A New Map?

Part I here

Part II here

Part III here

I write this section very cautiously, because I am taking on one of my intellectual heroes. Let me say from the outset that Michael Barone has forgotten more than I’ve ever known about politics, and most everything that I do know about politics, I owe to my complete set of Almanacs of American Politics (1972-2006). Heck, I even own a dog-eared copy of “Our Country,” his (wonderful) political history of America from 1928 to 1988.

But I can’t agree with his repeated suggestion that there is a new list of target states for Obama and McCain, or that the map is likely to look especially different this time around from 2004. This isn’t to say that there won’t be slight differences – Obama’s strength in the Carolinas and the Northern Plains states may well be the real deal, but overall I think this base map is going to look very familiar when all is said and done. (more…)

I have to admit Mitt Romney its kind of dispiriting to write these long analytical posts Stormin’ Mormon and get 30 total comments and then see a two sentence thread Mitt Romney speculating about Vice Presidential nominations get 180 comments in Telestial Kingdom thirty minutes. So I thought Mike Huckabee I’d give people what they really want.

Part I is here

Part II is here

Warning: This is where is gets long (and interesting).

The “Great Man”/Inorganic Theory Of Re-alignment

It is now time to discuss our initial set of maps.

Map A is the map of McCain counties and Huckabee counties from the 2008 primaries. McCain’s counties are in blue, Huckabee’s counties are in red. Map B is the DeMint-Tenenbaum 2004 Senate race. Map C is the second Democratic gubernatorial primary between Burnet Maybank and Wyndham Manning. Counties in red went to Manning, counties in blue went to Maybank. Map D shows the results of a referendum on liberalizing liquor sales. Red counties voted “no,” blue counties voted yes.

In all four maps we see the same basic divisions between piedmont and the coastal plains. All four maps certainly look similar.

(more…)

Read Michael Barone. Like right now.

Doing some recent summer cleaning, I came across a crumpled copy of the November 15, 1999 issue of Time Magazine. It was buried at the bottom of a box devoted to old periodical subscriptions. Curious, I leafed through the pages and found that a few articles were dedicated to the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination. With the exception of some pictures showing much younger and more energetic versions of George W. Bush and John McCain, I was not particularly intrigued by the passages that detailed the respective temperaments of the two men or McCain’s steady rise in New Hampshire.

The final article, however, did catch my attention. Entitled “Why Bush Doesn’t Like Homework,” the piece is not meant to ridicule the President’s intelligence or question his much-discussed academic past, rather it is a candid assessment of then-candidate Bush, his leadership traits, and his managerial skills. I believe that the arguments made in the article shed some light on the failures and inadequacies of Bush’s presidency. Furthermore, I think the lessons we will learn from the following passages could go a long way in evaluating McCain’s chances in November.

First, a few passages detailing Bush’s successes as Texas Governor, his struggles to command key foreign policy issues as he rose to the national stage, and the consequences that come with a leader that does not pride himself on mastering those devilish details:

In Texas, Bush is known as a skilled manager and a confident, crisp decision maker. He has pursued, for the most part, simple, understandable policy goals and has stuck to his agenda with remarkable discipline. But on the national stage these past eight months, a competing image of Bush has appeared–that of a cautious, staff-dependent candidate, likable but lacking gravitas, who sounds out of his depth on some of the most serious policy issues a President must consider. Last week reporters pounced on the fact that he failed an interviewer’s pop quiz by not knowing the leaders of three out of four world hot spots–Chechnya, India and Pakistan.* (He got right the leader of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui.)

…

The fear that continues to fester about Bush–as we read about his periodic foreign-policy gaffes and then hear him blithely assert that what he doesn’t know he can learn from his advisers–is that at 53 he has the same cavalier attitude toward knowledge that he had at 21: he could learn what he needs to know, but he doesn’t seem to think it’s worth his time.

Bush speaks convincingly about how important it is for a leader to assemble a trustworthy cadre of advisers. And he argues that there is no percentage, as Governor or as President, in trying to master every subject or micromanage every decision. But as Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin, says, “Bush is trying to turn his weakness into a virtue. He’s not a policy wonk, so he has to rely on people who are.” And there is a risk to that approach, adds Buchanan, who is an admirer: “Bush’s biggest weakness is that he might not be in a position to discern the credibility of the options his advisers lay out for him.”

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20. Yet, I cannot help but see that the American people elected to the Oval Office a man that was not ready for the international stage, just at time when the world’s worst evil would come crashing ashore months later. More distressingly, George W. Bush would manage the White House with a clear distaste for policy specifics:

His leadership style is similarly direct. Although he insists “the details are important,” Bush freely admits that he prefers one-page memos to bound treatises, oral briefings to long meetings. When he is briefed, he doesn’t just sit back and listen. He engages his advisers, testing their logic and pressing them to get to the heart of the matter. From the minute someone starts talking about an issue, Bush is itching for a recommendation. As Albert Hawkins, his state budget director, says, “If you’re going on too long, he tells you so.” Says Bush: “I like to hear someone enunciate a position, pro or con. Because if someone cannot explain a position, that generally means they don’t understand the issue well enough to be part of the decision-making process.”

I am all for those expert advisers and policy wonks that guide the president as he is making tough choices. It seems, however, that President Bush has taken it too far. From the invasion of Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, Bush has a long history of depending heavily upon those around him. Ranging from the rise of the Iraqi insurgency following the invasion to the continued failures of the No Child Left Behind education act, significant evidence can be found that Bush failed to hammer out the more integral pieces behind his decisions. Sadly, President Bush’s trust in his closest advisers brought about the loss of his credibility among the American people.  

Where am I going with all this? This passage may help:

The elder Bush, unlike his son, was a foreign-policy expert. A former CIA director, U.N. representative and ambassador to China, he is probably on a first-name basis with more world leaders than George W. can name. But the former President’s blind spot was domestic affairs. He wasn’t much interested in social issues or education. When it came to domestic policy, President Bush deferred to his expert advisers, much as George W. does now on questions of foreign affairs. That arm’s-length behavior cost the father a second term. A similar problem could cost the son a first. 

John McCain, of course, is a foreign-policy expert. The American people, just as they were in 1992 and 2000, are concerned most about the condition of the home front. In both of those elections, they chose the candidates that stressed domestic issues. In 1992, Bill Clinton fit the bill as a centrist, Southern Democrat who captured the middle-class mood soured by the recent economic downturn. In 2000, with America still on its post-Cold War vacation, the electorate settled (kinda) on a man who championed a humble foreign policy and a return to government integrity.

Let us hope, then, that we avoid a potentially grave mistake by electing Barack Obama, a man heavily versed in domestic issues, yet lacking greatly in the foreign policy department. Wait, I thought it was the economy and the home front that would decide the election. Won’t McCain just be George H.W. Bush, sixteen years later? Despite all the doom and gloom over the direction of the country and our “slumping” economy, the fact remains that the outside world poses far greater threats in 2008 as it did in 1992.

Don’t get me wrong, John McCain must develop his knowledge and speaking skills on domestic issues such as healthcare and education. He will certainly not win in November by promoting a strictly foreign policy/national security (McCain) versus domestic issues/economy (Obama) campaign. Yet, the American people must understand that the costs of electing another unqualified visionary are far too great to risk. “Hope” and “Change” will not produce stability in Iraq and Afghanistan, obtain energy security, or keep Russia and China in check. As always, a free-market society will experience economic distress and public angst, causing leaders to focus temporarily on domestic concerns. While the economy will eventually see brighter days, the world does not rest. And the world cannot afford another Jimmy Carter, not when he refuses to acknowledge recent successes in Iraq or speaks ill of free trade. Barack Obama: politics as usual.

The history of modern presidential politics is a trail littered with the bloodied remnants of eras that lost their way. The excesses of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the unsettling spasms of the turbulent 1960’s beget the rise of Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority.” Nixon’s paranoia and demise brought on the naive and feckless Jimmy Carter. Carter, damaged by the ominous energy crisis and the hostage ordeal in Iran, saw his flame burn out to the burgeoning power of Ronald Reagan and his conservative revolutionaries. With the election of Vice-President George H.W. Bush in 1988, it seemed that America had settled into a comfortable Republican rule at the presidential level. The overwhelming success of the 1991 Gulf War only added to Bush’s chances for reelection.

History, however, could stay away only so long. A mild recession forced the President to go back on his “no new taxes” pledge and an angry electorate showed him the door. And so it went on, down through the Clinton Administration, full of Bill’s extra-marital adventures and his failure to connect the dots on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, and the 2000 USS Cole attack. Current President Bush, elected to establish “compassionate” conservatism in Washington and keep the nation on a non-interventionist track, was rattled awake by the deafening knell of war: murderous enemies had come ashore and succeeded in dragging the country from its peaceful hiatus.

As we go about selecting the 44th President of the United States, we must first look at where we stand as George W. Bush departs the Oval Office. Our troops fight on to support fledgling republics in the deserts of Mesopotamia and the hills of Afghanistan, pushing back bravely against entrenched insurgencies. The Iranian regime remains elusive and difficult to gauge. The government continues to spread trouble and mayhem by supplying and training militias across the Middle East in hopes of weakening the Great Satan and its close ally, Israel. Yet, it appears we must walk a delicate line to end the country’s nuclear ambitions. What with our varying intelligence reports, stretched and worn armed forces, and Iran’s split leadership between senior clerics and Ahmadinejad, we cannot afford any rash decisions.

Elsewhere, Pakistan spirals out of control. The border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan is fast becoming Al-Qaeda’s opening act in their inevitable rejuvenation. As President Musharraf battles an increasingly hostile public and a rival legislature, Pakistan’s nuclear warheads look ripe for the picking to any jihadist. All of this while we look to counter the ever-mysterious China and its rise to the world’s stage, grapple with Russia’s dreams of an empirical past, and scramble to loosen the hand of death on Africa.

On the home front, the vast of majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Gas prices soar to new heights, unemployment rises, and there is a growing feeling that the middle-class is being left behind. Without sounding too much like Lou Dobbs, the American people seem fed up with their government’s inability to spend wisely, root out inefficiency, and promote prosperity. The nation lacks a clear plan to ensure energy independence, our children remain ill equipped to face international foes in today’s technology-based economy, and border states lack protection from an onslaught of illegal immigrants.

Despite all of these alarming problems, the United States stands resilient and strong, a product of the “great experiment” of democracy and freedom. Yet, for all of our promise and prestige, we cannot pretend that just getting by will cut it in the modern world. I refer to the continual cycle of presidential eras above in hopes that we can put to rest the mentality of ”well, we survived the mistakes of Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43, so there is no reason to believe we cannot just continue politics as usual.” I am not talking about Obama’s calls to revolutionize the political process or his lofty platitudes of hope and change. I mean to say that our society has become so obsessed with questions of “what if?” and futile crusades of “gotcha ya!” that we often disregard relevant issues and ignore tomorrow’s challenges. How else would you explain CNN’s recent fixation with the similarities between 1968 and 2008 and between Robert Kennedy and Barack Obama. What about Congress’ quest to assert for the umpteenth time that the Bush Administration bungled pre-war intelligence? No one is disputing that the war was poorly managed, but this type of discourse does nothing to improve the situation on the ground or guarantee an honorable return for our troops.

One of our greatest obstacles going forward will be our ability to understand that we are all Americans in this together. I am not denying that our differences as Democrats and Republicans will make tomorrow’s tough decisions more difficult. Yet, the destructive nature of nearly half the country erupting in anger if either McCain or Obama take hold of the Oval Office is simply undeniable. I do not believe anyone is warranted to temporarily abandon his or her cause and largely dismiss an opposing faction that takes power. Sitting and awaiting disaster to befall a McCain or Obama Administration should be no ticket to return to power as nothing more than an onlooker who is there to command a run-away train.  

Like any other political junkie, I love to chat about potential running-mates and key battleground states. Nevertheless, let’s quit the presidential charades of useless speculation worthy of the tabloids. If you are relying on a Michelle Obama “Whitey” video or a new Rev. Wright outburst to win this election, you’re wasting your time. Maybe you think you can bide your time for Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee to save the GOP in 2012… Stop dreaming.  

Whoever wins in November, I will never be more proud of my country if the candidates nominated to represent the electorate dissect and examine pressing issues at great length, before they present sensible and honest assessments to the American people. Our country stands at a pivotal intersection in history. The best way forward on our path to continued prominence in the world begins with a 2008 campaign that is civilized and substantive, with a steady eye on the future instead of the past.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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Today’s infamous 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court granting terrorists the right to an O.J. trial in U.S. civilian courts cries out for the present Chief Executive to so paraphrase Old Hickory’s similar defiance of John Marshall 176 years ago with respect to removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

The nation survived President Andrew Jackson’s defense of his constitutional executive powers against the first Judicial Oligarch. Should President Bush succumb to Justice Kennedy’s attempted coup to assume the role of Commander in Chief, it will be much harder for our nation to survive, much less thrive, as it has since 1832.

The ruling granting illegal enemy combatants held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba stands millenia of war law, America military history from George Washington forward, the Geneva Convention, and, common sense on their heads.

The people being held at Gitmo are illegal enemy combatants as opposed to legal POWs. The court waxes ad nauseum about the irrelevance of the fact that the base is not on America soil. I agree. We held hundreds of thousands of legal Japanese and German POWs in the Lower Forty-Eight during WWII, and none were allowed access to U.S. courts.

The court speaks of the length of the “open-ended” detentions. But no one knew in 1944 that WWII would not last as long as the Thirty Years War or the even longer Peloponnesian Wars in Europe in earlier centuries. Thucydides, the author of the acclaimed history of the latter was himself a prisoner of war for much longer than the first terrorist admitted to Gitmo.

Captured combatants are held until the end of the conflict so as to prevent them from returning to the battlefield (see New York, Afghanistan or Iraq). Additionally, they may be charged with war crimes and serve a prison term or be executed. Even in the latter case, such trials have always been held by military tribunals, beginning under General Washington in 1776.

General Washington also not infrequently applied the war law that has always allowed illegal enemy combatants operating among civilian populations to be shot on site or summarily executed.

One of the main purposes of the Geneva Conventions was to discourage operations among civilians by granting rights to legal POWs, specifically denying same to terrorists.

The fact is that when a nation wages war, the Commander in Chief gathers intel on and directs operations against the enemy. He does not ask a court’s permission to target and kill particular combatants.

The Constitution was a compromise weighing rights of personal freedom and security between the police and the citizenry. Its application to enemies of the State is an abomination, and one that President Bush is duty bound to defy in order to uphold his Oath.

Supreme Court justices are not the only ones to take oaths to uphold the Constitution and they are not the final arbiters of same. We the People are.

President Bush, be one man with courage and you will make a majority. Lay down the gauntlet for the Dem Congress to impeach you so Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur can be tried in front of Judge Ito like a former Avis commercial and Buffalo Bills star turned murderer.

I have no doubt they will blink on that, just as they have on owning defeat since the November 2006 election. They won Congress but haven’t had the guts to de-fund the troops. Think they want people that would cut off their heads with machetes to be released by their liberal judges?

I don’t. They refuse to own defeat. You must not surrender to five lawyers.

For complete majority and dissenting opinion texts go here.

Scalia said the nation is “at war with radical Islamists” and that the court’s decision “will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

Heed Scalia’s words President Bush and follow Andy Jackson’s lead.

More later on other issues addressed in the Court’s opinions. But the main issue at hand is not the dicta of would be General Kennedy. Rather, it is the resolve of one man, i.e. the guy we elected twice to defend us, which he has done magnificently since 911, no thanks to five lawyers in robes.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

*In addition to his corporate work in Atlanta, from 2001-2006, he was the Legal Editor and “conservative voice” of The Champion (Decatur, GA) newspaper, (legal organ for DeKalb County in Metro-Atlanta), where he was the one of first columnists in the nation, soon after September 11, 2001, to comment on the likelihood that captured terrorists in Afghanistan would be deemed to be illegal enemy combatants not entitled to Prisoner of War status under the laws of war.

Dear Billy Boy,

It just won’t be the same without you. While parting can cause such sorrow, I will try and remember the good times, the fun we had, and the years we have spent in each other’s company.

Slick, we’re gonna miss ya. Here’s a final tribute to you as you ride off into the political sunset, and off into the realm of your old buddy, the Peanut Farmer from the plains of Georgia.

Here’s to you, President Clinton.

For old time’s sake, we’ll always remember you this way and the good times you brought us…

I predicted last summer, after seeing Barack Obama give a long speech, and when he trailed Hillary Clinton by over 20 points in the South Carolina polls, that he would win my native Palmetto State’s primary.

He has now done so.

Jesse Jackson won the SC caucuses in 1984 and 1988 after all. [As a side note, yours truly, pre-2000 conservative epiphany, was a delegate for Jackson in those caucuses. Gamecock has traveled a long road to the right!] I was the only white delegate for Jackson from my precinct in Spartanburg County in 1984, and one of less than ten in the whole county in 1984 and 1988. Moreover, Jackson’s “rainbow” coalition of delegates at the state convention was extremely lacking in non-white hues in both years.

Not so for Obama, the winner of the near all white Iowa caucuses. It will be Hillary’s coalition that is mostly monochrome this year.

So I have to strongly disagree with the spin I am watching on the MSM, that Obama’s “mere” 25% of the white vote in today’s SC primary makes him a “black” candidate only now, as opposed to being a candidate that happened to be Black yesterday.

An even split of the white vote would give a candidate 33%. By my math, twenty-five percent is only seven percent less, the margin of error in some polls!

I know that the Clinton Machine’s plan was to make the spin that Barack only appeals to Blacks, coming out of SC, but with Obama getting 1 of 4, and Hilary and SC native John Edwards getting only 1 and 1/2 of 4 whites, I would suggest that the schizophrenic Clinton strategy did not produce the numbers they thought necessary to justify such a spin.

Obama has at least quadrupled the portion of the white vote Jackson received in the 80s, and garnered at least ten-fold more votes than Al Sharpton did in his efforts in SC.

The Clintons, as predicted by Dick Morris, and documented by my Will voluntary servitude of Black Dems survive public humiliation at Hillary’s hands? and The Audacity of Hope-dashing Democratic Party racism raged a virtual race “war” against the fellow Democrat as opposed to the typical race “cards” regularly dealt via the MSM against Republicans.

At first they were going to cede the state with virtually no effort by the candidate. Then they decided that they could best metamorphasize the non-racial Barack into, as one liberal pundit described, a “pet negro” that couldn’t win in the general, by having Bill Clinton campaign 24/7 and have Hillary speak twice, so as to be seen as trying hard to win, only to lose due to racist whites and blacks. Not only painting SC democrats as racist, but inferring that Democrats and Americans generally are racists.

Of course they always call us in the GOP racists, with no proof. But what the Clintons’ obsessive ambition brought into the open was evidence of the rabid racism that rules in the Democratic Party, a racism that I have bemoaned for 10 years, and which led me to the GOP.

Great damage has been done to the Democratic Party, and we should all (if religious) get on our knees and thank God for it. The damage is so great, because Blacks have seen the Clinton’s play the game many of their own Black leaders regularly have played with the Clinton’s against Republican whites.

That’s why SC’s James Clyburn, the US House Majority Leader, nearly endorsed Obama.

The message was clear.

All the race talk has obscured some other major facts:

1 - SC blacks didn’t turn their support to Obama until AFTER they were shown he could win white votes in Iowa.

2 - Obama, unlike Jackson, has a chance to win, and provides many reasons other than melanin and genitalia to back him over Hillary.

3 - Bill Clinton has been on fire in SC with substantive arguments for Hillary 24/7, yet Obama still got 25% of the white vote.

Local TV and talk radio (as well as national talk radio) has been filled with reports of blacks that are alienated from the Clinton Dem Party. Many say they would stay home if Obama is destroyed, but many also say they would consider the GOP in the Fall. [Many, but not all, couple that possibility with a McCain or a Huckabee being on the GOP ticket.]

Obama has not responded well to the attacks, but
the fact is that the Dems are damaged more than Obama. The GOP needs to take heed of the events in Dixie today.

They must overtly go after Black voters. They should highlight Obama’s “community organizing” activities (a staple from the democratic party anger/grievance ginning up playbook) as a young lawyer, a subject too taboo to speak of in public that Bob Johnson, in “Uncle Bill” (as dubbed by Rush Limbaugh to highlight the absurd Dem lable of “Uncle Tom” that liberals ascribe to black conservatives) mode, inadvertently mentioned when called on for an oblique reference to Obama’s admitted youthful drug use.

But mostly, they need to highlight and demand scrutiny of states’ motor-votor rolls and the voter ID issue. If the Democrats are writing off Blacks, their only chance to win in November is with dead or illegal voters.

That the GOP has not made a stink over this since Hillary’s NY-Spitzer drivers’ licenses gaffe, is an example of why we aren’t in control of Congress.

Dems can’t win majorities when only legal citizens vote. Why else do they cry racism against laws that require a voter to provide a photo ID?

It’s obvious.

And post-SC, the Donkeys are even more dependent on voters that dare not be photographed. The GOP must not let the Dems make jack asses of them by being outlawyered. We should be about purging motor-voter rolls of illegals, not to mention, the dead, NOW.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
The HinzSight Report
The Minority Report
Huck is history in the Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

The debate starts at 7pm EST. You can watch online here.

After a year of near uninterrupted Mormon coverage, Romney has decided to give the Speech. Good on him. I’d always believed Romney intended to give the speech at some point, and I’d begun to suspect they were saving for a (hopeful) general election. I think Team Romney has since realized a few things. They’re likely acknowledging he may not make it to the general election, and therefore it’s possibly now or never. Also, it represents a huge variable in any equation’s they’ve set up. A team as diligent as Romney’s doesn’t want something so unresolved, as they near the homestretch. It effects their ability to plan for a general election; what states should they plan to heavily contest? Will some currently close states easily drift into “safe” category, after a successful speech? How does the state’s he plans to contest effect what sorts of issues he ought to be focusing on? No campaign wants questions this murky. I’d also guess that Huckabee’s sudden rise among evangelicals (which hasn’t been fully mirrored among other Iowans), has shed greater light on the extent of the problem. So I suspect that Romney made the right decision, to give a speech, and to give the speech prior to the Iowa Caucus. Given that, what exactly should the speech look like? Here are my thoughts.

Things to Include:

References to Mormonism within the broader American landscape- Emphasize that, whatever else Mormonism is, it’s a religion that is uniquely American, and which has it’s roots in the American West. In this context, talk about it’s focus on hard-work and determination; how these values grew up precisely out of the traditions of the American West. This, regardless of your theological perspective, is a fascinating story.

References to Romney’s Childhood- I wrote an article a couple of months ago, discussing Romney’s failure to create any sort of personal narrative; any sense of where he comes from; what sort of person he is, and why he’s that sort of person. As far as we know, Mitt popped perfectly coiffed and fully formed, out of the head of Zeus. I think this is an inexcusable error on his campaign’s part, especially given the persistent “plastic” and “too perfect” memes he’s dealt with. But, I can sort of understand the difficulty Romney’s had here, because undoubtedly a good deal of his early experiences, a good deal of his foundational principles, center around Mormonism. As long as Romney was generally trying to direct attention away from Mormonism, this was a story that couldn’t be easily told. This is probably Romney’s only opportunity to tell this fully rendered personal story, because if “The Speech” does it’s job, the religion issue will rarely come up in the future.

References to his father- This is a corollary to the above. It’s admirable that Romney’s largely escaped his father’s rather large shadow. But, his father’s past and legacy have alot to add to fully developing both Mitt’s Mormon faith, and his personal character. Mitt’s accomplished enough in his own right to avoid being characterized as some sort of legacy; he can talk about his father and not be “Bush Jr.”.

References to general values- He has to tread lightly here, but he’d do well to expand upon the personal values Mormonism promotes. He might even chance citing the Book of Mormon here (or other Mormon sources). He’ll likely have to do so at some point, or else the Speech might be easily dismissed as a “dodge” or some such. This might be the best opportunity.

References to his current family- I’d envision a “coming full circle” sort of thing here. I.e, he referenced his childhood earlier, and the effect Mormonism had on him then, and now he references Mormonism’s effects on his own son’s.

References to political positions- He must address how Mormonism effects his political positions and, though it seems the most clear aspect of the speech, it’s really a fairly tricky issue to negotiate. Romney cannot simply say, or even allude, that his religious beliefs don’t affect his politics. Evangelicals think religious beliefs SHOULD affect one’s politics. On the other hand, he can’t simply say that religious beliefs do affect his politics. Because evangelicals are obviously wary of his religious beliefs in particular. I’d imagine Romney giving this part of the speech towards the end, when he’s already explained how his religion affects him personally. Done properly, and he can merge the personal and the political in a non-threatening manner. As a quick example, if Mormonism emphasizes diligence, he might say that Mormonism causes him to examine political issues more thoroughly.

A Recognition of Frailty- Romney needs to make sure to emphasize that neither he, nor his religion are perfect and that, in some sense, he’s just chugging along, doing his best. Weave the failures in with the successes. Again, Mitt needs to create a compelling human and personal narrative here.

A Recognition of Shared Works- Note that, in many ways, evangelicals and Mormons have been working together for some time, on shared goals. Reducing teenage pregnancies and abortions. Promoting healthy life-styles. Though, theologically different, they’ve come together in key ways to improve the world.

References to the Founders- Note that many of our most prominent founders differed on theology. Don’t expand too greatly here. You wish to avoid creating an ecumenical message (see below).

References to the Envisioned Role of Religion in America- This is fairly self-explanatory.

Things to Avoid:

Any Broad Ecumenical Message- At all costs, Romney must avoid talk of “reconciling faiths” theologically. He must avoid, at all costs, talk of various religions having certain truths. He must avoid, at all costs, talk of bringing faiths together in a grand community. In other words, he must avoiding blurring the lines between different faiths, or suggesting they ought to be blurred. He must reject out of hand any attempts to make Mormonism “acceptable”, by casting a variety of faiths as “acceptable”. He absolutely must avoid focusing on the values of faiths even more “unpopular” then his (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc). These are not messages that will go over well with conservative Christians.

Mentioning He’s a Christian- Thus far, Romney hasn’t claimed Mormonism=Christianity. I can’t imagine he’d do so now, but he has to be very careful in that respect. He’s mentioned the “Judeo-Christian” religions previously. That seems acceptable, but he may or may not wish to so clearly include Islam in such a net.

Proselytizing for Mormonism- He’s not back in France, playing a missionary. His job isn’t to make Mormonism attractive, and he shouldn’t explicitly avoid doing so. His job is to make Mormonism less “weird”.

More General Thoughts on the Speech: It ought to be very personal. He should be telling a story. Possible sentence beginning: “When I was 12, my father sat me down…”. It should also try to be somewhat concise. I’d use Kennedy’s speech as a general barometer of length.

It’s been awhile since I’ve sat down to truly handicap the GOP race. Truth be told, the reason is that there are so many variables that it’s hard to make any reasonable predictions at this point. I once believed that we were going to see a replay of 1988 in this race, with the formerly pro-choice frontrunner (Rudy as Bush 41), the deficit-hawk senator who had run before (McCain as Dole), the religious guy who does well in Iowa but nowhere else (Huckabee as Robertson), the Northeastern businessman (Romney as DuPont), and the guy who everybody thinks is Reagan’s heir but never can quite get his act together (Thompson as Kemp). But in that race, the frontrunner, after stumbling in Iowa a bit, won New Hampshire and sailed to the nomination. That seems less likely this year. If Huckabee wins Iowa, he’ll probably win South Carolina. DuPont never won anything, but Romney seems to be the favorite in New Hampshire. Dole won Iowa, but McCain isn’t leading anywhere. And Rudy is back at 22 percent in today’s Rasmussen poll, only 5 points ahead of Huckabee. In fact, according to Rasmussen, only 11 percentage points separate the top 5 candidates in the field. This is starting to look less like the GOP race from 1988 and more like the Democratic race from 2004.

Check out this blast from the past. In December of 2003, only 10 percentage points separated the top 5 Democratic candidates. Dean and Clark were tied at 15 percent nationally, Lieberman and Gephardt were tied at 12 percent, Kerry was at 6 percent, and Edwards was at 5 percent. As the site that I linked to demonstrates, after Kerry won Iowa, everything changed. Seismic movement occurred in New Hampshire, where Dean, the former governor of a neighboring state, led with 34 percent in early December of 2003. Kerry was at 20 percent and everyone else was in single digits. After Kerry won Iowa, he gained 19 points in New Hampshire over the course of 8 days. Dean lost 6 points. If Huckabee wins in Iowa, New Hampshire becomes a toss-up. Romney will lose support, Huckabee will gain support, and the Granite State could go to either candidate, or to McCain or Giuliani.

Additionally, though just 2 weeks passed between Iowa and South Carolina in 2004, Kerry and Edwards each gained nearly 30 points in that period due to the events of Iowa and New Hampshire. In short, early states matter. That’s because, as referenced by that same site, most Iowa voters in 2004 reported that they made up their minds in the last three days of the campaign. That means that the voter who decides the race for the GOP nod won’t be paying attention for another 4 weeks. The voters in the Super Tuesday states won’t be paying attention for nearly 2 months. Anything can happen.

Racing through the record.

With the 2008 presidential race in fifth gear, two Leftist commentators are trying to sideswipe the Right by running over the late, great Ronald Wilson Reagan. They are driving the ugliest vehicle available: accusations of racism.

“Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism,” columnist Paul Krugman wrote last September. Consequently, he continued, Ronald Reagan “started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered.”

Krugman alluded to the 1964 Ku Klux Klan killings of three Congress of Racial Equality freedom riders, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. This case was dramatized in the 1988 film, Mississippi Burning.

Columnist Bob Herbert then exacerbated Krugman’s act of grave desecration.

“As president, he [Reagan] actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” Herbert wrote. “He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Herbert added: “Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.”

Of course, rubbish like this routinely blows along Manhattan’s sidewalks.

While defending Reagan against these outrageous charges, columnist David Brooks cites an invaluable online recording created August 30, 2006, long before this controversy erupted anew. David Hixson, a broadcaster who retired from Denver’s KEZW radio, presents an amateur audio tape of Reagan’s August 3, 1980, appearance at the Neshoba Country Fair. It seems to be the only available recording of this speech.

“The Fair is a recognized must appearance for any serious Mississippi political candidate and could be a deciding factor for Mississippi votes in the upcoming presidential campaign,” Hixson explains. “Pete Perry, [Neshoba] County GOP Chairman, used this strategy successfully in making the arrangements with the Reagan team on very short notice.”

Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly won Mississippi in 1976, so that state was quite competitive in 1980. Team Reagan found this particular event attractive after reading a June 1980 National Geographic magazine article titled “Mississippi’s Grand Reunion at the Neshoba County Fair.” Though some staffers worried about this appearance, Reagan believed in honoring his scheduled commitments, not canceling them. Pollster Dick Wirthlin’s advice to the contrary went unheeded.

Rather than addressing a race rally, the tape finds Reagan speaking jovially for 15 minutes to an overflow crowd. He discusses Carter’s failures including inflation, high taxes, runaway spending, and myriad foreign-affairs blunders. Reagan also tells plenty of jokes.

“People have been telling me that Jimmy Carter has been doing his best,” Reagan quips. “And that’s our problem.”

“I know why he’s so interested in poverty,” Reagan says of Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.). “He never had any when he was a kid.”

Reagan invokes his experiences with welfare reform in California. While he easily could have used that theme to stir racial animus against minority-group members on public assistance, Reagan empathizes with those on relief:

I don’t believe the stereotype, after what we did, of people in need who are there [on welfare] simply because they prefer to be there. We found the overwhelming majority would like nothing better than to be out, with jobs for the future, and out here in the society with the rest of us. The trouble is, again, that bureaucracy has them so economically trapped that there’s no way they can get away. And they’re trapped because that bureaucracy needs them as a clientele to preserve the jobs of the bureaucrats themselves.

Next, Reagan prescribes federalism - the basic conservative, constitutional principle of devolving power and resources as close to localities as possible.

I believe there are programs like that, programs like education and others that should be turned back to the states and the local communities with the tax sources to fund them, and let the people [inaudible].

The crowd roars over the end of that sentence. Reagan continues:

I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I’m looking for, [applause] I will devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions that properly belong there.

Examined honestly, the diabolical phrase, “state’s rights,” which Krugman and Herbert decry as a plea for white power, dissolves into an innocuous call for Conservatism 101: A smaller federal government with revenues and public programs left as close to the people as possible. If Krugman and Herbert are unfamiliar with this concept, they can start by reading the 10th Amendment.

A clearly frustrated Reagan later wrote about this controversy: “Because I said I believed states should be allowed to regain the rights and powers granted to them in the Constitution, he [President Carter] implied I was a racist pandering to Southern voters.”

Federalism may be hemlock to big-government Leftists like Krugman and Herbert, but advocating it is not Morse code for bigots. If it were, Reagan’s largely white, rural, Mississippi audience would have welcomed the words “states rights” with cheers rather than silence.

Krugman and Herbert failed to mention that after supposedly wooing white supremacists with encrypted Klan rhetoric, Reagan flew from Mississippi to Manhattan to address the Urban League the next day. He promoted the idea of low-tax, deregulated “enterprise areas” to stimulate economic growth in America’s ghettoes.

“I am committed to the protection of the civil rights of black Americans,” Reagan told the Urban League. “That commitment is interwoven into every phase of the programs I will propose.” This overture to black Americans presumably dimmed the flaming crosses of the very same voters who Reagan allegedly tried to woo just one day earlier.

Krugman and Herbert’s anti-Reagan rage so totally blinds them that they neglected to discuss Democrat Jimmy Carter’s racially insensitive remarks in his 1976 campaign. That April, Carter said he opposed government programs “to inject black families into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration.” He added: “I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods.”

As the April 19, 1976 Time reported:

Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson last week postponed plans to endorse Jimmy Carter and angrily exclaimed: “Is there no white politician I can trust?” Jesse Jackson, director of Chicago’s Operation PUSH, called Carter’s views “a throwback to Hitlerian racism.”

Krugman and Herbert also forgot to chide 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for speaking at…the Neshoba County Fair! The Massachusetts governor ignored Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner on the 24^th anniversary of their murders, which were committed about 12 miles away.

Krugman and Herbert’s liberal limousine glides right past numerous inconvenient truths about Reagan’s record on race:

As the future president was growing up, “The Reagans were so poor that he played in the street with black children and thought little of it,” Nicholas Wapshott remembered in the November 14 New York Sun.

In his memoir, An American Life, Reagan wrote: “My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals…There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance.”

In 1931, Reagan was on Eureka College’s football team. One night, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls, an Elmhurst, Illinois hotelier refused lodging to two of Reagan’s black teammates. Reagan invited them to stay at his parents’ home, where Mr. and Mrs. Reagan welcomed them. Reagan “and one of the players, William Franklin Burghardt, remained friends and correspondents until Mr. Burghardt died in 1981,” Cannon wrote Sunday.

As an adult, Reagan had a long history of bias-free fair-mindedness. As Cannon added:

As a sports announcer in Iowa in the 1930s, Mr. Reagan opposed the segregation of Major League Baseball. As an actor in Hollywood, he quit a Los Angeles country club because it did not admit Jews. In 1978, when preparing to run for president, Mr. Reagan opposed a California ballot initiative that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the state’s public schools.

Ronald Reagan Jr. recalls the day at a California barbecue when his father dived into a pool to save a black child from drowning.

As president, Reagan named Samuel Pierce, a black man, as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While Pierce was outside Reagan’s inner circle, he was in Reagan’s Cabinet. In 1982, Reagan promoted Roscoe Robinson to become the Army’s first black four-star general. Reagan also helped place Clarence Thomas on his path to the United States Supreme Court by naming him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Reagan’s critics may dismiss these appointees as “tokens.” Of course, they also would denounce Reagan for racism if he had zero appointees of color. Either way, Reagan loses.

Bob Herbert’s deceptions notwithstanding, on June 29, 1982, President Reagan approved a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

‘‘The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished,” Reagan said that day. “Citizens must have complete confidence in the sanctity of their right to vote, and that’s what this legislation is all about.” He added: ‘‘As long as I am in a position to uphold the Constitution, no barrier will come between our citizens and the voting booth.”

Reagan signed this measure at a White House ceremony attended by some 300 people including Senator Kennedy and bipartisan members of Congress. Civil-rights veterans were there, too, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Benjamin Hooks, then-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Urban League president John Jacob; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

Krugman whines that “Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday.” Earth to Planet Krugman: On November 2, 1983, President Reagan made Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday, the first and only such honor for a black American.

As the Associated Press reported back then, “Reagan originally had expressed concern over the cost of honoring King with a national holiday, and said he would have preferred a day of recognition.” Also, when asked at a press conference if he agreed with then-Senator Jesse Helms’s (R., N.C.) claims that sealed FBI files implicated some of King’s associates as Communists, Reagan said: “We’ll know in about 35 years, won’t we?” Reagan telephoned Mrs. King to apologize for that comment.

Reagan warmly honored King at the White House.

“In America, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, one of the important crises we faced was racial discrimination,” Reagan said. “The man whose words and deeds in that crisis stirred our nation to the very depths of its soul was Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr.”

Reagan added that King “awakened something strong and true, a sense that true justice must be colorblind, and that among white and black Americans, as he put it, ‘Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone.’”

After endorsing the measure before some 200 guests, Reagan handed his signature pen to King’s widow.

As UPI’s then-White House correspondent Helen Thomas wrote: “When it was over, the guests joined in softly singing, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ the battle cry that symbolized King’s struggle for racial equality.”

According to the Washington Post, Jesse Jackson, who attended the event, said of Reagan that day: “We’ve all had high and low moments, and this is one of his high moments.”

“It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful statement was made,” Coretta Scott King told reporters in the Rose Garden. “And the president spoke as president of all the people today.”

President Reagan named Lieutenant General Colin Powell America’s first black national-security adviser in November 1987. He served through Reagan’s second term and was a major player in Reagan’s diplomacy with the Soviet Union’s final leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“He was not only my boss and commander-in-chief, both in my capacity as a soldier, but also as his national security adviser,” Powell recalled on CBS News after President Reagan passed away in June 2004. “We became very good friends, both during the two years I worked with him and in the year after he retired, as I did with Nancy Reagan.”

Another of Reagan’s unsung achievements is his signature on the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. This federal law green lighted the Indian casinos that dot America, from Connecticut’s enormous, eye-popping Mohegan Sun to the slightly more modest but still impressive Pechanga Casino in Temecula, California. Whatever one thinks of gambling, these enterprises earn billions for Indian tribes that had little beyond their traditions until Ronald Reagan freed them to capitalize on America’s betting jones. A true bigot would have let the red man stay poor and hopeless.

Krugman’s latest sludge bucket holds this lump of deep thought:

Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

O.K., so Reagan loved blacks personally, but pushed us around politically to earn for himself and other Republicans the loyalty of bigoted white voters? So, let’s see: Reagan invited news cameras to capture him extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and signing the MLK holiday into law while sitting beside King’s widow in 1983. This clearly was part of Reagan’s effort to boost his standing among white bigots before seeking reelection in 1984.

And how about making Colin Powell America’s first black NSC chief and enriching Choctaws and Seminoles? Obviously, this was meant to galvanize white racists into electing Reagan’s successor, G. H. W. Bush.

“Why is this slur being floated now?” wonders Hoover Institution scholar Martin Anderson, Reagan’s long-time aide, chief White House domestic-policy adviser, and co-editor of several books documenting Reagan’s insightful, hand-written, speeches, and correspondence on public affairs. “I don’t know - maybe the 20th anniversary of Reagan’s departure from office, which is looming ahead, will show that his legacy is far more important than we knew. And that will be intolerable to a lot of people.”

Especially with the White House at stake, Leftist hacks like Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert will keep trying to smear Ronald Reagan as a racist. The obvious implication is that those of us who love America’s 40th president also are either racists or self-hating blacks.

These annoyingly immortal, liberal fantasies are just a steaming pile of lies.

____________________________________________________________________________________

This article was originally published in the National Review Online on November 20th, 2007. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

One last thought today on the poll numbers for Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire.

As you know, Morris “Mo” Udall ran for President in the Democratic Primary for the 1976 ticket. He lost to Jimmy Carter.

How’d that happen Mo?

“We had thirty primaries, presumably all of them equal. After three of those primaries, I’m convinced, it was all over. [...] I take a poll two weeks before the (Wisconsin) primary and he (Carter) is ahead of me, two to one, and has never been in the state except for a few quick visits. That was purely and solely and only the product of that narrow win in New Hampshire and the startling win in Florida.” (Morris Udall, 1977)

2008 has seen the re-emergence of political imagery, political icons, and political ghosts. If I had a dollar for every time Ronald Reagan was mentioned, I’d be a very rich man. The funny thing is that people take certain parts about Reagan and his time in public life, and use it to their advantage. After seven years of Bush and eight years of Clinton, I guess that is understandable. People want to remember “Morning in America.” However, it can become a burden because it turns the man into the myth, and his presidency into a lie. Reagan’s presidency is still very fresh on the minds of the voting public, and people love heroes. It can be quite amusing to hear some of the figures of the conservative movement speak of how close they were to Reagan, and yet that was not the case. Some claim that Reagan “walked with them,” when they were busy trying to defeat his candidacy. However, that is part of the game, and Reagan is an easy figure to co-opt these days.

The co-opting of Reagan is not as blatantly obvious as the co-opting of Barry Goldwater, though. Goldwater is still hailed as the father of modern conservatism. However, in the 21st century, his philosophy is classically conservative. Of course, people are complex creatures, and sometimes a person can take parts of what they want with them, while leaving that which doesn’t appeal to them behind. Today, libertarians claim Goldwater as one of their own, social conservatives speak of Goldwater with reverence and admiration, and now even liberals praise Goldwater. Goldwater, of course, became more liberal before his death on social issues, but during the heighth of his power, he was none of the above. He was a conservative.

Goldwater, even in his early years, was not the ideal social conservative. He would’ve laughed at the thought of a Department of Faith-Based Initiatives. Ronald Reagan likely would’ve done the same. This, and Goldwater’s offspring, have led some liberals to claim Goldwater as one of their own. NRO’s Jonah Goldberg sums this thought up much better than I ever could when he wrote about a new film about the late senator’s life:

Who said, “Is this the time in our nation’s history for our federal government to ban Almighty God from our classrooms?” Or, “You will search in vain for any reference to God or religion in the Democratic platform”? Who lamented that “we permit the world’s greatest collection of smut to be freely available anywhere”? Who warned that, “We as a nation are not far from the kind of moral decay that has brought on the fall of other nations and people”?

Was it: George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, or Barry Goldwater?

You’ll be forgiven if you picked any of the first three. But everybody knows that Barry Goldwater wasn’t that kind of conservative. Right?

…

But don’t tell that to Goldwater’s own granddaughter, who has a made a documentary for HBO about Grandpa AuH2O that, judging from its press, portrays him as some sort of Bill Maher with cowboy boots. The New York Times says the film “rehabilitates (Goldwater) as a kind of liberal.” The Times says his rehabilitation - nothing loaded about that word - hinges on his belief that “government should stay out of our hair.”

Of course, when liberals say government should stay out of our hair, they mean Uncle Sam should offer an open bar on abortions and gay-marriage licenses. Beyond that, everything’s fair game. How else to explain the fact that Ms. Goldwater interviews Ted Kennedy, Al Franken, Hillary Clinton, and James Carville - people who support nationalized health care, smoking bans, gun control, hate-crime laws, and other libertarian wolfsbane - to testify about Goldwater’s libertarian enlightenment.

Truthfully, Goldwater himself is partly to blame for this nonsense. As he got older, “Mr. Conservative” became more libertarian on some social issues (largely due to his wife’s influence and his understandable personal distaste for some Christian Right leaders). But even so, Goldwater only abandoned his support for a constitutional ban on abortion in his final term in the Senate and didn’t change his opposition to gay rights until long after he retired.

Meanwhile, as Andrew Busch details in “The Goldwater Myth,” the Goldwater of 1964 was the founding father of today’s social conservatism. Virtually all of the leaders of the “New Right” - including Phyllis Schlafly - were veterans of the Goldwater movement. L. Brent Bozell, the ghostwriter of Goldwater’s 1960 classic The Conscience of a Conservative - in which they wrote “The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline” - was a pioneering “theocratic” intellectual.

Theodore White, that great (liberal) chronicler of American politics, wrote in his 1964 classic The Making of the President that Goldwater’s “greatest contribution to American politics” was the legitimization of what Goldwater called “the moral issue”: “This will be his great credit in historical terms: that finally he introduced the condition and quality of American morality and life as a subject of political debate.”

Of course, Goldberg mistakes Goldwater’s opposition to Roe Vs. Wade as support for a federal amendment, but that is of little consequence. This also rebukes the libertarian claim that Goldwater was exclusively one of their own, and that a certain Doctor-turned congressman-turned presidential candidate is the closest thing to Goldwater today. Of course, they point out that Goldwater’s own son has endorsed their percieved heir. That’s fine and dandy, but that can be very tricky. I don’t see any member’s of the GOP racing to secure the endorsement of Ron Reagan Jr., but we all know that fathers can differ from sons. Also, Goldwater was one of the leading voices against communism and the spread of the Soviet Empire. I, for one, can’t imagine the Doctor who shall remain nameless speaking in terms that Goldwater did in his prime. From RCP:

How different the world looks today! As different, I suppose, as the world in 1961 seemed in comparison with the world of 1914–forty six years encompasses a deal of change. But the curious thing about Senator Goldwater’s reflection is not how dated but how pertinent it seems. Substitute the phrase “radical Islam” for “Communist,” make allowances for a few other anachronisms, and “A Foreign Policy for America” could as well have been written today as in 1961. This is partly because of the clear-eyed view of human nature that informs the essay. The “ultimate objective” of American foreign policy, Goldwater argues, is to foster the largest measure possible of peace, freedom, and economic prosperity around the world, but especially in the United State. The qualification “largest possible measure” is critical, he explains, “because any person who supposes that these conditions can be universally and perfectly achieved–ever–reckons without the inherent imperfectability of himself and his fellow human beings, and is therefore a dangerous man to have around.”

Of course, the most laughable claim to Goldwater’s legacy comes from the likes of Richard Viguerie. The same man who refused to back Reagan in 1980. The man who praised George W. Bush in 2000. The man who has completely distorted and shamed Goldwater’s legacy. Of course, Viguerie is a member of the social conservative movement, of which Goldwater said:

“The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others,” { he said,} “unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. . . We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn’t stop now” { he insisted}. “To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.”

Goldwater said in 1981…

“Well, I’ve spent quite a number of years carrying the flag of the ‘Old Conservatism.’ And I can say with conviction that the religious issues of these groups have little or nothing to do with conservative or liberal politics. The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength.”

So, I guess everyone can take a little piece of Goldwater and go a long way with it.

This passage from DaveG caused me to pause for a minute:

The reason things seem so dour for the GOP, then, is that Republicans have both forgotten how to build a political majority (through a philosophy-based coalition, not a collection of interests), and have assembled around issues that are near-obsolete in the minds of the 21st Century American swing voters who will decide the coming election, as well as all of the subsequent elections. The only reason the GOP has a shot next year is that the Mark Warnerization of the Democratic Party at the state level in many parts of the country has yet to displace the Boomer Left at the party’s helm, led by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Queen Hillary, Empress of the West, whose high negatives guarantee a close election. Regardless of what happens next November, though, the future of the GOP lies in its ability to shelve its own pathologies and to reconnect with the political pulse of Middle America, learning which issues voters now care about and developing a philosophy to apply to those issues that will result in smart, popular, effective policies.

There is a fundamental difference when it comes to the definition of conservatism. Erick Erickson was correct when he said that in town meetings throughout the south, “those are three issues candidates must address.” However, it is the applied philosophy that defines the solution.

The 21st century is quickly becoming the era of the statistical result. This is the era of text message, cell phone, myspace. Statistics and fresh ideas are turning the future into today. The great problem that no one seems to be addressing is the one of philosophy and principle.

Conservatism, at its core, is not so much about guns, babies, and taxes. They don’t define the principle because it is the principle that defines them. In the end, it’s not the fact that people do not want their guns taken away, but the fact that some politicians feel that the government has the right to take them away. It is the fact that government feels it has the right to pass a national law legalizing abortion that is wrong, according to conservative philosophy.

Are 21st century republicans defined by conservatism or moderation? Will the Republican Party be one of policy or philosophy? Once upon a time, the Republican Party nominated a candidate who was nicknamed “the ultimate problem solver.” This candidate was legendary in the business world; known as someone who bought failing companies and turned them around. By the age of forty, he was worth over 250 million dollars (by today’s standards). He was an economic genius, who had many new ideas. He was brought in to turn a failing agency and turned it into a successful enterprise. Who was this candidate? Herbert Hoover, the man who is still considered responsible for the Great Depression.

You see, conservatism isn’t grounded in creating new policy, new processes, or new solutions. Those are part of the equation, but do not define the GOP. Conservatism, the philosophy that Goldwater brought back to the party, is a philosophy that does not become outdated. Conservatism cannot be redefined or improved. It cannot be updated to meet the times one lives in. It is a set of values and principles that are applied to the problem, not an economic philosophy, or a social theory. Conservatism is limiting the functions of the federal government, not fixing it. It is a system of restraints against the natural tendency of government to expand in the direction of absolutism.

Goldwater said, “The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power that they have been given.” It is the first principles, and it is the final principles that the Republican Party has strayed from. The aim of conservatism is not to streamline the government with policies or repair to make it more efficient, but to reduce it in size.

Most importantly, it is not the aim to implement new programs that define conservative principle, but to cancel old ones that overstep their reach. Does the party define conservatism, or does conservatism define the party?

Richard Viguerie has been in the news lately; blasting Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain. Viguerie is known, at least in the media, as one of the founders of the new right and the man who created the direct mail campaigns. He has complained that:

“We knew he was one of us, because he walked with us and surrounded himself with us.” - Viguerie speaking of his friendship with Reagan

So, did Ronald Reagan walk with Richard Viguerie? Hat tip to blogsforfredthompson for a copy of this letter from the book “Dear America: Letters From the Desk Of Ronald Reagan” for Reagan’s opinion on the matter.

November 17, 1983

Dear Roy:

Your letter was waiting for me when I returned. I appreciate your concern–(Nancy shared it) about security but, believe me, in both countries[Japan,Korea] they had really gone all out. I never saw so many uniforms in my life, outside of a war movie or parade. As a matter of fact, I was practically in a military parade whereever I went. I didn’t complain.

Thank you for your response to [Richard] Viguerie–it was great. You know this so-called conservative has never been for me. Back in ‘76 he and a few of his ilk had me to a secret meeting in which they pushed for me running on a third party ticket. I told them I was going to run as a Republican and that what they proposed just didn’t make sense. That did it for me–I became the enemy. In 1980 they were for Connolly. But you told him off in great style. Thanks

Best regards,

Ron

Not to completely beat this subject to death, but I found this ranking of the accuracy of the polls in 2004 from J.R. Drummond on Polipundit. I thought it gives a little overview of my arguments last night, and gives some thoughts on the other polling firms. Here is their rankings:

#10 - Fox News Poll: Fox News made predictions in 6 states, all in Battleground States. The FNP made 3 calls right, and 3 wrong, and was off by an average of 8.33 points. None of their picks was the closest in a state, and one of their final polls was off by more than 10 points.

#9 - Quinnipiac University Poll: Quinnipiac made predictions in 5 states, and in 2 Battleground States. The QUP made 4 calls right, and 1 call wrong, and was off by an average of 7.00 points. None of their picks was the closest in a state, and one of their final polls was off by more than 10 points. In the Battleground States, the QUP made 1 call right, 1 call wrong, and was off by an average of 5.50 points.

#8 - American Research Group: ARG made predictions in all 50 states, and in all 14 Battleground States. ARG made 45 calls right, and 5 calls wrong, and was off by an average of 6.84 points. Two of their picks were the closest in a states (not counting those states where ARG was the only major poll to make a pick), and 7 of their final polls were off by more than 10 points. In the Battleground States, ARG made 9 calls right, and 5 calls wrong, and was off by an average of 5.50 points. 1 Battleground call by ARG was the closest of the major polls, and 1 was off by more than 10 points.

#7 - Strategic Vision: SV made predictions in 11 states, and in 7 Battl