Category: National

Libertarianism

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Early in my political study I flirted with the ideas of libertarianism. I was highly disenchanted with the Republicans and skeptical of the chances that the Democrats could right their party which, at the time, lacked a specific direction. I had taken the worlds smallest political quiz and though my score varied at times I was consistently conservative on the economic scale so I was not a “Statist” (big government) but I had enough movement to score as a Republican, a Libertarian, or a Centrist. I have since concluded that part of the reason I scored as a Libertarian at times is that the quiz is made by Libertarians and the questions are worded so that if you are borderline you are likely to score as a Libertarian.

So why do I bring up this old information? Because I was surprised to learn about some other people who have traveled a similar path of considering Libertarianism. The difference is that Scott is much more articulate in stating Why I Am Not a Pure Libertarian. I think the explanation is beneficial for Libertarians or anyone who is exploring their own political leanings. (This also explains why I agree with Scott such a high percentage of the time.)

Tags connections, economics, parties

National

No to Newt

Over at Oval Office there is a discussion about the implications of a potential presidential run for Newt Gingrich. I have to agree with the assessment that:

My take on the idea of Gingrich getting into the race at this point is that he would split the party’s votes further than it is already. . . But he wouldn’t draw from Giuliani’s support. It looks to me like those Republicans who have decided to support Hizzonner are sticking with him.

That is a scary scenario to me. The only serious candidate (meaning, not those like John Cox or Tom Tancredo) that I like less than Newt in the Republican field is Rudy. I was happy early this year when the conventional wisdom was that Newt would not choose to run if Fred Thompson ran. Now I am hoping that Newt will choose not to run and I think the best thing that could happen would be for Mitt Romney to win convincingly in Iowa so that most of the other candidates drop out. I really don’t think that Rudy can get support from more than half the Republican primary voters so if the field is narrowed to two early Rudy won’t get the nomination. (I pick Mitt partly because he has the financial backing to stand toe to toe with Rudy.)

Tags 2008, national candidates

National

Power Struggle

This is nothing new in politics (power struggles in general or this one in particular) but it is starting to get more press coverage – the question is, “Who controls the nomination process – the states, or the parties?” The struggle is most public among the Democrats as their candidates have now promised to honor the Party primary calendar. The Republicans are dealing with the very same issue but without the same level of publicity. The struggle between the parties and the states seems to be a direct result of a struggle among the states to gain influence in the candidate selection process. I am left to wonder how the traditional set of early states was initially established? Was that set by the parties, or by the respective states? (Can anyone enlighten me on that?)

In my mind the parties should not control the process. On the other hand, they are choosing representatives for their respective parties so they should have control of how those representatives are chosen. I believe that experience had led the parties to value a process where they largely mimic each other through the primary cycle. (I’m not sure exactly why that is although I have a few guesses) While I believe that states should be able to choose how and when they participate in the primary selection process I’m not convinced that voters win when the primary season is pushed so far in advance of the general election. Imagine if the candidates for the election of 2000 were chosen in mid 1997 and then had 9/11 occur in mid 1998. We could find that the candidates we had chosen were ill suited to our new reality. (I know that’s an extreme example – almost too ridiculous to comprehend, but you can’t miss my point) There’s always a certain amount of risk that changes will occur between the primary selection and the final vote, but the earlier we push the primaries the greater that risk becomes.

What do other people think? Who should control the primary schedule? What would the ideal schedule look like (in general terms)? Is the current reshuffling power-struggle good, bad, or neutral for voters and the country?

Tags candidates, democracy, elections, media, reactions

culture National

Glancing at Immigration

I picked up my car from the shop and happened to catch part of RadioWest. Doug was talking to a writer about immigration and the contradictions in our human nature, wanting to help people in need and trying to secure our borders. I didn’t catch the whole show so I don’t know if that perspective is representative of the entire hour, but it got me thinking about my views on immigration which eventually boil down to this – I think we’re asking the wrong question.

Our political discussion of the issue is how to deal with illegal immigrants. I don’t think we can approach that question until we have taken the time to ask – how did we get in our current position? That includes the role of immigration in our history and the history of our immigration laws. It also includes the reasons that people cross our borders illegally. Until we have that background I think that any grand compromise (which seems to be the only kind of laws we have been getting lately) is like trying to catch a fish for dinner by shooting a slingshot into a stream in the dark.

As a start, our legal limits on immigration basically stem from the Immigration Act of 1924. Though some adjustments have been made in the 83 years since, nothing has fundamentally changed in our law. Prior to 1924 we never had a comprehensive immigration restriction except that we tried to prevent people with significant criminal records or contagious disease enter the country. Now I ask the question – are we better off since we decided to stem the flow of immigration? I don’t think we are. Not only that, but I am a bit suspicious of why we chose to enact that law in 1924. None of the great advances of the past century can be even remotely tied to limiting the flow of immigrants. If we were to open our borders completely (except for cases of contagious disease or criminal record) would we be any worse off than we are now? I doubt it since we have a tidal wave of people coming in despite our laws.

I’m not arguing for amnesty, I am arguing that we need to start making an informed decision on where we stand on the issue of immigration. If we decide that it is necessary to limit immigration then we need to close the door. Until we decide what we believe about immigration there’s really no point in discussing amnesty (or lack of amnesty).

Tags elevate, government, immigration, issues, NPR

National State

Fourth Seat for Utah

The bill to give Utah a fourth seat in the House of Representatives has been hanging around for quite some time. It has not had too much coverage lately because very little has been happening with it. Yesterday I was surprised to see two editorials on the issue in Utah newspapers (Deseret News, Daily Herald). What really surprised me was that both editorials were against the bill. Back when this bill was getting more attention I was constantly disappointed that most of the coverage of the issue was supportive of the bill.

The reasons given for opposing the bill are that the other half of the legislation (giving Washington D.C. a voting member of the house) was unconstitutional. As the Deseret News pointed out, the goal of giving D.C. a voting member of the house is not without merit, but it is outside the scope of legislation. The proper way to accomplish this is to change the constitution, or make D.C. a state or part of a state. These are the same arguments I have been making on blog posts and comment boards ever since the issue was first raised. (Surprisingly, I discovered today that I have never talked about it here.)

The Deseret News offers one other reason to oppose the bill – timing. I have always argued that Utah should just wait until we get a new seat – we’re growing much faster than the country as a whole so we’ll gain new seats as the census gets updated. The editorial argues that the time is getting short enough now (only 3 years or less before we get new seats anyway) that Utah has nothing to gain by pushing legislation for a provisional seat in exchange for a (currently unconstitutional) permanent seat for D.C.

Tags Constitution, Daily Herald, Deseret News, fourth seat, legislation

National

Dump Cheney

Post author By David
Post date June 26, 2007
2 Comments on Dump Cheney

I was so disgusted with the lame excuse offered by our VP – that he is not part of the Executive Branch of government – that I did a little research to see how much of a legislator he is. Vice Presidents have cast 243 votes in the history of our nation (a little more than 1 per year) Cheney has cast 7 votes in just under 7 years so he’s right on track. By contrast, John Kerry was often maligned in 2004 for missing votes on the Senate floor while he was running for president. Although he missed more than 90% of the votes he still cast 16 votes that year. If Cheney is doing 7% of the work of an absentee senator without being part of the Executive branch then he should be working gratis (no charge) because I am convinced that he is not working pro bono (for the public good).

I have never been a big fan of Cheney and I thought he should be replaced years ago, but by now I have long given up hope of that. I was surprised to find A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney today. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really think this plan will happen although it certainly would be a step in the right direction.

Tags Cheney, reactions

National

June Candidate List

It’s that time again when I review my current status on candidate endorsements. In the last month I manage to finish the whole list of candidates plus one who was not on the list a month ago. Despite all my work, the list this month is as long as the list last month:

Mike Huckabee
Alan Augustson
Wayne Root
Joe Schriner
Jon Greenspon
Charles Maxham
Bob Hargis
Fred Thompson
Daniel Imperato

The sad thing is that once you consider that two of the candidates on the list last month should not have been on the list (one was not running for president and I forgot that I had already covered the other one) you find that the list is actually longer at the end of the month than it was at the beginning. I have quickly glanced at all the candidates on the current list to make sure that they are all supposed to be on the list. Based on that quick review I am hoping that I can cover a large number of these candidates in a short period of time.

I’d like to get done with this soon so that I can review the endorsements and give some clarification on my positions with regard to the candidates. Not all my endorsements are equal and I want to get through all the candidates before I try to explain who I think are the best candidates and not just who is qualified enough to deserve votes.

Tags candidates, updates

culture National

Right Thinking

Townhall is not a place I have linked to before because much of what I see there is more partisan than I would care to pass along. Surprisingly today there are two articles there that give me hope that there are still active Republicans who stand for something besides being not Democrats (there are also Democrats who are more than not Republican, but I discovered that a while back).

In the first column, the author rejects the most famous sound bite of the second Republican Presidential debate where the media latched on to the sound bite from Rudy Giuliani and allowed him to twist the words of Ron Paul about terrorism and 9/11 to the detriment of this less popular candidate. Ron Paul gave an insightful answer about the situation we are in but the media covered the sound bite response. Typical.

In the second column, the author reminds us what the Republican party used to be known for and what they claim to represent. By the time I was done with that I wanted to ask the current Republican party which is worse for our economy and our future generations – a spend and don’t tax leadership or a tax and spend leadership? The answer should be obvious. We need to be talking less about funding welfare and saving social security and more about helping people get off of welfare and helping them not be dependent on social security. More importantly we should be doing things to reduce the perceived need for such programs.

So my point is, it’s no wonder that things aren’t looking good for the GOP right now – their words (especially historically) and their actions are inconsistent. That is bound to inhibit people from trusting them even if they like their rhetoric. When people don’t trust them they are less likely to make an effort to vote for them.

Tags government, media, parties, Republican

National State

Balanced Government

I have long believed that Utah needs balanced government. I have made most of the same arguments on this issue as were raised in that article. Having a single party in power does not generally provide the give-and-take, compromise-and-entertain-new-ideas environment that is the strength of a democratic society. One of the problems that encourages the current dominant-party situation in this state is the blurring of the proper separation of state and federal government. (And you thought I was going to talk about church and state separation.) One of the major causes for this blurring is that the federal government has been given power in many areas that were once reserved to the states. The It’s-a-Small-World mentality means that we think everything is local and we have to make our local decisions based on national implications.

The Utah County Democratic Party tried to make some distinction between different spheres of government last year by adopting a platform that was less like the platform of the Democratic National Committee and more closely aligned to the mainstream voters of this very conservative region. Now they face some resistance from local democrats who are more in favor of the national platform. In a place where the other party has more than 10 times the number of members your party has the initial move makes sense, but what does that imply about the relationship between the national party and the county party? How far from the national platform can you go and still retain the party name?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that the idea that there should be no correlation between the platforms is as useless as the idea that there should be no variation between them. I hope that the balance here can be found so that Utah will have two viable parties throughout the state and not a ruling party and an opposition party such as we now have.

Tags government, insights, parties

National

The Electoral College

I have found Oval Office 2008 to be a great place to go for commentary on the 2008 Presidential elections. Normally they don’t get into politics outside of the presidential candidates, but today they made an exception. They reported that Maryland had enacted a law which would assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of who wins in Maryland. The only catch is that the law will only go into effect if states representing at least 270 electoral votes enact similar laws. There are a number of states that have considered doing something like this. Who knows what will happen.

There is an interesting discussion in the comments of that post about the constitutionality of this move. My own feeling on the subject is that I would always oppose this type of move. I think that the founding fathers did not create the electoral college on a whim and I don’t buy the argument that it was because they could not count the popular vote without a computer. Then again, I think that each state should award their electoral votes proportional to the results of the popular vote in their state rather than block voting. That would make it so that candidates would find some value in appealing to states with small electoral vote constituencies. It would also mean that they could not afford to ignore a large state where they have no chance of winning outright.

I have argued before that under the current system it does not matter if you are from Utah or New York, your vote does not count in national elections because the electors in your state are predetermined. The current system has its flaws, but I’m not sure the system of just going with the winner of the popular vote is better. We are a republic after all and not a democracy. This was by design so lets be careful before we redesign the system.

Tags connections, Constitution