Roiling Political Currents

Are we having fun yet? This is a week when Democrat officeholders have been taking a look at the political winds and deciding not to run. As in Sen. Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), and Gov. Ritter (D-CO).

Then there are Dick Morris and Eileen McGann writing that the center-right Democrats are finished. Back in the Nineties it was the center-left Republicans that got wiped out. They voted with the center right and their constituents decided that they wanted real Democrats, not fake ones. Of course, some of the liberal Republicans, like Sen. Chafee of Rhode Island and Jeffords of Vermont, switched parties. But now it's the turn of center-right Democrats to face the music or switch.

Now that Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Byron Dorgan in the Senate and the likes of Marion Berry, Tom Perriello and John Spratt Jr. in the House have shown how easily they fold under pressure and how thin their conservatism really is, their states and districts will no longer be deceived into re-electing them. They will be replaced by real Republicans.

The question is, of course, should the switchers go all the way and become Tea Pary members? David Brooks notes how the American people are turning against the "educated class."

Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it...

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

As in health care, cap-and-trade, abortion, gun control. You could call it the "tea party tendency." Of course, Brooks assures us, "I’m not a fan of this movement." No, darling, not really recherché enough.

Yep, things are on the march, but we don't know where they are heading.

This is exactly why I wanted Barack Obama to become president. I felt that once the American people got a taste of real Democratic government they would upchuck on the spot, just like they did in the Nineties when they got a taste of Bill Clinton in 1993-94.

The problem for the Democrats and the educated class is that they have been around running things for over half a century. Inevitably, over a period like that, a political elite gets really corrupt. And I don't just mean in a flagrant Chicago-politics way. I mean in a lazy self-dealing way.

Eventually, despite all the pretty words and the goodies given to them, the people turn against an entrenched elite, and the tea party movement looks like it symbolizes that turning for us in the 2010s.

How about a Republican Tea Party? Any takers?

Democrats Help the Rich

Although the Obama stimulus package was advertised as a way to keep unemployment under 8 percent it is pretty clear that, from the start, it was designed as a mammoth earmark program. Writes Mona Charen:

[U]nemployment has continued to climb since passage. That's not surprising when you consider that the overwhelming majority of funds (116,625 grants) have gone to governments, not the private sector (13,080 grants).

And, of course, Democratic districts have been getting twice the stimulus money that Republican districts have gotten.

But wait a minute. We've been getting reports recently that government workers earn more than private sector workers, on average, Federal workers are earning about 40 percent more than private sectors, and state and local workers are earning about 37 percent more.

So doesn't that mean that this government-centric stimulus is going to the rich?

Somewhere in these United States there is a politician that is planning to ride to victory on the injustice of government workers earning more than private sector workers. Just wait.

Obama's Grass Roots

Whatever happened to President Obama's grass-roots supporters? Weren't they supposed to be transforming politics? That's what Micah F. Shifry wonders at techPresident.com.

The answer is not what he wanted. The grass roots were never more than a means of ascent for the Obama campaign, to be used in the primaries and for fundraising, but not to be encouraged as an independent force in politics. Now that Obama's president the grass roots are nothing more than a nuisance, making it difficult for Obama to pivot towards the center.

Which means, of course that the wonders of the Obama grass roots were all along a media mirage. And what else could they be? The Obama phenomenon was always a personal campaign. The Obama grass roots mobilized to elect Obama. They were inspired from the top down by his vaporous agenda of hope and change, youthfulness and energy that was intended to contrast with the tired administration of Bush and its reincarnation in the aged John McCain.

But Obama was always an establishment candidate, never an insurgent. Remember? He came to national attention when he was invited to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

If you want a true insurgency, look no further than the Tea Party movement. It came out of nowhere, unbidden and unattached to any candidate.

In fact the Tea Party movement dramatizes the utter fatuity of the "community organizer" notion so popular on the left. The Tea Party is real people organizing themselves at the grass roots and reaching out to find others out there doing the same thing. It is messy and contentious. Nobody knows whether it will fold into the Republican Party or split the conservative vote by trying to organize as a third party.

The "community organizer" concept is a top-down wheeze of the left. It imagines communities of the oppressed waiting around to be organized by left-wing cadres and fashioned into a force for progressive politics. Think astroturf.

The point is, of course, that the Tea Party people are middle-class voters that are capable of self-organizing. They have the can-do skills and the middle-class culture that amazed Tocqueville back in the 1830s. Americans have always formed associations when they wanted to achieve a community purpose. The Obama grass roots are just unorganized liberals that were energized by the charisma of Obama and the Obama campaign to help Obama get elected.

If the Obama people did organize their grass roots into a political force, the new organization would probably do more harm than good. The problem that liberals have is that they are really different from the average moderate or independent and, as Rush Limbaugh says, they have to keep that quiet. The natural home of most independents is probably in the Republican Party. They can only be enticed into voting for Democrats if they are fed up with the Republicans and if you present them with a candidate that looks like a conservative.

Right now independents and moderates are finding out that voting for a moderate Democrat doesn't mean that you get moderate policies. When the chips are down those nice moderate Democrats vote the Pelosi or the Reid line. Voting for a Democrat, any Democrat, means voting for liberal policies.

Why would the Obama people try to flood the streets with energized liberals? When you are trying to persuade the American people that your liberal policies are really moderate, you want to keep your liberal grass roots quiet. They might let the cat out of the bag.

Repeal the Deal

There is still time, some say, to kill the health bill that has now passed the House and the Senate and needs to go through a conference process before passing out as a final bill for the president's signature.

But I wonder if that is the right strategy.

It seems that Democrats didn't get the right message from the failure of HillaryCare back in 1994. Back then we killed the bill and dealt the Democrats a severe defeat in the 1994 elections, and so President Clinton retreated to a policy of incremental change on health care. No longer would he propose the Democratic dream of universal health care run by the administrative state. Instead he would do it by inches.

But Democratic policy analysts went to work to come up with a new way of selling universal health care to the American people. ObamaCare is the result.

Democrats clearly believe that if they can just get something, anything past the finish line then they will have succeeded in passing landmark social welfare thata can never be repealed. That was how the Democrats understood their victory on Social Security, and that is how they understand their victory on Medicare. They believe that once they pass an act to put health care under the administrative control of government, there is no turning back.

The only way to change their minds is to do the unthinkable. We must mount a campaign to repeal a major piece of social legislation and carry it through to victory.

Let us understand what this means. It means that we must declare ObamaCare unjust and illegal. We must mount a campaign to repeal it. We must persuade the American people of the justice of our cause. We must elect legislators sworn to repeal ObamaCare, and then we must press our case until a Congress is elected that repeals ObamaCare and a president is elected who will sign the repeal.

There must be a decisive battle sooner or later on social welfare. The battle is necessary to decide the larger war, which is: Shall the United States achieve social cohesion by means of administrative government programs? Or shall it reject this model and try another model?

The history of the past century and a half has been the history of the growth of government programs to deliver social services like education, health care, pensions, and charity. The prime movers of these programs were not the working classes. All they ever wanted was more money. No. The driving force behind social legislation has been the progressive educated class.

The progressive educated class arose in the mid-19th century and by the turn of 20 century has coalesced around a program of government expansion. They believed that an unregulated private sector could not deliver the education and the protection from poverty that the people needed. They proposed a legislative program to deliver these services with government programs that they would lead and control.

Obviously this program of government expansion will continue until it is stopped. Obviously it will eventually stop. It cannot take over the whole economy, for it requires a healthy private sector to deliver the goods and services to finance its programs. At some point the expansion of government will end.

Either the era of government expansion will end in meltdown, or it will end in a decisive battle in which the ordinary people tell the progressive educated class that they don't want their administrative state.

Michael Barone wrote recently about a similar decisive battle that occurred in the past. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act that Sen. Stephen Douglas (D-IL) shepherded through the Senate in 1854. He thought that his plan of deciding the issue of slavery state by state through "popular sovereignty" was a sensible plan that would end the conflict over slavery.

But he was wrong. The Kansas-Nebraska Act ignited a firestorm of rage in the North, and the Democrats lost 73 seats in the House in the 1854 elections (That would be like 140 seats lost today). Seven years later the states were at war.

Without the Kansas-Nebraska Act the anti-slavery North would not have been roused to political rage, and the Republican Party might not have been created to fight slavery. Perhaps there would have been no civil war.

Without the passage of ObamaCare we may not get the political rage that is needed to turn the tide of government expansion back and return once more to a nation of limited government.

We can only hope that the campaign to take back America from the progressive educated class does not end in civil war.

The Two Americas

Disraeli said it 150 years ago. So there's no need for a do-over. Here's what he said, in Sybil or the Two Nations.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws ... THE RICH AND THE POOR.

In America there are Two Nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy. Nor are they governed by the same laws. I mean the conservatives and the liberals. But there is one difference between Disraeli's England and our America. Liberals may be ignorant of conservative habits, but conservatives know a lot about liberals.

We know that liberals are more optimistic right now. Michael Barone writes that government workers are much more optimistic right now. Maybe that's because the stimulus bill has saved lots of government jobs, but not created many private sector jobs.

We know that liberals are less happy than conservatives. That's what Peter Schweizer tells us in Makers and Takers.

We know that government workers earn more than private-sector workers. Estimates range from 38 percent more to 45 percent more.

And then a chap like Thomas Frank can wonder in What's the Matter With Kansas? why ordinary working Americans are deserting the Democratic Party.

Barone again:

Democrats have been surprised that so many downscale voters oppose their big spending programs. Maybe many of those voters have noticed how much of that spending has gone to public-sector union members, leaving the rest of America with a less than happy new year.

It was always going to end like this. The heart and soul of the Democratic Party since at least the days of the first big city machines has been privilege. That was supposed to be a good thing when government was carving out privilege for the little guy.

For years the little guy believed the stories that Democrats told him. He turned his eyes away from the obvious truth that government is force and that the government that forced others to give to him would one day turn to force him to give to others.

Unsurprisingly, the Democratic privilege game has developed mission creep over the years. Now the notion of privilege extends to all those helping the little guy.

So we have a monster government health program that's supposed to help the little guy but instead creates lots of jobs for credentialed Democrats and makes health care to expensive for the little guy.

We have government education that makes education that is supposed to help the poor get a hand up but instead creates lots of jobs for credentialed Democrats and makes education too expensive for the little guy on his own.

We have welfare that creates lots of jobs for social-worker Democrats but destroys the working class culture of the little guy.

The heavens cry out for justice, and maybe in 2010 the American people will hear the cry, and learn the most important lesson. That people insisting that they want to help you just want to help themselves. Maybe they just want to help themselves to your money or your vote.

There are Two Americas. They are the Makers and the Takers, and, in 2010, most Americans know who they are.

A New Year Resolution

Here's my New Year Resolution. I'm not going to pile on to my liberal friends in 2010 about the evils of the Obama administration.

It will be a big effort. But I figure why not? Democrats are going to have an annus horribilis in 2010 with or without snarky commentary from their conservative friends.

Yes, you say. That's all very well. But liberals didn't miss a beat in the eight years of the Bush administration. They started complaining about the stupidity of President Bush even before the election. And Vice President Cheney became the evil Svengali from a very early day. Don't liberals deserve a does of their own medicine?

They do. But we are conservatives. We don't descend to liberal behavior. And anyway, I am not saying that I won't write about liberal follies. I am just saying I am not going to ram it home personally to liberal friends and acquaintances.

There's an affirmative action thing here, because liberals are not yet ready to take their place in society without assistance from a caring culture. Liberals are just not used to taking abuse. So a robust exchange of views would be too much of a blow to their positive self-esteem.

Here's what I won't be saying to my liberal friends.

• The year 2009 was the year the locusts ate. Everything that President Obama and Congress did was stupid or worse,
• The $787 billion stimulus was stupid. If you want to stimulate the economy, do it with tax cuts.
  
• The Obama approach to terrorism was stupid. That's why we got the hot-pants Christmas bomber. Because Democrats don't think we are in a war.
• The Obama approach to health care was stupid. What we need is not more freebies and subsidies and rationing leading inevitably to "death panels" but more people paying full freight for routine health care rather than through third-parties.
• The Obama approach to energy was stupid. Even if we are facing a huge global warming crisis, we should respond by adaptation, not by carbon capture and a vast web of taxation and regulation.
• The Obama approach to finance was stupid. We need to get as quickly as possible to a system that has a lot less politics in it. Instead, the Obama administration wants to inject more politics into the system with a consumer finance regulatory agency.

I could go on, but I won't because that would be piling on.

We conservatives have more important things to do than get snarky with our liberal friends. We need to be working on an electoral tsunami next November. In my view, 50 seats in the House would be an embarrassment. I reckon we need to aim for a 100 seat Democratic loss in the House in order to keep our self respect.

That would really be sending a message, and a much better message than any personal message to a liberal friend.

Conservative Women Pols: For Real?

Even lefties like A.C. Kleinheider in Nashville are noticing. Conservative women politicians are front and center.

Beyond a steady rightward shift and an increasingly reactionary rhetoric, conservative leadership is taking on another characteristic — it’s becoming more female.

See what I mean? We'll discuss "reactionary rhetoric" another time. But the interesting thing is that Kleinheider can't help wondering if it is all for real.

But just because there are no strings doesn’t mean they aren’t being used...

[as in] Rep. Marsha Blackburn taking on Al Gore in congressional hearings, the more confrontational political work is increasingly being left to women.

Obviously, Kleinheider suspects that the conservative back-room boys may be shoving the girls out front to do the dirty work.

Well, maybe. But I suspect that the simple assumption is the correct one. Conservative women, i.e., the kind of women that build their lives around love--of God, of family, of children--are waking up to an America that isn't good for them and for the ones they love. So they are becoming active and they are doing something about it. He quotes Rep. Marsha Blackburn, (R-TN):

"The amazing thing to me about the tea parties is, when you look out across the crowd, the crowd is predominantly female. ... It’s amazing, the number of women attending these events, and women are speaking out as never before. ... They are looking at what’s happening with the cost of health care, they are truly concerned about the strong arm of government reaching into their lives and into their pocketbooks."

That reads to me like a spontaneous political movement that isn't being stage-managed by anyone.

In fact we know this. The august wing of the Republican Party is afraid of and embarrassed by Sarah Palin. And it was completely blindsided by the Tea Party movement.

It all connects with my notion of a woman-centered, woman-led conservatism. The issues of the future are woman issues. Shall society center around the family and free association? Or shall it center around government and the individual? Shall health care be government-centered and controlled? Shall education be government-centered and controlled? Shall welfare continue to be a government provision of charity, or return to its old ways, inspired and run by women?

It's beginning to look as if American conservative women are taking control and deciding that they must lead the resolution of these great questions.

Frankly, I couldn't be happier. Nearly a century after they got the vote, women--real middle-class women, not rich liberal women--are moving to the center of political power and are eager to work for change, good conservative change.

Now we'll see something.