AEI on the Spectre of ‘Isolationism’
As David Boaz notes below, a few blocks away at 17th and M, the foreign policy and defense analysts at the American Enterprise Institute have discovered a threat that’s even more disturbing than the possibility of a Chinese “Space Force” armed with particle-beam weapons [.pdf]. It seems there’s a spectre haunting America–the spectre of “isolationism.”
It’s such a threat that AEI, one of our leading conservative think tanks, is calling on President Obama to man the bully pulpit and use his magic rhetorical skills to raise awareness. I did a double-take on Tuesday when I saw a post at AEI’s blog titled, “With Growing Isolationism, We Need Obama to Lead Now More Than Ever.” And yet, when I got up the next day, I heard AEI veep Danielle Pletka on NPR, lamenting “Republican isolationism” and the fact that Obama hadn’t yet stepped up to “explain to the American people” the “tough, important decisions” he’d made in foreign policy.
What’s the evidence for this supposedly burgeoning “isolationism” in the Republican party and the country at large? AEI’s Alex Della Rocchetta cites a recent poll showing that only 26 percent of likely voters support Obama’s Libyan adventure and the Pew Center survey David links to below, that has a rising number of Americans agreeing with the statement that the US should “mind its own business internationally.”
But is it “isolationism” to doubt the wisdom of bombing Libya, a country that the president’s own secretary of defense admits isn’t “a vital interest of the United States” or to think minding your own business abroad is better than minding other peoples’ business? As my colleague Justin Logan has pointed out, “isolationism” has always been a smear word designed to shut off debate. Tim Carney’s sardonic definition has it right: “Isolationist: n. Someone who, on occasion, opposes bombing foreigners.”
But, rhetorical games aside, AEI’s hawks have reason to worry that interventionism is increasingly unpopular. It had to hurt when even sometime AEI scholar Newt Gingrich–a guy so threat-addled that he once called for zapping a North Korean missile test with lasers–struck a note of restraint at the last GOP debate. As the New York Times noted, that debate showed that “the hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view.”
Maybe GOP pols are beginning to catch on that, for quite some time now, ordinary Americans have overwhelmingly rejected the globocop role forced on them by liberal and conservative elites. Indeed, there’s a huge disconnect between the foreign policies Americans favor and those the Beltway Consensus delivers. Nearly three-quarters of the American public wants to get out of Afghanistan yesterday; meanwhile, 57 percent of National Journal’s “National Security Insiders” think we need to waste more blood and treasure on armed “community organizing.”
It’s almost like there’s a “culture war” going on, but not one of the usual God, Guns, and Gays variety. On one side, you’ve got the sound, mind-your-business instincts of the American people; on the other, there’s a gaggle of intellectual elites, determined to extend the reach and power of the American state. A “Battle,” if you will. You could write a book about it.
Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal Virginians
The Washington Post just did a major poll of Virginians and tantalizingly included this note in writing up the results:
In contrast to four years ago, about as many Virginians consider themselves to be liberal on social matters as call themselves conservative. Fiscal conservatism is on the rise, but on these social issues, it’s liberalism that’s ticked higher.
But those questions were not included in the published data. Thanks to the generosity of Post polling director Jon Cohen, I can report that the percentage of Virginians who said they were socially liberal or moderate and fiscally conservative went from 16 in 2007 to 23 in the latest poll. This reflects a small increase in the number of social liberals and a larger increase in the number of fiscal conservatives. And here are the tables on those questions:
We’ve written about fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters before, notably here and here, and in relation to Virginia and in the Republican party. Apparently when you ask people, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?”, you get a higher percentage than when you ask the questions separately, as the Post did. When the Zogby Poll asked that question to actual voters in 2006, fully 59 percent said yes. Broader background on the “libertarian vote” here.
The Libertarian Moment?
On NPR, Mara Liasson tells Melissa Block that we’re in a “libertarian moment” in politics:
BLOCK: And Ron Paul appears to be running. Again, he got a lot of devoted followers on the Internet last time during the 2008 bid, not so many votes in the primary. So this time around, is he a significant addition to the Republican field or more of an asterisk?
LIASSON: Well, I don’t think he’s a huge factor in terms of the nomination. In the 2008 GOP primary, he got only about 6 percent of the Republican vote. However, as you said, he does have a devoted following, lots of libertarian-leaning young people. He can raise millions of dollars online in a single day in one of his famous money bombs. So he brings energy to the party, and the Republican Party base seems to have caught up to him on the issues.
The GOP is in a real libertarian moment right now, and Paul has always been all about the debt and the deficit and taxes and spending. You could call him the godfather of the Tea Party.
Of course, Paul may have to split the libertarian Republican vote with former two-term governor Gary Johnson. Johnson also was “a Tea Partier when tea-partying wasn’t cool,” according to the Capitol Report of New Mexico. He vetoed 750 bills in eight years, not counting line-item vetoes. And since today’s libertarian moment goes beyond spending and health care to include rising support for gay marriage and marijuana legalization, Johnson might be better positioned to ride that wave and attract younger and independent voters.
Footnote: Two weeks ago NPR speculated about an Ayn Rand moment building from the financial crisis to the opening of Atlas Shrugged.
Thursday Links
- The Obama Doctrine fails to address the limitations of Washington’s attempts to shape foreign conflicts.
- The 2012 Republican presidential field has thus far failed to produce a small-government conservative.
- FREE E-BOOK: Government Failure: A Primer on Public Choice is available for reading and download (PDF) for a limited time on our website.
- Republicans and Democrats are quibbling over a measly $61 billion in spending cuts–that’s a failure of leadership.
- Under the failing status quo, Big Sugar wins, and Joe Taxpayer loses.
- Ian Vásquez, director of Cato’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, joined C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to talk about the failure of foreign aid:
Prof. Krugman: Ace of the Ad Hominem Smear
Prof. Paul Krugman’s New York Times column of March 27th, “American Thought Police,” made this startling assertion: “the hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear.” What would Dr. Freud say? Well, after careful study of Prof. Krugman’s works and one trip to the couch, Dr. Freud diagnosed the patient and proclaimed, “projection bias.” Yes, the ace of the ad hominem smear is simply projecting his own attributes and habits of mind and deed to others.
On Election Eve…
With Tuesday’s election widely predicted to bring a near-historic shake-up of the political establishment, here are some things we can say for certain even before the first results are tallied:
- This election will be a win for economic conservatives, not social conservatives. Not surprisingly given the economic climate, economic issues dominated the campaign, with social issues barely registering. This was particularly helpful for Republicans, since economically conservative, socially moderate suburban voters, who backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008, switched to Republicans this year. There is a lesson here for Republicans in the future.
- In the months leading up to the election, we have heard a great deal about the so-called “civil war” in the Republican Party. As it turns out, there wasn’t one. Despite some spirited, even bitter, primary fights, Republicans of all stripes were able to unify around a common opposition to the Obama agenda. But having achieved electoral success, Republicans will now be forced to confront the serious divisions in their party: tea partiers vs. the GOP establishment; economic conservatives vs. social conservatives; budget hawks vs. neoconservatives. The “civil war” will be back with a vengeance.
- Voters will choose Republicans in this election because they aren’t Democrats. It doesn’t mean that voters have fallen in love with the Republican party. In fact, polls show that Republicans remain only slightly more popular than used car salesmen—or Democrats. At best, voters are willing to give Republicans one last chance. If they don’t deliver, it will be a long, long time before they get another one.
- No issue hurt Democrats as much as the health care bill. It wasn’t just that voters hate the bill—they do—but that it crystallized the average American’s antipathy to a government that was too big, too costly and too out of touch. Voters will declare that they don’t want government running health care…and come to think of it, they don’t want government running much else either.
GOP Sore-Loser Syndrome
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Does the Republican Party have a sore-loser problem?
My response:
Lisa Murkowski is Exhibit A of the GOP sore-loser syndrome. Poor little thing: She thought she was entitled to the seat. After all, Daddy gave it to her.
But she’s not alone: Charlie Crist, Bill McCollum, Bob Bennett, Bob Inglis, Mike Castle, Dede Scozzafava — all sitting on the sidelines, running against the primary opponents who beat them, or even endorsing the Democrat in the race. They confirm the Tea Party contention: They have no clue about the changes taking place beneath their feet. Lisa Murkowski talks about the bacon she’s brought back to Alaska. But unlike the people marching in Paris to protest moving the retirement age from 60 to 62, the growing Tea Party movement is marching across America with signs that say “We Want Less!” In other words, get out of the way so we can be free to plan and live our own lives.
Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, co-author with Dick Armey of the new book Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, has it exactly right when he says: “What you’re seeing in the Republican primaries amounts to a hostile takeover of the Republican Party – and I mean that in the technical sense of replacing a failed management and tired ideas.” It began, one could say, with slowly growing opposition to the two Bushes, who squandered the Reagan Revolution. It continued with the rejection, ultimately, of the Republican Congress that came to office in 1995, which in time forgot why it was elected as members grew far too comfortable in office. Today, the opposition to “business as usual” — to Republicans as “Democrat Lite” — has a full head of steam. A two-party system works only if the parties are distinct, standing on different principles. It’s taken a long time — since the New Deal — but that’s what we’re moving toward, and that’s good, because it gives voters a real choice.
The GOP and the “Ground Zero” Mosque
Some leaders within the Republican Party seem to have fixed on a useful club with which to bludgeon the president and his fellow Democrats — Cordoba House, aka the “Ground Zero” Mosque. Over the weekend, Republican strategist Ed Rollins explained how the party would use the issue in the coming months:
ROLLINS: Intellectually, the president may be right, but this is an emotional issue, and people who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York, and it’s going to be a big, big issue for Democrats across this country.
“Face the Nation” Host Bob SCHIEFFER: So you see it as an issue that’s going to continue?
ROLLINS: Absolutely. No question about it. Every candidate — every candidate who’s in the challenge districts are going to be asked, how do you feel about building the mosque on the Ground Zero sites?
This strategy, exploiting still-raw emotion and implicitly demonizing Muslims, threatens to trade short-term political gain for medium-term political harm to the party. And it most certainly will translate into long-term harm for the country at large.
Opposing the construction of a mosque near the Ground Zero site plays into al Qaeda’s narrative that the United States is engaged in a war with Islam, that bin Laden and his tiny band of followers represent something more than a pitiful group of murderers and thugs, and that all American Muslims are an incipient Fifth Column that must be either converted to Christianity or driven out of the country, else they will undermine American society from within.
It isn’t a political slam-dunk, either. Though 64 percent of Americans think a mosque near Ground Zero is ”inappropriate“, 60 percent of all respondents in the same survey, including 57 percent of Republicans, believe that the organizers have a right to build in that location, and presumably would not favor a government prohibition on this activity. (h/t Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight) If anyone were to show evidence that the parties building the center were in any way linked to the 9/11 terrorists, or funded by or funding these same terrorists, then the issues at stake would change. But they haven’t done so, and are unlikely to do so. In the meantime, those GOP leaders who oppose the mosque betray a basic inability to discern public attitudes, even as they propel this country on a ruinous course, headlong into a civilizational war which pits all Americans against all Muslims.
A Look Inside the Dark Heart of the GOP
Evidence that Republican leaders and conservative pundits want to shake off their anti-gay image continues to mount. Since the 2008 election, gay marriage has become legal in four more states and the District of Columbia, yet conservatives have been virtually silent. As Congress moves to repeal the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, Republicans are almost all voting against it, but they’re not making a lot of noise about it. Jonathan Rauch cites the lack of interest in Iowa in overturning the state court’s gay marriage decision and Republican strategist Grover Norquist’s observation that the Tea Party enthusiasm is focusing Republicans and conservatives on economic rather than social issues.
Many politicians have had a long dark night of the poll. They know that public opinion on gay rights has changed. Gallup just issued a poll showing that more than half of Americans believe that “gay or lesbian relations” are “morally acceptable.” Seventy percent, including majorities of all demographic groups, favor allowing openly gay people to serve in the military. Those are big changes since 2003, much less 1993, and politicians can read polls. Indeed, one thing that gay progress shows us is that cultural change precedes political change.
But out in the real world, where real Republicans live, the picture isn’t as promising. In the Virginia suburbs of Washington this week, Patrick Murray defeated Matthew Berry in a Republican primary. Berry, formerly a lawyer for the Institute for Justice and the Department of Justice, seemed to be better funded and better organized than Murray, an Iraq war veteran. The Republican in my household received at least two mailers and three phone calls from the Berry campaign and nothing from Murray. So why did Murray win? Well, Berry is openly gay, and David Weigel at the Washington Post reports that the Murray campaign did send out flyers focusing on gay issues. They may have gone only to Republicans in the more conservative parts of the district. And Republican activist Rick Sincere tells me that “in the last few days before the election, I received numerous emails from the Murray campaign that included subtle reminders that Matthew is gay and supports an end to DADT. He also, in a Monday email, took a quotation from Matthew out of context to make it look like he supports a federally-enforced repeal of Virginia’s anti-marriage law. In other words, Murray played the anti-gay card.” Blogger RedNoVa made similar observations, adding, “If you were at the Matthew Berry party last night, you would notice that the average age in the room was about 30. Young people were everywhere. The future of our party was there. Murray’s campaign crowd was older, and full of party purists.”
Bennett’s Ouster: a Sign That Conservatives Have Started Paying Attention to Health Care?
Utah Republicans will not be re-nominating U.S. Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) for another term. A principal reason appears to be their displeasure over a health care bill that Bennett teamed with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to sponsor.
Some commentators decry how Bennett’s ouster demonstrates that the Republican party has lurched to the right. That’s a reasonable interpretation if you believe, as conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker does, that Wyden-Bennett was a moderate, “market-driven” bill.
Rather than a moderate, market-driven bill, Wyden-Bennett would have created “Medicare Advantage for All.” It would have made health insurance compulsory for all Americans, and imposed stringent government controls on what type of coverage Americans must purchase. It would have imposed federal price controls on health insurance. As I explain elsewhere, once you have those elements in place, you’ve got socialized medicine.
Wyden-Bennett went further. It would have created a new government entitlement to insurance subsidies. Yes, the legislation would have given workers more insurance choices — at first. But it would have set in motion economic and political dynamics that would reduce choice and innovation, forcing all Americans into a narrow range of health plans. It effectively would have prohibited employer-sponsored health insurance, forcing even more Americans to give up their current coverage than ObamaCare would.
Wyden-Bennett was more honest than ObamaCare, in that it would have forced workers to pay their premiums to the IRS. That would have made it explicit that the mandatory premium payments are indeed a tax. Those tax payments would have appeared in the federal budget, and the American people would have been able to evaluate the law based on its actual cost. In contrast, ObamaCare’s authors assiduously worked to keep those mandatory (read: tax) payments out of the federal budget.
But on policy grounds, as National Review notes, Wyden-Bennett is more radical than ObamaCare — which itself was so radical that a majority of voters oppose it, and Democrats could just barely corral enough members to pass it.
“Okay, Cannon,” you might object, “but if Wyden-Bennett is even further to the left than ObamaCare, then why do its cosponsors include not just Bennett, but other conservative Republican senators like Lamar Alexander (TN), Mike Crapo (ID), and Judd Gregg (NH)?” Good question.
The answer: conservatives and Republicans just don’t pay as much attention to health care as they should. (Ask any leftist or free-market health policy wonk; they’ll agree.) As a result, the health care industry and the Left can easily seduce them into supporting legislation that violates their limited-government principles. Sen. Wyden pulled it off by dangling the words “choice” and “health savings accounts” in front of his Republican colleagues. Even when Republicans do pay attention to health care, it’s often after someone convinces them that a left-wing goal like universal coverage can be done in a free-market way. (Exhibit A: Mitt Romney.)
Viewed from this perspective, Bennett’s ouster is not evidence that the GOP has lurched rightward. It is a sign that conservative voters may be starting to pay attention to health care. And it gives hope that conservative politicians will do the same.
Selectively Small-Government
Yesterday, David Boaz riffed off of Michael Petrilli’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on the need for Republicans to stop denigrating well-educated, social-progressive types and make them feel welcome in the party. That is, make them feel welcome as long as they don’t try to impose their progressivism on everyone else through government.
That’s certainly good stuff — I’m all for making the GOP as libertarian as possible — but libertarianism extends far beyond just saying nice things about people who eat arugula or who own their own wind farms. Fundamentally, it means government leaving people alone in all facets of their lives as long as they aren’t inflicting harm on others.
Unfortunately, as Petrilli’s Thomas B. Fordham Foundation — perhaps the foremost neoconservative education think tank in the nation — has made clear for years, that’s definitely not something Petrilli and Co. are prepared to do.
Petrilli’s piece was a nice first step, but both he and the GOP still have a long way to go.
Who Wants to Make Sarah Palin the Leader of the Republican Party?
Could it be the Washington Post? Bannered across the top of the Post‘s op-ed page today is a piece titled “Copenhagen’s political science,” titularly authored by Sarah Palin. I’m delighted to see the Post publishing an op-ed critical of the questionable science behind the Copenhagen conference and the demands for massive regulations to deal with “climate change.”
But Sarah Palin? Of all the experts and political leaders a great newspaper might call on for a critical look at the science behind global warming, Sarah Palin?
What’s even more interesting is that the Post also ran an op-ed by Palin in July. But during this entire year, the Post has not run any op-eds by such credible and accomplished Republicans as Gov. Mitch Daniels; former governors Mitt Romney or Gary Johnson; Sen. John Thune; or indeed former governor Mike Huckabee, who might be Palin’s chief rival for the social-conservative vote. You might almost think the Post wanted Palin to be seen as a leader of Republicans.
I should note that during the past year the Post has run one op-ed each from John McCain, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, and Tim Pawlenty. (And for people who don’t read well, I should note that when I call the people above “credible and accomplished,” that’s not an endorsement for any political office.) Still, it’s the rare political leader who gets two Post op-eds in six months, and rarer still the Post op-eds by ex-governors who can’t name a newspaper that they read.
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