Published in Political Parties

Are the Republicans degenerating or just revealing their true selves?  With his latest charge that M. Mitt speaks French (Newt does too), it must be speculated that Newt is indulging in (self-)caricature. Of course it can always get worse--someone can appeal to states' rights.  Here's a good explanation of why conservatives should speak of federalism instead--plus a few other New Year's political resolutions.

Noting that "progressives have long lamented the fact that the Framers designed a Constitution replete with impediments to federal government activism," the eminent George Will reveals the latest twist of logic by which Colorado liberals are attempting to use the Constitution as an impediment to popular referendums (which would otherwise limit the power of the ruling classes in state legislatures).

Sextion IV, Article IV of the U.S. Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."

The folks in Colorado argue (tellingly, before an unelected judiciary) that a Colorado initiative limiting the legislature's license to raise taxes (the progressive's golden calf) denies the state a republican form of government. That is, only elected bureaucrats can craft laws - not the people themselves. While direct democracy has many flaws (and was hence rejected by the Framers as an insecure means of safeguarding liberty), its outright prohibition is a novel reading of the Guarantee Clause. Without delving into the history of the clause, I deeply suspect this reading is flawed.

Politically, however, liberals continue to reveal the surprising degree to which they are willing to oppose the people and popular government in favor of a ruling class. On an elementary level, the left - with all of its liberal ideologies of radical freedom, individuality and nonconformity - is incredibly devoted to the system, bureaucratic institutions and ever-expanding government.

I'm having lunch at the Mad Boar in Wallace, North Carolina. Not bad. Large, Irish-pub-like atmosphere, attractive and competent waitresses serving me a cool glass of Pinor Gris, with a pork stew soup, followed by a whiskey river trout. Second glass of wine, and I'm reading, slower now, reactions to last night's GOP debate. The best is by Scott Johnson at Power Line. Crisp and to the point, even witty when the subject allows it. I agree with his thoughts too bad they have to be cruel.

My esteemed colleague Pete, on the debt fracas, below: "the whole controversy was ugly and at most minimally productive."  To the contrary, I think this was the most important constitutional debate in memory (other than Obamacare, though I admit I am getting old and forgetful).  I wonder whether the Tea Party critics have ever purchased a car.  Do they pay the sticker price?  They used the power they had to educate the people on our disastrous situation.  Would the public be more aware of the crisis had a routine raise been voted through?

My high esteem for Senator Coburn has increased.  He exposed Grover Norquist's odd accounting on what constitutes a tax increase:  Cutting a subsidy (ethanol) would be a tax increase, in Norquist's view.  If that's the case, then reform without a tax increase is impossible.  To be fair, a cut in the subsidy would hurt the industry being subsidized and cost jobs, etc.  The press coverage of the new law emphasizes the temporary harm to the economy, caused by a cut in public spending, though the reforms will have a good long-term effect. 

As with Obamacare, the debt ceiling bill exposed Washington's ways.  What shocks us about Washington procedure is in fact routine.  Congress passes laws that no one reads through and that grant the real law-making power to bureaucracies.  That is the problem.  That is what the Tea Party, for whatever naievete it exhibits, has exposed:  Our routines are rotten.

Bob Hope on the Democrats.

The Washington Times has published my article predicting the end of the Republican's moratorium on internal feuding.

The Republican presidential candidates have presented a united front. They've held hands and stuck to the message. President Obama is the problem. They - the mature, resolved and above-the-fray Republican opposition - are the solution. Newt Gingrich momentarily strayed from the path by criticizing Paul Ryan's budget plan and was swiftly reprimanded by the greater GOP establishment. Even the recent GOP debate in New Hampshire was more of a GOP powwow. There has been an obvious consensus to defer the intraparty feuding until the GOP has collectively, convincingly and resoundingly identified Mr. Obama as the nation's albatross.

However, Obama's decline and Romney's ascent in the polls "have emboldened the Republican field to abandon their familial camaraderie and adopt a new strategy."

So, after playing nice in New Hampshire - and being widely criticized by the media for refusing to take CNN's repeated invitation to begin in-fighting - the candidates have begun lining up to take shots at the current king of the hill.

Please RTWT.

Harold Meyerson recently set out to sneer, in the pages and pixels of the Washington Post, but succeeded more decisively in refuting himself. It's always a bad sign when a writer introduces statistical evidence that weakens the argument he's trying to make.

Meyerson wanted to show that the Republican approach to cutting the deficit—spending cuts only, no tax increases—is absurd. His point on taxes is that in 1955, according to the Campaign for America's Future, the country's 400 wealthiest taxpayers had an average income of $13.3 million (in 2008 dollars) and paid 51.2% of that in federal income taxes. In 2008 the richest 400 had an average income of $270.5 million and paid 18% of that in federal income taxes. In 1955, he notes, "we could afford to pave roads."

But wait. 51.2% of $13.3 million is $6,809,600, the average federal income tax bill for the most fortunate 400 in 1955, using 2008 dollars. Thus, the federal government gathered in the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $2.724 billion from the whole lot of them. 18% of $270.5 million is $48.69 million, meaning that average tax bill for the top 400 was, adjusted for inflation, more than seven times as high in 2008 as in 1955. Those 400 households collectively accounted for $19.476 billion in federal revenues.

It speaks well of American governance during the Eisenhower administration that we managed to pave our roads while receiving $2.724 billion in federal taxes from our richest citizens. It speaks poorly of the quality of our governance today if, despite the additional $16.75 billion the families in the capstone of the income pyramid paid to the IRS in 2008, we can't pave the roads as often or as well, which Meyerson suggests is the case.

Assuming Mr. Meyerson owns and operates a calculator, it makes sense to ascribe his mistake—speaking as if the tax revenues generated by the richest 400 have gotten much smaller when they have clearly gotten much bigger—to a philosophical disposition rather than a mathematical error. Most people, and certainly most NLT readers, assume the purpose of a tax system is to raise revenues to finance the government's activities. A seven-fold increase in tax revenue from one segment of the population would, accordingly, mean that the government could undertake more activities, or that other segments of the population could pay lower taxes, which is a rough description of what actually happened in America between 1955 and 2008.

If, however, the primary purpose of the tax system is to punish or reproach the rich, to express our envy and resentment of people who are rich and getting richer, then it makes sense to treat the much larger revenues from that cohort as a minor detail and concentrate, angrily, on the fact that their incomes have gone up while their tax rates have gone down. Six years ago the columnist Jonathan Chait insisted that such malign intentions toward the wealthy played no part in liberals' preference for progressive taxes: "Liberals want to make the rich pay higher tax rates not because they hate them.… It's because somebody has to pay for the government, and the rich can more easily bear higher rates."

Well, yes, one advantage to being rich is that you can afford things easily that would be difficult or impossible for other people, including the 91% federal income tax bracket that was on the books in 1955. The problem with Chait's argument is there's no way to say where it stops. If the principle is that the rich should pay higher taxes because they can more easily bear the rates, then we should keep raising tax rates until the rich can no longer bear them—until, that is, they're no longer rich. One need not be rich to find this prospect disquieting. A government that can take whatever it wants strikes a lot of people as unfair, and unfree.

Assurances that only the rich will suffer as a consequence haven't convinced most people that this policy is fair, or that it really will be confined to the wealthy. In November 2010 voters in Washington, a state blue enough to have given Barack Obama 57% of its vote in 2008, rejected a state income tax applicable only to individuals making more than $200,000 per year and families making over $400,000. That most prosperous 1.2% of the state's population evidently had a lot of less-affluent friends, since 65 percent of the voters opposed the tax. One factor was that the promise to limit the income tax to the $200,000 and $400,000 thresholds was good for all of two years, after which the legislature could have applied it more broadly.

Meyerson makes a second point. Not only are the rich getting off too lightly, but the main beneficiaries of the federal government's activities tend to be red states. He cites a Tax Foundation study showing that in 2005 the federal government spent between $1.76 and $2.03 in New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, and West Virginia for every dollar it received from those states in taxes. By contrast, the blue states subsidize the federal government's operations: New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Minnesota received between 61 and 72 cents for every dollar paid in federal taxes. The states that "drain the government also constitute the Republicans' electoral base," writes Meyerson, "while those that produce the wealth constitute the Democrats'."

But, again, there's more to the story. The Tax Foundation study includes money transferred between citizens and the federal government as well as between the federal government and state and local ones. As the organization explains in the introduction to its study, "The most important factor determining whether a state is a net beneficiary is per capita income. States with wealthier residents pay higher federal taxes per capita thanks to the progressive structure of the income tax." New Jersey and Connecticut are net exporters of dollars, vis-à-vis the federal government, precisely because progressive federal taxes, which Meyerson imagines to have been relegated to the dustbin of history, draw in so much money from those states' disproportionately affluent residents. Mississippi and West Virginia have disproportionately few residents in the top tax brackets, but more than their share of poor residents receiving assistance from Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, school lunches, and a long list of other government programs.

If the disparities between importer and exporter states are intolerable, then perfect fairness will be attained when no such disparities exist, and every one of the fifty states receives precisely as much from Washington as it sends to Washington. At that point, however, the involvement of the federal government becomes completely pointless. The big steps needed to reduce the disparities between states that are net importers of federal dollars and net exporters would be to abolish the progressive federal income tax in favor of a flat tax or Value Added Tax, and do away with federal programs that direct assistance to households with low incomes.

I'm not as mean-spirited as Harold Meyerson, so I'll suggest consideration of a less drastic remedy, proposed 38 years ago by William Buckley in his book Four Reforms. Buckley would confine eligibility for welfare state programs to Americans living in states whose median income was below the national average. Because Buckley thought it was economically and politically debilitating to "turn the skies black with criss-crossing dollars," his reform would ground a lot of those dollars. Federal welfare expenditures would shrink, as the number of people eligible for them was limited, and prosperous states would pay for their own welfare programs without the transit and administrative fees of sending them on to Washington and then back to the states. Mr. Meyerson, do you wish to second the motion?

The journalist Joel Mathis asked, in connection with a book I wrote, since conservatives accuse liberals of wanting a government that's always bigger than the one we have, what's the conservative reply to the accusation that we on the Right always want taxes that are smaller than those we currently pay?  My answer is one way to describe the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals want government spending to be the independent variable that determines tax levels, and conservatives want government spending to be the dependent variable determined by taxes. I'm a conservative in this regard, not just because I think the government we get by letting our tolerance for taxes determine the size of our welfare state will be smaller than the one we get by telling the government to do all sorts of compassionate things, and then mentioning as an aside some years later that we'll need to raise taxes to pay for all our commitments. I'm a conservative because I think it's democratically healthy to confront the hard question about taxes first and directly, and then let our answer to that question determine the budget perimeter for our welfare state. It is democratically unhealthy to proceed the way liberals have habitually dealt with the problem, by promising generous programs that will "pay for themselves" or even "pay for themselves many times over," and only later, after people have come to expect and depend on the stream of government benefits, fess up about the taxes required to sustain them.

Mathis suggests a fiscal and moral symmetry: For liberals the answer to how much government should spend, especially on social welfare programs is always, "Just a little bit more," while for conservatives the answer about the right level of taxes is always, "Just a little bit less." But there are important asymmetries. Believing that we should have all the government, but only as much government, as we're willing to pay for--as opposed to all the government we need, or think we need, or just plain want--conservatives are happy to discuss the limits of a democratically bounded welfare state. Doing so is sound economics, because we'll never have a structural deficit resulting from a built-in mismatch between the government's spending commitments and its taxing capacities. It's also good politics because it insists that the citizens make their decisions about the scope of the welfare state on the basis of clear, honest assessments of what its programs will provide and cost. Both the politicians and the voters, in other words, are required to be adults.

Medicare's initial cost projections, for example, were based on the assumption that people receiving large government subsidies for hospital stays and doctor visits would avail themselves of those benefits at exactly the same rate as they did when they were paying for those services on their own. This same spirit of candor is reflected in the argument for Obamacare, which insulted our intelligence by claiming that a massive expansion of our entitlement programs was, above all, a way to control costs - although how it would control costs couldn't exactly be specified since the government boards that would come up with all sorts of ingenious solutions to the problem of delivering the same level of health care to all the people now getting it, and additional health care to millions of others, while dramatically reducing per-patient health care outlays, wouldn't issue their initial recommendations until after Barack Obama's presidential memoirs were published.

Moreover, when liberals feel that when we're closing in on alleviating the ancient causes of human misery--people being ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished, etc.--they react by getting to work on coming up with new problems for the welfare state to solve. In 1957 Arthur Schlesinger called for government to address the "problem" of "spiritual unemployment," and, sure enough, by 1965 President Johnson is promising us that the Great Society will banish "boredom and restlessness." This is the madhouse aspect of the political situation I was trying to describe in "Never Enough"--conservatives' feeling that as we put check marks by the items on the top of the list, whether from growing prosperity or the success of welfare state programs, liberals are busy adding new items to the bottom of the list.

There's another way in which the preferred liberal framework for considering the welfare state argues against an open, productive discussion about what the government should and shouldn't do. You point out that federal taxes account for a lower proportion of GDP than they have for 60 years. But not all GDP percentages are created equal. In 1950 the per capita Gross Domestic Product was $12,343, using the OMB's "chained price index" to adjust for inflation by expressing 1950's nominal dollars in terms of the dollar's buying power in 2005. In 2010 per capita GDP, deflated the same way, was $42,190. America was nearly three-and-a-half times more prosperous in 2010 than in 1950.

If liberals would participate in a discussion about what the welfare state should do, and the limits to what the welfare state should do, we could grapple with the question of how long-term economic growth would enable us to finance the welfare state's operations with a constant or even diminishing slice of a growing pie. This is certainly the approach we have taken to defense spending. In 1953, at the height of the Korean War, America devoted 14.2% of GDP to national defense. In 2010 we spent 4.4%. By this measure, our defense spending has declined by nearly two thirds. But America today is a much richer country than it was in 1953, even after taking into account the current slow recovery from a severe recession. Using the OMB's "total composite defense deflator," our defense outlays in 2010 were $617 billion, measured in 2005 dollars, while those expenditures in 1953 were $515 billion. Measured in real dollars rather than GDP points, we spent 20% more for defense in 2010 than we did in 1953.

Welfare state spending has grown in relative terms and really grown in absolute terms. In 1950, the last time federal taxes yielded less than 15% of GDP, federal outlays for "human resources" amounted to $44 billion, using OMB's "total composite non-defense deflator" to express every year's outlays in terms of the dollar's value in 2005. ("Human resources" here includes all federal outlays for Social Security; all other income maintenance programs; Medicare; all other health programs; and all programs for education, job training, and social services.) In 2010 human resources outlays, deflated the same way, were $2.06 trillion, 47 times as large. Even if we adjust for population growth, the increase is enormous, from $288 per American in 1950 to $6,547 per capita in 2010, a 23-fold increase. This increase is the result of devoting a much larger slice of a much bigger pie to human resources in 2010, when human resources outlays equaled 15.7% of GDP, than we did in 1950, when they were only 2% of GDP.

So, Mathis asks, how high should do conservatives want our taxes to be? High enough to pay for the things the government needs to do. Which are those? In a democracy, all the things the people feel the government really ought to do. I'm happy to abide by the outcome of the democratic debate over that question, but I think it should be conducted honestly. Honesty requires stipulating that the amount of government we get is no larger than the amount we're willing to pay for, as opposed to the dream-world welfare state we would build if wealth were limitless.

It also means that as our nation becomes more prosperous we should expect the welfare state's budget to require a diminishing portion of our national income rather than, as it has since the New Deal, a growing portion. We should expect this for two reasons. First, a welfare state with a clearly defined mission, as opposed to one where the goal posts are constantly receding as we move down the field toward them, should be one we can finance the way we have financed defense spending over the past half-century--by spending a smaller portion of our growing national economic output. Secondly, a growing economy should mean that more and more Americans can pay for more and more of their own needs and wants through their own economic efforts, rather than through the political efforts it takes to secure more and more generous welfare state benefits for more and more recipients. In other words, one of the reasons to like a growing economy should be that it makes a smaller welfare state possible, rather than because it makes a bigger one possible.

Remember when Democrats accused Republicans - particularly George W. Bush - of abusing their authority, defying the law and governing illegally? Of course, that was all just hyperbole - only the most fanatical and unhinged actually believed Bush or his ilk had actually broken the law. But Democrats demagogued and won elections on the promise of reversing these lawless trends.

Well, now Democrats are violating their own interpretation of lawful behavior as well as defying objective legal standards in every branch of government they control. First, as Robinson notes below, President Obama is engaged in an illegal war by his own standards and has now violated the War Powers Resolution. Second, Senate Democrats have not passed (or even proposed) a budged in over two years - a clear and blatent violation of the law which Harry Reid flippantly disregards. There can be no greater examples of prioritizing politics above the law than waging an unauthorized war and refusing to address fundamental fiscal responsibilities during an economic crisis.

Democrats are largely unfit to govern on account of their morally bankrupt, ever-expanding government policies - but their unsuitableness for democratic responsibilities is also well reflected in their disregard for the rule of law. 

This Sphinx of Pennsylvania Avenue routine, from a politician hailed just three years ago as an orator so compelling he would have driven Pericles into the tunic-wholesaling business, is the result of a political dilemma: Liberalism is much more forthcoming on the question of what the government ought to do than it is about how the government should pay for all its programs.

Wisconsin Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has harsh (but righteous) words of welcome for the prodigal Democratic senators.  

Today, the most shameful 14 people in the state of Wisconsin are going to pat themselves on the back and smile for the cameras. They're going to pretend they're heroes for taking a three week vacation.

It is an absolute insult to the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who are struggling to find a job, much less one they can run away from and go down to Illinois -- with pay.

Their appearance at the Capitol today is in direct violation of the contempt order issued by the state Senate earlier this month, and it proves their absolute disregard for the institution of the Senate and the constitution they took an oath of office to serve.

But the people of Wisconsin won't forget what they were really doing these past few weeks.

Sen. Tim Cullen refused to come back to save 1,500 jobs.

Sen. Mark Miller refused to come back even to make sure his own staff were safe in the Capitol he abandoned.

Sen. Fred Risser refused to come back out of respect for the institution and dignity of the state Senate.

Sen. Bob Jauch refused to come back even though our side was negotiating in good faith to try to find a reasonable compromise.

Sens. Jon Erpenbach, Chris Larson and Lena Taylor were all too happy to pat themselves on the back and smile for the cameras in Illinois, never mind their constituents here in Wisconsin.

And Sens. Dave Hansen, Kathleen Vinehout, Tim Carpenter, Spencer Coggs, Jim Holperin, and Julie Lassa refused to come back to actually do the job they were elected to do.

To the Senate Democrats: When you smile for the cameras today and pretend you're heroes, I hope you look at that beautiful Capitol building you insulted. And I hope you're embarrassed to call yourselves senators.

H/t: Power Line

Large-scale demonstrations don't necessarily draw the most refined participants, but they provide a useful cross-section of the relevant interest group. Right now, dueling rallies are being held in Wisconsin between left-wing union Democrats and right-wing Tea Party Republicans.

Power Line has a good blog post on the Tea Party's pro-democracy anti-demonstration, with pictures of clever rally signs and videos of political speeches. Like all Tea Party rallies, the demonstrators will likely leave the area in a cleaner condition than they found it and the media will search in vain for any sentiment of racism or untoward vulgarity.

The Power Line post also provides unique coverage of the anti-democratic union rally, with videos of doctors illegally writing fraudulent sick notes for union protestors. Michelle Malkin reveals the sort of toxic and violent rhetoric common to protest signs at liberal rallies.

From calls for African American lynchings at Common Cause rallies to a shut-down of the Wisconsin legislature due to threats of violence, liberal protests always seem to contain the most degenerate sort of behavior. Pro-life advocates hold prayer vigils while pro-choice advocates countenance child-rape and sex trafficking. Republicans in the minority complain on Fox News Sunday morning talk shows, while Democrats in the minority abandon their posts and shut down the government in order to subvert the democratic process.   

This isn't a scientific analysis of character composition among political ideologies - but it's a solid starting point.  

According to Article IV, §8 of the Wisconsin Constitution:

Rules; contempts; expulsion. Section 8. Each house may determine the rules of its own proceedings, punish for contempt and disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two-thirds of all the members elected, expel a member; but no member shall be expelled a second time for the same cause.

Expulsion is probably a bridge too far, given the 2/3 hurdle, but, at least, Republicans should consider some form of censure for the contemptible behavior of the missing Democrats.

Eschewing expulsion, I simply wonder aloud as to the possibility of declaring the Democrats to have abdicated their offices. Article IV, §14 states:

Filling vacancies. Section 14. The governor shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies as may occur in either house of the legislature.

I've only intermittently followed the debacle in Wisconsin, but I've not heard much of the most obvious conclusion regarding the state's elusive Democrats. There is simply something untoward about politicians in high office hidding outside their jurisdiction in order to disrupt the work they have sworn to conduct. These are not the acts of statesmen or noble characters. It's shameful that their fellows, at the national level and throughout the states, have not readily condemned such childish and hypocritical antics.

Just for perspective, Democrats should observe that George W. Bush never imagined such disruptive, anti-democratic measures. When Republicans lost, they accepted defeat without abdicating their responsibilities and seeking to wreck the democratic process. Democrats have been as haughty and overbearing in victory as they are now spiteful and ridiculous in defeat.

Again, where is the outrage on the left?

In honor of the Wisconsin Democratic party, a link to The Tale of Sir Robin seems to be in order. Brave, brave, brave, brave Wisconsin.

The New York Times almost makes it around to reporting on union rhetoric in Wisconsin which is exponentially more vile and malicious than anything uttered by conservatives in recent history. The story is titled, "Republicans Accuse Liberals of Hateful Rhetoric in Wisconsin," and confines itself to describing images from a GOP video (see below). 

It actually seems that liberals have used hateful rhetoric, and the Times might have reported on it sua sponte, without hiding behind Republican "accusations." The media did not timidly report "Democrats Accuse Conservatives of Hateful Rhetoric in Arizona," but was happy to report as fact Republican culpability for the shooting in that state. 

The video below is worth a thousand Times articles dancing around the truth.

If the Wisconsin legislature can't vote until they have a Democrat present to create a quorum, can't one of the GOP switch parties and announce himself "present" as a Democrat?

And how long until the Democrats can be declared to have abdicated their offices and a special election can be held to fill their vacant seats?

UPDATE: Commenter William Schumacher correctly observes that the necessary quorum does not require a Democreat, per say, but 20 persons present - and the GOP have only 19. So, skip my first question and move to my second: what is the timeframe for abdication?

"And so we must defeat determined enemies, wherever they are, and build coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. And America's moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom and justice and dignity. And because we've begun this work, tonight we can say that American leadership has been renewed and America's standing has been restored."

Republicans should have been better prepared.  While it might have made sense to read the Constitution as currently amended (thus omitting the 3/5 clause, etc.), this would also be a good time to play offense on these clauses.  Rush today distorted the issue by calling the anti-3/5 clausers "abolitionists"--the liberals of the time.  But maybe I missed his irony. 

Republicans (or the portion of them that believes in the fundamental documents) should read from as well the Declaration, the Federalist (the whole thing, perhaps on the anniversaries of their original publication), and the great speeches of Washington and Lincoln.  The ridicule from the Democrats, the NY Times, and E.J. Dionne would be sufficient to make conservatives' point, but it gives conservatives on the Hill, in the think-tanks, and on blogsites such as this a chance to expand the public debate and understanding about our fundamental legal and political documents.

Conservatives have exposed and could disarm the liberal progressives, because of course the left originated in Woodrow Wilson's denunciation of the Declaration's natural rights and the Constitution based on them.  This 18th century understanding should be brought up to date, Wilson contended, by 20th century evolutionary biology, thus leaving our rights in perpetual flux.  And, as FDR declared, Wilson was the Democrats' "commander-in-chief."  And so he remains. 

... just say Republicans are like "terrorists?"

Oh well, at least the Democrats have finally found the nerve to use the word in public.

I've long thought that the greatest impediment to the advancement of the civil-rights movement is the leadership of the civil-rights movement. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the like inspire (intentionally, I believe) division and angst where none need exist, personally profiting from the perception of victimization but thereby alienating their cause.

This syndrome can just as easily affect a political party. Thus, Democrats attempted to portray Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and the Tea Party as de facto leaders of the GOP. These attempts generally failed, but the GOP has been laboring to provide its own red meat for the grinder. RNC Chair Michael Steele has been an embarrassment and general disgrace from the onset, and continues to make headlines with his unprecedented and shady spending.

Party leaders generally ought to be distinguished (by longevity or merit) members of Congress or sitting presidents. A president is an obvious and inevitable leader, but the out-of-office party may find itself without a discernable head - or sporting a multitude of heads. Both are generally unsightly conditions. Nonetheless, peripheral characters, such as Palin, Romney, Huckabee and Steele, are dangerously unaccountable. They may work mischief without being personally held responsible by voters (unless they attempt to run for something) - the party suffers for their sins.

Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, Sessions, Pence and Ryan spring to mind as genuine GOP leaders. Insofar as a character such as Steele shares the stage, all the more pressing is the need to divest him of his authority.

I'm presently about five minutes from the Alabama border, and the big news down here is that four state house Democrats have just announced that they'll abandon ship and switch parties - thereby giving the GOP a supermajority in the 'Bama house.

The reason for their switch is reportedly that "they're very conservative, and their views are more in line with Republicans than Democrats." Funny they just figured that out.

In the wake of a landslide election, and with Obama polling at an all-time low of 39%, state Dems can hardly be blamed for noticing the rising water and deciding not to go down with the ship. The Alabama mutiny follows a similar mass exodus by six Georgia State House Reps, as well as recent party switches in Louisiana, Maine, Texas and S. Dakota. I'm at a loss to find any significant state GOP-to-Dem crossovers.

But the Dems did poach Arlen Spector - for a blissfully short time.

The Republicans' case [for representing the what "the people really want" from their government], . . . is already under assault. Along with the Democrats' open campaign to persuade the public that the election did not mean what Republicans thought, there is an allied effort underway, far more subtle, to undermine and weaken the Republican position. It comes from a group of self-proclaimed wise men who present themselves as being above the fray. These voices, acting from a putative concern for the nation and even for the Republican Party, urge Republicans to avoid the mistake of Obama and the Democrats after 2008 of displaying hubris and overinterpreting their mandate. With this criticism of the Democrats offered as a testimony of their even handedness and sincerity, they piously go on to tell Republicans that now is the time to engage in bipartisanship and follow a course of compromise. The problem with this sage advice is that it calls for Republicans to practice moderation and bipartisanship after the Democrats did not. It is therefore not a counsel of moderation, but a ploy designed to force Republicans to accept the "overreach" and the policies of the past year and half. It is another way to defend "the change." If Republicans are to remain true to the verdict of 2010, they cannot accept that the message of this election was just containment; it must mean roll back.

Conservatives often assume that elections like 2010 show America has a consistent conservative majority. I think it is more accurate to say that they show that America has a consistent anti-progressive majority. The task conservatives have today is to transform the anti-progressive majority into a pro-conservative one.

The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that Democrats had the worst night in state legislative seats since 1928. With races outstanding in New York, Washington and Oregon, Republicans have flipped at least 14 chambers, and have unified control of 25 state legislatures. They have picked up over five hundred state legislative seats, including over 100 in New Hampshire alone.

Question: If today's elections go as well for the tea party candidates as polls indicate, how should their supporters celebrate?  Should they drink tea?  Or, since the tea party was about dumping tea in the harbor and avoiding the tea tax, should they drink coffee?

In Maryland, a trick to boost the Dems' campaigns is making election day a school holiday and scheduling other non-school days close to the election, to give the teachers' union more recruits in the field.  When I worked in government, the political appointees would schedule election-year awards ceremonies for the fall, to take the typically leftist types getting awards for their taxpayer-funded organizations out of their campaigns.  (No way to defund the groups.)   

Any other tricks to share, anyone?

NRO's Rich Lowry pens an "Open Letter to the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party."

Dear Chairman Redfern,

I hesitate to take your time with a missive like this because I know you are busy losing a governorship, a Senate seat, and conceivably as many as six House seats in the great state of Ohio. Managing such a massive political failure can't be easy, so I don't want to do anything to distract you from it. . . .

[read more]

The values that have long been associated with the Midwest are almost anachronistic in the Obama era. Thrift, hard work, common sense--the messages and policies coming out of Washington seem to disregard these once-revered virtues. As voters in the Midwest and across the country found themselves increasingly worried about the economy and government spending, Democrats in Washington, led by the White House, changed the subject to health care.

Thursday morning, the GOP will unveil a "Pledge to America" (text here), attempting to reproduce the results of the 1994 election by replicating the means: the "Contract with America." Both the CwA and the PtA was / is a mere sidebars to the prevailing national zeitgeist which swept / will sweep Republicans into office - but the substance is instructive of how well the GOP has internalized the prevailing national zeitgeist.

The PtA emerged from town hall meetings and an internet project, America Speaking Out. CBS highlights the PtA agenda as:

Jobs:

- Stop job-killing tax hikes

- Allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income

- Require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit

- Repeal small business mandates in the new health care law.

Cutting Spending:

- Repeal and Replace health care

- Roll back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels before TARP and stimulus (will save $100 billion in first year alone)

- Establish strict budget caps to limit federal spending going forward

- Cancel all future TARP payments and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Reforming Congress:

- Will require that every bill have a citation of constitutional authority

- Give members at least 3 days to read bills before a vote

Defense:

- Provide resources to troops

- Fund missile defense

- Enforce sanctions in Iran

The GOP has thus shown its hand.

The Obama administration immediately expressed its knee-jerk, blanket opposition to the PtA. Co-option of some provision and targeted opposition to others might have proved a more bipartisan, practical response. But delusions of that sort should be all but evaporated by now.

On the right, NRO's lengthy review embraces the PtA as "bold" and "compelling," and Powerline praised it as a "ringing statement of first principles" which "deliberately echoes the Constitution and, especially, the Declaration of Independence." Conversely, Redstate lambasts the PtA as "the most ridiculous thing to come out of Washington since George McClellen." "Dreck," they call it. "Stagnant water."

Six weeks to go.