By-the-numbers Conservatism

There are all kinds of conservatives and all kinds of conservatism.

Some people say there are three kinds of conservatives: economic, social, and national-security.

Then there's Ken Blackwell's six-legged stool: social conservatives, Christian conservatives, Second Amendment conservatives, economic conservatives, philosophical conservatives, national security conservatives.

How many conservatives does it take to change a light-bulb?

But for my money, the guy to watch is John Hawkins. You could call him a by-the-numbers conservative. Today, he's got "Five Ways Liberals Misjudge the American People." That's a helpful thing to know when liberals are about to cram down a government takeover of health care down your throat. It gives you hope that, when they are actually asked what they want, the American people will want the monstrosity of ObamaCare repealed.

How do liberals misjudge the American people? Hawkins counts the ways:

1. They believe the American people want liberal policies.
2. They believe that many Americans don't know what's in their own best interests.
3. They believe that the American people want to be treated like children.
4. They believe that most conservatives are evil.
5. They believe they can lie to the American people without consequence.

Hawkins does a nice job of tossing these notions up in the air and snapping at them. But let us step back a moment. When you look at the five things that liberals believe about the American people that ain't so, you realize something.

If you wanted to cram down your agenda on the American people then you'd have to believe these things. You'd need to believe them in order to convince yourself that your cruel, corrupt, unjust program is the soul of caring, compassion, and justice. Of course the American want liberal things, except for those (in Kansas) that don't get it. Of course the American people want to be taken care of, otherwise the eevil corporations will get them. Of course conservatives are evil: they oppose all the good things that liberals want to do.

And of course it's necessary to tell a porky or two. Didn't Plato condone the "noble lie" so that the Guardians could create and sustain their Republic?

What I find astonishing, given the wall-to-wall liberal environment in which we live, is that something like the Tea Party movement is possible. As Hawkins says:

Your kids are exposed to liberalism at school, Hollywood forces liberal ideas down your throat when you watch TV, the local paper leans left -- you just can't get away from it.

So how come you can get, all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, a Tea Party movement with people waving Don't Tread on Me flags? These are not profound intellectuals who have studied the classics off in a corner at Hillsdale College. These are bread-and-butter Americans who go to work, obey the law, and pay their taxes. Yet they have somehow picked up a world-view that collides head on with their liberal masters.

As the philosophers say: How is that possible?

Like liberals, I sometimes think that we conservatives don't understand the American people at all!

Lack of Trust in Dem Congress

I captured an interesting comment from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay over the weekend. He was critiquing the Pelosi operation in the house. Let's look at his comment in full.

DeLay accused Democrats of “arrogance” after CNN host Candi Crowley asked DeLay how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have a Democrat-controlled House, Senate and White House, but haven’t been able to secure passage of President Obama’s health-care bill.

“It’s because they’re going back in rooms and then telling the members, take it or leave it. You can’t do that. It’s obvious,” he said.

DeLay contrasted Pelosi’s handling of the health-care bill process to when he was in the Republican leadership and “knew which members were having problems and we’d take care of those problems so that by the time it got to the floor, they wanted to vote for it because they had ownership of it.”

But now, he explained, “Nancy Pelosi writes the bill, hands it to the chairman, says ‘get it out of committee in an hour and we’re going to the floor, we’re going to debate it and I’ll break arms if you vote against me.’ That will come to haunt you and bring you down.”

This speaks volumes. It means that when the wind turns against Nancy Pelosi it will turn hard. Maybe it already did.

We often complain of the way that politics works, the log-rolling, the back-scratching. But it's done that way because it works that way. Members of Congress are not nobodies that can be bullied around. At least, not much. And the closer that wavering members come to November 2010 the less they are likely to vote with the leaders.

In fact, we are seeing the fundamental weakness of the Democratic strategy since 2005. The idea was to get moderates and conservatives elected in Republican leaning districts. That's fine, so long as you have a moderate agenda to enact when you get into office. That way you build confidence and trust and maybe a permanent majority.

But that's not what the Dems did. Once they won control of Congress and the presidency they threw all the moderate talk overboard and went for a partisan, left-wing agenda. But that's not what the swing Democrats were elected to do.

Conservatives have a similar situation: the RINO problem. Republicans from states in the North East have not been willing to vote the conservative agenda. No wonder. Their constituents didn't want it. But conservatives hated their timidity. Yet the moderate Republicans kept the GOP from doing what the Democrats are now doing. Going way off the center ground and leaving it wide open for the other party.

The way you avoid conflict and dangerous polarization in politics is by nudging the political center a little bit in your direction and then coming back next year for more. This strategy is the despair of partisans (like me) but it is the decent thing to do. People from the center and from the other party are Americans too. They deserve the right to have their voices heard and to feel that, even if they are out of power, they have an input into the governance of the nation.

I remain convinced that the Democrats are making a major strategic mistake that will echo through the politics of the nation for decades. But try telling Democrats that! Try getting them to listen to good old Tom DeLay, the former small businessman with a pest-control business.

Still, it's often best to learn the hard way. That way you really learn the lesson, good and hard.

Avoiding Conflict Avoidance

In the official liberal belief system, the key to it all is "conflict avoidance." Because if only we could avoid conflict then everyone could live in peace and justice.

Er, no. Not quite, chaps. In reality, life in the world is all about conflict. We humans, occasionally, create a moment in which conflict recedes to the margin. But not really. Conflict still continues, but in a sublimated form. Thus, in politics, we fight civil war by other means.

Against the liberal notion of conflict avoidance, I believe we should understand conflict, its rhythm and its typical human manifestations, and use that knowledge to make society work better--and families and churches and associations, for that matter.

That's why I think that we need President Obama and his Democratic friends to pass their awful ObamaCare legislation. They have done the American people a huge favor by overreaching on health care. They could have got to ObamaCare eventually, by slowly ratcheting up the level of government intervention, by turning every health care problem into an argument for more government.

But they didn't. They went for the whole Kahuna. And the American people woke up and decided they hated it.

So now we have a once-in-a-generation chance to make a huge national statement against Big Government. Not a government that slowly encroaches upon Americans and their freedom. In this case it is a government that is lunging towards a huge increase in government power.

In November, we have a chance to make the election about a single issue. The issue is simple: Repeal the Deal. Repeal the huge increase in government power. Repeal the huge increase in taxes. Repeal the huge increase in government boards and bureaucracies. Turn America around and make a statement for freedom and against government power.

Americans can always be tempted into signing on to some delicious subsidy that gives them something for nothing. We are all tempted by that kind of offer. But the Democrats in their hubris, going for the big historic achievement, have made a mistake. They have accidentally framed the issue in Republican, conservative terms.

Anyone can believe that a neat little subsidy might be rather nice. But nobody can believe that a huge bureaucratic government program is going to deliver better health care to the average American than the private sector.

So let's thank the Democrats. And let's not avoid the necessary conflict ahead. We are going to have to fight this battle over the size of government some day, and the time to fight a battle is when your side has the best chance of winning. I'd say that the current situation heavily favors the Republican side this fall.

Suppose that a new Republican Congress is elected on the platform of Repeal the Deal? What does the president do then? What does the MSM do then? Do they say that the American people were confused? That the American people are wrong?

Or do they admit that the new Congress was elected with a mandate, a mandate to repeal the cruel and unjust health legislation passed in a blur of corruption and Chicago bare-knuckle politics?

Obama's Four Porkies

Everything about ObamaCare is smoke and mirrors, starting with the idea that the system is broke. But the president did us the courtesy of actually listing the four things that ain't so in his health plan, writes Jon Ward of The Daily Caller. Ready?

1. It's not a government takeover. OK, technically it isn't. But the government will increase government supervision by a very big leap. It's the closest thing to a takeover without putting the entire health industry on the federal budget.
   
2. Republicans want to protect the insurance industry. If only. Who cares about the bloody insurance companies? It's the root and branch government regulation of health care that we care about and that we want to eliminate.
3. Obama's plan will reduce premiums. In your dreams, pal.
4. Obama's plan will reduce the federal deficit. Technically, the president has a point. But he will reduce the deficit by smoke and mirrors and by increasing taxes by more than the increase in spending. That's not what Americans mean when they talk about reducing the deficit.

I've been saying that we need Obama to pass his bill so that we can mount a vast national campaign to repeal it. Now Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is chiming in. He said in an interview reported by Jon Ward:

[I]f Democrats use a little-known procedure to pass health care reform it will spark an “instant movement to repeal the law.”

Alexander, in an interview on Fox News, said that this “movement” would “dominate every single congressional race in November.”

Not that he's planning to start such a movement. He is just assuming that the movement will come out of the woodwork, and I think he's right.

David Warren has recently said that Barack Obama is the best thing for conservatism since Ronald Reagan. And that brings up the tricky question. How do we know that Obama isn't a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed years ago by mysterious Republican operatives into becoming a ideological bomb to demolish the Democratic Party?

Keep on with those porkies, Mr. President. You're driving independents away from the Democrats in droves.

The Consent of the Governed

Today, according to reports, the president will announce that he is going for "reconciliation," the tactic of passing his huge ObamaCare reform through the Congress by a method that is intended to reconcile budget disagreements between the two houses of Congress.

Some have said that in doing this, the president "crosses the Rubicon," after the famous act of Julius Caesar in marching his army across that river in his march on Rome.

The Wall Street Journal edit page calls his act simply "An Abuse of Power."

But I would say that it goes beyond that. In trying to force their unpopular bill through Congress the Democrats show that they misunderstand the whole point of constitutional government and democratic politics.

And that point is encapsulated in the first great document of the American founding, the Declaration of Independence. Here is what it says.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

When the Government so instituted passes legislation clearly without the consent of the governed, then you have a pre-revolutionary situation. You have a situation in which some people will say that the Government has abrogated its right to exercise its powers because they are no longer just.

The whole point of the "consent of the governed" and "limited government" is to curb the instincts of the Government to assume that the governing elite knows best, and to govern accordingly: to deny that the government can be no better than the people it governs.

It's a temptation that all elites have, and our modern "educated elite" is no different that any other aristocracy. (We are using the term in a non-pejorative mode meaning "the best.") They think they know best and they are determined to give it to us.

Well, the whole point of modern democracy is that the governing elite has to persuade the ordinary person of its policies. That is why we normally agree that great reforms should only be enacted when there is a general consensus that it should be enacted. That is why most presidents try to pass legislation with a bipartisan majority. It lets them argue that the legislation was not a partisan cram-down but the consensus of the governed.

In the United States today we talk about a 50-50 nation. We mean by that two great factions, liberal and conservative, that want to take the nation in different directions. In the middle is the great mass of people that aren't sure that they like either road.

In this 50-50 nation the chances are that any effort by either conservatives or liberals to try an end run around the opposition is going to create enormous opposition. We saw how liberals ginned up a vocal opposition to President Bush on the view that the consensus he had created for the Iraq War was false. They argued that the consensus to go into Iraq was built upon a lie--that the Bush administration assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was a lie.

Now, we do not know whether the Bush administration knew beforehand whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But our liberal friends acted as though he did.

Imagine therefore the rage that will be built up by conservatives against the Obama administration if it proceeds with its health care reform without a consensus, without even a manufactured consensus, without even the fig-leaf of a consensus built upon a lie.

From a strictly partisan viewpoint I love this. The only way you make progress in politics is when your side is all riled up and the opposition is demoralized. A cram-down on ObamaCare creates the once-in-a-generation opportunity for a real change in national political orientation towards the conservative side.

But I fear that the heightened partisan conflict will lead to dark days for America. If we get a big change in the November elections, say with up to 100 seats changing hands in the House of Representatives, we will enter an era unlike anything since the years immediately before the Civil War.

A big change in Congress would set up the opportunity for real reform of the welfare state. Confronted with such reforms, I fear that our liberal friends will not go quietly. Their welfare state, their privileges, their subsidies, their sinecures are not just the spoils of political success. They are the liberal religion, their belief system. To take their religion and their sacred symbols away from them is not just relieving a thief of ill-gotten goods. It is to take away from liberals the very meaning of life.

That's when people do desperate things.

That's why I think it is a great tragedy that President Obama and the Democratic leaders of Congress are going for it and trying to pass a massive reorganization of one sixth of the economy in a straight partisan vote. They are setting in motion events that could utterly change the face of America, in ways that we cannot imagine.

Canada's Housing Non-Meltdown

How did those Canadians manage to dodge the mortgage meltdown? Do they know something we don't know? IN The American, Mark J. Perry takes a look at the reasons why Canada isn't in the middle of a housing/banking crisis.

And another thing. How come the Canadians have a bigger share of people owning their own homes? Even without Fannie and Freddie, mortgage interest deductions, and the ruthless regulations of the Community Reinvestment Act? Without even Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank? How do they do it?

Here's what makes Canada different.

1. No "non-recourse" mortgages. That means that if the bank forecloses, it can go after you for the balance of the mortgage.
2. Short fixed-rate terms. No 30-year fixed mortgages. Rates are negotiated every five years. That avoids meltdowns like the S&L crisis in the late 1980s.
3. Mortgage insurance more common. About half of mortgages carry insurance (see 1, above) and the mortgage insurer can challenge the appraisal. Nice bit of check-and-balance there.
4. No income tax deductibility for mortgages. That means that people don't use their houses as ATMs.
   
5. Higher pre-payment penalties, typically three months' interest.
6. No Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to loan to unqualified customers.
7. Better diversification of banks. Canada has fewer banks and they are all national in scope.
8. Banks keep most of their mortgages (about 68 percent) so they need to keep their mortgage portfolios in good shape.

So there you are, congresspersons. No subsidies, no bullying. Convenient checks and balances. And the bottom line is that more Canadians own their own homes than Americans. So all the hullaballoo since the 1930s about helping homeowners is a bunch of baloney. Canada hasn't "helped" homeowners, yet a bigger share of Canadians own their own homes.

Maybe the best thing to do with housing is to leave it alone.

Pelosi's Forced March Politics

Conservatives have always been irritated by Nancy Pelosi. But she is certainly one tough Speaker of the House of Representatives. Of course, she leads a majority of 257-178. That's a majority of 79. You can be plenty tough with a 79 seat majority.

In The Politico, John Bresnahan and Jonathan Allen marvel at her strong leadership and the brutal election year she faces. It's the usual Democratic-leaning approach. Strong leader Pelosi faces challenges from party splits as she heads into election year.

But I wonder if the take-no-prisoners strategy, that now seems to be include procedural shenanigans to get ObamaCare over the line, won't turn out to be a monumental error.

We complain about politicians because they are such wusses. They are like horses; they shy at the least little thing. There's a practical reason for that. Politicians want to please their supporters and give them goodies, but they don't want to rile up the opposition.

You don't let sleeping dogs lie because you are a nice guy. You do it because it is almost always the best way of keeping your seat.

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi seem to have gone out of their way to rile up the opposition. Whether that is deliberate, whether it is clumsiness, or just a feeling that the opposition is too weak to count, I don't know.

But my judgment is that the partisan agenda and tone of the 2009-2010 season will turn out to be a big minus for Democrats. It is teaching moderates and independents all across America that the Democrats are not the family-friendly moderates they liked to appear in 2006 and 2008.

Democrats are teaching non-political Americans that, if you elect a Democrat, you are going to get a very liberal government. That is something they strained mightily to avoid in the years from 1992 to 2008.

The default sentiment of the moderates and independents seems to be that first you take care of the economy. Then, if the economy is rattling along, well, you can pass a program or two to help people. It feels like the right thing to do.

Obama Democrats are doing things the other way round. They are concentrating on liberal agenda items with huge price tags, and they are letting the economy wither on the vine with discredited Keynesian pump priming (discredited except at The New York Times).

Instead of figuring out what they can pass with a few Republican moderates they are going for the big play, on a straight partisan game plan.

The reason we have the idea of governing with the "consent of the governed" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence is that it is a good practical basis for government. It minimizes the number of people that get all riled up and want to change things radically.

Democrats are forgetting this fundamental piece of political wisdom and they are going to pay for it, big time.

The poster girl of failure is going to be Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her forced-march partisan politics.