GioBlog

On religion, conservatives and the Republican Party

I'm an evangelical Christian, so I believe all the stuff that is traditionally associated with Protestant Christianity.

I know beliefs like these increasingly seem strange to an increasingly materialistic Western Civilization, but the real question is whether or not you think true reality is limited to that which a being bound within a 4 dimensional reality can detect with its five senses.

Our equations tell us that there are more than 4 dimensions. It seems odd to me that rational beings would assert that, bound within 4 dimensions, we can make determinations about ultimate reality. I imagine the 2 dimensional beings in FlatLand similarly assert the stupidity of believing in us.

I believe there is more to reality than just the material world. I believe there is much more to reality than just what we can detect with our 5 senses. That, of course, opens the door to the supernatural. It's only weird to believe in God, angels, Heaven and Hell if you insist that reality is limited to what you can detect with your 5 senses.

I think the Bible is the Word of God and is thus a reliable document. I think Jesus is God's son, that he performed miracles and that He died for our sins and rose again. I  believe in Heaven, Hell, angels and demons--all that wild stuff.

As an extension of those beliefs, I also believe that embryos and Terry Schiavo are worthy of protection.

Having thus attempted to establish my Religious Right bona fides, let me hasten to say that the only relationship between my personal beliefs and government is government's obligation to ensure my right to believe those things. It's not government's job to enshrine my personal beliefs into government policy; it's simply government's job to protect my right to believe what I want to believe and to live in a manner consistent with my beliefs.

I think the Republican Party has made a terrible mistake by confusing things like my personal religious beliefs with a political agenda.

Looking back on the last eight or ten years, it seems clear to me that the Republican Party thought that all they needed to do was pander in a simple and insulting way to evangelicals like me. Protect embryos, protect Terri Schiavo, and fight the Muslims. But that's not really what I need from my government.

What I need from my government I haven't gotten. I need fiscal responsibility from my government. I need low taxes, and I need government to live within modest means, like I have to do. I need government to do its job well and stay out of areas that aren't its job.

I need the government to drain no more than about 20% of the economy in the form of taxes. I need the government to be constantly vigilant in running down waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

I want my specific Constitutional rights protected. Otherwise, I pretty much want to be left alone by government.

Over the last ten years or so, Republicans have pretty much stunk at the stuff I just described. Spending is out of control, and it's only going to get worse now unless the Democrats suddenly become political geniuses, which I don't expect to happen.

All the government spending, guarantees, bailouts and promises are going to result in raging inflation, and I hold my Republican Party responsible.

Republicans (and the conservative movement) need to learn that the important stuff is the important stuff, and the important stuff is low taxes, spending discipline, regulatory forbearance, and national defense.

I do firmly believe that the American people remain center-right. The solution for the Republican Party's problem is not to throw the Religious Right under the bus. The solution is to make the main things the main things, and so long as the Republican Party is the party that believes in religious freedom, the Religious Right will be there for them.

Conservatism should not be defined as the Religious Right. Conservatism  should be about fiscal responsibility, individual responsibility, low taxes and limited government. It should be sympathetic to people's right to live in a manner consistent with their beliefs, which is how you get libertarians and the Religious Right to assemble inside the same tent.  We have religions and denominations to allow people to express their religious preferences, not political parties. There is not enough room in a two party system for a Baptist Party.

The party that wins is the party that captures the aspirations of the people. That's why the Republican Party should also become the party of immigration, rather than the party of xenophobia. It's the best and brightest who cross oceans and cross rivers to get to the Land of Opportunity. We should welcome those people, and welcome their contributions, not demonize them. The Republican assault on immigration is the most depressing, most disturbing, and most counterproductive trend within the Party.

So put me down as a religious conservative who hopes the Republican Party can get back to the central tenets of a practical and aspirational political agenda, and leave the religious stuff to us, thank you.

Whom do flag-wavers support?

The most fun thing to me in the latest IBD/TIPP tracking poll?

Among those who "display the flag," McCain leads 52% to Obama's 38%.
Among those who don't "display the flag," Obama leads 65% to 28%

Something downright creepy about Obama fanatics

Nobody on the right thinks either John McCain or Sarah Palin are going to change the world. True, many of us on the right are exited about Sarah Palin and her story, but people on the right tend to take the view that all human beings are flawed, and thus both the world and politicians are flawed and always will be. In a flawed world filled with flawed people there will always be unfairness, injustice and poverty. It's the job of all of us, including our flawed politicians, to do what they can to address these problems, but Utopia will never be achieved.

The Left tends to take a much different view of the world and of human nature. The Left tends to put huge trust in politics and in human institutions, as if the world and its people are perfectable. As if somehow, against all the lessons of history, politics is the way to achieve our dreams and to attain some form of transcendence.

So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that the Left is treating Obama as if he walks on water. It shouldn't surprise me that such fanaticism and such hyperbolic rhetoric should surround the man and his campaign. Especially when the man and his campaign have been so amazingly bereft of any real, substantive content (What kind of "change"? Precisely what is it about our country that so desperately needs "change"? Can you tell me exactly what?)

Nonetheless, it's creepy. I'm stunned at the naivete and juvenile utopian sentiments that people are expressing and projecting onto Obama. Take it from a 47 year-old guy who has spent his entire adult life in policy--Not only can no party or no politician live up to your expectations, but especially THIS guy and THIS Democrat Party can't do it, and won't do it.

And, for you Dems and lefties out there, let me just warn you: You have an enormous letdown coming. Because no man, no politician, can live up to the hopes and expectations that have been projected onto Obama. And, if any politician COULD live up to the hype, trust me it ain't someone as inexperienced and naive as Obama.

There is an unprecedent letdown coming in this country. A few weeks to a few months after the election, there is going to be a collosal letdown when Obama and the House Democrats lurch this country left. They will exacerbate the economic slowdown, enact exactly the wrong policies, and do what FDR did--make things far worse by enacting bad policy.

IF they win.

A two-minute drill for the McCain playbook

In football, “the two minute drill” is a series of plays a team has in its playbook for situations where it is behind in the game and there are two minutes remaining. They’re designed to help the team turn a close loss into a close win in the closing seconds.

I'm one of those delusional people who think John McCain can still win the election. McCain's remaining opportunity has almost nothing to do with McCain the man or the McCain campaign, but rather with the fact that there are sufficient voters for whom Obama still hasn't "sealed the deal."

McCain missed his previous chance for a game-changer by failing to vigorously oppose the ill-considered, unpopular and too expensive federal bail-out of a handful of major investment banks and insurance companies. In the remaining days of the campaign, it’s unlikely that another passive opportunity to change the game is going to come McCain's way.

Raising more questions about Obama's associations isn't going to do it, either. Talking about Obama's tutelage under the terrorist Bill Ayers, the communist Frank Marshall Davis and our very own black Protestant mad mullah Jeremiah Wright should have been raised months ago, before Obama's core support was locked-in.

McCain needs a game-changer—a few new plays for the two minute drill. Here are some humble suggestions.

Spending
The problem with fiscal discipline has always been that the constituency for spending cuts is too young to vote, or hasn't been born yet. There have never been any benefits immediately apparent to 60% of the voters for government to reduce spending. McCain needs to time-shift forward the benefits of fiscal discipline by proposing the Fiscal Responsibility Dividend (FRD). Under this plan, any federal spending reduced beneath the current CBO baseline would be split evenly between the American people and the economy. In other words, if Congress and the President cooperatively cut spending $100 billion below the current CBO baseline, $50 billion would go directly to the American people in the form of equal-sized rebate checks. Every man, woman and child with a Social Security number would get the same size check, regardless of income and regardless of tax liability.

This would immediately create a constituency for spending cuts regardless of political party, income level or taxpayer status. It puts President McCain above Congress and above party, and on the side of the American people. It would also be right up Sarah Palin's alley, as Alaska has been doing this sort of thing for decades. Give it to her to administer.

Social Security
The big news last week was that Argentina has nationalized the private pension savings of its citizens. But the dirty little secret is that the U.S. Congress has been spending the Social Security payroll taxes of American workers for 40 years. It's just as bad, it's just as offensive, and it's just as potent a political issue for McCain to exploit.

Congress, with its current 19% approval rating, is ripe to be kicked around by McCain on this issue. The McCain campaign should promise to absolutely stop Congress from raiding the Social Security trust fund and using it as mad money to be spent on wasteful projects. If Congress is to start acting responsibly with the taxpayers dollars, it should start by stopping its raid on the pension contributions of American workers. "Stop the Raid" should become a campaign slogan for the McCain campaign in its final days. Not only would this be the first step in forcing Congress to make better spending choices, but it its also the first step in fixing Social Security, as there are still surplus funds flowing into the Social Security system that could be set aside to help fund the transition to a more rational system.

These are not desperate ways to buy votes or to pander to the American people, but rather are two sound policy initiatives that not only fit within McCain’s existing persona and agenda, but also have the benefit of exploiting the historically low popularity of Congress.

A frightening mob is getting ready to take power

One gets the very disturbing feeling that, whatever the faults of the Bush administration and the policy shortcomings of John McCain, a frightening mob is getting ready to take over the country.

Amid reports of McCain supporters having their homes shot up and their signs vandalized, everyone knows and is simply accepting that there is widespread, highly organized, federally-funded voter fraud being perpetrated in swing states around the country. And no one for one minute believes that the beneficiaries of the voter fraud will be anything other than the members of a single party.

Despite the fact that Congress has been controlled for 2 years by the Democrats and has a historically low, 19% favorable rating, the voters are going to take their frustrations out on Congress by voting for--Democrats?

A financial crisis that, by any economic or historical analysis should lay at the feet of the Democrats is instead being used as one more reason to give the parties responsible MORE power.

Elected Democrats, who already control Congress, are talking about clamping down on free speech in the media, slashing defense spending and cranking up a New New Deal.

And usually rational, logical thinking conservatives have become so unhinged that they are providing emotional and irrational reasons for breaking with a lifetime of philosophical orientation and voting for a candidate who holds opposite positions on virtually every issue. Voting for someone and hoping, in effect, that he doesn't mean anything that he says.

While Sarah Palin, a prototypical American and a mother with a Downs Syndrome child, hangs in effigy at various homes as a Halloween decoration, those who promulgate the most vile and offensive political invective at the Daily Kos website will now have every right to believe that the country has validated their rhetoric.

The media has gone to such great lengths to manipulate the election that even those who benefit from the manipulation are embarassed and are publically admitting the bias.

A decision seems to have been made that a particular political conclusion to this election is so important that it justifies any possible tactic in order to see it through to a successful conclusion.

The Obama campaign itself seems to have purposely encouraged the splitting of contributions into many small, harder-to-track contributions, and has disabled from its website technology designed to filter out fradulent contribution identification information.

Extraordinary lengths are being taken to deflect questions about the frontrunning candidate's past history, his academic career, his professional associations, his past rhetoric--even whether he meets the Constitutional qualifications for the office.  A court has ruled that voters don't have standing to demand that a Presidential candidate meet the Constitutional requirements, and his birth documents have been locked away from public scrutiny.

I tell you, it's bizarre. For the first time in my life I feel like an outside spectator to America, instead of a participant. And I think our system is getting ready to be tested as it has only been tested a few times in our history.

Why I think liberals loathe Sarah Palin

As I've written before, the most interesting thing to me in the entire Presidential election has been the visceral reactions to Sarah Palin.

Particularly, the viscerally negative reaction to Palin among the majority of liberals (especially women), and even among some conservatives (mostly women).

I'm still not sure I understand the negative reaction to Palin among some conservative women. I have some ideas, but I'm not really certain.

But I DO think I've figured out why liberals, especially liberal women, loathe Sarah Palin. And I think it all comes down to the Downs Syndrome baby. Here's why.

Any possible moral justification for abortion starts with the idea of the malformed child. The most basic possible moral justification for abortion is sparing a malformed child the supposed misery of its existence, and sparing the parents the supposed misery of caring for it.

After the malformed child, from there the next possible moral justification for abortion is the life and health of the mother. From there, we go to arguments about rape and incest, and from there we get to reasons that all fall under the category of the preferences or convenience of the woman.

But the trunk of the tree, the basis of the justification, starts with the malformed child. If abortion isn't justified in the case of a malformed child, then jeez, when would abortion be justified?

And in choosing to bear at an advanced childbearing age a Downs Syndrome child, Sarah Palin has taken an axe to that tree. She has, not with a word but with an act, assaulted the fundamental basis of the justification for abortion. And she's done it with confidence, with purpose and with joy. She's not a victim--she's a fully realized human being who rejoices in her ability to choose the good--to do that which is noble and ethical and moral.

I have no doubt that, when pro-choice women around the country heard that Sarah Palin had chosen to give birth in her 40s to a Downs Syndrome child, their horrified reaction was "She did WHAT? How COULD she?" Disbelief, because you simply don't do that. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to cross that picket line, because if you do, the curtain will be raised and everyone will see that the Emporer of Abortion has no clothes.

In these women, Sarah Palin's choice to bear a Downs Syndrome child has poked at a part of the brain that is deep, deep within--down near the animal brain stem, down beneath all those layers that were educated at Wellesley, and at their Ivy League colleges and law schools. Way deeper than the parts shaped by Cosmo and Ms., and the media. Down where basic human nature lies, the part you can't reprogram, the part they've been repressing all their adult lives, where conscience lies, down where a small voice is telling them that what Sarah Palin did was an act of VIRTUE--a selfless, responsible, loving act.

And they can't STAND it, because the voice they've been repressing until Sarah Palin came along reminds them that they have been wrong all along, and that what they have been advocating has resulted in the needless destruction of millions of tiny lives. And in just a moment, they hate themselves for what they have chosen to believe.

But the human organism can't tolerate self-hatred, because that which hates itself has to destroy itself. So the survival instinct kicks in, and instead of destroying itself, the human organism turns on the thing that has caused the self-hatred. So they have to destroy Sarah Palin. It's not enough to vote against her, or make fun of her. Sarah Palin has to be destroyed.

On Palin, briefly

We avoid overt electoral politics at IPI as best we can, so there's not been much on this blog about the personalities involved in the Presidential election.

And we make it clear that political opinions expressed are the opinions of the writers, and not that of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI).

That being said, the most fascinating thing about the election to me has been the reaction to Sarah Palin.

I can tell you that, at IPI's offices when we watched her first public speech after being chosen by John McCain, there were literally tears in some eyes around the conference room table. It was astonishing to see such an impressive woman come almost out-of-nowhere onto the national scene and breathe such life and excitement into the campaign.

But others reacted just as viscerally in a negative way.

To those conservatives who have been so critical of Sarah Palin's qualifications and preparedness for office, I must ask: If William F. Buckley would rather have been governed by first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, exactly why do you feel so strongly that Sarah Palin is unqualified for the Vice Presidency?

Are you more elitist than William F. Buckley?

As a voter, my problem with Obama is not his inexperience, but that I disagree with him on the issues. Similarly, Biden may have lots of foreign policy experience, but he's been wrong more often than he's been right--at least in my personal opinion. I disagree with them. It has nothing to do with experience or qualifications.

Similarly, I'm leery of McCain because of his positions on so many issues, and DESPITE of his experience.

I think this is true of others as well. I don't really believe that people's problems with Palin are because of her qualifications or experience. It's beyond dispute that Sarah Palin is not only more qualified and experienced than Obama, but she's more experienced and qualified than almost any other Vice-Presidential candidate in recent memory of either party.

So I don't believe it's about qualifications or experience. I think other dynamics are at work here.

On taxes, have we reached the tipping point?

"The American democratic experiment will succeed until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Then it will collapse." - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1848

Among the policy informed public, it's fairly well known that for the last several decades we've been on a tax policy path that has slowly been removing low-and even lower-middle class taxpayers from the federal income tax rolls.

In fact, it's commonly understood that the bottom 40% of Americans do not pay any federal income tax at all, and that the next 20% pay little or no federal income tax. That means that 60% of Americans today pay almost nothing in federal income taxes.

Many of us over the years have been concerned about this trend. The obvious concern is that, at some point, the majority of voters are no longer payers into the system, but are simply recipients of benefits. This is the real "class warfare," when you reach the point that only the rich and fairly well-off pay taxes.

This is one of the things that always bothered me about the Flat Tax, which I otherwise enthusiastically have supported (and which McCain ought to resurrect in his campaign, like, yesterday). The genius thing about the Flat Tax is that it makes taxpayers equal under the law, with everyone paying the same rate (but not the same amount). But then almost all Flat Tax proposals had this gigantic standard deduction that would have eliminated a huge number of taxpayers from the federal income tax rolls, undermining the very thing the Flat Tax sought to accomplish--treat everyone equally from a tax standpoint.

If the country reached such a tipping point, where the majority of voters no longer even considered the "cost side" of policy considerations because they were insulated from the cost of government, this would seem to have ominous implications for our democracy. We would then reach the point de Tocqueville was talking about.

I'm wondering if we haven't reached that point now. Barack Obama has made the centerpiece of his economic plan a tax cut for people who don't pay any federal income taxes at all. That 40% of Americans who don't pay any federal income taxes, and that 20% who pay almost no federal income taxes, would still get a refundable tax credit, which means that, instead of PAYING income taxes, they will now be RECEIVING income taxes from the federal government.

Analysts, primarily IPI's own Peter Ferrara, have rightly identified Obama's plan as welfare done through the tax code.  But it doesn't seem to be troubling the majority of voters that Obama is advocating giving people who pay no income taxes money

It's Robin Hood, obviously. It's taking from the rich and giving to the non-rich, simply because the non-rich outnumber the rich.

The troubling thing is, I think this is exactly what de Tocqueville was talking about. I think we're there.

Update: Okay, now I'm feeling really stupid. Someone has pointed out that there is an op/ed today in the Wall Street Journal on this very topic. That's what I get for not getting around to cracking open my Journal yet today.

Only the first of many bailouts

The U.S. Treasury's bailout of the banking industry has dominated the news for the past month, and will probably be the dominant factor in public policy decisions for at least the next four-year presidential term.

The bailout will affect regulatory policy, tax policy and the funds available for any number of other programs, to say nothing of affecting our ability to deal with any future crisis that might arise.

Americans are rightly concerned not only about the cost of the bailout, but of the precedent of letting actors in the market make enormous profits while having the risk backstopped by taxpayers. And taxpayers are disturbed by the fact that elected officials were repeatedly warned about these risks and problems, but did nothing.

But if you think this one is bad, we've got news for you—this mortgage bailout is only the first, and the smallest, of a series of bailouts that are going to be necessary in the future. And taxpayers like you who have made responsible financial decisions are going to be on the hook for those as well.

Medicare and Social Security are both going broke, and everyone knows it. The combined unfunded obligations of Medicare Part A and Social Security are in the neighborhood of $48 trillion. That's 48 TRILLION dollars that the federal government has promised to retirees but has no way to pay—and knows it has no way to pay.

But it's worse than that. If you take into account the three major components of Medicare, its unfunded liability alone is $85 trillion. Combined with Social Security, that results in about $100 trillion in promises the federal government has made that it has no plan to fulfill.

Medicare went into deficit THIS YEAR—2008. That means that this year Medicare began paying out more than the taxes the program takes in. And Social Security will go into deficit in 2017—less than nine years from now.

As far as bailouts go, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

It's time for voters and taxpayers to start holding elected officials accountable for heeding the warnings they are given and solving problems BEFORE gigantic taxpayer bailouts are required. Any fool can go to Washington, collect campaign contributions and stand in front of the TV cameras. But we can’t afford that luxury anymore.

Voters must hold the next Congress and the next president accountable to take action to prevent the need for a massive taxpayer bailout of Social Security and Medicare. That's the bad news. The good news is that, in the weeks before an election, we all get to choose who makes those decisions.

It’s all good

The news is full of doom-and-gloom. Everyone's talking about economic collapse and the Great Depresion. Everyone is worried.

Meanwhile, the price of oil has dropped, the Russian stock market is down 60%, commodity prices are falling, and the dollar is strengthening.

Indeed, it appears to me that a multi-year runup in commodity prices ("real things like homes, real estate, oil and other commodities") is over and those prices are adjusting back to normal historical levels.

Bad policies in various countries are being exposed, and capital is fleeing countries with bad policies and is finding refuge in countries with good policies.

This is how it's supposed to work. Markets punish bad behavior, bubbles burst, and capital gets redeployed.

Remember, as stock markets are dropping, for every stock that is sold, there is a buyer on the other side of that transaction. For everyone who is panicking and selling, there is a smart guy out there who is buying things for a 28% discount over what it was selling for 2 weeks ago.

That squawking sound you hear right now are demagogues like Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, who's rule has been supported by high oil prices and who cannot sustain their rule with lower oil prices.

People like Warren Buffett have been sitting on the sidelines for the better part of a decade, believing that nothing was cheap enough to buy. They're buying now, I assure you.

This is what markets do. When things get out of line, they readjust. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

It's also why government policy should be NEUTRAL toward market results. Government policy should not be directed at keeping the stock market "up." Government policy should be neutral, and when the stock market is going down, that may be bad for some but it's good for others.

And for people to be taking a 2nd look at their lives and realizing that they've been carrying too much debt and not saving enough, that they've been spending too much and saving too little, that's not bad either.

Remember, "buy when there is blood in the streets." Don't panic.

Why the American People are Skeptical about the Bailout

The American people are being asked to spend an incredible amount of money and to yield unprecedent powers to the federal government in order to stave off a liquidity crisis being predicted by people we don't trust.

In our own lives, we expect to suffer the downside of risk and markets, and we are suspicious that politicans are climbing over themselves to insulate the well-connected from the natural consequences of their actions.

Further, we know that, if a massive federal bailout package becomes reality, the well-connected and the powerful will find ways to game the system and enrich themselves and the people they attend the opera with, all at the expense of working Americans who will pay the bill.

Further, we know that this is only the first of several such bailouts that we will be expected to fund because of the failure of our elected officials. Just as Congress and the White House have been warned for decades about Fed policy, GSE risk and irrational housing policy, they have also been warned about the impending bankruptcy of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security--bankruptcies which will dwarf the current crisis.

We do not believe these problems are the result of free-market economics, low taxes and insufficient government regulation of the economy, but rather result from the failure of politicians to heed warnings, exercise oversight and implement sound policy.

With that perspective, given the option, many of us would rather see some bank failures, a downturn in the stock market and tighter lending restrictions than the alternative.

It Could Have Been Here

I know there's a disagreement among limited government folks about whether or not government should be funding "big science," but I've always been a proponent of government spending money on science research, especially the kind of science research that just can't be done any other way.

Like particle accelerators.

As all the news has been coming out lately about CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, it's made me a little sad. You see, it could have been even better, and it could have been here.

And by here, I mean not only the United States, but literally HERE, in Texas, just a few miles from IPI's offices.

Remember the Superconducting Supercollider? It would have been three times as powerful as the LHC.

This is one of our country's big failures in big science--walking away from important research and discovery, the same way we walked away from the lunar program in the 70s.