“I’m pretty excited, but I also know that we have a lot of work to do… you gotta get right to work.” –Denver Riggleman
It’s that most wonderful time of year: Post-Election Day hot takes! Woot woot!
To start with the obvious, this was a relatively good cycle for Democrats and a bad one with some key upshots for Republicans and President Trump. Democrats took the House and a bunch of governor’s mansions. Republicans expanded their Senate majority, maintained the majority of governorships, and retain an even larger majority of state legislatures. Moreover, Republicans won difficult statewide races in key swing states (though not enough of them) that will be valuable in 2020 and beyond.
Perhaps most excitingly, on a personal level, the first ballot I ever cast for somebody I knew personally helped Denver Riggleman win the open race here in Virginia’s 5th congressional district. It was a single bright light amid otherwise dispiriting gloom settling across the Commonwealth, but we’ll take it.
Among the most encouraging developments came from my home state: Florida. I was rooting for Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis early on, back when he was a scrappy underdog in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He was one of my favorite congressmen because of his strident, principled conservatism, and I have fond memories of lively conversations with him and other conservative leaders over bourbon and cigars when I was visiting home years ago. I’m ecstatic that he’s earned the governor’s mansion.
Believe it or not, I once despised Gov. Rick Scott, even after I evolved from a Democrat to a Republican. But his strong record as governor—and the fact that he was clearly right about the high-speed rail boondoggle for taxpayers—brought me around, and he’ll undoubtedly be a marked improvement in the Senate over Bill Nelson.
Like Texas, Florida is an enormous multiethnic state that’s become more Republican as it’s become more diverse. Florida has the second-longest unbroken streak in the entire South (after Texas) of complete GOP rule (since 1999 vs 1995). If the GOP lead in the open race for Agriculture Commissioner holds, then there will be no statewide Democrats left in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction. Minority voters are a key part of this shift.
The 2016 and 2018 elections set records for minority voting in Florida, with sky-high turnout to boot. Republicans won both years—from Marco Rubio to Ron DeSantis—because as minority turnout has increased in Florida, the Republican share of minority votes has also increased. For all the talk of new voters from Puerto Rico padding Democrat margins in the I-4 corridor, Republicans gained significant ground against Sen. Bill Nelson (who came a little closer to victory than Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum) in the Tampa Bay area because Latino Floridians are generally voting *more* Republican, not less, as they get more engaged, just as black Floridians are voting *more* Republican, not less, even when a black Democrat is on the ballot.
Because of the Sunshine State’s growing diversity, Florida Republicans, like their Texas peers, need stronger margins among minority voters than Republicans in many other states. Rick Scott increasing his share of the black vote over his previous two elections is literally why he is in office today. According to exit polls, DeSantis roughly matched or exceeded that already relatively high showing, though neither was quite as high as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s impressive (for a Republican) 20 percent. DeSantis also earned nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote, about the same as Abbott, with Scott winning even more. This stronger performance among minorities is especially important because Florida Republicans, like Republicans elsewhere, have lost ground among whites with the flight of upper-class suburbanites and need minority voters to make up the difference. In Florida, as in Texas, Republicans are fighting hard for and winning these votes, and national Republicans would kill for such margins.
Of course, there are limits to this good news, as the bigger picture of 2018 reminds us: Minority voters still vote mostly Democratic, albeit much less so in Florida (and Texas) than they do nationally, and Florida Republicans lost two winnable House races in heavily West Indian South Florida (I dearly miss Carlos Curbelo already) and several more in Texas. Still, the numbers offer hope for a constructive way forward.
Now that Floridians have rightly repealed Jim Crow-era restrictions on voting rights for formerly incarcerated citizens, an estimated 1.4 million people with felony convictions are expected to regain the right to vote. They are disproportionately nonwhite. The enduring survival of Republican governance in Florida, along with all the robust economy this governance maintains for the state’s rapidly swelling population, will depend in part on conservatives’ ability to attract and engage those and other new voters. And these lessons and successes will be vitally important for the national GOP, even and especially if Trump continues to drag down Republican popularity throughout growing segments of suburban America.
The blue wave of 2018 was neither as deep as Democrats expected nor as weak as Republicans hoped, but the real impact long-term will come from what we make of the landscape it leaves behind.
“You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him.” –John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
“What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!” –Michael Moore
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ
I did not vote for Lex Luthor Donald Trump. I did not vote for the Democratic nominee, either. No matter who won, I was bound to be disappointed. But the Republicans won, and the world could be so much worse. I realize the people who wanted or expected Hillary Clinton to become president are devastated by the stunning upset a woman whose rise, yet again, was deemed inevitable. President Obama (who also triumphed electorally over Clinton while getting fewer votes) went so far as to describe the prospect of a Trump election as “a personal insult” that would essentially repudiate his legacy.
His legacy is so repudiated by a country that still approves of him, at least in polls. But his voters were not #WithHer.
As hard as it may be for some to grasp or accept, white working-class voters reportedly hold—note the present tense—a more favorable impression of the black guy who’s leaving office than the white woman who used to work for him but failed in her bit to succeed him. That is a dynamic those blue-collar whites share, like Tom Hanks’s Doug on Black Jeopardy, with the black and Latino Americans who rejected John McCain and Mitt Romney but voted for Trump. Nate Cohn noted this development in The New York Times before the election, when even Trump’s campaign still believed he would lose:
On their own, Mr. Trump’s gains among [white voters without a college degree] have been enough to cancel out four years of favorable demographic shifts for Democrats among Hispanic and well-educated white voters.
He has even won supporters among some of the same white voters who backed Barack Obama in 2008. It suggests that Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama might have a little more in common than you might think—at least from a political standpoint.
Overall, however, Trump’s margin among white voters was almost identical to Mitt Romney’s in 2012. But notwithstanding iterative episodes and accusations of racism, sexism, or other types of bigotry, early reports indicate the president-elect won appreciably better margins among almost every key Democratic demographic than previous Republican candidates. Trump improved seven points on Romney’s showing with black voters, eight points on his showing with Latinos, and nine points with Asian-Americans. Perhaps most saliently, Trump did 11 points better among Latina women than Romney, outshining his increase among Latino men. Trump even managed to do slightly better among immigrants (i.e., naturalized citizens) than with Latinos or Asian-Americans overall.
It gets more interesting from there. College-educated whites were one of the few demographics to vote relatively less Republican for president in 2016 compared to 2012—largely, but not entirely, balancing out Trump’s gains among non-college whites. Trump actually performed better among college-educated minorities than minorities without college degrees—an inverse of the breakdown with whites. Among Latinos in the crucial swing state of Florida, Trump even outperformed against Clinton relative to congressional Republicans against Democratic opponents. He lost non-college Florida Latinos by 42 points but their college-educated peers by only 27. He won Cuban-American voters by five points. This relatively strong Latino showing was instrumental to Trump’s victory in the Sunshine State
The data would suggest that millions of nonwhite voters in the least white presidential electorate in American history presumably did not consider Trump or his campaign particularly bigoted, or they did and voted for him anyway. Similar analysis would apply to the vast heartland sea of blue-collar whites who, again, voted for Obama twice before opting for Trump this time around. Likewise, Millennials went more for Trump than Romney, and Clinton’s margin among women was virtually unchanged from Obama’s in 2012.
To argue, given the data, that Trump beat Clinton because his supporters are hateful bigots is to say, in effect, that racism attracts young, nonwhite, and pro-Obama voters, and that women are largely indifferent to sexism. The hard truth of the matter is, as Nate Silver notes, Hillary Clinton would have won the election had the electorate voted only two points less Republican than it did. But nonwhite Americans instead voted at least seven points more Republican, amounting to a four-point (at least) swing overall, and so we have President-elect Trump.
The available numbers paint a rather sobering picture for the Democrats. In 2012, Obama won voters who approved of his presidency by a larger margin than Clinton. Likewise, a few more Americans said their financial situation had improved in 2016 than in 2012, but Obama bested Clinton among those voters by 21 points. A plurality of 41 percent both years said their financial situation hadn’t changed. But those voters chose Obama by 18 points; this time, they broke evenly between Trump and Clinton. Even voters who wanted to maintain or expand Obamacare (more on that soon) shifted from Obama to Trump by nearly 12 points. These data help flesh out the electoral finding that many voters, particularly blue-collar whites, who believed in or identified with Obama decided that Trump was a better choice than this year’s Democratic slate. What that says about the Republican and Democratic parties will assuredly be the subject of ongoing debate. But there’s more.
Had Clinton performed as well among blue-collar whites as Obama in either of his elections, it would not have mattered that so many nonwhite voters chose Trump. But the divide between the more rural, less-educated, flyover America and the more coastal, urbane, gentrifying America is essentially becoming a sociopolitical wall. Dave Wasserman noted that Trump won 76 percent of counties with a Cracker Barrel and only 22 percent of counties with a Whole Foods—a thoroughly predictable image of the profound electoral divergence between college-educated and blue-collar whites. It’s worth noting that this divergence has been growing steadily since 1992, but the margin spiked substantially between Obama and Clinton.
Whole Foods vs. Cracker Barrel culture gap over time:
Perhaps one of the most revealing reasons so many voters chose Obama and Trump is the only of four qualities on which Trump bested Hillary: change. A large plurality of Americans voted for the candidate they determined could “bring needed change.” This meant Barack Obama in 2008, and most voters were willing to stick by him in 2012. But in 2016, “change” voters went for Trump by 69 points, notwithstanding that Clinton won handily on experience, judgment, and empathy. The large minority of voters who saw their lives worsen over the last four years backed Trump by 59 points. Voters agreed with Democrats that their nominee was better suited to the rigors of the presidency, whatever their views on the issues, but they rejected what she and the Democratic Party stood for as agents of a toxic status quo. And that made all the difference.
Much has been noted about the fact that Trump voters are wealthier, on the whole, than Clinton voters, and many people, especially on the Left, think this proves that Trumpism is just some noxious mix of racism and xenophobia, divorced from economic concerns. But the devil is in the details. We already know that Trump flipped the script on white support for Republicans—where previous candidates did better among more educated whites, Trump traded that position for huge margins among whites without college degrees. Obama won voters without college degrees by four points in 2012, while Trump won them by eight this time, for a 12-point rightward shift. (The opposite shift occurred with college graduates, though it was smaller.) That has socioeconomic implications for Trump and Clinton’s political coalitions.
Trump only won middle-income and wealthier households by just two points. By contrast, Romney’s margin was four times larger. This makes sense if you put together two aforementioned facts: Trump hemorrhaged (without entirely losing) traditional Republican strength among college-educated whites—the second-wealthiest demographic in the country—and actually did better among educated nonwhites (black, Latino, and Asian) than non-college minorities. (Perhaps educated nonwhites are beginning to converge, ever so slightly, with their white socioeconomic peers.)
Clinton won by 11 points among poorer voters, because nonwhites are disproportionately poor and vote disproportionately Democratic. But that margin is a full 11 points weaker than Obama’s performance against Romney. If you filter income by race, which the exit polls declined to show for whatever reason, available evidence strongly suggests that support for Trump among whites correlates mightily with income, even as the inverse is true for nonwhites.
In the end, it’s not the voters’ fault that Democratic candidates failed to appeal to them. To paraphrase the campaign of Hillary’s politically unique husband: it really is the socioeconomics, stupid.
Wealthier voters, especially more affluent whites, moved strongly away from Trump, in keeping with the general revulsion toward him and his supporters from elites. But he won anyway, because poorer whites and minorities overall moved even more strongly toward him or just stayed home. While we were talking about misogynistic recordings and the umpteenth instance of racist ramblings, middle-Americans voters were agonizing over their families’ economic security, with little time or inclination to fret overmuch about iterative outrage that probably struck them as a sideshow.
Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” comment was so damning precisely because it viscerally captured everything Middle America—including, as noted above, plenty of blacks, Latinos, women, LGBT, and Asian-Americans—loathes about elites: the moralistic contempt, the smug liberalism, the social justice redlining in colleges and among media elites that seems almost tailored to mock and exclude them, the insidious beast of political correctness that hides behind a false flag of empathy. Conventional wisdom holds that electoral victories require voters be inspired to vote for something and not just against something else. (Just ask John Kerry.) Clinton, a poll-tested synecdoche of establishmentarian elitism, flipped the script; voters were more driven to oppose her than support Trump, and that proved enough.
As a former Bill Clinton adviser told the Huffington Post, “Hillary Clinton in many ways represents a world many people in this country would like to move on from.”
In that regard, this black woman probably speaks for millions of Trump supporters in her celebration of the election night results:
By contrast, the Donald is, as Michael Moore semi-presciently warned (tedious liberal straw men aside), the revenge of the underclass. His election is the fruit of seed of resentment planted around when Obamacare squandered and poisoned the considerable goodwill with which Democrats came to power eight tempestuous years ago.
Apropos, Trump’s triumph is a defeat for the people who dismiss Obamacare’s manifold losers and even insult them, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias does, with demands for a more financially crippling mandate. The plurality of voters who believe the ACA went too far broke for Trump by 70 points. Obamacare premium hikes were particularly large in the critical states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and Minnesota. To a somewhat lesser extent, rate hikes were also onerous in Georgia, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Clinton and Democratic Senate candidates underperformed in each of these states, ultimately losing almost all of them. (She eked by in Minnesota, but that was never supposed to be close.) Recalcitrant leftists are, even now, bemoaning the Republican victory as supposedly ruinous for the beneficiaries of Obamacare. But most Americans disapprove of Obamacare precisely because its benefits have been overstated and its considerable costs manifestly ruinous. This is, in the parlance of social justice, the lived experience of American voters, which underscores why Obamacare is unworthy of retention.
The illusory genius and belligerent condescension of progressive wonks and social justice warriors, of which Obamacare is but the easiest example, has put the Democratic Party in its weakest national position in generations. Not so long ago, Democrats mocked the GOP as a regional party. Now, nearly half the states are under unified Republican control, while one-third of the House Democratic minority in Congress hails from California, New York, or Massachusetts—three far-left enclaves that together account for only 20 percent of the national population. Meanwhile, in West Virginia—a state that went for her husband twice—Hillary won 53,000 fewer votes in the 2016 general election than she earned in the 2008 Democratic primary. This is a telling illustration of the Democrats’ post-Obama collapse in the Rust Belt. But the cataclysm extends far beyond that:
Barack Obama has apparently presided over the local, state, Congressional and now perhaps the national collapse of the Democratic party.
Progressives may have succeeded culturally and socially in shutting down various lines of thought or legitimate concerns about issues—from immigration to gun rights to campus sexual assault to energy policy to the toxicmythology of “cultural appropriation” to segregated “safe spaces” to the deplorable plight of blue-collar whites—as so many flavors of bigotry. But silencing or driving from polite society one’s detractors—or patronizing/insulting them with obnoxiouscelebrity leftism (thanks, famous actors!)—isn’t the same as convincing them. To the contrary, when Donald Trump came along and promised to upend the sententious, omnipresent repression of the silencers, the silenced proved willing and able to seize an opportunity, even though they dislike, distrust, and are otherwise concerned about that opportunity.
Against such a backdrop, it’s not surprising that the final polls seem to have featured something of a Bradley-style effect, where some voters who intended to (and did) vote for Trump declined to say so to pollsters. In my own networks, I lost track of all the black, brown, LGBT, women, etc. voters who leaned toward Trump and kept quiet about it, in part because of escalating hypocrisy and opprobrium from the eternal soapbox of the “tolerant,” “empathetic” and “inclusive” who seem increasingly anything but. For a case in point:
There has been a proliferation across social networks of grieving Clinton supporters threatening to sever ties with anybody who backed Trump. This is exactly the wrong lesson to take from an election that upended your whole perspective on the country. If your response to the reality of people deeply disagreeing with you is to demand special privileges and retreat into a bubble—or, as the satirists of The Onion cogently put it, a “fanciful, wildly inaccurate mental picture of the country”—you’re likely to find the real world is not moved by those who refuse to engage it. Trump and his voters won the election without you (or me) and your echo chambers. You have no support to withhold and, without Trump-aligned friends, no way to influence a Trump presidential agenda that is not beholden to your approval.
As many of my friends—including a large combination of progressive and conservative opponents of Trump—pointedly observed, the obnoxious virtue-signalling and fanatical accusations about the supposed bigotry and “deplorable” character of Trump supporters is a large part of why a lot of people voted for Trump. In my own networks, countless Trump skeptics, many of them minorities, voiced this notion explicitly, and some even changed their votes accordingly. (To be honest, I thought about it.) That Trump improved on Mitt Romney’s showing with nonwhites and maintained his showing with women suggests the bipartisan elites’ (me included) preoccupation with incidents of bigotry and other ills in Trump’s campaign only managed to sway upper-income whites. To put it bluntly, nobody else—of any race or demographic—cared enough, except for those who were largely voting for Clinton anyway, and many went toward Trump.
This doesn’t mean that the nastiness of the 2016 campaign should be forgotten or swept under the rug. A lot of people, on the progressive Left and now-defunct #NeverTrump conservative Right, have many legitimate qualms with the president-elect. However, no amount of rioting protesting, recycled aspersions, or vituperative slanders against one’s political opponents is going to annul Trump’s ascent to the White House or GOP control of the entire federal government and thorough domination at every level below it. (Though such reactions are likely to speed the process of reconciliation between #NeverTrump and the #TrumpTrain.)
The election is over. The know-nothing hoi polloi have humbled their know-everythingbetters. Donald J. Trump will be the next President of the United States, and the policy priorities of GOP voters remain traditionally conservative, not trade- or immigration-obsessed. Through whatever pain and grief this historic upset must have caused them, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Senator Sanders, and Minority Leader Pelosi, among other prominent Democrats, have all committed to accepting and working productively with President-elect Trump. Even the left-wing partisans of The Huffington Post have dropped their long-running anti-Trump editorial note in favor of a “clean slate” going forward.
President-elect Trump hasn’t done anything yet. Given his oleaginous approach to issues throughout the campaign, he almost certainly will ignore more than a few of his political promises, as all politicians do. The time will assuredly come to oppose and protest this or that proposal, from left or right, based on your political priorities. If Trump actually tries to discriminate against Muslims, start a trade war, dismantle NATO, or somehow impose white nationalism, take him to task (peacefully). And when he does or proposes good things, acknowledge, congratulate, and encourage him. (Even for a politician, Trump seems unusually susceptible to Pavlovian conditioning around his popularity.) But if his detractors instead cry havoc continuously over the mere fact of his presidency, they will hemorrhage legitimacy with an electorate that has already heard it all before and decided against them. Nobody benefits from that, except Trump and his already-winning coalition. His voters have apparently calculated that a Trump administration won’t be as awful as his critics have long inveighed. The easier people make it for them and others to affirm that calculation, the more successful Trump’s presidency will be, for better or worse.
America is still a shining beacon on a hill that empowers its citizenry to succeed freely and live safely. We are still the freest, most prosperous, most hopeful nation in the history of Earth. We remain that mighty superpower who, through the might of our valor and determination, defeated imperial fascism and saved the entire Old World of our forebears from a thousand years of darkness. Perhaps this glorious experiment will end, and the Dream will die as assuredly as all men must. But that is not today, nor will it come next January. If the presidency of Trump is enough to fell the Republic or irreparably corrode its vigorous constitution, then we were already at the end of all things, and this is the credits rolling. Otherwise, as President Obama and Secretary Clinton dutifully noted, we owe the president-elect an open mind, and we ought to work as hard as we can to ensure America is always great.
“It is tough to watch another person being beaten. And I’m not a proponent of what some might view as child abuse. But when the person being beaten is harming his community and his future and the person doing the beating is his angry mother, she gets no argument from me — because she was right.” –Jonathan Capehart
Thank God for a good mom!
I do not see Toya Graham as a hero. Rather, I find her ordinary, sympathetic, and reasonably enraged by the enormity of injustice proliferating around her, from reports of horrific police brutality to the arsonist riots. In short, I see her as a loving mother doing what she can in an awful situation most of will hopefully be blessed never to experience.
I can understand why many people in and watching the media have hailed her for snatching up her riotous son from his criminal path. She did a good thing, and hopefully her son will profit from her care. I cannot understand why anybody should think the celebration of Graham is the latest footnote in a long essay on “white supremacy” that apparently underlies the multicolored criticism of the Baltimore riots.
Among the many contemptible expressions that littered the reactions to the responses to the riots was this particular gem of mind-numbing inanity from Salon’s Joan Walsh:
“The hypocrisy of the white mainstream applauding Graham is sickening. Let’s be honest: many white folks are reflexive critics of the greater frequency of corporal punishment in the black community. Witness the media horror at Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson beating his young son. If Graham beat her child like that in the aisles of CVS, you can be sure somebody would call CPS.”
It is difficult to know where to begin with the things that are wrong with this paragraph (among the many other things wrong with the broader article). So for starters, let’s posit that a mother slapping at a teenage boy for participating in a riot is on a different plane of action from a professional football player whipping a small boy so viciously that the boy suffered bleeding wounds on his back, legs, and genitals. Let’s also posit that had Graham “beat” her teenage son in the aisles of CVS for attempting to burn down that CVS, nobody would call CPS, though many Americans would still call that mother a hero.
I will even go so far as to add the radical claim that many a parent would have handled themselves with considerably less self-control were their child to join a riot and then treat his outraged mother with such repeated disrespect as that teenage boy did his mother. It is unclear to me what race has to do with any of that.
In the interest of being philosophically and discursively charitable, I clicked on the link Walsh included in that excerpted paragraph and discovered another Salon article from Brittney Cooper, a biracial Princeton alumna from D.C. who now teaches middle school in New York City. The article peddles a familiar (and erroneous) trope that white people do not discipline their kids, while black people do. Moreover, it ties in the discredited myth that Michael Brown was murdered, rather than killed for attacking an officer, to suggest the purportedly broad racial disparity in corporal punishment is indicative of black parents focusing too much on “producing well-behaved children in a world that clearly hates them.”
Cooper’s article and argument are infinitely more sympathetic than Walsh’s subsequent screed, and I can certainly share her frustration at unregulated children frolicking as public testaments to infuriating parental disengagement (or worse, appeasement). But ultimately the analysis is flawed in part by presuming a dark conclusion—that the world hates black people—and extrapolating false claims—that Michael Brown was murdered, or whites are profoundly averse to disciplining their children—from that conclusion.
Spanking—or, more clinically, corporal punishment—is not a black phenomenon. It is and has been an incredibly common mode of discipline across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. While there may be some degree to which that method is declining, especially among the kind of well-to-do urbanites who comprise the media elite, corporal punishment remains far more prevalent than most media would have you believe.
Insofar as there are demographic differences, spanking is exceedingly common in the South, regardless of race or class. A Time article on a Dallas study from 2011 documented several dozen families in which spanking small children, even for petty misbehavior, was so common and “normal” that the presence of recording devices in their homes did not keep parents from doing so.
“The parents who recorded themselves represented a socioeconomic mix: a third each were low-income, middle-income and upper-middle-class or higher. Most were white; about a third were African-American.”
Relatedly, Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight took an extensive look at the General Social Survey’s findings about opinions of the acceptability of spanking. As of 2012, the GSS noted the highest levels of acceptance of corporal punishment among blacks, Republicans, born-again Christians, and Southerners—each at about 80 percent. The nation as a whole was at 70 percent (about where whites are generally).
As interesting as the racial disparity may seem (10 points), it’s smaller than other disparities—regional (more than 15 points between South and Northeast), political (about 15 points between Republicans and Democrats), and religious (10-15 points between born-again Christians and everybody else). Moreover, blacks are famously more likely to be born-again Christians than other American racial groups. Likewise, most black Americans live in the South, and many of the minority who don’t have deep roots in the region. Similarly, Republicans—notably underrepresented among African Americans—are also more likely to be born-again Christians and live in the South, and as mentioned above, all four groups accept spanking at roughly equal rates.
As far as actually spanking children, beyond just accepting the practice, an ABC poll on the topic also found a pronounced regional disparity:
“Among Southerners, 62 percent of parents spank their kids; that drops to 41 percent in the rest of the country… The U.S. Department of Education has reported that school-sanctioned spanking is most prevalent in Southern states – Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana.”
Taken altogether, the relatively higher rates of approval for corporal punishment among black families is not quite as dramatic or distinctive as some media would have you believe. In all likelihood, the cultural differences between white Southerners—who are mostly Republican and largely evangelical—and black Americans—who are mostly Southern and largely evangelical—are simply not remotely as large or profound as some might think.
I’ve bonded with many fellow Southerners, black and white, over being sent out back as children to “pick a switch” and the various ways we would try (in vain) to find one that would not hurt much. I’ve also heard permutations of that singularly haunting phrase, “I thanked my parents for every spanking/whooping/beating I ever got,” with eerily kindred pride from countless people (most recently a young, Yale-educated, middle-class white woman from Mississippi) across the spectrum of color.
The experiences of fellow Southerner Elizabeth Spiers is an insightful example of the broader cultural point:
“My parents are Southern white fundamentalist Christians, and we grew up in a working class community where nearly everyone else was a fundamentalist Christian and about 65% of the population was white. I don’t think I can recall a single person I knew who didn’t get spanked as a kid. I also went to school for twelve years at a tiny segregation academy* that was not parochial, but still had teachers who felt comfortable reading Bible stories in class and taught Creationism as a competing theory to evolution. There were 32 kids in my graduating class and no black students. Corporal punishment was doled out as a response to any sort of misbehavior and the principal would even spank 16 and 17 year old guys who were on the football team.
So spanking was part of life–at school, at home and throughout the community. I got spanked and slapped across the face as a kid, and so did my brothers. And the fact that my parents did this made them no different from anybody else’s parents.”
The demographic peculiarities of her community and school aside, there is not much in that description of the pervasiveness of corporal punishment in Southern Christian life that would not strike many a black person in America as intimately familiar.
There are many problems that disproportionately plague black America, and there are various remnants of racism that make the struggles of life harder than they should be. But noting that black people are known to spank their kids or pretending that white people either revel in that violence or disdain it in racial snobbery is perhaps even less productive or valuable than arguing over the imaginary racism of describing looters and arsonists as “thugs.”
In closing, I should note that nothing written here should be construed as my endorsing corporal punishment. Having grown up in a world inundated by the crack of the disciplinary belt (and a legion of other objects)—like Spiers, Cooper, and so many other Americans—I wholeheartedly agree with Spiers’s take on the subject:
“That said, I can tell you right now that if or when I have them, I will never hit my kids. I don’t believe in it morally, philosophically–and I don’t believe it works.”
“Because every time you see them happy you remember how sad they’re going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what’s the point in them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later. The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.” –The Eleventh Doctor
“Don’t you know? The sun’s setting fast!”
I was happy on Election Day. I’ve been positively elated all week, in fact, as it’s been a good time to be a Florida Republican. After all, the Gators devoured the playoff hopes of Georgia in a cathartically stunning upset on Saturday, and then our governor rallied to defeat Alcibiades Charlie Crist in a race that many suggested was lost. As a Republican in general, our candidates won the “War on Women” from Texas to Colorado, and we’ve grown and diversified our bench so enormously in the blue and purple states as to allow, as several have put it, for the GOP to essentially be America’s governing party (in the literal sense that Republicans will be doing most of the governing).
But amid all the anguish and mythomane ire arising from the emaciated dreaming of the other side, a progressive friend demanded perspective via a Yahoo article posted on Facebook. To be sure, the author’s liberal 2016 analysis is rather bullish on Democratic chances; it’s not particularly likely, for example, that a depleted Florida Democratic bench will knock off a popular GOP incumbent in a state Obama barely won. And his point about minorities skipping the midterm is belied by the evidence that 2014 featured the second-most diverse electorate in American history (ahead of 2008), and Republicans from Virginia to Nevada simply did better among various segments of minority voters.
Still, the author’s basic point, that Republicans will face daunting odds in 2016, is well taken. Indeed, I have been talking about that very concern with my tea-partying boyfriend and our conservative cohorts since Heidi Heitkamp kept the Big Sky blue in 2012. It was a reason why it was so essential for Republicans to run up the Senate score this cycle, so as to allow for as much cushion as possible ahead of the next one. (For this reason, the collapse of Terri Lynn Land in Michigan and ultimate failure of Scott Brown and Ed Gillespie to add a 55th seat makes already for bitter reflection.) Yet, oddly enough, acknowledging and contemplating the presidential-year challenges in the offing can and should afford us a curious sense of peace.
We are living on borrowed time. Every Christian—and probably many a Jew or Muslim—hears permutations of this truth from the pulpit with urgent frequency. Such grounding Solomonic perspective—that none of this will last—is an essential understanding for seeking proper order in life, and it is likewise vital a perspective for seeking proper order in politics. As former Indiana congressman and current Club for Growth president Chris Chocola noted, Democrats have poignantly demonstrated a capacity for this perspective. They made the conscientious decision that healthcare reform, among other things, was worth sacrificing their majority to the cleansing tsunami of public indignation, and we are all suffering the consequences of that fanatical conviction today.
If there is anything Republicans should learn from progressives like Nancy Pelosi (and there isn’t much), it’s that at some point you have to stop running for the next election and resolve to actually enact an agenda. Obviously, the Democratic Party will retain the White House through the duration of this Congress, and the number of moderate Democrats who can be relied upon to seek compromise has taken a hit. But for the governing party, those ought to be challenges to be met, not excuses to be doled out ahead of a perpetual chase for the next election.
That 2016 is a probable no-win game for Republican candidates is all the more reason to change the game. Conservatives have two years to develop and refine a robust governing agenda that we can take to voters for consideration. We have promising goals we can seek with President Obama on broad-based, revenue-neutral tax reform, trade negotiations, and mitigating the worst excesses of Obamacare. We also have places where Democrats will refuse to support better policy proposals that might enrage the far Left; some will be useful to enact in the many states we control, ahead of a national referendum on our functional ideas.
Over at National Review, Yuval Levin puts it this way:
“To do that well, Republicans will need to understand and to describe their efforts in these terms—to be clear that they are working to set the right agenda rather than that they are trying either to ‘prove they can govern’ from Congress alone or to ‘sketch clear contrasts’ with a president who will never be on the ballot again. Understanding their role as putting forward an agenda and pursuing it would help Republicans do both of those things while helping them avoid unrealistic expectations about either.
The key difference between the divided congress we have had and the divided government we will now have is that Republicans can now set the agenda, require Democrats to vote on the best of their ideas, and see which of them Democrats might agree with enough (or find painful enough to oppose) to actually bring them to fruition. That doesn’t mean that lots of Republican ideas get enacted, or even reach the president. The filibuster will prevent that. It means, rather, that those ideas get killed in Senate votes instead of getting killed by the Senate’s unwillingness to vote. And that’s a significant difference, because it puts both Republicans and (for the first time) Democrats on the record in a meaningful way.”
Ed Gillespie took this mindset to heart when he combined aggressive organizing and campaign discipline with the critical decision to present voters an intelligible vision of better leadership. Facing a daunting challenge that many in his own party (me included, though I did make sure to vote for him) considered essentially stillborn, the Virginia Republican was one of the few candidates on either side to present a detailed healthcare proposal that would offer better outcomes than Obamacare, along with a five-point economic plan for growth. For all this, the grossly underfunded challenger came within a point of slaying a Goliath in a race he was supposed to lose by a double-digit margin.
Whether or not we’re able to hold the Senate in 2016, our focus should be highlighting, selling, and, achieving the conservative victories that we can while we can. The conservative movement has no use for majorities that exist in perpetual obeisance to the continual, pusillanimous pursuit of electoral power for its own sake. Even if we do everything right, we might well encounter a measure of defeat in two years, because the map is simply not in our favor. But rather than fretting over what we cannot change, we should thoroughly embrace the challenge before us for the opportunity that it is. It is with such a spirit that conservative leaders like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Rick Snyder fought the odds for worthwhile reforms that would endure even if their tenures in office were cut short. That such leaders survived to fight another day should not undercut the key lesson of their examples—fight for conservative governance, and leave something valuable that will politically outlive you.
For the next two years, we can either play to win big or fade into the reclining opposition-party battles of the Obama years. I, for one, am happy now because we may again know frustration, disappointment and presidential petulance later. But if this cycle has shown us anything, it’s that nothing is inevitable or settled until all the votes are cast.
“So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.” – Beyoncé
When was I supposed to think of you? This Washington majority won’t lead itself!
There is an episode in the first season of the American House of Cards (I will try to elide significant spoilers) where the show’s antihero, Democratic Congressman Frank Underwood of South Carolina, is burdened in the middle of crucial legislative negotiations—on an education bill that will boost his cache in the Democratic White House—with the oddest of interruptions.
A teenager in his district has died in a way that (notwithstanding her own irresponsibility—don’t text and drive, folks) implicates certain decisions made by the local leadership—and supported by Rep. Underwood. A certain ornery (and classless) perennial rival of Frank’s is gunning to use the incident to stir up the kind of grassroots passion that could accomplish the rare feat of unseating a member of the House Majority leadership.
When informed about the situation by his loyal aide, Doug Stamper, this key exchange occurs:
Frank: He’s after my seat again. Has he learned absolutely nothing?
Doug: It’s a full-on smear campaign, boss. He’s out to destroy you.
Frank: With this? It’s a peach, for Christ sake. Let him make a fool out of himself.
Doug: No, he will make a fool out of you. If he spins this right, gets national coverage–
Frank: National coverage? It’s a joke.
Doug: And you will be the butt of it. We can’t afford that right now, not when you’re in the spotlight with the education bill.
Frank: This thing has caused me so much damn trouble.
Doug: I know.
Frank: So who should I call: the parents?
Doug: Phone call’s not going to cut it. You need to go down there.
Frank: Can it wait until Monday?
Doug: We get on this thing right now, we can contain it. We wait until Monday, then there’s no way to know how much this is going to blow up on us.
The vital core of Doug’s argument—to which Frank ultimately succumbs—is that no matter how grand and important the backroom machinations of Washington may seem to a given politician and his elite conspirators, the foundation of the games of Congress rests on winning elections. An elected official who wishes to say in office cannot hand-waive away the “small-ball” discontent of his “two-bit” constituents. He (or she) has to be present in real-time to keep them continuously convinced that he shares their values, cares for their needs, and represents their concerns. A politician who forgets this role in the intrigues of the high politics of the Capitol is a politician on track to early retirement.
All of which brings us to the curious case of Eric Cantor, who was presumed to be the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Whatever might be said of his values, leadership, policy positions, ability to play well with others, or influence-peddling affinity for money-laden New York, no report of the many I read about Cantor was quite so damning as this one from Sean Trende, one of Cantor’s erstwhile constituents:
“I have yet to read anything suggesting that Cantor had a good home style. His staff is consistently described as aloof, and his constituent service is lacking. This is consistent with my experience. Anecdotes are not data, but after passage of the Affordable Care Act, I called his office with a question about what autism therapies for my son would now be covered (I lived in Cantor’s district for six years). I never heard back. This surprised me, as constituent questions rarely go unanswered. I never once saw Cantor, not at county fairs, not at school board meetings, and not in the parades that would sometimes march past our house (we lived on a major thoroughfare). This isn’t to say that Cantor never did these things, only that they weren’t frequent enough to register; he wasn’t the stereotypical Southern politician whose face showed up at every event.”
I have contacted Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly, the congressman for my old high school, or his staff at different times for different reasons. I have received a prompt response every time. As a native of Florida, where I used to vote, I emailed Sen. Bill Nelson in the midst of the healthcare debate. (Full disclosure: in my college years, when I was liberal and silly, I was inclined to support the Democrats’ still-materializing healthcare reform effort. But unlike Mitt Romney, I have the decency to own up to the youthful mistake and sincerely apologize for it.) The population of Florida is more than 24 times larger than that of Cantor’s district, and Nelson was decidedly on the wrong side of a lot of voters on that issue—meaning his office was undoubtedly inundated by inquiries. Nevertheless, I got my (somewhat less prompt) response from Nelson like I did from Connolly.
That Cantor’s office did not deign to respond to his constituent speaks volumes. Of course, a member will not cater their position on any issue to each constituent concern—nor should they be expected to—but the necessity of at least a polite, pro forma response is never so blisteringly oblivious as when erstwhile supporters begrudgingly conclude their own congressman does not regard them as worthy of even basic courtesy. That a Southern gentleman, of all congressmen, would be so rude is as inexcusable as it is terminally arrogant. (It’s also stupid, given that successful primary challenges are concentrated in the South.)
In looking at some other candidates who (often shockingly) lost winnable races, this theme of distance emerges. Republican Mike Castle barely competed in his Delaware primary, while Christine O’Donnell’s supporters played to win and did. Massachusetts Democrat Martha Coakley was uninterested in properly campaigning for the U.S. Senate; Republican Scott Brown asked a broad coalition for votes and got them. Former Sen. Dick Lugar famously did not even live in Indiana, and now he doesn’t represent Hoosier voters.
Likewise, failed presidential candidates, from Democrat Chris Dodd to Republican Michele Bachmann, have routinely fallen into expedited retirement after their constituents lost patience with the manifold downsides of their all-consuming national ambitions. In his aforementioned article in Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende notes that GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham cruised to re-nomination in deep-red South Carolina, despite the well-known hostility of the conservative base, with the help of exceptional constituent engagement.
But unlike Graham—and quite like the other electoral losers—Cantor was far too absorbed in the imagined heights of his ambition to realize that he was falling without style or a parachute.
Consider how much seething constituent anger must have slow-cooked under the aegis of Cantor’s blithe ignorance (or indifference). Consider the many reports of the outgoing Majority Leader’s disengagement from his district and increasing focus on the intrigues of the Acela Corridor’s insular game of thrones. Consider that his approval rating back home sat at just 43 percent among Republicans (within the margin of error from his 44.5 percent in the primary), disapproval of the GOP leadership was much higher, and two-thirds of all voters in the seventh district outright disapproved of the Majority Leader.
Reflect on how out of touch Cantor’s operation must have been to let his position deteriorate so far without even noticing it. Facing hardly any organized opposition, the House Majority Leader was heavily booed at his own rally when confronting a primary challenger of so little repute that even notoriously primary-challenging Tea Party organizations spent not a dime. The incumbent then went on to inspire an exceptionally large portion of his own constituents to nominate that underfunded, barely known challenger by a 10-point margin.
In the end, of course, it is difficult to isolate why exactly a given incumbent loses this or that race, especially when primary losses are so rare. Most theories are probably wrong or incomplete, but if there is a single bipartisan lesson that emerges from Leader Cantor’s catastrophic fall, it is to remember, as Frank Underwood does, the “small-ball crap” of the supposedly little people in your own backyard. After all, chances are that those “little people” will remember and someday act on that John Ruskin quote my Dad loved to invoke in my youth:
“He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.”
“The only question is, whose vision of moral rectitude does it reflect?” –Bishop E.W. Jackson
How could this guy not appeal to Democrats and swing voters?
There are several different narratives percolating on the intersection between religious faith and homosexuality in America.
We have 61 percent of the Boy Scouts voting to drop both a ban on gay scouts and an institutional condemnation of homosexuality. This is particularly interesting in that the largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts—ahead of the United Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Southern Baptist congregations—is the Mormon Church. Not only did the Latter-Day Saints support the change, but their church has been pointedly moving away from the gay front of the culture wars toward a more libertarian consensus on the role of government and institutions in private life.
“The behind-the-scenes effectiveness of the Mormon Church, which sponsors more than a third of all Scout troops in America, is becoming more visible and appears to be nudging the GOP a bit toward a more libertarian stand on some social and cultural issues. Up to a point, Mormons and evangelicals think that the more libertarian the nation’s political center of gravity, the lower the risk of government meddling in religious matters.
But overall, it’s Mormonism that may be on the ascendancy. The nation’s best-known Mormon politician — Mitt Romney — unequivocally endorsed gay equality in Scouting in 1994, long before his 2012 presidential race.”
Representing a different set of priorities, we have legacy scout alum and RedState editor Erick Erickson announcing his acceptance of the Boy Scouts’ decision and rejection of further involvement from his family with the institution. As Erickson puts it, it’s fine to welcome gay people—and he has gay friends!—but it must be maintained that gay behavior, which presumably includes those committed, monogamous relationships that some call love, is sinful. Eve Tushnet, a gay Catholic and a friend-of-friends from Yale, would agree. This position on gay love is, blessedly, a minority and declining view in America, but we have little reason to believe it will die quietly.
And then there are people like Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr., the Republican Party of Virginia’s convention-chosen candidate for lieutenant governor. Jackson’s contribution to the discussion: LGBT people make him “feel ikky all over.” That is among his least objectionable statements. (We are supposed to be comforted by the fact that “he wouldn’t support any sort of ban on gay sex”—not that Lawrence v. Texas is constitutional precedent or anything.) Of course, he also spends his free time promoting discrimination against Muslim Americans (because obviously most of them are, like, terrorists and stuff) and warning people about the dangers of Satanic possession inherent in yoga.
As a conservative with libertarian leanings, I’m an independent at heart. I’m willing to entertain diverging views even on such sacred cows as gun control (use both hands and stand your ground) and the freedom to marry (Yes). I do have friends and family who oppose me on either and other positions, and I have and will support and vote for candidates who disagree with me on major issues if I am persuaded that their overall vision is superior to that of their opponent.
So I would vote for Chris Christie were I a New Jersey voter, despite lip-curling disdain for his positions on gun rights, pork-free relief bills, and gay marriage (which is as benign—if still annoying—as opposition can get), and against a Democrat whose policies would be great for gay rights (i.e., extending the invaluable word, “marriage”) but otherwise abhorrent. Likewise, I would support Mark Kirk in Illinois, despite his unsettling antipathy to gun rights, for essentially the same reasons unabashedly gun-grabbing progressives would support BrianSchweitzer over a Republican in Montana. That said, I would probably support neither (as first, second, or even third choices) in a Republican presidential primary, which would presumably be full of better (overall) options.
But however certain I may be that the progressive vision of America should be regarded as a call to arms against the equalizing asphyxiation of a prosperous civilization, there are bridges too far in that fight. With Jackson, even in areas where we agree, he manages to make me uncomfortable. For instance, I would find it difficult to support at-will abortion (i.e., pregnancies terminated for reasons other than rape, incest, or health considerations). However, I must draw a line well before comparing Planned Parenthood—which, in many cases is the only viable non-abortion health option for poor women—to the KKK. I also agree that liberal policies are disastrous for minorities (and most people), but I don’t see how expressing unmitigated contempt for minority voters wins any converts.
So to put it bluntly: I am not terribly inclined to support E.W. Jackson. (Yes, I suppose there may be worse options, but I am a zealous opponent of invoking Godwin’s Law.) That is not to say I will vote for the Democrat rather than just skip that race altogether, but barring a sudden and convincing change of heart from Jackson, the Virginia lieutenant governorship is all but certainly the Left’s race to lose. These things do happen when party bosses opt for conventions over primaries so as to limit the input of voters—the same voters who will decide the general election.
Fortunately, my political and moral revulsion toward Jackson has not yet translated into opposition to GOP gubernatorial candidate and current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. To be sure, I have qualms with Cuccinelli—not the least of which his opposition to Gov. McDonnell’s bipartisan transportation bill and less-than-enthusiastic regard for workforce protections for LGBT employees—but I will allow his campaign to convince me that his governance will hold the pragmatic conservative line set by his predecessor. Besides, the prospect of a Democratic Party hack like Terry McAuliffe as Governor of the Commonwealth is downright unconscionable.
We all have to compromise somewhere.
For some closing thoughts, allow me to make a general point on sexual politics that pertains to Erickson and Tushnet as much as to Jackson and other Virginia Republicans like Robert G. Marshall. The sexual revolution is over. In fact, it was so long ago settled that before I was ever dreamt of, my parents grew up in a world where birth control, casual sex, and divorce were already culturally ingrained, and gay relatives and friends were already finding the precursors of modern acceptance. It is all well and good for the holdouts of the erstwhile “Moral Majority” to solemnly distinguish their values from the philosophical incoherence of the Boy Scouts on the one hand and the rabid bigotry of E.W. Jackson on the other. However, that is a conversation that no longer has any more resonance in 2013—when 72 percent of Americans believe gay marriage will happen eventually—than a debate over the validity of absentee voting.
Accordingly, the conversation ahead of 2016 is whether and how potential Republican presidential nominees will downplay any opposition to gay marriage. I fully expect influential contingents of the conservative base to demand full-throated opposition to gay rights, and I suspect they will get some bone or other (e.g. nominal but express opposition to the freedom to marry). I also expect a growing mainstream contingent of pro-gay Republican and Independent voters will be unusually eager to kick that bone away in the face of popular Democratic grandstanding for gay rights.
This tension is not sustainable. Conservatives, as a movement, will have to learn to articulate a set of values that is inclusive to gay Americans—and the voters who support them. Otherwise, the Republican Party, along with the values of strong families and free enterprise it espouses, will buckle under the weight of escalating political liabilities like an aging welfare state over an overtaxed population.
Whatever happens in Virginia this November, the need to relate timeless values to evolving cultural trends will continue.
“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” –Ramsay Bolton
This congressman-elect brought you by Values Voters USA.
Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, and other old-style social conservatives lost two rather public battles this week. While each loss has direct political results in the immediate future, both portend long-term changes in American social policy and culture.
First, Delaware joined Rhode Island and nine other states (and the District of Columbia) in extending the freedom to marry to committed gay American couples. Halfway across the country, elected statesmen in Minnesota are angling to win the race with Illinois to be the second Midwestern state to embrace same-sex marriage, and the first to do so by legislation.
As an aside, one interesting thing about the Rhode Island vote—besides unanimous Republican support for gay marriage in the Ocean State senate—is that it finally consolidates New England and New York in unified recognition of marital rights for gay unions, which have been approved by every accessible metric: judicial rulings (Massachusetts and Connecticut), overridden veto (Vermont), rebuffed attempt at legislative repeal (New Hampshire), referendum (Maine), and governor-signed legislation with bipartisan support (New York and Rhode Island). With Delaware joining the marriage fold, Pennsylvania is now the only state in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic that offers no recognition to gay unions whatsoever.
Secondly, the first district of South Carolina is sending Mark Sanford back to Congress as a conservative Republican.
While John Hayward over at RedState might imagine that liberals and Democrats are shying from the discussion on “family values”, it is abundantly clear that they—along with more libertarian Republicans and Independents—are quite willing, able, and successful in wielding traditionalist hypocrisy as a weapon for a more inclusive understanding of marriage and family. Within the next week or so, Rep.-elect Sanford will join the likes of Senator David Vitter (R-La.) in mocking the undead credibility of the “moral” opposition to gay rights.
To be sure, one cannot fault the average Sanford general-election voter for pinching their noses and thwarting Elizabeth Colbert Busch’s attempt to bolster the coalition of Nancy Pelosi. It was certainly as pragmatic a political choice, if also a repulsive instance of “dirty hands,” as the partisans of Bill Clinton holding the fort against his Republican opposition. And for what it’s worth, Lowcountry voters did, as Nate Silver notes, withhold a substantial degree of support from the disgraced ex-governor.
Yet the “lesser of two evils” analysis does not excuse the fact that Sanford won a GOP primary where more credible (if less glamorous) and family-friendly options were readily available. If abusing public funds to commit adultery on another continent does not disqualify someone from winning the Republican primary in a region more conservative than 119 Republican districts, why should anybody heed a movement that agitates for the civilizational imperative of “traditional marriage” only insofar as it makes life harder for gay people (e.g. opposition to anti-discrimination laws)?
Jennifer Rubin, a token conservative of The Washington Post, makes the point quite eloquently:
“But social conservatives should take this result seriously as an indication that even in a low-turnout race in a Republican district appeals to personal morality and approbation for sexual misconduct carry little weight. Yes, one can bemoan the voters’ values (or lack thereof), but it is a warning that the public’s willingness to accept all sorts of behavior out of some sense of “fairness” (he apologized didn’t he?) is nearly limitless. That has implications for the sorts of appeals they make on everything from “traditional marriage” to sex education. In short, Americans, including Republicans, aren’t very susceptible to appeals based purely on morality.
Whether we are becoming a more libertarian or a libertine society is a matter of debate. But the real take-away is that Republicans talk a good game on “family values” but don’t take it all that seriously.”
None of this is to say that some understanding of family-oriented traditionalism is no longer relevant or valued in modern America. To the contrary, many people support gay marriage precisely because of the prospect of shoring up conservative values—the proper ends of liberty—against libertine atomism. But if conservative stalwarts will not demand a cogent application of those values in the ruby-red land of palmettos, how can there be a national discussion about why such values must entail ongoing discrimination against the families of gay Americans?
But however the GOP determines to deal with insurmountable public support for gay people and their families, we can all take some small solace in knowing that having Ashley Madison as your running mate trumps an endorsement from Nancy Pelosi. Even Focus on the Family and friends have standards.
You hear a lot these days about the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” types who would vote for the Republican Party if only it got its act together. MSNBC-friendly Republicans like Colin Powell and Joe Scarborough have each done their part to help sustain this narrative at times. To be sure, there are a number of social positions the GOP generally represents that are rightfully anathema to this crowd, and I understand that. What’s rather interesting, however, is the degree to which the Trojan Horse of “right-wing extremism” has come to extend to the very fiscal responsibility that would-be conservatives profess to want.
Republicans don’t all agree on the optimal way forward on fiscal issues any more than do the Democrats. But whatever the media hype to the contrary, we should all be able to agree that, say, continually raising the debt ceiling without substantial budgetary reform is less than ideal. To this effect, you GOP-leery fiscal conservatives, Jonah Goldberg has written you a letter:
“So, Bob, as a “fiscal conservative,” what was so outrageous about trying to cut pork — Fisheries in Alaska! Massive subsidies for Amtrak! — from the Sandy disaster-relief bill? What was so nuts about looking for offsets to pay for it?”
Even if you think the House mishandled the Sandy bill, their objections seem not unreasonable, and they did offer another, less pork-laden bill. But as that fight is over, let’s move on to the “moderates”:
“Well, let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling). Now, the debt is bigger than our GDP. Gross Domestic Product is barely $15 trillion. The national debt is over $16 trillion and climbing — fast. The country isn’t going broke, Bob, it is broke.
When George W. Bush added nearly $5 trillion in national debt in two terms you were scandalized. When Obama added more than that in one term, you yawned. When, in 2006, then-senator Obama condemned Bush’s failure of leadership and vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling, you thought him a statesman. Obama, who wants to borrow trillions more, now admits that was purely a “political vote.”
Yet when Republicans actually have the courage of Obama’s own convictions, you condemn them.”
This, of course, brings us to the crux of our spending problem of which liberals loathe to speak—entitlements:
“Anyone who calls himself a fiscal conservative understands we have a spending problem. Do the math. A two-earner couple who retired in 2011 after making $89,000 per year will have paid about $114,000 into Medicare over their lifetimes but will receive $355,000. When will it dawn on you that Obama doesn’t think we have a spending problem? I ask because when he said “we don’t have a spending problem,” it seemed to have no effect on you.
And yet you still think Paul Ryan’s budget was “extreme.” Do you know when it balanced the budget? 2040. What’s a non-extreme date to balance the budget, Bob? 2113?”
Until and unless Democrats get serious about transformative spending cuts, my fiscally conservative friend, the GOP is the only game in town for deficit reduction. I’m not saying the Party is perfect by any means, but a few rotten apples don’t change the fact that we, as a movement, are committed to the fiscal reforms that will move our country toward the right track. And every step of the way, the Left fights us tooth and nail. Remember that the next time somebody howls about “extremists.”
Update: This post was adapted by The Daily Caller. You can find that article here.
“Let’s remember the energy… there was the neighborhood, the communal determination that we, the children, should escape poverty, ignorance, disease, social injury and intimidation—escape, above all, insignificance. You must not come to nothing! Make something of yourselves!” –Philip Roth
“We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.” –Col. Michael Hudson, U.S. Marines
“Sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.”
On January 9, 1913, a future President of the United States was born into a conservative Quaker family in Yorba Linda, California. A few weeks from now, forty years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon was inaugurated into his second term in office. Having won more electoral votes than any American president in history (to that point) by a still unprecedented margin of 18 million popular votes, he seemed the herald of a new era of American politics after a generation of New Deal dominance, bitter Civil Rights battles, and lukewarm Democratic wars in Southeast Asia.
Now, of course, President Nixon is largely remembered for ushering in a new era of governmental dysfunction, ill-advised economic meddling, escalating distrust in our public servants, and the so-called “Southern strategy” (which won him a now-incredible 36% of the black vote). But whatever his failings, real and imagined, Richard Nixon contributed much to the American story and the history of the Republican Party, including a two-decade conservative dominance of the White House. In remembering that Nixon swept every state but Massachusetts (and D.C.) en route to historic reelection, we must note his exceptional political savvy.
On the domestic front, he pushed policies to desegregate Southern schools, limit federal spending, protect the environment, and fight rampant sex discrimination. Before Clinton-Gingrich ended “welfare as we know it”, the Nixon administration proposed work requirements in an ultimately ill-fated endeavor to salve the sting of poverty. Whereas some conservatives today have been wont to, how to put it, reflexively malign the poor and struggling, Nixon knew how to sympathetically appeal to the dignity and plight of the working poor. For this they rewarded him electorally like no other executive besides Reagan, who was similarly gifted in the convoluted art of appealing to a diverse nation.
In foreign policy, President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger artfully sowed the seeds of American victory in the Cold War by taking advantage of the little-noted fact that Communist regimes in the USSR and China were not a monolith but antagonists. Through singular perspicacity, Nixon built on a strong record of fighting Communism, foreign and domestic (just ask Alger Hiss), to accomplish nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and the diplomatic opening of China. In winding down the Democrats’ war in Vietnam, he reaffirmed the GOP as the Party of Peace and responsible use of force—a distinction it would hold until the 21st Century. For such achievements, the fallen president would later be (privately) consulted for advice by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, who accomplished the final body blows to the fiefdom of the Bolsheviks.
This is not to say Richard Nixon is a model for Republicans Present. His commitment to conservatism notwithstanding, he was the first president in over a century whose Party controlled neither house of Congress. As such, he was obliged to yield to a far more robust coalition of progressivism than we are called to endure today, and he aimed to be a conservative reformer in a New Deal world—not exactly an enviable task. Accordingly, his governing philosophy “was only as conservative as he could be and only as liberal as he had to be.”
Moreover, he had the immensely complex task of governing a radical new consensus on civil rights, which presented a host of challenges in lieu of the clarity and achievements of today. His politically motivated price controls were a bust, his expansion of the welfare state earned legitimate qualms, and Watergate was an incalculable disgrace. But there must be something worth learning from a president who managed in four years to expand his share of national support by greater margins even than did Reagan. It is a testimony to Nixon’s governing success that his unelected, pardon-plagued successor Gerald Ford only barely lost the 1976 election because the Solid South rose again in a final stand against the divided Republican North.
The lesson of Nixon for conservatives is that we must understand the failures and successes of Republicans past—every bit as much as we must understand progressives present—if we are to take back our country from the brink of asphyxiating division, debt, and entitled mediocrity. We are not perfect, nor have been—or will be—our leaders and representatives. But if Woodrow “Segregate the Federal Government for No Reason” Wilson and Jimmy “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embarrass a Superpower” Carter can still get their accolades on the Left, we can remember Richard Nixon with a bit of perspective.
Besides, he was still a better president than Obama.
Update: An earlier draft of this post was adapted by The Daily Caller. You can find that article here.
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulateeconomic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.” –John F. Kennedy
“We believe small businesses are the engine of economic growth in this country.” –Barack Obama
What do you mean taxes have consequences?
The U.S. Treasury Department announced yesterday that the federal budget deficit for the month of October 2012 was $120 billion.
For some fun perspective, Greece, Spain, and Italy produced deficits of about $9 billion, $29 billion, and $87 billion, respectively, in 2011. Read that again. In a single month, the U.S. government accumulated debt nigh tantamount to the entire annual deficits of three precariously recessive Eurozone countries. Of all the countries on Earth, only four—Japan, Britain, France, and Mexico—ran deficits in all of 2011 that exceeded Washington’s shortfall last month alone. Of all the annual surpluses of 2011—from Brazil to Sweden to Saudi Arabia—not one reaches $82 billion, let alone the $120 billion the U.S. spent by Halloween. Of course, these countries all have much smaller GDP, but it still makes for amusing comparison.
By now, you have already heard ad nauseam that Barack Obama has added more than half as much debt as he inherited. You also know that spending is at the highest levels since the Second World War, and yet Millennials are still, in a word, screwed. With the election behind us and the status quo ante more or less entrenched, we should expect the president will finally offer a real, centrist proposal to subdue the debt and unburden a drowning economy in way both sides can agree.
A week past the election, however, President Obama remains obsessed with effecting higher tax rates, which his allies are insisting do not matter. Before the election, the president campaigned on the need to lower corporate taxes in order to spur growth and create jobs. Now freed from the oversight of the electorate, Obama has reneged on this oft–repeatedpromise and literally doubled down on plans to sap resources from what he has agreed are the engines of our economy. Either the president has “evolved” on the question of private enterprise or he places a minimal premium on political and economic integrity.
Just as edible chemicals are not interchangeable for bodily health, not all forms of revenue have equivalent effect on the economy. Put simply, taxes retard growth, but certain types do so more than others—hence the once bipartisan agreement that corporate taxes should be cut and the fact of different rates for different kinds of income. (By the way, Great State of Illinois, sin taxes are terribly regressive.) As it happens—income taxes, which have already risen at the state level—are particularly associated with lower economic growth than other kinds of revenue, and the U.S. already has an unusually progressive tax system relative to the rest of the developed world. Hence, Republicans have long admitted and embraced the need for more revenue while insisting only that tax rates not be increased. From an economic standpoint, and contrary to the administration’s demagoguery, this makes sense.
We all know that President Obama won the election, and the Democrats gained seats in Congress. The Party of gracious victors was magnanimous enough to remind everyone of this fact, ad infinitum, in case we forgot. It was really very thoughtful of them. But now that the campaign is over, we need our elected officials to get serious about fixing this economy.
Equating Bill Kristol’s musing that the country would survive a tax hike with an endorsement of the idea is not serious. You could survive an amputation, if the party in power insists on it, and we may have to negotiate an arm down to a finger because they have won the upper hand (ahem). But that doesn’t change the fact that the powers that be are obdurately committed to hurting you, and we need to discuss ways that will actually solve problems.
At the end of the day, America still has a spending problem that can never be matched by revenue, and entitlements will start to go insolvent in the next decade. I would love to see the President of the United States reckon with the reality of the mess, and I expect the Republicans in Congress, however weakened, will continue to insist that he do so.
Token Dissonance 
