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Peas in a Pod
The Mitt Romney video that Ben Domenech has posted below deserves attention. It demonstrates – if the point needs demonstrating – that Romney is a managerial progressive. His initial response to Obamacare was to want “to repeal the bad and keep the good,” and among the things he thought good about the President’s healthcare reform were the incentive structure (i.e., the individual mandate enforced by fines) and the provision that insurance be provided to those with pre-existing conditions who had not seen fit to pay for insurance when they thought that they were healthy (i.e., making the responsible pay for the irresponsible).
In short, Governor Romney sees us as children who need to be policed in a thorough-going way for our own good. His objections to Obamacare are those of a social engineer. This is the real Romney. The fellow now calling for the wholesale repeal of Obamacare is, as I have argued at length in an earlier post, a chameleon. He will do what he needs to do to attract our votes, or, at least, in his awkward, inept way, he will try. And in this one particular he may feel bound to keep his promise. But once in office – like Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush One, and Bush Two – he will drift into extending the power and scope of the administrative entitlements state. In most regards, he will consolidate what Barack Obama has initiated.
I would like to think that Newt Gingrich represents a genuine alternative. His record in office as Speaker of the House of Representatives is much more conservative than Mitt Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts. But his record since then is even more disappointing than I thought it was when I described him as the wild card.
I was inclined to give Gingrich the benefit of the doubt with regard to the consulting work that he did for Freddie Mac. I was wrong. As The Wall Street Journal points out in an editorial in this morning’s newspaper, Gingrich publicly defended both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as late as April, 2007 when he remarked, “While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.” He defended Fannie and Fred on the ground there are times “when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development,” and he described himself as being “in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism.”
As the Journal points out, Gingrich was notably silent when Congressman Richard Baker, Senator Richard Shelby, and Bush White House aide Kevin Marsh went to “the barricades” in an attempt to force a reform of Fannie and Freddie:
As for the destructive duo’s business model that Mr. Gingrich said he didn’t want to change, this was precisely their problem. Far from a private-public partnership, they were private companies with a federal guarantee against failure. Their model was private profit but socialized risk. This produced riches on Wall Street and for company executives. But taxpayers bore the risk of loss—to the tune of $141 billion so far. Why does the historian think they were called “government-sponsored enterprises”?
The real history lesson here may be what the Freddie episode reveals about Mr. Gingrich’s political philosophy. To wit, he has a soft spot for big government when he can use it for his own political ends. He also supported the individual mandate in health care in the 1990s, and we recall when he lobbied us to endorse the prescription drug benefit with only token Medicare reform in 2003.
As late as Thursday night’s debate, Mr. Gingrich was still defending his Freddie ties as a way of “helping people buy houses.” But that is the same excuse Barney Frank used to block reform, and the political pursuit of making housing affordable is what led Freddie to guarantee loans to so many borrowers who couldn’t repay them. Yesterday’s SEC lawsuit against former Fannie and Freddie executives for misleading investors about subprime-mortgage risks only reinforces the point.
In short, Gingrich is a lot like Romney. Neither man recognizes that the source of our problems is government meddling and the distortion that this produces in what would otherwise be a free and relatively efficient market. What they think of as a cure is, in fact, the disease. Fannie and Freddie, with the help of a Federal Reserve Board that kept interest rates artificially low for a very long time, produced the subprime mortgage bubble and the subsequent economic crash. If healthcare is outrageously expensive and health insurance can be hard to get, it is because of the manner in which the federal and state governments structure and regulate the market. What these managerial progressives in their desperation to manage the lives of the rest of us fail to understand is that the intellectual presumption underpinning the aspiration to “rational administration” that they embrace is the principal cause of our woes.
Romney can perhaps be forgiven for his folly. He is not an especially well-educated man. He is the son of a businessman, and he is himself a business-school product. He understands management; he believes in management; and he is ready, willing, and able to manage our lives for us. Like many Republicans of similar background, he has given next to no thought to first principles.
For Gingrich, there is no excuse. He poses as an historian, and he was trained as one. He is a lot more thoughtful than Romney, a lot more imaginative, and a lot better informed. But he also lacks perspective – for he has been inattentive to the American Founders. Or he has read them through the eyes of the Progressive historians of the early part of the twentieth century.
Alexander Hamilton and Teddy Roosevelt do not belong together. The former was an exponent of natural rights and an advocate of limited government; and, despite their differences, he had far more in common with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson than with the Progressives of a later day. In office, Jefferson and Madison embraced much of what they had once found objectionable in Hamilton’s program.
Teddy Roosevelt was in no way a conservative. He was a sharp critic of the American Founding and of the Constitution it produced. He was prepared to jettison natural rights and limited government, and he did so in a dramatic fashion ninety-nine years ago when he ran for the Presidency as the nominee of the Progressive Party on a radical platform advocating the creation of what is now known as the administrative entitlements state.
A few weeks ago, Robert K. Landers reviewed in The Wall Street Journal a book by Scott Farris, entitled Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race and Changed the Nation. Among the influential losers discussed in the book was Thomas E. Dewey, who ran unsuccessfully against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944 and Harry Truman in 1948:
“Dewey, along with his protégés Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon,” Mr. Farris writes, “moved the Republican Party away from an agenda of repealing the New Deal to a grudging acceptance of the permanent welfare state.” Dewey—who had been a nationally renowned prosecutor and then a three-term governor of New York—called himself a “New Deal Republican.” He favored the pursuit of liberal ends by conservative means. “It was fine for the federal government to initiate social reforms, Dewey believed, but those reforms should be implemented at the state or local level, and they should be funded in a fiscally responsible manner that did not increase the national debt.”
Dewey was the heir of Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, as was every Republican Presidential nominee since his time – apart from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are cut from the same cloth. As New Deal Republicans, they are peas in a pod, and they have a lot more in common with Barack Obama than with Alexander Hamilton.
It is a scandal that the Republican Party cannot do better than these two at a time of opportunity like the one in which we live.
Published in General
That’s just one of a million Gingrich throwaway lines. I think Hamilton had some interesting views too.
Next someone will say that Lincoln was no conservative, and Bill Bennett have to replace him as nominee for the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
What defines a conservative as a conservative before the Cold War? Ron Paul-type monetary views? ·Dec 18 at 5:51am
Edited on Dec 18 at 05:59 am
You should read through the 1912 platform of the Progressive Party, for which TR bore full responsibility. I link it in my post above. It is a blueprint for the New Deal. What defined a conservative before the Cold War was a commitment to federalism, the separation of powers, and limited government. That is what defines conservatives today as well. All of the most fundamental issues being debated today were on the table in the election of 1912.
1. I don’t like Gingrich, but since he is the only one talking about EMP, I have to hope for his election. EMP is the only thing reasonably likely to cause the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of Americans within our lifetimes (prove me wrong–please!)
Well, if it is hundreds of millions of Americans, then we have nothing to fear – since that is all of us. Something of that magnitude is an existential threat and would end our way of life – we wouldn’t be voting for president in that case.
If you though global warming was bad, just wait for the power grab that EMP engenders. Just because Newt talks about it, doesn’t mean he knows what to do about it.
Here is the irony: Levin and Limbaugh backed Romney in 2008.
An unanswered question for me is whether their early emphasis on ideological purity and criticism of Romney was a factor in Ryan, Daniels, and Christie deciding not to be candidates.
Another excellent historian, Ron Radosh, disagrees with Prof. Rahe about Teddy Roosevelt: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/12/07/why-barack-obama-is-not-a-modern-day-theodore-roosevelt/
From katievs: “Since there are good solid reasons for doubting that Newt is the right man for the job we’re facing, it is strange to the point of being almost comical to find him being defended so vehemently–as if anyone who opposes him is part of the establishment selling out true patriots. For heaven’s sake.” My thoughts excacty. But I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this post — especially Professor Rahe, whose students are lucky to have him in the classroom — for clarifying the choice. Neither guy is The Guy. Wish it weren’t so, but it is.
1) The party didn’t give us a lousy choice, the ranking members didn’t have the chops to put their hat in the ring – leaving us the field we have now.
2) True, but since they continually hire managers like Mike Murphy to tell them how to run elections, what do you expect. The Mikes of this world are great at crunching the numbers, but they fail to quantify the sentiment – focusing on the appearances and not the substance.
3) My local Tea Party recognizes that if the Tea Party tries to make a third party, we will lose, throwing future elections to the Democrats in-perpetuity. It is better to co-opt the Republican party away from the big government wing.
Ditto.
To have to reach back to 1970 to find Hilary’s use of the term seems to be dodging the issue. ·Dec 18 at 12:01am
The word “gay” has also been in continuous use since that time. But, we all know that its meaning has changed. So, too, the word “progressive” has changed and morphed now into being identified with anti-American hard leftists. TR would simply not be a progressive nowadays. Alger Hiss would, Henry Wallace would, Barack Obama is.
You are simply misusing it here and elsewhere to sow dissension. You are using it as a form of litmus test for purity — plain and simple
Your are wrong here. Ron is talking about Teddy Roosevelt’s speech in 1910. I was referring to his Progressive Party Platform in 1912. Read the latter, which I link above, and see what you think.
The only politician I know of who really has espoused conservatives views credibly is Sarah Palin. She seems to represent a new, purer form of conservative populism. Unfortunately, it’s undeveloped and not yet mature as a political force. ·Dec 17 at 6:16pm
Edited on Dec 17 at 06:18 pm
She has remarkable political instincts. One zinger after another I hope that we have not heard the last from her.
“Romney and Gingrich are practical men — sensitive to the bottom line. Obama is anything but. That is the difference.”
I sincerely hope that Romney and Gingrich are sensitive to the bottom line — with respect to government. Clearly they are sensitive to the bottom line in their personal businesses. But would a Romney, as president, be more sensitive to the bottom line than George W. Bush? Was he more sensitive to the bottom line as governor of Massachusetts?
Nevertheless, they would, as you point out, be more sensitive to the bottom line than our current president. ·Dec 17 at 6:24pm
Romney was pretty good on fiscal matters in Massachusetts. Gingrich forced Clinton to balance the US budget. However critical we may be of these men, we should not think them irresponsible in this particular.
…
So ad hominem statements are considered deep thinking now? Boy, I’m glad you took the time to show us this. It’s really deep. Just a half hour and we’ll all come out of our dementia? Deep Deep stuff.
Not deep, light-hearted.
Since there are good solid reasons for doubting that Newt is the right man for the job we’re facing, it is strange to the point of being almost comical to find him being defended so vehemently–as if anyone who opposes him is part of the establishment selling out true patriots.
For heaven’s sake.
I don’t take character assassination lightly, for heaven’s sake.
As a Republican, you should also be against it. It is used too often against good people.
This is a class thing, really. George Will is more in the class of Barack Obama — he would more likely have him over for dinner than he would Newt Gingrich, for example. It is this class that is selling us out. And Prof. Rahe is playing into their hands, unwittingly, by confusing people on what the issues are. He is doing the work for ruling class.
The managerial governor (whether progressive or not) insists on scripting virtually all the moves of the game in advance on the theory that the players are not intelligent enough to make decisions on their own. ·Dec 17 at 6:28pm
Nicely and elegantly put.
Paul A. Rahe
katievs
Maybe with Christie. Daniels opted out because of his wife’s concerns. The spotlight would certainly have been hard on her. Ryan has young children, and that was decisive for him.
Paul A. Rahe
Larry Koler:
. ·Dec 18 at 12:01am
You are simply misusing it here and elsewhere to sow dissension. You are using it as a form of litmus test for purity — plain and simple ·Dec 18 at 7:05am
Utter nonsense. Read the 1912 platform of the Progressive Party. The meaning has not changed.
And Romney? There is no substantive difference between Romneycare and Obamacare. One does not have to be a purist to notice and be appalled.
No one who is even half-way conservative could enthusiastically embrace either of these candidates. ·Dec 17 at 6:02pm
I know I keep returning to this, but I’m really struggling to understand. If supporting the Constitution is an important instrumental good, Romneycare is constitutional, and Obamacare is not, all of which I understand to be your positions (if I misrepresent you here, it is through my foolishness rather than an attempt at cunning) is the important instrumental good not a substantial difference?
Also, just for the record, I consider myself more than half-way conservative. I’m willing to accept that this is a subjective judgment, however.
Larry Koler
The word “gay” has also been in continuous use since that time. But, we all know that its meaning has changed. So, too, the word “progressive” has changed and morphed now into being identified with anti-American hard leftists. TR would simply not be a progressive nowadays. Alger Hiss would, Henry Wallace would, Barack Obama is.
You are simply misusing it here and elsewhere to sow dissension. You are using it as a form of litmus test for purity — plain and simple ·Dec 18 at 7:05am
But it fell out of use. It returned more recently. Nonetheless, if Romney had called himself “a progressive”, you’d be spot on. Much like if someone called himself “a gay” when that meaning was not in common use. Using the term as an adjective, however, is not the same. Jonah Goldberg wrote a lot about this circa 2006-2008.
I don’t take character assassination lightly, for heaven’s sake.
As a Republican, you should also be against it. It is used too often against good people.
I am against character assassination (which involves intentionally trying to destroy a person’s good name). I don’t engage in it and I deplore it when I come across it.
But, being a conservative, I also hold that “character matters”, and therefore that public discussion of candidates’ characters is a good and necessary part of the process. One can decry a person’s well-documented moral defects without engaging in character assassination of the kind Palin, for instance, underwent.
Newt’s character is deeply flawed. That’s his doing, not the media’s, and it’s a serious item for serious conservatives to take into consideration.
And apart from that is his political record with (besides some great accomplishments) its progressivist, big-government tendencies.
He has real strengths over Romney. He may be on balance more conservative than Romney. I grant it gladly. But that has to be measured against Romney’s strengths over him, including a strong and steady moral character.
If you though global warming was bad, just wait for the power grab that EMP engenders. Just because Newt talks about it, doesn’t mean he knows what to do about it. ·Dec 17 at 6:36pm
What I’ve read is that a few hundred million dollars of transformer-hardening (I don’t know what the really means exactly) would prevent the backbone of our power system being destroyed in a Carrington-like event. We could recover in such a circumstance. I suspect that the reason EMP is ignored so broadly is precisely because its resolution does not require a massive invasion of the government into the few freeish remnants of our once free society. It could even be considered constitutional (upgrading national power grids sounds related to interstate commerce to me, unlike banning farmers from growing grain to feed their own livestock.)
But I don’t want to live in fear of EMP. If you can provide some links to resources that show either that EMP isn’t a problem, or that its resolution is onerous beyond AGW’s, then by all mean do so. In the mean time, I’d suggest buying food and ammo.
I think TR had some rather conservative views regarding immigration.
So do many union members [and others with the make-work bias] who otherwise hold leftist views.
Larry, Reagan said in his first inaugural that government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. Progressives do not believe it.
Thomas Paine wrote:
Conservatives believe this, progressives deny it. Progressives believe above all other things that in, with, and by government all our problems can be solved. Utopian progressives such as Obama, Hillary, et al. do not qualify the statement. Managerial progressives do add a qualification. They believe that well managed government can solve most (if not all) our problems. In both positions is the denial that government is but a necessary evil and often the source of, rather than the solution to, our problems. This is what I understand when Professor Rahe uses the term managerial progressive.
Thomas Paine wrote:
Conservatives believe this, progressives deny it. Progressives believe above all other things that in, with, and by government all our problems can be solved. Utopian progressives such as Obama, Hillary, et al. do not qualify the statement. Managerial progressives do add a qualification. They believe that well managed government can solve most (if not all) our problems. In both positions is the denial that government is but a necessary evil and often the source of, rather than the solution to, our problems. This is what I understand when Professor Rahe uses the term managerial progressive.
But, what’s it in aid of, Prawn. It serves our enemies better than it elucidates any discussion that will help this country. This is a Libertarian disease, this perfectionism. And the term progressive can do nothing but sow dissension — which is his intention.
Sadly, LCJ, Superman isn’t running this time. We’re just going to have to make do with what we’ve got. Blasting our candidates with both barrels over and over isn’t going to help us in the general election.
Why doesn’t Newt run for Senate somewhere? He’s much more of a Senator than President. Besides, he’s not becoming President.
Rob, I disagree. We have only extrapolations of existing data to know how either would react to the presidency. We do know that Mitt has managed difficult corporate turnarounds and we do know that Newt balanced the Federal budget. For all their character flaws (luckily none of us have them), they’ve accomplished impressive things of direct import to the job of president.
I strongly support Newt because I think he’s most likely to give us the biggest changes in DC.
But, what’s it in aid of, Prawn. It serves our enemies better than it elucidates any discussion that will help this country. This is a Libertarian disease, this perfectionism. And the term progressive can do nothing but sow dissension — which is his intention. ·Dec 18 at 8:17am
I find it quite clarifying. It is a constant reminder of first principles. It confirms that all snake oil salesmen are selling the same thing, the snake oil known as government solutions to society’s problems.
With that kind of certainty I should have you pick out some lotto numbers for me.
King of Prawn: 4-16-28-8-9.
It is a scandal that the Republican Party cannot do better than these two at a time of opportunity like the one in which we live.
I am not sure whether more blame rests with exhausted, corrupt elements of the establishment, or with the fickle incoherence of primary voters for this situation: but I am sure that there is more than enough of both for both to be indicted.
Scandal indeed–and doubly so when one surveys the whole course of 2010 and this primary season and sees the fecklessness and weakness of both parties on such a grand scale displayed for all the world to see.
I’ve said before that in the great optimist/pessimist debate about America, that I am an optimist. A man never bets against his country.
But I am given pause, from time to time: my country’s inability to summon its strength in so perilous a time is of great concern, and the mismatch of men and moment bodes ill.
For Larry and Michael Tee: I like this line from Mark Steyn over at NRO, which I hadn’t seen til just now:
“Anyone who thinks that sentient beings require an ulterior motive to be wary of a Newt nomination should have an herbal tea and lie down in a darkened room for half an hour.”