Right Wing Nut House

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels would be on my short list for presidential candidates if he decided to run in 2012.

Unfortunately, outside of us RINO’s, I would be pretty much alone in that hope. Why this is so says a lot about conservatives and Republicans today.

Daniels represents one of the most conservative states in the union. He was just re-elected in 2008 with the largest vote total in state history despite Obama carrying Hoosierland that same year - the first Democrat to do so since LBJ in 1964. Clearly, he is conservative enough for almost anyone in Indiana.

But outside of his home state? Daniels runs into problems because he is actually interested in governing, rather than posing. He wants to get things done rather than hope for failure on the part of the majority as a path back to power. To that end, he has committed the unpardonable sin of working with Democrats in the legislature to pass health care reform, as well as fight the deficit by strategically cutting spending and - another horror - raising taxes.

Somehow, this makes Daniels less conservative than, let’s say, Rush Limbaugh who doesn’t have the responsibility of governing and can afford to posture about evil Democrats because he doesn’t need them to perform his job.

For most movement conservatives, obstructionism and doing nothing about the enormous problems facing us is definitional. Dismissing the opposition as out to harm America is a litmus test.

But Daniels - a great admirer of Reagan - comes at the task of governing a little more pragmatically.

The results speak for themselves:

On this day, Daniels is describing how, in his first term, he won bipartisan support for a program known as Healthy Indiana, which provides health insurance for Hoosiers who aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but earn too little to afford buying coverage for themselves. So far, 50,000 residents have signed up for the program, under which the state contributes up to $1,100 each year to each enrollee’s individual health savings account. Participants also contribute according to their income, and when the account is depleted, a catastrophic insurance plan kicks in to cover any additional expenses. It’s all paid for with a portion of the state’s Medicaid funds, along with an increase in the cigarette tax that Daniels pushed through a reluctant legislature.

In fact, Daniels is such a believer in health savings accounts and consumer-directed health plans that he made sure one was offered to state employees. So far, he reports, 70 percent of state workers have signed up — including himself — saving millions of dollars each year for themselves and taxpayers.

[...]

The good Mitch, by contrast, is a principled but practical conservative who respects the intelligence of voters and would rather get something done than score political points. Daniels is a genuine fiscal conservative who took a $600 million state budget deficit and turned it into a $1 billion surplus but managed to do so without cutting spending for education and even increased funding for child welfare services. He pushed hard to lower property taxes but didn’t hesitate to propose temporary hikes in income and sales taxes to keep the state in the black. He privatized the state’s toll road and then used the $4 billion proceeds to launch a major public works investment program.

He served as Bush’s OMB director and is scary smart. And he doesn’t sound like a tea party patriot in this interview with National Journal:

NJ: What do you think is the biggest lesson that the Republicans haven’t quite learned yet from the last election?

Daniels: Always have a better idea. Let me tell you how this looks from out here — and we’re anomalous. In Indiana, Republicans are the party of change and reform; ask anybody — our opponents, the press, everybody. In the rhythm of life here, four years ago we replaced a 16-year regime that had gone stale.

And so we are the party that restored fiscal integrity. We are the party that addressed health care for the uninsured. We are the party that rebuilt an attractive business environment. We are the party that cleaned up the ethics issues in government — that and much more. We attacked our infrastructure problem in a novel and taxpayer-friendly way.

NJ: That you took a little heat over…

Daniels: Yes, yes, but you know, the results are in — and incidentally, we just won with the largest vote total in the history of elections in our state for any office any year.

NJ: A tough year, too…

Daniels: In a tough year. Obama won the state — you know that. I guess what I’m saying is that when Indiana Republicans meet, I always tell them we cannot control what the party looks like in other places or nationally, but here in Indiana if we don’t remain the party always defining the agenda, bringing the new ideas and standing for constructive change, then people will excuse us from duty. And they should. …

People want to know first of all that you hear them and understand what’s going on in their lives. I work at this incessantly.

Politics is about the winning of power. Governance is about using that power to serve the people. In order to serve the people, you must listen to their concerns, and work with the other branch of government to address them.

Sometimes, like Daniels, you get it mostly right. Other times, like Obama, you get it mostly wrong. Both executives listened to the people but drew radically different conclusions about how to go about addressing their problems.

This week, the president is trying one last time to pass health insurance reform. He is trying one last time to get some cooperation from Republicans. Frankly, I don’t blame the GOP for their opposition after what Harry Reid pulled with the jobs bill, taking a carefully crafted compromise and junking it in favor of a nonsensical measure that barely scratches the surface of our jobs crisis. And I am in agreement that there is so much in the Democrat’s proposal that is overreach that opposing the entire process is probably the only alternative open to principled Republicans.

But I have to admit to having admiration for the president. He is doing what good presidents do; not giving up a cornerstone of his agenda despite the odds because he obviously believes he is right. I want a president to be a stubborn mule when he thinks himself correct. Obama is damning the politics of health care reform and proceeding full speed ahead. I agree that he is perhaps taking his party over a cliff. But he will go down with his flag waving high.

Not very practical of me but a president who digs in their heels when they feel they’re right is someone who “gets it” about the job. History has tapped him on the shoulder. That’s a powerful incentive to make your mark and do so your own way.

Daniels hasn’t had the national responsibility but he didn’t hesitate to raise taxes and cut popular programs to balance the budget. While his health care reforms have been market friendly, the state subsidy to the uninsured would probably be viewed with a jaundiced eye by most movement conservatives. He privatized the state’s tollroads but took the money and funded infrastructure projects.

In short, Daniels has allowed necessity to guide his actions rather than ideology. That, and his decidedly dour take on CPAC does nothing to enamor him to “true” conservatives:

Daniels said he wasn’t at CPAC because it was “a lot of rowdyism and barbs cast at the other side. I think that’s appropriate at a certain time. But that’s not my lane right now.”

Daniels was arguing for the GOP to embrace “a friendly and unifying tone” and that his primary political focus was the upcoming elections for the Indiana legislature.

He argued that the problems facing the country — deficits and economic stagnation in particular — were so dire that they demanded serious policy work, not red meat politics.

“For the first time, I’m concerned about the future of the American experiment,” Daniels said.

When red meat politics is all you understand, and when you view cooperation with the enemy and any straying from a narrow, ideological worldview as apostasy, you are not going to fathom a character like Mitch Daniels nor ever consider him for national office.

I love rowdyism myself. This blog likes to mix it up and I pride myself on my ability to trash liberals with the best of them - when they deserve it. But Daniels is repelled by the kind of hysterically exaggerated critiques of the left that flowed so easily from so many at CPAC, depicting Obama with a horns and tail while ginning up fear and outrage over what might be done in his name. That alone disqualifies him in this current climate of “savagery.”

And that is the republic’s - and the Republican party’s - loss.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome technology writer Charlie Martin who broke a big story today on climategate, and IDB’s Monica Showalter.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

This is the kind of post that could easily degenerate into a swirl of numbers, percentages, tables and graphs - in short, all the boring stuff that causes us to roll our eyes and click away to something else.

I will try to keep that kind of thing to a minimum - if only to define the universe we will be looking at. The real thrust of this post will be philosophical; asking questions to which there may not be any answers, but should cause us to think about government, it’s expanding role in our lives, and the very nature of public service.

After remaining steady for 28 years - 1980-2008 - at between 1.1 and 1.2 million, the number of civilian federal workers in 2010 will have grown to 2.15 million. Some 80,000 of those are temporary census workers, but even once they are off the payroll in 2011, the federal government will still be paying more than 1.35 million employees - the largest number ever and a number that only promises to go up if some kind of national health insurance reform is passed.

State and local government employee increases have been even more remarkable. The number of state workers since 2000 has tripled.

Let’s leave the numbers for a moment and ask an obvious question; is more necessarily bad? There is a direct correlation between the increase in the size of government (i.e., the tasks that government has decreed it has a duty/right to perform) and the increase in public employees at all levels of government. There are some increases that may, indeed, be beneficial. More policemen means safer streets, generally speaking. More firemen is also a good idea. As long as there is reasonable justification to believe that increasing the number of public safety employees will improve the lives of citizens, there aren’t too many who would turn up their nose at that kind of increase in the size of government.

More teachers? If increases in the education bureaucracy was confined to adding educators to the rolls, that too, would be beneficial. But schools and their districts have become so bloated with unnecessary bureaucrats that any add ons there would be counterproductive.

Other increases in employment, such as more service employees at departments that have extensive contact with the public (D.L. Bureaus, state aid agencies) may also be justified. The point is, not all of the increase in the size of federal, state, and local government is necessarily bad. Making a blanket condemnation of the growth in the number of public employees then, is relatively meaningless.

This graph from the Census Bureau lists the total number and total salaries of state employees for 2008. The total is about 14.5 million full and part time employees drawing salaries totaling a little over $49 billion.

Here’s the census data from 2000. Back then, there were about 4.9 million employees being paid $13.2 billion. This represents a tripling in the size of government over 8 years. Even with the caveat that many of those employees may be necessary to the functioning of good government, or are needed to protect and serve us, no one can reasonably make the argument that the need for government by the American people has tripled in 8 years.

Along with the increase in the number of employees has come the uncomfortable idea that government employees have not only increased their share of total US employment, but have surpassed the private sector in average salary and benefits.

This is my second question; should the idea of public service mean that public employees must make sacrifices that include making an inferior salary to those in the private sector?

Let us agree to recognize the reality that in order to attract and keep good employees, the public sector must at least offer competitive wages to those paid in the private sector. But this equation affects a relatively small number of technocrats. What about the bulk of public workers?

One problem with trying to make that determination is that many jobs in government have no counterpart in the private sector. Career Builders carried out this survey a couple of years ago but might cause a few raised eyebrows:

Attorney
Government average: $105,577
Nationwide average: $110,520

Financial Manager
Government average: $95,257
Nationwide average: $96,620

Economist
Government average: $89,441
Nationwide average: $80,900

Microbiologist:
Government average: $80,798
Nationwide average: $63,360

Architect
Government average: $80,777
Nationwide average: $68,560

Accountant
Government average: $74,907
Nationwide average: $58,020

Librarian
Government average: $74,630
Nationwide average: $49,110

Human Resources Manager
Government average: $71,232
Nationwide average: $89,950

Nurse
Government average: $60,935
Nationwide average: $56,880

Tax examiner
Government average: $36,963
Nationwide average: $49,460

Medical Technician
Government average: $35,526
Nationwide average: $33,170

The trouble with averages in this case is that most government jobs are in high cost of living urban areas that tend to bump up the total while private sector data includes ex-urban and rural areas with a far lower cost of living. Still, when you think about the fact that the public employees get an extremely generous benefit package along with a competitive salary, it is a legitimate question to ask if the old fashioned idea of stressing the “service” part of government service hasn’t been lost in some respects.

I don’t want to trash public employees, nor minimize the importance of their work. But at what point is it injurious to the republic that employees of the taxpayer see more benefit in working for themselves than the people? For a couple of hundred years, the idea of working for the government meant service to a higher cause. This was considered a greater reward than being paid on par with private sector workers. It was a matter of sacrificing personal gain for public service.

That idea has been turned upside down today. More than the number of public employees, it is this change in the nature of public employment that is the real threat to liberty. There is no talk of “sacrifice” today. In fact, with the incredible growth in power and influence of public employee unions, there is concentration only on what public employees can rip from politicians representing the taxpayer in the form of gold plated pensions, health care plans, and other extras including outsized vacation packages, overly generous sick day provisions, and holidays not granted to most in the private sector. (Note: Most federal employees are not unionized.)

How does AFSCME, SEIU, NEA, and other public employee unions manage this? Public sector unions gave nearly $400 million to Obama and the Democrats in 2008 in campaign contributions, not to mention many millions more in in-kind contributions such as manning telephone banks, door to door canvassing, get out the vote activities, and other election-related assistance.

Third question: Should public employee unions be allowed to influence politicians by contributing to their campaigns when these same politicians will be making decisions on their salary and benefit packages?

Here’s where the first amendment bumps up directly against what should be considered “good government” practices. In a perfect world, public employee unions would probably voluntarily refrain from such political activity. Until that world arrives, the courts have come down on the side of first amendment protections for the unions rather than common sense, good government policy. Hence, the spectacle of public employee unions basically buying protection from politicians who are only too glad to maintain the status of their ruinously expensive pension and health insurance plans, not to mention virtually guaranteeing job security to the point that even gross inefficiency and illegal behavior will not cause a public sector employee to lose their job.

We have allowed public employees to ascend to a privileged place - a pedestal that they were never intended to occupy by the Founders - to the point where their influence over politicians, especially at the state and local level, have made them a force unto themselves in growing the size of government. More public employees means more union members, which means more dues money, which translates into more political contributions to friendly politicians who will gladly repeat the cycle.

This vicious circle must be ended. The biggest reason is that it is bankrupting us:

Despite the lofty promises made by policymakers, public employee retirement plans have been neglected over the years and have become huge liabilities that severely threaten the financial health of many states. If legislators do not properly address the crisis in public pensions, they will make current state budget problems look trivial. In fact, as of 2006, states had accumulated nearly $360 billion in unfunded pension obligations, according to a new 50 state study conducted for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The report entitled “State Pension Funds Fall Off a Cliff,” is co-authored by Dr. Barry Poulson of the University of Colorado and Dr. Arthur P. Hall of the University of Kansas.

Much of the current data regarding liabilities in public employee pensions was taken before the recent economic downturn, and the study’s authors warn the problem is much worse today since stock market losses have not been fully realized in many official government pension statistics. Other estimates with recent data place the unfunded pension liabilities at $1 trillion nationally.

Already, the seams are bursting as some towns have been forced into insolvency as a result of public employee pension and health care plans. Many more will certainly follow unless the idea of “sacrifice” when working for the people once again becomes part of the idea of public service. Are these hugely expensive pension plans necessary to get and keep good employees? Pension plans that pay up to 80% of the average salary for the last three years of an employee’s work history - years in which the employee’s salary sometimes triples?

There aren’t too many Americans who would answer yes to that question. Until the philosophy and culture of public employee unions changes to reflect the principles of our Founders about working for the government, the public sector will only continue to grow at the expense of the private sector to the detriment of our economy and our liberty.

After having just seen the euphoria and confident words coming out of CPAC about how conservatism isn’t dead - it’s back and better than ever - I feel some trepidation in trying to rain a bit on that parade.

I really don’t like being a Cassandra. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be able to report on a popular, dynamic, vibrant conservatism that is in the ascendancy and ready to reinvigorate government. But blinding oneself to the facts, misinterpreting straws in the wind, and basing a conservative comeback more on wishful thinking than on the evidence before our eyes only makes the task of asking you to face our shortcomings, own up to them, and change course all the more difficult and depressing.

For those of you who refuse to believe that all polls are rigged against the right, and all pollsters have it in for conservatives, you may find the following interesting. The rest of you can move on to more agreeable sites who would rather blindly engage in cheerleading, while ignoring the fact that conservatism is still seen as a marginal philosophy among the young, and that the right’s comeback is the result almost entirely of a huge jump in support among those aged 65-82.

First, the numbers (via Larison), that show some movement toward the right among “millenials” (18-29) but still show a huge gap in party ID:

However, over the course of 2009 the Democratic Party’s advantage among Millennials in party affiliation weakened considerably from its high point in 2008. The most recent party affiliation data (from the fourth quarter of 2009) show that in terms of straight partisan identification, Democrats held a 36% to 24% lead over the GOP among Millennial voters, a significantly narrower edge than the nearly two-to-one margin (41% vs. 22%) in 2008. At the same time, the percentage of Millennials who said they lean Republican has nearly doubled, from 8% in 2008 to 15% at the end of 2009. There was little change in the percentage who leaned Democratic (20% in 2008 vs. 18% in late 2009). While the Democratic Party has a larger advantage among Millennials than it does among the two oldest cohorts, a greater proportion of the party’s support comes from people who do not explicitly identify as Democrats but only lean toward the party.

Despite the shift in partisan leaning among Millennials, the Republican Party has had limited success in increasing the number of Millennials who identify as — and not just lean –Republican. Just 22% of Millennial voters identified as Republican in 2008, and there was no significant rise in the latest polling (24% in the 4th quarter of 2009).

In other words, no sale. Gains were also made by the right among the Gen X, Boomers, and the “Silent Generation” (65-82) with the last of those showing a complete flip in support away from Obama and the Democrats. However, all but the “Silents” still show majority support for the Democrats.

On average, Millennials’ underlying social and political views put them well to the left of their elders. If you dig into the full report, you will see that the recent Republican resurgence owes almost everything to the dramatic shift among members of the so-called “Silent Generation,” whose voting preferences on the generic ballot have gone from being 49-41 Democrat in 2006 to 48-39 Republican for 2010. There have been small shifts in other age groups toward the Republicans, but by far it is the alienation of voters aged 65-82 that has been most damaging to the Democrats’ political strength*. As we all know, these are the voters who are far more likely to turn out than Millennials, which is why Democratic prospects for this election seem as bad as they do even though the Pew survey says that Democrats lead on the generic ballot in every other age group. Among Boomers, Democrats lead 46-42, and among Gen Xers they barely lead 45-44. In other words, the main reason why the GOP is enjoying any sort of political recovery is that many elderly voters have changed their partisan preferences since the last midterm. Republicans remain behind among all voters younger than 65.

What does it mean for Republicans and the right that they now find themselves in the position of defending Medicare against fiscally responsible moves to rein in its costs? Catering to the elderly voting bloc means maintaining the complete integrity of their entitlements.

Even a cursory examination of the huge hole that Medicare is digging for future generations will tell you that addressing the problem is going to entail much more draconian cuts than the measly $500 billion contemplated by the Obama administration in their health insurance reform package. When we’re talking about an eventual shortfall of tens of trillions of dollars, such gestures are hardly worth the political blood spilled to get them enacted.

But the GOP now finds themselves the Defenders of Medicare - an irony too sour for many of us who believe that entitlements need to be drastically overhauled in order to save us from ruinous decline. But since old people vote, it isn’t likely that the Republicans will give up their current advantage in that age group willingly.

It is the young that should concern us, however, Unless something unexpected occurs, the Millenials will be lost to conservatism largely due to what is perceived to be a much less tolerant and less expansive view of social issues:

The percentage of self-identifying conservatives among Millennials is basically equal with that of self-identifying liberals (28% vs. 29%). The youngest generation of voters is unusually ill-disposed towards movement conservatism of the sort on display at CPAC, which is the event Gardiner hails not only as proof that conservatism is the future but as an “intellectually vibrant” gathering.

Gardiner can believe what he wants, but the evidence we have available right now suggests that conservatism is losing, indeed has already lost, most of the next generation, and that conservatism as we know it today is going to keep losing ground in the future. It is possible that something could happen in the next few years that could change that significantly, but typically once a cohort attaches itself to one party or the other its later voting habits become fairly predictable. The generation that came of age during the Bush years and overwhelmingly backed Obama is not going to become receptive to movement conservatism.

Larison’s analysis fails in one respect; the idea that the Millenials will always vote Democratic because they have attached themselves to the Democratic party and their voting habits become “predictable.” The survey Larison references, in fact, shows a growing comfort with conservatism the older one gets.

The Democrats feel they have a chance to cement the loyalty of Millenials to their party by passing national health insurance. Perhaps the “right bill” might have done so, but the monstrosity that has come forth will almost certainly drive them away from the party or, at least, make them so cynical that they drop out of the voting process altogether. The entire burden in the current health insurance plan falls on the youngest wage earners. Once they get wise to that, I suspect they won’t like it much at all and will be looking for someone to blame.

Larison’s point, then, has some deficiencies but its thrust is correct; the current state of Millenial attraction to movement conservatism is very weak and may get weaker over time. Obviously, the conservatives will never abandon their anti-gay marriage stance (and the perception that this makes them bigots plays a significant role in the standoffishness of Millenials), nor is the right likely to move away from the pro-life position - a stance that drives away Millenial women in droves. (While the numbers may be near equal, better educated and wealthier Millenial women are more pro choice.)

Perhaps social upheaval caused by a significant economic downturn would shunt social issues like gay marriage and abortion to the sidelines enough that a conservative economic populist message would resonate more with the Millenials. Then there’s always the chance that they might go the opposite way and embrace more liberal solutions. Given the fact that neither side will change their base conclusions about social issues, something along those lines would appear to be the only real chance to cause the Millenials to give conservatism another look.

As for the other age groups, it was encouraging that in the NJ and VA governor races last year, and the MA senate race this year, it appeared that the right was making a small comeback in suburbia. But it should be noted that the GOP candidates in all three of those races downplayed their social conservatism and talked up economic populism.

The recently completed CPAC conference also lends credence to this idea that the dominance of social issues on the GOP agenda may be on the wane with only 1% of attendees believing that opposition to gay marriage should be the number one issue of the GOP. No word on how many think it should be #2, or #3 which makes me think that the perception that the GOP is anti-gay might not be changing any time soon.

In 2010, where only half the number of people will vote who cast a ballot in 2008, the general level of enthusiasm on the right along with the turnout among the old folks will mean sizable, perhaps spectacular Republican gains.

But what of 2012? Conservatives still have a huge problem with the highly educated, the wealthy, and still trail the Democrats in support by the Middle Class. In a general election with elevated turnout, the Millenials may once again give the Democrats victory despite all that has happened.

Perhaps instead of crowing about a comeback, conservatives should keep their focus on developing alternatives to what the Democrats are doing in order to offer a positive program that would win over those independents who will decide the next two elections.

Republican leaders were treated well enough by attendees at CPAC. They clapped in all the right places. They cheered lustily at every Obama put down. They dutifully applauded at the 100,000th mention at the conference that the GOP had learned its lesson and were now born again fiscal conservatives.

Then attendees went ahead and gave Ron Paul a victory in the presidential straw poll.

National Journal’s Hotline on Call, picking winners and losers, tags the GOP as a big loser:

What the straw poll did show is that many conservatives aren’t happy with the GOP. RNC chair Michael Steele’s fav/unfav rating is upside down, and 37% say they view GOP leadership in Congress unfavorably too. Many speeches included reminders that the GOP had its chance and lost power because of excess spending. If anything, CPAC showed the GOP is courting the Tea Party movement, but Tea Partiers aren’t sold yet.

A man much admired by many tea partyers, Glenn Beck really let the Republicans have it during his keynote address:

Beck also recalled Reagan’s use of the phrase “morning in America” from one of his TV campaign ads. “It is still morning in America, said Beck. “It’s shaping up to be sort of a nasty day, but it’s still morning in America.” Beck blamed “progressivism” in both parties as the “cancer” in U.S. politics.

“It’s big government, and we need to address it as if it is a cancer,” Beck, on the other issues facing politics. “You must eradicate it. … We need big thinkers and brave people, with spines, who can make the case [that] … it’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be ok. We’re going to make it.”

“It’s not enough to not suck as much as the other side,” said Beck, on how Republicans can regain their ideals. “The first step to redemption is admitting you have a problem. … When they do say they have a problem, I don’t know if I believe them. … They’ve got to recognize they have a problem. … ‘I’m addicted to spending and big government.’”

Beck also made the observation that, “One party will tax and spend. The other party won’t tax, but spend. It’s both of them together. I’m tired of feeling like a freak in America.”

And so it went for most of the conference. The crowd saved their biggest applause for those out of government (Gingrich, Cheney), or those challenging the establishment (Rubio), or for those who are quirky, loony politicians who want to go back to a gold standard while eliminating the Fed (Ron Paul).

“It’s not enough to not suck as much as the other side,” is very good advice from Beck. Too bad the GOP isn’t taking it. The fact is, the Republicans can make huge gains in the House and Senate simply by presenting themselves as a less sucky alternative to the Democrats. They don’t need any specific ideas. The certainly don’t think they need a new agenda.

Whatever pablum emerges as a GOP platform for 2010 I guarantee will look a lot like 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002, and 2000. They may drop anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion stuff further down the page. And there will be a something about returning to “constitutional government’ which, while I find a lot of what Obama and the Democrats are doing to be inimical to liberty, I don’t recall the Supreme Court coming out and pronouncing their agenda “unconstitutional.” For people who claim a fealty to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, I find it fascinating that they declare stuff the administration is doing “unconstitutional” when that document implies such determinations are made by the Supreme Court and not conservative activists.

Of course, judicial review is not written into the Constitution but since Marbury vs. Madison, the high court’s jurisdiction in matters pertaining to the interpretation of what is constitutional and what isn’t hasn’t been questioned. Hence, while I agree with those activists who question the constitutionality of some of what Obama has sought to do, I think it nonsensical to declare willy nilly that just because there is no mention of health insurance in our founding document, that the attempt for a government takeover of health care is, by itself, unconstitutional. It’s a horrible, stupid, ruinous idea. But unconstitutional? I will wait for the Supreme Court to decide that question.

Also, this loyalty to our Constitution seems to have its limits with many activists. I seem to recall a passage in there about Congress being granted the sole authority to declare war or something. This is a problem for many (not all) strict constructionists who appear to want government to treat what’s in the Constitution as the Revealed Word on some things, but others? Not so much.

But never fear, there will almost certainly be language in any GOP manifesto for the election that will seek a “return” to constitutional government. Asking those conservatives when we abandoned that kind of government would elicit some fascinating responses, no doubt.

All snark aside, the Republicans are in a bind. They put on a full court press at CPAC to attract, flatter, and praise the tea party movement, while seeking to move them into the GOP orbit, as Hotline explains:

The Tea Party Movement: Virtually every speaker paid homage to a movement that remains loosely defined, praising fiscal restraint and a renewed energy among activists protesting the Obama admin’s policies. The media had fun interviewing the guy in the tri-cornered hat and “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, but GOP leaders are doing their best to incorporate, and kowtow to, the movement. Anyone who can show they lead a local Tea Party group is leaving CPAC with an enormous sense of power, and the GOP is all too happy oblige.

I have no doubt that a sizable segment of the tea party movement - perhaps even a majority - will resist the siren song of Steele et. al. and remain outside the party structure. But the conservative/libertarian bent of the movement makes it inevitable that there will be some synergy between the establishment and the new grass roots simply because they are a natural fit. The Democrats aren’t interested in conservative reform and have kicked the flirtatious libertarians to the sidelines. Since there seems - at the moment - to be little energy among the grass roots for a third party, that leaves them only one place to go.

The GOP will make big gains in 2010 simply by being less sucky than the Democrats. But the difference between picking up 25 seats in the House and 4-5 in the Senate, and a Republican tsunami that sweeps the Democrats from power will be the GOP’s ability to offer a positive agenda that speaks to the fears and concerns of ordinary voters. Without something to vote for, the great independent middle of the electorate who broadly support a platform that espouses fiscal sanity and an end to legislative overreach by the Democrats, will not give Republicans the smashing victory they are capable of achieving unless there are specific initiatives that deal with their everyday problems.

It’s not enough to say you’re for the Constitution. Holy Jesus, you might as well say you’re for apple pie, and grandmothers. Republicans are going to have to earn this one by convincing the American voter that they hear their cries for help, and will respond by passing legislation that deals with the specific causes of their misery; jobs, the deficit, skyrocketing health care costs, and a promise that what happened on Wall Street that initiated this mess, won’t happen again, among other things.

Can a party and a movement that has worn its disdain for government action of just about any kind on its sleeve convince people that it now sees government as part of the solution?

That would be a trick worthy of Houdini.

Before I delve into the thicket of analysis as to why a sizable number of conservatives are opposed to gay marriage (and the subset of that minority that hate gays period), I wanted to address Bob Barr’s comments yesterday at the National Security panel at CPAC.

The setting was interesting.

Oh what a lovely crowd, huh? Bob Barr is booed and yelled at loudly by the crowd until the moderator, Jay Sekulow, calms them down, for daring to point out that waterboarding is torture. This is from one of the CPAC 2010 panel segments, the topic of which was, “Does Security Trump Freedom?” The panelists included Barr, Jim Gilmore, Dan Lungren and Viet Dinh. Rep. Lungren got a nice little cheer out of them for saying he was for “enhanced interrogation” as well. There’s your conservative base, folks: Torture lovers.

1. Many in the crowd were yelling support for Barr, especially the Paulbots were were all over CPAC yesterday, and libertarians who came to see their former presidential candidate. There were also many boos - especially after the former congressman condemned water boarding as torture.

2. The crowd was none too kind to Barr either after his remarks about the Patriot Act (”repeal it”), the terrorist surveillance program, and his strong criticism of Bush-era national security measures at home.

3. The discussion was remarkable. There were disagreements about many issues among the panelists. For contrast, when I attended the Netroots Convention a few years ago, I saw several panels where there was as much disagreement about issues as you might expect from the College of Cardinals about theology. Not only boring to listen to, but the lockstep mentality of the panelists was almost comical.

Readers of this site know that I side with Barr in this debate - at least on waterboarding torture. I think he has some good things to say about civil liberties overall, but I would disagree with him about some elements of the Patriot Act which have been blown wildly out of proportion by civil liberties absolutists. Oversight is the key and, while there have been notable lapses, overall I think the courts, DoJ and Congress have done a pretty good job in that regard. They can do better and we need people like Barr to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they do.

Despite what many on the left may say, these are not cut and dried issues (except those “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are clearly torture) where the left is on the side of the angels. In fact, they have tried to politicize the national security/civil liberties debate to their shame.

They shamelessly sought to score political points by railing against the Patriot Act, the TSP, and even the innocuous SWIFT terrorist money tracking program. These are not programs that are indicative of a slow slide towards authoritarianism. There is certainly room for disagreement. We know that some on the left care as much about civil liberties as they care about Joe Lieberman because now that Obama is president and has kept many of these programs intact, we hear nary a peep from most of them (Barr and Greenwald being notable exceptions).

The discussion yesterday where Barr was loudly booed for some of his views was robust, nuanced, intelligent, and so far above anything in quality that I’ve ever seen from the left on these subjects that they are not even playing in the same league. Pointing out diversity of opinion in these matters only makes liberals look like the mindless automatons on these issues that they have shown themselves to be.

What of the blow up about gays?

It happened at an event that highlighted young conservative activists across the country - many of whom started “conservative clubs” at their high schools and had to go through the usual harassment by clueless school administrators. One YAF member from California, Ryan Sorba, went up to the podium with a chip on his shoulder, and rather than tell his little two minute story about his activism, he launched a tirade against “GoProud” - a conservative gay organization - who had a booth at the conference.

It was pretty embarrassing. Sorba stood up there like the former high school star athlete he probably was and kept looking out into the audience - many of whom were booing him - and kept sneering “Bring it on!.” It was painful to watch - especially when you realized that the cheers for Sorba were, if not equal to the boos, then certainly noticeable.

That’s only half the story. Someone at the American Conservative Union who assigned booth space was either trying to sabotage the gays or is really, really dense. They placed the gay’s booth very near a table manned by representatives of the National Organization for Marriage -a group that, um, strenuously opposes gay marriage.

My guess is the former. The thinking must have been that those visiting the anti-gay marriage booth would then sidle over to GOProud’s table and harass them. Maybe they were even hoping for fisticuffs. Instead, according to this video from CNN, the two sides got along fine. There were spirited discussions as you might imagine but no unpleasantness - until yesterday.

That’s when NOM issued a press release, warning GOProud that if they supported candidates who advocated gay marriage, they would “Scozzafavaize” them. That led to this statement by one of the gay group’s representatives who wonder why the NOM people couldn’t have said the same thing to him in person since he was only 5 feet away. “Who’s are the pansies at CPAC” the GoProud fellow asked?

The bigger issue, of course, is the attitude shared by many in the Republican party and conservative movement toward gay people. Opposition to gay marriage does not make one a homophobe, although there is certainly a subset of that group who are. Since our politics has become so irrational that debating gay marriage sensibly is out of the question, supporters of the issue lazily tar all opponents, willy nilly, with that disgusting moniker.

But it is not those who oppose gay marriage because they see it as detrimental to society, or against their religious beliefs who necessarily demonstrate a nauseating intolerance for gay people. Rather it is that ever shrinking number of opponents - mostly men - who genuinely hate gay people for who they are, and who have been given a home in the conservative movement and Republican party that should concern us.

Are there gay haters who are liberal Democrats? Of this, I have no doubt. Given the amount of racism we’ve seen from “tolerant” liberals, I am completely convinced that there are homophobes in the Democratic party and progressive movement as well.

The difference is, that kind of bigotry isn’t catered to as it is in the conservative movement and GOP so anti-gay liberals generally know enough to keep their mouths shut. Ideology plays a small role in gay hating, or any kind of bigotry. People are people, and intolerance knows no political party or philosophy. To argue otherwise is to argue against human nature - nice trick if you can pull it off.

While there may be homophobes who are liberals, gay intolerance is a problem for conservatives exclusively. The left has mostly marginalized their haters - not so the right. It is tolerated under the guise of “religious freedom” for the most part, but the effect is the same; a poisonous fear and loathing of homosexuals that drags down all conservatives and adds to the right’s problems with regards to the political perception of conservatives held by the public at large.

I am not a psychologist. I don’t even play one on the internet. My personal feelings about gays is fairly tolerant - when I think about it. I’m not sure someone’s sexuality should be a major political issue, but I understand why gays would try and make it so. I support gay marriage simply because it is an inevitable consequence of changing societal values, as I stated here. Managing that change so that it occurs within the context of the popular will should be what concerns conservatives, in my opinion. No judicial shortcuts.

But through their opposition to gay marriage, conservatives supply cover for the genuine bigots who usually couch their intolerance by claiming common cause with the traditional marriage folks. Obviously a way must be found to separate those who sincerely oppose gay marriage out of conviction or faith, from the haters who want homosexuals back in the closet and sodomy laws reinstituted. I’m not sure that it’s possible, but an effort should be made nonetheless. Self-policing language and rhetoric would be a start. Defending outright bigotry by alluding to “political correctness” isn’t going to cut it. There are lines that cannot be crossed and those that do should be called out for it.

Beyond that, there are symbolic, but telling steps that can be taken to raise the profile, and integrate Log Cabin Republicans, GOProud, and other gay conservative organizations into the party leadership. The establishment is terrified of gays, thinking that accepting them would bring down the wrath of evangelicals upon them. This may be true. But as Allahpundit and others have pointed out, the tide may - just may - be turning on that score:

The One’s agenda has vaulted fiscal conservatism to the top of the list of right-wing priorities; with even Darth Cheney sanguine about gay marriage, social issues simply don’t have the same bite that they used to. In fact, I’m curious to know if Ed’s gotten the same vibe at the convention that Time magazine’s getting — namely, thanks to the GOP’s tilt towards libertarianism, that the big tent is a little bigger this year than it used to be.

Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.

I believe there is a way to maintain conservative and GOP opposition to gay marriage while purging the movement and party of the bigots who do so much to harm the perception held by the average American of the right. It won’t be easy. The left, as they continuously do with regard to race, will seek to minimize, criticize, and misrepresent anything conservatives do in this regard.

But a changing society demands that we change with it. And recognizing and tolerating the 10% or so of the population who are attracted sexually to the same sex is not just the politically correct, or politically advantageous, or even the philosophically satisfying thing to do.

It is the right thing to do, and should be done because it is morally correct.

Was the Austin terrorist John Stack a right wing loon?

Sure - because as we all know, liberals love to pay taxes and never get mad at the IRS.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Paul Begala wanting to make April 15 “Patriot’s Day:”

Happy Patriots’ Day. April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us — or at least the vast majority of us.

[...]

This country has showered me with the blessings of liberty. So what do I owe my country in return? Paying my fair share of taxes, it seems, is the least I can do. Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 95 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year. No one — not even the wealthiest 1 percent — will have to pay higher income taxes until 2011.

But no one kisses the ass of our IRS overlords with more nauseating obeisance than Matt Stoller:

I just paid my taxes, and I have to say, I always take pride when I do so. I don’t like having less money to spend, of course, and the complexity of the process is really upsetting. But I am proud to pay for democracy, and I feel when I do send money to the DC Treasurer and the US Treasury that that is what I am doing. The right-wing likes to pretend as if taxes are a burden instead of the price of democracy. And I suppose, if you hate democracy, as the right-wing does, then taxes are the price for paying for something you really don’t want. Personally, I find banking fees, high cable and internet charges, health care costs, and credit card hidden charges much more abrasive than taxes, because with those I’m just being ripped off to pay for someone’s summer home.

To which I responded:

When liberals like Stoller make noises of satisfaction like an infant who has just soiled their diaper just because they obeyed the law one wonders what lefties like our Matt do when they come to a complete stop at a stop sign. The celebrations must go on far into the night.

Obviously, liberals love it when they are racked and stretched by the IRS - even for honest, piddly-sh*t transgressions. They get off on a government agency that can make your life miserable - and, as Mr. Stack suggests - unlivable once caught up in the maw of IRS enforcement procedures. The trauma and torture wears one down, as forcefully and unrelentingly as tectonic plates grinding against each other.

Here’s Amanda Marcotte who suggests that Mr. Stack was indeed a left winger but that he was trying to goose right wing nuts into picking up on his IRS jihad:

Stack’s beef with the IRS seems to have developed from personal problems stemming from possible tax evasion on his part. But it appears to have turned into a full-blown ideological stance, and again, it’s clear that he hopes others who share his ideological stance—and believe me, there are a lot of crazy right wing nuts in the area who do, and I have no doubt Stack was aware of this—will act on his wishes. This is what I mean by a mish-mash. Most of his ranting seems very left wing, but if you’re living in central Texas and you do something like this, you’re sending a signal to right wing nuts, and you know it.

“Most of his ranting seems very left wing…” but ignore that, pay it no mind. It disturbs the narrative that this fellow was a tea party type.

What was that “left wing rant?”

And while they appear to make it look like it’s all about anti-government and anti-IRS, they fail to mention his anti-Catholicism, anti-Bushism, anti-capitalism and pro-communism.

I guess it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative

No, it doesn’t. But when has that ever stopped anyone on the left from jumping to conclusions? Recall that suicide of the federal worker in Kentucky that the left flayed conservatives over before it was discovered he took his own life and wasn’t murdered by “anti-government extremists.” Or Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s “PTSD transference” where he heard so many bad things about Iraq coming from his patients that he snapped. I wrote here about both right and left jumping to conclusions about Hasan but in the case of the Austin terrorist, there is a clear, and laughably ignorant attempt by many on the left to tie Mr. Stack to tea partyers.

Why can’t a nutcase just be a nutcase? Why does he have to be “motivated” by political views at all? I’m not a mental health professional, but I’ve read enough to know that trying to glean intent from a diseased mind is a ludicrous sport for amateurs. The reason someone commits suicide in the first place is that the natural, healthy, normally functioning mind breaks and the primal urge of self preservation is either short circuited or is prevented from working properly. This does not happen in minds that are in love with logic or reason.

The left is ascribing a rational thought process to an irrational man. If it weren’t so stupidly obvious that there’s is a political attack rather than a serious attempt to reach a conclusion based on observation, investigation, and a familiarity with how mental disease can lead to suicide, we might excuse liberals for simply being dumb. But tis the season for idiotic political bloviating so we’re stuck with nonsense like this:

Joseph Stack was angry at the Internal Revenue Service, and he took his rage out on it by slamming his single-engine plane into the Echelon Building in Austin, Texas. We now know this thanks to the rather clear (as rants go) suicide note Stack left behind. There’s no information yet on whether he was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we’re hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.

I was not struck by that at all. What struck me was this guy’s lack of a clear ideology - something that some of the less reason challenged liberals recognized and, to their credit, are writing about.

Or this:

5. He was mad at the IRS, and left what CNN reports was a suicide note on a local website, detailing his trials with the agency. In fact, a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a tea party rally.

The question of whether this guy was a terrorist is a no brainer; of course he was. Maybe the FBI and Homeland Security refuse to call incidents like this “terrorism” because of the increased paperwork involved in reporting it that way. Otherwise, the only explanation that makes sense is they don’t want to make a big deal out of the incident.

But in this case, we have a terrorist without portfolio. His motivation, given the building housed a regional IRS office, seemed to have been revenge more than anything. His ranting about wanting to inspire people is just that - the mouthings of a madman who wanted to give his death a twisted kind of meaning. It’s not logical or rational. It is delusional.

Maybe some day both sides will realize that the only people they are fooling with their politicization of the insane are themselves.

Rob Port is at CPAC and took a White House tour which included the White House Library:

Now, according out the person who guided our tour, the library is stock with books picked out by the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Being a bit of a bibliophile, I started to peruse some of the books on the shelves…and lookie, lookie what I found (click for a larger view):

By itself, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But in the context of Anita Dunn saying Chairman Mao is her favorite political philosopher? In the context of the Mao ornament on the White House Christmas tree?

In the context of Obama’s economic policies?

Well, I’ll let you make your own call.

OK. My call is that you’re a loon.

Anyone looking at my father’s library would have had him arrested for sedition if they thought like Mr. Port. My dad had Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Michael Harrington, Howard Zinn, and a host of socialists, communists, and other far left authors on his book shelf. The fact that he was a dyed in the wool capitalist, a New Deal Democrat, a veteran of World War II, and a practicing Catholic would not make any difference to someone of Mr. Port’s ilk. Those books are in his library so obviously, he must agree with their content.

Of course, this is anti-intellectualism run rampant. Whoever our next president is going to be, I hope to god they have a supple and open enough mind to have read Marx and Engels, as well as Ambrose and Friedman. I hope they inculcate this attitude of open scholarship and free inquiry into their children. I hope there are no ideas or ideology they fear. And I hope they can recognize this liberty of mind as essential to the liberty of the soul.

Parenthetically, I see where Michelle Obama also placed John Hicks seminal work on prairie populism, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party on the shelf. What are we to think of someone who displays a book about a grass roots rebellion against east coast elites? That they support the tea party movement?

Just asking.

I am not attending CPAC this year. Finances have become problematic and since neither one of my employers were going to pay my way, the $1,000 or so that the trip would cost me will be put to better uses I’m sure.

Not that they would have rolled out the red carpet for me anyway. RedState is running Blogger’s Row this year and it’s strange, but my invitation somehow got lost in the email. Or perhaps they’re still smarting from my post criticizing RedState as “a barbarous brew of angry yawpers.”

A mystery, yes?

Then there are the few conservatives who have gotten angry enough to de-link me, or write long screeds calling me a liberal or other swear words who would have taken great pleasure in confronting me at CPAC for my apostasy. I apologize for not giving you your “Chief Brody slap” moment. Maybe next year.

So who is going to be welcome at CPAC this year?

“There needs to be a purging of the movement, and I think we’re already starting to see a different of hierarchy of groups,” said Erick Erickson, the Macon, Ga.-based founder of RedState.com, who predicts that “you’re going to see a much more diffuse conservative movement that is being led in large part from outside of Washington and is much more in line from the grass roots.”

Erickson, a favorite of the new activists, said, “Some of these legacy groups have become so entrenched in the Republican establishment in Washington that a lot of these new activists don’t think they can trust them.”

As examples, Erickson singled out CPAC’s primary sponsor, the American Conservative Union, as well as CPAC stalwarts including the Heritage Foundation think tank and the groups headed by Grover Norquist and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Those groups and other organizations that once formed the vanguard of the conservative movement — such as the National Rifle Association, the Family Research Council and Young America’s Foundation — haven’t made major inroads in the tea party movement.

And thus my first observation; this is not a friendly gathering where independent thought - or much thinking at all - is welcomed. It is the Palinization of conservatism; the rise of Joe the Plumberarianism on the right as George Will (another who is in bad odor with this crowd) points out:

America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832.

Note: It is not what these establishment conservatives say, nor especially what they think as much as what they represent that has Erickson and others pining for a Stalinist purge. Sidelining Norquist I can see. The man is a toad of a lobbyist who facilitated the sale of the Republican party to special interests. But kicking the Heritage Foundation out the door? Or Newt Gingrich? What connects these targets of the neo-right is that almost all of them approach politics and the issues with a thoughtfulness that is painfully lacking in their purge-happy opponents. They are no less fiscally conservative than the neo-rightists who want their scalps. Nor are they less devoted to the Constitution. To imply otherwise is libelous.

But the neo-rightists who smell blood in the water and wish to take control of the conservative movement are arrogant enough to believe that they have a corner on love for our founding document, and take the simple minded approach that if you criticize them, your devotion to First Principles are suspect. They constantly refer to themselves as “patriots” as if designating oneself thusly actually confers legitimacy on the honorific.

As I mentioned previously, I have never heard of this kind of self-reverence until tea partyers began to identify themselves as “patriots.” Real patriots allow others to append that appellation to them and eschew doing the honor themselves. That’s because some of the prerequisite qualities for being considered a patriot are humility and self-abnegation - not much of which will be on display at CPAC this year.

Second observation; welcoming the Birchers back into the fold while gleefully kicking intellectual conservatives and other “elites” out into the street may be enormously satisfying on an emotional level but brands the neo-rightists as gigantic failures in appreciating irony.

If there is one thing I wanted to do at CPAC if I had been able to attend, I would have loved to stand around the John Birch Society booth and talk to the visitors. Would they be aware of the battle that mainstream conservatives fought in the 1950’s and early 60’s to sideline these wackos, and bring conservatism into the intellectual mainstream? Probably not. In response to my criticisms of CPAC for allowing the JBS to co-sponsor and exhibit, I was informed that, at least as far as fringe nutjobs are concerned, the conservative tent should be expanded to include them. Others, who might not agree with the neo rightists on 100% of their pet issues need not apply.

Third observation; if this indeed, is a changing of the guard with the conservative establishment being marginalized and the neo right ascendant, then it stands to reason that the definition of “conservatism” will narrow considerably.

Protestations to the contrary will do no good. I have experienced first hand the definitional constriction of who these jamokes believe is “conservative enough.” We have seen the repudiation of Newt Gingrich, George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Frum, and countless others who, at one time or another, have been tarred with the “liberal” epithet, or RINO, or “Democrat-lite.” Their sin has been to disagree with the notion that there is one overarching definition of conservatism, that differences on issues or tactics does not mean that there are differences in principles.

But the neo right is unable to differentiate between issues and principles, and thus, there will be precious few “acceptable” conservatives from the northeast, the upper midwest, and most of the mid-atlantic. Ceding that much territory to your opponent will eventually lead to permanent minority status.

Right now, the right is rising because of the demonstrated incompetence and overreach of the Democrats. The voter literally has nowhere else to go if they disagree with health care reform, the bailouts, the buy outs, and the corporate cozying being carried out by the Obama administration. Since conservatives have offered nothing positive for voters to rally to, the recent polls showing people gravitating toward conservatism can be seen as a reaction to what Obama is doing, not to anything conservatives are offering as an alternative.

This will be fine for 2010. But what happens in 2012? And beyond? The bad economic times will be with us for a while, and there will come a point where people will get tired of hearing about sticking to principle and want their government to do something to help them. Since this is a foreign language to the neo-right, they will elect those who seem to care about their problems.

What problems? Here’s David Frum commenting on the vapid Mount Vernon Statement released yesterday:

* Are you an American who was earning less in 2007 than in 2000? The document has nothing to say to you.

* Did you lose your home or job or savings in the crisis of 2008-2009? Blank to you.

* Are you worried about the loss of your health insurance – or how you will pay for nursing care for your aged parents – or what 20% youth unemployment will mean for your newly graduated child’s life chances? Not our department.

* Do you wonder whether we are winning or losing the war on terror? Do you want an explanation for why it took so long for a conservative administration to react to military disaster? No answers here.

I’ve said it before; there are many on the neo right who claim allegiance to the Constitution but refuse to recognize a role for government in modern society. Their notion of “limited government” is more akin to the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution, more comfortable in a 19th century setting than the 21st century.

With that kind of attitude, and if candidates are elected to office that espouse this kind of extraordinarily narrow and restrictive view of what government is about, then conservatives will find themselves shunted to the sidelines before they know what hits them.

The true believers and ideologues who are angling to overthrow the existing conservative regime will eventually discover that populism, as George Will noted, hasn’t won an election in 187 years. And noble goals do not always translate into success at the ballot box. Government, limited or expansive, must answer the needs of the people. Forgetting or eschewing that fact will lead to marginalization and defeat.

The earthquake that shook the world’s financial system in September of 2008 opened many eyes to the fact that the largest companies on Wall Street had become heavily engaged in the extremely profitable but wholly unregulated derivatives market without a clue as to understanding the extraordinary damage their gambling could do to the economies of the industrialized countries if a financial shock came along.

There were some - in government and out - who sensed the trouble we were in but whose voices were drowned out in the speculative frenzy, the drive for ever larger profits, and the mania for secrecy upon which these firms traded. And the enablers in the Clinton Administration - including Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Robert Rubin - along with the anti-regulatory Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, worked hard during the 1990’s (as did their successors in the Bush administration) to keep the regulators at bay, discrediting them with Congress, and trying to bully them to toe the party line on keeping the derivatives market free of scrutiny by the government.

We paid for this shortsightedness with a meltdown of the financial industry that we are still feeling today and are likely to feel for years to come.

Those who continue to believe that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and subsequent tsunami that led to our current economic problems was the result of a few hundred thousand poor people who got loans they shouldn’t have received through the Community Reinvestment Act need to wake up and smell the coffee. The still unregulated derivatives market is worth $600 trillion today. That is not a misspelling. An unknown tens of trillions of that market - nobody can possibly know exactly - are in “toxic assets” still being carried on the books of big banks just waiting for the next shock to hit Wall Street to bring these great houses of finance to their knees again.

Yes, mismanagement of risk by Fannie and Freddie had something to do with the crisis, and the CRA had its own small role to play. But this crisis virtually begins and ends with the mind boggling way in which the largest financial service companies in the world fought tooth and nail to keep the government from finding out just what they were up to with these credit swaps.

I suppose I should mention that my understanding of all this is a mile wide and an inch deep. But the political explanations offered by both sides never satisfied my curiosity. The crisis was more than 2 decades in the making, and the idea that one side is more or less to blame for it is nonsense. Both Clinton and Bush, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have a lot to answer for and trying to place relative blame on a scale and weigh out who should be designated as the winner of the blame game is an exercise in futility.

No transparency, no record keeping, and little understanding by either the companies or the government of the systemic risk of these derivatives and credit swaps led directly to the collapse. But we can’t get rid of derivatives even if we wanted to, as business writer for the NY Times Timothy O’Brien points out:

But it’s really important to remember that there are a lot of good, practical uses for derivatives. In fact, the average person who’s a homeowner owns a derivative. It’s the insurance policy on their house, and it’s essentially a contract that you enter into with an insurer that pays you a certain amount of money if some kind of damage or calamity happens to your home. And you pay a little bit of money, or a lot of money depending on the size of your home, each year for that policy.

Wall Street has all sorts of contracts like this. Derivatives, in essence, are insurance policies that various players on Wall Street and in the business world enter into to protect themselves from unforeseen calamities, whether it’s wild interest-rate swings, changes in the values of currencies, someone’s debt going bad. …

And that’s a good thing. When people have protection from things they can’t control, it enables them to take sensible risks, which allows them to grow their business and allows more money to get created and creates jobs. These are all good things, as long as that’s what these things are being used for.

As you might have guessed, it was the other things derivatives were used for that sealed our fate:

The problem is, no one really knows exactly what derivatives are being used for because it all exists in a black box. They’re unregulated; the contracts aren’t traded on exchanges; they’re entered into between private parties. No one knows whether or not one company, let’s, for example, call them AIG, a big insurance company, has entered into so many of these contracts that if an unforeseen financial hurricane comes and hits the house known as Wall Street and suddenly AIG is required to make good on … so many of these policies that they don’t have enough money to do this, and they run into danger of going belly up. Which is exactly what happened at AIG.

And the lingering question is, if these transactions - if the derivatives market - had been regulated adequately, could we have avoided the worst of the meltdown? Joe Nocera, also of the Times:

The technical term for the kind of derivatives that really got us into trouble is bespoke derivatives. Bespoke means one of a kind. And these were complicated contracts that covered a particular, you know, one deal only. It couldn’t be replicated. It wasn’t like buying a share of IBM that is exactly the same as every other share of IBM. You bought a credit default swap; it would be built around a particular series of deals. It would have a particular set of terms. It would be one of a kind.

This is, by the way, why this stuff became so untradable. How do you trade a one-of-a-kind? There is no real market for them. It has a utility as a contract on a one-on-one basis. But there is no trading function. And that has been part of the whole problem. They don’t mark to market, i.e., because there is nothing to compare it to. What’s out there that you can compare this one thing to? So they mark to model. They come up with fancy, financial models every quarter. And they mark this thing to the model.

And for many years the model said they were worth more, worth more, worth more, so you mark them up. And then finally the model said: “Uh, you know what? Foreclosures are up. Subprime is down. We have got to start marking them down.” You start to blow up. But even though they are blowing up, you are still stuck with them. There is nothing you can do with them. You can’t trade them.

Bottom line:

So one of the big problems with the rise of credit derivatives is that Wall Street was terribly resistant to the idea of standardizing contracts and allowing them to be traded on an exchange, because it would hurt their profits.

The question now before us is what should be done about it? And for me and for many conservatives, the question becomes is there any regulatory regime that would be consistent with conservative principles?

It is a false assumption that regulation of markets is inherently un-conservative. Libertarians might take that position but since conservatives should value order above almost all else, sensible regulation of markets is a requirement for promoting a just and orderly society.

The size of companies like JP Morgan and Citigroup gives them an enormous advantage in the market already. And as I demonstrated above, these credit swaps take place in a totally unregulated, secret environment. Add the potential for harm to the community - harm that could be avoided or mitigated with a regulatory regime - and I think a solid, general case can be made for conservatives to support some kind of minimal regulation.

The problem as I see it, is that as with everything else President Obama wishes to do, he takes a good idea and ruins it by overkill. The president wants to transform the financial services industry. Conservatives want to rein it in. Obama wants to drastically reduce risk. Conservatives recognize the value of risk (as explained above) and want to minimize it without destroying its many advantages. The president wants to create a federal agency - the Consumer Financial Protection Agency - that some analysts believe would make credit extremely difficult to get for ordinary Americans. Conservatives believe that laws already on the books to protect consumers in this regard could be strengthened, but that a whole new agency is dangerous and unnecessary.

The differences then, are a matter of degree. Clearly, where there is no regulation or transparency, government must be there to create it so that not only is the economy protected, but that the derivatives market itself becomes less prone to the kind of exploitation that secrecy encourages.

Being supportive of a free market most decidedly does not mean that conservatives should oppose all regulation, or support less than adequate regulation, due to an ideological belief that such “interference” is an anathema to the functioning of the market. If the derivatives crisis showed anything, it is that our modern financial system is so complex that ordinary market forces that are supposed to correct imbalances are actually a danger to the economy as a whole. There may have been steps short of trillions in bail outs for firms “too big to fail.” We will never know because they weren’t tried. But even solutions like forced mergers of teetering banks, managed liquidations, guided bankruptcies, and the like would have required massive government intervention in the markets to achieve. And since the problem was worldwide, such measures may still have not been enough to keep the crisis from imperiling the world’s banking system.

A free market is only free if all benefit from its workings. When big companies can skew the market to gain advantages not available to others, or when they can game the system - backed by taxpayers - to take wild risks and place our economy in peril, it behooves conservatives to support reasonable steps by the government to rectify the situation.

Some of what the president proposes makes sense. Preventing big banks from both taking deposits and trading securities that benefit their own house - a small move back toward Glass-Steagell - is a good idea. Other ideas, like making the Fed the overseer of “systemic risk” and the creation of the CFPA smack of overreach. What eventually emerges from negotiations with Congress, with Wall Street, and the White House we can only hope will be adequate to address the problems without being so burdensome that they stifle economic activity.