The Occasional Observer

With some commentary from moi, originally posted at Race 4 2012:

I think the focus of this ad is dead on, and should be co-opted by whoever is the eventual GOP nominee. This lack of trust is at the root of what ails us.

Liberals believe the political fracturing of our society is because of economic “inequality.” But the honest truth (and the conservative viewpoint) is that the diversion of political factions has more to do with a lack of trust in our insitutions, than the fact that we can’t all be rich. Americans who believe they’re getting a fair shake are willing to work hard to be in the middle class. Selective bailouts, Obamacare exemptions, selective asset subsidies, and the general picking of winners and losers in the economy, creates a feel of corruption that dispirits and divides. It makes the deck seemed stacked against you.

Just finished repaying your student loan? Sucker! Should’ve let the interest accrue till the mob forced a government bailout for debtors.

Bought a house in the middle of bubble, without realizing that quasi-govermental agencies were allowing lenders to avoid the consequences of writing bad loans via securitization? Sucker! Should’ve held your cash and waited for the bust.

These (and many other) government machinations make it more difficult than it should be for the average citizen, who wants to play by the rules, from achieving success.

Less picking of winners and losers, please; a return to a sense of stability in the legal, regulatory and economic context within which we make our decisions. Get government’s heavy hand out of the way, and people might start to trust it again.

This should be a D.C. special...

Race 4 2012 has a post up stating that McCain is preparing to make a Romney endorsement. The article quotes a source (in an article from The Hill) who, I think, sums up the fears among GOP insiders w/r/t a Newt candidacy. Even for those who respect his considerable talents:

There is growing concern among many of McCain’s Senate Republican colleagues on whether Gingrich is electable in a match-up against President Obama.

“Newt’s hand is always six inches from the self-destruct button,” one GOP lawmaker said last week.

Blatantly lifted from http://newtjudgesyou.tumblr.com/post/12853736401/i-understand-you-disagree-with-my-argument-on



“I understand you disagree with my argument on transubstantiation. I’ll grant you that. But this does not change the fact that you are completely wrong about whether Han shot first.”

I have been having problems publishing posts (no issues with comments though, as I'm sure has been noticed).

This is only a test--IGNORE THIS POST!!!!

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Admin Edit: If anyone else is having trouble posting on the blog, please let Fredo know offline. Thx.

Clockwise from center top:

Sleepy, Stalker, X-Man, Racer-X


Also, maybe you guys could help me with this one:

I have your red velvet cupcake Ameritupperware.





Just saying.

Having read and re-read that Will article, I really believe this paragraph is the core of it. I've removed the references to Gingrich, because it makes a deeper philosophical point about the nature of conservatism:

[A] Marxist believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. Conservatism, in contrast, is both cause and effect of modesty about understanding society’s complexities, controlling its trajectory and improving upon its spontaneous order. Conservatism inoculates against th[is] hubristic volatility..."

Conservatism is not, historically speaking, a "movement" aimed at reform, revolution, or upending the nature of things. It is status-quo-ism. It is trimming the fat, restoring things to a state of equilibrium, moving beyond the hubris of trying to legislate fantasy in the face of reality. This is a conservatism that would appeal to Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk. Or possibly John Calhoun.

And therein lies the potential criticism of it: Calhoun was committed to preserving a status quo institution that needed to be destroyed. His brand of conservatism preserved, it did not overturn. Unlike Calhoun, today's movement conservatives no longer believe we can merely preserve the valuable institutions that form the core of our society. They believe that our most important institutions, which may vary depending on the type of conservative you are talking to (e.g., our Anglo cultural heritage, our common-law protections, religious institutions in the Judeo-Christian tradition, a town/locally-centric body politic), have already been trampled beyond recognition. They believe a restoration is needed, which would be transformative in nature, and destructive of the status quo built by liberals over the past 80 years. If this restoration is wrenching and full of conflict, so be it.

This is the opposite view of the traditionalist conservative, who sees more value in preserving stability, gradually steering society away from excess and harmful measures that may have accumulated over time, and working incrementally. One might also compare this to the difference between Clarence Thomas conservatism and Anthony Kennedy (or David Souter?) conservatism. Or to the difference between Reagan Republicanism and Rockefeller Republicanism, although both are imperfect analogies.

Note that this distinction does not apply perfectly to the candidates in this race. Gingrich espouses so many different views that he cannot be neatly defined as either an incrementalist (despite wanting a less audacious plan to entitlement reform than Ryan's "right-wing social engineering"), nor a restorationist (despite his views that he is leading a cavalry charge against the status quo).

Mitt seems to fit more clearly into the role of incrementalist. This obviously does not bother Will greatly, who seems more concerned with Romney's likeability, than with his preference for managing, rather than rolling back, the continued creep of liberal-statism.

Huntsman likewise can't be pigeon-holed, but is clearly more of an incrementalist and a valuer of stability. For example, look at how his approach to the debt ceiling crisis contrasted with the rest of the GOP candidates in the field: he voiced conservative priorities, but wanted to the brinkmanship that he felt had unknown consequences. Yet he also has some bold proposals (politically speaking), like the elimination of cap gains and dividend taxation. I presume that Will's main calculation is that Huntsman is more likeable than Romney, and thus a better candidate, while still hailing from a similar conservative tradition--one that Will is more comfortable with.

Will seems to ignore in this article, though I'm sure he's aware of it, that there are whole segments of the American right that are no longer incrementalists. Which is odd, because when Reagan and Thatcher were wresting of conservative political parties here and in England, I'm pretty sure Will sided with them over the status quo. I'd be interested to know if Will sees our current trajectory as closer to a "natural equilibirium" than was the case in the '60s and '70s.

In any event, these movement conservatives believe that societal institutions need to be upended, just as liberals have believed for centuries. They are focused on upending the institutions of the Great Society, the New Deal, and the Warren Court, whereas liberals have been focused on the Church (purveyor, in their view, of patriarchy and ethnic supremacism), strict property and contractual rights (resulting in wealth inequality), and the belief in homogenous cultural and moral values.

For these political warriors/movement conservatives, currently most associated with the Tea Party, Gingrich's personality, and elements of his ideology, seems to be a fit, even if his long record may not align with their goals when closely scrutinized.

Will cuts down the current frontrunners. It is a piece that is startling in its candor (read: willingness to attack the prevailing view that Gingrich is a conservative), and also written by a man who clearly know the ropes, and whose experience and knowledge command attention. First, his attack on Romney:

Romney’s main objection to contemporary Washington seems to be that he is not administering it. God has 10 commandments, Woodrow Wilson had 14 points, Heinz had 57 varieties, but Romney’s economic platform has 59 planks — 56 more than necessary if you have low taxes, free trade and fewer regulatory burdens...

Obama is running as Harry Truman did in 1948, against Congress, but Republicans need not supply the real key to Truman’s success — Tom Dewey. Confident that Truman was unelectable, Republicans nominated New York’s chilly governor, whose virtues of experience and steadiness were vitiated by one fact: Voters disliked him.

He saves his harshest critique for Gingrich:

Gingrich...embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. And there is his anti-conservative confidence that he has a comprehensive explanation of, and plan to perfect, everything...

His temperament — intellectual hubris distilled — makes him blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads, from 1990s futurism to “Lean Six Sigma” today...

Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. Conservatism, in contrast, is both cause and effect of modesty about understanding society’s complexities, controlling its trajectory and improving upon its spontaneous order. Conservatism inoculates against the hubristic volatility that Gingrich exemplifies and Genesis deplores: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”

Will offers brief praise of Perry as a possible alternative (out of deference to his wife, I presume, who works for Perry), but then goes on to praise the man that I must presume is his preferred candidate:

Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative. He endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security measures — food security, somehow threatened. Gingrich says opponents of ethanol subsidies are “big-city” people hostile to farmers.) Huntsman considers No Child Left Behind, the semi-nationalization of primary and secondary education, “an unmitigated disaster.” (Romney and Gingrich support it. Gingrich has endorsed a national curriculum.) Between Ron Paul’s isolationism and the faintly variant bellicosities of the other six candidates stands Huntsman’s conservative foreign policy, skeptically nuanced about America’s need or ability to control many distant developments.

Mr. Will's summation:

Romney might not be a Dewey. Gingrich might stop being (as Churchill said of John Foster Dulles) a bull who carries his own china shop around with him. But both are too risky to anoint today.