Yesterday, on the heels of news that he has personally donated to Planned Parenthood, Rudy visited radio host Laura Ingraham (listen here). Ingraham wasted no time in broaching the elephant in the room: “If you hate it, what exactly is wrong with abortion?”
Rudy’s response: “I think in America, you can personally oppose something, and at the same time recognize that in a pluralistic society other people just as strongly view it differently, and … you can’t put ’em in jail for it.”
So far, so good. Given the time to elucidate and elaborate, Rudy did so in a way that seemed plausible.
But then Ingraham zinged him with the obvious follow-up: “Why would you donate to something like Planned Parenthood that makes hundreds of millions of dollars off the procedure that you say you hate?”
Rudy’s response: “Because Planned Parenthood makes information available. It’s consistent with my position.”
Huh? If you hate something, which you say you personally discourage, shouldn’t you donate to organizations that also discourage that something?
I should also point out that it’s less than confidence-inspiring when a politician, especially one like Rudy whose views on abortion are perhaps his most controversial, doesn’t know whether the Mexico City Policy, otherwise known as the global gag rule, is or isn’t currently the law. (It is.)
Co-founder David All, who is doing brilliant work with new media and from whom I have learned much, responded as follows:
“I had that same conversation with a close friend who I now believe owns tC. What the Republican Party and the conservative movement needs is more people that claim to actually be a ‘Republican,’ or will at least work toward helping to elect Republicans.”
Huh? What the Republican Party needs is not people who merely call themselves Republicans but those who actually believe in Republican principles, like limited government and a market economy and fiscal restraint.
“I was talking with Robert Bluey at lunch today and he said something wise so I’m going to steal it and use it here: To build the movement, we need to add and multiply, not divide and subtract. . . .
At the end of the day, it’s us versus them. We’re in this boat together.”
In other words, disagreement is dangerous because it disrupts unity. (Ironically, this is the exact same view of the liberal establishment bloggers, or netroots that Jonathan Chait profiles in this month’s New Republic. Quoth Daily Kos himself, “I’m not ideological at all. I’m just all about winning.” Translation: “What they cannot forgive is Democrats or liberals who distance themselves from their party or who give ammunition to the enemy.”)
To give this view its due, consider the endless infighting among libertarians compared to the stay-on-the-message orthodoxy of the GOP. Then look at the respective electoral results. There’s a lot to be said for the virtue of strength in numbers, as the Baker-Hamilton commission, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board, and the netroots have all recognized.
But if it’s one thing to respectfully disagree and another to gratuitously censure, David seems to view even disagreement as unhelpful. I couldn’t disagree more. I do not indulge in the “us. vs. them” mentality, and I do not put party before principle.
For that matter, nor does Mike Pence, who is famous for calling himself a conservative before he’s a Republican. Indeed, even if you subscribe to Reagan’s 11th Commandment, I would hope that you agree with Pence—which is why, to bring us back to the original question, I prefer “techConservative” to “techRepublican.” (Incidentally, this is why the American Conservative Union is not the American Republican Union; that’s what the RNC is for).
Instead, I think in terms of what’s right, regardless of who’s saying it. And, as a matter of fact, I think David does, too. Why else would he play such a big part in the Open House Project, a beautifully bipartisan movement to increase congressional transparency among both Democrats and Republicans?
Ultimately, David is right: we need to “add and multiply, not divide and subtract.” But indulging in the latter does not undercut the former. It might technically be a distraction, but it’s a necessary and perfectly healthy one.
For the Internet is not a zero-sum game. If anything, it’s the exact opposite: a world wide playground where we can learn from—and improve upon—those we disagree with rather than seeking simply to “beat” them.
A version of this blog post appeared in Politico on May 8, 2007.
Another Tax Day has come and gone, but the Internal Revenue Service remains essentially unmoved and unchanged. Accordingly, instead of continuing to advocate tax relief, the right should focus its efforts on tax reform.
The Cleanse the Code Coalition is an excellent example of how this works. As John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union, has explained, while members of the coalition disagree sharply on specifics (for instance, whether the code should be more or less progressive), they all agree that the current system should be scrapped in favor of something “simpler, fairer and more transparent.”
Without wading into the question of whether the current code is unfair, there are three strong reasons why such tax reform should supersede tax relief.
1. Reform is more urgent.
Compliance with the tax code’s ins and outs, especially if you’re self-employed, necessitates a significant expenditure of both time (which translates into lost productivity) and money (to pay an accountant to ascertain your particular loopholes).
2. Reform is less divisive, easier to identify with and thus easier to sell.
By contrast, tax cuts are controversial always. There’s no one alive whom the current code—at 67,204 pages and with 1,638 forms—doesn’t irritate and frustrate. Columnist Deroy Murdock reminds us that USA Today recently picked four tax professionals to create returns for the imaginary Bailey family. The pros generated four different amounts of taxes the Baileys owed. Similarly, in 1998, Money magazine asked 46 tax experts to file for another hypothetical household. In return, readers received 46 different tax liability figures, varying from $34,240 to $68,912.
3. Reform is more important.
In the same way that conservatives now emphasize the importance of judicial appointments (since federal judges receive lifetime tenure), we should seek changes that are permanent rather than temporary—changes that are so institutional they can’t be repealed by the stroke of a pen from the next president.
Phil Klein opines that Jonathan Martin’s article yesterday about Rudy’s donations to Planned Parenthood—information Martin received from an unnamed rival campaign—”makes me a bit uncomfortable, because basically the journalist is doing the dirty work for a candidate.”
But the Hotline’s Marc Ambinder (who I just recently discovered and whose work is terrific) argues that “Martin wasn’t spoon-fed.” He confirmed the tip, contextualized it, and disclosed its origin.
My take: Ambinder’s conditions are all necessary but not sufficient to maintain journalistic integrity. To be sure, the issue isn’t that the article hurt Rudy or helped his rivals, or that the Politico published the tip. The issue is the anonymity, or as the New York Times’s first public editor, Dan Okrent, phrased it in a different context, the “anonymity-cloaked assertions of people with vested interests.”
If a campaign wants its opposition research publicized, especially in a high-profile venue like the Politico, then it should stand by its hard work, with attribution. Martin, who’s doing terrific work for his paper, was used like a football, and even though he and his editors are okay with that, the New York Times would never be.
Having said that, I’m still waiting for Jack Shafer to weigh in.
Addendum: Tom Bevan of RCP explains why the leak was well-timed.
1. “People, especially conservatives, are paying more attention to this stuff than most people . . . think.
2. “The longer Rudy stays out in front the more dangerous he becomes, so it is imperative he be brought back to the pack as soon as possible.
3. “Giuliani showed weakness on the issue of abortion in last week’s debate and so the perfect opportunity presented itself to extend and expand conservative doubts about him on the issue by leaking the story now.
NRO’s Rich Lowry (again) pinpoints another contradiction in Rudy’s oft-repeated line that he “hates!” abortion: it’s “so flagrantly insincere” and “rings so false because, temperamentally, [Rudy] is not one to hate something without outlawing or attempting to discourage it.”
Indeed, since Rudy is still ultimately pro-choice, why hasn’t anybody asked him what exactly he abhors about abortion? Is it that it’s controversial? That it’s too common? That it constitutes murder?
Moreover, how does Rudy square his avowed abhorrence with at least six, personal contributions to Planned Parenthood, one of the country’s leading abortion-rights groups and its top provider of abortions?
(Add these questions to Dave Weigel’s list for the full field.)
Finally, Lowry suggests that Rudy can redeem himself by supporting the repeal of Roe (which many pro-choice scholars agree is bad constitutional law), and allowing each state to decide its own abortion laws. On the surface, this seems like the perfect way out—until you ponder the legal nightmare it would unleash:
“The common refrain in the anti-Roe pro-choice camp is that women in anti-abortion states will simply travel elsewhere to end their pregnancies. But it’s unlikely that states with strict regulations on abortion would stand idle, and they will have many legal tools at their disposal.
“States could make it illegal to cross state lines in order to abort a fetus—a tactic Ireland tried in the early 1990s, until a court decision and subsequent constitutional amendment recognized a right to travel. While the Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to travel across state lines, it has also recognized exceptions.
“If states can decree that life begins at conception, they might also be able to use child custody laws to curtail the movements of pregnant women. For example, many states are legally allowed to hold children in protective custody if there is reason to believe the parents will misbehave. Once Roe has been overturned, a state may be able to place unborn children into protective custody, forbidding their mothers to take them across state lines.
“Furthermore, in recent decades, the Supreme Court has ruled that a state can regulate its citizens’ activities while they are elsewhere and prosecute them for violations of state law upon their return. This so-called long-arm jurisdiction has been invoked to allow states to regulate Internet sites based beyond their borders, or to prosecute murders that followed interstate kidnappings. Anti-abortion states could forbid their residents to obtain or perform abortions, even while out of state. Would such measures be legal? The current law is unclear.
Perry Bacon (who recently left Time to join the Post, where he’s been lighting up the Web site’s list of most–popular articles) reports:
Thompson was perhaps McCain’s strongest Republican supporter, even advocating an early version of McCain’s bill that would have banned contributions from political action committees. (In recent interviews, he has complained that the enacted law has not had the effect that was intended.)
Perry, however, draws a different comparison: “The man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Senator John McCain.” Indeed, there is more than unites McCain and Thompson—hawkish interventionism, good government, campaign-finance reform, etc—than separates them.
Consider foreign policy (my hyperlink):
In a 2004 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Thompson said that “every politician that describes Iraq as another Vietnam gives our enemies hope for success.”
“If someone says, ‘This is Vietnam,’ they’re predicting defeat,” Thompson said. “They’re predicting an early pullout. I think that is irresponsible.”
He called for “regime change” in Iran in a recent interview with the Weekly Standard, although he did not detail how that would happen. . . .
In 2000, he infuriated business groups, a rock-solid GOP constituency, by insisting that a trade bill with China include provisions that would allow sanctions on Chinese companies that sent weapons to rogue nations. He was unsuccessful.
This sounds like McCain on steroids to me.
Nonetheless, there are some differences. Whereas McCain was overtly hostile to the religious right, which consequently still distrusts him—who can forget his “agents of intolerance” and “forces of evil” remarks in 2000?—Thompson seems indifferent toward it. Similarly, against McCain’s regulatory instinct, Thompson, as a federalist rather than an ideologue, is more inclined to favor market-based solutions.
“Hillary Clinton is the most conservative” Democrat running for president. So says columnist Bruce Bartlett, who argues that Hillary’s policies would resemble Bill’s: “Outstanding” on trade, “far better than George W. Bush” on the budget, and “no worse than” W on regulatory policy.
We should add, as Michael Crowley did recently in a cover story for the New Republic, that Hillary “has always been more comfortable with the military than many of her liberal boomer peers.” She comes from the Truman-Kennedy foreign-policy wing of her party, and despite enormous pressure from her base, she refuses to recant her vote authorizing the Iraq war. She is also co-sponsoring a bill to sanction U.S. companies that do business with Iran.
Equally to the ire of primary and caucus voters, Hillary deplores violent and sexual content in video games—though because she’s not a knee-jerk leftist, she has proposed a voluntary ratings system rather than a mandatory one. Indeed, she talks more about our national morale and faith, which are far common from the mouths of Republicans than Democrats, than she does about gay marriage and abortion. A few months ago, she even declared that the latter is a “sad, even tragic choice.”
In short, Hillary has left behind her HillaryCare days and embraced the political center. She focuses more on consensus than partisanship. And if you think I’m exaggerating, well, just ask such adversaries-turned-allies as Rick Santorum (on restricting graphic media for children); Sam Brownback (protecting refugees fleeing sexual abuse); Lindsay Graham (expanding health care services for the National Guard); and Newt Gingrich (reforming health care).
And yet, pace Bartlett, Hillary is not the most conservative Dem. That honor belongs to Bill Richardson, about whom Reason magazine sums up the case nicely (not yet online):
[As governor] Richardson cut New Mexico’s income tax from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent, halved the capital gains tax, and eliminated the gross receipts tax. He frequently and explicitly drew a link between lower taxes and economic growth. . . . [He] not only supports the right to carry a concealed weapons but holds a concealed-carry permit himself. He . . . endors[es] charter schools (but not vouchers) and medical marijuana (but not decriminalization).
And in case you think a presidential run has caused Richardson to revisit his views, as it has donetoothers, two things he said last week should quell your fears. First, on taxes: “Democrats, whenever we have a solution, we want to tax. I’m different. I’m a tax cutter.” Second, on guns: “I’m a Westerner. . . . The Second Amendment is precious in the West.” In fact, Richardson has the highest rating from the National Rifle Association of any candidate for president, Democrat or Republican.
Finally, Richardson’s resume stands heads and shoulders above those of all his Democratic challengers: Governor, U.N. ambassador, congressman, cabinet secretary. As Karen Tumulty of Time puts it, “He has rescued hostages and negotiated with some of the toughest characters on the planet.”
Others have noted that Congress is now in the hands of Democrats largely because Democrats ran blue-dog candidates in November. A Clinton-Richardson ticket would entrench this conservative trend.
Addendum (5/4/2007): Citing various quotes from Hillary, but no specific policies, the Club for Growth calls Bartlett “crazy.” Comments Club President Pat Toomey:
Her distrust of individual freedom, her distaste for the capitalist system, and her faith in government control places her at the far left end of the political spectrum. A President Hillary Clinton would do everything in her power to make America look more like our neighbors across the Atlantic and less like the capitalistic free-market enterprise that has made this country great.
And in case Karen’s quote about Richardson’s diplomatic successes left you curious, the Las Vegas Review-Journalelaborates: He’s pried free a journalist from Sudan, concessions out of Kim Jong Ill, prisoners from Castro and Americans from Saddam.
Addendum (11/10/2007): Rich Lowry joins the conservatives-for-Hillary club:
It’s a paradox of this election season that the most conservative candidate in the Democratic presidential field is the one most hated by conservatives. Hillary Clinton will not make extravagant promises about pulling American troops from Iraq, defends declaring elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization and won’t endorse massive new payroll taxes to fund Social Security.
Residents of the District of Columbia want a voting representative in Congress, and Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have introduced legislation to grant their wish (the House has already passed such legislation). This seems perfectly legitimate and long overdue; after all, simply living in the nation’s capitol shouldn’t disfranchise you.
But the way the franchise is established makes all the difference. As Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation explains in the above video, doing so by legislative fiat is unconstitutional. The Constitution created Congress for representatives of the “people of the . . . states,” and since DC is not a state but the seat of the federal government, its residents cannot constitutionally claim suffrage.
Yes, this is harsh, especially because District residents certainly pay taxes (whatever happened to no taxation without representation?) But short of redistricting DC into Virginia or Maryland, or both, the only remedy is a constitutional amendment. As Congresswoman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) put it, “The Constitution is clear. Let’s follow it or amend it.”
Addendum (5/4/2007): Wikipedia offers a decent overview of the competing arguments. Interesting footnote: John Kerry, George Will and the Congressional Research Service all favor the status quo, while Ken Starr, Viet Dinh and Mike Pence support suffrage.
Congress’s “effort to micromanage the Iraq war,” by sending the president a bill this afternoon with a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, “is nothing less than shameful,” argues Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation.
Let’s play devil’s advocate for a minute. Fact: Each branch of government is supposed to act as a check and balance on the others. Question: If the legislative branch disapproves of an action taken by the executive, what should it do?
To wit, what should Congress do with respect to war, so as not to “micromanage”?
Is oversight limited to such things as a (toothless) Sense of the Congress resolution? Or, since Congress has the power of the purse, should it defund the war by withholding money or tying money to certain conditions (say, that Iraqi oil pay for 25% percent of our expenses)?
Addendum (11/4/2007): In his column today, George Will provides the answer:
American history is replete with examples of Congress restraining executive warmaking. (See Congress at War, a book by Charles A. Stevenson.) Congress has forbidden:
Sending draftees outside this hemisphere (1940-41); introduction of combat troops into Laos or Thailand (1969); reintroduction of troops into Cambodia (1970); combat operations in Southeast Asia (1973); military operations in Angola (1976); use of force in Lebanon other than for self-defense (1983); military activities in Nicaragua (1980s). In 1993 and 1994, Congress mandated the withdrawal of troops from Somalia, and forbade military actions in Rwanda.
When Congress authorized the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against those complicit in 9/11, Congress refused to adopt administration language authorizing force “to deter and pre-empt any future” terrorism or aggression.
Steve Chapman points out the supremely counterproductive policies behind foreign aid:
Affluent nations often make it impossible for Third World exporters to participate in the world economy. Third World producers trying to export to rich countries face tariffs averaging nearly 13 percent, nearly four times higher than the duties encountered by producers from rich countries.
Poor countries that might sell agricultural commodities in the West also face another hurdle—government subsidies to farmers in rich countries, which amount to $1 billion a day and serve to discourage imports. Textiles and apparel, where poor countries often excel, are still tightly restricted in the United States and other advanced economies. We want developing nations to compete in the world economy—but without inconveniencing our own producers, thank you. All these barriers cost poor countries about $100 billion a year, which is twice as much as they get in assistance.
“The biggest request we are making of Western countries is to open their markets,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said recently. “Debt relief has saved us some money, but the real money will come from trade. Give us the opportunities, and we will compete.”
Of course, Africans aren’t exactly helping themselves either. As Nick Kristof points out, the staggering amount and complexity of red tape only perpetuates economic stagnation and dependence on handouts:
[O]f the 20 countries in the world where it is most difficult to do business, 17 are African, according to the [World Bank] study, “Doing Business in 2006.” Niger ranks 150th, followed by Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and—the very worst place to try to do business—Congo.
Take a simple construction project—building a warehouse for books. In Niger, obtaining the necessary licenses would involve 27 procedures over half a year. And in either Nigeria or Zimbabwe, the licenses would take nearly a year and a half to obtain. . . .
The minimum wage is set at $35 a month in Niger, higher than the local market level. Employees are allowed to work no more than nine hours a day, weekend work is basically prohibited, and women are not allowed to work evenings at all. Layoffs are usually not allowed.
How does any of this relate to the war on terror? Tom Friedman connects the dots:
Wouldn’t it have been wise for the U.S. to take the initiative at Cancún, and offer to reduce our farm subsidies and textile tariffs, so some of the poorest countries, like Pakistan and Egypt, could raise their standards of living and sense of dignity, and also become better customers for U.S. goods? Yes, but that would be bad politics. It would mean asking U.S. farmers to sacrifice the ridiculous subsidies they get from our federal government ($3 billion a year for 25,000 cotton farmers) that make it impossible for foreign farmers to sell here. . . .
The Pakistani farmer we’ve put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer’s sons joins al Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces.
Since I missed his talk last night, “Defending the Constitution, Restoring the Republic” (at the District Chop House, courtesy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute), I was pleasantly surprised that Ron Paul showed up this morning at Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meeting.
Unfortunately, the congressman’s remarks were no better than his recent, lousy appearances on TV (twice now on Lou Dobbs, most recently two nights ago; once on Fox’s Red Eye; on MSNBC; and once on Bill Maher.)
He faces two big problems, neither of which impinges upon his platform per se but upon the way he communicates it.
1. His policies are so radical that they require heaps of explanation, to say nothing of patience for persuasion. Paul is all-too happy to oblige, but he needs to discipline himself to speak in sound bites, not like a professor. He doesn’t need to sandpaper his ideas or poll-test his words, but he needs to compress them into simple syllogisms.
Grover, for instance, has done this well: “The government’s power to control one’s life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized.” TV Watch is even succincter: “Parents, not government.”
2. Because his radicalism encompasses every aspect of politics, i.e., he has so much to say, he rambles. The solution: a stump speech, something to keep him on message, so he can constantly hammer home the idea (with which many Americans already agree) that Big Government does more harm than good.
Nobody cares, as Paul is sometimes baited to argue, that the U.S. could have ended slavery without a civil war. That’s ancient history and an academic debate, and any time he discusses it, he rightly loses his audience (their attention and interest) and he rightly looks like a kook.
The good news is that Paul is a good fund-raiser and has a strong online presence. His hard line on immigration also helps him with the Republican base.
Moreover, as a libertarian, Paul offers something for all audiences. Are you an environmentalist? He wants to stop subsidizing Big Oil. Disturbed by the war on terror and its accompanying civil liberties clampdown? Paul opposed the Iraq war before it began and is the only presidential candidate to sign the American Freedom Agenda.
If you’re a gun nut, Paul has never voted for a federal restriction on the Second Amendment. Plus, he’s from Texas. For the abortion crowd, while he is personally pro-life, he is politically pro-choice, even as he votes against taxpayer-funded abortions and would nominate judges who would repeal Roe v. Wade.
To be sure, Ron Paul isn’t even a serious contender for the vice presidency, let alone the presidency. But his greatest hope is considerable: the chance to influence the national debate. To do that, he must communicate better.
On a related note, among the myriad fliers at this morning’s meeting was a scorecard from Americans for Tax Reform on all the presidential candidates. Since Paul has never voted for a tax increase or for an unbalanced budget, I’m curious why his lifetime rating from the antitax group is a middling 71.9?
If I were a columnist today, I’d write a column apiece about the presidential candidates. I’d follow them on the campaign trail to gain both a sense of who they are and specifics about their platforms.
George Will, a columnist par excellence, seems to be doing something similar. Here’s his take on Duncan Hunter (from February), on Giuliani, Romney and McCain (March), on Fred Thompson (April), and, now, on the other Thompson—you know, the one who rides a Harley and served four terms as Wisconsin’s governor and four years as secretary of health and human services, where he presided over a $580 billion budget, which is larger than the combined budgets of the eight largest states.
Will makes three main points. Looking backward, Thompson achieved extraordinary success on welfare reform and school choice. Going forward, Thompson wants the Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should remain there. In the present, Thompson says he can win the crucial 27 electoral votes in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota combined.
If I were a journalist today, I’d spend more time covering people like this than scrutinizing the death out of the front-runners’ every yawn and wristwatch-check.
Addendum (4/27/2007): A freelancer for the New Republic calls to our attention something George Will neglected: “As governor, Thompson racked up a reckless spending record and left residents with a $3.5 billion deficit.”
A version of this blog post appeared on Politico.com on April 14, 2007.
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is the mecca for the Republican base—the people who man the phone banks, knock on doors, plant homemade signs on lawns and bedeck their bumpers with stickers. In theory, what’s good for CPAC is good for the GOP.
Alas, as last month’s confab made clear, the nexus between the conservative movement and the Republican Party is wobbly. Whereas conservatives are ideologues who concern themselves with issues, Republicans are politicians who focus on re-election. The two are not mutually exclusive—in fact, the competition is healthy—but something is wrong when many conservatives think their elected officials would exercise greater fidelity to the cause as the minority rather than the majority.
In short, the Right is at a crossroad. On one hand are those who have inured themselves to the relentless growth of government. Such people no longer want to downsize federal agencies but to harness them for their own ends. On the other hand are those who believe that the principles of limited government—fiscal discipline, a market economy, decentralization—are still worth fighting for. Such people read Goldwater, quote Reagan, and cite the Contract with America.
If the GOP wants to regain the congressional majority, it must therefore make a choice: should we try to co-opt the Democratic agenda, or should we hold fast to our leave-me-alone, do-it-yourself ideals?
To be sure, it’s one thing to pontificate from the sidelines, and it’s another to explain to one’s constituents why it’s wrong that their neighbors’ farm, but not their own museum, just received a million-dollar grant. Indeed, the right answer requires mettle—which is to say that it requires principles.
Principles matter not only because they establish a framework for thinking, but also because they distinguish one party from another. A lack of principles explains the CNN poll taken after the November midterms that astonishingly found more than 60% of Americans now believe the GOP to be the party of “big government.”
They’re wrong, of course, since in a contest for who can better exploit the resources of the state, conservatives will always lose. The reason: liberals are more consistent in such advocacy.
So, instead of adopting a me-too approach, Republicans should view the 110th Congress as an opportunity to reorient and revitalize themselves—to reconnect with CPACers. The solution is to return to first principles, the ones that are as easy to explain—government is the problem, not the solution—as they are commonsensical.
A mass e-mail I just received from Mike DuHaime, the campaign manager of Rudy for President, contained the following sentence: “This recent news story highlights some of the many cases Rudy prosecuted as U.S. Attorney[,] including those against the mob, corruption and tax evasion.”
I was initially tempted to think that since the article comes from the AP and not the campaign, I shouldn’t assume that Rudy is proud of all the cases the article highlights. But DuHaime specifically mentions “tax evasion,” by which he means a 1998 indictment Rudy brought against Leona Helmsley.
The husband of real-estate and hotel mogul Harry Helmsley, Leona was found guilty of deceiving the accounting firm that prepared both her corporate and personal tax returns. In short, she submitted false invoices that claimed as business expenses $4 million in renovations to her Connecticut mansion.
But even leaving aside the numerous red flags in the case, it’s unclear to me why an economic conservative, running in large measure on an anti-tax platform, would trumpet this indictment as if he had gone after Tony Soprano.
If you break the law, you should be prosecuted. But prosecutors wield enormous discretion as to which cases they prosecute, and it’s unfortunate that Rudy made his bones on Leona Helmsley’s back.
Given that taxes are far too high and the tax code is far too complicated, I don’t begrudge someone who tries to loophole herself more of her own money. Call her greedy, but it’s my kind of greed.
Pit easily exploitable emotions against deep philosophical convictions, and you get a glimpse of the debate over stem-cell research.
“Consequently,” write Robert George and Thomas Berg, “we propose six facts on which people on either side of the . . . debate should be able to agree”:
1. There is no “ban” on human embryonic stem cell research in the United States.
2. We are a long way away from therapies derived from embryonic stem cells.
3. The human embryo has at least some degree of special moral status.
4. There are non-controversial alternatives worth exploring.
5. Concerns about embryo destruction are not only religious.
6. [Omitted because it’s nonsense.]
One of the best strategies for reasoned discourse—where the goal is enlightenment, not victory—is to begin with common ground. The above essay is a good example, since by trimming the trees, if you will, it shifts the discussion to the forest, like where life begins and what research taxpayer dollars should fund.
My proposal for the next such primer concerns another subject fueled more by ignorance and arrogance than by facts: global warming. Here’s a start:
1. The earth is warming.
2. Human activity is partly responsible for the warming.
3. Environmentalists have a track record of alarmism.
From here, we can delve into the essential issue: will the warming be disastrous?
Posted by Jonathan Rick in 
Scholars “use an intellectual scalpel…