William F. Buckley was right

In David Frum's new post over at The New Majority he channels William F. Buckley:

Many years ago, at another dark time for conservatism, William F. Buckley did a marvelous interview. It's collected in his book of columns, Inveighing We Will Go. I'll have to quote from memory here, but the interview concluded with an explanation from Bill about the mission of National Review as he then saw it. We are maintaining an air strip in the jungle. And when the planes begin to land, we'll be there to welcome them - coffee and coke on the house.

That is the spirit that the GOP needs now. After all Obama won approximately 10 million more votes than McCain did. Luckily, many of those right-of-center voters who decided to go with Obama out of frustration with the Republican Party now have reason to regret their decision. We need to encourage and include any converts we can if we hope to make significant gains in 2010 and 2012.

A New Great Depression? Maybe Not.

The Obama administration is fond of comparing our current economic crisis to the Great Depression. "We are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a lot of you I think are worried about your jobs, your pensions, your retirement accounts," he said.

Talk such as this was used to sell the nation on the now under performing stimulus package. Obama said the stimulus bill had “saved or created over 150,000 jobs.” However, since the $787 billion spending measure passed, over 1 million jobs have been lost and unemployment has increased to 8.9 percent.

And there’s this from an Associated Press study:

Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP's review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower.

So, we were told that the nation was staring a new Great Depression in the face and we needed to implement the biggest spending plan we had ever seen to combat it; and that plan has yet to show any real results. Well, it turns that Great Depression comparison may have been just a bit hyperbolic.

The graph is from the Donald Marron's new blog.

Can you imagine what the nonproductive stimulus plan would have cost if we really were entering a new Great Depression?

Nothing Comes For Free

With secular progressives in charge of just about every government institution it was only a mater of time before their never ending list of programs and policies caused a debate about new taxes to arise. After all, someone has to pay for all of these initiatives. Here come the taxes....

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax. Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

Liberals dispute that notion. "You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off -- maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they'd come out a lot better off," said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.

Scary numbers= Scared Economists

John Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution voices fear over the exploding debt our country is facing.

Under President Barack Obama’s budget plan, the federal debt is exploding. To be precise, it is rising – and will continue to rise – much faster than gross domestic product, a measure of America’s ability to service it. The federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 2008; the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years. With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years.

While there is debate about whether a large deficit today provides economic stimulus, there is no economic theory or evidence that shows that deficits in five or 10 years will help to get us out of this recession. Such thinking is irresponsible. If you believe deficits are good in bad times, then the responsible policy is to try to balance the budget in good times. The CBO projects that the economy will be back to delivering on its potential growth by 2014. A responsible budget would lay out proposals for balancing the budget by then rather than aim for trillion-dollar deficits.

Umm...What did she just say?

Isn't policy made in the legislative branch? Just asking.

Meet Your New Justice

From RightPundits:
Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954 in New York City. She was raised in the South Bronx by working class parents and is of Puerto Rican descent.

Despite her working class background, she attended Princeton University and graduated summa cum laude in 1976. With her stellar credentials, she had her pick of law schools to attend and chose to go to Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Upon graduation in 1979, she worked as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County. Then, she moved on to private practice, working several years for the law firm Pavia & Harcourt. She married while at Princeton, but divorced in 1983.

In 1991, Sotomayor was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She was the first Hispanic federal judge in New York. She was confirmed by the Senate in 1992.

In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and confirmed by the Senate in 1998. She still holds that position today.

For much of her career, she was considered a moderate, hence her appointments by both a Republican and Democratic President. Today, conservatives tend to view her as a judicial activist and a liberal.

What will conservatives reaction be?

Happy Memorial Day

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree. ~Thomas Campbell

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. ~Felix Frankfurter

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. ~Woodrow Wilson

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. ~D.H. Lawrence

Freedom is never free. ~Author Unknown

Chrysler & Capitalism: Dead on Arrival

According to Scott Spreling at the WSJ, the recent Chrysler bailout is “capitalism at work.” While I am not an economist I would have to respectfully disagree. Effective capitalism would support companies that provide products and services that the public wants. Effective capitalism breeds efficiency in corporate structures. And in truth, effective capitalism would have seen Chrysler die out nearly 25 years ago.

The unfortunate truth is that Chrysler stopped making automobiles the public wanted long ago. That, and not the current economic crisis is what put it in the position it is in today. A glance at the most recent Consumer Reports Auto Edition tells the tale. The following are the recommended buys for a variety of brands.
Ford: 14 models
Ford Edge
Ford Escape Hybrid
Ford Escape 4-cyl.
Ford Escape V6
Ford Expedition EL
Ford F-150
Ford Focus AT
Ford Focus MT
Ford Fusion 4-cyl.
Ford Fusion V6
Ford Mustang V6
Ford Mustang V8
Ford Taurus
Ford Taurus X

Honda: 15 models
Honda Accord V6
Honda Accord 4-cyl. AT
Honda Accord 4-cyl. MT
Honda CR-V
Honda Civic Si
Honda Civic EX AT
Honda Civic EX MT
Honda Civic GX CNG
Honda Civic Hybrid
Honda Fit Base AT
Honda Fit Sport MT
Honda Odyssey
Honda Pilot
Honda Ridgeline
Honda S2000

Chrysler: 0 models

That's right, zero, none, nada. Is it really a win for capitalism when a company that makes cars that don't sell well and are generally of lower quality than its competitors is propped up by an intrusive federal government for the sake of short term job savings?

Lets put the quality of the product aside for a moment and look at what the company itself is willing to sacrifice to enable survival. When a company fails this miserably one would expect drastic measures in terms of its corporate structures to try and keep it alive. First among those changes would be cost cutting tactics. So one would think the workers along with the CEO's would be taking a long hard look at compensation as a temporary way to right the ship. However, among the cost-cutting measures being enacted are a suspension of cost-of-living-adjustments and new limits on overtime pay. Chrysler workers will also lose their Easter Monday holiday in 2010 and 2011, according to a union summary. No pay raises? Limits on over time? That's it? Even the workers themselves are surprised, “the reaction here has been incredibly positive. With many workers saying the plan is not nearly as drastic as they expected.”

Sadly, this is not the first time Chrysler has relied on the largess of the federal government and the American taxpayer. An eerily similar situation occurred 25 years ago. Chrysler chairman, Lee Iacocca, came to Washington in 1980, hat in hand, begging for a government bail out which he got. However, while the public perception was that Iacocca was a corporate savior, the reaction from economists was somewhat different, and very illuminating for our current situation. Below is the reaction from 1983.

The problem with the Chrysler bail-out—in fact, the problem with all "industrial policy"—is that it is necessarily political in nature; the loudest interest groups get the greatest reward, while the scattered and fragmented "invisible constituency" is largely ignored. But a free market is a tangled web of infinite and subtle interaction, in which the full impact of intervention is not always recognized until too late. In the case of the Chrysler bail-out, a big chunk of taxpayer money was committed to a shaky and inappropriate venture. Every American became an involuntary and uncompensated partner in a company whose future is still in doubt. The precedent established is extremely dangerous. On top of this, the bail-out even failed in its purpose.

It is time to pick your favorite cliche. The past is prologue; those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it; here we go again. Any of these will apply. But is it a win for capitalism? Unfortunately not.

Declining Happiness for Women

Was the Woman's Movement wrong? Interesting new research from Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson:

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.

While on the one hand equal opportunities for women in the workplace would seem to be an objective good, one has to wonder if many have made the right choice in trying to be both mom and career woman.

A Pro Life Nation?

It is no longer a statistical blip; the United States has definitely drifted to the right on the issue of abortion. The latest Fox News issue opinion poll mirrors the movement in the Gallup and the Quinnipiac polls, but the larger question is why? Nancy Gibbs at Time has one theory,

Abortion has forever been blown by electoral trade winds; when the right was in charge, people feared the return of coat hangers in back alleys. Now that the left leads, they fear abortion on demand. The very meaning of the labels adjusts; calling yourself pro-choice at a time when a liberal Democratic President and allies in Congress are lifting abortion restraints may imply no qualms at all, and that's not where most people are.

But there could be more to the strangely shifting polls than politics. Perhaps in some very important way, the pro life movement is simply winning over the hearts and minds of America. The culture of violent protests at abortion clinics that once defined the movement is now thankfully over. Now the bulk of pro-life energy is being channeled into grassroots efforts, from crisis pregnancy centers to post-abortion counseling. Many of the current crop of megachurches now focus their efforts on these and other like minded projects which serve the dual purpose of seeking to reduce the abortion rate one woman at a time, while also softening the image of the movement overall. Ross Douthat in an editorial piece this past December adds to the picture of a more positive pro life push,

Over the same period, pro-lifers — especially in the evangelical community — have broadened their movement’s ambit, emphasizing poverty, the environment and other non-abortion “life issues” more consistently than an earlier generation did. Leading pro-life figures like Rick Warren are more likely to be photographed touring poor nations alongside Bono than protesting outside abortion clinics.

What is most interesting is that these strong pro life numbers are coming at a time when the Democratic party ID numbers far outweigh the GOP's. This means that many self described Democrats are admitting to not being pro choice. Is this because of technology- high resolution ultrasound pictures? Or is this because of the absence of the threat of back alley abortions- back-alley talk may be politically untenable, in a way that it wasn’t 35 years ago? Regardless, the young voters the pro-life movement has won over are likely to stay pro-life.

Maybe the abortion issue will change from being a starkly right vs left debate into a more rational human debate?

Is the Left Losing Faith?

From Politico:

Barely four months into his presidency, Obama is confronting growing dissatisfaction among members of his liberal base, who feel spurned by a series of his early decisions on issues ranging from guns to torture to immigration to gay rights.

The list got longer last week as Obama reversed his earlier decision to release photos of detainees abused in U.S. military custody and announced plans to try some terror suspects before military commissions – though on the campaign trail he railed against earlier versions of the tribunals.

A few, like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, have even hurled the left’s ultimate epithet – suggesting that Obama’s turning into George W. Bush.

“He’s not the person that people thought he was,” says Michael Meyers of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, “The left is finding that out and the right is finding that out.”

Could this be a ray of hope for the GOP in the midterm elections? Time will tell.

Liberal Backpedaling

Democrats have spent the past four years decrying The Bush Administrations operation of a military prison at Guantanamo Bay. They have shouted from the hills how much they hate the use of torture. President Obama largely won his party's primary running against these very policies. However, it is very easy to be against things; it is a very different matter to be responsible for the safety of a nation. From the WSJ:

'We're not going to bring al Qaeda to Big Sky Country. No way, not on my watch," declared Montana Sen. Max Baucus. "I wouldn't want them and I wouldn't take them," insisted Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Not Quantico, piped up Virginia's Mark Warner. After all, it "is in a very populated area in the greater capital region." Look, "Alcatraz is a national park and a tourist attraction, not a functioning prison" for terrorists, said the office of California's Dianne Feinstein.

All Democrats in favor of standing with your president to shout out the evils of Guantanamo, shout aye! "Aye!" All Democrats in favor of doing what would be necessary to close Guantanamo, shout aye! . . . What, nobody?

On day two of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive order to shut down, within one year, the Gitmo prison that still houses 241 detainees. Four months later, he may be about to be handed his first defeat of a major campaign promise, and by his own party. Faced with the actual politics of bringing terrorists to U.S. soil, congressional Democrats are running for the exits.

In addition, when it comes right down to it how "against" torture are the Democrats any way?

Was the Stimulus Irrelevant?

Ed Morrissey has a great piece at the American Issues Project that brings up the question, "Did the historic stimulus package actually do anything?

In early January, a joint paper [PDF file] by Dr. Christine Romer, then the nominee to chair the Presidential Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein from Joe Biden's advisory team painted a bleak view of a world without the off-budget stimulus plan. This paper drove the administration's agenda on the stimulus bill and helped formulate the calculus that gave a much higher priority to public-works projects as opposed to tax cuts and business incentives. Failure to act, Romer and Bernstein warned, could have dire consequences.

Figure 1 details the challenge better than the text does:

After the passage of the bill authorizing the off-budget spending of almost $800 billion, one might have thought that the crisis represented by the light-blue arc would be avoided. Guess again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in April had risen to a peak of 8.9 percent, more than the doomsday scenario laid out by Romer and Bernstein in their January paper. In fact, March had exceeded the recovery-plan curve and the non-recovery plan curve, too, as this revised graph clearly shows:

Baby Boomer Bust

As the GOP searches for a fresh face and a fresh approach Gov Mitch Daniels offers an original albeit controversial analysis of his own generation. From The Fix:

Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered a condemnation of the "Baby Boomer" and a call for generational change during a recent commencement address at Butler University, a speech drawing considerable national attention as the Republican Party continues its search for fresh faces and new leaders.

"As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish," Daniels said in the speech. "Our current Baby Boomer president has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about . . . himself."

Daniels went on to offer a sweeping indictment of his own generation's financial and moral selfishness, concluding: "It's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us."

Taking Fiscal Conservatism Where We Can Get It

With the power of the GOP in Congress at a frightening low, fiscal conservatives need to look long and hard to find any restraint on spending. At least we can root for the conservative Blue Dogs to have some kind of influence in the coming healthcare debate. From The Hill:

The fiscally conservative arm of the Democratic Party has begun to flex as the House inches toward action on healthcare reform. [They] issued a statement of healthcare principles Tuesday, less than a week after complaining to three House committee chairmen that they felt shut out from drafting the $1 trillion-plus bill to reduce healthcare spending growth, improve the quality of medical care, and expand coverage to the 46 million without health insurance.

the Blue Dog letter represents a rare coalition consensus, signaling that the 51-strong Blue Dog Coalition intends to stick together — which could including voting together as a significant bloc in the House — if it doesn’t get what it’s asking for in the final bill.

“As we move forward, moderate voices should have a key role in this debate and we must never lose sight of how these reforms will impact small businesses and working families across this country,” said Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), who’s heading a healthcare task force for the Blue Dogs.

And the Blue Dogs are apparently not completely alone.

The Blue Dogs are not the first contingent of centrist Democrats to weigh in on healthcare reform.

The centrist New Democrat Coalition put out a similar document last week. Combined with the discomfort voiced by centrist or conservative Democratic senators like Ben Nelson (Neb.), these salvos signal that congressional Democrats are not fully united behind their leaders’ approach to healthcare reform.

Needless to say, I can't imagine the healthcare debate is going to make any conservative happy, but hopefully the moderate wing of the Democratic Party can at least keep it from becomeing a disaster.

Jobs? What Jobs?

It seems all those promised "boots on the ground" jobs may not be coming after all. From the AP news wire:

A top congressional Democrat says the White House may have oversold the roads-and-bridges component of the historic stimulus law.

An Associated Press analysis of the first $19 billion in transportation spending showed that communities most in need of jobs are least likely to benefit from the program.
A spokesman for Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar, who leads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, says the White House shouldn’t have billed road money as the signature component of the stimulus, or as a surefire boost to needy communities.

One result among many: Elk County, Pa., isn't receiving any road money despite its 13.8 percent unemployment rate. Yet the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.

Jobs? What Jobs?

Religion & Politics

Michael Gerson reviews "American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives," being written by Robert Putnam and David Campbell. If the book is half as interesting as this preliminary review it should be a great read. It talks about how organized religion and politics collide, not always to mutual benefit.

The politicization of religion by the religious right, argues Putnam, caused many young people in the 1990s to turn against religion itself, adopting the attitude: "If this is religion, I'm not interested." The social views of this younger cohort are not entirely predictable: Both the pro-life and the homosexual-rights movement have made gains. But Americans in their 20s are much more secular than the baby boomers were at the same stage of life. About 30 to 35 percent are religiously unaffiliated (designated "nones," as opposed to "nuns" -- I was initially confused). Putnam calls this "a stunning development." As many liberals suspected, the religious right was not good for religion.

However, at the same time the authors seem to argue for the overwhelming benefits or religion, or at least the community it fosters.

At a recent conference of journalists organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Putnam outlined the conclusions of "American Grace," based on research still being sifted and refined. Against the expectations of hard-core secularists, Putnam asserts, "religious Americans are nicer, happier and better citizens." They are more generous with their time and money, not only in giving to religious causes but to secular ones. They join more voluntary associations, attend more public meetings, even let people cut in line in front of them more readily. Religious Americans are three to four times more socially engaged than the unaffiliated. Ned Flanders is a better neighbor.

McCain on Inclusion

I have been making the case for weeks now that the GOP needs to be a big tent party. This Sunday John McCain agreed. From Politico

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” the Arizona Republican said the GOP needs to do a better job of communicating with voters and recruiting local candidates. Reflecting on his 2008 White House run, he said: “Maybe I didn’t do a good enough job communicating with the American people.”

Asked if being inclusive meant welcoming candidates and voters who support abortion rights or gay marriage, McCain said: “It means that we can have people in our party who do not have the same views on specific issues, as long as we share common principles.”

“We have to understand that maybe a candidate that can win in one part of our country, like the South, may not be able to get elected in Pennsylvania,” he said.

Evidence We Are Still a Center-Right Nation

Where the Stimulus $$ is Going

If you want to see where all the stimulus money is going don't bother using the government's Recovery.gov, which won't be opperational for up to another year. The folks at the information-services firm Onvia stepped in and created the site Recovery.org, which is already up and showing, as much as is possible, who is getting what. A very interesting site with a lot of easy to digest graphs and charts. Below is a 5 min interview with the companies CEO.

New Jersey Lawmaker Leading from the Center

A timely article from The Hill profiles Congressman Leonard Lance from New Jersey, who is pushing the GOP towards a more centrist approach, especially in the northeast.

Lance is a fiscal conservative and social centrist who emphasizes his environmental record — the big-tent approach that pure conservatives love to hate.

But Lance is using his beliefs to advocate a position conservatives can support — getting more Republicans elected to Congress, particularly in the Northeast, which is traditionally a Democratic stronghold.
“I am very vigorous about this,” Lance said in an interview. “It is clear beyond dispute that there are not very many of us; it would be ridiculous for me to argue otherwise. But in my judgment there is going to be more of us and that’s the way the party should move forward. I have discussed this with the leadership on many occasions.”

Russ Douthat & the Republicanus Rockefellus

Russ Douthat has some critical things to say about as he calls it — Republicanus Rockefellus. Understandably as a self-described Rockefeller Republican I take issue with some, but not all, of his points. Douthat is using the recent Sen. Specter debacle to make a broader point about the politics of centrists.

Political debates are often framed in binaries: Middle-of-the-roaders versus hard-liners, moderates versus ideologues. But American politics is more complicated than that. There are multiple rights and lefts, and multiple middles as well.

I couldn't agree more. There are many factions within the greater Republican party,-Fiscal conservatives, Libertarian conservatives, Moderates, National Security-oriented, Neoconservatives, Paleoconservatives, Religious Right/Theoconservatives, Social conservatives, States' rights supporters, Federalists- and we need them all.

In reference specifically to Northeast Republicans,

The Northeastern moderates tend to style themselves as fiscal conservatives, spinning a narrative in which they’re the victims of a doctrinaire social conservatism and its litmus tests. But many of them are just instinctive liberals who happen to have ancestral ties to the Grand Old Party....others, like Collins and Snowe and (until last week) Specter, are simply horse-traders and deal-cutters, whose willingness to cross party lines last month to vote for $800 billion dollars in deficit spending tells you most of what you need to know about their supposed fiscal conservatism.

I take issue with the point that I, or others like me, are instinctively liberal. While Specter and the ladies from Maine do tend to prove this point they are not the only examples of Rockefeller Republicanism. There are many fiscally conservative North-easterners who are a better representation of our brand of conservatism. One only needs to look at some of the members of the Republican Main Street Partnership for proof of moderate Republicans who are still truly conservative, members like Todd Platts of PA 19th district, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, Mike Castle of Delaware and Charlie Dent of PA 15th who all voted with their party 85% of the time in the last congress. They do not get the press of the Specters and Snowes of the world but are quietly working to further a center-right ideology in Washington.

Douthat goes on to make the point that centrist are needed, but in his words we need a

better sort of centrist. The Reagan-era wave of Republican policy innovation...has calcified in much the same way that liberalism calcified a generation ago. And so in place of hacks and deal-makers, the Republican Party needs its own version of the neoliberals and New Democrats — reform-minded politicians like Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, who helped the Democratic Party recover from the Reagan era, instead of just surviving it.

This I agree with and posit that moderates could lead the way here, or at the very least be a strong partner in a coalition to rebuild the party. A strong platform built around energy policy for the 21st century would be a good start; it would be pro-environment, pro-business as well as strongly pro-security. Someone like Jon Huntsman, Governor of Utah should be looked at closely as a leading voice for the new moderates. Being from Utah he is predictably conservative on many social issues, but he has been known to be more centrist in other areas. The environment in particular has been an area that he has stressed. "We as Republicans can’t shy away from speaking the word 'environment,' and we shouldn’t shy away from speaking the words 'climate change,'" Huntsman told reporters at a press conference late last year. "When you’ve got a body of science that already is rendering certain judgments about what is happening in our world, for us to shy away, say it doesn’t matter as an issue, I think is foolhardy, it’s short-sighted and it’s bound to do us damage in the longer-term." He has also talked of reform in the areas of education, health care and energy.

The GOP needs all factions of its party to win back a majority, even neo-Rockefeller Republicans like me.

Jon Huntsman Strikes Fear in the Heart of Team Obama

There is one republican presidential candidate that President Obama's campaign manager fears the most in 2012...and his name is Jon Huntsman Jr.. Huntsman, 48, has built an impressive political resume- he worked as a White House staff assistant in the Reagan Administration, U.S. ambassador to Singapore in the administration of Bush 41, and a deputy United States trade representative in the George W. Bush Administration, all before being elected as Utah’s Governor.

This site has recognized Huntsman's potential before and applaud his continued relevance.

Education update: Promises Broken

The president says he wants to do "what's best for kids." So why won't he save a proven program that helps low-income students?

A Party or a Movement?

A political party and movement are not the same thing, and the uproar over Specter and other so-called RINO's is bringing that point into clear focus. Noemie Emery from The Weekly Standard adds to the conversation:

A movement exists to express and promote a coherent set of principles in the world of ideas and of values. A party--especially in a two-party system--is something quite different: a gathering of diverse political forces around a large and loosely held set of interests and values, that exists to give all of its factions access to power in the practical world of events. A movement gives a party a spine and a platform; the party assembles a coalition around them that is large enough to win and hold power, and turn some of the movement's ideas into law.

The conservative movement is a collection of theorists that self-selects for conformity. The Republican party is the vehicle for the center-right of the American polity, a group that includes the conservative movement, but is not quite of it, and includes many people who touch the conservative movement with different degrees of intensity, or only lightly, or on only a limited number of points.

Permutations are endless: Rudy Giuliani, right on defense, crime, and tax-cutting, but wrong (in the movement's view) on gays and abortion; George W. Bush, a hawk, tax-cutter, and social conservative, but a bleeding heart and big spender; John McCain, a strong defense and fiscal conservative, but a maverick on many things else. All are considered as grave disappointments by the purists of the conservative movement, who also give failing grades to every Republican president since Coolidge, with the exception of Reagan, and sometimes even to him. The movement seems in a permanent funk over the party's unworthy leaders and often looks down on the party itself as being a drag on the movement's aspirations and prospects. The only problem is that the movement, if it is to be anything more than a really interesting reading group, needs the party if it wants to succeed.

Obama May be Learning

I have always thought President Obama to be an intelligent man even if I could not agree with him on many issues. So when he does something right, I have to give credit where it is due.
From The Christian Science Monitor:

Polls show Americans prefer bankruptcy over a bailout for troubled US car companies and President Obama has now partially and reluctantly accepted.

He has let Chrysler file for Chapter 11 and soon may be forced to let General Motors do the same. In both cases, Mr. Obama is learning why government should not necessarily impose political concerns on what should be a business or legal decision.

His attempt to avoid a Chrysler bankruptcy failed Wednesday because his proposal favored the United Auto Workers over the company's small investors, such as teachers' pension funds. The UAW, while it has made sacrifices in wages and benefits, would have been given more than half ownership of the firm – a far larger share than it deserves under Chapter 11.

Now a bankruptcy judge will be able to treat all stakeholders more fairly, as the law requires, without favoring the politically powerful, such as the UAW.