Hillary and Obama and McCain, oh my!

Every election year, Democrats can count on winning the majority of votes from certain key demographic groups: criminals, defense attorneys, dead people, illegal immigrants and people who aren’t smart enough to figure out how to correctly fill out a ballot. Hillary or Obama will dominate all those categories this year.

Meanwhile, John McCain is all but assured to win the votes of at least one group: people who mistakenly registered as Republicans. So at least he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

For conservatives, the decision will require more thought.

Today was a big day at CPAC. Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, while McCain tried to make the case that he really is a conservative. In a better world, McCain would have dropped out of the race while Romney tried to convince us that he really is a conservative.

Bill Bennett and some guy that I’ve never heard of before made the best case I’ve seen yet for why we should support McCain over the eventual Democrat nominee.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter made the case for sitting this one out:

If Hillary is elected president, we’ll have a four-year disaster, with Republicans ferociously opposing her, followed by Republicans zooming back into power, as we did in 1980 and 1994, and 2000. (I also predict more Oval Office incidents with female interns.)If McCain is elected president, we’ll have a four-year disaster, with the Republicans in Congress co-opted by “our” president, followed by 30 years of Democratic rule.There’s your choice, America.

I’m actually starting to salivate at the thought of four years ripping apart Hillary’s “ideas.” The problem with this plan of action is what to do if Obama wins. Obama has major momentum, the media and the left is absolutely crazy for him, and no amount of destructive ideas (and believe me, he has plenty) would prevent him from winning a second term if he manages to win a first, in my opinion. So the Coulter Plan is only viable if Hillary wins the Dem nomination.

For his part, McCain took a step towards reconciling with conservative voters. This was a highly unusual move for the ornery, prideful senator from Arizona. Here are some highlights of his speech today:

I know I have a responsibility.. to unite the party and prepare for the great contest in November… I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavor, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conservatives, whose convictions, creativity and energy have been indispensible to the success our party has had over the last quarter century. Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years. I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is. And it is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative. Further, I hope you will grant that I have defended many positions we share just as ardently as I have made my case for positions that have provoked your opposition. 

Surprisingly contrite and accurate all around. Keep it coming.

I am proud to be a conservative, and I make that claim because I share with you that most basic of conservative principles: that liberty is a right conferred by our Creator, not by governments, and that the proper object of justice and the rule of law in our country is not to aggregate power to the state but to protect the liberty and property of its citizens.

Okay, so we know he at least has a copy of the Reagan playbook. Now tell us why you keep losing it at the worst possible times.

While I have long worked to help grow a public majority of support for Republican candidates and principles, I have also always believed, like you, in the wisdom of Ronald Reagan, who warned in an address to this conference in 1975, that “a political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”

Way to turn those words inside out. Rush Limbaugh quoted this the other day in an attack on McCain for too often trying to be all things to all people. At least we know McCain is listening to Rush now. Maybe he’ll learn something.

I attended my first CPAC conference as the invited guest of Ronald Reagan, not long after I had returned from overseas, when I heard him deliver his “shining city upon a hill” speech. I was still a naval officer then, but his words inspired and helped form my own political views, just as Ronald Reagan’s defense of America’s cause in Vietnam and his evident concern for American prisoners of war in that conflict inspired and were a great comfort to those of us who, in my friend Jerry Denton’s words, had the honor of serving “our country under difficult circumstances.” I am proud, very proud, to have come to public office as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. And if a few of my positions have raised your concern that I have forgotten my political heritage, I want to assure you that I have not, and I am as proud of that association today as I was then. My record in public office taken as a whole is the record of a mainstream conservative. I believe today, as I believed twenty-five years ago, in small government; fiscal discipline; low taxes; a strong defense, judges who enforce, and not make, our laws; the social values that are the true source of our strength; and, generally, the steadfast defense of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which I have defended my entire career as God-given to the born and unborn.

A few people have asked me why the focus on Reagan. This speech should clear that up for anyone. Ronald Reagan’s ideas are so powerful that no Republican can hope to become President without convincing us that he is a rightly heir to the Reagan legacy. The words “mainstream conservative” concern me, because for anything to be mainstream it must be watered down, less effective than it would be if it were just “correct.” But hey, it seems to be working so far.

Most of the rest of his speech concerned certain issues that have annoyed mainstream conservatives. He did make a strong finish, however:

Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad. It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama want to increase the size of the federal government.

I intend to reduce it. I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it. I will fight for the line item veto, and I will not permit any expansion whatsoever of the entitlement programs that are bankrupting us. On the contrary, I intend to reform those programs so that government is no longer in that habit of making promises to Americans it does not have the means to keep.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will raise your taxes.

I intend to cut them. I will start by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. I will cut corporate tax rates from 35 to 25% to keep industries and jobs in this country. I will end the Alternate Minimum Tax. And I won’t let a Democratic Congress raise your taxes and choke the growth of our economy.

They will offer a big government solution to health care insurance coverage.

I intend to address the problem with free market solutions and with respect for the freedom of individuals to make important choices for themselves.

Great stuff there. McCain has always been solid on taxes and spending. I will get into his war position in part one of my analysis of Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech. We have a few months to decide if this sort of lukewarm conservatism is acceptable, if we’re willing to allow McCain to move the party to left in order to avoid a worse fate, or if we can afford to take a four-year step back in order to bring about a better solution in the future.
 

Conservatism IS Progress – What Would Reagan Do?

ORIGINALLY POSTED 2/2/08

For over 230 years now, the United States has travelled the long highway to exceptionalism internationally and abundant prosperity and freedom at home. Aside from an occasional speed bump, America has stood tall as the single most important force for progress in the world. Since 1980 American Conservatives have paved onward, expanding the lanes as we've gone and allowing an ever-growing number of citizens at home and previously-enslaved people throughout the world to join us on the road to an even greater future. Today, for the first time in nearly 30 years, the end of that pavement lies just ahead in plain sight. The battle wages before us as we make the choices that will decide whether we do the hard work needed to extend the highway of progress straight ahead into a more prosperous, freer future, or whether we will reverse course and make a sharp left turn onto the old, dusty road leading to regression, government repression and economic recession.

Unfortunately, those that would move us toward that leftward path have confiscated the language of politics. We see two neo-Marxists running for the Democrat Party nomination using a repackaged version of the ideas that led to the Stalinist/Leninist former Soviet Union. They call their ideas “progressive” (or secular-progressive when they’re feeling slightly less dishonest). I call them “dangerous.”

We see populists on both sides preaching the same “us versus them” doctrine that has created repressive tyrants and economic calamity every time it’s been carried to its logical end. We see free market capitalism under attack daily by those who claim to be “forward-thinking” but whose policies would undermine the very system that has made America a beacon of hope and progress.

We see junk-scientists lying that this very progress is killing our planet, and that the only way to turn it around is to follow the same gameplan the socialists have been peddling for 50 years. We see a presidential candidate attempting to remake the Republican Party into some sort of squishy Democrat-Lite Party, audaciously trying to redefine American Conservatism to make it include himself, as its leader.

It is time for American Conservatives to take back what rightfully belongs to us, beginning with that language.

In their insightful book, “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America,” British authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge explain what a rare breed American Conservatives are. This stems from our unique national history. Most people in the world who call themselves conservatives preach a stodgy, anti-progress ideology. Not so with American Conservatives.

As the first nation founded under the belief that government receives its power from “we the people,” American Conservatives hope to conserve the still-revolutionary ideas of our founders, including our God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We hold fast to freedom from government oppression, cherish our strong private property rights, favor free markets, low taxation and limited federal government. Under the language used at the time of our founding, most Conservative Americans are actually classic liberals. The socialist/progressives stole that word from us long ago. Barack Obama, who opposes almost all the items I mentioned above, was just named the “Most Liberal Senator” of 2007.

As a 33-year old journalism student, I have been surprised to learn that most of my classmates have no idea why Ronald Reagan stands alone as the most revered and beloved president in recent history. If they know little about Ronald the Great, they know even less about Jimmy Carter, and therein lies my mission. Never in American history were the differences between two successive presidents more profound, and the results of their policies more easily recognized than the time period between 1977 and 1988.

Carter’s lone term illustrated the disastrous effects of combining a liberal president with a liberal congress. He was such a disaster that even the predominately liberal media of the time couldn’t comprehend the havoc he wreaked on this country. Only the creation of the misery index allowed them to accurately report the depths of despair he led us into, and even that index didn’t take into account America’s declining world influence and the expansion of Soviet allies throughout the world.

Ronald Reagan’s policies, and yes his optimism, turned this nation around. Since his dramatic tax cuts took full effect, America has realized nearly uninterrupted prosperity. Only his non-believing VP, George HW Bush (who referred to Reagan’s tax cutting plan as “voodoo economics”, failed to extend the prosperity. The supposedly disastrous economy of today actually ranks as one of the “least miserable” years in the last half-century. We’ve rarely had it this good.

But now we stand poised to throw it all away. While the Republicans have fought hard to out-Reagan one another rhetorically, the fact is that none are anywhere near the committed conservative ideologue that Reagan was. At least four of the remaining five candidates for the presidency are closer ideologically to Carter than they are to Reagan. Only Mitt Romney offers hope in that at least he can talk the talk without making me double-over laughing, but even he has never truly walked the walk. The others are just varying shades of gray, and if the pundits are correct John McCain will wrap up the Republican nomination this Tuesday.

This blog will follow the political scene forward, attempting to encourage debate and to influence where we go from here by evaluating events through the speeches, actions and ideas of Ronald Reagan. One of the tremendous things about Reagan is that his speeches before becoming president accurately reflect the way he tried to lead the country while in office. This is rare indeed. I will apply those ideas to the world we face today.

At the same time, we will help educate the newest generation about the greatness of American Conservative ideals. The nation and the world progress every time they are implemented. I firmly believe that today’s liberalism stands no chance if the battle is waged in full view of an informed public. Conservatives win on ideas and logic every time. To that end, I encourage debate through comments from people who have believed those who would revise the history of Reagan’s presidency. I will attempt to respond to all reasonable discussion that my posts might generate.

In all my posts I will look to the words and actions of my hero, doing my best to answer one question:

“What would Reagan do?”

My next planned post will look at Reagan’s coming out speech, “A Time For Choosing,” and apply it to the choices we face this election year and beyond.

Until then, here are some examples of Reagan’s classic humor…