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Rejoice! Rejoice! Victory, oh Victory!
The most common form of contemporary conservative electoral argument is flawed in its premise. They argue that we don’t win elections because we don’t follow their advice (give up on social issues / double down on social issues / the same for fiscal issues and/or foreign stuff / use stronger language / use more moderate language / educate the public on abstract issues / stop talking about abstract issues / talk about gaffes more / talk about gaffes less).
In fact, we win elections. We run the legislature in most states, reaching a level of (small d) democratic control rarely seen in American history. We have most governor’s mansions, again, right at the edge of the historical record. We have the House; after decades of suffering from Ike’s neutrality and Watergate, we got it back in 1994 and we’ve mostly kept it. We have the Senate. Even presidentially, we’ve lost just five out of the last twelve races, with the “always losing” argument often resting on the last two. If you decide on the basis of receiving two tails after tossing a coin twice that the coin must be faulty and have no heads on it, you’re probably excessively predisposed that belief.
When people tell you that we’re losing and the only way to win is to buy their snake oil, whether classy snake oil like Arthur Brooks’ or off-brand oils like Mike Murphy’s or Mark Levin’s, they’re wrong in two ways. Firstly, we’re winning, and secondly, many of those who are winning are not from their faction of the party. Ron Johnson and Pat Toomey win in blue-purple states while being unapologetically socially conservative, whatever Murphy might prefer; while Graham, McCain, Murkowski, Capito, Cochran, and Alexander can win in red states despite Levin’s assurances that their path is doomed to fail.
Allied to this is the claim that we don’t win on the issues. Sometimes this is specifically aimed at McConnell and Boehner. In the comments, I’d like people to suggest a Senate leader and speaker who have been more effective at stopping the legislative agenda of a post-war President. I don’t believe that such a man exists. Bush got what he really wanted from Daschle and Reid. Clinton got a bunch of what he wanted from Dole and Newt. Anyone who wants to argue that Reagan and 41 failed to leave a legislative legacy has a tough case to make. And so on. From tax cuts to gun rights to trade agreements to partial birth abortion to bankruptcy to the surge, the Democrats never united in the way that McConnell and Boehner have kept the party together in opposition to Obama, so time and again Bush could peel off enough Democratic moderates to get his reforms passed. Today, pro-choice Republicans refuse to vote for pro-choice bills. Pro-union Republicans don’t vote for pro-union bills. Obama has been reduced to acting through executive orders by the most effective and courageous Republican party leadership in a half century. Obama did pass radical reforms, but only while he had a supermajority; a supermajority that was kept brief between the death of Ted Kennedy and the election of Scott Brown. It’s the united efforts of moderates and less moderate Republicans that has won us our position.
At some level, most of us are aware of this. Over and over again, I speak to closeted McConnell fans who will not admit it in public (some, like James O’Keefe, are open about it if they’re asked, but don’t raise the topic). It’s not cool, and it’s bad for fundraising, to declare that affection. I’ve spoken to people who were coming off a panel discussion angry because they didn’t get to demonstrate their bona fides by attacking McConnell on a point irrelevant to the discussion. Our pundits have overwhelming incentives to bad-mouth our leaders. There’s sometimes almost as little respect for the achievements of our governors and state legislators, although the Constitution gives them the scope to go on the offensive even when there isn’t a cooperative President. Our states are popping and fizzing like mad, deregulating labor, protecting electoral integrity and self-defense rights, closing abortion clinics, cutting taxes, reducing recidivism by expanding religious charitable access to inmates, expanding school choice, shoring up the Constitution with anti-Kelo laws and the like, and finding many other ways of expanding Americans’ freedom.
It’s my belief that America, and the world, were in a precarious state in Reagan’s first term, but that we are in a better position now, and that we were in a precarious state when Ted Kennedy died, but that we are in a better position now. I outline why in posts addressing each of the three legs of the conservative stool and comparing our position to Reagan’s first term and to what one could refer to as the B.M. period of American history (“Before McConnell,” the period of supermajority).
I’ll conclude with a post on the stakes for the upcoming election. We can fix entitlements to make them affordable, but not every party is likely to do so, and even four years would make the problem much harder. We can restore American leadership to the world, but we would have to choose to do so. Almost all the regrettable Court decisions are 5-4, so we can revive our Constitutional fidelity to unprecedented levels, but the good decisions are also mostly 5-4. It is merely likely, not certain, that the shining city on a hill will illuminate the world even more brightly than before.
Published in Domestic Policy, Politics
There is also blue and purple state federalism.
Sanctuary Cities are local governments ignoring Federal Law. California and Colorado giving Illegal immigrants driver’s licences ignores federal law.
Pot legalization is state governments ignoring Federal Law.
Killing it because it wouldn’t generate a majority of GOP votes in the House is different than killing it because it is bad for the United States.
Do you not find that rather cowardly? Why can’t these politicians do what they know to be right, run on their principles, and let the people decide? Instead, it gives off the appearance that the Senators are actually trying to screw Conservatives over, but for those damned Wacko Birds in the House.
But was the total debt still rising? I believe it was. So basically, I am to get excited in that we don’t deficit spend as a percentage of GDP compared to the Left? I’m sorry but that is not something to “rejoice” about.
Again, how do you know this was the motivation? There is no chance that McCarthy is actually a conservative?
Ex-Im is suspended, not dead. It can be reauthorized as an amendment to any must pass legislation.
You should actually be excited about this. The way to get out of the debt crisis is to outgrow it. Continue holding spending down as the economy continues to grow and you can make even a 20 trillion dollar debt un-intimidating because your economy will eventually dwarf it.
This is how massive war debts of the past have been repaid, and it comes at no political cost the way that trying to slash a trillion from budget every year surely would.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to cut a trillion from the budget. But growing the economy is a proven fix for debt problems.
And it will not be reauthorized by this congress. The clients of EX-IM are already going elsewhere for funding. It will remain suspended/dead unless the democrats retake the house (highly unlikely for several years).
Are the dems in favor of this boondoggle?
Oh yes. They voted almost unanimously to reauthorize.
Great post, James! Thanks for putting things into perspective.
I think what created most of the mistrust is massive expansion of government that happened during the Bush 43 years. That, and the economic crisis, created the Tea Party.
And the Tea Party has caused us to have a much better “establishment” than we’ve had in the past.
After all, no one wants to bring back the Tom Delay congress.
I’m not saying “wait till they’re elected”. I’m saying “wait until later in the electoral cycle”.
I hope you’ll forgive me not being sure which Bush hypocrisy you’re referring to, or even which Bush (this is a thread on which there’s at least three plausible candidates, each of whom could be reviled for any number of reasons).
I would prefer Mark Kirk be the senator of Illinois to what ever leftist would be there in his place. Notice that Kirk though not great on several issues is still in favor of repealing Obamacare, and opposes the Iran deal. He is light years better than whatever democrat would replace him.
If we can help Mark Kirk stay elected, it is a huge net benefit to us, not a sign of a lack of principles.
Yes. So, for what it’s worth, is everyone who knows about the specific subject that I’ve spoken to.
Not “general experts in politics who have written about the Ex-Im bank as an example of something”, but “Academics who focus on trade finance”. As some of you know, working with Export Credit Agencies was part of my work in Iraq and I got to know a few of them.
It’s helpful when you’re selling to some foreign markets to have a governmental agency engaging in the debt collection and there are plenty of entities that won’t do business without the involvement of something like that. There’s just a limit to, for instance, Boeing’s ability to force a state flag carrier to pay for its planes, whereas something with a governmental imprimatur generally can. This is why the Ex-Im bank has been able to make money while still providing both an important service and occasional political payoffs. I’m as partisan as the next guy, so I’m happy to see it gone; everyone on the payroll should be aware that there are existential costs to letting yourself be abused for political purposes by the President. Still, America is the poorer for the loss. One of the few legitimate roles for the Federal government is the protection of Americans in their interaction with the world and it is now harder to export than it was, particularly to foreign governments and quasi-governmental agencies.
With a bit of luck, eventually some new entity will be created that can perform some of its functions, with better mechanisms in place to prevent abuse.
Hooray! James and I get to disagree on something.
On both of those topics in three cases, Roberts supported expanding Federalism and on both topics the meaningful change to Tenth Amendment doctrine was to expand its scope. In Sebelius, Kennedy agreed with him (and they won). In Windsor, Kennedy disagreed with him, and Roberts won. In Obergefell, there wasn’t a serious federalist argument, but to the extent that there was one, Kennedy disagreed with it and Roberts lost.
Wow! So we are loosing slower and ‘better’ than in the past?
With Obamacare, Dodd Frank, the new HUD and EPA proposals, along with the FCC taking over the control of the internet and the NLRB decisions, the national debt and the unfunded liabilities left to our children? Winning?
These are bricks built into the structure and adding fewer bricks isn’t a win. These are also not in the states control, so the feds have the power and the locals deal with it. (they took federal dollars decades ago and the ‘devil’ wants his due)
Easy to talk about trees but the forest was nationalized years ago. We can overcome with national growth? Someone can put that in a time capsule and open it in 100 years and explain to the grandchildren how much better off they are, since all this debt will come due on them.
“Hey doc, what’s my cancer prognosis?”
“Well there’s good news and bad news. The good news- we’ve mostly curbed the cancer. The bad news, you are going to die of cancer, just not tomorrow.”
I appreciate that this is a pragmatic argument, but doesn’t it say something that we have to be this cynical and mislead the public to keep our party in power? The whole system has this rottenness at its core.
If I learned about if from the news, or from NR or somesuch, I wouldn’t support it either. News accounts all make it seem like it was about cheap loans; the process was abused to give loans to a couple of renewable energy companies, but it wasn’t about loans. If you think of it as a bank, it would be awful, but it’s not. It’s an Export Credit Agency.
At some point in the next few months, I’ll have a post up on it (or, rather, about the general point that the Federal government properly acts to protect Americans from foreign governments, with the chief example of confused conservative complaints being about regulations in FTAs; we say that we shouldn’t have complex international agreements because the government should just behave well, which misses the point that the agreement is complex because it’s there to protect us from the foreign governments, which are often abusive).
The Bush hypocrisy I detailed in the earlier comment. I think it highlights the issue with the republican governors. It was a unique situation to have GW Bush as president extending federal overreach into his brother’s area of expertise while his brother was a sitting governor.
I will eagerly await this post. One can argue that government intervention in almost any field is just them properly protecting Americans.
Abusive foreign governments would either get less trade, or be less abusive if Americans weren’t shielded from the consequences of dealing with abusive foreign governments.
Back in my days at UPS, it was always funny to look at the loss data on shipments to many South American countries. It was always insanely high. When I asked one of the higher ups about it he told me that customs in these countries engaged in a rather extreme amount of theft.
“It’s built into our prices shipping to those countries.”
Again, this really is a post about the electoral success. The argument is there not “we’re losing slowly”. It is “we’re winning. By substantial margins.”
If you’re talking about the debt, then, well, that’s really for the next post in the series and I’d urge you not to get too into this (or the Ex-Im) on this thread, but the debt is estimated go down next year:
It’s not going to go down fast enough, and we need the Ryan Plan’s entitlement reform, but right now the concern is that we’re not winning fast enough on the debt, not that we’re losing. It went down a little from 2012 to 2013, too, which was nice.
If we win this election and pass the Ryan Plan, there’s no reason for us to die of this at all. Read the House Budget and weep with joy.
When government intervention can accurately be described as enforcing contracts, I think that it is generally a legitimate function of government. I know, I know, us crazy squish minarchists.
Oh, right. Sure; I’d read that as obnoxious, but not hypocrisy, but yes, that’s a pretty funny angle on it.
Still, the tax cuts he passed, partly with the help of NCLB favors, have mostly become permanent and NCLB looks like it’s going to be off the books any day now, right Leigh?
I will wait for your post to
refuterepudiaterefutiate this.You’re right that it’s different. If he’d said “I’m killing it because it is bad for the United States”, there’d have been a discharge petition filed that afternoon. The House Speaker isn’t a dictator. He’s given a specified set of powers which he retains by the consent of the House. Stopping a law because he doesn’t like it is not one of those powers, and an open declaration that he was abusing his position would have weakened the consent of those who could withdraw their consent and pass the bill at any time.
It’s a balancing act, and Boehner conducted it masterfully, single handedly saving the US from amnesty and taking tremendous amounts of abuse from the Left (which understood what he was doing), from the pro-Amnesty right (mostly likewise), from the people who agreed with him but wanted to fundraise (likewise), and from the guys they were fooling.
That’s what courage and a genuine commitment to achieving conservative goals looks like. Again, recall that his killing the bill was optional. If his loyalty were to the Chamber, the bill would have passed. Instead, because Boehner was prepared to courageously stand on principle and take abuse from literally every quarter and faction, to lose fundraising support, and to have his writeups in the newspapers be less flattering, it failed.
I should improve my “not replying on this topic” skills, and appreciate your intervention.
Which politician do you believe didn’t do what was right, run on their principles, and… well, it’s a representative democracy, so they didn’t let the people decide, and there are certainly things that they disagree with most people about (they mostly like entitlement reform for instance, whereas their constituents do not), but that doesn’t make them cowardly, so far as I can tell.
So how did the Federal government provide this protection? I hope it wasn’t through subsidies or credits.
Frank,
That was one way to look at this, but there is something missing.
For example welfare chauvinism. It is going strong in the west, also now in US. But in US it is hurting conservatives mostly, because there is too many women, liberals and especially more and more latinos, also conservatives are dying faster. And there was no internet when Reagan was president, white mans rage was not that magnetic. Now there is more group-thinking and Trump supporters are not going to give up, he is tough guy who is answer to their dreams. Something fairly similar has happened in other countries, it does not matter whether your candidate is pure conservative or right winger, he just need to appear strong and he has to be tough on immigration and he must hate lefties.
Republican electorate will choose Trump, and it might take too long time to recover from that. People say that Herman Cain was even more supported, but he was not right person for angry white dudes, Trump is and he is not going to vanish like Cain.