We Can't Do Anything Right: The GOP and the Civil War

Mackubin Thomas Owens reviews a new book with the thesis that "The South Was Right and Historians Are Wrong" vis a vis what motivated the Southern States to secede from the Union and initiate the Civil War/War Between the States (trying to be ecumenical here). As we all learned in 4th Grade - and was understood back in 1860 - the Confederate States believed the election of Abraham Lincoln represented the end of the line for their efforts to preserve and extend the "peculiar institution." 

Post-war historians and commentators, however, while allowing that slavery was a factor in secession, have filled libraries with alternative explanations for the Civil War's origins. It has even become a leftist trope to denigrate Lincoln himself as a moral monster who had no interest in ending slavery, or protecting the rights of American blacks, except to the extent needed to further his own career. This, of course, is nonsense, but nonsense is never in short supply in America's public debate, especially when it's time to denigrate or diminish the achievements of the Republican Party. 

In his remarkable new book, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes argues that the historians who deny the antislavery origins of the war are mistaken. He contends that from the outset, Republicans had slavery in their sights. Southerners understood that the antislavery threat to the South was real. Accordingly, secession was not an hysterical overreaction to Lincoln’s election but an understandable response to the fact that an antislavery majority in the North had elected an antislavery president. And indeed, Oakes contends, from the very beginning of the conflict, the Republicans worked assiduously to destroy slavery. The problem with the dominant narrative, he argues, is that too many historians have refused to take the Republicans at their word. 

Oakes expands the work of Allen Guelzo, who in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argued that from the first day of his presidency, Lincoln had his eye firmly set on ending slavery. Oakes takes nothing away from Lincoln, but demonstrates that Lincoln’s approach was reflective of the Republican Party as a whole. While there were many differences between Lincoln and the Radicals within the Republican Party, they were of far less import than those between the Democrats and the Republicans. As Lincoln himself once remarked, the difference between Charles Sumner, the Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, and himself was six weeks.

Yeah, God forbid anyone read the 1856 Republican Party platform:

Resolved: That, with our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction; that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the Territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislation, of any individual, or association of individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present Constitution shall be maintained. 

Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.

Everyone in American political life can plausibly link themselves to the Founders, but only the GOP can claim credit for the hard-won achievements of the second founding, no doubt an intolerable truth for the left to abide. 

Don't Bring The CrazyStupid: How To Run For the GOP Presidential Nomination

Baseball Crank has a list of 73 things you need to do if you are going to run for the Republican presidential nomination. I particularly liked these two:

24-Being a consistent conservative will help you more than pandering to nuts on the Right. If you can't tell the difference between the two, don't run. 

25-Winning campaigns attract crazy and stupid people as supporters; you can't get a majority without them. This does not mean you should have crazy or stupid people as your advisers or spokespeople.

People forget this now, but the conservative movement during the Reagan ascendancy was absolutely be-set with loons, many of whom managed to get on the news and embarrass themselves and the movement. (that's why the media has always tried to play up the alleged "crazies" in the Tea Party. They remember the halcyon days when a Bircher droning about the fluoridation of the water supply was considered good TV, so long as it made the Right look bad). Probably the ultimate right-wing crazy person was Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt. Among other things he:

1. got into a beef with the Beach Boys (which he lost) 

2. once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations. 

3. once said, "If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don't go to Russia, come to America and go to the Indian reservations." 

4. and, most famously, he described the make-up of a coal-leasing panel as comprising: "A black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." This last bon mot cost him his job.

On the other hand, he did not say "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." That's apocryphal. (phew!) But, it gives you an idea of what people thought Watt was capable of saying at any second. To say that James Watt lacked message discipline is putting it nicely. 

On the other hand, Watt was everything you would want from an evil right-wing Secretary of the Interior. He delighted in leasing federal lands for mining, drilling, timber cutting, what have you. Let wiki-pedia tell the rest of the tale:

Watt resisted accepting donations of private land to be used for conservation purposes. He suggested that all 80 million acres (320,000 km²) of undeveloped land in the United States be opened for drilling and mining in the year 2000. The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled during his term as Secretary of the Interior. Watt boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km²) of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion of that area would ever be drilled. Watt once stated, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."

Great stuff, but because Watt acted like he had a mouthful of buckshot every time he spoke in public, no one remembers any of it.

Look, Reagan was a movement conservative. So was Watt. So were a lot of people inside and outside the administration. They were constantly getting p*ssed with the 40th president, holding his feet to the fire, etc. Ronaldus had to prove and re-prove his conservative bona-fides to an extent that would have left RINO's like Mitt Romney and John McCain covered in flop sweat. 

More important, and unlike the "disciplined" campaigns of the early 21st century GOP, Reagan was not above firing the idiots and reckless word-meisters who were drawn to his message, campaigned for him passionately, and then threatened to destroy the last best hope on earth with ill-chosen words about minorities,  the Civil Rights Act, etc. Of course, the king of the gaffe was Ron himself, but he was the indispensable man and any way his mistakes had a certain charm that the likes of James Watt utterly lacked. 

It's an iron law of Anglo-American political systems that the conservative party is the Stupid Party. We can live with that. But, even stupid people know and understand what is or is not acceptable public discourse. If you are running for president and you find yourself talking about Gardasil causing mental retardation; or you have a close adviser who thinks, in all sincerity that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant (then why are you a member of the party of Lincoln); or you can't stop talking about "sodomy" (get a room), you are probably not meant to make a serious run for the GOP nomination. Just sayin'.

Happy Fourth of July From the Pennsylvania Memorial!

Actually, I'm not in Gettysburg, or in Pennsylvania. I haven't even left my apartment. But, I am at the Memorial in spirit.

I bring up the memorial because, while we celebrate the Independence Day today, the just-concluded 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg deserves some note. That's because, while moderately educated Americans can be conversant about the Civil War, it's sometimes hard to understand what motivated the men who fought on the Union side and preserved the union. After all, they could have just as easily said, screw it, let the Southern slave masters keep their plantations and peons. There were plenty in the North who counseled peace, and could not abide the thought of a civil war against their countrymen.

Well, if you want to understand you should visit the Pennsylvania Memorial.

The Gettysburg Battlefield is famously covered in monuments, memorials, statuary, markers, etc. Most of them are dedicated to the exploits of the Union troops, although there are some Southern markers, including one at the top and one at the bottom of Cemetery Ridge. Most of the Gettysburg memorials were placed there by private subscription, rather than by gov't money. Often a regiment or company would get together, raise some funds, and plop something down on whatever scrap of hallowed ground they had fought over. This contributes to the hodge-podge quality of the battlefield, but it also gives you a sense of what the people at the time considered important. The memorials really do follow the lines of battle. There's no way the Park Service, or some academic board, would have managed to do better.

The bigger ones were installed by states to commemorate the veterans among their citizenry. And the biggest one of all of these is the Pennsylvania memorial.

The memorial itself is not some grand aesthetic masterwork. It is, as they say, "busy," covered in friezes depicting battle scenes, statutes of Union generals from PA (and the PA governor who valiantly signed the bill appropriating funds to construct the memorial), and all sorts of other gimcrackery. It's never really achieved national iconic status, but it should. Because the most important part of the memorial can be found wrapped around it: the names of every Pennsylvanian who was on active duty in the Army of the Potomac at the time of the battle. To look at those names, and then turn around and look down Cemetery Ridge is a moving moment for any American. These men fought and died in America, for America, to preserve America. Immortality doesn't get much better than that.

Best of all is a prominent plaque installed by the men of Pennsylvania and dedicated to the ladies of Pennsylvania. We're all familiar with the stories of Confederate gallantry - that was one of the few things we can all agree they had going for them - but the Union side had plenty of gallantry and bravery too, as this charming plaque testifies.

And, with all apologies to my Southern brethren, those gallant men didn't just win a war. They were on the right side of history and humanity. The Confederate armies were as brave and tough as they come. Many of the generals were brilliant, making more out of much less than their Northern counter-parts. The southern gentry were dashing and gallant. Etc. But, for all of that, they were fighting for the absolutely worst cause imaginable.

Slavery - a barbaric system that didn't even rise to the level of feudalism in terms of economic sophistication - was bad enough. The methods that the South used to enforce slavery spread its oppression beyond the plantations and into the wider world. It was against the law to teach blacks to read or write. It was illegal to even disparage slavery as an institution. An ounce of African blood would render one's relatives as little more than chattel. Sally Hemings, for example had less African blood that George Zimmerman. Imagine a system where your cousins or half-siblings - products of a randy relatives sexual exploits with concubines - could be bought and sold, and then worked to death.

Apologists who claim that slavery was "contained" to the South ignore the very real ways in which slavery reached North. There were the hated fugitive slave laws, which eventually cast such a wide net that free blacks could be dragged South against their will.

It wasn't just about slavery. The Antebellum Democrat Party was dedicated to not just preserving, but also spreading the "peculiar institution" throughout the territories, the Northern states, and beyond. Southern Democrats were, of course, up front about this, while Northern Dems like Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan tried to accomplish this through stealth and silence. Many Republicans from Lincoln on down argued that the Democrat presidents of the 1850's had, through benign neglect, created the legal and political atmosphere in which the Missouri Compromise broke down and the Supreme Court rendered the notorious Dred Scott decision.

If you haven't read Dred Scott, you should. It's an amazing document from the authority with the supposed final word on interpreting the Constitution. For several years, in the United States, it was a matter of constitutional law that blacks were so inferior as to be literally inhuman, and not deserving of constitutional notice. Imagine being an 1850's-era Irish immigrant, freshly arrived from  a life as a serf on some English estate. Now, you're in the Land of the Free and the highest judicial authority in the land is making distinctions about who is or is not constitutionally inferior. That might make you more than a little nervous, maybe even send you off to fight in a war to resolve the question once and for all.

July 4th celebrates the birth of freedom in this country. Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania Memorial celebrate the new birth of freedom that came 87 years later. We would do well to remember both.

Clueless: Moderate Republicans And The IRS's Attacks on the Tea Party

We've spent so many decades hearing about how Richard Nixon (unsuccessfully) tried to sic the IRS on his political opponents, it was almost funny to learn that the "white hat" Obama lead an effort to systematically suppress conservative activists through abusive auditing. You would think anyone with an "R" after their name would know what to do with a scandal like this: righteous anger mixed with a resolve to fight these b**tards to the political death. But that's not what the GOP's moderate elements are doing. Instead, they are working hand-in-glove with the Obama administration to pass immigration reform while harrumphing about "special prosecutors" and generally allowing public anger to diffuse. 

As the perfect exemplar of this strain, Sheriff Michael Gerson rode into town on his high horse a couple weeks ago and declared the heated reaction by Tea Partiers to be, erm, unhelpful:

A number of libertarians and conservative populists have found data collection by the National Security Agency(NSA) to be the final confirmation of their worst fears about Barack Obama and modern government. It is an attempt, according to Ron Paul, to “deliberately destroy the Constitution.” To radio talk show host Mark Levin, it reveals “the elements of a police state.” To Rush Limbaugh, it is part of a “coup d’etat” by the Obama “regime.” 

Some on the right believe, as they say in the intel business, that they have connected the dots. All the scandals are really part of one big scandal. For Levin, it encompasses abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, the collection of DNA by policemen, Obamacare’s centralization of medical records and the use of domestic drones. “The Transportation Department, people forget, has proposed black boxes in all of our automobiles to track how they function,” Levin adds. 

Limbaugh presents a similar list, demonstrating what he calls “the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration,” and homes in on the NSA revelations: “The main question is, why is such a gigantic surveillance operation even necessary? What is really going on here? Who is the enemy? The tea party, we know, is an enemy of the administration. We know that conservative Republicans — and I could give you names — are enemies of this administration.” 

Let me stipulate that the IRS targeting of tea party groups is deeply disturbing andEric Holder’s Justice Department is politicized, swaggering and incompetent. Distrust of government is deep in the American DNA, and the Obama administration has often managed to justify it. 

But asserting that U.S. intelligence agencies are part of a conspiracy that somehow includes a national gun registry, drone surveillance and Lois Lerner crosses a line. 

I guess we shouldn't expect any real fight from the man who helped craft the Bush 43 administration's pathetic non-response to the scurrilous attacks the left subjected it to for years. But, come on! Doesn't any of this make Gerson angry? It should. Decent, hard-working Americans of the sort whom the GOP has historically relied on at the polls, were subject to attack and abuse by cold-hearted left-wing activists disguised as bureaucrats. The GOP base was literally being hounded and suppressed - while the left wailed about a bogus "war on women" and a mythical effort to suppress minority voters via voter ID laws! Mr. Gerson, your people were under attack and that doesn't seem to bother you, nor does it bother many of the DC-based GOP leadership. Frankly, that is almost as disturbing as the IRS asking conservative groups about the contents of their prayers. 

What's worse is that progressives have been using 501(c)(3)'s and (4)'s as political tools and income streams for years. The NAACP, NARAL, the teachers unions (and every other union), Greenpeace, PETA, and so on are all tax-emept organizations. They are also political through and through. How is that "legal" while some women organizing a Tea Party group around their kitchen tables is untoward? 

And, left-wing groups aren't just organizing tools. Rich progressives like the Kennedies use them as tax shelters and as income streams. The grant-writing liberal is not far removed from the conservative businessman going to the bank for a loan, only the liberal is looking to start an activist group and pay herself a salary. And, the non-profit sector is notorious for its prodigious fund-raising and pathetic disbursement rates. Rush Limbaugh has been saying for years that the modern left is funded by tax-payers. He's not far off the mark. Again, Mr. Gerson, doesn't it make you angry that leftists are excluded from the sort of rigorous enforcement to which conservative groups were subject?

That's not to let Tea Partiers totally off the hook. As earnestly as they wanted to comply with IRS rules, it should have been clear to anyone receiving those crazy document demands that quick approvals would not be forthcoming from Cincinnati or Ogden or wherever. As Prof. Reynolds suggests, they should have self-exempted at that point. And, while it's admirable that conservatives wanted to make sure they were crossing all of their T's and dotting their I's re: accepting donations, I have to ask whether, say, the Black Panthers or Mario Savio or the Chicago Seven or other leftist rebels ever went through the bother of complying with IRS rules. Maybe they did and there was a Black Panther 501(c)(3), but I have no idea and anyway I doubt it. They just went out and started taking care of business, committing real crimes along the way. The left's funding has always been murky with an unknown but significant portion coming from Moscow and Beijing back in the good ol' days. Somehow the Tea Party hasn't managed to figure out that successful political activism is probably inversely proportional to compliance with the rules created by the political class. 

And, finally, while the right has a compelling case that its vote was suppressed in 2012, it was hardly a case of involuntary suppression. People just stayed home and didn't vote. Excuse me? That's pathetic! You don't like Romney, or are being inundated with insane IRS correspondence, or are getting Obama robo-calls, and your response is to stay home? Voting in America is still one of the easiest public duties a citizen has available to him. Obama richly deserved to lose, whether that loss came at the hands of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry or John Huntsman should have been beside the point. 

I had no illusions about Mitt Romney, no one should have. The man was a technocrat, not an activist. All those promises about repealing Obamacare, etc. would have wilted at the first sign of leftist counter-attack. But, that would still be better than what we've got now. 

To bring it all back to Michael Gerson's plaintive whining about unhelpful right-wing rhetoric, there's a reason why the Bush/Romney/Dole/McCain/Ford/Dewey branch of the party has so much trouble winning elections. They have no fight in them, and worse, don't realize they are in a fight at all. And, if they manage to win an election, they don't fight back. They don't protect themselves, and they don't protect their voters and most active supporters. Pathetic. 

It's Not Amnesty!

One thing you hear a lot from "comprehensive immigration reform" advocates is that their proposed bill is "NOT amnesty!!!!!!!" even though Ronald Reagan described the very-similar intended results of the 1986 reform as "amnesty in exchange for border security." I guess I could take their word for it, but Marco Rubio, et al. might want to know how immigration law is being marketed - in English! - by attorneys catering to the immigrant population here in San Mateo County:

(This, btw, is a rare example of Free Will shoe-leather reporting as the FW Cub Reporter and I traveled a mile down the road from our HQ to snap these dramatic photos).

The fact is that, regardless of what the old white guys in the Senate might say, the immigrant community and those who advocate for it, are telling themselves that DC's efforts to "normalize" the illegal population is amnesty, whether through the DREAM Act or through the Senate's comprehensive reform bill. That's certainly what Marco Rubio has been saying in Spanish to Spanish-speaking audiences. (if the guy doesn't like getting booed at Tea Party allies, he might want to cut down on repeated use of this Arafat-style of political persuasion). And that's certainly why we are being treated to an incomprehensible 1,000 page bill intended to mask its true effects, both intended and unintended.

Even if amnesty is not the result, we know what will happen: more masses chanting "Si Se Puede," more quavering-voiced news stories about people living in the "shadows," and an effort in the courts to obtain amnesty through judicial fiat with border security thrown to the wayside. Some form of amnesty seems inevitable, whether through legislation, judicial intervention, or pseudo-revolution. Choose your poison, I guess.

Plumbing The Depths: Is the Stupid Party Becoming the Moron Party

Another Republican politician - this time Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and no I've never heard of him before - is going through the media wringer after daring to put the words "abortion" and "rape" into the same sentence. He actually had good reason to as all he was trying to say was that the incidence of abortions resulting from rape were low. Not that this matters. Outrageous outrage is going down as we speak, but that's not really my concern. I'm more exorcised by the likes of ostensible center-right commentator Jonathon S. Tobin* who declares Cong. Franks to be an unfortunate manifestation of the "moron factor" sapping the GOP of it manly essence.

Republicans have spent the last several months arguing about the lessons of the 2012 election with both establishment types and grass roots activists mixing it up on a variety of issues. But if there was one conclusion that surely everyone in the party agreed upon it was that GOP candidates and officials needed to avoid mentioning rape, especially when discussing their opposition to abortion. The spectacular idiocy of Missouri senatorial candidate Todd Akin—who publicly doubted that women could become pregnant as a result of rape—didn’t just transform his opponent Claire McCaskill from a certain loser to an easy winner and sink Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock, when the latter said something not quite as foolish. It also allowed Democrats to trash all Republicans as Neanderthal nitwits seeking to abuse women. 

But apparently Arizonan Republican Representative Trent Franks didn’t get the memo. Franks demonstrated that yesterday when he claimed during a Judiciary Committee debate that the incidence of pregnancy from rape is “very low.” But Franks had to repeat the assertion even in a later clarification before he realized what he had done. With a single phrase, Franks had handed Democrats on the committee and elsewhere a chance to revive their fake “War on Women” theme that helped mobilize the Democratic base in 2012. Though it can be asserted that they didn’t need any new excuses to try the same tactic in 2014, Franks has made it a lot easier. Just as was the case in 2012, Republicans are learning the hard way that foolish statements—even if they are ripped out of their context or unfairly characterized—allow Democrats to change the subject from serious moral issues to a topic they’d rather talk about: why some Republicans are morons.

Oh, come on. Republicans will always suffer for their abortion related "gaffes" because the pro-abortion crowd only wants to discuss baby killing in the context of these sorts of meltdowns. There was nothing factually incorrect in Franks' statement. (although we don't know what the exact percentage of abortions arise from rape). I can't imagine there is a huge number of rapes resulting in pregnancy. (statutory rape is another matter, of course). And, the point he was trying to make is an important one. He's trying pass a bill outlawing abortions after 20 weeks - at this point, a six month preemie can easily survive outside the womb - and responding to NARAL types wailing about rape:

After the committee meeting, Franks told POLITICO: “My bill does nothing to restrict abortion even before the first five months, so all issues related to rape are long since dealt with.” 

He said that Democrats are the ones who “constantly want to inject” rape into the abortion debate and have done so ever since the original Roe v Wade case. By focusing on rape instead on “the child that was being killed” they try to change the dynamics of the debate, he said. “So sometimes Republicans get beat up for having to respond to it, but it’s always the left that brings it up because it results in Republicans getting beat up by it.”

Agreed that pro-life Republicans probably need a seminar to practice their lines for moments like this, but what are they supposed to say? The rape question always comes up, and it needs to be batted away, only it can't be batted away because the left brings up rape precisely to strike the sort of gaffe gold they found in Todd Akin.

Democrats make all sorts of moronic, not to mention evil, claims re: abortion. Just today Nancy Pelosi made some crazy comment that late-term abortions are "sacred ground." (ugh!) She also responded to questions about the murderous abuses of Kermit Gosnell by saying she deplored them, but, no, did not plan to work to pass any legislation that would make Gosnell's practices illegal. Give me the "moron" Trent Franks any day over this.

* can't forget the "S." Jonathon Sssssssssssssss. Tobin, ladies and gentlemen!

The Republican Party and Our Forgotten Second Founding Fathers

Georgetown law prof Randy Barnett has been doing a slow-rolling study of the abolitionists writers and lawyers who provided the intellectual and moral arguments in support of ending slavery and passing the 14th Amendment. First was his "Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment." Now comes a paper remembering Salmon P. Chase. Here is the abstract and table of contents: 

The name Salmon P. Chase is barely known and his career is largely forgotten. In this Article, I seek to revive his memory by tracing the arc of his career from antislavery lawyer, to antislavery politician, to Chief Justice of the United States. In addition to explaining why his is a career worth both remembering and honoring, I offer some possible reasons why his remarkable achievements have generally unremembered today.

Contents

Introduction: Constitutional Abolitionism.............................654

I. Chase’s Rise to the Chief Justiceship ......................................656

A. Chase’s Early Years........................................................................ 656

B. Chase as an Antislavery Lawyer ...............................................659

C. Chase as an Antislavery Political Leader..............................668

II. The Chief Justiceship of Salmon P. Chase ..........................676

A. Chase’s Duties as Chief Justice..................................................676

B. Chase’s Opinions on Reconstruction.......................................677

1. In re Turner............................................................................................677

2. Texas v. White .......................................................................................679

C. Chase on the Enumerated Powers of Congress.....................683

1. United States v. Dewitt.........................................................................683

2. The Legal Tender Cases........................................................................687

D. Chase on the Privileges and Immunities of Citizens
of the United States..............................................................................694

III. Why Has Chase’s Career Been Forgotten? ..........................697

Conclusion ...............................................................................................701

Chase was a towering figure in his day: governor of Ohio, Treasury Secretary, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He helped found no fewer than three national political parties: the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party (even coining its slogan "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men"), and of course the Republican Party*. He was also an attorney who spent years refining abolitionist legal arguments. And, apparently, Chase Bank was (posthumously) named for him. It's a bit much to say he's "forgotten" - anyone who reads about the Civil War era will come across his name - but it is certainly true that Chase's accomplishments deserve more note than current historic understanding grants to him. 

As Barnett notes, Chase and his cohort, whom Barnett dubs "constitutional abolitionists," successfully found a middle ground between the competing sides of the slavery question. On the one hand, Democrats insisted that slavery was constitutional, and would eventually insist that, as a matter of constitutional law, blacks were mentally inferior and slavery should spread through the territories, and even into the northern states. On the other, full-mooners like William Henry Garrison insisted that disunion - and the rending of the Constitution - was the only proper "solution" to the slavery question. Great, but what if you just want to go to work and raise a family without worrying that the government will fall apart before lunch? Chase, et al.'s middle ground preserved the Constitution through the fire and brimstone of the Civil War.

The Constitutional Abolitionists relied on close readings of the Constitution to point out that (1) there was nothing in the Constitution specifically approving slavery (read the Confederate Constitution to see how that's done); and (2) other parts of the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment made involuntary servitude unconstitutional. Whatever Founding Father nods and winks southerners relied on to support their arguments were meaningless as they couldn't be found in the text. These might be obvious points now, but back then they were literally dynamite. When Abraham Lincoln - the greatest of the Constitutional Abolitionists - won the presidency, the South knew the jig was up, at least with regard to the slavery question. (No, the issue of state's rights was not "resolved" by the Civil War. Only children and Ivy League graduates could believe that).

Barnett rightly laments that the Constitutional Abolitionists, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, are largely obscure as historic figures and rarely register in high or low culture. Well, join the club. Unless you are a progressive princeling or a member of an oppressed class, your would-be admirers have to actively work to seek out your biography. Plus, how can the likes of Lysander Spooner (google him) measure up to Beyonce'? 

Still, there is one group of Americans who should rectify their ignorance in this area: members of the Republican Party, who are often as ignorant of the noble origins of their party and philosophy as anyone else. Read Whence Comes Section One. It is literally inspiring (and ought to provide the basis for a very good book). On the most important political questions in American history, our guys were 100% right. Modern-era Democrats might claim their pursuit of "social justice" should take pride of place, but nothing can compare to the freeing of the slaves. Republicans seeking inspiration in these times would do well to learn more about their own founding fathers. 

* NB: Chase started and ended his political career as a Democrat, however, even running for the Democrat presidential nomination in 1868.

This Bugs Me: The Secret Mitch McConnell Tape

The supposedly explosive Mitch McConnell tape"scandal" has backfired on the Democrats and has become a question of whether left-wing operatives committed felonies by recording a conversation between the Senator and his campaign staff: 

A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his advisors was taped by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, says a longtime local Democratic operative. 

Mother Jones Magazine released the tape this week. The meeting itself took place on Feb. 2. 

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting. 

On the tape, McConnell and his advisors are heard laughing and joking about opposition research they had on actress Ashley Judd, who had been considering running against McConnell next year. Many Democratic groups blasted McConnell for the remarks yesterday, disgusted by the fact McConnell would potentially use Judd's suicidal thoughts as a child against her. 

Reilly and Morrison have declined to comment for this story.

I heard Jacob Conway's interview on Fox. What a laughable clown. And what a typical modern-day Democrat. Not only was he disingenuous, claiming in this fake-exasperated tone that these darn operatives were not authorized by the Democrat Party at all; but his voice was - how can I put this - *mincing*. If you catch my drift. We are definitely a long way from the lunch pail wing of the Democrat Party. 

More seriously, though, McConnell should hereby be on notice that he is Going Down on the slightest possible pre-text. Now that the "war on women" angle - McConnell and his staff were discussing Judd's well-publicized mental problems - has failed to work out, leftist activists are making a stink over possible ethics violations arising from whether McConnell was on "campaign time" or "government time."  It's not going to matter so long as McConnell is injured. 

Don't think that this can't happen? Read Robert Novack's description of his "role" (such as it was) in the Wilson/Plame affair.  David Corn was present at the creation of that media-driven "scandal." Whatever you might say about Corn, he knows how to create the impression of law-breaking out of the carelessness of Republican officials. 

(btw, you know who definitely gets hurt by these "secret tape" scandals? The tapers. Democrat politicians and journalists are happy to publicize these things, but it's the tapers who pay the bill. That kid who turned Sarah Palin's emails over to Gawker went to jail. Those two liberals who tape-recorded Newt Gingrich in 1997 - they were just a couple grandparents who thought they were hearing a bit of history! - plead guilty to federal wiretapping charges*. David Corn is going to get his awards and his publicity out of this, but it's anonymous Kentucky Democrats who will likely go to jail.)

A lot of conservatives like to dump on Mitch McConnell, but you won't hear that around here. McConnell has demonstrated over and over again an ability to lead the opposition in the Senate. His grasp of the law and the Constitution is deep and impressive. He has fought for conservative principles, going as far as to take multiple cases to the Supreme Court, where he has prevailed. He is a much steadier hand than John Boehner. That's why some of the Left's big guns are hunting McConnell. 

McConnell has played this affair well so far. He instantly recognized that no one could have recorded without breaking the law. But, he's going to have to be careful out there. 

* actually John Boehner sued lefty jerk Jim McDermott and won a multi-million dollar judgment against his colleague, so occasionally the bad guys do get dinged. 

I Am Outraged: Don Young vs Beverly Hall

Another Republican is causing trouble with the Hispanic outreach program. Don Young, Alaska's lone House member, used the term "wetback" in a radio interview.

Rep. Don Young, who used the term “wetbacks” to describe Mexican immigrants in a radio interview Thursday night, issued a full-scale apology this afternoon for using the derogatory slur after a barrage of criticism from Republicans and Democrats. 

“I apologize for the insensitive term I used during an interview in Ketchikan, Alaska,” Young, R-Alaska, wrote in his second statement of the past 24 hours. “There was no malice in my heart or intent to offend; it was a poor choice of words.”

Young is, predictably, the face of the Republican Party this week despite the fact that (1) he is the sort of big-spending, non-evangelical moderate that we're supposed to elect more of and (2) most Republicans outside the Land of the Midnight Sun can't stand him. Sarah Palin even supported an effort to primary Young back in 2008! (and is there any doubt that Young would be the first House Republican to sign on to "comprehensive immigration reform?") None of this matters, of course. As long as Young is insulting Hispanics, he is Mr. Republican, Mr. Tea Party & Mr. Conservative.

But, who is being hurt by Young's slur? Nobody. Sticks and stones, and all that (plus, Ike had some kind of guest worker program back in the good old days called "Operation Wetback," so at some point the term was socially acceptable).

On the other hand, imagine all of the casualties from the latest scandal out of urban America: a conspiracy directed by the superintendent of the Atlanta School District to raise test scores by literally changing kids' answers on standardized tests:

In the two and a half years since, the state’s investigation reached from Ms. Parks’s third-grade classroom all the way to the district superintendent at the time, Beverly L. Hall, who was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury. 

Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison. 

During the decade she led the district of 52,000 children, many of them poor and African-American, Atlanta students often outperformed wealthier suburban districts on state tests. 

Those test scores brought her fame — in 2009, the American Association of School Administrators named her superintendent of the year and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, hosted her at the White House. 

And fortune — she earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses while superintendent. 

On Friday, prosecutors essentially said it really was too good to be true. Dr. Hall and the 34 teachers, principals and administrators “conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” the indictment said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. 

Reached late Friday, Richard Deane, Dr. Hall’s lawyer, said they were digesting the indictment and making arrangements for bond. “We’re pretty busy,” he said.

Am I stepping out of bounds in assuming that Dr. Hall and her confederates are liberal black women? Probably not, as Hall was feted at the White House in 2009.

(apropos of nothing, have you heard about the arrest of Elba Gordillo, presidente' for life of the Mexican teachers union? She's accused of stealing $200 million from the union with Neiman Marcus providing crucial evidence of multi-million dollar shopping sprees. For the Children, of course.)

That African-American kids are cruelly trapped in failing schools is beyond dispute. Also beyond dispute is that those failing schools are not educational institutions, but are little more than jobs programs and money pits. And the cheating is national, and systemic with similar scandals brewing in El Paso and Ohio.

Yet, somehow, Don Young is a Big Problem for Republicans, perpetually flat-footed in their effort to make in-roads into minority communities; while Dr. Hall is part of some crazy "local" scandal and everyone else involved in urban public education is great because they care so much for The Children (and vote Democrat).

Reality is that Don Young is a cheesy semi-corrupt octogenarian pol with virtually no voice in his party outside of Alaska. Reality is that Democrats, the Party of Education, have had one-party rule over urban school districts for decades and destroyed them, stunting the development of god-knows how many millions of minority kids. And, apparently, it's enough to hold up the obscure likes of Don Young as representing the tip of the spear of some sort of unspeakable GOP Jim Crow for Democrats to retain their death-grip on the votes of minorities. (those who show up at the polls at least. Urban precincts are notorious for the fraudulence of their electoral returns).

Instead of convening seminars and writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Republicans eager to court black or Hispanic voters should show up at these sh*** schools and help lead a revolt by those parents who care enough about their kids to change this noxious reality.

Off The Mat: Marco Rubio's Turn In The Spotlight

I can't say I think much of Marco Rubio - not being personal, but this "savior" stuff seems a little premature - but the following from his SOTU rebuttal is worth a highlight

But his favorite attack of all is that those who don’t agree with him – they only care about rich people. 

Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy. 

The tax increases and the deficit spending you propose will hurt middle class families. It will cost them their raises. It will cost them their benefits. It may even cost some of them their jobs. 

And it will hurt seniors because it does nothing to save Medicare and Social Security.
So Mr. President, I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich. I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors.

It's one of the great ironies of of modern politics that the "party of the rich" is filled with politicians who come from modest backgrounds. Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, John Boehner, Ronald Reagan, Dennis Hastert, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, the dread Karl Rove, and on and on all came from marginal or modest families. It's Democrat (and "moderate" Republican) politicians who are much more like to come from wealth, often ludicrous wealth. 

Of course, the news media that never stopped talking about Mitt Romney's car elevator also plays along with the fiction that billionaires like John Kerry - who, btw, appears to have had plastic surgery - is a reg'lar guy, the same sort of fiction that props up the careers of so many left-liberals. But, what's stopping Republicans from pointing out this reality? Got me, but I'm glad Rubio took his moment in the spotlight - it's a rare moment indeed when a conservative can speak unimpeded or unedited - to make this basic point. 

Jerry Brown vs. Orange County

Jerry Brown has been on something of a victory lap, having declared the state budget to be balanced after years of red ink - and if you look at the numbers the right way, and assume he will collect all of the new taxes "we" (don't look at me, paleface) have have just levied on ourselves, he might be technically right. But, question him about how spending actually increases under his "austere" budget, and it's bash-the-GOP time:

Something has changed, even as our society has become wealthier. Sure businesses have to comply with regulations and millionaires need to pay taxes, but somewhere we’ve shifted from honoring success to envying it, from viewing government as a limited tool to achieve a few necessary things (infrastructure, enforcing the rule of law) to seeing it as the be-all and end-all of our society. 

Why is it assumed by these moralistic Affluence Police that the rich are mainly greedy people who spend their money on luxury goods? Charities and non-profits are funded by wealthy people. Real capitalists invest millions of dollars into ideas and often create good jobs in the process. I have no idea what Mickelson does with his money, but it isn’t any of my business. Given California governmental attitudes, one can’t blame him for looking elsewhere. 

For instance, during a recent Capitol press conference, the Orange County Register’s Sacramento reporter asked Gov. Jerry Brown about the spending increases in his supposedly austere budget. Brown joked about there being no hope for Orange County readers, according to a Register editorial. Then he mocked “this doctrine that government is the problem,” which he said is promoted by the “Orange County Register or whoever all these people are.”

Har! Har! Look, "Jerry" (first name Edmund), I know state liberals have been dumping on Orange County and the Orange County Register for decades. That's not surprising, as O.C. has long been a conservative enclave and the OCR one of the few reliably right-leaning newspapers of any note. And, certainly the California GOP has not covered itself in electoral glory over the past 15 years, but there's something about Orange County, and similar right-leaning communities in California that you might not want to hear about:

They work a hell of a lot better than the rest of the state, which has been in the hands of Democrats and Democrat-lite Republicans for the better part of two decades.

Now, it may be I know more about Orange County than you do, "Jerry." The Free Will grandparents lived there for decades. The Free Will Father lived there Richard Nixon-style; meaning he grew up in a house his father built. Heck, for all I know, I've visited Anaheim/Orange County more times than the current governor of the California. As far as I'm concerned, the Republican hellhole of Orange County has always been orderly, clean, and decent; the proto-typical suburban community where you would want to raise kids. Not only that, it was always more reflective of the Republican Party as the party of hard-working strivers than the cartoon image of the GOP as a plutocracy riding snake handlers and bigots to election day victory.

I hadn't been down there in several years until this past summer when the family made a pilgrimage to Disneyland. I was curious how Orange was doing after so many years of state-wide economic distress. Well, I shouldn't have worried. De-plane at John Wayne Airport, get in your rental car, head out to the highway, and what do you find? Some of the smoothest, most sophisticated highways in the world. We're talking 12-lane highways with elaborate lane markings, no doubt developed by some of the most forward thinking traffic engineers in the world. "Green" Bay Area highways have car pool lanes that are restricted during rush hour. "Evil polluter"  Orange County has car pool exits with miles long off ramps. The car pool lanes are permanent, of course, set off by special lane markings. And the traffic flows smoothly. I drove into morning rush hour traffic heading to LA, and moved quickly towards my destination.

I'm sure there are "crappy" parts of Orange County, and LA sophisticates will be happy to point them out to you, but I went through a number of towns - Torrance, Long Beach, Newport Beach, & Anaheim to name a few. Each one looked safe, clean and well-organized. There is a certain sterile quality at work, which generally means (1) no gaudy "landmarks" or public art and (2) no hipster neighborhoods* with their attendant restaurants, and drunks. Frankly, I know where to go if I want to find either of the above

But, here's the best part:

When you cross the border from Orange County to LA County - that's glamorous, progressive LA County, mind - everything changes. The six-lane highway immediately narrowed to four. Traffic came to a complete standstill. The bright, shining communities suddenly turned gray and cluttered. Smoke seemed to belch all around me. The radio switched from "Fun, Fun, Fun" to "Hell's Bells." And, the traffic didn't let up for one minute of the day. It's no wonder so many Hollywood types are convinced that global warming will destroy the world. They are living in a hellhole.

LA County, in other words, doesn't "work" as well as the dread Orange. I could say the same for Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, which are also filled with Republicans, and which are also orderly and prosperous. I'm not even going to discuss the Bay Area, whose highways and public services are simply pitiful compared to what they do in "you didn't build that" Orange County.

Orange County certainly isn't perfect, and it's not nearly as Republican as it used to be, but it's clear that right-leaning governance - or at least governance that operates efficiently and economically - can work better than the grim, re-distributionist liberal model. Maybe you can gin up a crowd in the ghetto/barrio/trailer park, and get them p***ed at "the rich," but those poor people would be better off in Anaheim working at a McDonalds than they would be in LA collecting a check.

Jerry Brown and other liberals can make all the snotty comments they want about the market, the OC Register and "Tricky Dick from Yorba Linda," but they can't get away from the fact that they can't do their jobs as well as the people they disparage.

* I was amused to drive by the Vans corporate HQ, complete with checkboard facade and Warped Tour bus parked out front. Do they play the Circle Jerks over the PA system?

Anything Going On Today?

I'm embarrassed to ask but...isn't the Obama Inauguration coming up?

Absent the historic nature of electing the nation’s first black president and amid a slow economic recovery, expectations and planning for President Barack Obama’s 2013 inaugural aren’t near the historic levels of 2009. 

But with stars such as Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Stevie Wonder lined up to perform, plenty of celebrations on tap, and tickets being auctioned off at 50 times their value, public interest remains high and planners are prepared to deliver a major celebration. 

Four years ago, a record-breaking 1.8 million people lined the mall for Obama's swearing in and attended other inaugural events in Washington. This year, expectations are lower-- some D.C. officials place crowd estimates at 600,000-800,000—but still promise a heavy influx of visitors to witness the swearing-in, parade, the inaugural balls and a wealth of unofficial parties, events and festivities in around the city. 

The official group behind the inauguration, the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC), say that overall their scope has decreased in comparison to 2009. 

“In keeping with the precedent set by previous second inaugurals and in recognition of the ongoing economic recovery, this Inauguration will be smaller in scale than the historic ceremony four years ago," PIC spokeswoman Aoife McCarthy told Yahoo News in a statement. "We expect the 57th Inaugural to capture the same excitement that we saw throughout this campaign and to reflect the values that the President will continue to bring to his second term." 

The ten inaugural balls the president and First Lady attended in 2009 have been condensed to two. There is no inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Planners are organizing fewer official events overall.
But the scope remains grand.

OK, so we're not having a Grand Immaculation as happened the first time out. Still, there's a noticeable lack of interest here that deserves some note.

One thing I keep hearing is that Republicans are more "depressed" with the imminence of the Obama second term than Dems were at the prospect of the second Bush term. Looking back, here are the main complaints I recall from the glory days of the compassionate conservative hegemon:

1. The Iraq War
2. The PATRIOT Act
3. The suppression of gay marriage
4. Oil companies manipulating gas prices
5. the "jobless" recovery - when we had virtually full employment

Other complaints - Hurricane Katrina, Cindy Sheehan's dead son, Global Warming, the spendthrift GOP Congress - were to come later, but looking at that list I am struck by two thoughts:

(1) that most, if not all of these problems were not problems that directly affected querulous liberals. I mean, you can complain about the Iraq War all you want, but the war resolutions passed with large numbers of Democrat votes. Not only that, the war had no bearing on your life unless you were in Iraq proper. Similary, no American (excluding bogus "Americans" like al-Alwaki) was inconvenienced by the PATRIOT Act. Hurricane Katrina was a fiasco, but it wasn't Bush's fault that the Pelican State's Democrat establishment was so biblically corrupt and incompetent. And so on.

(2)  gas prices, unemployment, and gov't debt - in other words, the things that do affect most people - have gotten worse under Obama to no discernible complaint from the loudmouths who used to excoriate Bushitler.

On the other hand, what are the issues that bother Republicans about Obama?

1. $5 trillion in debt with another $5 trillion on tap
2. the prospect of endless trillion dollar annual deficits
3. a trillion dollar stimulus that was a classic pay-off, and which is being renewed annually thanks to base-line budgeting
4. Obamacare with its attendant fines, tax increases, and premium increases
5. the pathological desire to raise taxes
6. and so on

Then there's Obama's repeated personal attacks on Republicans and their ideas. Say what you will about George Bush, but you never heard him use the sort of rhetoric - "bitter clingers," "you didn't build that" - that Obama routinely uses against conservatives.

The difference is that anti-Bush libs were upset about things that either did not affect them directly or have gotten worse under Obama. Anti-Obama conservatives are upset that Obama policies are aimed directly at them, and are often crafted specifically to weaken, if not destroy them. And no one seems to care. Not only that, Obama is the "likeable" one!

A depressing prospect all around.

Bringing The Bitter: Calling Out the Socially Liberal Fiscal Conservatives

There's more than a trace of bitterness in Jonah Goldberg's column calling out the sort of "socially liberal fiscally conservative" type who likes to make a big show of their reasonable ways, but vote and advocate for politicians who are pursuing a fiscally suicidal course

Bob, I’m going to be straight with you. I never had much respect for your political acumen before, but you’re a sucker. 

You’re still spouting this nonsense about being fiscally conservative while insisting that the GOP is the problem. You buy into the media’s anti-Republican hysteria no matter what the facts are. Heck, you even believe it when Obama suggests he’s like an Eisenhower Republican. 

Well, let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” 

Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling). Now, the debt is bigger than our GDP. Gross Domestic Product is barely $15 trillion. The national debt is over $16 trillion and climbing — fast. The country isn’t going broke, Bob, it is broke. 

When George W. Bush added nearly $5 trillion in national debt in two terms you were scandalized. When Obama added more than that in one term, you yawned. When, in 2006, then-senator Obama condemned Bush’s failure of leadership and vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling, you thought him a statesman. Obama, who wants to borrow trillions more, now admits that was purely a “political vote.” 

Yet when Republicans actually have the courage of Obama’s own convictions, you condemn them.

The epitome of fiscal recklessness has been the Democrat Senate's obdurate refusal to draft and enact a budget, which has lead to the sort of crisis mongering and dark-of-night budgeting that have been the true hallmarks of the Obama presidency. This, of course, provokes shrugs, but let Republicans try such a stunt and we would never hear the end of it re: radical Republican recklessness.

What's really exasperating about these folks is their seeming blindness whether about themselves or about liberals. We've all met Republicans who were furious with the Bush deficits, so they voted for Obama back in 2008. Even back then, this made no sense. Democrats tax and spend. That's what they do, even when they pose as moderates. If you're PO'd about deficits, you don't vote for the people who invented deficit spending! Bob Barr was on the Libertarian ticket that year; why not vote for him? Or, do what I did and tell yourself that you are voting for Sarah Palin.

Actually, Sarah Palin - or rather, the fate of Sarah - perfectly encapsulates the BS of the social liberal/fiscal con. A big part of her appeal back then was that she had been a real budget cutter. Remember her story about selling the governor's plane? But, she was pro-life, not obnoxiously so, I might add, but pro-life nonetheless. Can't have that! Moderates apparently prefer to have abortion on demand over their professed goal of a balanced budget. Makes sense!*

Republicans have a lot of problems, but the phenomenon of politicially unsophisticated liberals publicly masquerading as pragmatic moderates is surely in the Top 5.

*(especially when you consider how upset these moderates professed to have been by the Sandy Hook massacre. We Republicans may be crazy, but at least we think all life is precious, and don't sit around fine-tuning arguments about when it should or should not be legal to kill babies.)

Now It All Makes Sense: Romney Didn't Really Want To Run For President

That, at least, is the word from Tagg Romney, who told the Boston Globe that he and Ann Romney had to work hard to persuade Mitt to run for the 2012 nomination. It was "his turn" after all!

No one wanted to be president less than Mitt Romney, his son said in an interview out Sunday that raises new questions about the candidacy of the losing Republican nominee. 

In an interview with the Boston Globe examining what went wrong with the Romney campaign, his eldest son Tagg explains that his father had been a reluctant candidate from the start. 

After failing to win the 2008 Republican nomination, Romney told his family he would not run again and had to be persuaded to enter the 2012 White House race by his wife Ann and son Tagg. 

"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life. He had no desire... to run," Tagg Romney said. "If he could have found someone else to take his place... he would have been ecstatic to step aside." 

Mitt Romney "is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them. He loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention," his son said.

To paraphrase Johnny Rotten, "Ever had the feeling you've just been ripped off?"

I guess now it makes sense how Romney essentially took a dive in the third debate and eased noticeably off of the throttle during the last three weeks of the campaign. He came dangerously close to winning the election - remember how everyone on the left was relieved when Hurricane Sandy hoved into view? - which would not have been an optimal outcome for someone who didn't act like he really wanted the job to begin with.

In a way, we averted disaster of a sort. (trying hard not to diminish the disaster we're living through right now). If Romney couldn't bother to campaign, he certainly wasn't ready to govern in the manner he promised. There would have been no major spending cuts, no tax reform, and, of course, no repeal of Obamacare. It would have been Bush 41 all over again, only without the preceding 8 years of real conservative governance to build on.

Of course, "thanks" to Romney, we had no viable conservative candidate to put up against Obama. While he was not enthusiastic about waging political war against Democrats, he was quite happy to let it rip against his fellow Republicans. Funny how the guy who violated the 11th Commandment didn't really want the job to begin with.

Santa v Jesusland: Critiquing Mitt Romney's Post-Election After-action Report

Mitt Romney is one of those guys whose "gaffes" are in the category "inadvertant utterance of the truth" rather than simple misstatements or mispronunciations. (I thought his "corporations are people, my friend" was one of his best moments despite the ignorant caterwauling that arose in response). Even in defeat, the "gaffes" keep coming as Romney has sought to blame his loss on Obama giving "gifts" to certain targeted constituencies.

In a conference call with fund-raisers and donors to his campaign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday afternoon that the president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” 

“In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.” 

Mr. Romney’s comments in the 20-minute conference call came after his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, told WISC-TV in Madison on Monday that their loss was a result of Mr. Obama’s strength in “urban areas,” an analysis that did not account for Mr. Obama’s victories in more rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire or the decrease in the number of votes for the president relative to 2008 in critical urban counties in Ohio. 

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.” 

The president’s health care plan, he said, was also a useful tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters. Though Mr. Romney won the white vote with 59 percent, according to exit polls, minorities coalesced around the president in overwhelming numbers: 93 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics. 

“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge,” Mr. Romney said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

This has inspired a furious counter-reaction from some Republicans who have have accused Romney of dividing the country and engaging in some kind of corporatist politicking that excludes the lower half. John Podheretz probably came up with the best summation of this latest attitude du jour:

Romney didn’t say on that call that the election had come out as it did because Obama’s team had outplayed and outfoxed his. He should have, because that’s the truth. 

Rather, he said that Obama had won the second term essentially through bribery — or what he called “gifts.” According to The New York Times, Romney said Obama had pulled out an “old playbook” to woo “the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” 

Obama and his team, Romney said, were“very generous in what they gave to those groups.” He mentioned certain immigration reforms the White House designed without the need for congressional vote and ObamaCare policies mandating free contraception and extending a child’s ability to stay on his parents’ insurance to the age of 26. 

By contrast, Romney said, he talked about “big” national issues: “military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.” So, compared to the “gifts,” he just couldn’t compete. 

Aside from being bad sportsmanship — Romney basically said Obama won by cheating — he was displaying the same obtuseness about the wants and needs of ordinary people that did more to torpedo his campaign than any goodies Obama might have had to dole out.

Podheretz is a Serious Thinker (who writes for the New York Post, but still) or at least is descended from Serious Thinkers,  so you'd think he'd know what he's talking about. I mean, is there any doubt that what Romney said was true? Podheretz seems to have forgotten that Obama just won a national election, in large part, by motivating the constituent parts of his base with gifts or with outsized claims about the efficacy of his various bailouts. Not only that, these groups came relatively cheap. Remember how restive Hispanics complained about the absence of comprehensive immigration reform? All he had to do was sign a constitutionally dubious executive order authorizing the DREAM Act. Don't tell me that didn't satisfy most Hispanics.

Even better was his "evolution" on gay marriage. Obama was calling for legalizing gay marriage back in the 1990's, then cynically switched positions to say his "religious beliefs" told him marriage was between a man and a woman. Everyone knew he was lying - about gay marriage and about his having religious beliefs that had any influence on his "evolution" on marriage. The Left was especially aware of the lie, and simply waited for an electorally motivated evolution in their direction, and then voted accordingly. Let's see a conservative get away with this.

Most important, there was the Democrat Convention, which featured speeches offering one "gift" after another. As I said at the time, if a Libertarian (or serious conservative) saw any part of that convention, they would be overcome with despair at their philosophy's bleak prospects in the face of millions of voters for whom such gifts are highly prized and worth their vote. To deny this is to deny reality, not to mention experience.

Podheretz points to Gov. Bobby Jindal as a Young Turk who knows how the world works:

Bobby Jindal, the brilliant and effective governor of Louisiana, raged against Romney in response. The former candidate was “absolutely wrong,” he said. Romney was “dividing the American voters.” Republicans, Jindal asserted, “need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream.”

Sorry, is that a joke? The governor of Louisiana has trouble understanding how Democrats use pay-outs and patronage to win elections? And thinks that discussing such matters is out of bounds?! If true, then he literally should not run for president, but should stay in the Pelican State. The man clearly does not know the enemy, and that has to be a foundational requirement for any serious conservative presidential contender.

Is Romney over-selling the "gift" spin? Absolutely. There were a lot of other factors involved in his loss including the catostrophic failure of his GOTV, and his hesitant campaigning style that saw him ease off the throttle in the last debate and in the final 3 weeks of the campaign. Romney is, unsurprisingly, not ready to admit to his own failures.

But, Democrats have been winning elections since Andrew Jackson's time by running against moneyed interests and offering gifts to their supporters. This is basic stuff! I assume Podheretz, Jindal, et al. would recognize this dynamic if they saw it play out somewhere like Argentina and France (and it has played out in both countries in the last 18 months). That they can't see it in the good ol' US of A tells me that they, and many other Republicans, are woefully unprepared to compete in the current environment.

Beached Whale: What Happened To Mitt Romney's Project ORCA?

One of the infuriating data points that came out of Mitt Romney's loss on Election Day was the catastrophic failure of ORCA, a GOTV effort, based around a computer program that brought live voter data to the Romney camp's Boston HQ so that they could better deploy resources to hustle up voters who hadn't made it to the polls. At least that's what it was supposed to do. The program apparently crashed, stranding tens of thousands of volunteers and leaving the GOP blind. This is why tech companies don't like to release the beta version of their latest products. (Word on the street is that Romneys wizz-kids didn't do a system-wide test before election day. We kept being told this was the "most important election of our lifetime" but it sure is beginning to look like a lot of people in the upper levels of the GOP didn't act like it.)

By contrast, check out this inside look at the Obama campaign's data-mining system, named Narwhal. Obama hired top tech guys from Google, Facebook, and other companies. They set up a complex cloud-based system on Amazon's servers, and then subjected it to rigorous tests, including a number of live-action practice runs. They worked 14-hour days, etc. You get the feeling Romney's guys were doing this (or were as smart)? Me neither.

That there was a massive failure of some kind is undeniable (people have testified to experiencing it in Ohio, Colorado, Florida and Virginia). But, there has been precious little talk of it from the Romney camp's after-action reports (that's in contrast to his "notorious" comment about how Obama won by giving voters gifts. more on that tomorrow). I'm sure there are a lot of red faces out there, at least there better be. But, we are being told that the GOP needs to make all sorts of dubious ideological adjustments based on a narrow election loss that you could plausibly blame,  at least in part, on a crippled GOTV effort. At the very least, we should know who put this disaster together so we can make sure they are never allowed near a Republican campaign ever again. (the enterprising Stacy McCain has already named some names).

Word is now coming out that Anonymous claims to have hacked ORCA and brought the system down. Is that true? Well, they have hacked plenty of other systems in the name of global leftism, ranging from San Francisco's BART system to websites daring to support Israel. Hacking a Republican campaign would fit right in with their modus operendi. And it's not implausible that someone disabled ORCA, whether as a dirty trick or for darker reasons. Plenty of characters inside and outside of the US had reason to dread the return of Republicans to the Executive Branch, and hacking into a buggy system like ORCA - apparently ramped up in a hurry in a few months - doesn't seem like all that daunting a task, especially since the Romney camp was bragging about ORCA in the months before the election, in contrast to the tight lipped Obama operation.

Mitt Romney lost a very close election that he genuinely believed was in the bag. You could make a list of "reasons he lost" as long as your arm. The absolute failure of his GOTV operation in states where he lost by tens of thousands of votes has to be a factor, and is deserving of a lot more attention before we start making any "deals" as a sop to this or that disenchanted voting block.