Bill's Notes

There's been a robust debate around the blogosphere about what we Republicans need to do to win. Americans are stupid. Americans are easily led. They're easily manipulated. The corporatist masters are all on the sides of the Democrats. In fact, a lot of what I'm hearing on the right, I rejected when I heard from the left back eight years ago.

Some proposed solutions: Republicans need to fight as dirty as the Democrats. It's those darned Christians and social conservatives' fault -- let's jettison their ass and we'll be competitive. I've even read that Republicans need to be more entertaining.

I'm not buying any of that. At least, not completely.

I think we have three main problems: One concerns competence, and the lack perceived thereof. Two concerns principles. And three ... it's hard to explain, what we might call, a counter-cultural problem.

I think that the GOP, if it wants to regain power that lasts and be capable of governing effectively when we regain power, need to take a long-term strategy. As I've said before, governance isn't a game of Yankees versus Red Sox, where the fans of one are pleased and the others are despondent, but nothing of serious value is at stake, and we play again by the same rules next year.

To formulate a long-term strategy, we need to be truthful about the past 14 years. There were several grievous errors that need to be corrected. First, our economic policy was a mess. Second, impeachment of Clinton destroyed a lot of our credibility. Third, we went for a "name brand" with George W. Bush, instead of going with a better communicator who could handle the national press. Fourth, the Republicans didn't govern as competently as we should have. Fifth, we got confused about principles.

Our problem now:

1. We have to live down the presidency of George W. Bush. He was a good man and a fair president in difficult times, but was tarred as the worst president ever because he was unable to rise above the hyper-partisan environment or deflect/answer criticism. He just wasn't good enough -- and a Republican, because of the cultural disadvantages, needs to be twice as good as a Democrat to seem half as good.

2. We have to describe what we stand for, and why, when we had power, we didn't follow through enough. What will we do when we get power back?

3. We need to seriously rethink our economic policy.

4. We need to stop kidding ourselves about what's politically possible.

5. We need to be ready when the time comes.

In other words, we need to think in terms of the Long March than a quick come back.

Now, before we get too pessimistic, we need to remember a couple of things: The facts of life are conservative. Democrats may embrace conservative values ... not yet, but eventually.

For example, the Democrats can't muster up the votes to impose the liberal viewpoint on gun control. Why? Because they know they'll get slaughtered at the polls. Maybe they'll try again, but they know the risks.

In other words, we the people, not necessarily we the Republicans, may still get our way. Even hopelessly liberal Canada has not reduced its spending to where it's near ours. And that's an entire nation of Democrats. Every county in California just rejected a tax bill on a referendum. Every one.

We conservatives may just have to work through Democrats for the time being. And Democrats are so power hungry they may do anything, including the right thing, to stay in power.

More on this later.

Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll: On the issue of abortion, would you say you are more pro-life or more pro-choice?

Pro-life 49%
Pro-choice 43%

That's good news. If we can win the cultural war on abortion, there's real hope for this country. Two pro-life parties would a great thing. Now, if we could just turn that into political change, we could stop the holocaust.

Oh, I get how it's gonna be under Obama.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

I understand the new incentives in our Brave New World. The incentives are pretty clear.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

I understand passing a law to get rid of gouging. But then to turn around and screw your best customers ... um, we're the ones with options. Including not doing business with you.

Noted Democratic strategist James Carville claims in a new book that the 2008 election was a watershed election for Democrats, and the Donks will be in power for the next 40 years. I might point out that the Democrats have been the dominant party since 1930.

The Democrats controlled the House:
1930-46
1948-52
1954-94
2006-present

R-16 years, D=60 years +

The Democrats controlled the Senate:

1932-46
1948-52
1954-80
1986-94
2000 (a week)
2001-02
2006-present

R-21 years, D=55 years

The Democrats controlled the Presidency
1932-52
1960-68
1976-80
1992-00
2008-present

R-36 years, D-40+ years.

There has been Democratic control over both houses of Congress and the Presidency:

2008 to present
1992-94
1976-80
1960-68
1948-52
1932-46.

That is, 28+ years in the lifetime of most Americans.

There has been Republican control over both houses of Congress and the Presidency:

1952-54
Jan. 20-June 6, 2001
2002-06.

That is, less than seven years in the lifetime of most Americans. And in all that time, the GOP had only a slight majority in the Senate.

Granted, the GOP has controlled the Presidency 36 of the past 56 years, but often balanced by a Democratic Congress.

Potential GOP control of the judiciary has been mitigated by Democratic dominance of the Senate, and has failed to either nominate or confirm conservative Supreme Court justices. (I count five: Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito; Byron White, a JFK appointee, was a sixth. Failed GOP picks include: O'Connor, Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Powell, Burger, Blackmun, Warren and Brennan.)

Not only that, but two of the GOP presidents -- George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, were some of the biggest spending presidents in the past 76 years. The joke going around now is that Nixon couldn't be nominated as a Democrat today because he'd be too liberal. (Nixon put in place wage-and-price controls, and vastly expanded the federal budget, added EPA and OSHA.)

Further to the Donks' advantage: The Democrats have had more registered Democrats than Republicans virtually the entire 76 years. They've dominated the media, the universities, the "soft" professions such as literature, music and the arts; the teaching professions, the mainstream Protestant churches, and held a steady majority in the Catholic Church. Ethnically, they've been the overwhelming favorite of all minority groups, single women, and for most of that time, the youth culture. And in the past 30 years, Democrats have started to dominate the finance industry, the upper middle class, and rich elites, especially on cultural issues.

Despite its disadvantages, the GOP has managed to fight the good fight. The GOP managed, just before electing Dubya, to set the stage for a major revival. But the GOP wasn't able to land a knockout blow. Now things are back to the Democrats, that is, normal.

James Carville's thesis is that the GOP has controlled the presidency for 28 out of 40 years, and thus was dominant, and it's now the Democrats' turn to dominate. Perhaps that's the future -- but the GOP was never dominant during the past 40 years. It never had a 60 vote senate majority, a solid majority in the house, the presidency, and never got a five-vote majority on the Supreme Court. In this sense, Carville is wrong. There may have been a GOP moment, but it went by awful quickly.

Now we're listening to Democratic triumphalism. It would be a little like the Yankees winning the World Series this year and saying, "Finally, we've overthrown the Red Sox dynasty."

"The country's going down the tubes. We're becoming a nation of people who can't make the simplest distinctions. Read about the middle-class types who purchased houses way outside their price range, and then collapsed the economy. All predictable. The decline in religious values makes people financially stupid, too. The Baby Boomers are the Worst Generation."

Critical voice: "Half right. The issue isn't that people are dumber -- it's that they're dumber about different things now. Marriage and sex -- that they're confused about. Torture. Abortion. Still a little too bloodthirsty. But, looking at history, probably well within the norm of human depravity for a typical generation."

"Electing a populist demagogue like Barack Obama is a terrible sign for the future. We're becoming Weimar America. I didn't think it could happen here."

Critical voice: "The jury's still out whether Barack Obama is a demagogic governor. There's no doubt he's a demagogic campaigner. Not the first one, though. But he seems to have toned down a bit since his first victory lap, and sometimes seems downright reasonable. Whether that's a ploy remains to be seen."

"Damn Yankees."

Critical voice: "Yeah, well, we've had a break lately."

Fascinating article in the Atlantic on a long term study of men's lives.

A couple of quotes:

[T]he Glueck study data suggested that industriousness in childhood—as indicated by such things as whether the boys had part-time jobs, took on chores, or joined school clubs or sports teams—predicted adult mental health better than any other factor, including family cohesion and warm maternal relationships. “What we do,” Vaillant concluded, “affects how we feel just as much as how we feel affects what we do.”

The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises. Regular exercise in college predicted late-life mental health better than it did physical health.

This means that a glimpse of any one moment in a life can be deeply misleading. A man at 20 who appears the model of altruism may turn out to be a kind of emotional prodigy—or he may be ducking the kind of engagement with reality that his peers are both moving toward and defending against. And, on the other extreme, a man at 20 who appears impossibly wounded may turn out to be gestating toward maturity.

That last sentence describes me at 20. Yet at 45 I'm happy. So apparently what saved me was that paper route ...

Reading a lot about "what Republicans need to do" and this and that. Um, here's an obvious thought that, as the title says, needs to be said for some reason.

Politics ain't baseball. I am not rooting for the Republicans to come back and win next time as I root for the Phillies to win. I am not rooting against the Democrats as I root against the Yankees.

Get what I'm gettin' at?

Like, this stuff matters. This is governance. If Obama proves to be an effective leader, we all win. If Obama proves to be an ineffective leader, we all lose.

Clear, yet? I don't want Republicans to win because I root for that brand. I want the government to maintain a level playing field so that I can pursue excellence in my chosen profession and have plenty of time for the rest of my life without too much interference from the government.

Now, I have my personal opinions on Obama, but the truth is, I'm not sure about the guy. On one hand, he's without a doubt a frightening demagogue. He seems to be extremely effective at mass hypnotic effects straight out of Marcos, Peron and, well, Hitler. The fact that Americans have become so culturally degraded that they've ignored this is more worrisome to me than Obama himself. It means, in the end, we've finally become prey to mass movements. We used to be more cynical, critical and mature than that.

On the other hand, Obama occasionally make sense.

My inkling at this time: This Obama Administration will end in tears. No one's really willing to confront what needs to be done.

I recently heard that the U.S. government is basically an insurance company with a side business in defense. If you look at government expenditures, you'll see what I'm talking about.

The government simply can no longer afford its entitlement promises, nor a massive military with troops all over the world. Get rid of entitlements, get rid of Social Security, scale back the military for U.S. mainland defense only, and default on the debt, and we can keep everything else for about $1.2 trillion a year (assuming $200 billion for defense and a nip/tuck here and there.)

What to do? Keep kicking the can until it goes off a cliff, apparently.