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Bonfire of the Sophisticates (Part 1)
Just a few days before Christmas, National Review’s Rich Lowry — easily one of my favorite writers — penned a sober analysis titled, “The Right’s Post-Constitutional Moment,” in which he laments that, “Trump has captivated a share of the Tea Party with a style of politics utterly alien to the Constitution.” This is especially vexing, Lowry continues, in light of a movement which in 2010 produced “… a class of constitutional obsessives, such as Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee, who were focused not just on what government shouldn’t do, but on what it couldn’t do, and why.”
Interesting turn of phrase there, using the designation, “constitutional obsessives,” to describe people who took a solemn oath of constitutional fidelity. I suppose I could be described as “matrimonially obsessive,” since I took a solemn and sacred vow of fidelity to my wife, but the term seems a bit quirky somehow, underscoring the Republican view of these upstarts and the voters who sent them, as borderline fanatics. In any event, Lowry goes on to describe Donald Trump in terms that strike this observer as disconcertingly accurate:
Donald Trump exists in a plane where there isn’t a Congress or Constitution. There are no trade-offs or limits. There is only his will and his team of experts who will figure out how to do whatever he wants to do, no matter how seemingly impossible. The thought you can’t do that doesn’t ever occur to him.
Trump is a reaction to Obama’s weaknesses, but also to Obama’s exaggerated view of executive power … For some on the right, clearly the Constitution was an instrument rather than a principle. It was a means to stop Obama, and has been found lacking.
Here, I think, is where the analysis begins to derail, and so it is here that I respectfully tender the first proposition:
Through its serial Faustian deals with the radical left, combining a toxic blend of political ineptitude, tenacious timidity, and an endless capacity for moral equivocation, the Republican Party has compromised its soul, reducing conservatism itself to little more than an academic exercise — all but paralyzed physically, though of some residual intellectual comfort.
Back in 2010, well before Donald Trump stepped on the political stage, Republicans vowed that big changes were on the way if only we would support them. The GOP unveiled a plan that “puts forth a new government agenda that reflects the priorities of the American people — priorities that have been ignored, even mocked by the powers-that-be in Washington — and can be implemented today.” Page after page of promises were offered, promises based on constitutional principles, no less, from which I glean just a few:
To provide Stability, we will require congressional approval of any new federal regulation that has an annual cost to our economy of $100 million or more.
Cut government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.
Cut Congress’ budget.
Hold weekly votes on spending cuts.
Establish a hard cap on new discretionary spending.
Impose a net federal hiring freeze of non-security employees.
Repeal the costly health care takeover of 2010.
We will fight efforts to fund the costly new health care law.
Permanently prohibit taxpayer funding of Abortion.
We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives. No more hiding legislative language from the minority party, opponents and the public. Legislation should be understood by all interested parties before it is voted on.
Advance legislative issues one at a time. We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people.
Keep terrorists out of America. We will prevent the government from importing terrorists onto American soil.
Require tough enforcement of sanctions against Iran.
Establish operational control of the border.
Conservatives generally — and Tea Partiers in particular — responded by installing Republicans in a historic majority in the House of Representatives. Expecting promised results, since the agenda was advertised as one that “can be implemented today,” conservatives watched in dismay as one opportunity after another to flex constitutional muscle was surrendered, always because the task was too daunting, and always with the stipulation that the good fight would be waged next time. Only next time never came.
Capitulation, like success itself, becomes a habit. In short order, those who promised to repeal and defund a perfectly awful health care law — and one that barely survived judicial scrutiny thanks to the linguistic gymnastics of a Republican nominee to the Supreme Court — look at us askance, incredulous that they should be held to their word. They only controlled one half of one branch, which was less than a full third of something or other. That they had neglected to mention all those caveats and conditions when asking us to give them the majority was somehow our fault, dontcha know? But even with majorities in both chambers, the results were the same.
Contrary to Mr. Lowry’s either/or proposition, the Constitution is both a principle and an instrument, designed to thwart the usurpation of its tenets. But we the people — who expected constitutional fidelity from those who promised as much — were derided as “purists,” constitutional troglodytes, too thick-headed to realize that principles are, in reality, mere expedients to be jettisoned as the cost of reaching across the aisle, and “getting something done.”
Yes, we are indeed in a post-constitutional era, but that process began long before Donald Trump’s first campaign event, over the vehement objections of some Tea Partiers who — having watched for several years as their representatives repeatedly and preemptively surrendered — have learned their lesson perhaps too well and decided to emulate the moderate’s emancipation from conservative orthodoxy, for the sake of getting something done, of course. In fact, they might even be forgiven if they answer the RINO’s belated and uncharacteristic concern for constitutional adherence with a wry smile and the single word, “purist.” Conservatism used to be made of sterner stuff before the apologists for Republican inaction and capitulation emasculated it. It’s adherents still make a coherent and persuasive philosophical case for it in these and other pages, but inaction has caused it to atrophy, and a weary and beaten citizenry are looking elsewhere for help.
It wasn’t the Constitution that was found lacking. It was Republicans who lacked the courage that the Constitution’s Framers expected from the representatives of a people whose very liberty was born of courage. One can argue over exactly when it was that the Right began making peace with extra-constitutional government, but when you fully fund an agenda you swore to oppose, and spend more time belittling those who voted for you than you spend keeping your word in the first place, you’re complicit in the results.
And it all happened before Donald Trump ever set foot on the political stage, which will bring me to the second proposition, in the next installment.
Part 2 of the Bonfire of the Sophisticates is here.
This post was originally published on Jan. 14, 2016.
Published in Domestic Policy, General, Politics
They could start by hiring Andrew Klavan, whose work is extraordinary, entertaining, insightful, and punchy.
Yes. I am just trying with my kids.
Cruz is decent on this topic, though a Goldman Sachs margin loan undermines his credibility. Rubio makes nice noises, but his sugar and ethanol love drown them out.
Also, Paul could’ve made this argument more prominent. I’ve heard him hit the cronyists before, but Rand focused too much on foreign policy, IMO.
I finally got it! At first, as a newbie, I thought I was doing something wrong on Ricochet! Hand to forehead …..
At the risk of breaking the joke, you are continuing the Columbo stichk, right? I hate to think I just offended you as a newbie.
Thanks for the kind words, Columbo. Love the car, by the way.
Why? His wife worked there, they banked there, and he disclosed it in his Senate campaign.
Agree. Cruz isn’t much better or different on ethanol.
Agree here also. Rand Paul in general has been a disappointment in this campaign. He woke up during the last debate, but in general hasn’t aggressively or effectively fought for his limited government view.
Of the three I think Ted Cruz has the most credibility. He has managed to piss off everyone in Washington and their mother’s.
I agree with the thought that the electorate broadly does not care about Constitutional issues. They just don’t know and frankly, most of them don’t have the luxury to care. This is in part why I believe Cruz’s appeal will be capped. My personal choice would be to elect someone who truly understands the limitation in the Constitutional structure and re-orients the government along those lines. What Trump has taught me is that such a President would be a failure to a broad portion of the public and ultimately unsuccessful unless they also can bring back in to the coalition the blue-collar whites – which requires talking about something other than Constitutional order.
You cannot overestimate how much my thinking has shifted as a result of watching Trump. As a New Yorker, I have seen him in a lot of different lights and generally don’t like what I see. But I am now starting to understand what others see, even if I cannot bring myself to agree.
It’s also partly why I am starting to believe that Trump could reshape the electorate in a historical manner. Been voting since 1994. But since the 2004 election I have been increasingly seeing this concept that a broad portion of the electorate, sometimes described as blue-collar whites, is just left out. These people don’t care about Constitutional matters. They care about results and they care about their values. They have been sitting in their homes, and staying out of elections, for years, all the while thinking that the world is going crazy around them. Trump is cutting through it all like no one has in their lifetimes.
I think they are starting to get their voice and its going to be yuge, whether we like it or not. It would not surprise me if Trump wins Iowa and NH by a large margin.
I don’t think you disagree with Lowry as much as you think Dave. Lowry doesn’t posit the Constitution is either a principle or an instrument. I think he accepts it is both. He is criticizing some for only seeing it as an instrument but not also and most importantly a set of principles.
Lowry very clearly lays the blame for the lack of success at the hands of the Republican Party and its leaders’ “serial Faustian deals with the radical left, combining a toxic blend of political ineptitude, tenacious timidity, and an endless capacity for moral equivocation …”
What he is noticing in Trump support is a willingness to ditch the constitution out of frustration with the GOP leadership. He is making a baby with the bathwater argument.
Regarding your umbrage at the term “constitutional obsessive,” I take it to mean an annoying tendency to make every political argument a matter of constitutional crisis. I doubt you or your wife, as dedicated to the institution of matrimony as you no doubt both are, would find it very worthwhile to listen to the other trot out the wedding vows and history of the institution of marriage over every disagreement or negotiation you had on a daily basis. Fidelity to the constitution is admirable, wearing it on your sleeve constantly and questioning others understanding and commitment to it at every opportunity tends to become a bit obnoxious.
I am not sure this is accurate. I don’t think the Trump supporters are willing to ditch the Constitution out of frustration. They are not ditching it insofar as I don’t think they ever cared about it that much. I think what you are seeing are people who have not largely participated in the debate in the past cycles now becoming energized. They are different people, on the whole, than the Tea Partiers of 6 years ago. These are the people who were “missing” when Romney ran.
Very interesting. The two sentences I took the liberty of italicizing especially got my attention. I’ll be addressing that aspect in a succeeding part of the essay, and I appreciate you bringing it up. It must be interesting watching all of this unfold from New York, yes?
I think that is right for a big number of them. I imagine Lowry knows this. Lowry is making his point about a segment of Trump supporters who not long ago identified themselves as Tea Partiers. These people are real, you see them on this site as a matter of fact.
But exactly nothing Trump is proposing within this campaign is a violation of the constitutional order.
Yes it is. Funny thing is, the moneyed set around here think that Hillary will win no matter what. Even the ones who cannot stand her think its in the bag already. I cannot even describe to you how universal that opinion is. At first, it was amazing to me to see these smart guys so completely miss what is going on outside of Manhattan.
But then again, Trump isn’t really one of them. Notwithstanding his background and particularly how he obtained his wealth, culturally he is more Queens than Manhattan. If a blue collar guy from Queens (or the MidWest, for that matter) won the $1.5B Powerball, he would probably dress, talk and tan just like Trump. By the way, its also why Cruz’s “New York values” comment so teed me off. I think he meant to imply Wall Street – meaning a set of values that are just not shared by so many New Yorkers, including Trump himself. The New York value Trump best exemplifies is the “get out of my way you jamoche I am solving this thing myself” side of NY.
There are many Americans tired of feeling alienated in their own nation, the one they helped to build.
Yeah, I didn’t phrase it well. The problem is much more optics than substance.
McConnell and Boehner cut spending two years in a row which is the first time that has happened in 50 years. That is a pretty big deal.
It appears he claimed to fund his campaign out of his personal funds. It was not disclosed at the time that this included a load against assets from Goldman Sachs. No biggie, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it as “used all my savings”. He eventually disclosed the nature of the loan.
Apologies, I mistook your proposition as a quote from Lowry. Reconstructing then, I agree with your point that any Tea Party support for Trump does stem in part from the weakness of the GOP and the sense of betrayal many feel towards it. Lowry’s point, though, while not acknowledging that explicitly, isn’t inconsistent with that. He doesn’t claim that Trump has caused people to abandon the constitution. He says:
Lowry implicitly acknowledges there frustration from some on the right with GOP unwillingness to fight fire with fire. He is pointing out that both Obama’s lawlessness and the GOP response has caused part of the Tea Party movement to call for going to the mattresses, principles be damned.
On those big issues, I think you are right. I read Lowry as referring to a tendency to cast everything, even smaller issues which can be defeated just as a matter of bad policy, in light of a constitutional crisis. I remember often thinking in the early days of the Tea Party movement that the constitutional righteousness was a bit over the top, and constitutional language was cited to attack or defend every political battle, no matter how mundane or uncontroversial from a constitutional standpoint, i.e. tax-information treaties.
Understand. The formatting was an issue, and I hadn’t intended to block quote my own formulation. Maybe I’ll switch to decaff?
And Goldman Sachs is a boogeyman. Only thing worse would have been a loan from his Koch Trading account.
Cruz hid it because he wanted to be able to say he opposed the Wall St. bailout. The fact was, though, that his wife benefited from the bail out. She, like most Wall St. employees, was able to take huge bonuses in the time immediately after the financial crisis because of the bailouts. It was those huge bonuses that Cruz was borrowing against to fund his campaign. Hard to rail against Wall St. bailouts when you’re candidacy depended on them.
How do you figure he hid this when he disclosed it in 2012 while running for Senate?
Do you do any due diligence at all or just throw random blanket insults on Ricochet and just make stuff up?
In 2008, Fred Thompson was my guy. But I didn’t get to vote for him because the GOP enables a staggered primary process. By the time the Texas primary came around, only three candidates still had a shot at the nomination and only two of them were serious contenders.
This year, I expect the same. Texas primary voters will be offered a choice between Trump and one other candidate, with others either dropping out or being effectively sidelined beforehand.
This is just one of many ways the Republican party reminds me that my vote barely matters.
If Cruz, Rubio, or some other halfway-senisble candidate is elected President, we can expect a continuation of the status quo with slight improvements… “fixes” to be immediately negated by the next Democrat. If Trump — a lawless salesman — is elected, the imperial presidency and rule by grievance will continue as it would under Hillary Clinton.
I’ll vote for the Republican candidate again, as always, and expect no improvement.
He disclosed it after the first primary vote and didn’t reveal it until 3 days before the runoff against Dewhurst, too late for Dewhurst to notice and use it to attack Cruz.
Not saying he did anything illegal, or that is wasn’t smart politically. But it was shady nonetheless. He knew that he was required to disclose the loans, but he hid them as long as he could.
This guy is not the conservative stalwart you all believe him to be. He is an opportunist and a savvy manipulator.
Amen. I am always a little surprised that Cruz supporters cannot see this. Or maybe they do and don’t care. I am trying to like the guy, but it’s hard.
Contrary to many here, including Tom Meyer, I agree with notorious lefty Kevin Williamson. I don’t care if you have 400 votes in the House, if the Senate can block everything- and you will be blamed- and the president can veto- and you will be blamed, and if you enable a “government shutdown” to exercise the presently largely meaningless “power of the purse” which shuts down nothing except whatever is visible to and causes pain for regular citizens- and you will be blamed, it makes little sense to enable the latter.
It makes far more sense to do the hard work of changing rules and processes to restore the power of the purse, and reduce delegation, etc. That is not an overnight- less than 5 year- project.
The term “Constitutional obsessives” does not equate to “Constitutional adherents.” The former term applies to those people who whip out and quote from the Constitution in response to every stimulus, without considering the current context of case law or public views and how to fit the latter into the former rather than just preaching about undefined terms like “limited government” and endlessly reciting the 10th amendment instead of discussing ways to implement it.
1) For example, where have you ever seen any of these self-identified “Constitutionalists” ever seriously think about or strategize regarding Prof. Greve’s points regarding the difference between “cooperative federalism” and “competitive federalism’?
2) Why does Rand Paul natter on about the Constitution, while behind the scenes he undercuts the best opposition to ObamaCare?
3) What really works to limit the administrative state?
We don’t need more bellowing within the hive, we need serious people (like Speaker Ryan) doing serious and thankless work.