Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and qualifications for the Presidency

The Washington Examiner carries a regular column by Byron York, who, like many of the Examiner's columnists, tends to be a little more right-wing than me, so sometimes I agree and sometimes I disagree. In yesterday's paper I read York's column, which read:

What's wrong with Rick Perry? How did the successful, well-liked, long-term governor of one of America's largest states enter the Republican presidential primary race with great fanfare, zoom to the top of the polls, and then slide almost as quickly back into the pack?

Blaming the Texas governor's problems on a lackluster debating style — as Perry himself has done after a number of poor performances — answers only part of the question. Yes, debates are particularly important this campaign season. But debates are more than just style and popularity contests. They reveal deeper things about candidates; voters watching debates can learn not only how a candidate handles tough questions but whether he is really, truly prepared to run for the White House.

Early in Perry's candidacy, there was a spate of stories suggesting he's not smart enough to be president. They weren't subtle; one was headlined “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” But even Perry's critics could look at those stories and say: Here is a man who has successfully governed a large and complex state, presided over prosperity and growth, dealt with the political challenges that go with it all, and won re-election repeatedly. Successful governorships don't just happen by accident; Perry's results in Texas show he is a smart, competent executive.

But the debates have revealed a different problem. The Rick Perry who has taken the stage in four Republican debates so far is a man who, for all his governing success in Texas, appears not to have thought enough about why he wants to be president of the United States and what he would do if he achieved his goal. When critics gently say that Perry's presentations have been “light on details,” they're really saying Perry doesn't seem to have thought things through.

More than anything else, a lot of thinking should precede a run for president. There's no time to think about much of anything once the campaign begins, and there's no way a candidate can collect and organize a lifetime of experiences into a coherent approach to national issues once he's flying from stop to stop. A candidate has to have done his thinking long before he hits the road or steps on a debate stage.

Think back to a different example from a different time. In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Miers was a perfectly fine White House counsel, but she clearly had not spent a lifetime doing the kind of legal thinking that prepares one for the highest court. The White House assured doubters that Miers planned to study really, really hard in preparation for her confirmation hearings.

But it doesn't work that way. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito didn't have to cram at the last minute for their hearings. Each had a lifetime of experience and thinking at the highest levels of the law, and their task was to organize the knowledge they already had to prepare for confirmation questioning. But the important thing was, the knowledge was there. The thinking had already been done. Miers, on the other hand, wasn't prepared and finally dropped out.

There's no doubt former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has thought a long, long time about being president. Romney can tell you, at any level of generality or detail you want, why he is running and what he would do if he won. He adjusts to new issues and questions by building on all the preparation he's already done.

For Romney, debate preparation involves taking all the things he has already thought through and finding the most effective way to present them in one-minute answers. For Perry, debate preparation is trying to learn new stuff about national issues that he should have been thinking about a long time ago.

It's often pointed out that since Perry entered the Republican race late, on Aug. 13, he had little time to build a campaign organization and hone a campaign pitch. That's true, but the fact is, if Perry wanted to be president, he should have been thinking seriously about the substance of national issues — not just money-raising and state chairmen — years before he declared his candidacy.

Now Perry is paying the price for that lack of preparation. And if that, in fact, is the real problem behind his poor debate performances, then he's not going to improve as a candidate in the next few weeks. It's far too late for that.

I don't think York goes quite far enough. When he says that “[t]here's no doubt former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has thought a long, long time about being president. Romney can tell you, at any level of generality or detail you want, why he is running and what he would do if he won. He adjusts to new issues and questions by building on all the preparation he's already done,” he's conceding, as well, that Romney, if he is elected in November 2012, will be able, right on Jan. 20, 2013, to move into the Presidency, knowing what he wants to do and how and why he wants to do it. Contrast the current occupant of the White House, who let Congress write his health care bill because he wasn't quite sure what he wanted, and who has in general been pretty slow on the uptake in just about any way you can imagine. This is a good reason to elect Romney, not just a reason he will win debates — whether with Perry now or with Obama in 2012.

"Occupy Wall Street" vs. the "Tea Party"

There is a man up in New Hampshire who does a blog called “Libertarian Leanings.” I don't always agree with him, but it usually makes good reading. And yesterday, he posted this comparison between the two movements called “Occupy Wall Street” and the “Tea Party.”

For some time now Democrats have wanted their own version of the Tea Party, and now they think they have it with Occupy Wall Street. Good luck with that. As Karl Rove observes, there are differences between the two.

The tea party is a middle-class movement of people who want limited government, less spending, less debt, low taxes, and the repeal of ObamaCare. Occupy Wall Street isn't a movement. It's a series of events populated by a weird cast of disaffected characters, ranging from anarchists and anti-Semites to socialists and LaRouchies. What they have in common is an amorphous anger aimed at banks, investors, rich people and bourgeois values.

The tea party reveres the Constitution and wants to change laws to restore the country to prosperity. Occupy Wall Street started by occupying a New York City park and then blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, sparking the arrest of hundreds.

The tea party files for permits for its rallies and picks up its trash afterwards. Occupy Wall Street tolerates protesters who defecate on police cars, allows the open sale of drugs at protests, and features women walking around rallies topless.

Somehow differences like that haven't registered with progressives like Nancy Pelosi.

“God bless them,” Pelosi said, “for their spontaneity. It's independent ... it's young, it's spontaneous, and it's focused. And it's going to be effective.”

Effective? Yes, if the plan is to destroy any chance for Democrats to hold the White House and the Senate in 2012. Their embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement will prove toxic to Democrats, especially in light of Barack Obama raking in near record setting amounts of Wall Street campaign money. Which raises one notable similarity between the Tea Party and OWS. Both will effectively drive Democrats from office in 2012. Go team, go!

This time, I think he's hit the nail on the head, so I quote his post in its entirety.

Religious fervor about political issues

In Dennis Sanders' blog, “Big Tent Revue,” he references a column by New York Times columnist David Brooks, and makes the valid point that policy has become subordinate to symbolism, causing our political system to founder. I advise people to read both posts, and I think Sanders has a lot of truth in what he says. Certainly, whether it's taxes, gun control, or any of a number of issues, it looks like just what he talks about has happened.

The only question is, how can we change this trend? I'm not certain this can be done without great changes in our political establishment. Sanders seems to think that there was hope that Barack Obama might be the one, and he seems to be disappointed that he wasn't. I never saw Obama in that light, and my posts prior to the 2008 election should make that clear. But who can be the one?

A senior living facility that should be ashamed of itself

It seems that in Reston, Va., just outside Washington, D. C., there is a living facility for senior citizens called Hunters Woods Fellowship House. Its site proclaims: “Hunters Woods Fellowship House is a government–assisted apartment complex, located in Reston VA, designed for individuals of limited income who are over age 62 or are handicapped or disabled.” Note the words “government-assisted.” Therefore, it ought to be a non-discriminatory facility. But the facts, as opposed to the “ought to be”s, are quite different. According to an article in today's Washington Examiner, a group of Jewish seniors wishing to have a Rosh Hashanah celebration party were denied the opportunity. They were refused the option of renting a common room that is available for activities, and when they took some chairs outside for the party, the Hunters Woods management called the police (who determined that no law was violated, and left without making any arrests). Apparently a similar occurrence happened last year at Chanukah, when residents were told that they could not have their party and should consider a Christmas party as enough.

If this doesn't confirm Hunters Woods as grossly anti-Semitic, I don't know what it is. They, according to the Examiner article, deny being discriminatory. Of course, on their Web site, the organization says it operates “out of an abiding sense of Christian mission.” So are they a religious organization, which figures they're like a church and have no need to accomodate non-Christians, or a Government-funded charitable organization, with an obligation to serve all regardless of religious preference? They can't be both.

A follow-up to yesterday's post

Yesterday, I made a posting on this blog in which I referred to sources that predicted that Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey would officially endorse the candidacy of Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. It has now happened. And what a ringing endorsement it was. Gov. Christie went up to New Hampshire, where former Gov. Romney was preparing for the debate, to stand beside him and proclaim:

“I'm here in New Hampshire for one simple reason: America cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's the man to lead America and we need him now.”

This is no wishy-washy, half-hearted endorsement. Chris Christie is a man who speaks his mind, and this shows it. And I heartily concur with Gov. Christie's words. That is why I put them on this blog, larger than normal. Romney has shown he can manage a business, and also manage a state. None of the other candidates (except Jon Huntsman) can claim this experience. And Romney has done it in a state dominated by the opposite party, which Huntsman cannot claim. Romney also, unlike such extremists as Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, has the appeal to moderates that is needed to prevent their going to Obama. For all these reasons, I, along with Gov. Christie, believe that “Mitt Romney's the man to lead America.”

An endorsement that makes a lot of sense

Since Chris Christie has decided he's not running for next year's GOP Presidential nomination, a lot of his supporters are going to look to him as to where to go. His biggest backer, Kenneth Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, has already said he's going with Mitt Romney. So will Christie himself endorse Romney? Some news sources say he will, today.

It makes sense. Chris Christie is a Republican governor of a normally-Democratic state who has shown he can get his program through a Democratic state legislature. Both he and Romney are relatively moderate conservatives who eschew the craziness of the extremists. So I am sure that he sees a kindred spirit in Romney. And I certainly think it's appropriate. Readers of this blog may have figured out that my position for some time has been "I really would prefer Christie, but of those who are actually interested in running, Romney is clearly the best." So I applaud Christie's decision to endorse Romney now, before all the jockeying for position. It will help Romney get support from others besides just Langone who have been in the "draft Christie" camp.

I think this proves once more that Christie is the kind of person who does things that make sense. And it confirms my good feelings about both men. Just as, three years ago, when Romney saw he was not going to win the nomination, he buried the hatchet with John McCain for what was obviously the good of the Republican Party, Christie is doing what he (and I) believe is the best thing for the Republican Party and for the USA: encouraging us all to unite behind Romney as clearly the best hope to end the Obama Presidency.

What's wrong with deflation?

Lately I have been seeing posts and articles in which the writer gets all hot under the collar about the threat of deflation. Frankly, after living my whole life under inflation, worrying about whether my savings, even with interest, will be worth less than when I put the money away, I welcome deflation — if it will really occur. I've seen the 3¢ stamp of my youth go to 44¢ — and it's probably going to go even higher. I don't ever go to the movies — $10 a pop seems fantastic when, as a kid, I paid 25¢, and adults paid 40¢ — and got to see two movies for the price! Yes, my first job paid $6500 a year, and I had a Master's degree; and now even the guy at McDonald's makes a heck of a lot more than that. But I think I'd rather make the wages I made in the 1960s and 1970s — if prices were also at that level — so I knew that if I put away the money in savings I'd still have its value when I needed it.

People argue that, with deflation, people would never buy anything — they'd forever be waiting for prices to come further down. But you have to eat every day, and things wear out, so you'd need to replace them. And look at the one part of our economy that has been deflationary: electronics. The Commodore 64 I bought in the 1980s cost more in current dollars (not inflation-adjusted dollars!) than the laptop I bought in 2008. And the laptop is vastly more powerful! And even a calculator that I can buy for $10 does as much (or more) than the one I paid $80 for in 1973. Yet people buy computers, and calculators, and don't wait for prices to come further down. They want the items now, and will upgrade in the future. So this is a fallacy.

So, I repeat, what's wrong with deflation? I would be happy to see it!

The passing of Steve Jobs

At least three of the blogs I look at had posts about Steve Jobs, who passed away yesterday, so I guess I ought to put in my own 2¢.

Jobs was, like Howard Schultz at Starbucks, the man who made his company go. In both cases, when they left their companies, the companies tanked, and only when they came back, their companies revived again. Perhaps Jobs' successor as Apple CEO, Tim Cook, can keep the company going, but at one time before, Jobs left and Apple foundered, so we have to see.

But there are some misconceptions as to what Jobs actually did. Some people believe that Jobs invented the easy interface, sometimes called the WIMP interface (Window/Icon/Mouse/Pointer). But in fact it was developed by the Xerox Corporation at its Palo Alto Research Center. The thing Jobs (together with another Steve, Wozniak, who seems to be forgotten these days) did at Apple was to make it a marketable product. Xerox never figured out how to market, or at least how to market anything but the copiers they grew famous on. That was Jobs' real contribution: making computers something that anyone could use was part of it, but making computers something that everyone wanted was the bigger part. And later on, he continued with these products that caught people's fancy: the various “i-P's” (iPod, iPad, iPhone). (I must admit, I have none of these three, though this makes me a distinct minority!)

Unlike Bill Gates, Jobs never made lots of enemies. He found a way to make you want his products without resenting it — while Gates made people feel that he was bullying people into buying his products. And this was Jobs' real genius.

The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki

President Obama has been criticized for ordering the killing of al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki. In my book, however, the President did right.

Awlaki was born in the U. S., and under the 14^th Amendment is a citizen of the U. S. So in theory, this is the assassination of a U. S. citizen. But in fact, Awlaki, by his words and deeds, renounced his citizenship. In exactly the same way that my grandfather, when he became a citizen of the U. S., renounced his Russian citizenship. Unfortunately, the 14^th Amendment does not address the issue of renunciation of citizenship, so it could be argued that "once a U. S. citizen, always a U. S. citizen," under the terms of that amendment. But in that case, if Awlaki was still a citizen, his actions constitute treason, a capital offense. And his killing is simply an act of punishment that fits the crime.

But then, some might argue that he deserved a fair trial. My response is, what is the purpose of a trial? It is to afford the prosecution a chance to prove its case. Is there any person who can deny that Awlaki's actions, if he was still a citizen, constituted treason, while if he was not, he was an enemy soldier and his killing was simply a normal act of war?

In either case, the killing of Awlaki was justified. This time, Obama did the right thing.

Chris Christie won't run

Apparently New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided he won't run. Too bad. He would have made a great President, I think. But, as it said in the New York Times:

After a kinetic month in which some of the biggest names in American industry and Republican politics urged him to run for president, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey spent a quiet weekend at home, coming to a sobering conclusion on Tuesday: “Now is not my time.”

“New Jersey, whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with me,” Mr. Christie said at an afternoon news briefing in Trenton in which he appeared to be reveling in the national attention his deliberations had drawn, while at the same time showing relief.

And so ended what Mr. Christie’s closest aides and associates described as a heady roller-coaster ride during which he discussed the perils of a national campaign with former President George W. Bush during a Sept. 11 Jets-Cowboys game, received a private hourlong foreign policy briefing from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, and dined with Nancy Reagan.

But he found himself dreading the prospect of winter in Iowa, conjuring an image of campaign misery at a forum two weeks ago as he imagined himself at a hotel room in Des Moines, “and its 5:30 in the morning and it’s 15 below, and it’s time for me to get up and go shake hands at the meatpacking plant.”

Mr. Christie’s decision — reached Monday night — means the Republican field is now essentially set, forcing the party to focus on those already in the race and give up on the idea that an ideal candidate continues to sit on the sidelines.

And it gave Mitt Romney in particular an opportunity to win over donors and
other potential supporters who have been waiting to see how the race takes
shape. Within hours of Mr. Christie’s announcement, Mr. Romney, the perceived front-runner, had won a commitment from Kenneth Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. Mr. Langone, a high-profile donor, had taken a leading role in urging Mr. Christie to run.

It was just three weeks ago that Mr. Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, gave him the green light for a presidential bid. But as he consulted with his top aides, his wife, and his longtime confidant, William Palatucci, the stark realities of a national campaign were coming in to sharp relief: An unsuccessful bid could make a re-election campaign for governor that much harder.

Getting a campaign together relatively late in the election season was made even tougher when Florida announced last week that it was moving its primary up to Jan. 31, prompting Iowa and New Hampshire to likely leapfrog ahead of it. That meant even less time to prepare for the first contests. But Mr. Christie’s top political aide, Michael Duhaime, was said to be confident that a campaign could be set in motion overnight and was not daunted by the logistical challenges.

And aides and friends said, beyond the challenges of a national run, the
governor was simply unable to abide all the unfinished business he would have to leave behind after less than two years in office.

As Mr. Christie said Tuesday, “I could not get by, in my mind, in my heart, the idea that I was going to leave here 20 months into my term. I just couldn’t get by that.”

The high-level campaign to persuade Mr. Christie to run came to typify the
unease that the party’s establishment and donor wings still have with the slate of candidates in the running. And Mr. Christie’s quasi-public deliberations had frozen many of the Republican Party’s most important financiers as they waited to see if he would get in.

As he deliberated, there were emotional pleas from captains of industry and
finance such as Mr. Langone and the investor Carl Icahn, as well as from voters, like a farmer from Nebraska who sent a FedEx to Mr. Christie’s home over the weekend, addressed to his children, the youngest of whom is 8. It contained a letter telling them to urge their father to make a bid and that doing so would give them a place in history, Mr. Christie said.

Mr. Langone had been among the leaders of the effort to get Mr. Christie to
enter the race, holding a meeting with the governor and dozens of other major party donors at the New York Health and Racquet Club in the summer at which Mr. Christie was said to have been taken aback by the passion of their pleas.

Aside from doubts about the Republican field of candidates, they were impressed with Mr. Christie’s public tangles with Democrats, teachers and state workers as he sought to cut state spending, not to mention his theatrical approach at public events.

But aides said the campaign to enlist him started its climb to fever pitch after former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota announced in mid-August that he was dropping out of the race, and then more so after Gov. Rick Perry of Texas received poor reviews at a Sept. 22 debate in Orlando, Fla.

But it appears she was ahead of Mr. Christie himself. Three people close to Meg Whitman, the new chief executive of Hewlett Packard, said that when she spoke with the governor in early September about holding a fund-raiser for the New Jersey Republicans in California — which she did last week — she received assurances from him that he was not running for president. Mr. Christie’s assurances to Ms. Whitman were first reported in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Bob Teeven, a friend from Mr. Christie’s student government days as an
undergraduate at the University of Delaware, said the governor had not indicated he was leaning toward a White House bid when he saw him in Wilmington on Sept. 20, when Mr. Christie received the Freedom Award from former Gov. Pete du Pont.

Mr. Perry’s poorly received debate performance came two days later, and
afterward Mr. Christie and his aides were deluged with new requests, from
powerhouse donors and voters alike, to enter the nominating battle.

His polite responses to their calls left some with the impression that he was leaning toward a run. And while his representatives denied that to reporters, it is clear that his resistance to the idea was, at the very least, softening.

Already scheduled to speak at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in
California last week, his address there — in which he called President Obama “a bystander in the Oval Office” — took on new resonance. Combined with a series of fund-raisers across the country, the trip — and the boisterous reception he received from crowds — made an impression on him, and caused him to begin reassessing his denials one last time, aides acknowledged in interviews.

As Mr. Christie said on Tuesday, “When you have serious people from across the spectrum, not to mention from all across the country, passionately calling on you to do something as consequential as running for president of the United States, I felt an obligation to earnestly consider their advice.”

Also, friends said, he no longer seemed to have the same misgivings about his own readiness for the Oval Office. Jerry Zaro, a friend of Mr. Christie’s, said that a half-term on the job, and one legislative victory after another, “It’s taught him — it’s shown him — that he’s got the goods.”

Yet even now, there are no reports that Mr. Christie ever came very close to deciding to plunge in. During a fund-raising event in Louisiana on Thursday with Gov. Bobby Jindal, he made it clear that he did not have an appetite for the long stretches of time on the road that would take him away from his children, said Jason P. Doré, the executive director of the Louisiana Republican Party. He said Mr. Christie spoke about “his son missing him after being gone for the three days on the road, and that he needed to get back.”

Mr. Christie said his family was prepared to support a White House bid and
insisted on Tuesday that the decision was his alone. “I came back to the same place that I was in the whole last year when everyone was asking me, which was I don’t want to leave this job,” he said. “And it’s just never felt right to me to leave. And so I didn’t.”

As I said, too bad.

More on Governor Christie

Yesterday I said that if he ran for the Presidency, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would be my first choice. So it is an interesting coincidence that on the same date, Dennis Sanders' "Big Tent Revue" blog also discussed Christie, but in the context of another opinion, a September 29 column in The Washington Post by Eugene Robinson, and a rebuttal in The New York Times by Frank Bruni.

Dennis Sanders agrees with Bruni that just because Christie is seriously overweight, that does not make him any less qualified to be President. And I certainly agree. If being unable to control one's appetite is a sign of inability as a leader, what about President Obama's inability to control his tobacco habit?

I think Robinson just doesn't like Christie, and has found a convenient excuse.

Another candidate?

Right now, of those declared candidates for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination, my favorite, as I've stated on this blog before, is Mitt Romney. He's the best of the ones who have said they want to run, for a lot of reasons — he's not the extreme right-winger that most of his competitors are, he's proved that he can run both a business and a state, and other things. But it's clear that many Republicans are uncomfortable with him. Why else would Herman Cain — politically inexperienced, and all along running only a few percent in the polls — suddenly vault to the top in the Florida straw poll? And even to me, Romney has his flaws — the main one being his reversing his positions on a number of issues. In this respect, though I hate to admit it, Texas Governor Rick Perry was right. But although Perry is more consistent on the issues, he's more consistently on the wrong side as far as I'm concerned, so I certainly wouldn't prefer him to Romney!

There are two men who, if they decided to run for the nomination, would easily get my support for the office. One is Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels — the man who put the "social conservatives" in their place by saying that in these hard economic times there needs to be a setting aside of the social issues. The other — my absolute first choice if he ever chooses to change his mind and run — is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has taken on powerful teachers' unions and won, who has resisted the effort to make “social conservatism” a badge of the party, and has worked with a Democratic legislature to get his programs through. This last shows his superior leadership abilities.

Of course, both Daniels and Christie have said they aren't running. So I'm stuck with Romney for the time being, given the alternatives. But sometimes I just wish that Christie, particularly, would change his mind. (Latest flash: A report on Fox News says Christie is "reconsidering" his decision not to run, and may decide to change his mind. I hope he does.)

Barry Goldwater, racism, and the Republican Party

About fifty years ago, a Republican senator, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, voted against a civil rights bill. I don't agree with Goldwater's position, and (as most Republicans at the time) I supported the bill, but it is a mistake to say that Goldwater was a racist because he opposed the bill. In fact, Goldwater believed, as many libertarians do even today, that it was Government interference in something that should be left alone. (Last year, then-candidate, now Senator, Rand Paul got into political trouble for expressing similar opinions.) But it led to a number of unfortunate results: first, Southern conservative white people, who had been Democrats, flocked to the Republican Party, which in itself was not bad because it made the party bigger and viable in an area where it had not been, but also moved the party rightward (and meant that the party became associated with some real racists like Strom Thurmond), and second, the exodus of African-Americans from the Republicans, which began in the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt because many of the African-American citizens were poor and perceived FDR's policies as helpful to them, accelerated and became almost total — with the African-American vote for President being in some years around 90%. Only a few African-Americans remained in the GOP — the party can boast of such names as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and more recently we have seen Herman Cain. Recently we have even seen people claiming that the Republican Party (or its economically conservative, "Tea Party" wing) are institutionally racist, and three years ago people were insisting that anyone who opposed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency were "racist." (My wife, a nominal Democrat who was supporting McCain, but who before she met me had even had African-American boyfriends, heard such criticism!) It isn't racism to oppose a President, who just happens to be African American, because his policies seem to be wrecking this country's economy. It isn't racism to oppose a President, who just happens to be African American, because he does things like forcing through a healthcare bill that most Americans oppose. It isn't racism to oppose a President, who just happens to be African American, because he does things that scare our only sure ally in the Middle East, Israel.

One might think that a party who has elected officeholders like Allen West (and decades ago elected the first African-American Senator since Reconstruction, Edward Brooke), that chose a President who appointed the first two African-American Secretaries of State, and which now has a candidate for nomination for the President, Herman Cain, who is considered a serious contender, could be considered immune from accusations of racism. But the world doesn't seem to work this way.

The hypocrisy of the Congressional Black Caucus

Allen West is an African-American member of the United States House of Representatives who happens to be a conservative Republican — more conservative than I am, in fact. Herman Cain is an African-American candidate for the Presidency of the United States, who recently won a straw poll for the Republican nomination in Florida. The Congressional Black Caucus claims to be representative of African-Americans trying to get a “piece of the pie.” So you'd think that Allen West and Herman Cain would be shining examples to the CBC. But clearly, they are not.

Obviously, the CBC's approval goes only to liberal Democrats. Even African-Americans, if they happen to be Tea Party conservatives, are considered examples of white racism.

Of course, the CBC isn't racist — yeah. Stephen Cohen, a white Congressman who tried to join the group in 2007 because he sympathized with their goals was refused membership. But this isn't racism. Yet the Tea Party, which supported Herman Cain, is racist. Please explain this to me.

How left-wing is Obama, really?

On Sunday, David Frum posted on his blog the question "How Left-Wing is Obama?" He points out that the far Right has been categorizing President Obama as a socialist, even a Maoist, while the far Left has been criticizing him for selling out. Yet Frum fails to answer his own question, so I think I ought to do so.

President Obama is a man who starts out on the far left on most issues. He was talking about pulling out of Iraq when he was not yet President, and he was for a "public option" on health care, as well as positions that can be considered "left" (even though I agree with them, at least to an extent) on such issues as gun control and abortion. But when push comes to shove, he has one agenda: the centralization of power in Barack Obama. So he gives in to Republicans when he has to, in order to get a bill passed, and the Left thinks he's selling out. He doesn't know how to create jobs, so he lets the Democrats in Congress write a jobs bill; he doesn't have the votes to pass a public option on health care, so he lets the Democrats in Congress write a health bill (and ends up with one that neither the Left nor the Right can abide!); and now that the Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Democrats control the Senate, he finds himself unable to do anything because he is totally unable to lead and both houses of Congress are pulling in opposite directions. If Hillary Clinton (at least as far left in spirit, but with a pragmatic streak) were President, she'd probably be able to achieve a consensus in the Congress and get bills to do something — Obama doesn't know how to do anything, and is simply concerned with making himself look good while Congress tears itself to bits.

So the answer is: Obama is very far to the left in his thoughts, but the Obama presidency is ending up with a relatively centrist record. Not because Obama wants to be a centrist, but because he is devoid of leadership skills.

When "Right Wing" really meant it

Reading Dennis Sanders' excellent blog, my attention was called to a blog by Walter Russell Mead called “Via Meadia,” in which a post appeared (dated September 20, 2011) called “The ‘Christianist’ Nightmare: It’s Just A Bad Dream.”

The gist of this article was that if it looks as though the Bachmanns, Perrys, and Santorums of today's Republican Party are leading to a “Christianist” take-over of the country, one needs to realize that over the past 60 or more years, there has been so much improvement in people's freedom that the worst of the things that they advocate is still so much milder than what things actually were like in his (and my) youth. The post is so long that, rather than quote it here, I recommend that you read it on his blog. But it reminds us not to worry so much.

Mead, according to his post, attended a segregated school — I did not, because I grew up in New York City. But I was certainly aware of segregation in our Southern States. And back in 1952, a music teacher that I had considered friendly to me turned viciously hostile — because I refused to sing carols with words like “O come let us adore him, Christ the lord.” (She actually conspired with another teacher to try to keep me out of my own graduation ceremony — which, thankfully, failed.)

Mead is responding to other, younger, bloggers who are afraid of the future; his point is that the trends toward freedom are so strong that we shouldn't worry about “Christianism” taking over. I share his memories; I suspect we are about the same age. And I thank him for reminding us of these facts.

What do moderates want?

What do moderates want? An interesting posting by that name appeared in a blog run by Rick Bayan called "The New Moderate." I don't necessarily agree with everything he says in this post, but I think it's worth reading. I commend it to you, though careful readers will note that Bayan is probably a bit to the left of my own positions. And I do recommend his blog in general, if you aren't reading it.

On the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

While my previous post was critical of the position taken by Dennis Sanders on his blog, I certainly concur with him in his celebrating the end of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Of course, as a publicly declared gay man, Sanders has more reason to celebrate it than many other people, but I think that all people who believe in the concept of equal rights should be happy in this — but yet it is not quite a total victory for equal rights. As long as the ironically mistitled "Defense of Marriage Act" is still on the books, gay military personnel cannot provide their spouses with the same benefits that straight ones can. However, that bill will hopefully be declared unconstitutional — the Obama administration has refused to defend it, one of the few things this president has done right.

It is a good feeling to see pictures like the Navy lieutenant who went up to Vermont to marry his partner. It will be interesting to see the outcome of legal cases where expelled gay ex-servicemen and -women are suing to get equal treatment (they were only granted half the standard severance pay, for example).

I can't really see the point of view of people who want to be in the military — I did everything I could to ensure I was not drafted, back when I was called! — but certainly, if someone wants to be there, a simple concern for equality has to say that this is a positive step.

On the death penalty

Dennis Sanders is a blogger I often agree with — probably, in fact, one I usually agree with. But in two recent posts he takes a position I really cannot accept: perhaps because he is a Christian minister I can understand it (after all, their Bible has "turn the other cheek" in it, as mine does not).

In a posting entitled "Death Penalty PR", Sanders says, regarding recently executed murderer Lawrence Brewer:

But the fact is, most of the folks that come before the electric chair or lethal injection are more than likely guilty as sin like Brewer was. Davis makes people wonder about the legitamacy of the policy. Brewer confirms in the minds of many that this is the right thing to do.

In the end, I still can’t support the death penalty. One reason is that we can never be totally certain that someone is guilty. But another reason is that I think killing by the state is something that has to be done sparingly (such as war or law enforcement). I would rather take away someone’s liberty than take their life even if they are reprehensible.

And in an earlier post entitled "On Troy Davis" he writes:

Clive Crook sums up my view:

The strongest case against the death penalty, I have always thought, is simply that it is irreversible, and criminal justice is prone to error. The thought that an innocent man might be put to death is appalling. I don’t know whether Troy Davis, scheduled to be executed tonight, is innocent, but according to what I read about recanted testimony and questionable physical evidence it I cannot believe he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt–let alone beyond all doubt, which is the standard that ought to pertain in death-penalty cases. In 2007 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles appeared to uphold that more demanding standard. Nonetheless yesterday it ruled the execution should go ahead.

And it did go ahead tonight.

Well, in these posts, Sanders clearly puts forth his opposition to the death penalty. but I certainly cannot agree. Allowing a convicted murderer to live, even as an incarcerated prisoner, cheapens the lives of the victims of murder. These lives are deemed to be worth less than the life of the murderer. And for this reason alone, I firmly support the death penalty — but only for murder or those other crimes that cause the death of innocent people. Making other crimes, like rape, capital is not something I would support. But I firmly believe in "eye for eye, tooth for tooth," and thus, "life for life."

Well, my previous post is confirmed

As I said two days ago, It appears that President Obama doesn't seriously want a bill to reduce the deficit; he merely wants a campaign issue. His comment that he will veto a bill unless it raises taxes proves that. Even liberals seem to see this, as the cited blog post (from Mother Jones, about as liberal a source as one can imagine) shows.

The problem is, as a result we will have gridlock, and nothing will be accomplished unless a new President is elected, and that won't happen for more than a year, or a new Congress is elected, which will take just as long.

Unfortunately, Obama does not care about the economy as much as he does about scoring political points and fomenting class struggle — his socialistic point of view is quite clear now. Too bad people, who seemed to take him for a centrist, elected him in 2008, but we are stuck with him until January 2013.

Again -- please not Rick Perry!

Rick Perry is now a front-runner in the race for the 2012 GOP nomination for the Presidency. Such a nomination would be, as Stephen Richer posted in the FrumForum blog, anathema to many more Jews than simply me.

Please read the post; I'm not going to reproduce it here, but it makes great reading.

Is Pres. Obama looking for a bill? Or a campaign issue?

“Politics is the art of the possible.” So said Otto von Bismarck over a century ago. And to a great extent, this is true. But it looks as though President Barack Obama doesn't believe so.

He is still insisting that a bill to improve our economic situation must raise taxes, though he has been told by Speaker of the House John Boehner that such a bill cannot pass the House of Representatives. In fact, even the Democrats in the Senate are not united behind it, so the Senate, no less than the House, will reject his plan.

The only possible motive for Obama's making this proposal is that he's not really looking to get a bill through the Congress that he can sign, but instead he is hoping that he can harness class warfare to ensure his re-election, since there are more poor voters than rich. But hopefully, even those who are not rich will realize that those “rich people”that Obama wants to strangle financially are the people who create the jobs we need. Obama wants to kill the golden goose. And he's encouraged by such as Warren Buffett, who have so much money that they can easily spare the tax money Obama would take from them. But a lot of people are not in Warren Buffett's class, and will not be so eager to support Obama's programs with their money.

President Obama's bill is dead on arrival at the House, and I'm sure he knows it. So unless he's only building up a campaign issue, what is the sense of proposing such a bill?

Was the New York Congressional vote a referendum on Obama?

Some people are claiming that the election Tuesday which elected Republican Bob Turner to Congress was not a referendum on President Obama's administration. Well, listen to the comments of 61-year-old Linda Goldberg after she cast her ballot in New York City's borough of Queens: “I am a registered Democrat, I have always been a registered Democrat, I come from a family of Democrats — and I hate to say this, I voted Republican. I need to send a message to the president that he’s not doing a very good job. Our economy is horrible. People are scared.” Anyone who would say she “hate[d] to say” that she voted for a Republican is a pretty firm Democrat. When people like Linda Goldberg vote as she did — and say that the President is “not doing a very good job,” that is a pretty bad sign for the President.

In this election, even a Democratic colleague of losing candidate David Weprin's in the New York assembly, Dov Hikind, endorsed Turner. When fellow partisans in office back your opponent, that says something. Assemblyman Hikind suggested that the deciding factor in the race was the economy. “People want to go back to work,” he said. “They're sick and tired of speeches.”

The arrogance of… Barack Obama

Some years ago, now-President Barack Obama wrote a book entitled "The Audacity of Hope." Well, I don't know about how much audacity hope may possess, but President Obama's audacity is so great as to be better described as arrogance, to a seemingly unbounded degree.

The President submitted a request to Congress during the debt ceiling debates to raise certain taxes. (Robin-Hood-like, he seemed to think that taxing "rich people" more would get support from the American people.) The Republicans, quite naturally, balked. They also were very unhappy with the "stimulus that didn't stimulate," which Obama pushed through when the Congress was in Democratic hands. So what did the President propose for his "jobs" plan? A rehash of the "stimulus," to be paid for by the very tax increases which he could not get the GOP members of Congress to sign on to. And he has the gall — the audacity — to accuse the Republicans of excess partisanship, and beseech them to cooperate!

If he wants a less partisan response from Republicans in Congress, it is up to him to come up with a less partisan program — no repeat of the "stimulus that didn't stimulate," no more "robbing from the 'rich' to give to the poor," and at least some concession to Republican ideas like lowering business taxes and deregulating those businesses.

A referendum on Obama?

Tuesday, a special election was held in New York City to fill the seat vacated by Anthony Weiner, the discredited member of the House of Representatives. And guess what? In a district with ¾ of its registered voters enrolled as Democrats, an area that has not had a Republican Representative since the days when Calvin Coolidge was President, the winner was Bob Turner, a 70-year-old retiree. Turner has never been elected to public office; his opponent was a sitting member of the New York State Assembly (lower house of the legislature). Turner ran, and lost to Weiner last year.

This is as big news as Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat when Kennedy died. It means one thing: Voters, even in a strongly Democratic district spreading through two of New York City's five boroughs (it is mostly in Queens, with a piece in Brooklyn), are so fed up with President Barack Obama that they have elected a Republican to fill their seat in the House. Given that on the same day, six Democratic state legislators also won special elections, this had to be nothing less than a referendum on Obama.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of the Obama administration.

Maryland's DREAM Act fixation

One of the editors of the local Washington Examiner, Barbara Hollingsworth, writes a column with which I often disagree. (Among other things, she is bitterly opposed to mass transit, except possibly buses, and I've personally exchanged e-mail with her over this.) But today, she wrote a great column, which I will happily quote:

Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Marielsa Bernard's abrupt dismissal last month of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch against Montgomery College's Board of Trustees for granting discounted tuition to illegal immigrants is not the end of the discussion. Judicial Watch plans to appeal the ruling, which could spark the beginning of a re-examination of sanctuary policies nationwide.
The Judicial Watch case was not even on Bernard's docket when she inappropriately intervened and took it away from another judge to whom it had been assigned. A founding member of the Hispanic Bar Association with close ties to CASA de Maryland, a tax-funded advocacy group for illegal immigrants, Bernard ruled that the three plaintiffs — all Montgomery County taxpayers — had no legal standing to sue the college because financial aid is supposedly the sole province of the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

And how's this for unintended irony?

In order to qualify for the in-county rate, students must prove they either live in Montgomery County or that they graduated from one of the county's public high schools within the past three years. In other words, the tax-supported community college imposes its own residency test to determine how much tuition to charge students — but somehow feels free to ignore legal residency requirements under existing federal and Maryland state law.

The community college allows illegal immigrants to enroll at the in-county rate of $107 per credit, about half of the $219 per credit charged for in-state Maryland residents and a third of the $299 paid by out-of-state students. All else being equal, an undocumented Guatemalan living in Silver Spring would pay half as much tuition as a U.S. citizen from Upper Marlboro.

Maryland Del. Patrick L. McDonough, R-Baltimore County, agreed to audit the college when Montgomery state legislators and County Council members refused a request to do so from their constituents. The audit found that the college's long-standing policy, which has apparently been in place for at least a decade, may have cost Maryland taxpayers as much as $10 million, McDonough told The Examiner. "Maryland taxpayers must pay for this deficit."

"They know they're wrong," said McDonough — who helped spearhead a successful citizens petition drive to suspend implementation of the controversial Maryland Dream Act, which grants in-state tuition to illegal immigrants statewide, until a 2012 voter referendum. "Public officials do not have the right to violate the law and use tax funds — including the $147 million Montgomery College gets from the state — any way they want. If that right already existed, why was the General Assembly required to pass SB 167, the Dream Act, which would have allowed it?"

In Montgomery County, the law has been twisted so far that it is now used as a vehicle to reward and protect illegal immigrants while law-abiding citizen taxpayers are forbidden from challenging the misuse of their own money in court. This is supposed to be "fair."

"It's unbelievable that the biggest community college in Maryland is proudly and publicly admitting that it is misusing tax dollars, that members of the County Council and the county executive all think this is a good idea, and that a judge has now inappropriately issued a decision that upends 150 years of legal tradition and says that Maryland taxpayers do not have the right to sue public officials. This will not be tolerated or ignored," McDonough vowed.

If he's right, and this sanctuary college in a sanctuary county in a sanctuary state is finally held accountable for its illegal use of tax dollars, there's no telling how far this could spread.

Now, this time, I think Hollingsworth is right, and I applaud her raising these points.

An interesting comment on organized labor

I don't always agree with Bill O'Reilly, especially when he writes on issues like separation of church and state. But he wrote a column, which I read in the Washington Examiner, which I like enough to reproduce here. (I can't find it on the Examiner's site, but only on O'Reilly's own, so I do not give a link.)

There's lots of angst in the air after Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa called Tea Party people SOB's and urged voters to "take them out." Immediately, voter registration jumped among members of the Gambino family. Apparently, Mr. Hoffa is angry that some Americans want to put a lid on public sector pensions and perks which are bankrupting municipalities all over the country. Old Jimmy believes this is "taking the bread out of the mouths" of American workers.

For decades, union power has intimidated politicians in both parties. I mean, if you were running for office, would you want big union money flowing into your opponent's campaign? Would you want organized demonstrations at your rallies? How about work slowdowns, sudden mass worker illness, or anti-you phone campaigns? Unions have power and power rules.

Thus, many American unions have secured lucrative benefits for their members—benefits that have drained treasuries. The Post Office, for example, is on the verge of bankruptcy, not able to repay $5.5 billion in loans from the Treasury Department. The huge cost of postal retirement benefits is one of the main reasons an American institution may collapse.

All of this is not the fault of the workers. They did their jobs and are entitled to what was negotiated. But public money has run out, and going forward, big changes will have to be made if the American economy is to expand. Jimmy Hoffa can huff and puff all day long, but if he succeeds in blocking economic reform, he will indeed blow the entire house down.

President Obama needs union votes to win reelection. Therefore, he did not condemn Hoffa's over-the-top rhetoric even though he campaigned for verbal restraint in his Arizona speech. Mr. Obama will also not go up against the unions and demand fiscal reform. He will position himself as the champion of the working stiff, even if it means more disasters like the Post Office.

Previously in this space, I discussed my membership in AFTRA, a union that represents TV and radio people. When some greedy suits tried to con me and my colleagues at the syndicated program "Inside Edition" out of pension money, AFTRA fought them and won. So, unions are needed, but they should be optional. No American worker should be forced to pay union dues. Employees must weigh self-reliance against union protections.

With union power in decline, Jimmy Hoffa needs an enemy to rail against, and the Tea Party provides him that. But if he were honest, Hoffa would see the Tea folks simply want financial responsibility and fairness in the public sector. Living within your means is a key to economic success. Gaming the system through intimidation and threats is not.

Hoffa's not looking out for his country on this one.

This time, O'Reilly has it exactly right. I fully agree.

Social Security -- a Ponzi scheme?

Governor Rick Perry of Texas, one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency, recently called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He's been criticized for this. But the real point is not whether Social Security is or is not properly described as a Ponzi scheme. It is, according to the definition, much like a Ponzi scheme because money from later "investors" is being used to pay off earlier ones. But unlike a true Ponzi scheme, there doesn't seem to be any plan by the U. S. Government to take the money and run. Rather, it is able to use its taxing power to force people to put money into it, which Carlo Ponzi could not do.

The real question is what to do about it? Canceling it is out of the question — so many people have paid into it all the money that might have gone into retirement savings, so canceling it would make it a Ponzi scheme, complete with the "take the money and run" aspect. It might be true that the program should not have been started in the 1930s on the basis it was, but it's too late to change that aspect of it. What we need to know is what Perry would put in its place. Anything that replaces Social Security has to take care of current retirees — people who didn't get a chance to invest that money in a better alternative — as well as current workers, many of which have already put in much of the money that could have been invested. Perhaps new workers could be put into a better program, more like what an IRA is, but anyone who has already been working and put money into Social Security needs somehow to be helped to compensate for his lost opportunity to invest that money. Perhaps the only fair thing would be to keep all retirees receiving money on the current plan and return, with interest, all money that current workers have paid into Social Security. But where would that money come from?

Ponzi scheme or not, the real question is how Social Security will be changed, and what it means to current retirees and current workers. Perry's criticism of the program does not serve a valid purpose, unless he presents his alternative.

Where has moderation gone?

When I was growing up (I'm in my late 60s now) both of our two political parties had liberals, conservatives, and moderates. It was common for votes in Congress to have large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the question. But in recent years, this is becoming less and less the case. Why?

Some people cite the McGovern-Fraser reforms of the Democrats' selection of delegates to their national conventions, or the rise of Presidential primaries as the near-exclusive mode of picking delegates (as opposed to political bosses and elected officials, who used to pick a lot of the delegates). But this only affects the choice of Presidential candidates, not the hundreds of members of the two houses of Congress or the thousands of members of the fifty State legislatures. So it cannot be that.

One thing that has had an effect is the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Certainly the Southern political situation has greatly changed because of that. African-American Southerners, newly able to exercise their votes, joined the Democratic Party, pulling it leftward, while former conservative Democrats have moved into the Republican Party, jettisoning a hatred of that party that went back to the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, because the Democratic Party's Kennedy and Johnson were instrumental in pushing through those civil rights laws. (Examples of this abound. Strom Thurmond, the most obvious example, started political life as a Democrat, leading a revolt in 1948, but his States Rights Party still ran as the "true" Democratic Party in those Southern states where it won. By the end of his political career, he was very definitely a Republican. But the clearest example of this influx of conservative Democrats to the Republican party is probably little known. When I was in graduate school, the governor of Virginia was a Democrat named Mills Godwin. Governors of Virginia cannot be re-elected, but they can, it seems, run again after an interval out of office, so I was surprised to find out, years later and long after I had moved far away from Virginia, that the governor of Virginia was again Mills Godwin, but that he was now a Republican.) This has pulled the Republican Party rightward.

But this only affects the South. Most of the liberal-to-moderate Republicans were in the Northeast (and the few that still exist, like Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, still are). Nothing has happened to Northeastern politics like the civil rights revolution in the South. African-Americans could, and did, vote in the Northeast. They even elected officials, like Representative Adam Clayton Powell of New York. I cannot see what has changed.

Perhaps, the association of particular issues with liberalism and conservatism has. Prohibition used to be a liberal issue, if you look at the past (though liberals like Franklin Roosevelt were also responsible for its repeal). Certainly religious fundamentalism used to go with economic liberalism (if you don't believe that, think of William Jennings Bryan, the most outstanding example of both.) That does seem to have some connection with it, but it cannot account for it all — for one thing, this is a much more recent phenomenon than Bryan.

I wish I knew. I'd love to see a revival of "Rockefeller Republicanism." It was Nelson Rockefeller (and Dwight Eisenhower) that made me choose to be a Republican. By contrast, people like Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann make me ashamed to be one. But the absence of moderates in the Democratic Party makes it even more unattractive to me. So I'm really unhappy this year.

Classification can be treacherous

As I have said more than once on this blog, sometimes political classification can be treacherous. On economic matters, I tend toward the conservative end — for lower taxes and lower spending, in general, though I have my causes that I think deserve spending. On social matters, I'm probably very much a liberal. But again, if "liberal" means anti-Israel, as it's coming to be these days, I go back to the right on this issue.

I recently saw a posting on the FrumForum blog by Noah Kristula-Green referring to Jon Huntsman as "More Conservative Than You Think." It bears some quoting:

Ever since Jon Huntsman declared on Twitter that he thinks evolution and climate change are real, he has been identified as the “moderate” candidate in the GOP field, the candidate whose goal seems to be to antagonize the Republican base. Charles Krauthammer described him as “a liberal’s idea of what a Republican ought to be.”

But what if the real Jon Huntsman is actually a candidate with an incredibly conservative record? This is the argument in The American Conservative’s new piece on Huntsman by Michael Brendan Dougherty.

-In spite of his support for civil unions, Huntsman is very socially conservative. His pro-life record is very substantive. Dougherty calls him “the pro-life cause’s most accomplished executive.” In Utah, second trimester abortions are banned and third trimester abortions are a felony because of Huntsman. His gun record includes making it possible to carry concealed guns in Utah.

“In Jon Huntsman’s America, once a child survives the first trimester, he’s well on the way to having a rifle in his small hands and extra money in his pockets,” Dougherty says.

-His economic record is very conservative: $110 million in tax cuts and a flat tax rate state wide. On healthcare, the article refers to Health Exchanges in Utah that he approved, adding that, “Unlike Romney, Huntsman’s state healthcare reform achieved more insurance coverage for residents without resorting to an individual mandate.” Left unmentioned in the piece is that Huntsman is also a strong advocate for the Ryan budget and has made multiple calls for it to be signed into law.

-His foreign policy at times can hit similar to Ron Paul sounding notes without being isolationist. In addition to questioning America’s role in Libya, Huntsman also asks, “why do we have so many military bases in Japan, we’re half a century after World War II? Why so many in Germany? Does it make sense for America to remain in these places?” He wants counter-terrorism in Afghanistan, not counter-insurgency or nation-building, and he wants the US to return to focusing on its long-term growth before going abroad.

Despite this, Huntsman isn’t seen as a conservative at all. He has some of the lowest poll numbers of anyone in the GOP field — he only barely qualified for the upcoming NBC-Politico debate. Rick Perry gets more traction just by calling Ben Bernanke’s actions treasonous and by calling Washington DC a “seedy place”.

Speculating what any of this can mean for Republican presidential nominee, Jon Huntsman is very premature. But during the next debate, it will be important to listen to Huntsman’s answers and keep in the back of your mind this piece of knowledge: whatever Huntsman is, he is not as moderate as you think.

On some of these issues, I'm in agreement with Huntsman. On others, of course, like abortion and guns, I'm not. But this posting deserves some attention.

Another voice on the health care law, for the perusal of our readers

The following column by Marc Kilmer, originally published in the Baltimore Sun, was included in an e-mail I received from my local county Republican Party:

MPPI: Make Health Insurance Affordable by Choice, not Mandate

Do you need a mandate to force you to buy something you want or need? This question isn't asked by those who support a health insurance mandate, such as Dr. Edward Miller and Scott A. Berkowitz of Johns Hopkins ("Hopkins leaders support health insurance mandate," Aug. 9). The reason we have so many uninsured Marylanders is that health insurance is either too unaffordable or it doesn't offer a good value to those who can afford it. A mandate won't solve either of those problems.

Responding to self-interested lobbying groups, well-meaning legislators have mandated that any health insurance sold in Maryland must cover over 60 procedures, something that has dramatically raised the cost of insurance in this state. If you want insurance that doesn't cover, say, in vitro fertilization, you can't purchase it. There are also a number of restrictions on the price and type of health insurance that can be sold in the state.

If you want to escape Maryland's tough regulations, too bad. If you live in the Eastern Shore town of Delmar and want to purchase a cheaper policy from a broker across the street in Delmar, Del., you are legally prohibited from doing so. Now, with the passage of the so-called "Affordable Care Act," restrictions like Maryland are in place at the national level. This legislation will increase the cost of health insurance and then use tax dollars to subsidize its purchase for some people.

If we allowed health insurance to be bought and sold like other goods there would be no need for a health insurance mandate. If people could tailor the health insurance policy to meet their needs and desires and if they could buy health insurance across state lines, the vast majority of people could afford a policy giving them what they want. While some people would not have enough income to afford a policy, that's why we have safety net programs like Medicaid.

Instead of supporting a mandate forcing people to buy a product that is too expensive and doesn't offer people what they want, Dr. Miller and Mr. Berkowitz should advocate giving health insurance consumers more power. These consumers, not government bureaucrats, know what they can afford and what type of insurance is best for them.

A very good column, with which I heartily concur.

Rick Perry? Oh, no!

Some polls I've seen lately show a surge in the numbers for Rick Perry, putting him in #1 position among Republican candidates for the nomination. I hope that it's just a case of people supporting him because he's a fresh face, the newest entry into the race.

It's clear that Perry is the kind of Republican that Democrats like to paint all Republicans as — pretty stupid. His remarks on creationism, for one, bear this out. And he's taken to comparing himself to George W. Bush by saying "Bush went to Yale, I went to Texas A&M." Nominating Perry almost concedes the race to Obama, unless people are so fed up with Obama's handling of the economy that they'll vote for anyone running against him, and I don't see this yet.

There are certainly problems with Mitt Romney, but so far he seems the best choice. I've seen some mention of former New York State Governor George Pataki as a candidate, and I would — as far as I can tell — be able to support him, but I haven't seen that he was interested in the nomination. I might have really liked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and had a favorable view of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, but both of them have made it clear that they aren't interested. My favorite blog owner, Dennis Sanders, keeps advocating Jon Huntsman, who is probably closer to me politically than Romney, but can he get the nomination in a party where he's polling about 2%? And if he manages to get that nomination, will he be able to make himself known to enough people to get their vote in Nomember 2012 against an incumbent President Obama? So with all these factors, I have to go for Romney.

I really don't understand

In just about a month, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in our military services will end. What I cannot understand was the point in continuing it in place once it was decided that it would go. Why should a gay serviceman or -woman be subject to discharge for revealing, now, something which would have no effect if he/she reveals it about him/herself in another month?

I understand that the service chiefs wanted time to educate people about the new rules — but it still would make more sense to begin this education and immediately state that no further discharges of service personnel who revealed that they were gay would take place, both, upon the decision to end DADT.

If anyone can tell me the justification for continuing DADT once the decision to end it was made, I'd like to know it.

Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and the real reason to oppose them

Two days ago, Cal Thomas posted a column in the Washington Examiner which took "liberals" to task for supposed "bigotry" toward the likes of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, or "evangelicals" in general, with the following words:

In contemporary culture, those who claim to tolerate everything are intolerant of ideas that come from perspectives other than their own, especially when those ideas are rooted in conservative politics or evangelical faith.

Though anti-Semitism and anti-Catholic bigotry sadly are still with us, the new and "accepted" bigotry among some on the left is for those who call themselves -- or are sometimes mislabeled by people who don't know the difference between born-again and born yesterday -- evangelical Christians.

With two evangelicals running for president, the opening salvo in what is likely to be a God vs. government battle has already been launched. A June 22 article in Rolling Stone magazine gives bigots permission for more bigotry. The illustration by Victor Juhasz, which accompanies it, reveals where the writer is headed.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is dressed as Joan of Arc with a Bible in one hand, a bloody sword in the other, a cross on her chest, and the "finger of God" pointing at her from heaven.

In the background, people are being burned at the stake. Father Charles Coughlin at his worst would have had trouble topping this on his bigoted radio broadcasts in the 1930s.

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi says Bachmann is "a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions." One of many examples he cites is her assertion that China is "plotting to replace the dollar bill."

Recently, China's official Xinhua News Agency editorialized in favor of a new global reserve currency, replacing the dollar. Don't look for a retraction.

There's plenty more in "Michele Bachmann's Holy War" on which the bigots can feast. This is the argument of anyone who has little or no faith in God. They attack people who believe the Supreme Being does not sit in the Oval Office.

The secular left is also going after Gov. Rick Perry's faith. Writing in the New York Times, Timothy Egan refers to the Texas governor as a "biblical bully" and asks, "Is God listening to Rick Perry?"

Ideas that come from the minds of secular liberals are considered right and good, no matter their track record. Ideas from conservatives, be they secular or especially evangelical, are "bat sh*t crazy," according to Taibbi's scatology.

There is a way to blunt this coming tidal wave of anti-evangelical bigotry. Bachmann and Perry -- and any other Republican who wishes to join in -- should not play on the territory of their opponents.

Instead, they should focus on what works and whose lives have been transformed by embracing similar faith and similar attitudes.

When I read this column, I felt like commenting, but while the Examiner used to print letters to the editor from me routinely, they haven't always done so. So I held off. And I was glad to see in today's Examiner, a letter to the editor by David Lampo, which could almost have been written by me. The letter was so good, I want to reprint it as a guest editorial in this blog:

Re: "A new wave of liberal bigotry," Aug. 18

Cal Thomas should receive a chutzpah award for his piece charging "the left" with religious bigotry simply because they are exposing the scary records and statements of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Anyone who studies these two candidates will find a long list of examples of religious and anti-gay bigotry, particularly in the case of Bachmann, whose long-held religious belief in the views of the radical theologian Francis Schaeffer make her the most extreme major party presidential candidate in generations.

Millions of Republicans, independents and libertarians are deeply worried about the records of these two candidates. They are not being attacked simply for having religious faith, as Thomas states. They are being attacked because their beliefs and statements are so extreme that most Americans will repudiate them at the polls if the country is unfortunate enough to have either one of them as the Republican presidential candidate.

If that happens, the many virtues of divided government will become readily apparent.

David Lampo

Alexandria

Well written, Mr. Lampo!

Do we really need them all?

I'm not one of those anti-military types who want us to limit our military to homeland defense, but sometimes I wonder, Do we really need to have an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, and a Marine Corps as separate services?

The Army is supposedly land-based, the Navy sea-based, and the Air Force air-based. But the Army has airborne troops, the Navy has its SEALs (who often, as in the action that got Osama bin Laden, operate on land), the Navy and Air Force quarrel over the specifications for planes they will both have to use, and the Marine Corps, though technically a part of the Navy, seems to be more a land force than anything else.

Some time ago, Canada merged all its services into Canadian Forces. I think that, just because we're a bigger country with a much bigger military, this doesn't mean we can't do the same. It should be much more efficient to eliminate duplication.

Back in 1947 the Defense Department was created, and the Army and Navy no longer had separate Cabinet secretaries to report to. Yet it was only this year that the two services' Washington-area hospitals were merged. More than sixty years later!

I think Canada did it right. Let's do the same!

Pawlenty is out, Perry is in

This past weekend, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. And Texas Governor Rick Perry joined the race, and immediately became a serious contender in the eyes of the political correspondents. In fact, they are calling it a three-person race, with the only candidates with serious chances at nomination being Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Perry. But I have to say I have great skepticism about Perry's fitness for the Presidency — not as much skepticism about Perry as about Bachmann, but enough to worry me about the chances he might be nominated.

I rather wonder whether Perry is perhaps not intellectually up to the Presidency, as I read that Perry is a creationist. But, the truth be told, I searched for evidence, and what I found was this quote from the "Outside the Beltway" blog. And if you read the quote, what Perry is advocating is not creationism, but intelligent design. And, as I stated about 2½ years ago, they are different. In fact, I am firmly convinced that the evidence of science proves that evolution has occurred, but that there is no way one can tell from that evidence whether the mechanism for the evolutionary changes is the Darwinian one — random mutations plus natural selection — or an intelligent designer playing with his creations to see what he can produce. And I favor the latter, so while I am totally opposed to creationism, and I accept evolution, I also accept intelligent design.

But then, read that quote again. Perry seems to oppose intelligent design to evolution; he talks about teaching one alongside the other as if they are alternatives. So perhaps he is one of those creationists who say "intelligent design" when they really mean "creationism." I'm really afraid this is the case.

More and more, I'm pulling for Mitt Romney to get the nomination.

Scoreboard on the individual mandate

At the District Court level, four courts have ruled. Two say it's constitutional, two say it's unconstitutional.

At the Circuit Court of Appeals level, two courts have already ruled, one remains to be heard from. One says it's constitutional, one says it's unconstitutional.

Whatever the 4th Circuit Court in Richmond, the remaining appeals court says, this is a sharp division. It clearly will have to go to the Supreme Court. I'm not certain why there is so much division among the judges — its unconstitutionality is clear to me. But all bets are off until the Supreme Court actually rules. I'm waiting with bated breath.

The Eleventh Circuit has ruled! Now on to the Supreme Court.

A great opinion was issued by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The individual mandate in last year's health care law is unconstitutional.

[T]he individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power. This conclusion is limited in scope. The power that Congress has wielded via the Commerce Clause for the life of this country remains undiminished. Congress may regulate commercial actors. It may forbid certain commercial activity. It may enact hundreds of new laws and federally-funded programs, as it has elected to do in this massive 975- page Act. But what Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die.

This is one more nail in the coffin of the bill that has been called "Obamacare." As I have maintained all along, whatever may be the good features of the bill, the individual mandate clearly has to go.

The Obama administration obviously will appeal to the Supreme Court. This, of course, they have a right to do. But I predict that the Justices of that court will accept the Eleventh Circuit's ruling. The Constitution is clear on this point.

Mitt Romney is even more the front runner

Looking at the Examiner coverage of the debate in Iowa, it seems that Mitt Romney has pulled out even more in front as the candidate with the best chance at the 2012 Republican nomination.

The Examiner tends to run far to my right, yet they agreed that the best performance in the debate was Romney's; they gave him a B+ while Newt Gingrich got a B- and nobody else anywhere above a C+. (I can't find a link; this seems to have only appeared in the paper edition of the Examiner.) But if even they admitted that Romney beat their favorites, he seems to be an unquestioned front-runner.

Why Michele Bachmann should not be the nominee

This is probably not news to anyone, but it's clear that, on all the issues that she considers important, Michele Bachmann and I are on opposite sides.

In a campaign stop in Iowa, Bachmann said:

"I'm 100 percent pro-life, I'm 100 percent pro-marriage, pro-family, I'm 100 percent on the Second Amendment."

Assuming that "pro-marriage, pro-family" means in fact against allowing same-sex marriage (which would be consistent with her previous stands) her "100 percent" issues are all on the wrong side. Supposedly, Bachmann is the "Tea Party" candidate. The "Tea Party" is supposedly an anti-tax, anti-spending movement, which would meet with my approval, but when Michele Bachmann makes the three things listed here her signature issues, she's lost me.

Moderates? Or not?

As I said in one of my recent posts, Solomon Kleinsmith's comments in his blog took issue with my characterization of the debt ceiling deal as a "compromise." But it seems that the Washington Post characterized it as a victory for "moderates." So was it a "centrist" or "moderate" deal? Kleinsmith doesn't think so. I do, as does the Post.

I don't very often find common ground with the Washington Post, but it looks like an agreement here!

Government foolishness

On July 13, 2006, I went to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration office to get a new identification card. (Why the Motor Vehicle Administration is the place to go is strange enough — but because it's issued in a format based on a driver's license, MVA issues it.) A card was issued to me, with an expiration date of July 13, 2011. Five years was the term, apparently.

Yesterday I attempted to go to a meeting that was scheduled to take place inside a Federal Government building, so I had to show a photo-identification card. At first, the security guard was about to pass me in, but then she said "Let me look at that card again." She saw the date, and I was denied entry.

First of all, why was there a need to put an expiration date on that card, in the first place? If it was valid proof that I was who I claimed to be on July 12, why was it not on July 14?

And why would it be necessary to deny me access to the building, just because my card expired, less than a month ago? I think both the State of Maryland (for setting an expiration date on the card) and the U. S. Government (for caring that it had passed, less than a month ago) were being rather foolish. As I said, it would have been sufficient to let me into the building less than a month ago — why not yesterday?

So I had to head back to the MVA office to get a new identification card. At first glance, I thought that perhaps this was just a scheme for the State to collect more money from fees to issue these cards. But I was charged nothing for the new card — and, surprisingly, the expiration date on the new card was August 6, 2019! If five years was all that a card was good for in 2006, why am I given eight on the new one? All I lost was the chance to participate in a meeting and a bit of time; the processing took perhaps a half hour, but I had to spend some time traveling to the MVA office. The State gained nothing — in fact it lost, since the clerk who renewed my identification card had to be paid. What was the point of all this?

A euphemism that obscures

It is interesting that people trying to get things like the DREAM Act or other laws that make it easy for illegal immigrants to get the privileges of citizens (or residents) never call them "illegal." They always use the euphemism "undocumented." (I just saw an example in a local paper, the Montgomery Gazette.)

You'd think that someone had just forgotten to fill out a form, or lost his papers. But in fact, the correct thing to call them is "illegal." They are here in violation of the laws of this country. If that isn't what "illegal" means, I don't know what the word means!

This country is a nation of laws. The immigration laws are on the books and just as much valid laws as anything in the statute books, whether for murder, theft, or anything else. Anyone in violation of our nation's laws deserves to be punished, not abetted. The states of Arizona and Alabama are doing the right thing — if the Federal Government will not enforce its own laws, the States need to do it for them.

Where is the political center?

There is a blog I read frequently, called "Rise of the Center," owned by Solomon Kleinsmith. He obviously considers himself a centrist, but sometimes I wonder.

Now, I do not claim to be at the dead center of the political spectrum, but I think I'm a relatively short distance to the right of center. Yet Kleinsmith sometimes impresses me as far to my left.

Case in point: the recent debt ceiling/deficit settlement. In comments to his posting on it, he took me to task for referring to the final solution as a "compromise," because in his eye, any refusal to impose a new tax burden on the American people is a "hard right" position. In fact, the Tea Party types gave up quite a lot in order to win a no-new-taxes solution, and many voted against the bill because they felt it did not cut spending enough. I'll admit that if you consider the most extreme positions of the left wing of the Democratic Party and the most extreme positions of the right wing of the Republican Party (approximately synonymous with the Tea Party), the final solution was closer to what the right wanted than to the left. But the right wanted to eliminate several executive departments (Yesterday's Washington Examiner had a column advocating the Energy, Education, and Housing & Urban Development departments; Sen. Rand Paul has proposed a bill to eliminate Commerce as well as those three), eliminate the Medicare drug benefit, and many other reductions in the Federal Government that were not even approached. (Frankly, the department I would eliminate is Agriculture. When it was formed, more than half of all Americans were farmers. Today it is about 3%. Do they really need a whole Cabinet department devoted to their interests?)

Yes, this was a compromise. Both sides gave up something, and members of the two houses of Congress from both ends of the political spectrum refused to vote for it. But yet, Solomon Kleinsmith insists this was "not a centrist solution." I guess to me the center isn't what Kleinsmith thinks it is. But then, nobody has the power to define the center, I guess.

Sore winners?

It is very strange that so many of the "Tea Party" types voted against the budget compromise bill. They may not have gotten all they wanted, but they got a lot.

Yesterday, I saw a post in the Washington Examiner by Susan Ferrechio:

The debt deal President Obama signed into law Tuesday was shaped largely by the Tea Party movement, which propelled dozens of fresh faces into Congress last year only after the candidates pledged to drastically slash federal spending.


While many Tea Party freshmen in the House and Senate ended up voting against the debt ceiling bill because they didn't think it cut deep enough, their fingerprints were all over the measure.

There were historically steep cuts, no tax increases and a commitment to even bigger spending reductions in the near future. In response to Tea Party pressure, the measure also requires the House and Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment, something that hasn't happened in 15 years.

Yet it wasn't enough for some. In the face of a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate, did they really believe they could avoid all traces of compromise? If I'd been trying to get the Government to do something, and I got as much of what I was trying to get as the Tea Partiers did, I'd have been enthusiastic!

Political posturing

So now the debt ceiling bill was passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President, only a few hours before the Government was theoretically to go into default. And yet, all this drama really meant nothing.

I never believed the U. S. Government would go into default; like certain banks, it is "too big to fail." I was totally confident that a solution would be found, and found in time, and the timing confirmed my belief that it would be made at the very last moment, so that nobody could question details. The whole thing was a perfect exercise of political posturing; the most liberal and the most conservative members of each house voted against it, but always making sure that enough members voted in favor to pass it. If there were any possibility of enough negative votes to scuttle it, some fierce arm-twisting would have ensued.

Did anyone really expect anything different? This is the way politicians work. But some people will say, if professional politicians are going to do this sort of thing, the time is ripe to institute term limits and restore amateurism in politics. I do not think that's the solution. You would only replace people who are so familiar with how the system works, and how to game it, with people who are so ignorant of how laws are worded (and how lawyers can game the laws) that they'd pass sloppy laws whose meaning would be uncertain when they were passed and which the legal profession would twist to mean whatever their clients wanted them to. I think the current way is better, but our Congress has not acquitted itself very well.