The American Conservative

What may be a declining force in American political life is the Tea Party movement, which in 2010 played a critical role in winning congressional seats and governorships for the economically conservative wing of the GOP. Since then, national support for this loosely organized movement has fallen precipitously. Between March 2010 and April 2011, according to Pew polls, disapproval for the Tea Party rose by 19%, while only 21 % expressed positive views about it. 49% of those polled held no opinion on the subject and were not even motivated to inquire. At the same time, support for Occupy Wall Street movement has held steady at 21% and is now almost equal to the popularity of its right-of-center competitor.

There are several factors that make these findings curious. One, the Tea Party has obviously declined in its confrontational relation to the two-party establishment since 2010. For the last several months Tea Party leaders Senator Jim DeMint and Governor Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey, Governor Janice Brewer in Arizona, and Congressman Paul Ryan in Wisconsin have been piling on to the Mitt Romney bandwagon, and self-identified Tea Party sympathizers have been doing the same in primaries in Florida, Colorado, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Their support for the quintessential small-government candidate Ron Paul has been minimal, which should not be surprising. We are talking here primarily about Bush-McCain Republicans, who went on the attack against Democratic spending, and particularly against Obamacare, after the 2008 election. Tea Party demonstrators were mostly, according to polls, high on Medicare, which many of them are receiving, and have no desire to play around with entitlements. They are mostly objecting to Obama’s expansion of government spending. Read More…

Ever since I dared criticize the Obama administration and its partisans, I’ve been getting less than friendly email messages. Supposedly I work slavishly for the GOP and spend every waking hour listening to Rush Limbaugh or trying to imitate his verbal outbursts. For the record, I’ve been attacking the GOP at the national level ever since the neoconservatives came to refashion the Republican Party’s foreign policy, while taking over and reprogramming America’s misnamed conservative movement. And those things happened thirty years ago. Since that time I’ve stood athwart the GOP, as a relentless critic of how its advisors and politicians have defined America’s role in the world.

I’ve denounced in print for all to see the boasting engaged in by Republican presidential candidates and by Fox News talking heads about “American exceptionalism.” One has a right to like one’s country but not a duty to proclaim that it’s morally superior to the rest of mankind and that our state should impose its human rights ideology on everyone else. Pride goes before the fall, as Proverbs teaches.

Because of my objections to this vainglory and its foreign-policy implications, Republican and conservative movement activists have carefully avoided discussing my books; and they have written prospective publishers suggesting I would bring disgrace on those who disseminate my ideas. Moreover, those who know me can testify that I haven’t spent more than five minutes in the last twenty years listening to Rush. I view him as contemptuously I do Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, and other vulgarizers of political discussion. Read More…

Since neoconservative journalists, at least to my knowledge, have not been lately slamming the “German connection,” I rejoiced at a feature article in yesterday’s New York Post (March 20) going after the “series of German outrages” that helped push us into World War One. A commentary by Thomas A. Reppetto, on German saboteurs during World War, focuses on an explosion at an ammunition factory on Black Tom Island on July 30, 1916, which is now Liberty State Park in New Jersey. In this incident and other similar ones that erupted in the area between New York and Baltimore, German agents prevented by violent means the delivery of arms “to the Allied powers.”

Reppetto suggests that the federal government dealt effectively with such explosions, by declaring war on Germany and then taking counter-espionage into its own hands. At first this could not be done because we were mollycoddling Germans residents in the US while indulging such uncooperative figures as the authoritarian mayor of Jersey City Frank Hague. Reppetto does not hide the moral here, which is drawing a direct line between the sneaky, anti-democratic Germans in World War One and the present terrorist danger. “New Jersey officials need to recall the lessons of Black Tom.” “Islamic militants have operated out of Jersey City,” just as once other bad folks did.  Read More…

Despite high unemployment and soaring gas prices, it seems the Obama administration may survive the November election. This is due not only to Republican infighting but also to the support given to liberal Democrats in the media, educational establishment, and entertainment industry. But even these factors may not tell everything. Perhaps more importantly, Obama and his advisors have begun playing up ethnic and gender grievances in a way that may hurt Republicans.

The administration has taken a number of positions intended to mobilize its base in the same record numbers as it was able to do in 2008. It has doggedly opposed attempts by states like Arizona and Alabama to deal through legislation with massive illegal immigration. The feds have not addressed this problem with any particular vigilance, but they have denied the states the power to cope with it. At the same time Obama has suggested that dislike for Hispanics and other minorities lie at the base of this heated resistance to the influx of illegals into certain states, a situation that, by the way, has added significantly to local social costs and crime. More recently, the administration has drummed up another supposed indication of Republican bigotry, namely the insistence by GOP officials that would-be voters provide identification, to guard against fraud. This law is supposedly aimed at keeping blacks from voting, particularly in Southern states, since it apparently goes against a way of life that excludes identifying oneself before voting. Civil rights leaders have now joined the chorus of condemnation against “racist” Republicans who expect voters to provide the same ID-forms as might be asked of someone buying a bottle of booze.

The recent testimony concerning publicly financed contraception by Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who is considerably older and more politically engaged than the media would lead us to believe, opened can of worms for the by now anxious GOP another. Obama managed to turn to his advantage an issue that was creating flak for him, requiring religiously affiliated institutions to pay for birth control and abortifacients. Fluke became a stand-in for every victim of (a long-gone) male patriarchy. The fact that GOP shock-jock Rush Limbaugh weighed in by insulting Fluke complicated the problem. Academics and administrators, including clergy, fell over themselves defending Fluke and accusing Limbaugh and the party he fronts for of being complicit in the high crime of sexism. The gender gap surfaced again dramatically in recent polls, to the detriment of Republicans, and this has impacted most severely on Rick Santorum, the presidential candidate who has been emphasizing his religious traditionalism. In a two-way race, Santorum would be eaten alive by Obama. Read More…

Although not many people in high places may notice what I’m doing, I’d like to ask the following questions to three of the surviving GOP presidential contenders. First, why did Mitt Romney, as late as 2002, respond to a questionnaire from Planned Parenthood indicating that he fully supported Roe v. Wade and favored state funding for abortion?

According to his stated positions at the time, which were reported in the Boston Globe, Romney also favored allowing minors to obtain abortions without parental consent. Whatever one may think about these issues, Romney has been flip-flopping on social questions more often than he wants us to believe. Supposedly he had moved from wiggling somewhere to the left of Teddy Kennedy on abortion, while running unsuccessfully against him for the Senate in 1994, to being a “family-issues conservative” a few years later. By 2002, according to this frequently recounted narrative, he had undergone l sea change. As the Santorum campaign tried to point out during the recent Michigan primary, this change is not at all evident from Romney’s record; or else this change came later, when Romney’s presidential ambitions became stronger and he had to contend for votes from the Religious Right.

Second, if Santorum is as gloomy about the moral state of his country as he appears to be from his campaign speeches, how do we explain that he switches gears abruptly when he discusses America’s role in the world? Then we become a shining city on a hill and a chosen people required to bring the human rights we exemplify to the rest of humanity. This schizophrenia is characteristic not only of Santorum but of those Religious Right spokesmen and politicians I’ve been listening to. I wish they could make up their minds. Either we’re going to hell in a hand basket; or we’re so glowingly virtuous that we have a mission to make everyone exactly like us. Which is it? Read More…

For the last few weeks Catholic clergy and GOP politicians have denounced the Obama administration for forcing Catholic-affiliated institutions to provide coverage for birth control and abortion-producing pills. After hearing strong reactions from his Catholic Democratic advisors, Obama offered an apparent compromise (if a pun may be permitted) to coat the bitter pill.  Arrangements would be made with insurance companies to supply the coverage, without directly involving institutions that are under the Catholic Church or under other protesting religious authorities. Presumably Evangelicals would express the same objection as religious Catholics to subsidizing what seems to be a form of abortion.

The Catholic clergy vigorously protested Obama’s plan in its original form and in its not significantly revised draft. Led by the about-to-become Cardinal of New York Timothy Dolan, clerics from across the country thundered in sermons against forcing Catholics to act against their consciences. Dispensing birth control particularly to the unmarried is an offense against Catholic moral teachings, but assisting in making abortion services available by paying for them goes beyond that. It is seen as turning Catholic institutions into accomplices in homicide. It would have been impossible for Catholic parishioners to have missed this message. And it would have been equally hard for TV news watchers to have missed the assertions made by all GOP presidential candidates that Obama was trampling on the religious consciences of individual Americans. He was doing this by removing an exemption that had been granted to religious institutions to withhold coverage for what they found morally objectionable. Read More…

Allow me to vent an old complaint. It’s something that I can’t get off my chest, although I have written about it many times. Every time I hear a politician utter the word “values,” I throw my shoe at the TV. I throw both shoes at the screen when I hear the term “family values.” It’s not that I personally am without moral beliefs. In fact the ones I hold would suggest that I’m a social reactionary. What I object to is empty rhetoric.

All politicians favor “values,” and when those on the social Left claim to stand for “family values,” as Obama has been doing, they have as much right to that term as anyone else. Indeed I can respect people I disagree with on just about everything, because they act on the basis of their beliefs.

Some of my Republican friends, who make fun of my attitude, ask me whether I really admire Obama as a person of principle. I respond by explaining that to whatever extent he acts on the basis of conviction, Obama deserves my respect. I wish I could say the same about Mitt Romney or other GOP presidential candidates who waffle every time they encounter liberal journalists or think that a hostile reporter may be eaves-dropping. Although I disagree with Ron Paul’s judgments about Iran, I have to recognize that Paul stands up for his constitutional principles. I find the same integrity in John Bolton, whom I have known for many years. Although I would not trust the war-happy Bolton anywhere near Foggy Bottom, let alone as Secretary of State, I’m sure he would never betray his conscience. For me that does count for something.

The users of the value-word are mostly hack Republicans, trying to avoid mine fields. Value-talk typically consists of phrases intended to reassure one’s base while revealing nothing that could get hurt the speaker. In the current presidential primaries several Republicans have departed from this script by telling us what they would do to oppose gay marriage and restrict abortions. I applaud this honesty, which for me is far less distasteful than hearing someone announce that he or she is the candidate of values. The only “value” that I find in such politicians is the priority of getting elected.

But standing for principle may not be enough. I also wish to hear from the advocates of traditional social positions how they intend to implement them. It seems that even those with whom I agree in principle have sometimes held questionable views about constitutional matters. It is state legislatures, not courts or federal bureaucrats, which should be dealing with abortion and gay marriage. Congresswoman Bachmann and former Senator Santorum both misstated this procedural matter during primary debates, although Santorum later corrected his mistake. All attempts at end-runs around state governments in order to have the feds decide social issues is not only constitutionally wrong but also dumb. Do social traditionalists honestly believe that the federal government is more likely to ride to their rescue than the state legislatures of our more conservative states? It is mostly the federal administration that has steered the country leftward throughout my life. I see no reason to believe this will change in the foreseeable future. Read More…

During the Republican presidential primary debate from Des Moines on December 15, Ron Paul caused uproar when he said that a strike against Iran “would risk a repeat of the useless Iraqi war.” In response to a question from Bret Baier, Paul made this statement: “To me the greatest danger is that we will have a president that will overreact and we will soon bomb Iran.” Further: “We ought to really sit back and think, not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That’s how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much.” Paul finally suggested that the Obama-administration may be doing the right thing “by backing off on sanctions,” which may be seen as an “act of war.”

Ever since, Paul’s rivals have been denouncing him for peddling radical foreign-policy views. Although far from the only one to have done so, Congresswoman Bachmann may be the politician who has spoken most emphatically for the GOP establishment on Paul’s apparent madness. According to Bachmann: “We know without a shadow of doubt that Iran will take a nuclear weapon, they will use it to wipe out our ally Israel, off the face of the map. And they’ve stated they will use it against the United States of America. We would be fools and knaves to ignore their purposes and their plan.” There were equally publicized attacks by Weekly Standard and by National Review’s editor Rich Lowry on Paul as a bigot and hate-America leftist, but these off-the-wall hit jobs may have more to do with the fear of the neoconservative camp that Paul is not going away than with factual reality.

Having heard both sides, allow me to come down somewhere in the middle. From the tone of its remarks, it would seem that the Iranian government is hoping to do us harm and we are right to keep this government under close surveillance. What Paul calls a “little bit of diplomacy” may not be enough to contain the possible threat; and even if the Republicans are manic on the subject, the U.S. does face real enemies in the world. Not every political confrontation has been our fault, and contrary to Paul’s suggestion, allowing the present Iranian rulers to develop atomic weapons, which they’ve announced their intention to use, is not the same as quietly watching other countries acquire them. The Iranian case may be different. Read More…

Steve Chapman has partly anticipated my argument when he describes Newt Gingrich as a “conservative, sort of.” Chapman is astonished that “conservative” Republicans have turned to Newt “in their hour of need.” This “onetime house speaker is a consistent conservative like I’m a duckbill platypus. In a contest with Romney for the most zigzags, Gingrich can more than hold his own.” Gingrich has taken and abandoned positions the way some people change underwear.

He was vocally in favor of added social programs and played down rapid increase of the national debt during the Bush presidency. Back then Gingrich was helping himself to a million and a half dollars in Freddie Mac handouts as a “history consultant,” later he exploded against his federal benefactors when the Dems took over the presidency. As Chapman shows, Gingrich has been running back and forth on the Libyan intervention, depending on how he could use this issue against Obama. Then in between attacks on the Democrats for deficit spending, Gingrich went after Paul Ryan’s “heartless” plan to lower government costs over a number of years. Newt may forget what he proclaims from one day to the next, but he does have a way of coming back to spilled milk. His call for amnestying long-resident illegals may contradict other impressions he’s conveyed, but it is consistent with what he said at some point in the past, if one looks back far enough. Read More…

In a syndicated column, National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru tries to explain how the GOP really lost its way. It seems that Republican Congressmen with a “fixation on ideological purity” have been misleading their party by complaining about government expansion. Republican leaders who lament that their party has been “fiscally irresponsible” are supposedly barking up the wrong tree. When Republicans triumphed in recent presidential races, it was because they were able to put aside their small-government ideology and to promise things that attract votes. Thus George W. Bush was able to win Florida in a tight race in 2000 by promising to expand Medicare to cover prescription drugs. To his credit Bush, and presumably his grey eminence Karl Rove, ignored those doctrinaire Republicans who wish “to avoid accommodation at all costs.” They did whatever it took to get elected.

According to Ponnuru, it was not Bush’s spending on social programs but “the bleeding in Iraq, Washington corruption, wage stagnation and the lack of an agenda to do something about these and other problems “ that led to disastrous Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008. The Republicans may not regain public trust until they recognize Bush’s “real mistakes” as opposed to his imaginary ones. Presumably they will have to do something about getting wages to rise and then offer new social programs in order to win back the presidency.

To the consternation of my readers, I’ll have to admit that I agree with some of this analysis. Although Ponnuru and I are on opposite sides on most philosophical questions, it seems to me that some of his arguments are sound. Americans, like Western Europeans, have moved dramatically to the left on just about every social and economic issue since the middle of the 20th century, and contrary to the bromides that one encounters in Ponnuru’s magazine and similar sources, there is absolutely nothing that would make me believe that Americans are “a right of center people.” Further, Americans do not seem particularly exceptional but about one step behind the English, Canadians, Swedes, Germans, etc., on the road to becoming politically correct social democrats. And it didn’t start with Obama. Both parties, together with the media, public education, and the cultural industry, have been complicit in this process for many decades; and those Republicans who dared to criticize the Bush administration for sounding and acting like liberal Democrats are only waking up to reality.

But there are three problems with Ponnuru’s arguments. One, he is obviously disingenuous in urging Republicans to roll with the punches. Despite his observation that Bush was fighting an unpopular war, he and National Review devoted enormous energy whipping up favor for that war. They have also enthusiastically supported John Bolton, Dick Cheney, and other advocates of the use of American force in support of “our democratic ideals.” Clearly Ponnuru does not want to throw all scruples to the wind. He just wants the GOP to take those foreign policy stands that he and other neoconservatives have prioritized. Meanwhile he dismisses other traditional Republican concerns as ideological purism. Read More…