Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Peter Robinson ·
December 5, 2011 at 8:58pm
George Will in his Washington Post column last week:
[Conservatives]...anticipated choosing between Mitt Romney, a conservative of convenience, and a conviction politician to his right. The choice, however, could be between Romney and the least conservative candidate, Newt Gingrich [italics mine].
Tim Groseclose, writing here on Ricochet just yesterday:
Some recent evidence suggests that Gingrich—the more conservative candidate in my judgment—is just as electable as Romney [italics, once again, mine].
Well, Dr. Groseclose?
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Barfly: Nobody's perfect, but this guy would be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon and the most conservative since Reagan. · Dec 5 at 9:07pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 09:08 pm
Romney would also be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon, and I am sure he would govern more conservatively than anyone since Reagan. With Newt, we'll be on tenterhooks waiting for him to get one of his big, civilization-changing ideas and sell us out.
Jun '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
wmartin
Barfly: Nobody's perfect, but this guy would be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon and the most conservative since Reagan. · Dec 5 at 9:07pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 09:08 pm
Romney would also be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon, and I am sure he would govern more conservatively than anyone since Reagan. With Newt, we'll be on tenterhooks waiting for him to get one of his big, civilization-changing ideas and sell us out. · Dec 5 at 9:40pm
It is so silly to just repeat the hyperbole about Newt. You have absolutely no data on this suspicion of Newt getting a big idea and selling us out. His actions speak much louder than his words. He has a track record of real action here -- so take a look at it and quit parroting David Brooks and George Will.
Oct '11
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
wmartin
Romney would also be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon, and I am sure he would govern more conservatively than anyone since Reagan. With Newt, we'll be on tenterhooks waiting for him to get one of his big, civilization-changing ideas and sell us out. · Dec 5 at 9:40pm
GHWB was arguably smarter than Mitt, and W was more conservative. I've heard a lot of hesitation about Newt's crazy ideas, but can't think of any such that he pushed as more than a speculation or conversation starter, while out of office at that. Give us a case in point?
Admitted, he's a risk, but the risk is more that he'll alienate people and not get anything done. The Romney risk is that he'll ideologically favor tweaking ObamaRomneyCare around the edges, and not try any bold conservative steps at all - Mitt doesn't have his heart in it.
Apr '11
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Michael Tee
Jonathan Cast
NB: your last item is a conservative, free market measure (it's the opposite of imposing price controls). · Dec 5 at 12:44pm
Not on my planet. Every libertarian I know would like to go back to Gold Standard. · Dec 5 at 5:33pm
Here's a libertarian for you to meet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman.
There's a large difference between an automatic gold standard and the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rates system. Under a free market gold standard the quantity of dollars automatically adjusts to maintain the legal price of gold. Under Bretton Woods, the quantity of dollars was left up to Fed discretion and the United States committed to engage in various interventions (exchange controls, tariffs, wage/price controls, etc.) to (attempt to) guarantee a fixed peg of the dollar against other currencies (whose quantities were themselves determined by the discretion of foreign governments).
Apr '11
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Barfly
GHWB was arguably smarter than Mitt, and W was more conservative. I've heard a lot of hesitation about Newt's crazy ideas, but can't think of any such that he pushed as more than a speculation or conversation starter, while out of office at that. Give us a case in point?
Admitted, he's a risk, but the risk is more that he'll alienate people and not get anything done. The Romney risk is that he'll ideologically favor tweaking ObamaRomneyCare around the edges, and not try any bold conservative steps at all - Mitt doesn't have his heart in it. ·
Newt was fairly effectively moderated by Delay and Armey, who achieved more of Newt's positive record than Newt. President, and Candidate Newt would be the unmuzzled version.
Compare W's 2000 platform with Mitt's. I'm pretty sure you'll find Mitt's more conservative. No big new spending outside defense, no big expansions of government. Just lots of cutting spending, deregulating, and labor bashing.
Mitt has his heart in cutting spending. It's what he's done all his life, passionately. Even Prof. Rahe gives him credit for that.
May '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
James Of England
Compare W's 2000 platform with Mitt's. I'm pretty sure you'll find Mitt's more conservative. No big new spending outside defense, no big expansions of government. Just lots of cutting spending, deregulating, and labor bashing.
Mitt has his heart in cutting spending. It's what he's done all his life, passionately. Even Prof. Rahe gives him credit for that. · Dec 6 at 4:56am
The reason that, perhaps, we needn't be overly stressed about any of our guys going all "progressive" on us once in there is simply because, well, we're broke. Fiscal math, even more so than electoral math, now demands conservativism, whether Mitt, or Newt, or whoever, likes it or not.
Put another way, we've arrived at the point where it's manifestly true that "the facts of life are conservative", for all but our most liberal friends.
Edited on December 6, 2011 at 2:42pmSep '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Romney would also be the smartest Republican nominee since Nixon,
The two smartest have been Carter and Nixon. Be forewarned.
May '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Aaron Miller:
In other words, a candidate's communication skills and trustworthiness matter. · Dec 5 at 8:27pm
Aaron, I'm afraid you just disqualified all of the remaining candidates.
Apr '11
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Scott Reusser
James Of England
Mitt has his heart in cutting spending. It's what he's done all his life, passionately. Even Prof. Rahe gives him credit for that. ·
The reason that, perhaps, we needn't be overly stressed about any of our guys going all "progressive" on us once in there is simply because, well, we're broke. Fiscal math, even more so than electoral math, now demands conservativism, whether Mitt, or Newt, or whoever, likes it or not.
Put another way, we've arrived at the point where it's manifestly true that "the facts of life are conservative", for all but our most liberal friends. ·
I thought this was fascinating and true when you said it of Ohio. Not sure it's true federally. As the world (well, China/ EU) goes to hell, US Treasuries become the safe haven, giving us more ability to borrow in the short term. The Feds can ride that gravy train all the way to catastrophic collapse. Sure, at that point we have to slash social security, medicare, and everything else, but at the cost of a recognizable America. Bad choices are still very available.
May '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Scott Reusser
The reason that, perhaps, we needn't be overly stressed about any of our guys going all "progressive" on us once in there is simply because, well, we're broke. Fiscal math, even more so than electoral math, now demands conservativism, whether Mitt, or Newt, or whoever, likes it or not.
Where have you been all your life that you believe politicians (and voters) can be forced to acknowledge reality?
Speaking of, here's a fresh interview in which Gingrich supports incrementalism because he would rather go along with delusional voters than try to convince them government doesn't have the money to keep their programs alive.
Kofola
Aaron Miller:
In other words, a candidate's communication skills and trustworthiness matter. ·
Aaron, I'm afraid you just disqualified all of the remaining candidates.
In regard to trustworthiness, perhaps. But Newt is by far a better communicator than the others. Perry's not bad when giving speeches, but he's no good on-the-fly. Ron Paul is straight to the point, but comes across as a whiner.
May '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Obama is in trouble now because he felt his oats and charged in to do everything all at once- to leave his lasting legacy.
President Reagan was successful because he looked at the landscape, decided what was most important, and moved full throttle on that more limited set of initiatives while constantly working the public to bring them along. He did not promise to elininate Cabinet departments- because he knew it was neither possible nor more important than the economy (inflation and taxes, decontrol of oil) and rebuilding our defenses and seriously fighting the Cold War.
All of those who think that any new president would be effective attacking everything with a scythe as soon as he got to the Oval Office- or would in such circumstances be able to get anything at all accomplished- are dreaming.
Success comes with laser-like focus on the limited set of initiatives that can be accomplished. This year it is throttling spending and stopping ObamaCare. Without a supermajority you can't kill ObamaCare, but with House budget/appropriation control and regulatory action/inaction you can throttle it in the crib.
Don't lose the opportunity to accomplish something by trying everything.
Jun '10
Re: Calling Dr. Groseclose, Or It Takes a Brave Man to Dispute George Will
Aaron Miller
...
Fiscal math, even more so than electoral math, now demands conservativism, whether Mitt, or Newt, or whoever, likes it or not.
Where have you been all your life that you believe politicians (and voters) can be forced to acknowledge reality?
Speaking of, here's a fresh interview in which Gingrich supports incrementalism because he would rather go along with delusional voters than try to convince them government doesn't have the money to keep their programs alive.
...
Remember that -- as Churchill recognized in the 1930s and even once he was back in government -- that it is not just electorally bad but morally wrong to get too far ahead of the people. Roosevelt had sufficient connection to the country's mindset to bide his time, too. The president is still only a servant of the people. He has to convince us that what he wants to do is sufficiently important and the times dire enough that we should then be expected to go along with the president to give him our "blood, toil, tears and sweat."
The president must use the bully pulpit. Never have we needed that more than now.
Edited on December 6, 2011 at 7:27pm