Arrogance

Now Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pres. Obama seem to have forced their health care bill through. Only a court decision that the bill is unconstitutional can derail it. It is certainly arrogance on their part to force this monstrosity through, in the face of disapproval of the American people. The House of Representatives is supposed to represent, which they certainly are not doing in this law.

It is impossible, unfortunately, to repeal the bill, as Senators James DeMint and John McCain are calling to do, at least for the next three years. Even in the wake of an election this coming November, the Republicans may win enough seats to take over the Congress, but they certainly will not have the ²/₃ majority they would need to pass a repeal bill over an Obama veto. So repeal would have to wait until at least January 2013. Only the Supreme Court can save us from this folly.

More "ideological purism"?

It seems that Senator John McCain is facing a primary challenge from a former Congressman who has since become a conservative talk show host, J. D. Hayworth. One more case of "ideological purism." For Hayworth has been characterizing McCain as someone who campaigns as a conservative but legislates as a liberal. And of course, this implies that McCain isn't "conservative enough," whatever that means. Well, (to quote McCain in another context!) I have news for Hayworth and his ilk: McCain is, by general United States standards, a conservative. The American Conservative Union has given him ratings ranging from the 60s to the 80s, and while some people argue that makes him rather liberal compared with other Republicans, it is still on balance (compared with the US center) conservative.

The thing that bothers me is that the conservatives who want to get rid of people like McCain will, if they get their way, force the United States leftward. Because hard-right conservatives will drive the American voter into the Democratic fold. Even the conservatives' hero, Ronald Reagan, understood this. (See my earlier posting from June 25, 2009.) I had hoped that the recent success of our newest Senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, might teach them a lesson. Brown is a Senator because the Republicans, including the conservatives, were willing to back him, even though he was hardly a far-right conservative. If they had refused to back Brown, Massachusetts would have elected Martha Coakley, and Pres. Obama would have gotten his far-left program through the Senate.

John McCain deserves re-election. And if the Republicans reject him in favor of Hayworth, this risks giving the Democrats the seat, for Arizona, no matter how conservative a state they see it as, still can elect Democrats. (How about ex-Governor, now Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano?)

Let us honor Reagan by using Republicans' energy and money to fight Democrats, not defeat genuine conservative Republicans who may simply not be "conservative enough."

I was happy to hear people like the conservative broadcaster Mark Levin proudly endorsing Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate seat. But his endorsement of the Hayworth challenge to John McCain is a serious mistake.

What the GOP needs

It has come to my attention that when Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts, was asked what kind of a Republican — conservative or liberal, for example — he was, he responded

I'm a Scott Brown Republican.

Well, I think that's what the GOP needs — not specifically Scott Brown Republicans, but Republicans who are themselves, not somebody else's idea of what a real Republican is.

We need Scott Brown Republicans, John McCain Republicans, and it's a shame we lost Arlen Specter to the other side because some ideological purists made it hard for him to remain in the GOP.

Don't get me wrong. We need the conservatives, too. But their own hero, Pres. Ronald Reagan, recognized that you can have an ideologically pure party, or you can have a majority party, but you can't have a party that is both.

That's why, for one thing, I'm unhapy that there are people who are challenging John McCain's re-election bid in Arizona. To them, McCain is insufficiently pure as a conservative. It's people like those challengers who will ensure that the Democrats control the U. S. government!

Now, let's come up with a new health care bill!

It looks as if Scott Brown's election has finally brought the juggernaut to a halt. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has admitted she can't get 218 votes to ram the Senate bill through the House, so any bill is going to need to get through both houses again, and Brown will join the other Republicans in a 59-41 vote, at least. And the message is finally getting to President Obama: He's not going to get a health care bill at all, unless they start from scratch and write a new bill that will get some Republican votes.

So let's proceed. The government (alias "public") option already had to go to get the vote of people like Sen. Joe Lieberman. Let's also scrub the mandate that requires people to buy health insurance or pay a fine. (If you have to make them buy health insurance, there must be something wrong with the pricing, the benefits, or both!) And recognize that the way to control costs is simply to get a handle on malpractice suits and the resulting defensive medicine -- we need meaningful tort reform!

That's a start, anyway; let's get going!

Thank you, voters of Massachusetts!

It looks as if the message that Massachusetts voters sent, by electing Scott Brown to the Senate, was picked up. It took a little time, but it looks as if Pelosi et al. have given up.

He did it!

Scott Brown is now the Senator-elect from Massachusetts! If this doesn't show how big a hole Barack Obama has dug for himself, nothing will.

Brown won on one pledge — to vote against the so-called health care reform that Pres. Obama is pushing. If his win does not kill this bad bill in its tracks, our Constitution is a dead letter.

Three cheers for Sen.-elect Scott Brown!

On Martin Luther King and the holiday in his honor

Today is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. And it seems that one risks being called a racist if one refuses to think that Rev. King was worthy of such a holiday. But here goes.

Rev. King, in the early part of his life, was a leader in the struggle for civil rights, and justly deserves praise for this. But later, he took on another cause, for which he deserves, not praise, but condemnation. He became an opponent of the fight against international Communism, particularly in Vietnam, and one must ask,

If freedom for African-Americans was worth giving up people's lives to obtain, why was freedom for Vietnamese (Southeast Asians) not worth giving up people's lives?

There are others I consider more worthy of being given a holiday to commemoriate the civil rights movement. Like Thurgood Marshall, whose work led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.

I suppose some might argue that African-Americans should be allowed to choose their hero. But I cannot see lionizing Rev. King.

Let's work together -- this is good for a change

In 1964, probably before many of the readers were even born, much less old enough to vote, I had my first chance to vote in a presidential election. [You had to be 21 then (unless you lived in Georgia or Kentucky), not 18, so I could not vote in 1960, though I was 18 in 1960.] The Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, who contemptuously dismissed the moderates in the party with his famous quote:

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

I was one of many Republicans who did not vote for Goldwater that year — I felt I was being read out of the party, though this was my first year of eligibility to vote.

Several elections later, the Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan, who was just as conservative, if not more so. But his attitude was much more inclusive: he had named moderate Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as a running mate in an earlier election year, and chose the leader of the moderate faction, George H. W. Bush, as his running mate that year. The difference was dramatic: he won.

Last year, the extremists of the GOP rejected Dede Scozzafava as insufficiently conservative and left her so peeved that she endorsed the Democratic candidate, who won the election in a disctrict that had been Republican since 1870. So Nancy Pelosi got one more soldier in her army. Did this help conservatives or the Republican Party?

I'm glad to see that this year they seem to have learned theie lesson. Last night I was listening to a conservative talk radio program hosted by Mark Levin, who seems to be fervently backing Scott Brown, the candidate who seems to the best hope for breaking the filibuster-proof 60-vote Democratic bloc in the Senate. And Brown is the type of moderate Republican they have often criticized as a "RINO" in the past. Thank you. We need to work together. Conservatives enforcing ideological purity have led to people like Arlen Specter and James Jeffords leaving the party, and you really need to ask again, "Did this help conservatives or the Republican Party?" It really did not.

Let's all work together and support people like Scott Brown, as moderates supported Bob McDonnell, who today takes the oath of office as Virginia governor.

The Massachusetts special election

Some of the polls I see show Scott Brown, the Republican, actually ahead in the special election that will fill Edward Kennedy's Senate Seat. For this to be happening in a State as liberal as Massachusetts shows that the people are clearly upset with the Obama administration's health care "reform" bill. If the State that sent Edward Kennedy to the Senate, the only state that George McGovern carried, the bluest of the blue, is close to electing a Republican to fill that seat, it gives us a sign.

The American people are saying, "KILL THIS BILL!" By any means, whatever the opposition to this bill can do, they must do all they can to hold this bill up, because even doing nothing is better than this bill.

On the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger

As this article points out, today a possibly groundbreaking "gay rights" case starts its path through the court systems: Perry v. Schwarzenegger. If it succeeds, it will lead to as fundamental a change in the legal treatment of sexual orientation as Brown v. Board of Education did to the legal treatment of race. And while I hope it succeeds, I have to worry that it might fail. Because failure might be equivalent to Plessy v. Ferguson, setting the cause back for many years.

Those who have been reading this blog know that I feel that the incremental approach, starting with gaining marriage rights, without perhaps the name, (i. e. the "civil union" approach) and then getting marriage later on after some of the resistance has been dulled by experience — the approach which has worked in Vermont — has more chance of success. I see nothing wrong with the idea of gay marriage, but why not go for the thing you really want — rights — if you can get more support for that than you can get for the word "marriage" itself?

One thing that gives me some hope is that the legal team challenging California's Proposition 8 is led by two lawyers who represent opposite ends of the political spectrum, Theodore Olson and David Boies (the two lawyers for opposite sides in Bush v. Gore.) It has always saddened me to see that the same political Right that generally acts in a "pro-freedom" direction on economic issues often takes the side of bigotry and intolerance on social issues. But here it's different.

If the pro-rights side wins here, it will make me happy. But I'm just afraid it's an awfully big "if."

Chickens coming home to roost?

In 2008, I posted a lot of reasons why Barack Obama was a bad choice for the Presidency. One of the points I made was that as a product of Richard M. Daley's Chicago machine, he was used to a style of government that would run roughshod over all opposition. Well, the American public did not choose to consider such points, and Obama now sits in the White House. And he's been governing true to form. Anone with any misgivings about the desirability of an Obama policy is simply ruled to be an obstacle to progress, and ignored. The Congress is about to pass a health care bill which the majority of the American public opposes, even believing (as I do) that doing nothing at all would be better than enacting this unfortunate bill. Because the Senate has its 60 Democrats who can override any filibuster threat, there is simply no barrier to this blockbuster, unless the differences between the two chambers of Congress turn out to be so serious that they cannot be reconciled — and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are doing their best to prevent any word of what is being negotiated behind closed doors getting out, so that secret deals will assure a bill that both chambers will approve.

It looks as if the only possibility of derailing this monstrosity is a challenge to the constitutionality of this bill's mandate (buy approved insurance or be fined!) ot another constitutional challenge over the special sweetheart deal that Sen. Ben Nelson got for Nebraska. (Even Nebraskans are embarrassed by this, saying that while they elected Nelson to get Nebraska its share of benefits, this was going too far, and recent polls show Nelson losing if he ran against a challenge by the Republican governor of the state!)

Until these objections on constitutional grounds get to the courts, of course, nobody can tell how the courts will ruled on them. Let us hope that at least in the courts, some sanity reigns.

Abortion and the health care bill

Interesting that the health care bill may founder on the issue of funding for abortions. Frankly, I don't care much one way or the other on this issue, but if it gets to the point where Ben Nelson won't vote for it because it allows Federal funds to be used in a way that indirectly pays for abortions, and it stops the bill from going through, while other Democrats won't vote for it if the Stupak proviso is added, great! It stops the bill, which is what needs to be done!

The bad things in the bill have nothing to do with abortions, of all — the requirement that you must buy insurance or pay a fine, and the "public option" (which the Senate has weakened so it looks satisfactory, but what a Senate/House conference might do I can't predict): these are the gross evils of this bill. But if it's abortion that kills the bill in its tracks, so be it. I don't really care why it fails, only that it fails.

A broadcasting slip?

Last night I heard two commercials for Meg Whitman, former head of eBay, who is planning to run for Governor of California in 2010. The problem is, I live nowhere near California. What was going on?

I just hope the Whitman campaign wasn't billed for those ads. What kind of slip-up permits an ad for a California electoral candidate to be broadcast on a Washington, D. C. radio station, not once but twice?

Perceived (lack of) intelligence?

One thing I have noticed in my lifetime is that liberals seem to be perceived as more intelligent than conservatives. Way back in the 1952 election, Adlai Stevenson was considered the "intellectual" candidate, though Dwight Eisenhower, after retiring from the Army, had been a university president. And John Kerry, in 2004, was quoted as having said "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot!" Yet looking at Kerry's college grades and George W. Bush's (from the same institution, Yale University!) it seems that the two were about the same, with Bush's perhaps a bit higher, even!

The examples are quite numerous, extending to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan as well. And the most recent has been Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

Well, Gov. Palin recently put out a book. And it may be possible that it was to some extent written by others, but I'm sure it represents her thoughts accurately. And I have to say that despite all the negatives I've heard about Gov. Palin, the book (at least the parts I've read; I have not gone through it all) seems to be a well-thought-out work. As I've said before, she is not my preferred choice for the 2012 presidential nomination, but I have no doubt that if she is the nominee, she would be a better President than the person now holding the job. Yes, in 2012 if the candidates are Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, there is no question that my vote goes to her.

Universal health care?

President Obama says we need "universal health insurance." And he means you buy health insurance even if you don't want it, on pain of a fine! That kind of "universality" we don't need or want.

It would be fine if "universal health insurance" simply meant that if your employer didn't want to provide it, or if you just could not afford it, you got help in paying premiums from the government, the way if you're out of work you can colledt unemployment insurance. And that kind of universality -- without the coercion of a fine -- would get my support. What Obama wants, as I said, is just not right.

Catholic Church, your name is inconsistency!

The Roman Catholic Church has been pushing hard for provisions like the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the health insurance legislation being considered by the Congress. They insist that if anyone gets federal money to buy health insurance, then taxpayers, including of course, Catholics, would be subsidizing abortion if the insurance companies write their policies to include abortion coverage, which of course is anathema to the Catholic Church. Now, in a sense this is true, in a vague, indirect way. But in the past, the same Catholic Church has been strongly in favor of Government money for students to attend Catholic schools, which in the same indirect way means that taxpayers would be subsidizing the teaching of Catholic doctrine, and that is just as much anathema to non-Catholic taxpayers.

After all, if it is against a Catholic's conscience to give taxpayer money to someone who will be using that money to buy an insurance policy that covers abortion, isn't it just as much an affront to the conscience of a Jew like myself to give taxpayer money to someone who will be using that money to send his child to a school where he will be taught that the Pope is infallible, or that Jesus was the Son of God born of a virgin?

I certainly have my problems with the proposed health-care legislation. And in fact the question of abortion coverage is of so little importance to me that the presence or absence of the Stupak-Pitts amendment language will not change my opinion on the bill. But the whole issue is somewhat laughable to me, since Catholics can get so worked up into a lather over Government money going to someone who might purchase an insurance policy that covers abortions, and yet not see how taxpayer subsidies to kids in parochial schools might bring the exact same reaction in others.

Prospects for 2012

The 2009 elections are just over, and the 2010 elections have not yet been held, but it's really time to look toward 2012. Very likely, Barack Obama will be looking to gain a second term as President, and all people who are interested in defeating this attempt must get together on a suitable opponent.

One person who is already being touted as a candidate is former Alaska Governor, and 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who has just put out a book, which many people consider to be the start of her campaign for the 2012 nomination. One thing she has going for her is that defeated VP canddates are often given a chance to try for the Presidency — look at Walter Mondale and Bob Dole. Another thing in her favor is that history was made in 2008 with an African-American President, and history would be made again if Sarah Palin became the first female President.

But Palin would not get the feminist vote — any more than Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes gets support from African-American groups. Policy trumps race, and the liberals who constitute the majority of the African-American community consider Thomas and Keyes, if anything, to be traitors. And feminists would consider Palin the same.

Besides, there may by 2012 be two other viable female candidates, if either Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina gets elected next year. Both of them are talking about running next year in California, one for governor, the other for the Senate. If either gets elected — in the biggest state of all, California — she will immediately become a hot item in the 2012 Presidential sweepstakes.

I do not consider Palin, as some did last year, unqualified. She served as a state Governor, probably the best preparation for the Presidency that our political system provides, and did, so far as I can tell, an excellent job (though quitting makes one wonder whether she could take a 4-year term in the White House). And if she does get the nomination, I would certainly vote for her against Obama. But she is hardly my choice; for one thing, there are more experienced and more highly qualified candidates out there; for another; she's more aligned with the conservative extremists in the party than would make me comfortable.

If either Fiorina or Whitman gets elected next year, she will be a good choice; both have run major corporations, but as of 2009, neither has any political experience, and if either one has, by 2012, this political experience, she will be a great choice. Mitt Romney, who was not my choice in 2008, would be a better choice in 2012, though the reasons for my discomfort in 2008 would still apply — his ideas have changed a lot in recent years, and one can not really be sure how conservative or how liberal he is on those issued where he seems to have effected a conversion. But he has the experience of being both a state Governor (and in a much bigger state than Alaska) and a corporate executive, which makes his qualifications pretty impressive.

A name often mentioned is Tim Pawlenty, like Palin and Romney a state Governor. All I can say is I don't know much about him. Possibly if I did, I'd like him, possibly not, but I can't say very much.

One former Governor I could not support — to the point that if he is nominated by the GOP, I vote third party — is Mike Huckabee. He is the personification of just about everything I oppose: left where I'm right and right where I'm left. And he is the most extreme member of the religious Right since the days of Pat Robertson. It really troubles me to see him leading in polls among Republicans thinking about the 2012 election; One can only hope that by 2012 his star fades.

Yesterday's elections

Most of the election results from yesterday make me pretty happy — especially Chris Christie's win in New Jersey, which was not at all certain to happen — but there was one very unfortunate result, which will be the subject of most of this post.

But before I go into the details, it will be necessary to explain some points about New York State's political system, which is rather unusual in some regards. Unlike most other states, New York State has something of a multi-party system, with the two major parties being joined by a bevy of smaller parties. There are two big reasons for this. First, New York's ballot access laws are rather easy to meet. A party only needs 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election in New York State to have four years of guaranteed ballot access, with a line on the ballot reserved for them. In a state where over 4 million people voted in 2006, this is a very easy requirement to meet. Second, New York is one of a small minority of states that have electoral fusion, a system where minor parties can co-endorse major party candidates for many offices, getting their own line on the ballot for the same candidates, and saving their efforts on behalf of their own separate candidates for those limited elections where it is most important to them. (In fact, even two major parties can co-endorse a candidate, but except in races for judgeships, this is pretty unusual.) They can even do this in the gubernatorial election, so that they can get the 50,000 votes needed for the next four years of ballot access without running a separate candidate on their own, and many small parties do this.

This explanation sets the stage for the election I am about to discuss. In the 23^rd Congressional District in New York, the sitting Congressman was appointed by President Barack Obama to a sub-cabinet post, one with prestige but no power, in a shameless attempt to give the impression of bipartisanship. This left the sear vacant. In a normal situation, this would be a safe Republican seat, as the Democrats haven't elected a Congressman in this part of New York State since 1870! And the Republicans nominated a State Assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, for the seat. The Democrats nominated William Owens, and the Conservative Party nominated David Hoffman.

But here came the weirdness. There are people in the Republican Party who are dissatisfied whenever a person who is, in their eyes, too liberal, and they are willing to let a Democrat take the seat rather than let that sort of a Republican win. And so they poured their support, in dollars and publicity, on Hoffman, despite the fact that this risked electing Owens. I suppose they were happy last year when they caused the Democrat Frank Kratovil to win a seat in the Maryland 1st District by denying renomination to Wayne Gilchrest, a sitting Republican congressman who was another of those "not conservative enough."

Well, that was the first problem. By putting major Republican support on Hoffman's side, they weakened Scozzafava so much that she felt it necessary to withdraw from the race, though her name remained on the ballot. That would not have been so bad — Hoffman could have been elected, and he would have served as a Republican Congressman, even if not elected on the GOP line — but then Hoffman proceeded to make statements insulting Scozzafava, so that she (who had claimed to "remain a proud Republican" when withdrawing) felt obliged to endorse Owens! (I don't know whom to consider the worse villain here: Hoffman for refusing to bury the hatchet with Scozzafava, or Scozzafava for letting her pique at Hoffman overshadow her loyalty to the Republican Party.)

So this is how it ended. The combined vote for the two Republican candidates (Hoffman, who was in fact a Republican, and Scozzafava) would have won the seat for a Republican, but Scozzafava got 6% and Hoffman 45%, so Owens won it for the Democrats with 49% of the vote. And Bill Owens gets a seat that should have been a safe GOP seat, just as did Kratovil last year in Maryland.

Who is the villain of the piece? National GOP conservatives, for building up Hoffman? Hoffman, for refusing to make peace with Scozzafava when she withdrew? Scozzafava, for letting her pique at Hoffman override the need to keep the seat in GOP hands? I think all 3 deserve a share of the blame.

Sen. Roland Burris and the "public option"

Sen. Roland Burris, the man who was appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill Pres. Barack Obama's Senate seat, has said that he will not support a health plan without a "public option."

In a sense, that's good news, though the whole idea of a public option is anathema to me. The reason? Because there are a lot of Senators who won't support a bill with a public option. And so the more who won't support a bill without one, the more likely it will be that no bill will get passed this year. And, really, it would be better to have no bill at all than any of the bills being considered now.

More on the Peace Prize

There was a column which I saw today entitled "Nobel panel mad about Bush" (click on the title of this piece to see it) which deserves reading. Its thesis is that the award given to President Barack Obama is just the latest of a series of expressions of the committee's dislike of the previous president, George W. Bush.

I didn't think of this point when I wrote yeaterday's blog post, but that is probably true to more of an extent than I might have thought. After all, the political left really despises Bush. I'm not sure why they do even more than other conservative presidents like Reagan — perhaps because he won on the electoral vote while losing the popular (though that's just the way the Constitution works); perhaps because he had the temerity to insist on playing by the rules rather than letting Gore's people insist on recount after recount until the results got changed to Gore's liking (which Al Franken was able to do because of a sympathetic Minnesota court system let him). But for whatever reason, the left hates Bush more than any political group has hated any president lately. And, as I said yesterday, the Nobel Committee has become the left wing's own property.