Senator McCain Goes 'Round and Around

Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal Online (paid access) argues that John McCain followed a traditional Republican course of emphasizing tax cuts. She argues that if only McCain had "transcended the Republican brand" then McCain's fortunes would have improved, but in "the areas where Sen. McCain had staked out his independence, he and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, agreed".

I disagree.

There was little conservative about the McCain campaign, nor more generally about post Y2K Republicans, at least in the Jacksonian sense.

There are two economic and political strands of Republicanism: the Progressive and the small government. The small government Republicans are the ones who descend from Andrew Jackson and the late nineteenth century hard money advocates. The Progressives descend from Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and the socialist Theodore Roosevelt. Progressive Republicans have mostly dominated 20th century national Republican politics. Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge were not small government men, nor was Ronald Reagan, really, although he borrowed the small government rhetoric. As for the Democrats, the Jackson Democrats had become a small minority by 1932. In the late nineteenth century they had become the Bourbon Democrats led by Grover Cleveland. After William Jennings Bryan identified the Democrats with inflation, the Republicans became the Jacksonian, laissez-faire party.

About 25% of the American electorate favors less government. If the Republicans capture this vote they can win. Small government people are in both parties, but they are mostly in the Republican Party. These voters stayed away from Senator McCain.

By 2005, the Bush administration had jettisoned any pretense of small government rhetoric in favor of special interest pandering. This has included the recent, disgraceful Wall Street bailout. The bailouts are Progressivism at a socialist level not seen since Theodore Roosevelt ran under the Progressive banner in 1912.

Big government Progressives dominate the Republican Party because they reflect corporate interests and have the most resources. They speak the language of efficiency and low taxes, but ultimately they are interested in policies that benefit themselves, which means subsidies, coddling and special breaks. Although they have the most resources, they don't have that many votes outside New York. They are comfortable with government bloat because budget deficits facilitate borrowing, which in turn facilitates monetary expansion. Monetary expansion boosts the stock market, and the music goes 'round and 'round. Indeed, I did not hear any evidence that John McCain would have been but another President Bloat, in the same tradition as Roosevelt, Hoover, Harding, Nixon and Bush. I leave out Taft, Coolidge and Reagan, although they should probably be included in the "Progressive" category as well, although they put a lid on it. Bush didn't know how to put a lid on it, and McCain didn't know it was an issue.

Thus, the Republican Party is inherently in conflict. If the Party can resolve the conflict it can win. This includes the specious resolution at which Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich succeeded. However, in the end, it is difficult to reconcile two fundamental antagonists: people who believe in fairness, laissez faire, limited government and low taxes; and people who believe in subsidies to big business at the expense of high taxes, and inflation in the name of growth.

By 2005 the Republicans had jettisoned their small government wing. The aim seems to have been to strike an alliance between big government Progressives and social conservatives. But enough social conservatives were disloyal to the Progressives because they were disgusted at the income inequality that Federal Reserve bank policy generates (most did not know this was the reason), the pandering to special interests, and Republican corruption.

The Republicans have failed the true conservative base, the remnant of the Jacksonian and late nineteenth century advocates of limited government, hard money and fiscal discipline. If Barack Obama reduces government and sheds his radical affiliations, the Progressive-social conservative alliance will never work again in my lifetime.

PS--this version isn't as good musically, but it is funny:

Crashing Online Polls--Sometimes You Just Gotta Say: "What the Heck?"

Simon Owens has published an interesting article on PBS.org. A week or so ago PBS published an online poll asking whether Sarah Palin was qualified. I had been alerted about the poll via e-mail and posted the e-mail on this blog. I also voted. Simon points out that FreeRepublic had posted a message that "conservatives" (I consider myself a Jacksonian radical, but "conservative" will do) should crash the poll, and that's probably how I heard of it (i.e., indirectly from one of the many Freepers whom I respect, admire and turn to for advice). Learning that conservatives were crashing the poll, Professor PZ Myers of Pharyngula mounted a counter-offensive. Myers is a scientist who correctly points out the many biases and threats to the validity of online polls.

Myers says:

"If you look at the major networks' coverage of the election, for instance, what you find is that they turn it into a horse race...All they report is who's ahead, who's behind and by how much. It is distracting and detracts from the coverage of the actual issues."

Issues? What issues? When was the last time you heard discussion of monetary policy on PBS? Probably in 1836, when Jackson was still president.

However, Joel Schwartzbert of the website that ran the poll does not claim that online polls are representative. Article author Owens points out about the Palin poll I crashed:

"To date, more than 50 million votes have been registered on the poll, both from constant freeping and from bots running rampant and falsely inflating the numbers. Eventually, NOW changed the poll to track a user's cookie so they could only vote one time per computer."

Maybe the guys over at PBS haven't heard of Webroot's Window Washer. Sorry to break the news to you, Simon, but no cookie is going to be able to stop the Freepers!

Given the extreme biases in the American news media I would not make much of an issue out of an online poll. In fact, I would claim that if Fox, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc. permitted online voting as to whether the viewers think that the announcers are full of baloney, the instant feedback would improve things.

Social Conservatism Not a Decisive Issue in This Election

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News report that Proposition 8, mandating that marriage between a man and a woman, won 52-48%. In contrast, President-elect Obama won in the Golden State by 61% to 37%. A bill restricting abortion rights for minors (requiring parental notification) lost by 52-48%. It is true that, as Paul Rogers points out in a Mercury News blog:

"Two of the main anti-abortion ballot measures in the nation failed. Voters in South Dakota rejected by a margin of 55-45 percent Initiative 11, which would have banned abortion except in cases of rape, incest or serious health risk to the mother. And in Colorado, they trounced Amendment 48, which would have defined life at the moment of conception. It failed by 73-27 percent."

Despite the failure of anti-abortion proposals, it would seem that the economy and the Iraqi War rather than social issues received voters' attention. Although restrictions on abortion failed, elimination of gay marriage succeeded in California, which someone once called "the land of fruit and nuts". It would also seem that advocates of abortion rights might begin to feel more comfortable with state-by-state determination of the extent to which abortion will be permitted rather than a sweeping Supreme Court decision.

George Phillips's Loss Is Ulster County's Loss

Joe Bubel has an excellent post on his blog. Joe notes:

"Our media-driven society accepted Obama by word only, and that is enough for them. And, there just aren't enough people left, who expect more than just words, to counter the droves of 10 second sound byte Obama followers at the polls. Time will only tell, if Obama can deliver the Christmas he promised.

"There will be those who will gloat. There are those who say to me, and others like me on the blog world, we are a blue county in a blue state, time for your 'kind' to move...So I say, I have the FREEDOM to live where I Like. You, however, are tied to where the government can take care of you, or you need to bring the government to you, which you have been doing quite successfully in Ulster County."

Sadly, Ulster County and the rest of New York's 22nd Congressional District has overwhelmingly voted another term for Comrade Maurice Hinchey, Congressman Price Control, who advocated price controls on gasoline earlier this year and never saw a socialist system he didn't wish to emulate. The 22nd district is gerrymandered to include Binghamton, Ithaca, New Paltz, Woodstock, Kingston and Poughkeepsie. They managed to slice in more than a half dozen colleges, Vassar, Marist, two SUNYs (New Paltz and Binghamton)and Cornell, plus Woodstock, home to trust left wing trust fund babies and rock stars. George Phillips mounted a noble campaign but lacked support from Ulster County's Democratic media and 2001 invasion of New York City liberals. The Obama-McCain debacle contributed as well.

Let us hope that George continues his noble efforts in pursuit of this Congressional seat.