Categories
life

“Whole Foods” Republican


photo credit: ilovemypit

Nearly three years ago I publicly wondered where I fit politically. Since then I have solidly concluded that the Republican party is the best fit for me, but now I have found a term for my general political view – I’m a Whole Foods Republican who Michael Petrilli describes as:

independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods . . .

What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There’s no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.

Categories
General

Of Big Tents and Purity

It’s a busy holiday time so I’ll spend more time quoting and less time expounding. Back in May, Jim DeMint expressed the very opinion I still hold about How Republicans Can Build a Big-Tent Party by holding to one key principle:

There is a question Republicans do need to ask: What is it that binds our party together?

. . . Moderate Republicans are right to remind conservatives that they cannot build a center-right coalition without the center part. And conservatives are right to remind moderates that Republicans only succeed when we rally around clear principles.

The real mistake is that Republicans became more concerned with staying in D.C. than reforming it.

Despite notable successes at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., it seems to me that Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration forgot a simple truth. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you aim for principled reform, you win elections in the bargain; if you just aim for elections, you get neither.

No Child Left Behind didn’t win us “soccer moms,” but it did cost us our credibility on locally controlled education. Medicare prescription drugs didn’t win us a “permanent majority,” but it cost us our credibility on entitlement reform. Every year, another Republican quality was tainted: managerial competence, fiscal discipline and personal ethics.

To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a “big tent” party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party — the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom.

(emphasis mine)

We’ve been discussing the ideas of purity, conservatism, inclusiveness, and intra-party division a lot in the last few months. I believe, along with many of you, that holding to principle and being inclusive are not mutually exclusive goals. There must be strong poles to hold the tent up, or to put it another way, there must be something in the tent that makes people want to enter. I agree with Senator DeMint that freedom would be a very enticing offering – but we have to find a way to articulate the vision of freedom and not allow the message to by framed in negative terms by those who disagree with our vision.

Categories
National

A Short-Term Vision of “Purity”


photo credit: David Reeves

It’s never safe to focus so much on the present that we lose sight of the future. This seems to be what is happening with the push by some to codify a purity test within the GOP. If you have not heard about this I would sum it up like so – there is a resolution before the Republican National Committee which would prevent them from giving financial backing to a candidate that did not support at least 7 of the following ten principles:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

I am amazed that the people backing this proposal do not see how short-sighted this effort is. I believe that their efforts are sincere, but sorely misguided, as they seek to define the GOP in a way that is more concrete than “not the democrats.”

Without going into specifics I am basically in favor of principles such as those outlined above, and the fact that the resolution only requires 70% support for those principles to receive party support is proof that they are not trying to weed all but the staunchest conservatives from the party (especially since they do not specify any subset of the principles which demands 100% conformity).

The shortsightedness is evident in the specific references such as “Obama’s ‘stimulus’ bill,”, “Obama-style government run health care, ” and “victory in Iraq and Afghanistan” (or maybe they are just admitting that this is a perpetual project).

I believe that there is value in talking about what defined ideological purity within the party – we certainly need to have some idea about who we are in order to be able to identify what the party has to offer voters but this particular proposal is significantly too blunt an instrument to benefit the party. Without any extended study of exactly the best way forward for the party I have a few suggestions, based on the existing proposal, for an approach that would be more likely to make things better rather than worse.

Categories
General

Individualism vs Collectivism


photo credit: 416style

It seems that the churning within the GOP is a conflict at various levels between the forces of individualism and collectivism. There is the question of whether the party faithful should do what they think is best or what the party determines to be best. There is the question of whether the national party should be uniform, or whether the local parties should be more autonomous, and there is the question of whether government should enforce the collective good, or allow for more individual choice in society.

With all the jockeying within the GOP there have been plenty of calls for a return to small government principles within the party and generic statements about various groups spoiling the supposed conservatism of the party but in a Los Angeles Times article yesterday Edward Crane sounded a call I never thought I would hear – The GOP Should Dump the Neocons. The first thing I had to do as I read that was confirm the accepted definition of “neocon” to decide if I could believe what I was reading and if there were any implications that I would disagree with. It turns out that I think I can fully agree with this position.

Categories
National

Decision Time – GOP or ATTAP


photo credit: Pat Rioux

When I learned that Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the NY-23 race, and even more when I learned that when she dropped out she endorsed the Democratic candidate rather than the Conservative candidate, it really got me thinking about what parties are supposed to be. That endorsement would indicate that the GOP establishment in that district is closer to the Democrats than it is to the Conservatives (or else Ms. Scozzafava is playing sour grapes, but somehow I don’t think that’s the explanation). In theory there’s nothing wrong with being closer to Democrats than Conservatives but in practice it depends on what the GOP stands for – which is the question currently raging within the party membership.

Political parties, rightly and of necessity, are coalitions of voters. In theory those voters share some political views in common in order to participate in the coalition. If that is the case then it must be accepted that some parties will have no presence in some locations because in some locations there will be no voters who share the views belonging to a particular party. I’m not suggesting that a place as large as a state would be devoid of voters for any significant party, but individual districts, cities, or precincts might easily be split more between the Green party and the Democrats or between the GOP and the Constitution party than they are between the Democrats and the GOP – assuming that the GOP and the Democratic party each have some core values politically.

Categories
General

In Search of Banzai Republicans


photo credit: jpellgen

Holly has a great post/discussion about why Unity at all costs is the wrong message for the GOP today. Within her post was one small statement that I had been thinking about for weeks:

Too many are not willing to lose . . .

I thought of calling such leaders Kamikaze Republicans but there is an important difference. Kamikaze attacks could not have the attacker survive and have the attack be successful. Banzai attacks had a low probability of success, but the attacker could still hope to both live and be successful. Kamikaze attackers intend to destroy themselves in hopes of breaking their opponents while banzai attackers are willing to stand for their principles even if it means they lose in the effort.

Show me the republican leader who is willing to end their political life in order to maintain a principle in which they should not compromise. For that matter, define for me the principles of the Republican Party for which the party should take an uncompromising stand.

Categories
National

Honest Democrats in Congress

by Lori Spindler
by Lori Spindler

If we are ever to achieve any health care reform that will actually have a positive impact on our society it will require that we have honest Democrats in Congress. Not just any honest Democrats, but enough of them and in the right places that they can use their honesty to guide the debate. The way that you will be able to recognize a Democrat with the honesty to help the process is that he will reject the assertion of President Obama that Republicans only want to maintain the status quo.

An honest Democrat would have to recognize and admit that Republicans have been publicly acknowledging for years that we need health care reform. An honest Democrat would work from a position that understands that believing that the proposals they currently don’t have time to read are actually worse than the status quo (as Republicans generally do) is not the same as believing that the status quo is acceptable (as Republicans generally don’t). Using the scare tactic that doing nothing will make the cost of health care double within ten years without acknowledging that a poor solution could be crafted in a way that makes the cost triple within nine years is not honest. Such honest Democrats would be willing and able to actually have a dialog with Republicans and see if they have anything of value to offer on this issue.

Categories
culture

Lincoln’s House Divided Speech

I had never before read Lincoln’s House Divided Speech. Considering that it came in the very early days of the Republican party it could have been applied to or derived from the split between the Republicans and the Whigs and not simply the nation as a whole. Here is the heart of what most people know of the speech:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Lincoln explores the recent history the slavery debate in his speech and I was surprised to find some startling parallels to the gay marriage debate we are currently having in this country. (Some people may not believe me when I say that I started reading this speech with no thought of this issue.)[quote] Here are the parallels I saw from the systematic progress of the pro-slavery movement in the prior four years.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by state constitutions and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition.

More than 30 states currently prohibit gay marriage by statute or amendment (compared to 6 that allow it) and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a congressional action meant to ensure that states cannot be forced to accept gay marriages from other states.

The Nebraska Bill stated:

It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into an territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people there-of perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.

It was passed without a proposed amendment that would have explicitly stated that the people in a given territory could outlaw slavery within their territorty. Today it is the gay marriage opponents who say “let the states decide” but if the gay marriage advocates get DOMA repealed (as they hope to do) they will be the ones making that argument.

Lincoln sums up the situation of the four years prior to his speech by saying:

. . . when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding, or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

I believe that Lincoln was right that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Today I believe that neither the Republican party nor this nation can endure permanently with part allowing gay marriage and part denying it. I do not know whether to expect the party to fall; but I do expect that if it does not fall it will be because it ceases to be divided. It must fall or become all one thing, or all the other. After the issue plays out in the party it will then have to be resolved in public policy although the chances of the nation splitting and falling over the isue are lower than the chance that the Republican party splits (as the Whigs did in Lincoln’s time) over this issue.

Categories
State

Online Conservative Desert

I understand that it is a commonly held belief that the political left has more influence in online political activity than the political right. Now we have research by Richard Davis that sheds a bit of light on that.

Davis also queried more than 200 journalists to learn how they use blog content in their coverage of political news. Most journalists were aware of influential blogs on both sides of the political spectrum, such as Daily Kos and Talking Points on the left and Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on the right. Despite equal awareness, journalists spend more time reading posts in the liberal blogosphere.

For example, more journalists know about Michelle Malkin than Talking Points. Yet twice as many journalists actually read Talking Points than read Michelle Malkin.

I wish I could find the article that first alerted me to this research because it included another tidbit of information – in the research into political bloggers a much higher percentage of right-leaning bloggers read left-leaning blogs than the number of left-leaning bloggers reading right-leaning blogs.

From my own experience here in the conservative state of Utah I can say that we have at least as many left-leaning political blogs as we do right-leaning political blogs.

My question is, why is this? Why, even where the political right vastly outnumbers the political left on the ground does the political left still hold an edge over the political right online? My suspicion is that part of the answer lies in the fact that the political left was functionally irrelevant in national politics as the world of online commentary was becoming more powerful and widespread. Those who had less of a voice in running the governments might easily have been more anxious to use these new tools to communicate and respond. The result is that in some ways they have a six year head start in online organization and dialog over those who were content to be holding the reins of office. In those six years and without the luxury of turning away all who would challenge their thinking it is reasonable to expect that they might have a more vibrant and interesting dialog in general than their counterparts. It may not be that most members of the media natively prefer liberal positions, it may be that they and even some of those on the right are simply allergic to immature conversation that has not had time to develop as widely without that head start gained in the political wilderness.

I believe that this needs to be rectified. The online conversation should be a more accurate reflection of the various positions held by those on the ground. Perhaps some time in political irrelevance by the political right might serve as an incentive to create some oases online of fertile conservative conversation which could plant the seeds so that our online desert can blossom as a rose, just like the desert we live in has blossomed in the last 162 years.

Categories
Local State

Convention Surprise

I attended the Davis County Republican Party organizing convention on Saturday. There was one very surprising outcome for me from attending. Senator Bob Bennett spoke at the conventions and by the end of his speech I realized that I could potentially vote for him in 2010 if he survives the Republican nominating convention and primary (if necessary) next year. I’m still absolutely sure that there must be at least half a dozen Republican politicians in this state that would be far better for the state than Senator Bennett can be he is still better than the majority of likely Democrat and third party candidates. Even if he were running unopposed I could not vote for our sitting senator at the Republican nominating convention but I may find that he is the best available option in the general election if he is the Republican nominee.

How’s that for a ringing endorsement.