This past Wednesday I wrote about a letter being circulated by conservative members of the House of Representatives who were signing on the a radical proposal by the republican Study Committee (RSC) to make the increase in the national debt ceiling contingent on spending cuts sufficient to reduce the deficit by 50 percent in the FY2012 budget. It hasn’t taken long for the left to cry what an outrage it is for republicans to make increasing the debt ceiling conditional on anything. Jonathan Chait has written an article entitled “It’s either a Ransom or a Bargain, Not Both” in The New Republic. At least he takes aim at President Obama for allowing the republicans to use the usual automatic votes on the debt ceiling to extract legislative concessions! Now it’s not often you will find me being sympathetic to the Obama Administration, but I am afraid they did not have much choice. It seems Mister Chait has failed to study the Constitution and understand that in our democracy the President must in fact seek congressional action before he signs things such as bills and debt ceiling increases. Now President Obama has not yet agreed to negotiate with congress over the debt ceiling but on this there is little doubt. If Congress does not approve an increase, on or about August 2nd according to the Treasury Department the government will no longer be able to borrow additional money and will have to live off the approximately 62 cents of every dollar spent it actually receives in taxes in the current fiscal year. So a refusal to negotiate and the resultant refusal, I hope, of the house to pass the extension would result in a massive budget cut and an instant balanced budget. Now that is even too draconian for me but trust me, the left would be far more upset than those of us of a more conservative perspective.
Again the left seems to be misreading their mandate and with support for increasing the debt limit running at less than 20 percent they just don’t get it. The American People elected the democrats in 2006 and 2008 because the Republicans in congress and the Bush administration had failed in their responsibility to manage the nation’s finances responsibly, as well as disasters like the response to Katrina and 7 years of war. The Democrats took this as a mandate to double the deficit, federalize health care and start a third war in Libya. If they take the advice of leftists in the media such, the 2012 election will make them long for the good old days…of the 2010 vote. Let’s hope the Republicans in the House listen to the RSC and hold the line on the debt ceiling negotiations.
It seems the starter’s gun has sounded and the 2012 presidential race is on in full. With the announcements in the last week by Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, I suspect we will be hearing from most of the major candidates for the Republican nomination in the coming days and weeks. Later today Mike Huckabee will announce his plans for 2012. The front runner in many of the polls, Huckabee is the first of the truly viable candidates to make an announcement in season and his decision will have a dramatic effect on the race. When Haley Barbour backed out three weeks ago in a surprise to most, his impact was mostly inside the game. Two decades in mostly political jobs before he became Governor of Mississippi including a term as RNC Chairman gave him the best rolodex in the race with key fundraisers and consultants on his team. However Barbour was in single figures in the polls so his decision not to enter the race (he was in my mind the odds on winner of the nomination) was not felt immediately on the standings. Mike Huckabee is the frontrunner in most polls and given his tenure as Governor of Arkansas and as a commentator since his 2008 run makes Huckabee a force to be reckoned with this year.
The decision to run for president is intensely personal and one which changes the lives of not only the candidates but their families. If you go on the win the nomination your life story and those of your immediate family are laid bare by the media. Should you go on to win the presidency the transformation is permanent and your life is forever changed. Form most of my adult life I have studied the presidency and would never second guess the choice one makes not to run, indeed it may be the sane and rational choice for a family centered person to make. Yet I am a true believer and we live in a time of great challenge and we republicans need a core group of candidates to ensure the vitality of the nomination process. Mike Huckabee is one of the most dynamic and vital potential candidates today and the one who has best represented the populist interests of the average American. Should Huck decide to enter the race today he becomes the instant front runner. I’m far from endorsing him, indeed I have some serious questions about his tax policy as Governor (he raised them far too willingly), but he has connected with both the party and average voters in a way few have in recent years. So I say Run Huck Run, and cross my fingers he chooses to join the race later today.
I may be showing my age, but this year’s Republican primary for President has some of the feel of 1988. After 8 years of Ronald Reagan, then destined to go down in history as one of the greats, many people were talking about the light Republican field. Conservatives loved Rep Jack Kemp, but while he was every bit as conservative as Ronald Reagan and a first rate policy guy, Kemp had none of The Gripper’s communication ability. Bob Dole was the tried presence as Senate Majority/Minoriry Leader and 12 years after being Gerald Ford’s vice presidential running mate. But the presumptive front runner was Ronald Reagan’s Vice President George H. W. Bush. At the time he was running on the premise of a third Reagan term and a no new taxes pledge which would eventually lead us to read his lips. And there was the problem. While he had been a loyal and effective Vice President to Ronald Reagan, many conservatives had doubts. Only 8 years earlier as a candidate for President in 1980 he has been solidly pro choice and famously called Reagan’s tax cutting policies “Voodoo economics” Then in July of 1980 when selected in the midst of the Detroit convention to be Reagan’s running mate a great conversion occurred, Bush said he supported Reagan’s platform, and thus had become pro life and a tax cutter. Late in the primaries Bush had tried to convince the press that he, like Reagan had “the vision thing”. Well if he wasn’t born with it he adopted Reagan’s and they were an amazing pair. But in 1988 with Reagan stepping aside many conservatives wondered if Bush’s conversion was real. Bush went on to win the nomination, at the convention in New Orleans the nation read his lips and the no new taxes pledge helped to win Bush the presidency.
Ronald Reagan Endorses George H.W. Bush, May 11, 1988
But that was where the question of Vision becomes complicated. Those of us who are old enough to actually remember the Reagan administration recall how the media labeled Reagan an ideologue. Conservatives like George Will called upon the outsiders like David Gergan, then White House Communications Director who were advising moderation of Reagan’s “risky” and “untested” economic plans to “Let Reagan be Reagan”. Well, that wasn’t necessary because Ronald Reagan was Ronald Reagan and didn’t need advisors or pundits to tell him what to do. See, George Bush got it right, Reagan had the Vision Thing. He knew why he had run to become President, what he stood for and that was the course the administration followed. Advisors like Gergan left the administration before the first term was over fretting how the President didn’t listen to their advice. They forgot that ideology is in fact a compass which if you truly have will keep you from ever getting lost. Sure there were bumps on the road; the 1982/83 recession was actually one hell of a pot hole. But today history rates Ronald Reagan among the great presidents. Unfortunately in 1990 in an effort to cut a budget deal with the Democrats George Bush traded away his no new taxes pledge for spending cuts the left never delivered. In that move, he sealed his fate as a one term president. But in fact that fate was defined years before because while George Bush was an amazing administrative President (the execution of the Gulf War was brilliant), he has no core ideology to tell him to just say no to the democrats in that smoke filled room.
This all brings us to 2012 and for those of us who are truly uncommitted and still looking for a candidate to support; the quest for the Vision Thing is proving difficult. Let me state up front I was a supporter of John McCain in 2000 and 2008 and I am convinced he had the Vision Thing, but that is another discussion. In 2008 I labeled Mitt Romney a Flip Flopper and wondered if it were something in the water in Massachusetts in the wake of John Kerry’s 2004 campaign. While I dismissed Mitt as a rich opportunist who was jumping from a single term as governor to the presidential big league on the back of his fortune. However after he lost and McCain secured the nomination, Mitt was a loyal soldier during the campaign even after being passed over for Vice President. In the years that have followed I have watched Romney perform well on the national stage as we approached the 2012 campaign. Given the economic crisis and the massive structural challenges we face in reforming government finances, Romney should be the presumptive nominee and a prohibitive front runner.
Which brings us to yesterday and the speech Romney made to explain why Romneycare is different from Obamacare. His answer was logical and the best he could have made, states are different and there should be no federal national mandate and he simply did what was in the interest of the people of Massachusetts. But as I was watching the speech I thought to myself while Romney is a very good communicator, somehow I could not imagine Ronald Reagan trying to thread the needle as Romney was. That is because it never would have happened. Reagan had the Vision Thing and that rigid ideological side the press and pundits complained about would never have let him support such an expansion of government as governor. He would have vetoed it if it had been passed, regardless of what the odds of his veto being sustained by the legislature. Oh Reagan was skilled at compromise, something many on the right today conveniently forget, but there were lines he didn’t cross because of that Vision Thing. In 1994 Romney was pro choice when running against Ted Kennedy for Senate, but by 2006 as he left the Governor’s mansion he had reconsidered his views and was now prolife. Now, I have no problem with thoughtful people reconsidering their positions over time in light of new evidence. To do that is healthy. But at your core there should be a compass which is used to evaluate the directions you take. It was that compass that lead Reagan to say no to Gorbachev at Reikjavik in 1996 when offered the opportunity to trade away virtually all nuclear weapons in exchange for the Strategic Defense Initiative all in the course of a few hours.
So the quest for the Vision Thing continues in 2012 with uncertain results. Has Romney really found it with maturity? Will Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty be able to effectively communicate theirs? What exactly is Mike Huckabee’s ideology on things such as taxes? If we get it right, we will have a leader able to take on the significant challenges the nation faces. If not, it may be déjà vu all over again.
Today we see the spectacle of five CEO’s of the major oil companies being marched in front of the klieg lights to be grilled before the Senate Finance Committee. The democrats are demanding the repeal of tax breaks for the Oil and Gas industry to reduce demands for spending cuts to achieve deficit reductions. Some Republicans will be defending the continued bail out of the oil and gas industries. Unfortunately there is far more at stake here than the hyperbole of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would let on. Indeed the questions raised by the current energy price escalation and the deficit crisis are complicated and not easily answered. but key to America’s economic and strategic future.
21st Century American Energy Security is Central to Our Future
As a fiscal conservative I am opposed to any industry subsidies as they are just tax payer bail outs disguised as tax reductions. It drives me crazy to see so called conservatives arguing for industry specific tax breaks, regardless if they are for the oil & gas industry, farm price supports or the General Motors bail out. Simply put in a free market companies should manage themselves based on the market based supply and demand forces. When they interfere with those forces by way of collusion (price fixing) then the Justice Department should perp walk them straight to prison. Let the market do its thing, period. It has taken me years to come around to the Flat Tax but the excessive use of industry specific tax and fiscal bail outs based solely on which industry has the best lobbyists is just uncontrollable. It’s time to have a lower flat tax rate with very few deductions (based on GAP accounting, not legislative gibberish) and let companies succeed or fail based on their performance. Not only would this be simpler and less costly (my apologies to all the soon to be unemployed tax accountants and lawyers) but this would allow businesses to plan long term in a stable tax environment.
Don’t be confused by the words spoken at the hearings today, this is simply political theater of the round and an embarrassment to the concept of free enterprise. Yes these CEO’s are coming as an extension of their lobbying efforts to continue to get a bail out for their industry. The Leftist will vilify the corporations over their profits (god forbid anyone makes profits) and talk about the pain of consumers paying gas prices of more than $4 a gallon. Republicans will forget their free market roots and defend the ongoing bail out an industry with combined profits of more than three times the total tax break. All throughout the klieg lights will flash and CNN, Fox News MSDNC and CNBC will provide live coverage of the drama of pre written statements being read. As I said, theater of the round.
All the while maybe the most strategic question to the United States in the next decades will be totally ignored, sustainable energy self sufficiency for America. The politics of this subject have been so blurred than it is dizzying. I am proudly conservative and as such believe in self sufficiency and self reliance, of the individual and the nation. Being conservative does not mean being pro any industry nor does it mean being anti environment. America should be aggressively pursuing clean renewable energy sources. We should be developing domestic oil, gas and coal. We should be developing next generation nuclear energy sources. There is no single solution to our energy problems but there is a common enemy. By allowing our reliance on foreign energy to continue we are continuing our dependence on people who don’t like us. I would rather see solar cells on the roof of every home in my town than continue sending almost a TRILLION DOLLARS a year to Hugo Chaves in Venezuela and to the Saudis’ to pay for Madrasa schools to teach your Arabs to hate us. Really, it’s time to wake up and stop this Washington theater and let loose the ingenuity of the American entrepreneur and private sector and develop the technologies which will allow us to be totally energy self sufficient.
Those of us on the right must step back and think what it really is to be a conservative. I opposed the General Motors bail out since it prevented a poorly run corporation from failing. If the oil and gas industry cannot make money from producing oil and gas inside the largest energy consuming market in the world, welcome to Chapter 11. Pass a flat corporate tax which is based on sound accounting, fair and predictable. Government should limit itself to preventing illegal market abuse, there is nothing Conservative about price fixing and anti competitive practices if they really occur. As for the Senate Finance Committee, I think they have a deficit problem to deal with.
In a report today by Erik Wasson in The Hill, he reports that the Republican Study Committee, the caucus representing over 175 Conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives is making a truly radical set of demands in exchange for increasing the Debt Ceiling which will be required in the next couple of months. The RSC is asking each of its members to sign a pledge to support three proposed conditions in exchange for agreeing to increase the nation’s debt ceiling. The RSC conditions include:
1. Cutting the Budget deficit in half by next year. Given this year’s $1.4trillion deficit and a projected FY12 deficit of $1.08 trillion, an additional $381 billion in cuts will be required to reach the required limit of $700 billion
2. Placing a ceiling on federal spending not to exceed 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Current federal spending is at 24 percent of GDP.
3. Approval of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution
This would be the largest reduction in federal spending ever and would dramatically move the nation in the direction of fiscal responsibility and stability. For years we as a nation have lived off what some have seen as a credit card without a limit. However the time of reckoning has come. This past April Standard & Poor’s changed its outlook on US Government Debt to negative while retaining its AAA rating. That is the equivalent of seeing your once stellar personal credit score of over 800 slip into the high 700’s because you have run all your cards up to their limits. Hopefully this is a wake up not only for the inside the beltway crew but for the nation as a whole. One cannot overstate the potential consequences of failing to get the deficit under control. Every day we wait the pain involved with restoring fiscal responsibility simply increases.
We should all send our representatives, even those of us with liberal democrats in our district, a message communicating our strong support for the RSC proposal, as well as the House and senate leadership. The Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have failed their responsibility to the American people to manage the nation’s finances. Now it’s the GOP’s turn. Game on.
A Conservative's Musings on All Things Political 