Thursday, June 28, 2012
Obamacare Ruling
Of course I am disappointed by the decision, but I'm not surprised. I was predicting a 6-3 ruling upholding the mandate with Kennedy and Roberts in the majority. I had believed, like many, that if the conservative wing could not get Kennedy that Roberts would side with the liberal wing to "control" the opinion of the court, but never did I imagine that Kennedy would dissent while Roberts joined the liberals. That part makes it sting a little more, but honestly, I'm not shocked by the result. That said, there are a lot of silver linings, and here are some things I think that conservative-libertarians should keep in mind as we move forward:
1) There was a VERY fine distinction between the dissent and the majority opinion on the issue of the mandate. From the dissent: "The issue was not whether Congress had the power to frame the minimum coverage provision as a tax, but whether it did so." The fate of this decision rested on whether the mandate was a penalty or a tax, but how many of the dissenters would have joined the majority if it had been clear this was a tax? (we don't know for sure, because the dissenters do not address the issue of whether they would have upheld a non-insurance tax under Congress's taxing power, but it seems likely that at least one would have, given the breadth of that power in the court's jurisprudence). Given that, I think all the harrumph-ing about this case as establishing a broad new federal power is a little over-blown. I for one, don't much care whether Congress called the thing a penalty or a tax, because functionally, it amounts to the same thing. How, then, could we have seen it as a victory for freedom or limited government if the decision had said "sorry, it's a penalty, and hence you can't have it," when Congress could have done the same thing anyway simply by calling it a tax? Such a decision would have won the day, but would have left a clear road map for Congress reaching the exact same result via different means. Such a ruling would not have been a grand constitutional victory, but a narrow ruling striking this hideous bill, and leaving us just as exposed to Congress's massive tax power (as we have been for a century).
2) We did win on the Commerce Clause issue, which, while that probably feels like cold comfort now, is nevertheless important. I did NOT expect that result, and so see it as a silver lining. Don't forget that prior to US v. Lopez in the 1990s, most constitutional scholars had thought all commerce clause limitations were dead. Thanks to Lopez, Morrison, and now NFIB, there are at least some limits on Congress's authority to regulate commerce. But who cares, you ask, if Congress can squeeze in the back door with it's taxing authority? It matters because politically it is harder for Congress to pass a tax than to "regulate commerce." Indeed, one of the things that makes the decision today so galling is that it allowed the Democrats to garner the political benefits of "pretending" this wasn't a tax (which of course it was, which is one of the reasons I'm not as upset with Roberts as I suspect some of my peers are right now) to secure passage by the narrowest of margins while getting the benefit (in terms of constitutionality) of it being a tax. That's maddening, but understandable. The Court has a duty--which CJ Roberts clearly appreciates--to uphold statutes if they are constitutional under any fair reading. I happen to agree with the dissent that construing this "penalty" as a tax was a bit tortured, but, the silver lining is: going forward, Congress can't play that game again b/c of the clear precedent here. NEXT TIME, they will have to assert the proper basis for their jurisdiction. So the decision, while allowing the mandate, also shrinks the very hole which such legislation can be shoved through. And the other upshot of winning on the Commerce Clause issue....
3) It's now clear, and judicially decreed, that this bill is a massive tax increase! (duh!). This is a political weapon for the GOP. I don't pretend to know how the politics will sugar out, and of course the Administration will spin this as a big win, BUT: the law is still unpopular, and now the GOP can say, with perfect justification, the SCOTUS peeled away the BS and laid bare for all what this law really is. A highly regressive TAX on Americans with no health insurance. Ouch. I think there is mileage to get out of this with voters. And finally,
4) Let's all remember that the ballot box is and always has been more important than the Courts in getting good policy. As CJ Roberts noted: "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." Amen. It always amazes me that conservatives seem to fall into the trap of thinking the Court should strike down bad laws. Nonsense. We have a right to enact stupid laws. This one surely was one. There was a good argument that it was unconstitutional, but we lost that fight. Now let's push forward politically, rather than legally, on the far more salient point: constitutional or not, it's an economic basket case and we need a President and a Congress willing to gut it and start fresh.
Friday, March 30, 2012
The Mandate is Falling, the Mandate is Falling!
In yesterday's New York Times, an MIT Economist named Jonathan Gruber, who the Times has apparently nicknamed "Mr. Mandate," lamented the direction of the oral arguments re the Mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act. "'As soon as I started reading the dispatches my stomach started churning,' Mr. Gruber said of the arguments on Tuesday, while taking a break from quizzing his son for a biology test. 'Losing the mandate means continuing with our unfair individual insurance markets in a world where employer-based insurance is rapidly disappearing.'"
Really, Mr. Gruber? Let's assume for a moment that you're right, and that without an individual mandate, we are fated to a future where increasing numbers of Americans are left without access to employer-based insurance. Fine. But even if this is true, why is the sky falling if the individual mandate is beyond the power of the federal government to require? As Mitt Romney is no doubt tired of being reminded, Massachusetts has had an individual mandate in place for several years. Thus if Mr. Mandate is right and mandates are the only way out of this mess, then those pesky constitutional limits on congressional action need not mean our goose is cooked. Moreover, if the sky really does start to fall for lack of a mandate, while the sky is meanwhile staying put in the Bay State, then perhaps might other rational state legislatures adopt a mandate of their own? Hmm?
The subtext running through all this, of course, is that the states are too stupid or backwards or incompetent to accomplish this type of thing on their own. This is a horrifying development in our political life. The state governments are, by definition and design, closer to their constituents than is the federal behemoth. They can be quicker to act and in most cases will be more responsive.
If the SC knocks out the Mandate on the basis of its having exceeded Congress's Commerce Clause authority, that will effect Romneycare's mandate not one iota. Nor should it. The real question here is not, "can government do this" as it is framed almost everywhere, but "can the Federal government do this?" This distinction is critical, if for no other reason than it knocks the wind out of those that would focus on policy arguments rather than constitutional requirements (I'm looking at you Justices Kagan, Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor). Saying "you may not do this" has much more finality than does "you are not the proper party to do this."
What we are left with when we assume that states are helpless/hopeless without the feds doing all the public policy heavy lifting for them is world where the argument "but modern society requires this sort of regulation" gets more traction at the Supreme Court than the theoretically more appropriate "but the Constitution expressly forbids and/or does not permit Congress to do this" argument. This is not a good result for friends of Freedom and self-government. But it is, sadly, increasingly the world in which we live.
Of course, we do not believe the Mandate is the only way to fix healthcare, and indeed, think it ill-conceived both in practice and in principle. The point is only that this debate has highlighted the sad slide of our constitutional jurisprudence from robust constitutional analysis to super-legislature-policy-making. What the modern Court does--at least what the four liberal justices appear prepared to do--is not determine statutes' constitutionality, but rather their wisdom from a policy perspective. Good thing, then, that they have a wise latina among them.
Really, Mr. Gruber? Let's assume for a moment that you're right, and that without an individual mandate, we are fated to a future where increasing numbers of Americans are left without access to employer-based insurance. Fine. But even if this is true, why is the sky falling if the individual mandate is beyond the power of the federal government to require? As Mitt Romney is no doubt tired of being reminded, Massachusetts has had an individual mandate in place for several years. Thus if Mr. Mandate is right and mandates are the only way out of this mess, then those pesky constitutional limits on congressional action need not mean our goose is cooked. Moreover, if the sky really does start to fall for lack of a mandate, while the sky is meanwhile staying put in the Bay State, then perhaps might other rational state legislatures adopt a mandate of their own? Hmm?
The subtext running through all this, of course, is that the states are too stupid or backwards or incompetent to accomplish this type of thing on their own. This is a horrifying development in our political life. The state governments are, by definition and design, closer to their constituents than is the federal behemoth. They can be quicker to act and in most cases will be more responsive.
If the SC knocks out the Mandate on the basis of its having exceeded Congress's Commerce Clause authority, that will effect Romneycare's mandate not one iota. Nor should it. The real question here is not, "can government do this" as it is framed almost everywhere, but "can the Federal government do this?" This distinction is critical, if for no other reason than it knocks the wind out of those that would focus on policy arguments rather than constitutional requirements (I'm looking at you Justices Kagan, Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor). Saying "you may not do this" has much more finality than does "you are not the proper party to do this."
What we are left with when we assume that states are helpless/hopeless without the feds doing all the public policy heavy lifting for them is world where the argument "but modern society requires this sort of regulation" gets more traction at the Supreme Court than the theoretically more appropriate "but the Constitution expressly forbids and/or does not permit Congress to do this" argument. This is not a good result for friends of Freedom and self-government. But it is, sadly, increasingly the world in which we live.
Of course, we do not believe the Mandate is the only way to fix healthcare, and indeed, think it ill-conceived both in practice and in principle. The point is only that this debate has highlighted the sad slide of our constitutional jurisprudence from robust constitutional analysis to super-legislature-policy-making. What the modern Court does--at least what the four liberal justices appear prepared to do--is not determine statutes' constitutionality, but rather their wisdom from a policy perspective. Good thing, then, that they have a wise latina among them.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
HHS Mandate
One of the most obvious fault lines in the Fusionism coalition is along the so-called "social issues." Or so the conventional wisdom would have us believe. The recent dust up over the HHS Contraceptive Mandate and possible congressional action to curtail it is the fruit of the left's latest attempt to drive a wedge into this perceived fault line.
Superficially, of course, it would seem that this is an issue that would peel away libertarian-minded voters from the GOP. Contra that CW, below are Fusionim's thoughts on why libertarian and conservative values voters should be able to make common cause against the Obama Administration's proposed mandate:
It's Not 1960 Anymore
A favorite tactic of liberals is to resurrect the rallying cry of long-ago won political battles even when their relevance to the real issue at hand is tangential at best. In this case, that instinct manifests itself in a "hands off my birth control" sentiment. Indeed, if there was anything like an effort to roll back or restrict access to birth-control underway, it would be a sure loser for the GOP and the Fusionism Project. Happily, despite some ill-considered remarks by Rick Santorum (yet another reason that he cannot hope to become the Fusionism Candidate), the only person seriously considering such a policy reversal is the straw man in the left's collective imagination.
The real issue with the HHS mandate is religious liberty, despite misdirection campaigns on the left. In the 1960s, when crusading feminists sought to strike down prohibitions against non-married women having access to birth control, they could credibly claim the mantle of libertarianism. Today, however, the coercive power of the state is being used not to prevent women from buying birth control but to force Sister Alice and Father Daniel to pay for someone esle's birth control.
That distinction might not make a big difference to social conservatives who think birth control is always and everywhere a mortal sin, or to liberals who won't rest until every woman of child bearing age is made chemically infertile. For those folks, the battle lines are the same as they were over Griswold v. Connecticut four decades ago. But for the libertarian half of the Fusionism coalition, the fact that the Leviathan sits on the other side of the ledger this time around makes all the difference.
This is about controlling a private institution, not about financing birth control
To listen to the hysteria surrounding the congressional Republicans' proposal to remove the mandate by legislation, including Susan Fluke's surreal testimony before Congress, one could be excused for thinking that birth control is on the verge of becoming inaccessible for a generation of women. This could not be further from the truth. The issue is not access, but payment. Payment and access might conceivably be linked, if the costs for the procedure or medicine at issue were prohibitively expensive for the typical--or even the poorest--insured. Considering that, even according to Planned Parenthood, many forms of birth control (the pill being, obviously, only one of many options) cost as little as fifteen dollars per month and a quick google search indicates the cost may be as low as 9 dollars per month , so clearly, something else is going on. With all due respect to Sandra Fluke, even the grossly inflated estimate of $3,000 over three years for birth control is hardly an economic hardship of any significance. At $83 month--surely on the very high side of the actual cost to a would-be litigator practicing the sexual mores of Ally McBeal--most law students presumably pay more for cable and internet, let alone text books. Indeed, we think we spent more money on Jell-o and Lucky Charms when we were in law school. Certainly most law students spend at least this much on Tylenol from the headaches they get from attempting to wrap their minds around the various "penumbras" that "emanate" from seemingly benign constitutional clauses.
Although we frequently dislike questioning the sincerity of the motives proferred by our political opponents, in this case it is hard to conclude other than that our friends on the left relish the idea of forcing the Catholic Church into subsidizing behavior it finds morally objectionable. It is as though Big Brother were to require a parent, concerned for her son's health, to nevertheless purchase her son marijuana. That the son can find pot elsewhere rather easily and probably will even if it is against his mother's wishes reduces the rationale for such an arrangement to the brow-beating of the mother for her anti-drug stance. The example is cruel, but so is the reality with the mandate. The Church knows its flock and the members of the larger society can and will sin--but to force it to not only accept this reality but also assist in it is an act that can only be meant to inflict pain on the institution and it's mission.
Ultimately, this is about crushing dissent to the liberal status quo. Having essentially won the debate on birth control years ago, the sexual revolution rolls on, seeking not only to make the world safe for those who want birth control, but to make it impossible to object even privately to it's ascendancy.
And, even if we are wrong, and it really is the cost of birth control that motivates the Administration and its allies...
The addition of the HHS Mandate reveals a poor grasp of the basic concept of insurnace
Sandra Fluke testified that the cost of her birth control was a significant hardship on her and her law school peers and implicit in this testimony was the assertion that this hardship would have been mitigated if the Georgetown student plan had only covered birth control.
This starving law student story--apart from (rightfully) eliciting no sympathy from the typical American--is a very odd narrative to use to justify a public policy of larding up health plans with daily expenses. As a former law student ourselves (one who dined on tuna and dry cereal on alternating nights, mind you, the daily condom and spermicidal lubricant purchases leaving almost no room in the budget for food), we would argue that the starving law student is best served by an inexpensive policy. Said policy would be bare bones--it would probably cover only the absolute essentials and, even for what it did cover, it would probably have a high deductible--the higher the deductible the better, since the starving law student would be best served by a plan that had a low premium.
This POV is formulated out of the naive notion that insurance is about spreading risk, not about paying for daily expenses out of premiums rather than pocketbooks. The original notion of insurance went something like this: "A Bad Thing will almost certainly happen to a few of us, but we don't know who. We can spread that risk by all incurring a small cost (the premium) to create a pool of money for the unfortunate victim of said Bad Thing." The Susan Fluke plan, however, works something like this: " I have some known expenses (hence, no risk) that I incur because of lifestyle choices. I would prefer not to pay for these things with my own money, and therefore think people--even people who vehemently disagree with my lifestyle choices--should pay for it instead." I don't think I need to close the libertarian loop on that one. One suspects that when Susan Fluke next testifies before Congress it will be to explain why her auto insurance policy with GEICO should be forced to pay for getting the cigarette smell out of her upholstry. Pity those of us silly enough to think that the car insurance premiums we pay should only be covering the risk of unforeseeable accidents--we must now be prepared to shell out for that AND for foreseeable expenses incurred by those less prudent that us.
In sum, the HHS mandate is bad as insurance policy and worse still, it encroaches on religious liberty and freedom of conscience in an insidious way. Even if we take the proponents at their word on this one, the economic benefit from such a policy is so marginal as to be trivial. Leviathan is using this as an excuse to annex yet one more stronghold of our embattled and shrinking civil society. Libertarians--on the opposite side of conservatives in the original birth control battles--should have no trouble aligning with conservatives on this one.
Superficially, of course, it would seem that this is an issue that would peel away libertarian-minded voters from the GOP. Contra that CW, below are Fusionim's thoughts on why libertarian and conservative values voters should be able to make common cause against the Obama Administration's proposed mandate:
It's Not 1960 Anymore
A favorite tactic of liberals is to resurrect the rallying cry of long-ago won political battles even when their relevance to the real issue at hand is tangential at best. In this case, that instinct manifests itself in a "hands off my birth control" sentiment. Indeed, if there was anything like an effort to roll back or restrict access to birth-control underway, it would be a sure loser for the GOP and the Fusionism Project. Happily, despite some ill-considered remarks by Rick Santorum (yet another reason that he cannot hope to become the Fusionism Candidate), the only person seriously considering such a policy reversal is the straw man in the left's collective imagination.
The real issue with the HHS mandate is religious liberty, despite misdirection campaigns on the left. In the 1960s, when crusading feminists sought to strike down prohibitions against non-married women having access to birth control, they could credibly claim the mantle of libertarianism. Today, however, the coercive power of the state is being used not to prevent women from buying birth control but to force Sister Alice and Father Daniel to pay for someone esle's birth control.
That distinction might not make a big difference to social conservatives who think birth control is always and everywhere a mortal sin, or to liberals who won't rest until every woman of child bearing age is made chemically infertile. For those folks, the battle lines are the same as they were over Griswold v. Connecticut four decades ago. But for the libertarian half of the Fusionism coalition, the fact that the Leviathan sits on the other side of the ledger this time around makes all the difference.
This is about controlling a private institution, not about financing birth control
To listen to the hysteria surrounding the congressional Republicans' proposal to remove the mandate by legislation, including Susan Fluke's surreal testimony before Congress, one could be excused for thinking that birth control is on the verge of becoming inaccessible for a generation of women. This could not be further from the truth. The issue is not access, but payment. Payment and access might conceivably be linked, if the costs for the procedure or medicine at issue were prohibitively expensive for the typical--or even the poorest--insured. Considering that, even according to Planned Parenthood, many forms of birth control (the pill being, obviously, only one of many options) cost as little as fifteen dollars per month and a quick google search indicates the cost may be as low as 9 dollars per month , so clearly, something else is going on. With all due respect to Sandra Fluke, even the grossly inflated estimate of $3,000 over three years for birth control is hardly an economic hardship of any significance. At $83 month--surely on the very high side of the actual cost to a would-be litigator practicing the sexual mores of Ally McBeal--most law students presumably pay more for cable and internet, let alone text books. Indeed, we think we spent more money on Jell-o and Lucky Charms when we were in law school. Certainly most law students spend at least this much on Tylenol from the headaches they get from attempting to wrap their minds around the various "penumbras" that "emanate" from seemingly benign constitutional clauses.
Although we frequently dislike questioning the sincerity of the motives proferred by our political opponents, in this case it is hard to conclude other than that our friends on the left relish the idea of forcing the Catholic Church into subsidizing behavior it finds morally objectionable. It is as though Big Brother were to require a parent, concerned for her son's health, to nevertheless purchase her son marijuana. That the son can find pot elsewhere rather easily and probably will even if it is against his mother's wishes reduces the rationale for such an arrangement to the brow-beating of the mother for her anti-drug stance. The example is cruel, but so is the reality with the mandate. The Church knows its flock and the members of the larger society can and will sin--but to force it to not only accept this reality but also assist in it is an act that can only be meant to inflict pain on the institution and it's mission.
Ultimately, this is about crushing dissent to the liberal status quo. Having essentially won the debate on birth control years ago, the sexual revolution rolls on, seeking not only to make the world safe for those who want birth control, but to make it impossible to object even privately to it's ascendancy.
And, even if we are wrong, and it really is the cost of birth control that motivates the Administration and its allies...
The addition of the HHS Mandate reveals a poor grasp of the basic concept of insurnace
Sandra Fluke testified that the cost of her birth control was a significant hardship on her and her law school peers and implicit in this testimony was the assertion that this hardship would have been mitigated if the Georgetown student plan had only covered birth control.
This starving law student story--apart from (rightfully) eliciting no sympathy from the typical American--is a very odd narrative to use to justify a public policy of larding up health plans with daily expenses. As a former law student ourselves (one who dined on tuna and dry cereal on alternating nights, mind you, the daily condom and spermicidal lubricant purchases leaving almost no room in the budget for food), we would argue that the starving law student is best served by an inexpensive policy. Said policy would be bare bones--it would probably cover only the absolute essentials and, even for what it did cover, it would probably have a high deductible--the higher the deductible the better, since the starving law student would be best served by a plan that had a low premium.
This POV is formulated out of the naive notion that insurance is about spreading risk, not about paying for daily expenses out of premiums rather than pocketbooks. The original notion of insurance went something like this: "A Bad Thing will almost certainly happen to a few of us, but we don't know who. We can spread that risk by all incurring a small cost (the premium) to create a pool of money for the unfortunate victim of said Bad Thing." The Susan Fluke plan, however, works something like this: " I have some known expenses (hence, no risk) that I incur because of lifestyle choices. I would prefer not to pay for these things with my own money, and therefore think people--even people who vehemently disagree with my lifestyle choices--should pay for it instead." I don't think I need to close the libertarian loop on that one. One suspects that when Susan Fluke next testifies before Congress it will be to explain why her auto insurance policy with GEICO should be forced to pay for getting the cigarette smell out of her upholstry. Pity those of us silly enough to think that the car insurance premiums we pay should only be covering the risk of unforeseeable accidents--we must now be prepared to shell out for that AND for foreseeable expenses incurred by those less prudent that us.
In sum, the HHS mandate is bad as insurance policy and worse still, it encroaches on religious liberty and freedom of conscience in an insidious way. Even if we take the proponents at their word on this one, the economic benefit from such a policy is so marginal as to be trivial. Leviathan is using this as an excuse to annex yet one more stronghold of our embattled and shrinking civil society. Libertarians--on the opposite side of conservatives in the original birth control battles--should have no trouble aligning with conservatives on this one.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Romney for President
It's been a good month for Mitt Romney. First, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie-a man many thought was well situated to become the fattest President since Taft-ended speculation on his bid and threw his (considerable) weight behind Governor Romney with an endorsement.
And now, Gov. Romney receives an infinitely more consequential and singificant endorsement: The Fusionism blog is giving it's coveted endorsement to the former Massachusetts governor.
Make no mistake: Mitt Romney is not our ideal candidate. Like many on the right, we have been searching high and low (and mostly to the right) for viable Romney alternatives for months. Some Fusionism favorites included Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and the aforementioned Gov. Christie. We also considered many in the current field; Pawlenty piqued our interest early, but ended his run before we'd figured him out. Perry looks like a great conservative alternative--if, that is, you don't mind the fact that he was the chairman of Al Gore's Texas campaign in his failed 1988 presidential bid and that he shares scads of superficial similarities with a certain other recent President who shall remain nameless (yes, I said superficial. Look, I don't think he's a GWB clone at all, and I know their animosity for each other is real, but you can't mis-under-estimate the power of superficiality in presidential politics. Hence our present Poser-in-Chief). Bachmann, too, is an excellent choice (as one friend of Fusionism is constantly reminding us, she looks like a centerfold and sounds like Reagan...or do I have it backwards...)but Fusionsim has long advocated that executive experience is a must-have for the presidency, an area where Ms. Bachmann is woefully lacking (and yes, this would have been an issue with Paul Ryan, absolutely). Cain is the candidate in the current field that exerted the strongest pull against our Romney preference, but 9-9-9 makes us cringe. While we inherently root for "outsiders," the reality is that building coalitions in Congress is a critical component of any president's success and Cain seems poorly disposed to be able to do that.
So, while all the candidates in the field have their merits (my apologies to the also-rans for not affording them longer put downs, but briefly, Santorum: wrong man for the moment as his focus is moral decline not economic recovery; Gary Johnson: hey, what happened to him anyway?; Newt: seriously? pay off your Tiffany's bill, then we'll talk; Ron Paul: more on him in a future post-a special case that merits its own space; that Utah governor guy: sorry, the other mormon got here first) they all certainly have their flaws as well.
Still, we are not choosing Romney by default. Although not a conservative and certainly not a libertarian, Mitt has his own strengths that earn him Fusionism's nod nevertheless. The core case for Romney is competency. We are careening off the tracks with an absolute administrative novice at the helm. Mitt actually has experience running large enterprises, and in many different fields in (Massachusetts Governor) and out (Bain Capital) of government and in some cases had to put things back together after his predecessors blew everything up (Salt Lake City Olympics). After watching the debates--each of which, so far, seems to have been won by Romney--it's hard to deny that anyone on the stage exudes competence the way Mitt does. He's not the smartest (that's Newt), not possessed of the most Gipper-esque charm (Cain), not the most ideologically pure (Santorum, Paul, or Bachmann depending where you fit on the Fusionism conservative-libertarianism scale, and not the smoothest (ok, yeah, he's the smoothest, but that's a low bar). But if we were going out of town for the weekend and were leaving someone in charge of watering our pants and walking our dog and were in the unfortunate circumstance of having to choose our house sitter from the Republican presidential primary field, we'd pick Mitt Romney. And that matters.
We are choosing our chief administrator here, not a philosopher king. We're going with the best, most competent, administrative type with the most even temperment in the field. We'll save our ideological votes for the legislative races.
So, Stuff the Ice Chest!
And now, Gov. Romney receives an infinitely more consequential and singificant endorsement: The Fusionism blog is giving it's coveted endorsement to the former Massachusetts governor.
Make no mistake: Mitt Romney is not our ideal candidate. Like many on the right, we have been searching high and low (and mostly to the right) for viable Romney alternatives for months. Some Fusionism favorites included Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and the aforementioned Gov. Christie. We also considered many in the current field; Pawlenty piqued our interest early, but ended his run before we'd figured him out. Perry looks like a great conservative alternative--if, that is, you don't mind the fact that he was the chairman of Al Gore's Texas campaign in his failed 1988 presidential bid and that he shares scads of superficial similarities with a certain other recent President who shall remain nameless (yes, I said superficial. Look, I don't think he's a GWB clone at all, and I know their animosity for each other is real, but you can't mis-under-estimate the power of superficiality in presidential politics. Hence our present Poser-in-Chief). Bachmann, too, is an excellent choice (as one friend of Fusionism is constantly reminding us, she looks like a centerfold and sounds like Reagan...or do I have it backwards...)but Fusionsim has long advocated that executive experience is a must-have for the presidency, an area where Ms. Bachmann is woefully lacking (and yes, this would have been an issue with Paul Ryan, absolutely). Cain is the candidate in the current field that exerted the strongest pull against our Romney preference, but 9-9-9 makes us cringe. While we inherently root for "outsiders," the reality is that building coalitions in Congress is a critical component of any president's success and Cain seems poorly disposed to be able to do that.
So, while all the candidates in the field have their merits (my apologies to the also-rans for not affording them longer put downs, but briefly, Santorum: wrong man for the moment as his focus is moral decline not economic recovery; Gary Johnson: hey, what happened to him anyway?; Newt: seriously? pay off your Tiffany's bill, then we'll talk; Ron Paul: more on him in a future post-a special case that merits its own space; that Utah governor guy: sorry, the other mormon got here first) they all certainly have their flaws as well.
Still, we are not choosing Romney by default. Although not a conservative and certainly not a libertarian, Mitt has his own strengths that earn him Fusionism's nod nevertheless. The core case for Romney is competency. We are careening off the tracks with an absolute administrative novice at the helm. Mitt actually has experience running large enterprises, and in many different fields in (Massachusetts Governor) and out (Bain Capital) of government and in some cases had to put things back together after his predecessors blew everything up (Salt Lake City Olympics). After watching the debates--each of which, so far, seems to have been won by Romney--it's hard to deny that anyone on the stage exudes competence the way Mitt does. He's not the smartest (that's Newt), not possessed of the most Gipper-esque charm (Cain), not the most ideologically pure (Santorum, Paul, or Bachmann depending where you fit on the Fusionism conservative-libertarianism scale, and not the smoothest (ok, yeah, he's the smoothest, but that's a low bar). But if we were going out of town for the weekend and were leaving someone in charge of watering our pants and walking our dog and were in the unfortunate circumstance of having to choose our house sitter from the Republican presidential primary field, we'd pick Mitt Romney. And that matters.
We are choosing our chief administrator here, not a philosopher king. We're going with the best, most competent, administrative type with the most even temperment in the field. We'll save our ideological votes for the legislative races.
So, Stuff the Ice Chest!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Fusionism
Fusionism, as we will use the term in this blog, denotes a philosophical reconciliation between conservative and libertarian principles. The concept (often attributed to the late National Review contributor Frank Meyer) goes beyond the mere strategic alliance between these two factions for reasons of political expediency and instead seeks a coherent blending of the two ideologies.
For many reasons that we hope will become apparent over the life of this blog, we am not only proponents of Fusionsim, but we think it is essential to the future health and success of the Republican Party in the United States. For virtually my whole politically conscious life, American political pundits of all ideological stripes have speculated about, feared and/or celebrated the break up of the Republican Party on the theory that one or the other of these two constituencies (libertarian or conservative) would break away from the GOP. Our thesis (and the point of this blog) is that this crack up has not happened because the bond between the libertarian and conservative wings of the GOP is more resilient than is supposed. It is often postulated the the conservative-libertarian alliance is predicated solely on matters in the "economic sphere," and that in areas broadly classified as "social issues" the two wings of the GOP are at loggerheads and simply agree to disagree, putting the economic agenda first. With that reading of the political landscape, no wonder liberals of all stripes predict (and hope for) an inevitably splintering of the GOP base along the "social issues" fault line. The reason libertarians and traditionalist conservatives have made common cause since Barry Goldwater, however, is that this conventional wisdom is not correct. While traditionalist conservatives and libertarians often disagree on the merits of many "social issues" what they do (often, but not always) agree on is this: the State has no legitimate role to play in deciding hot-button, culture-war issues. In a free society, social mores should not be determined by the state, but by the organic, voluntary associations and institutions of civil society. What both libertarians and conservatives decry--often for very different reasons--is the crumbling of a civil society that, for conservatives, once offered moral authority to traditional values, and, for libertarians, once served as an important bulwark against state over-reach. Now, this is not true on every issue, and libertarians often make common cause with liberals on a host of issues (this is complicated further by the fact that the term "libertarian" encompasses a wide swath of viewpoints, but we're speaking here of the Cato-Reason brand of libertarian thought). Some of these issues, where libertarians line up with liberal Democrats, have indeed put enormous strain on the Fusionist Alliance. However, liberals are amazingly tone deaf to this overall dynamic, which is why they are perpetually perplexed by the resiliency of the Fusionist project. This creates an enormous opportunity for GOP politicians, to speak in a language and for a process that both libertarians and conservatives can get behind: smaller government, and an expanded role for civil society.
For many reasons that we hope will become apparent over the life of this blog, we am not only proponents of Fusionsim, but we think it is essential to the future health and success of the Republican Party in the United States. For virtually my whole politically conscious life, American political pundits of all ideological stripes have speculated about, feared and/or celebrated the break up of the Republican Party on the theory that one or the other of these two constituencies (libertarian or conservative) would break away from the GOP. Our thesis (and the point of this blog) is that this crack up has not happened because the bond between the libertarian and conservative wings of the GOP is more resilient than is supposed. It is often postulated the the conservative-libertarian alliance is predicated solely on matters in the "economic sphere," and that in areas broadly classified as "social issues" the two wings of the GOP are at loggerheads and simply agree to disagree, putting the economic agenda first. With that reading of the political landscape, no wonder liberals of all stripes predict (and hope for) an inevitably splintering of the GOP base along the "social issues" fault line. The reason libertarians and traditionalist conservatives have made common cause since Barry Goldwater, however, is that this conventional wisdom is not correct. While traditionalist conservatives and libertarians often disagree on the merits of many "social issues" what they do (often, but not always) agree on is this: the State has no legitimate role to play in deciding hot-button, culture-war issues. In a free society, social mores should not be determined by the state, but by the organic, voluntary associations and institutions of civil society. What both libertarians and conservatives decry--often for very different reasons--is the crumbling of a civil society that, for conservatives, once offered moral authority to traditional values, and, for libertarians, once served as an important bulwark against state over-reach. Now, this is not true on every issue, and libertarians often make common cause with liberals on a host of issues (this is complicated further by the fact that the term "libertarian" encompasses a wide swath of viewpoints, but we're speaking here of the Cato-Reason brand of libertarian thought). Some of these issues, where libertarians line up with liberal Democrats, have indeed put enormous strain on the Fusionist Alliance. However, liberals are amazingly tone deaf to this overall dynamic, which is why they are perpetually perplexed by the resiliency of the Fusionist project. This creates an enormous opportunity for GOP politicians, to speak in a language and for a process that both libertarians and conservatives can get behind: smaller government, and an expanded role for civil society.
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