Tag: Republicans

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ideological culture incumbents local leaders media and media people national politics & policies

Monied Hopes Dashed

elections, Democrats, Republicans, left, right, CNN, Obamacare

Democrats had high hopes. Their come-back after the 2016 defeats seemed near at hand. After all, Trump is proving increasingly erratic and incompetent, and the Republican mis-handling of the ObamaCare repeal appears to be a disaster of ginormous proportions.

How could they not start taking seats in Congress back?

There were four open seats requiring new votes this late Spring. “Democrats tried an inoffensive moderate message in Georgia,” CNN’s Eric Bradner informs us. “They ran a banjo-strumming populist in Montana. They called in the cavalry in South Carolina and tried to catch their foe sleeping through a long-shot in Kansas.”

Democrats failed, 0-4.

Why? Well, the congressional vacancies were made by the new president’s appointments, and he may have targeted those districts that were especially safe. Nevertheless, CNN notes, “[t]he party got closer than it has in decades to winning some of the four seats — a sign they’ve closed their gaps with Republicans in both suburban and rural areas. . . .”

But there is a lesson here that CNN did not draw from the debacle. The much-lamented Georgia race, in which Jon Ossoff lost to Republican Karen Handel, was a race in which Ossoff out-spent Handel six to one in what is called “the most expensive House race in history.” And yet, somewhat oddly and perhaps hypocritically, Ossoff, the bigger spender, went on air complaining about money in politics.

All that moolah did not push him over the top. Ossoff and the Democrats — as well as the feckless Republican majority — might look for fewer excuses and stand for something voters actually want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government

Whack the Bob

pendulum, noose, politics, left, right, change, Republicans, Democrats

It’s a truism in politics: the pendulum swings. Now, around the world, we see a deep swing rightward:

  • Brexit, and the collapse of Britain’s Labour Party;
  • Donald Trump, and the routing of the Democrats;
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s turnaround on Muslim refugee acceptance; and,
  • in France, the rise of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported on events in Poland. There, the Law and Justice Party is not only making sweeping changes of a pro-family, religious conservative nature, it has also grown in popularity.

Fearing an anti-intellectual “neo-Dark Age,” the Post finds cause for that worry in the fact that the Poles are downplaying evolutionary science in government school curricula.*

Before the big freak out, note the why of this: the dominant progressive-left paradigm has proven itself incapable of dealing with the challenges of the present age — most being caused by their own policies. Worse yet, those on the vanguard left have become moral scolds and petty language tyrants.

Yes, political correctness is one of the big offenders, here.

So, of course there’s a backlash.

But, turnabout being fair play, if the move to the “right” goes too far — as it probably will — we can expect another swing leftward.

Isn’t it time to give that pendulum bob a whack, to initiate something like an equilibrium position? Many of today’s problems are caused by partisans trying to force their kind of change down others’ throats. There is an alternative: limit government, setting it to just a few tasks, letting society evolve naturally, without forced central planning.

That would be “evolutionary,” and thus neither rightist nor revolutionary-left. Call it neo-Enlightenment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Poland’s new government has become scary, by reducing transparency, limiting press access, purging the government news network of anti-rightist journalists, hiking subsidies to traditional families and the elderly, shelving the gay marriage issue and allowing local governments to cut back on granting public protest permits. Not all of these are equally frightening, of course. Why should any government be allowed to maintain a government-run news agency? (Ideological purges come with the territory.)

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pendulum, noose, politics, left, right, change, Republicans, Democrats

 

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general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

Mike Lee’s Fix of Congress

“What too few in Washington appreciate — and what the new Republican Congress must if we hope to succeed — is that the American people’s current distrust of their public institutions is totally justified.”

So wrote Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in The Federalist shortly after the big election earlier this month. “Americans are fed up with Washington, and they have every right to be.”

Lee starts off with the need to earn trust. Will many readers simply shrug? His notion of a “more open-source strategy development model that includes everyone” sure sounds nice. But after Obama’s promise of the most “transparent” presidency in history, and delivery of one of the least, skepticism is natural.

At least Lee knows his challenges: “Republicans in fact can’t ‘govern’ from the House and Senate alone — especially without a Senate supermajority.” He sees the necessity of working with Democrats, but insists that the congressional majority not compromise away the whole enchilada.

“Anti-cronyism legislation is win-win for the GOP,” he writes, and views “taking on crony capitalism” as a test of the GOP’s “political will and wisdom.” Fighting the corrupt Washington culture of insider deals is sure to test Democratic lawmakers, too.

“[A] new Republican majority must also make clear that our support for free enterprise cuts both ways,” argues the Senator. “To prove that point, we must target the crony capitalist policies that rig our economy for large corporations and special interests at the expense of everyone else— especially small and new businesses.”

Echoes of Ralph Nader, but with deep free-market rumblings. Not discord, but harmony. Music to my ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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moral hazard subsidy

For Some Reason

Yesterday, the House voted to extend the legal ability for the Export-Import Bank to run . . . for another nine months. The people’s legislature passed the “stop-gap” measure, 319-108, with both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.

Just last month, President Obama expressed dismay that Republicans would be against it.

“For some reason,” he intoned, “right now the House Republicans have decided that we shouldn’t do this. . . .” He pretended to incredulity and puzzlement. He gave the usual reasoning for the subsidized financial guarantees, and insisted that “every country does this.”

“When,” he asked, “did that become something that Republicans opposed?”

Obama could’ve asked all those members of his own party who opposed it.

But then, he could have asked himself. Back in 2008, he very clearly put the Ex-Im Bank on the theoretical chopping block. Candidate Obama gave the big business bank up as a program that “didn’t work” and one that had become “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”

So why the change of mind, Mr. Obama?

Has the Ex-Im ceased being a fund for corporate welfare?

No. It’s still there, propping up big businesses doing business abroad — indeed, multinationals abroad, the kind of companies that Obama’s Occupier friends despise so deeply.

What has changed? He’s in power, now. And that power derives from the mighty federal purse, filled by taxing hundreds of millions of Americans, and used to give hundreds of millions and billions in benefits to the few, the insiders.

President Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties are tighter than ever with special interests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

A Teachable Wage

The U.S. President wants to up the national minimum wage to $9 per hour.

Republicans tend to lose at such policy debates, sometimes by daring to tell the truth: That minimum wage laws tend to raise unemployment. But that doesn’t impress politicians, who can’t be bothered to look beyond the surface of such issues.

They present the minimum wage hike as a guarantee that higher wages get paid all around, that wages only go up, rather than what actually happens: some wages go up to meet the law, and others evaporate, as people are let go, jobs downsized, and new jobs go uncreated.

So why would congressional Republicans use the same old rhetoric to balk at the president’s plan?

Sometimes irony works. Republicans should take all the Democrats’ premises — we want higher wages, more wealth, etc., etc. — and up the ante:

“Yes, raising wages would be great! But why are you all such tightwads? Raise the minimum to $49 an hour! Or make the lowest rate comparable with congressional pay: $85 per hour!”

Then compromise and say they will only vote for the raise if the rate hike is a serious amount, not the president’s paltry $1.75 increase.

At that point, a more honest conversation will start up.

For the ugly truth is that the harmful effects of the current and rather low minimum wage laws rest mainly on folks who aren’t very likely to vote, or to notice why it is they are unemployed. But raise the rate to $49 per hour, or even $19, and the scam becomes obvious to all but the most dense.

Even Democrats would insist on a lower rate.

And then Republicans should demand that Democrats explain why. And reveal the perverse logic behind minimum wages for all to see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies tax policy

The Muppet Is Right

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is being mocked by oh-so-funny lefty pundit Matthew Dowd because Dowd dislikes the anti-higher-tax-rate pledge Norquist invites politicians to sign.

Some long-serving Republicans have renounced the commitment they made to their constituents to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses.” Senator Saxby Chambliss says he cares “more about the country than . . . about a 20-year-old pledge.” Co-Republican and co-pledge-signer Senator Lindsey Graham agrees.

“Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing,” Dowd said on This Week, ABC’s Sunday morning talking-head program. “The only good thing about Grover Norquist is, he’s named after a character from Sesame Street. ”

Welcome to sound-bite alley. Lucky for Norquist his first name isn’t Elmo or Snuffleupagus, eh?

Expanding on the theme of Norquist’s putative irrelevancy, Time’s Joe Klein says Norquist has passed his “sell-by date.”

Let me interject a question neither about muppets nor sour milk: What is “good governing”?

Does it require stripping the wallets of taxpayers to fund every conceivable government program concocted by those who would run every aspect of our lives?

Those who most eagerly wish to loot the rest of us seem, at the moment, to have the upper hand. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us should supinely wait to be rolled over. The fight for freedom is always relevant. So is keeping one’s word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.