I’ve been out of pocket from the political realm for a week and a half, but President Obama’s claim that a health insurance mandate is not a tax strikes me as marginally good politics and absolutely terrible lawyering.  I think Jason Kuznicki (also here) and by extension Will, are absolutely, 100% correct that an individual mandate is necessarily characterized as a tax, and a regressive one at that.  But that’s not the interesting thing to me here. 

Accepting for the moment that it is only debatable – rather than certain - whether an individual mandate is a tax, Obama’s attempts to characterize the mandate as something else are hardly a make-or-break argument for passage of health care reform.  Health care reform is not going to pass or fail to pass because people think the mandate should be characterized as a “tax” or merely as an attempt to get the uninsured to “take responsibility to get health insurance.”  The people affected, whether you characterize it as a tax or as something else, are going to be the same people; the people worried about being affected are going to be the same people; the costs that the mandate will impose on them will be the same.  People for the most part get this.  Sure, it may be mildly politically embarassing for Obama to sign a tax increase on a subset of the American middle class in contradiction of his campaign pledge, but if the resulting bill is as good as Obama wants voters to think, it’s tough to see him paying much of a price at the polls for it. 

But by claiming that the mandate is not a tax, Obama undermines the single strongest argument that the mandate is constitutional.  [Read more →]

I read this post over at The Dish and quite honestly thought it said “Obama” and not “Osama.”  Which changes everything, of course.  Read the following passage substituting the word Osama with Obama:

Paul Cruickshank thinks that if Osama is ever captured we should put him on trial:

It would be nothing short of a watershed moment, doing much to restore the public’s confidence in American institutions and the rule of law after years of being told that they were too quaint for the challenges of a new era. And it would go a long way, too, in restoring the moral high ground for the United States in the court of global opinion.

And you know what? It was surprising but not that surprising when I first mis-read this.  The right-wing is so far gone at this point it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if some member of the birther fringe wanted to capture Obama and put him on trial – “doing much to restore the public’s confidence in American institutions.”  It isn’t that far from what some on the right are already saying about our Muslim, fascist commander in chief who, despite government’s incapacity to do anything right, will somehow take our country from us and turn it into a socialist, European, Islamic hellhole (yes, Denmark).

And isn’t this belief in the all-powerful president strange also?   When it comes to domestic policy, the president sets the agenda but not much else.  He’s not really a “decider” so much as a guide.  He doesn’t really enact anything.  He can sign his veto and therefore halt legislation, but he can’t single-handedly tear up the fabric of our society. [Read more →]

[moved to an earlier time, off the sidebar, yada yada yada...]

“Perhaps we’re getting at what puzzles and galls me so much about recent posts at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen about how dissident conservative writers ought to conduct themselves. The notion is that these writers should assess an ideological subset of the American public, discern their sensibilities, and craft all subsequent writing so as not to offend them. What a fool’s errand. There are times when people react badly to hearing the truth plainly stated. It is a journalist’s job to tell them that truth anyway, as forthrightly and accurately as one can put it.” ~ Conor F. in his interview with Scott

Yes, I culled the same quotation as Mark.  It’s the obvious starting point for a rejoinder.  But there’s more to the quotation:

Do you want to corrupt public discourse? Ask those engaged in the fights over ideas to pull their punches whenever what they regard as the truth might upset a segment of the public. Tell writers that if they find wisdom in the political philosophy of conservatism, and desire that its insights be incorporated into the governance of American society, they ought to refrain from writing things they regard as true whenever doing so will cost them credibility among some folks with whom they’d share a political coalition in a more rational world. [emphasis added]

What Conor is suggesting is that a war against the pundits – against Beck and Limbaugh, et al. – is a fight over ideas.  I would argue that calling people like Limbaugh out for some stupid thing(s) he’s said is not in fact a battle of ideas.  It’s just your classic personality politics.  A number of dissidents on the right have fallen into this very trap, engaging their loud, swaggering opponents on their own terms rather than within the framework of ideas.  And all this does is alienate the base.

Regardless of whether Conor or David Frum or any other dissident is correct in their assertions, what their actions achieve is alienation and excommunication from their supposed target audiences.  Liberals laud the efforts of Charles Johnson who has recently been calling out the conservative shenanigans, but in a lot of ways all that Johnson has achieved is to distance himself from the conservative movement.  What good has that done for conservatism?

One door opens – a population of independents and liberals that is very receptive to attacks on their least-favorite television and radio personalities; and one door closes – the conservative base which, however misguidedly, marches behind the Limbaughs and Levins of the world.  Instead of fragile allies, they’ve become sworn enemies.

My critique is simply this: engage in a fight over ideas, often and passionately.  But engage.  Don’t try to unseat the champions of the right.  Try to change their hearts and minds, or at least use them to reach their audiences.  It’s not as flashy or as fun, but I think it will serve a better purpose.

Or as Mark put it – change conservatism, not conservatives:

To be sure, if the primary goal is to put an end to extremist rhetoric, then by all means focus on extremist rhetoric; if, on the other hand, the goal is to reform conservatism and make it a philosophy capable of governing well, then focusing on the symptoms rather than the disease will do nothing.

What it comes down to is this: one cannot reform conservatism if one believes that the problem with conservatism is conservatives, and refuses to challenge core assumptions of conservatism. Indeed, what made Orwell’s critiques so effective and important was not that he publicized the evils of individual actors; it was that he drew the connection between evil and ideology in an attempt to reform that ideology. Conservative wonks and opinion journalists should be introspective enough to do likewise rather than merely seeking to blame conservatism’s problems on a small cadre of individuals.

That pretty much sums it up.

I had the good fortune yesterday afternoon to attend a panel discussion on the future of conservatism featuring Ross Douthat, David Frum, Daniel Larison, and Virginia Postrel.  It was a rather enlightening discussion, but at the same time also a discussion that drove me to the conclusion that we are a long way from seeing a Republican Party capable of garnering a coalition that is serious about the task of governing. 

One thing that made this panel so worthwhile was that it provided a good cross-section of the various schools of thought that have largely made up the conservative coalition for the last 30 or so years.  Equally notable was that even though each speaker represented an individual strain of conservatism, each speaker was also something of a dissident that would be readily labeled a RINO by most movement conservatives. [Read more →]

by Kyle Moore

(Note: this post is MOSTLY ripped straight from my comments to one of Scott’s earlier posts)

I wanted to make I suppose an emphasis to this great post. Early on you posit that in order for good partisanship to occur, all sides have to do so respecting essentially the multiple facets of an issue, and appreciate what people outside of one’s own ideology can bring to that discussion.

I would like to emphasize a slightly different angle because I think it’s a little more important. You talk about it, but in sort of a roundabout way. Positive partisanship comes from willfully recognizing that one’s own ideology can be wrong. [Read more →]