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The Thing Most Needful
If you have a moment free, read Steve Hayward’s “Crisis of the Conservative House Divided.” If you have hardly a free moment, read it anyway. Then read it again. It is that important.
Steve has cut through the muck — the list of good things that conservatives favor — and he has focused in on the only thing that really counts: whether elections matter any more.
Back in 1733, Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu published an exquisite little book entitled Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline. In a sly passage directed against the French monarchy, he focused in on an advantage that Rome possessed, which everyone reading it in that year would have recognized that France did not possess: the capacity to correct course. Then, he alluded to England’s ability to do so.
What he had in mind when he mentioned England had two dimensions: freedom of the press, and free elections. They enabled the people of England to force their rulers to alter course.
We can no longer do that. We can elect conservatives. We can elect them in a landslide, giving them more governorships, state houses, and more seats in Congress than Republicans have had at any time since 1928 — and nothing happens. The administrative state continues to grow; the progressives in charge force the states to accept same-sex marriage and men in the ladies room; they persuade all the universities in the land to institute an inquisition to hound and ruin young men who have incurred the pique of a young woman or two by stealing a kiss or (more often) by ceasing to steal kisses; and they promise to censor political dissent by identifying as “hate speech” any statement that breaks from orthodoxy.
In response, what do the conservatives in office do? They cower; they run; when put under pressure, they fold (yes, Mike Pence, it is you I have in mind). And when the Presidential candidate foisted on their party by popular fury aimed, in fact, at them speaks an unpleasant truth, they wring their hands. Theirs is the party of the white flag. They show their talents best in retreat.
The history of modern liberty has always been bound up with one thing: the capacity of the legislative power to elicit from the executive a redress of grievances. That is the role played from the medieval period on by England’s House of Commons, and it used to be the role played by our House of Representatives. The chief thing was not their law-making capacity — though that was important. The chief thing that gave them the leverage they needed if they were to hold the executive accountable and stop it in its tracks if it went astray was, as I argued in a blogpost some months ago, the power of the purse.
I do not know what will happen in November. I fear both possibilities. Neither Clinton nor Trump is, in my opinion, palatable. What I do know, however, is that if Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and their associates do not recover for the legislative branch of our government the power of the purse we might as well not have elections anymore. For the progressives will use their leverage in the courts and in the executive agencies to shove whatever measure elite opinion comes to favor down the throats of everyone else. We are no longer a democracy. We have become a narrow, ideologically-driven, highly partisan oligarchy, and it would take something like a revolution to restore constitutional democracy and democratic control in these United States.
Let me be blunt. Under our Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to stop anything it really wants to stop. All that it has to do is to zero out the budget allocated for the activity it wants to stop. If it is unwilling or unable to exercise that power, it should close shop. The Republicans are the victims of their own cowardice.
This post was originally published on Oct. 23, 2016.
Published in Politics
The Social Security Act of 1935 passed the House with a vote of 372 yeas, 33 nays, 2 present and 25 not voting. It passed the Senate with 77 for, 9 against and 12 not voting.
Medicare (The Social Security amendments of 1965) passed the House 313 in favor and 115 against, 5 not voting; it passed the Senate 68-21 with 11 not voting.
The final version of the act to establish the department of energy in 1977 passed the house 353 in favor and 77 against; the Senate 76 to 14.
Agriculture I’ll give you – Lincoln created it with a commissioner, not at cabinet level, but Congress voted to raise it to Cabinet level later.
And so on. Past expansions of the federal government have often been voted on by Congress as representatives of the people. They’re often very popular at the time they’re enacted, which is how they get enacted in the first place. The will of the public since the Progressive Era (many of the policies during which received broad support at the time from the American public) has been toward expansion, not contraction. If we want to change this, we have to change minds, not just blame current GOP leaders.
The Original is just fine. The inherent weakness is that it is run by people.
“We are no longer a democracy. We have become a narrow, ideologically-driven, highly partisan oligarchy”
I don’t disagree, but it was done by choice with the consent of the governed. Democracies are voluntary and the American people chose not to have one.
Conservatism is not a majority position. If Republicans in the house were to act like conservatives they would lose their seats. Better to putter along as a brake on federal growth waiting for a truly transformative moment when the American people are forced by necessity to wake up.
When? I thought this might come in a national election after a failed Liberal presidency. Maybe we could usher in a conservative President with a definitive mandate as was the case in 1984. I’m beginning to doubt that will occur again.
He’ll lose.
Sadly, I agree.
That’s it? And you write as if there were some other outcome waiting in the wings if we had just taken a different direction.
Congresscritter: “We must cut down on this cancer of welfare payments!|
Lobbyist: “*whisper*It was a package deal. Chuck the welfare, and you’ll lose your corn farmer subsidies*whisper*”
Congresscritter: “We must protect this vital program!”
Congratulations! Your tiny town Has an MRAP and is ready for war
Do you mean like that?
This is my nomination for riochet’s aritcal of the year.
Ya, they mean well, don’t they? I mean: they’re really on our side. I wonder how it would look if they were just cowards?
The media is the linchpin in all this. Conservatives can convince people if the media didn’t cause us so much damage. The media — as presently comprised — is a destructive element in our society. Conservatives need to fight the Dems and all of their partners in crime. The media is an arm of the Democratic Party but our guys simply refuse to fight them directly and personally — the only way you really damage political enemies and their reputations.
Think about it: the only alternative to fighting this domestic enemy is to submit and/or run for cover.
Boy howdy. Been saying that for years, myself.
A lot of this discussion is about how best to rearrange the deck chairs. That might not be the conversation we should have. Maybe this is what’s going on; maybe this is Why Trump?:
Hence, Trump….end of discussion.
I think public pressure still works, but right now there is a lot of apathy. Most liberal politicians or bureaucrats probably are not liberal activists, as in universities. They likely believe they are serving the majority or protecting a substantial minority and respond to the same social pressures we all do.
In the Steven Hayward article, he writes about progressives advocating for “Justice, equality, and the right side of history” where conservatives speak to policy goals. We need to create narratives that explain why small government, constitutional law, personal freedom, and responsibility are valuable and applicable to everyone. This includes disaffected Trump voters, millennials, minorities, or immigrants. This is the long game liberals took in the universities and it may take as long for conservatives to rebuild.
To spread conservatism, our personal lives should model that freedom and responsibility promote a dignified life. This example can be more powerful than the weak connections felt towards officials in Washington.
I don’t know about near term success. But if conservatism is true, the truth will come out in the end.
This is obvious nonsense. If the majority favored same-sex marriage, men in the ladies room, and kangaroo courts in our colleges, the liberals would not have resorted to the courts and executive agencies to work their will. They would have fought for it in the state legislatures and in Congress.
All of this has happened because the people who call themselves conservatives at election time and serve in the House and Senate are timeservers. Were they willing to use the power of the purse, many things would be different.
Thank you @paularahe for bringing that article to our attention and adding your thoughts. It seems to have stirred the pot here a bit.
I too hate the omnibus bill approach, as others have mentioned. Just throw everything in the pot. It obscures who is doing what. This system seemed to come around the same time complaints started about “pork” bills. Pretty easy to hide anything in the giant bill without getting noticed. The bills hidden within are probably just headliners waiting for the unelected bureaucrats to fill in the blanks and make the laws that reek havoc on us.
We need to go back to writing readable bills that people are directly responsible for.
It is also true that many of these things were created in times of crisis and not because of random public sentiment. Social Security and Medicare were part of the New Deal response to the Great Depression and a 50% poverty rate for seniors. The Department of Energy was consolidated (and likely expanded) in response to the energy crisis of the 1970’s. The Department of Homeland Security was created in response to 9/11.
Many are created from exploitation of the public’s current sentiment than from sober discussion over time. I admit it’s a fine point, but it illustrates that public support can be manipulated. The Constitution seems written to anticipate this, by allowing only those powers listed to be performed by the Federal government. Many federal agencies are created with vague mandates, with “rules” to be written later – by the agency.
As for changing minds, there’s evidence we did that at the Federal level in Republican Congressional sweeps during Obama’s term – and handily. Many state and local legislatures have gone heavily Republican over the same time. The current evidence suggests there is popular sentiment to at least do what the Republicans are running on. One of those promises from Speaker Ryan is regular order. From McConnell is repeal Obamacare. From others individual funding bills for individual items. None of these – much less using the power of the purse to even start balancing the budget – have even been tried by the entire Congress. This is the frustration.
Trump is not the sledgehammer you’re looking for. Look at his promises. Where is the bit where he spends less money?
Yes, indeed. Thanks for dropping by Dr. @paulrahe!
I always thought Ron Paul’s strategy was pretty awesome from a cynicism point of view. Load up a budget bill with your pork projects and then vote against the bill knowing full well that it’s going to pass. You get to play pious orthodox libertarian and still get your pork projects that get you re-elected.
And not delegating legislative authority to the executive branch and using powers granted to Congress by the Constitution to prevent the imperial courts from legislating. Like Dr. Rahe says, they have the power of the purse, they should use it along with their other powers.
Even where laws exist covering such things they just waive the requirements. The DoD spends millions of dollars every year conducting wage surveys across the nation to determine the hourly rates government should be paying its blue collar work force to keep it in step and in line with comparable private sector trades. They do these as a matter of law. Then some time between October and December the president waves his magic EO wand and sets a blanket pay raise percentage (or not, as was the case for several years of Obama’s first term.) I’ve been employed by the Navy for a decade and have never had a pay rate set according to the wage surveys or according to the laws governing this.
Thank you, Dr. Rahe. You are the brightest light at Ricochet.
I can agree with the diagnosis of the problem, it just is very hard to agree that the solution is Trump.
Rather than eliminate departments, cut the funding for abusive programs and personnel. The GOP made a hesitant move in this direction with the IRS, but it has to be sustained, and the goal of protecting people from abusive government has to be preached from the rooftops, day after day. And we need to stop the bad habit of letting the hate machine frame the issue, and the bad habit of throwing the actors from the rooftop for their moral and personality flaws (as revealed by the hate machine).
The solution is not Trump, because there is no such thing as “the solution .” It could be the way forward, or up out of this hole, though. Maybe.
The easiest way for a Republican member of Congress to get defeated by the voters is to criticize Social Security or Medicare. The average Republican voter supports large entitlement programs that are bankrupting our country. That is why Trump was able to win the nomination despite being opposed to any entitlement reform. Trump is, after all, “the king of debt.”
Trump’s nomination was a rebellion against the belief that government should do less for the American people. Trump said in the 1st Republican debate, Single payer socialized medicine works “incredibly well” and promised not to reform runaway entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Trump was not rebuked by Republican voters for saying “me too” to the Democrats. Trump was rewarded. Politicians of both parties respond to the voters and about 70 percent of the voters want “free stuff.”
The Republican Congress passed a repeal of Obamacare and this legislation was vetoed by President Obama. Obama’s veto was sustained by the required one-third plus one of one house of Congress. Republicans do not have 67 percent (two-thirds) of both the US Senate and US House. They have about 54 percent. Not enough to override a presidential veto. Like it or not, a political party must win the White House, the US Senate and the US House simultaneously in order to reduce the size and scope of government. The American voters will not support reducing the size and scope of government. American voters can be relied on to “vote for the check.”
You ignore the power of the purse.
You ignore the veto power of the President. Obamacare is not an appropriation bill. It is an entitlement. In order to repeal or modify an entitlement program, legislation must be passed by Congress and signed by the president. If legislation is vetoed by the President, a two-thirds vote of the US Senate and the US House is required to override that veto.
The only way out of control spending on Medicare and Social Security can be rationalized is if a President and Congress supporting such reform is elected simultaneously. Donald Trump has said that he opposes entitlement reform. Donald Trump praised President Obama’s economic stimulus plan in 2009 in an interview with Fox Business Channel.