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In her piece of the significance of Scott Brown’s victory last week, Peggy Noonan asks whether or not it was a backlash:
It seems cooler than that, a considered and considerable rejection that appears to be signaling a conservative resurgence based on issues and policies, most obviously opposition to increased government spending, fear of higher taxes, and rejection of the idea that expansion of government can or will solve our economic challenges.
Like Fred Barnes, who sees Brown’s victory as representing as alignment between the tea party movement and moderates, Peggy observes that Brown eschewed social conservatism to articulate the real concerns of the voters:
They focused on the relationship between spending and taxing, worried about debt and deficits, were moderate in their approach to social issues. They didn’t have wedge issues, they had issues.
That’s what the polls have been showing, Americans think the government is doing too much. And this is where Republicans need to be moving. The concerns of the American people increasingly align with the bedrock principles of the GOP, principles which our party, in recent years, took for granted.
Thus, as Freeman Hunt puts it, the “answer”, for Republicans is “easy“:
It’s a no-brainer. It’s even Constitutional. People are sick of the spending, sick of the debt, sick of the bailouts, sick of the handouts, sick of the back room deals, sick of the taxpayer funded bribes, sick of the bureaucrats. They want unyielding, unapologetic fiscal conservatism.
(H/t: Instapundit.) In short, what the GOP needs do is return to its Reaganite roots. As the Gipper might have said, freedom is the glue which holds our party together. Let’s hope his heirs remember this as this go forward this fall.
I don’t see how that explains the Massachusetts’ election results. Although I won’t dispute this was a win for your side, there is a certain irony about Scott Brown running against health care reform. Brown voted for the Massachusetts’ universal health care program and I think the legitimate criticism of Obama’s health care proposal is that it too similar to the one in Massachusetts. The program Brown voted in support of–Mitt Romney’s program although he tried to distance himself from it in the presidential election–has most of the same features as Obama’s including individual manadates and subsidies for those who can’t afford it. To my mind it has the same weaknesses including the lack of a strong public option to control costs. The result in Massachusetts has been mixed. Coverage of the uninsured has increased dramatically and working poor people have been able to access health insurance. However, insurance rates in Massachusetts have not dropped and I believe the last I looked at the data is that they have increased.
But to conclude from the election that people want smaller government is questionable. In fact the Massachusetts health insurance plan is quite popular and no one is calling for it to end–Scott Brown included. It is also true that if you look at polls on Obama’s healthcare proposal there is decreasing support, but if you look at polls that address some of the particulars of the proposal such as barring insurance companies from discriminating for pre-existing conditions, whether working poor people should be provide high quality affordable health insurance and the polls tell a different story as the particular provisions are stillwidely supported in the abstract.
Again I am not disputing that Brown’s victory is very disturbing to those of us in Massachusetts on the left, but the conclusions that can be drawn from it are from clear. In fact I suspect that many on the right will be quite disappointed with Brown over the next couple of years. He has a 2.5 year term and he votes consistently with the Republicans he will be at a very high risk of not being reelected. For example in the next couple of months Congress will need to vote on an extension of federal employment benefits. Despite Brown’s status as the conservative of the day I would be very surprised as a Massachusetts’ Senator if he votes in opposition to the extension of federal unemployment insurance.
I would call it an Epic FAIL! WTF is the point in covering everybody if they can’t get in to see a doc? Further, I didn’t follow Brown’s campaign very closely. Did he seem to change his mind since voting for the MA failure?
TGC gets it. You want lower prices and cost control? BOOST SUPPLY. But just throwing money at a system characterized by inelastic demand and constrained supply does nothing but skyrocket prices and produce shortages.
I liked this post. I said the following at length Friday, but here is the gist: To get to 52%, the GOP must pick issues that will inspire both conservatives and independents/moderates. Not issues which alienate a majority of independents (inspiring only conservatives). Or for that matter, issues which alienate conservatives (inspiring only independents/moderates). The GOP must inspire both. Fiscal-conservative issues would do it (i.e., pocketbook issues with answers grounded in fiscal discipline and small-government principles).
As for RomneyCare: I think the real reason the voters of MA supported Brown – or took the chance to kill ObamaCare – is, they know that if ObamaCare passed, they (citizens of MA) would then be unable to get their health care in other states. What RomneyCare has done to MA would be done to health care nationwide.
“I would call it an Epic FAIL! WTF is the point in covering everybody if they can’t get in to see a doc? Further, I didn’t follow Brown’s campaign very closely. Did he seem to change his mind since voting for the MA failure?”
It is comments such as your’s that gives me hope. Read what you just wrote. Is this political analysis? Does it mean anything? Do you have any evidence that people in Mass. have any less opportunity to see a doctor? No, you know nothing. but that does not stop you from posting your idiotic comments.
As for ILC in comment #5, do you have any facts to support anything you say after “I think”?
“They want unyielding, unapologetic fiscal conservatism.
(H/t: Instapundit.) In short, what the GOP needs do is return to its Reaganite roots. ”
The delusion, and historical illiteracy is stunning.
Ronald Reagan, need I remind y’all, cut taxes but did not cut spending. He presided over a QUADRUPLING of the national debt. He was far worse on fiscal matters than George W. Bush. This is what you consider “unapolgetic fiscal conservatism”?
Brendan: You mean, aside from the fact that RomneyCare is a failure which is now kicking people out and denying them care, in order to cut costs? Aside from that?
Or that MA must soon implement formal rationing to cope with RomneyCare’s failure – you mean, aside from facts like that?
Very good piece. You write very well and rephrase your argument very convincingly, however, as you like to tell Tano and others when they do the same thing, you aren’t addressing ANY of my points. Which just suggests that you dont have a good response to them, but you have your mind made up anyway. Nonetheless, I will address yours. I hope you will actually read mine, long-winded though they may be, because I think they are vitally important and can help you understand why your position is a prescription for not only weaker election results, but will also result in a more moderate, more fiscally moderate Republican party .
It is one thing to say Republicans should make the economy their number one concern. I can agree with that, and have, and do. If you want to try to turn this into an argument over whether Republicans should emphasize the economy or not, then we will have no quarrel. But that’s not where we have been disagreeing.
It’s another thing altogether to say, as you have many times that “social issues are not the winning ticket for the GOP. They may motivate the base, but they won’t appeal to independent voters ” and that Republicans need to eschew social issues completely in favor of economic issues.
That’s a very different point, and a losing strategy. Such a strategy would have lost the election in 2004 and given us “President Kerry” as the exit polls universally showed that that election was decided by “values voters.” So much so that the term “values voters” became part of the vernacular.
I think Republicans are going to win next year — almost no matter what. The question here is how much are they going to win? Do we want a landslide like Ronald Reagan had? And like the Contract with America brought? Both of which heavily addressed social conservative issues and recognized that Republicans do not win without the enthusiastic support of that large segment of the base. Do we want to take back control of one, or perhaps both houses? Or do we want the more moderate gains that will come from re-running John McCain’s losing 2008 strategy where he did precisely as you advise and ignored social issues totally?
We will still pick up some seats by re-running that failed formula, but they will be tepid gains, and we wont take back control of either house.
1. You selectively quote Fred Barnes, but the truth is Fred Barnes makes exactly the point I am making. He has said,
2. I’ll give you Peggy Noonan, she and David Brooks and David Frum have grown very comfortable with big-government Republicanism, and agree with you. (She also seems to harbor a strong dislike for Sarah Palin for whatever that’s worth.) But I certainly wouldn’t want Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Frumpy choosing the direction of the Republican party. The Republicans they support have been the PROBLEM, not the solution.
3. You keep using the examples of Ronald Reagan and the Contract with America. But Ronald Reagan ran on states rights, against the ERA (while also promising to put women on his cabinet and on the Supreme Court), and a whole host of other social issues, while about HALF the Contract with America regarded social issues, all of which I have documented here
Neither Reagan NOR the 1994 Republicans ignored social conservatives as you advocate. Indeed, they embraced them. They knew Republicans depend on “values voters”. As did President Bush, and Congressional Republicans in 2000, 2002, and 2004.
4. You take voter anger at the economy, which is strong, and wrongly translate that into automatic support for Republican policies. This is a huge mistake. Most Americans, unfortunately, dont know why we are in the situation we are in, which is EXACTLY why they voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2008, despite the fact that Democrats had been running the show for two years when the crisis hit, and Democrat policies are responsible for that crisis. Americans wrongly believed that Republicans had been running congress, and so they punished them. Now they know that Democrats are running things and will likewise punish them, but over half still think Republicans are to blame and that Democrats are just having a hard time cleaning up what they wrongly believe Bush and Republicans caused.
Even after a year of Obama and THREE years of a Democrat congress:
Democrats most certainly can and WILL use this to their advantage. They will tell voters they are right to blame Bush. They will tell voters that it was not just Bush, but his Republican policies that are to blame. And it will work with a great many Americans
Other relevant polls show that Republicans in congress have LESS support than Democrats. That even while 61% disapprove of Obamacare, at the very same time a sizable majority (something like 53%-58%) of Americans APPROVE a “public option”. And another Gallup poll last week showed that even now, 40% of Americans say the country would be better off if the Democrats controlled Congress, and 36% saying it would be better off if the Republicans controlled it.
Even with Rasmussen’s generic ballot, where Republicans have led by anywhere from 2-9 points, support for the GOP has never gotten higher than 45%. That means that while Americans are angry at Democrats, that they are still very wary of supporting the GOP.
5. Probably THE major reason people are upset with Democrats is not necessarily because they dislike Democrat policies, but because they are angry that Democrats seem to be focused on passing their agenda, instead of focusing on job creation as they think they should be.
Well, that’s all going to change. It always was going to change. Democrats are shortly going to turn ALL their energy to”stimulus” and “job creation”. And the demonization, and lies and their whole bag of economic tricks that they employ time and again because they often work. They are going to throw huge sums of money at people, they are going dredge up all the usual bogeymen — corporations, banks, big oil, and big bad evil capitalism all while offering people who are hurting financially big wads of other peoples money. They are going to scare people that Republicans will take away this and take away that while simultaneously running a campaign of moving forward, not “back to the failed policies of the past”
In short, the race is going to tighten up a lot when the Democrat congress starts acting in its own interest — something they were NOT doing during the MA or NJ races.
6. There is a big difference between asking people generically if they think government is too big, and whether they think Social Security should be reformed, or the Department of Education should be cut or whether we should eliminate the missile defense system. That’s one major reason why Reagan said the closest thing to immortality on this Earth is a government program.
7. When the electorate is as divided as it is — and it is still very evenly divided — you do NOT win by ignoring major issues that are deeply important to major factions of your base. As Fred Barnes said, as Reagan knew, as the Contract with America Republicans knew, as the values voters Republicans knew, that is how you lose. YOu win by uniting fiscal, defense AND social conservatives, by rallying them with issues they care about. And you win by running on issues in which a majority of Americans support your position and not your opponents.
8. Which is EXACTLY why Obama, Democrats and the media were so eager to ignore social issues in the 2008 election, why they label them “wedge issues” and call them “divisive” (but seizing the health care industry or growing government is never divisive) Because they are losing issues for Democrats!
The 2008 election was the first time since Roe v Wade in which abortion was not a topic at ANY of the debates. WHY? Because its a BIG losing issue for Democrats. A large majority of Americans think abortion policy in the US is too lenient and needs to be more restrictive. A majority of Americans favor banning government funding of abortion. And opposition to abortion is GROWING in America, not shrinking, precisely because of the same demographic shifts that favor traditional marriage.
And yes, even in California and Maine, where gays already HAD gay marriage, majorities of those liberal states supported “taking marriage away” from gays and restoring the traditional definition. Now that the question is no longer one of taking gay marriage away, but of maintaining traditional marriage, expect support to go UP, not down.
And attitudes on social issues favor Republicans almost without fail. 53% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track morally, and that government should do MORE to promote traditional values. Gay marriage will probably not be a major issue this year, unless the District Court in California overturns proposition 8 — then it will be a major issue, and one that will help Republicans.
Illegal immigration is likely to be the major social issue in 2010, because like Clinton, Obama wants to grant illegals amnesty and immediately register them to vote (or just have ACORN fill out the phony registrations). But again a huge majority of Americans, 66 percent, think government should do more to stop illegal immigration.
John McCain didn’t want to lose the legal, law-abiding Hispanic-American vote, so he did as you advise, and refused to campaign on it. Indeed, he was a big proponent of “a path to citizenship”. He lost the Hispanic vote by even more than Bush.
9. Social issues UNITE Republicans with Hispanic and black voters. The two demographics Republicans need MOST. Economic issues do not. Indeed, majorities of these groups think Democrats are better on economic issues and are more in tune with their needs. Republicans need to appeal to the traditional values we share with these groups and use that to make headway on economic issues. Your plan offers these voters NOTHING.
10. Voting for social moderates gets FISCAL moderates. The Republican politicians who have followed your advice are EXACTLY the fiscal RINOs who are the problem to begin with.
Schwarzenneger agrees with you. He didn’t campaign on social issues. California is bankrupt. McCain agrees with you, he lost the election, supports Cap and Trade, supports bailouts, supports McCain/Feingold, amnesty and a whole lot more big government policies. McCain lost by 21 points in a liberal to moderate state that SUPPORTED traditional marriage. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee — these have all been the type of Republicans who agreed with you that Republicans should ignore social conservatives. What they wrought was big government FISCAL “moderation”.
EVERYONE claims to be a fiscal conservative. Obama and all the Democrats who won recent election campaigned as fiscal conservatives. What matters is how they vote. And the people who ran like you advocate, are the same people who have gotten the GOP where it is today.
11. And as Chad pointed out, the most fiscally conservative members of Congress, people like Tom Coburn, Jim Demint, Mike Pence, Michelle Bachmann, who did not run away from social conservatism, who embraced it, are also the most fiscally conservative members of congress.
In short, you are vastly overestimating the number of people who subscribe to and support fiscal conservatism. And a large segment of those who DO support conservative Republican fiscal and economic policy are social conservatives — many of whom pay little or no income taxes, many of whom are recipients of government largess — and as such only support Republicans on principle. And as a result, many of those same people who are essential to Republican victory are more motivated by social issues than by economic policy.
We ignore them and the majority of Americans who agree with those positions at our peril.
You do not win elections, or you win much less than you would, if you ignore issues that the majority of Americans agree with you on.
Social conservatives have been ESSENTIAL to Republican victories from 1980 all the way through 2004. What happened in 2006 and 2008? Well besides voter fatigue over the war, Republicans totally ignored social issues. (Democrats sure as hell would never do such a thing. That’s why they are constantly bringing up embryonic stem cell research, because its one social issue of which most Americans agree with them. Yet notice how they dont call THAT divisive.) And increasing numbers of social conservatives have stayed home, and even voted for Democrats who have successfully run to the right of Republicans.
Values voters made up 23 percent of the electorate in 2004. Of those, Bush won a whopping 78 percent.
Your prescription would have delivered us President Kerry, and will most certainly bring us much weaker gains in congress this year than we will have if we unite ALL of our base behind issues that majorities of Americans support.
Boy that’s a grammatical DISASTER. I apologize, but it’s too much of a pain in the ass to edit in this tiny little window — particularly when the comment is so long and contains so much hypertext. But please try to slog through it — the evidence is rather overwhelming.
More than just it’s Reagan roots, the GOP needs to address the needs of small business and accentuate how the Democrats are now the party of both Big Business (the banks, Wall Street, and corporate America) and the labor unions (including the public workers unions and the auto unions that now control much of the auto industry).
Ted, the Democrats are the party of a weird kind of corporate socialism. Unfortunately, the GOP of the last 10 years has been very far from admirable and the public knows it.
I think its not as easy as you seem to think it is. The GOP is fundamentally not a party of cutting spending anymore – when was the last major spending cut the GOP oversaw?
I don’t think this is an accident, either. Americans want lower taxes, less regulation, etc., but they also want social security, medicare, medicaid, a “safety net,” etc. These all cost money, and you will never see a serious reduction in the size of government without those being phased out. This is something there is no steam behind and no one in the GOP will stand up and try it, for fear of being booted out of office even faster than the Dems appear to be.
Or that MA must soon implement formal rationing to cope with RomneyCare’s failure – you mean, aside from facts like that?
ILC–Did you even check the place you are citing. From thweir own page regarding their Research Associate: “Brian T. Farmer is a Research Associate with the John Birch Society and The New American magazine.”
If the Massachusetts’ plan is such a failure why did Scott Brown support it and never spoke against it during the campaign? You are correct that insurance costs are increasing in Mass, but are you opposed to that? Isn’t that just a sign of the emergence of the free market consencus?
I lived in MA during the passage of that state’s plan. The same things drive costs there that drive them in other places, plus one big one: mandated coverage. With the state able to define what a policy covers, every policy covers any ailment and treatment that is able to generate a lobby and slip some money to the state’s notoriously corrupt pols.
(Three of the last four presidents of the state senate have been indicted. The fourth, who was not, was the co-patriarch of the Bulger organized crime family, along with his brother who remains on the Ten Most Wanted List for serial murder).
Pressure to increase benefits is localized and the pressure of costs is spread over a wider area (P = F x A in politics as in physics). As a result, everyone pays through the nose to cover in vitro fertilization, sex changes, lifelong chiropractic, and aroma therapy, to name a few fine points.
This is one more sickener that makes Massachusetts a lousy place to start a business, despite the best advantage an entrepreneur can give himself: an educated workforce.
There are reasons why Brown could vote for a state health plan and not for a federal one.
1. Fed has no constitutional powers to regulate health care inside a state.
2. State is not so limited
3. State goverments have to solve fiscal problems, so it is self limiting
4. Federal government can create money from nothing, and so can ruin the country rather than solving problems
5. it is easier to leave a state than to leave the entire country. With bad ideas, people can vote with their feet.
Asking the GOP establishment to return to Reaganite principles is a hopeless cause. They hated Reagan. The hate conservatives. They hate the Tea Party movement.
They want to be the managers and participants in Big Government. They want to be accepted by the MSM and the cool clique in DC.
McCain promised last Spring that he was going to re-make the Republican Party. He’s carrying out his promise. He’s recruited and supports GOP establishment types to run in the primaries; see Carly Fiorina and Charlie Crist. I’d love to know, who else McCain has recruited.
The goal has to be to remove the GOP establishment. They’re legacy of failure, big government, authoritarianism has be a disaster policy-wise, politically, morally and in the real world. But they’re elitists, they know better. They have to be purged and removed from the GOP in order for the GOP to return to Reaganite principles.
They are the ones preventing this.
On the one hand, the political situation is hopeless;
Cannot get there from here in time.
On the other hand, the economy is hopeless;
One more year of calm during the election cycle,
then inflation takes off and we all get poor.
On the Gripping Hand, if we can create enough
new wealth, by removing bureaucratic barriers
to Hi-Tech innovations in manufacturing, it may
be possible to earn our way out of debt;
The first, mandatory qualification for state or
Federal office needs to be business experience;
Throw the lawyers out !
As a father of three teens, a couple of which can now vote. I see it again and again in themselves and their friends. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves, liberal or conservative. They all would vote for for a candidate who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. It is very much a “GET OUT OF MY LIFE AND OUT OF MY POCKETBOOK” mentality. First party who gets there wins. Its really that simple.
It’s important to remember in any industry there are always built-in incentives that push action in certain directions. As far as politics is concerned, the incentives resulting from the desire to be re-elected are clear: obtain money for campaigns and “satisfy” your constituents. Up to now, this has resulted in the continuous erosion of barriers to the offer of legislative regulatory and contracting favors in return for campaign contributions and to the “purchase” of votes by offering targeted constituencies indirect – programs – and direct – entitlement spending – transfers of taxpayer money. This incentive structure works inexorably on politicians of both parties. The only difference is in their choice of voting blocks and constituency groups. This is the problem with any idealistic plan to shrink government. Everybody wants to shrink government in general. They just have a problem with shrinking THEIR part of the government. That was the problem with Ronald Reagan’s failure to reduce the size of government in any meaningful way. A structural transformation of voter attitude will have to be achieved which can force actions contrary to the will of your average politician and then protect the accomplishments from eroding as special interest pressure returns. We may be at the end of the beginning, but there is a long row left to hoe.
This is absolutely true. The camel has his nose under the tent up to his hump.
However, the national government wiped out a whole system of state and local jurisdiction run old folks homes, orphanages, and the tradition of several generations living under the family roof. That is to say, Uncle Sugar destroyed a working system with a system of less than adequate payments.
The “County Home” was nearby when I was a kid. Ours was a farming area and many of the people in the “home” tended gardens and raised animals on the property. Their basic needs were met and their health needs were attended to by local doctors who donated their time and skills. This was not warehousing. It was very compassionate. At my school and church we always had some interaction through visits to the County Home. My parents picked up a woman every Sunday (we called her “Aunt” Florence), took her to church with us, brought her home for Sunday dinner and took her back in the late afternoon. This was the norm for those who were mentally and physically able to get around. They were not isolated of abandoned.
Our society is completely walled off from this type of “community chest” type of caring for our neighbors because cold welfare through government cash register has come between us. Now the Salvation Army has to boot people out after 30 days and the mentally ill have the “right” to manage their own affairs, like not using the medications that are necessary to make them “independent.”
Ultimately, there are other, better ways of handling unsustainable entitlement programs. One of them is to make dependency on welfare/entitlements a choice that is meaningful.
Translation: Brendan has no real answer to the TWO sources I provided, one of whom was the MA State Treasurer. Sop, time to whip out the stupid, empty dismissals, ignoring the facts. “Oooh, that one writer was once a lowly research flacky for a liberal bogeyman! Look here, at my hands!”
Lack of wisdom and education in free-market principles. The guy is a *Massachusetts* Republican, remember.
Ooh… do you think the very thing you just cited, the fact that he originally and unwisely committed himself to supporting it, could have anything to do with it?
Really, Brendan. Raise your game. This is too easy.
I liked Jon Stewart’s formulation: “Remember, guys, he’s a Massachusetts Republican… that’s pretty much like being a gay Democrat anywhere else.” Point well taken! (I have recreated the quote from memory; apologies for undoubtedly not getting it exactly right.)
The Tea Partiers of Mass and elsewhere prioritized correctly: first, throw a roadblock up in front of the juggernaut of ObamaCare by means of a charismatic politician who promises to stand with the Republican party on that point. Only then can you turn your attention to other issues. By the time Brown’s up for reelection, it may be clear that there’s no more pressing need to make common cause with a possibly-not-so-fiscally-conservative conservative – and he can campaign as he wishes and will or won’t be reelected by his constituents. But first things first.
Jabba,
Dan supports Fiorina and with the strategy he is advocating, it is clear that he supports a much more moderate, and more fiscally moderate, Big-Government Republican party, because that is EXACTLY what his advocacy to ignore a large wing of the conservative Reagan coalition will bring about. More Big Government moderate establishment Republicans like Cap and Trade McCain, Schwarzennger, Crist etc, and less fiscal conservatives like Marco Rubio, DeMint, Coburn and the REAL fiscal conservatives who also run as social conservatives.
“Really, Brendan. Raise your game. This is too easy.”
Although I am not a very frequent visitor to this site, I have visited it often enough to see that this your typical mode of argumentation. You declare victory regardless of the facts.
Just a clarification, in response to my post you link to two articles as if that demonstrably proved I was wrong. One of the links was to a right wing site that employs as a Research Associate someone who is CURRENTLY, not in the past as you imply, also employed by the John Birch Society. I suspect, or at least hope, that for most gay conservatives the John Birch Society is not now viewed as respectable.
The other link you provide is a statement from the current Massachusetts’ Secretary of State who recently left theDemocratic Party to run as an independent for Governor on a conservative platform. That does not mean his position can be ignored but he remains one of the few Mass politicians who is publicly opposed to the health insurance program.
None of this of course challenges my central point that there is a certain amount of irony that Scott Brown based a campaign (quite successfully) on running against a health insurance that was almost identical to the one he supported and seems to continue to support.