Know Nothing Party

How things have changed in two short years.*

In November 2008 we were told conservatism was dead and the Republican Party was on its way to Whig status. Ragin' Cajun James Carville boastfully predicted 40 years of Democratic governance.

Maybe not.

Now conservatism is in an ascendancy. The Republicans are back and have learned that the reason they were fired in the first place was because of all that spending. Now that Republicans are back in the House, they can get to work on repealing Obamacare, privatizing Social Security, and ending the welfare state.

Maybe not.

For all the chatter, there isn't anything even broadly revolutionary about this election. There might be a few upsets and a few unapproved candidates might survive running the gauntlet, but this Republican Congress will likely resemble the ones that disappointed from 1994-2006.

The mistake made by rose-spectacled Republicans comes in thinking that a change of majority parties makes much of a difference beyond the name plates and seating arrangements.

Time magazine just put "Party Crashers" Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Marco Rubio, and Meg Whitman on its election issue cover. That Bush Republican Marco Rubio and former eBay CEO and billionaire Meg Whitman are somehow considered "a new breed of Republicans" tells us enough about what is considered "Tea Party" these days.

Too much buzzkill?

The first reason for skepticism is that there has not been a serious philosophical shift, nay even a debate within the GOP.

One might argue that support for the bank bailouts or President Obama's stimulus became a litmus test since it resulted in the scalp of Bob Bennett and the defection of Arlen Specter. But that anyone can support the promotion to Speaker of the House for bailout leader John Boehner suggests that the party leadership won't have to pay for their sins.

The one issue that got Republicans kicked out in the first place, foreign policy and the disastrous experiments in Middle Eastern nation-building, has been a non-issue in this election cycle.

Republicans have convinced themselves and probably convinced a lot of voters that the real reason they got booted was because they spent too much. The party's recent emphasis on economic issues would be a step in the right direction if it was rooted in anything besides partisanship. Like the kid who got spanked for sticking his hand in the cookie jar, these Republicans are only sorry they got caught.

Secondly, there is nothing in this election to suggest confidence in Republicans -- only that Democrats failed and voters had nowhere else to turn.

Republican victories this year are also consistent with historical precedent. In America's duopoly, the ruling party traditionally loses big in the first midterm. One party fails and the other one gets their chance to do . . . something.

In 1954, during Dwight Eisenhower's first term as president and the first such Republican in 20 years, the GOP lost 18 seats in the House. Reagan's Republicans got routed in 1982 while the economy was still sour. Bill Clinton had large majorities in Congress in 1994 before losing a whopping 54 seats. With the memory of 9/11 still fresh, George W. Bush's GOP temporarily broke the trend by adding 8 seats at midterm.

Since the Republicans have gone into exile, there has been no urgency to address issues. Republican identity for the past two years has been wrapped up in opposition to the Democratic president. It's not because he's black. It's because he's a Democrat.

The new Republican ascendance has nothing to do with a re-birth of conservatism or faith in the GOP and everything to do with a Democratic ruling majority that didn't delivery what it promised despite overwhelming majorities.

The Republicans' position as the majority party in Congress doesn't preclude them from relinquishing their title as the Party of No. They can still oppose President Obama at every turn for the next two years but that won't mean they stand for anything.

The Republican Party doesn't need to be restored to power. It needs some fresh ideas and new leaders.

And if Barack Obama can defy conventional wisdom and make a Clintonian move to the Center, who will he and the rest of us have to thank for providing no genuine alternative?

That Rally

If there is any question about the status of the conservative movement, it could be found in Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally: it is as alive and kicking as Ronald Reagan himself.

Too soon?

Either way, despite estimates of hundreds of thousands attending Beck’s rally last Saturday, there was nothing on display to imply that American conservatism has any long-term usefulness.

More than anything, it showed the triumph of liberalism over everything in the country, even the purported conservative movement itself.

Heeding criticism that the rally could only be political in nature, the Mormon Beck made it about “god.” Only keynote speaker Sarah Palin, whose presence was derided as proof that the event would just be a Republican rally, treaded into the political muck.

The insufferable opening prayer, led by a supposed descendent of Mayflower passengers, alongside a rabbi and supposed descendents of the Indians er, Native Americans at Plymouth Rock, included a petition about Quaker William Penn and this beauty:

“And you, O God, called us to repentance when we did not live up to our creed, and we did not treat everyone as equal. But Lord, we found out that you are a God of forgiveness, you are a God of covenant, you are a God of restoration, you are a God of healing and you have healed us.”

I’m no professional theologian, but if I understand that correctly, Americans didn’t learn about the forgiveness of God by reading the Bible’s account of Christ’s sacrificial death but only after we had enslaved the blacks and broken our treaties with the Ind-. . . Native Americans. Was this conservative Christianity or the liberal gods of collective guilt and multiculturalism?

This display of multiculturalism isn’t new and it isn’t even unique for Beck. In May, the radio and TV host dedicated one of his “Founders Fridays” programs to the forgotten black founders, a pathetic display of unwatchable political correctness.

That so many conservatives lap up this god constructed in the image of America only proves that the liberals have won the race card war. Or as James Edwards says at Alternative Right:

“. . . a conservative movement as willingly impotent as the crowd that came to DC on Saturday can’t go on much longer. At some point it’s going to dawn on them that no matter how much they grovel to MLK and praise his holy name, or how many ‘conservative’ imams they pack their podium with, they still get called racists and Nazis, and their country just keeps slipping further down the tubes.”

So what was the point of this event? Did we restore honor? Did we worship the god of our imaginations? Has anyone bothered to ask how ironic was it that someone like Beck, who is calling for an end to big government, chose to have his event at the Lincoln Memorial, a monument to a man who knew a thing or two about centralization?

A better question, one that should have been asked, is what the Republicans will do after the November midterm elections, where they are poised to either retake the House or at least make inroads.

The clarion call of the Tea Party over the past year has been “Cut spending!” The right course to be sure, but Pat Buchanan asks what cutting spending really means:

“Where are the victorious tea party Republicans going to cut?

“According to USA Today, 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, and perhaps an equal number on Medicare and Social Security. Which of these three will tea party Republicans cut, when Republicans are already denying Democratic charges that they plan to raise the retirement age for Social Security? . . .

“Are Republicans going to go after other entitlements — veterans benefits, earned income tax credits, food stamps — which now go to 41 million Americans, or unemployment benefits that run for 99 weeks?

“The big remaining items in the budget are interest on the debt, which must be paid, and war and defense. But Republicans are more likely to be supportive of Obama’s rebuilding a military ravaged by war, and staying the course in Iraq and Afghanistan, than are Democrats.

“Obama’s budget commission will surely come in with tax increases on personal incomes, perhaps also for Social Security and Medicare. But the GOP cannot sign on to these and go home again.”

The Republicans only stand to benefit from an event like Beck’s “Restoring Honor,” an event celebrating America’s civil religion, one that obviously resounds with the Republican base.

The only question is how long it will take for conservatives and Tea Partiers to realize that to “restore honor” or restore the republic for that matter, will take more than a few hours of feel-good entertainment and self-indulgence.

It will require hard questions like those above as well as a healthy dose of willpower.

If not, “honor” will only be an afterthought.

Rand Paul and Sarah

“You saw the Tea Party group basically in action twice in the last two or three years. One was for the anti- immigration-reform thing . . .

The second was after the nomination of Sarah Palin, this enormous surge to McCain, huge crowds coming out when he couldn't get a couple of hundred people before . . .

Now . . . Ron Paul, will do better. He's not going to be nominated, but he will do better than he did before if he runs again because he'll get some of those folks. But right now, quite frankly, the one candidate who can get them better than anybody else is Ms. Sarah Palin.”

- Patrick J. Buchanan, January 15, 2010 on “McLaughlin Group”

After weeks of speculation, on Monday, February 1, 2010, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin endorsed Kentucky Republican Rand Paul for the U.S. Senate. Palin, whose political baggage is too bulky to mention here, may prove to be a kingmaker.

Already, Rand Paul is pulling ahead in the polls in a race that was supposed to go easily to Secretary of State Trey Grayson. The Palin endorsement was welcomed by the Paul campaign and comes just two days after Rand’s father Ron Paul came to Louisville to campaign for his son and two days after the secretary of state smeared the father and son as “a career politician and pro-choice marijuana advocate,” respectively although not respectfully.

The Palin endorsement is intriguing. Hardly anyone in American politics, save perhaps President Obama, elicits such knee-jerk love or hate. In fact, I feel like an oddball in that I neither love nor hate the former governor. What’s wrong with me?

Some might also ask what’s wrong with Palin herself. Why would she endorse Rand Paul, the son of one of the most famous American libertarians when she has also endorsed pols such as her old running mate John McCain and Texas governor Rick Perry. It’s hard to imagine those three endorsees (a libertarian Republican, a progressive Republican, and George W. Bush’s lieutenant governor) getting along for five minutes. Maybe Sarah Palin is confused about her political philosophy. Maybe she is endorsing three people she just happens to like. Maybe she is just an old-fashioned politician held captive by the moment.

What to make of the endorsement? The Paul campaign welcomed it but some of the grassroots supporters of both are a little uneasy about it while others are simply distraught.

But in the words of Barry Goldwater, after conservatives threatened to abandon the party when Richard Nixon started pandering to the party’s liberals, “Let’s grow up, conservatives.” Or in this case, let’s grow up, Ron Paul Republicans.

Sarah Palin does have some political problems. She touts the bellicose foreign policy of John McCain both on their campaign trail and in her book. She held her hand out to receive stimulus money while she was still governor. She doesn’t really show much knowledge of the issues beyond the talking points. But both Sarah Palin and Rand Paul claim Tea Party support and like Pat Buchanan said, “The one candidate who can get [people] better than anybody else is Ms. Sarah Palin.”

Some grassroots libertarians are upset at the acceptance of the endorsement because Palin’s policy positions are far from perfect, and in some cases, are far from Rand Paul’s. But both claim Tea Party credentials and both campaign as the outsider to the establishment. And in a year where a Republican can win in Massachusetts, the endorsement is a good thing.

Why? 3 main reasons:

1. The endorsement might just produce, at the very least, a primary win. But to even get that far, alliances must be made and coalitions built, which by nature means teaming up with people who do not share complete confessional solidarity. A coalition is not a religious creed, where all points must be agreed upon to signify a true believer. Accepting Sarah Palin’s endorsement is not an abandonment of principles. It is good political sense.

2. Like it or not, she brings in people. And in a state that went 57-41 for McCain-Palin, Republican opponents like Trey Grayson will have more trouble marginalizing Rand Paul when one of the party’s biggest stars comes out for the latter. Will he continue trying to convince voters that Rand Paul is “pro-choice” when one of the country’s most prominent pro-life figures endorses him? Is Trey capable of walking the tightrope of vilifying Rand Paul without implying that Sarah Palin is also kooky, nutty, and anti-Semitic?

3. If Sarah Palin does get gutted for supporting Rand Paul, it only confirms that the GOP is the War Party and only the War Party. Federal encroachment, borrowing and spending, bailouts, and amnesty are all tolerable as long as you support torture and imperialism.

Welcome to the Kentucky race, Sarah. I hope you get a chance to listen to Dr. Paul.

*

Update: Regarding point #3 that the GOP may prove itself to be the War Party, see here for Jeanette Pryor's take at David Horowitz's Israel First Newsreal Blog. Ms. Pryor proves that point very plainly:

"The logical conclusion of this endorsement is that Palin considers America’s global defense of freedom, national defense, the War on Terror, the defeat of Radical Islam, and the support of Israel and our allies, to be less important than 'some' domestic policy issues."

Is Glenn Beck Healthy for the Right?

Following the anti-Obama festivities of the weekend of September 11, 2009, headlined by Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project and march on Washington, one must certainly attest that the radio and TV host wields some amount of influence on the grassroots Right and beyond. Beck’s exposure of the depravity of ACORN and a rare willingness to sharply criticize the Bush administration make him stand out among the conservative commentariat. But could Beck be just as much of the problem of the Right as its solution?

Watching in 2009, it might appear as though Beck would be a suitable spokesman for a Bush-less Republican Party. He wails against the bank bailouts and the readiness with which Dubya expanded the government. Beck’s eagerness to attack the Bush administration is commendable and many of those attacks are those which Republicans and conservatives need to hear because if someone’s goal is to cut government, restore individual liberty, and be governed by laws instead of men, the first fact that must be grasped is that today's Republican Party is not your friend.

The problem with windbag talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and their minor league impersonators, is that they never seriously challenge the status quo of their party. This is done to the point that conservative talk radio may as well be called Republican talk radio. After all, these are the folks who jumped on the bandwagon for pro-choice, state-run health care Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The speed with which they followed the empty suit perfectly illustrates how empty the vessel of contemporary American conservatism is. And it is why the talk radio medium ought to be generally, but not completely, ignored.

Is Glenn Beck different? It’s true that he frequently has Ron Paul as a guest, as well as his son, Rand. Judge Andrew Napolitano, who readily calls Republican and Democratic politicians the criminals that they are, is a regular guest host. Another regular is Professor Kevin Gutzman, a contributor to takimag.com, among the most anti-Bush and anti-GOP establishment webzines, Left or Right, to talk about states’ rights, an issue faux conservatives avoid like the Bubonic plague. Plus, Glenn Beck openly criticizes the Republican Party when the sycophants are still tip-toeing around the fact that maybe Bush might have, possibly, done some things that might not have been quite okay.

I actually somewhat like Beck. His schtick can get a little tiresome, going from crying to yelling to having a fire-side chat all in the same afternoon, but he also does some relevant reporting. Everyone following the news right now has heard about Beck’s reporting of the ACORN scandals. He’s the only TV or radio personality I can think of who has actually taken a skeptical view of the Federal Reserve and the insane monetary practices of printing a trillion dollars. He’s also the only TV host I’m aware of who actually has members of Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty for segments on his show. To people like Rush and Hannity, Ron Paul is still a four-letter word.

Beck’s 9.12 Project is admirable and rather uncontroversial. “Common Sense” was a decent read and was actually pretty independent-minded, calling out both parties for their extravagance but most of it falling on the Democrats.

However, a recent mash-up video has surfaced where Beck can be seen calling Ron Paul a “crazy, kooky guy,” suggesting that last year’s bank bailout “wasn’t nearly enough” and that he “supported the Patriot Act.” Interspersed were neocon party lines of Ahmadinejad as Hitler who was making preparations for a second holocaust. (Also see this video where he contemptibly smears Ron Paul supporters for having a “money bomb” on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, as domestic terrorists, oddly foreshadowing the Obama administration’s reports about potential right wing domestic terrorism which Beck would ironically denounce.)

Such a video obviously has the potential to be easily taken out of context and spliced together in Michael Moore fashion to make Beck look like a despicable flip-flopper. Indeed, anyone could be embarrassed by seeing their worst predictions all glued together. For example, in a needlessly rambling blog from over a year ago, I implied support for the war in Afghanistan over the one in Iraq, a position I certainly do not hold today.

Since the material from the nefarious video was originally uttered, Beck has admitted that he did support the Patriot Act but regrets it. In a more surprising video, Beck reveals that

“I guess the scales are falling off my eyes. . . . In 1900 with Teddy Roosevelt . . . we’re going to tell the rest of the world, ‘We’re going to spread democracy.’ . . . in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse after the next progressive came into office . . . the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did, we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant, global government, it was originally . . . League of Nations . . . then it became the United Nations, one world government. The Republicans took it as ‘We’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it.’ I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, and then come home.” (emphasis mine)

If there is one issue that continues to unite the mainstream Right, outside of opposition to Obama, it’s the unwavering support for Bush’s wars. Even if it took him more than seven years, Glenn Beck should be commended for speaking out against enduring military occupations. May he keep it up.

But it’s still quite precarious that Glenn Beck has shed his more odious positions once the Republicans were thoroughly repudiated. His antics are a bit annoying, bordering on bad soap opera acting, but he still displays better independence than his more unoriginal talk radio colleagues.

So, is Glenn Beck healthy for the Right? Maybe, maybe not. Is he part of the solution or is he part of the problem? If he’s part of the problem, he’s far less of it than Rush, Hannity, Levin or Coulter.

Conservatives have been betrayed in an unrepentant fashion for the entirety of this century. If the evolution of Beck’s positions mean anything, it means that he might be a spokesman and a platform for an effective and genuine anti-government movement. It also means he’s someone who’s worth keeping at an arm’s length for any Republican Party that wants to move past the errors of the Bush administration.

The Opportunists

Readers of this blog have surely noticed that some of the recurring characters are collectively known as the neoconservatives, or “neocons.”

Without going into too much detail, “neoconservative” is the term used to describe members of the Democratic party who left after George McGovern’s nomination in 1972 because they disagreed with the South Dakotan’s “Come Home, America,” pledge.

So, the neoconservatives are liberals who left for the Republican Party because they needed a political home for their doctrines of limitless war and intervention around the world. This found resonance in a GOP that, especially by the 1980’s and Ronald Reagan’s presidency, was determined to win the Cold War. In short, the neoconservatives are always looking for a war in which to plunge their country.

Many of these people have ample access to the nation’s print and television media. Bill Kristol is a fixture on Fox News, so is Charles Krauthammer, and John Bolton gets a favorable amount of time there as well. Bill Bennett gets regular time on CNN while Norman Podhoretz, his son John Podhoretz, and David Horowitz makes rounds on all the networks. Kristol writes a column for The New York Times, as does David Brooks, and Krauthammer’s op-eds come out of The Washington Post, two of the nation’s most influential, but hardly right-wing newspapers. Former President Bush speechwriter David Frum is on everywhere from the radio to The Daily Show. In short, there is no shortage of neoconservative opinion in the news world.

Most of these people are liberal on any of a variety of political issues. Bill Kristol occasionally calls himself pro-life, but the son of neocon founding father Irving Kristol was trumpeting Joe Lieberman for John McCain’s running mate this year and believed that Mr. Lieberman would be accepted by the Social Right if he was “introduced in the right way.” David Frum, who castigates anyone who deviates from the GOP’s current foreign policy, loves to remind people that he is not a social conservative or a conservative concerned with stopping illegal immigration.

These people support an open borders immigration policy that originated in the Democratic Party, the ever-growing federal government, disavowal of the Constitution and its limits, and they treat abortion with indifference. But the overriding issue for neoconservatives is foreign policy and a muscular, aggressive foreign policy at that. And any opposition to intervention anywhere for any reason is tantamount to “isolationism,” “appeasement,” and “surrender,” - just read Clifford May anytime.

These people obtained influence during President Reagan’s terms but gained prominence and agenda-setting status during the terms of the second President Bush. Neocons, holding important positions in the administration, pressured President Bush to confront Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and forcibly remove him if necessary. In a time after the attacks of September 11, 2001, with fear and shock still resonating, their scheme worked.

Now after more than five years in Iraq, and seven in Afghanistan, many Americans have grown weary of the all-war-all-the-time message of the Republicans and the neoconservatives. No bigger reason than frustration over the war in Iraq led to the election of a Democratic congress in 2006. And the war in Iraq was perhaps the biggest factor motivating people to vote for Barack Obama for president in 2008. The freshman senator from Illinois won his party’s nomination because he painted himself as an antiwar candidate who had opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. Once he became a general election candidate, he had to talk tougher on foreign policy to avoid criticism of being weak. That led him to making the war in Afghanistan his defining foreign policy issue, a issue that may well prove his ruin. But getting “tough” on the Afghan theater is what is making the supposedly antiwar candidate appealing to the neoconservatives.

This much is evident by the way the neocons are abandoning their president of the last eight years. The person never seen, but always mentioned during the campaign was the president who launched the war in Iraq. The neocons have been shy to defend the unpopular president many people believed they helped to ruin, mainly because they are flocking to the new president-elect, another person they want to manipulate and mold.

President-elect Obama has made Afghanistan an issue again and the neoconservatives are swarming him, heaping all their praise on him and every cabinet selection from the retention of Robert Gates at Defense to the selection of Hillary Clinton at State. These people need to stay in power and need to have influence on American policies. That they are so quickly singing the praises of President-elect Obama’s burgeoning cabinet, promises that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue.

This is far from a comprehensive look at the neocons (I have omitted references to their Trotskyite intellectual forebears, something a more detailed essay on the neocons would require) but a very brief introduction to the people that wrecked the American image and one American presidency. They have been lumped in the GOP for the last several years but look like they are trying to gain influence among a golden Democratic president.

People who so strongly supported (and crafted) the Bush foreign policy, so strangely abandoned the man but not the policies, and raced to kiss the ring of the new emperor are nothing more than shameless opportunists. It is time they are called what they are.