principles. By compromising with Obama we would be saying that we agree with some aspects of Socialism. No we don’t. There is no common ground between an ideology of slavery and the ideology of freedom. Rush Limbaugh said the meaning of the election was “No, we don’t want to ‘work together,’ and the American people did not say they want to work with you. The American people said yesterday they want to stop you!”[3]

With an entirely secular meaning, I say, “Amen!”

NOTES

1. Jared Rhoads, “A Republican voter . . . ,” 2 Nov 2010, http://lucidicus.org/editorials.php?nav=20101102a.

2. Paul Hsieh, “GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You,” 3 Nov 2010, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gop-dance-with-the-one-who-brung-you/?singlepage=true.

3. Charlotte Cushman, “No More Goodie Two-Shoes,” 4 Nov 2010, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/no_more_goodie_twoshoes.html.

Scott Brown, Senator from Massachusetts

Against all odds, Massachusetts has stood against tyranny.

With over 90% of the precinct results reported, Republican Scott Brown has a 52% to 47% lead over the Democratic Martha Coakley. Mrs. Coakley has conceded the race.

A Brown victory is an extremely positive sign. It sends as strong and clear a signal as any election I can remember. The message is: Government control of people’s lives may prevail everywhere else on earth, but it is still not acceptable in the United States of America.

Image from usflag.org.

It would be hard to overstate the unlikelihood of Democrats losing the Massachusetts Senate seat that belonged to Ted Kennedy for almost half a century. Except for the odd penchant to elect Republican governors, Massachusetts voters are as uniformly leftist as one can find in the nation. This state is solid blue. Opponents hardly need apply; Democrats are a lock in every office from Congressman to dog catcher. We have not had a Republican in a Senate seat since 1972. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances could Democrats lose Ted Kennedy’s seat. (And yes, it is viewed as “Ted Kennedy’s seat” by many in Massachusetts.)

But extraordinary circumstances they are. The credit for the Democrats’ implosion belongs, of course, chiefly to Barack Obama. It is the President who has provided clarity to ordinary citizens – for the first time in decades. (In this regard, I highly recommend the John Lewis article referred to in Note 2.) Elections are ordinarily disgusting affairs, requiring one to choose between two narrowly-differentiated compromisers - the “lesser of two evils,” so to speak - or to not vote at all. Rarely do we get to vote on principles.

Barack Obama has cut through the fog. This Massachusetts special election became a referendum on the administration, particularly on health care "reform." Unwittingly, what the President has made clear more than any of his predecessors (with the possible exception of Franklin Roosevelt) is what a government takeover really means. His heavy-handed blitz upon American liberty, the assembly of czars and commissars that he has dispersed to command over his realm, and his shocking nonchalance in nationalizing private companies, trampling private contracts, and ignoring the rule of law – all have pierced the usual apathy and cynicism. Even in Massachusetts, people are figuring out that this administration is a menace and needs to be stopped.

A Scott Brown win does not mean that all our problems have gone away. There is still no indication that Republicans, after decades of expanding the regulatory welfare state as if they were Democrats, have suddenly decided to do their job – namely, to safeguard individual rights and to begin the enormous task of unclenching the government’s hold on us. It will take a larger cultural shift to thoroughly convince Republicans to be Republicans.

Nevertheless, for the first time in my life, I am proud to live in Massachusetts. Today, many of us have actually deserved to walk on the hallowed ground of Lexington and Concord.

NOTES

1. Flag illustration from “http://www.usflag.org/gadsden.html.”

2. For an excellent exposition of this idea, see John David Lewis’ essay, “Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda,” in The Objective Standard.

Note to the Republican National Committee

I sent this note to Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee. It’s a little too long, I know, but I wanted to drive home my assertions with enumerated details that emphasized just how far the Republicans have strayed from defending limited government. I’m hoping a couple of things mitigate the defect of the letter’s length. First, I sent it by “snail mail,” which may earn the letter slightly more attention than would an email or blog comment. Second, the bold type may help highlight the essence of the idea, even if the bulk of the text is glossed over by the intern who is likely to be reading it.

Dear Mr. Steele:

The leftist attack on individual rights led by Barack Obama is unquestionably a disaster for America. However, the Democratic hold on the White House and Congress does have one benefit: it has unshackled the opposition, leading, as you said, to “the rising mood of freedom-loving Americans across this country.” The spontaneous rise of the “Tea Parties,” the indignant opposition to the government takeover of industries, and the exploding sales of Atlas Shrugged simply would not have happened with the Republicans in power.

Why not? The reason is certainly not that John McCain would have been much better than Barack Obama. Freedom lovers are being heard now because Republicans had silenced defenders of American principles more effectively than the Democrats could hope to have done.

Precisely because Republicans are supposed to be the guardians of freedom and limited government, they have rendered the true defenders of liberty impotent. When Republicans pursue the policies of a bloated, paternalistic state, as they have for decades, their failures are blamed on freedom. When Republicans expand the federal regulatory grip with ever-increasing rules and restrictions, the inevitable failures are blamed absurdly on “deregulation” and the “free” market. Republicans have outspent Democrats for almost half a century; they dealt the killing blow to the gold standard, imposed price controls, meddled ceaselessly with the monetary system, and expanded the welfare state. It is primarily Republicans who have ushered religion into government affairs and legislation. Republicans are behind compulsory health insurance, corporate bailouts, TARP, funding of religious groups, and the prescription drug bill. Republicans have prosecuted a weak and sacrificial war, putting our fathers and sons in harm’s way not to crush an enemy but to hand out food. With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have been the active enemies of freedom. Thanks to the Republicans alone, freedom has taken the blame.

In the last presidential election, despite my overwhelming disgust at the prospect of an explicitly un-American socialist presiding in the White House, I voted for no one. (I handed in an empty ballot.) If John McCain or any Republican had been elected, he would have eroded liberty in more or less the same manner as Barack Obama and his predecessors. His administration would have been a continuation of the Bush “compassionate conservatism,” replete with pleas for sacrifice and national service, capitulation to environmentalists, religious groups, and multiculturalists, and heavy-handed, pragmatic meddling in the economy. Republicans are simply weak, “me too” Democrats; they offer 75% the socialism of their opponents, with the identical moral underpinnings: altruism.

All my life, I had voted exclusively for Republicans... until recently. I refuse to vote for a Republican again until they explicitly, in word and deed, hold individual rights as the fundamental principle of the United States. Republicans must recognize anew that the sole purpose of government - the founding principle of our republic - is to safeguard the rights of every individual to his life, the property he earns, and the pursuit of his own happiness for its own sake.

Republicans must heed this message: They were booted out of office because they were too religious and gave mere lip service to freedom. They will return to office when they embrace the principle that makes America the greatest nation in history: the defense of individual rights.

Sincerely,

Stephen Bourque

Note to the Republican Platform Committee

Inspired by Paul Hsieh’s note to the Colorado Republican Party, “Why The Republicans Have Lost My Vote,” I jotted down some of my own thoughts on the matter below.  The point made by Dr. Hsieh that is particularly crucial is that wherever Republicans are ousted from offices in November, they must be made to understand that they lost because they were too religious.  Above all, they must not think that they lost for the opposite reason - that they were not religious enough.

For this reason, it necessary to communicate these ideas to them before and after the elections.

The text below is fine for a blog post, but is too long for my activist purposes.  I submitted heavily edited versions to the Republican Platform Committee and the Massachusetts GOP.  Though these versions were briefer, I believe they retained the essence of this message: the Republicans are too religious, they are violating the proper purpose of government, and they can win back my vote by rejecting, in word and action, the injection of religion into politics.

______________

For all of my adult life - from the Reagan years until the 2000 election - I voted exclusively for Republicans because they were (at least nominally) the party that respected and defended freedom.  While Democrats intruded into every aspect of our lives with their “progressive” paternalism and cradle-to-grave welfare programs, Republicans advocated a limited government devoted to preserving the rights of its citizens.

However, in the last decades, the Republicans have betrayed their freedom-loving supporters as they have steadily turned their backs on the founding principles of America.  

For one thing, they can no longer pretend to be the defenders of individual rights and laissez faire capitalism.  Indeed, under the cover of an undeserved “pro-business” reputation, Republicans have gone on a spending spree and imposed a regulatory assault on the free market that Democrats would hardly have dared mount.  A Republican president signed the campaign finance reform bill, the Medicare prescription drug bill, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; Republican governors lead the way in compulsory medical insurance and capitulation to environmentalists.  In this betrayal, the Republicans have become approximately as bad as the Democrats, so this alone would not necessarily have driven me away from voting for Republicans.  

But there is one respect in which the Republicans have become far more dangerous than Democrats: their embrace of religion.

The proper purpose of a government is to defend each citizen’s right to his life, property, thoughts, and choices, as long as he does not physically harm others.  Any attempt to impose religious views on its citizens converts a government into a menace, a violator of rights.  I cannot blame honest Americans for being disgusted with the moral relativism of the political left, but it is not the purpose of a proper government to impose religious values.  

Contrary to some religious conservatives’ view that America was founded upon “Judeo-Christian values,” the strict separation of church and state was emphatically insisted upon by our Founding Fathers, who viewed rights as natural and inalienable, not as privileges granted by either god or government.  Furthermore, this principle is amply reinforced by logic and by history.  Simply being secular does not ensure that a government is good, of course, but being religious makes it impossible.

Observe the inroads that religious conservatives have made in America today, driven by Evangelical Christians.  We have “faith-based initiatives” that fund religious organizations with taxpayer money.  A woman’s right to abort her fetus - or even to use birth control - is under varied and repeated attack from all angles, motivated by religious considerations.  Religionists are trying to use legislation to smuggle creationist theology under the scientific-sounding moniker of “intelligent design” into classrooms, and are now aligned with environmentalists to submit to the duty of being “stewards of God’s earth.”  Almost daily, we see new attempts to inject religion into government activities - from stem-cell research to school prayer to “gay marriage” to religious symbology in government buildings - a trend that is steadily eroding the freedoms that were so dearly earned by our forefathers.

The issue of religion is now the single characteristic that distinguishes the two major parties.  Democrats are enemies of Americans’ freedom to be sure, but they are generally disorganized, inconsistent, and pragmatic - and the far left is too nihilistic to receive much serious mainstream support.  In contrast, religious Republicans tend to be highly organized and motivated; they are intelligent, moralistic, and crusading enemies of America’s freedom.  A righteous antagonist is far more dangerous than an apathetic one.

For many Republicans today, the government is an institution that has one primary function: to impose their faith-based views... by force.  I cannot and will not continue to support such fervent hostility to America and Americans.

The Republicans must reverse this trend toward religion and recover the proper and sole purpose of government: to protect individual rights.  They must both explicitly declare support for the separation of church and state, and act to defend this principle.

If they do this, they will not only win back my vote, but will save America.