Next Year's Agenda

Some people are getting impatient. They are asking why the Republican Party doesn't have a party position for the mid-terms. Other people are looking forward already to a Republican Congress. They are asking how the Republicans should avoid the mistakes of 1995.

I think the critical thing is to tell the truth and shame the devil. That's Shakespeare, by the way.

For the Fall election it is critical for Republicans to promise what they really intend to do come January. It's not hard to come up with a doable agenda: continue the Bush tax rates and lower corporate income tax rates; repeal ObamaCare and start over on a non-bureaucratic approach to health care; cut wasteful spending.

The American people are not yet ready to cut entitlements. They need to see the entitlements system broken before they will agree to that. But there's plenty of other stuff to work on. There is the utter waste of government money in education, for starters. Then there is green energy, that is crony capitalism from start to finish. Then there is the fabulous ethanol program. There are tons of things that can be cut at the margin as governors like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie have shown.

After the elections, whatever the result, President Obama will have to start working with Republicans. No more "I won," or telling people to shut up while he fixes things that Bush broke. Republicans should start working with the president, or at least urgently saying to the media that they need to get together with the president and solve the nation's problems.

The people have spoken, Republicans should say. But the president is still the president, and we are all Americans. We should work together. What the people have told us is that they don't like bailouts, they don't like stimulus, they don't like ObamaCare, and they don't like earmarks. So let's get together, Mr. President, let's clean up the nation's capital as you promised in 2008 and get about the people's business.

Personally, I feel that President Obama is no Bill Clinton, and that he just doesn't have the talent or the temperament or the experience to do a good job negotiating on the issue-by-issue process of day-to-day government. I think he's a guy that likes to say: call me in when it's time to call the big shots.

But the Republicans must treat the president as the president. If he won't deal straight--and I don't think he will--then they need to go to the media and the talk-show hosts and tell them about it.

But Republicans must start out in September with a clear and honest agenda, and then continue in January saying: let's get together Mr. President and let's work together for the American people.

2010 Isn't 1994, etc.

People in the political world like to sneer at generals for "fighting the last war." So what is all the talk of 1994, and the worrying about a Republican Congress overreaching in 2011 in a reprise of 1995?

As Ronald Reagan said: to say that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor is an insult to drunken sailors. And the re-fighting the wars of 1994 and 1995 is an insult to generals.

The only thing we know is that 2010 won't be a replay of 1994 and that 2011 won't be a replay of 1995. However, like any general that has studied recent wars, it certainly doesn't hurt for us to recall the lessons of 1994 and 1995.

First of all, 1995 may have been a tactical defeat for Republicans in that President Clinton "won" the government shutdown. But in the medium term Republicans actually did reduce the rate of increase in spending. The problem for Republicans was not 1995, it was 1998. That was the year when the budget went into surplus and President Clinton started saying telling Americans that, yes he could cut taxes and return money to the taxpayers but then maybe the taxpayers would waste it. That was voters started to think that we could relax the purse strings a little.

That sentiment gave us the 2000s and a Republican Congress that gorged itself on earmarks.

Anyway, all the talk about debt and deficits and bailouts rather misses the point. The whole key to the federal spending problem is, #1 Medicare, #2 Medicaid, and #3 Social Security. That's where the money is.

The Medicare problem is simple. Affluent middle-class seniors (like me) will have to pay full freight on health care. It is simply unjust for people with money (i.e., older people with savings) to tax the hides out of 30 somethings much less wealthy than they are. The fact is that most middle-class seniors can afford to pay for our own health care. And we should.

Of course, that might mean that a lot of seniors won't be able to afford to become snowbirds and winter down south.

When we affluent seniors start to pay full-freight on our health care we will start to find ways to economize on health care. We will revolutionize health care and all of a sudden health care costs will stop their exponential rise into the stratosphere.

Once the Medicare problem is solved, then Medicaid will follow. Don't know how, but it will. The American people will demand it.

Social Security? You can fix Social Security with a financial coup de main. For instance, you can capitalize current benefits by awarding Social Security beneficiaries special Treasury bonds that pay off Social Security benefits and then privatize the whole thing. Again, it's a matter of justice. People in their fifites and sixties should save, big time, for their retirement. And guess what: our savings will go to create the jobs for the 30 somethings. As is should be.

When will middle-class seniors be ready to pay full freight on health care? When Medicare is completely broken. And that won't be in 2011.

So Republicans won't be doing a grand reform on entitlements in 2011. But Republicans can start the ball rolling by offering, e.g., a New Medicare that offers a fixed subsidy that you can apply to your own health insurance plan.

One thing is for sure. We are living in interesting times.

Stimulus and Confidence

The big question in economic crises is Confidence. When the stock market is going south and banks are going broke and everyone is worrying about a "double dip" they are looking for the magic bullet that will turn the whole thing around and restore Confidence.

In the liberal world-view, you restore Confidence with a stimulus program that keeps money in consumers' pockets and gives them Confidence in the economy's future.

In the conservative world-view, you restore Confidence with tax cuts that give businessmen Confidence that the future will allow them to make profitable investments and keep a good chunk of what they make.

James Glassman has a useful analysis of the current crisis of Confidence in "The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?" in Commentary.

He argues that the stimulus hasn't worked because people are looking past the stimulus to the higher taxes and spending and heavier regulation that the Obama administration has so diligently been working on for the last 18 months.

If government spending is short-term or one-time-only, which is what the stimulus was supposed to be, then individuals might be expected to take a more benign view. But the 2009 stimulus did not take place in a vacuum. It was soon accompanied by other economic policies and proposals of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress: health-care reform extending public coverage to 30 million new people, cap-and-trade energy proposals featuring vastly higher taxes, and the imminent expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010.

American business leaders and consumers are not fools. They can see what is coming. They see that the Confidence-building stimulus was a bridge to nowhere.

Americans judged that the party in power intends the radical expansion of the size of government in perpetuity. That expansion will have to be paid for. There is no reason to expect very much good from the future if you are the sort of person who generates income and creates jobs. Your “permanent income” is going to decline, and your gut response will be to husband your resources.

Democrats have had this coming to them for a long time. They were lucky in the 1937-38 downturn resulting from increased taxes and higher union wages rates that World War II came along before they got pitched out on their ears. They were lucky in 1965-68 when their inflationary economic policies were drowned out by the Vietnam War. They were lucky in 1994 when Republicans gained control of Congress and reduced spending. They were lucky that the crazed credit subsidies at Fannie and Freddie crashed on Bush's watch.

But it is starting to look as if the American people are going to blame the Democrats for the current lack of progress on the economy. It is starting to look as if their luck is running out.

My guess is that the only thing President Obama needs to do to save his presidency is to extend the Bush tax cuts and lower corporate income tax in stages to 20 percent. Because that will restore Confidence in the future.

My guess is that he won't do it.

Glenn Beck's Girl Conservatism

Suppose you are a liberal, and here you are on Monday morning after the Beck Restoring Honor rally. What are you to think? What does it all mean?

You go read Ross Douthat in The New York Times and he isn't really that helpful. OK, he says, he underestimated Glenn Beck. But it's not really such a big deal:

Beck’s packed, three-hour jamboree was floated entirely on patriotism and piety, with no “get thee to a voting booth” message. It blessed a particular way of life without burdening that blessing with the compromises of a campaign, or the disillusioning work of governance.

For a weekend, at least, Beck proved that he can conjure the thrill of a culture war without the costs of combat, and the solidarity of identity politics without any actual politics. If his influence outlasts the current election cycle, this will be the secret of his success.

OK. Here's a quickie analysis for liberals, so you chaps can figure it out.

Glenn Beck is selling girl conservatism.

Rush Limbaugh is selling boy conservatism.

That's it. That's all you need to know. Now go back to NPR. The rest of you, Stay tuned.

I once read a critic of Rush Limbaugh who lightly sneered at his "jaunty optimism." That's it, I thought! That's exactly the secret of Rush Limbaugh: his day in, day out, irrepressible jaunty optimism. It's a profoundly male thing, of course. When men are under stress, whether they are an army platoon in a tough spot or working in a business that is teetering on the edge of failure, the response is to maintain a front of jaunty optimism, to say to your brothers that things are looking up, we'll get through to the end of this, and then we'll lift our arms with a brewski.

Glenn Beck is different. He is all emotion, all twelve step recovery, all history lessons, all revival. This morning, I caught a couple of minutes of the Glenn Beck Radio Program, and it featured women calling in about Good Samaritan episodes that they experienced at the Restoring Honor Rally. Guess what: that's girl stuff.

So we have Rush Limbaugh servicing the boy side of conservatism, about "being the best you can be," about laughing in the face of adversity. We have Glenn Beck servicing the girl side of conservatism, dishing up morally uplifting stories, rolling his eyes and rolling out the blackboard for a lesson on conservatism. Women love that stuff.

So if I were a liberal, trotting off to my non-profit sinecure this morning with a vague feeling of unease, I'd realize that things were really a lot worse than I thought. Because conservatives now have a one-two punch communicating daily to the 40 percent of Americans that call themselves conservatives. Men and women.

P.S. How about that black woman at the rally that said: "I am not an African. I'm an American!... These people are my family."

I Just Got a Tingle!

For the last couple of years I've sneered at liberal Chris Matthews and his famous tingle. But now I take it all back.

Needless to say, my tingle--and yes, it was in my leg--had nothing to do with President Obama. It came at the end of an American Spectator blog by Ben Stein. It had to do with the comments of his Hispanic gas station attendant.

"We have to wake up," he said. "Those people want to hurt us. Then they want to build a mosque. Why? To hurt us more? And how come Obama always takes the side of the people who hate us? Isn't this his country, too? What's wrong with him? Doesn't he know he's an American? Or what is he? This country has to wake up and get rid of Obama."

I nodded. "I agree," I said.

The man shook his head. "This country has to wake up," he said again. "We elected Obama. We made a big mistake. Now we have to fix it. Stop him, then get someone else in there. Someone who is an American. Someone who works for us, not our enemies."

Tingly stuff, I'd say. Because it tells a very big truth about America and American history.

At some point every immigrant stops thinking of himself as a helpless victim oppressed by a big bad America. He stops hugging the side of the swimming pool in the shallow end with all the liberal swimming instructors and strikes out into the deep end. He finds out the amazing, almost unbelievable truth about America. He belongs. He finds himself thinking of himself as a non-hyphenated American. He starts talking about "we." He finds, out there in the deep end, that when he gets into trouble and asks for help, Americans will come and help.

Perhaps he plucks up his courage and goes to a Tea Party--where all those racist whites hang out. And he finds out that he's welcome, that the sharp-faced middle-aged white women are pathetically grateful to see him there.

He finds out that everything the liberals told him is a lie, that all those awful racists and bigots of which he's heard tell are just folks.

Maybe he even gets a tingle running up his leg.

Ben Quayle's Way With Words

Back in the day--oh what halcyon days they were--Vice President Dan Quayle (R) had a little problem with his spelling.

Yes, he spelled "potato" with an "e." Oh what a jolly time our media friends had with that. Because, you see, it confirmed their worst prejudice, that Republicans were uncultured and anti-intellectual.

What a shock it is, then, to discover that Dan Quayle's son Ben has a remarkable way with words. Even the liberal Politico has taken notice covering his victory speech when he won the Republican primary for the 3rd congressional district in Arizona on Tuesday.

His victory speech's first line mirrored a startling attack ad he released in the campaign's final weeks: "I mainly have eight words for you: Barack Obama is the worst president in history," he told supporters.

Well. On the other hand, maybe he's not so good with words. His line seems a bit wordy to me. For one thing, it adds up to 15 words, including the vocal pause "mainly".

Dan Quayle can't spell, and now we find out that Ben Quayle can't add.

The thing is that in these latter days, you've got to cut things down, dumb them down so the "like" and the "totally" and the "whatever" crowd can get it. How about this:

Worst. President. Ever.

Still too long? Hmm. Maybe we have to reduce it to texting-speak, where everything is reduced to an abbreviation, as in LOL. How about:

WPE

I wonder if WPE is already taken? Let's just Google it and see.

Ah, no problem. WPE is already recognized as "worst president ever."

So that's all right. Mind you, WPE also stands for "writing proficiency exam" and "winsock packet editor." But somehow I think that people will get the point.

When they go into the voting booth in November.

Palin the Kingmaker

Several of the GOP candidates that won yesterday are, as our MSM friends like to say in their objective reports, outside the mainstream. In the next paragraph, they typically quote some Democratic honcho; he'll say that Democrats look forward to running against him.

Sharron Angle in Nevada is one such candidate. And it looks like Rick Scott (R), the self-financed businessman running for governor in Florida is another. Maybe Joe Miller, who seems to have defeated Lisa Murokowski, is another.

The MSM is right, of course. In the past conservative candidates that didn't mouth the correct pieties to liberal Articles of Faith got clobbered.

One day, of course, that's going to change. Because that's the way the world works. One day some chap will come along and desecrate a holy shrine. People will hold up their hands in horror. They will look up to the heavens expecting the wrath of the gods--and nothing will happen.

Is 2010 that year? Nobody knows. Not yet.

But we do know that Sarah Palin is a political force. All the people that wrote her off as a light-weight and as a bumbling fool are wrong. Sarah Palin is a remarkable political talent, and she has been a professional politician since the mid-1990s. She seems to have a political "golden gut," an instinct for the right word, the right gesture, that President Obama would probably love to borrow, if only he could.

Sarah Palin is making herself into a political kingmaker. She travels around the country sprinkling selected candidates with her pixie dust--and they keep coming out of nowhere to win elections.

Are you chaps ready to take her seriously yet?