From the Archives - Dick Armey on the U.S. Congress: 'the most dangerous gang of economic illiterates I've ever seen'

Dick Armey on the U.S. Congress: 'the most dangerous gang of economic illiterates I've ever seen'
September 15, 2010 2:52 AM MST

According to its co-author, former Texas Congressman and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the new book, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, came about in response to mean-spirited attacks on Tea Party participants.

“We were sitting around looking at these horrible, mean ways in which these good folks were being characterized,” Armey related, “and we said, ‘Somebody needs to tell the whole story, the true story.’”

Tea Party’s ‘true story’
That “true story,” Armey explained to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, was that, even before the movement had a name, Tea Party activists from around the country sought advice from FreedomWorks, the advocacy group that Armey chairs.

“Almost without exception,” he said, “wherever you look in the country -- California, Florida, wherever -- where somebody wanted to put a group together and start getting the ball rolling, they called us.”

Armey answered questions about his book, the Tea Party, and the 2010 and 2012 elections in an interview on the eve of the second 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington, which this year attracted a crowd of 100,000 or more protesters who gathered on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol to hear a range of speakers from Colombian immigrant Tito Munoz to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Understanding Economics

The average Tea Party member, Armey agreed, has a better grasp of economics than the average Member of Congress.

“No doubt about it,” he said. “That’s one of the things that really distresses me.”

The country is in trouble, he added, if Congress Members' “understanding of economics, how the economy works, the world of commerce, where the money comes from, is less than” that of the typical citizen.

“This is a serious problem and I have no doubt about it,” Armey said with emphasis.

“You take a look at the leadership in the House and the Senate and the Executive Branch of government, starting with the President, it is the most dangerous gang of economic illiterates I’ve ever seen in my life.”

No ‘honest curiosity’
Having served in Congress for nearly two decades, Armey had observed the capacity of its Members to understand basic economic concepts.

“It is frightening,” he said. “They don’t have an honest curiosity about economics. I just don’t believe any one of them ever looked at this and asked the question, where’s this money coming from?”

Armey described legislators as “a bunch of kids that found the money tree” who say, “’We can just spend all we want.’”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 15, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Repost: Jeff Flake, Donald Trump, and Edmund Burke

Last week Tuesday, at a fundraising reception for his reelection campaign, Jeff Flake and I briefly reminisced about our – well, his – early days in Washington a quarter century ago, when we were both policy wonks working on African issues.

Rick Sincere & Jeff Flake

Those were simpler times. George H.W. Bush was President. The Cold War had just come to an end, and the West and its liberal values had won. We were riding a tide of prosperity buoyed by the Reagan administration’s economic policies and the 1986 tax reforms. Jeff had not yet run for public office but I had tested the political waters in a special election for the Virginia House of Delegates.

Jeff Flake went on to bigger and better things: president of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator and chairman of the Africa subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Earlier this year, he wrote Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle, borrowing a title from Barry Goldwater's 1960 book.

Today he stunned us with his announcement that he would retire from the Senate because of the debasement of the Republican Party and government institutions by their putative “leader,” Donald J. Trump.

He explained his decision not to seek reelection to the Arizona Republic by saying “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party."

In an eloquent and hard-hitting speech on the floor of the Senate – which became the lead story on today’s edition of All Things Considered on NPR and no doubt flooded the headlines and airwaves of Arizona news outlets – Flake laid out his reasons for retiring and made it clear that Trump is a cancer eating away at the body politic. If anyone deserves blame for the destruction of the Republican party and its values, it is Trump.

What was once the party of Goldwater, Ford, and Reagan has become listless, boneheaded, and petulant.

But those are my words, not Flake’s. Here is what he had to say to his colleagues in the Senate today:

It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership.

Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal. That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals, we must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.

And more:

Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.

And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?

Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it.

Read the whole thing here, with its citations of James Madison and Theodore Roosevelt. Watch it here.

Make no mistake – talented, wise legislators like Jeff Flake depart the Senate and political life because a blowhard in the White House has no sense of propriety, or empathy, or humility, and no understanding of the Constitution or the rule of law or the limits of his own authority. This bodes ill for the Republic.

As I write this, I am still shaking in anger and sadness. Edmund Burke wrote that the “only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” When sinister forces like Steve Bannon and his orange-rind puppet gleefully sideline good men like Jeff Flake, evil triumphs.

This has been reposted and slightly adapted from an article on Bearing Drift published October 24, 2017.

From the Archives: 'Beautiful chaos': FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe describes the Tea Party movement

'Beautiful chaos': FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe describes the Tea Party movement
September 3, 2010 2:30 PM MST

Glenn Beck showed some of the momentum of the Tea Party movement when he attracted tens of thousands of people to the Lincoln Memorial for a “non-political” rally with the theme “Restoring Honor” on August 28.

Another test of the Tea Party’s breadth and depth will occur on September 12 at the U.S. Capitol, when the second annual 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington is scheduled.

On of the groups organizing the 9/12 March is FreedomWorks, whose president, Matt Kibbe, recently wrote a book about the Tea Party Movement with coauthor Dick Armey, the former Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. Titled Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, it was published August 17 by William Morrow.

Earlier this summer, Matt Kibbe spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the Tea Party Movement and where it’s going.

Two Characteristics

There are two aspects that characterize Tea Party activists, Kibbe said.

First, “they are new to politics and they’d always thought that politics wasn’t for them. They’d been sort of rationally opted out of that, so when you talk to them, they say, ‘I’ve never done this before.’”

Second, the Tea Party activists “tell you that the government is spending too much money it doesn’t have, it’s getting too involved in our lives, and that it’s out of control,” Kibbe explained, and they say, “’I had to show up, I had to participate; if I don’t participate, I have nothing to complain about.’”

Reflecting on whether the Tea Party movement will be a lasting political phenomenon, Kibbe suggested that “the most important test of the tea party movement is not November 2 but November 3.”

He foresees “a huge political impact” in the 2010 congressional elections, with the result that “we’re going to see huge turnover in politics, but the question is, Will they be organized on November 3 to hold this new generation of politicians accountable?”

That, he said, is the test.

Shared Values
Moreover, Kibbe continued, “what’s going to be different about this grass roots uprising from anything we’ve seen in the past” is that “they’re not just a protest movement. They’re actually a community of people with certain shared values that bind them together.”

The Tea Party will breed a new generation of political leaders whose names are not known to us yet, but who are learning political skills through their participation in the movement.

“What I like to say,” Kibbe explained, is that “the Tea Party has created this huge political stage and has created an incentive for a new generation of leaders to climb up on that stage and embrace those ideas and effectively represent them in the political realm. They’re all amateurs now, and that’s not a bad thing, but to win office, you’ve got to learn those skills” in order to win.

‘Beautiful Chaos’
The Tea Party movement is diffuse and “it’s very decentralized,” said Kibbe. “I like to call it ‘beautiful chaos.’ I say that with an understanding of Hayek’s notion of spontaneous order, that markets organize things in a semi-rational way even if it’s not planned, even if there’s no central authority like a Republican or Democratic party saying this is how you should do it.”

What’s more, Kibbe added, there is also “competition for tactics and ideas that you’re seeing now. I believe that the Tea Party activists are going to gravitate toward the best ideas.”

Ideas and tactics are being tested “right now,” Kibbe said, and “different people are going to have different views about where the Tea Party should go, but I believe the center of gravity is going to follow the best ideas.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 3, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Author Craig Shirley considers whether Ronald Reagan was a libertarian

Author Craig Shirley considers whether Ronald Reagan was a libertarian

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the death of President Ronald Reagan. He died on June 5, 2004, the eve of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the 20th anniversary of his speech at Normandy remembering “the boys of Pointe du Hoc.”

Earlier this year, Craig Shirley, author of Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All and of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, came to Charlottesville to speak at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

In an interview that weekend with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Shirley noted how Reagan viewed libertarianism as intrinsic to conservatism and often defined himself as a libertarian.

'Heart and soul'
Reagan, he explained, gave an interview to Reason magazine in 1975, in which “he said that libertarianism is the fundamental basis for American conservatism.”

That interview, conducted by Reason's founding editor Manuel Klausner, appeared in the magazine's July 1975 issue. In it, Reagan said that “if you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

Shirley pointed out that, “for a time, [Reagan] referred to himself publicly as a 'libertarian conservative.' I have interviews with him on CBS in which he referred to himself as a 'libertarian conservative.'”

Reagan, Shirley explained, “was not libertine but he was very much of the opinion, following Locke, Paine, and Jefferson, that [limited government] was about the individual and the privacy and the rights and the dignity of the individual. He said that many, many times in his political career.”

Anti-gay Briggs Amendment
As an example of Reagan's libertarianism, Shirley recalled the then-future president's opposition to the Briggs Amendment in California, a 1978 voter initiative that would have banned gay men and lesbians from teaching in government schools.

John Briggs, he explained, was a California state senator in California. Briggs “had seen the political success that Anita Bryant had done in Dade County” with her campaign to end the local anti-discrimination ordinance that protected gay workers. “Her political star began to rise as she was taking on the gay rights movement,” he said, noting that “Briggs had higher aspirations; he wanted to run for governor of California.”

Briggs, he explained, “came up with an idea that would prohibit either those who championed a homosexual lifestyle or those who were gay and were out from being public school teachers. This deeply offended Ronald Reagan. You could say it was because of his libertarianism, or because of his upbringing, because of his mother's [influence] about allowing people to live and let live, or because of his cosmopolitan lifestyle that he was aware of during his days in Hollywood. He may have been informed by all three experiences but he was against it and he campaigned against it.”

The November 1978 referendum was defeated by a 14-point margin and afterwards, Shirley recalled, Briggs had a press conference where he “was asked by a reporter, why did it lose?”

Briggs replied: “Ronald Reagan. Reagan campaigned against it, and that was it.”

Confirmation
Shirley's recollections are confirmed in an article by James Duke Mason on June 5 in The Advocate, an LGBT magazine.

“Believe it or not,” Mason wrote, “Reagan was one of the first major politicians in history to come out for gay rights. Just a year before he announced his candidacy for president, he came out forcefully” against the Briggs Amendment.

Not only did Reagan “have no political incentive to do it, but it could’ve been a huge catastrophe. In speaking out against the initiative, Reagan used language that was way ahead of its time; he argued that 'prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.' Some dismiss his support as too last-minute to have made a difference. But as his biographer Lou Cannon once put it, Reagan knew the risks but 'chose to state his convictions.'”

Briggs himself blamed Reagan for his amendment's defeat. Could he have equally blamed Reagan's core libertarianism?

SUGGESTED LINKS

Craig Shirley recalls events at the start of World War II in 'December 1941'
Virginia Senate candidates remember Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday
Historian Paul Kengor on Ronald Reagan and the collapse of the USSR - Part I
Historian Paul Kengor on Ronald Reagan and the collapse of the USSR - Part II
Amity Shlaes discusses significance of Calvin Coolidge at Heritage Foundation

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/author-craig-shirley-considers-whether-ronald-reagan-was-a-libertarian

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on June 6, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Barry Goldwater's 1964 'extremism' speech still defines conservatism 50 years on

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on July 15, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Barry Goldwater's 1964 'extremism' speech still defines conservatism 50 years on

Fifty years ago this week, Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican party's nomination for president at the GOP convention in San Francisco. Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign is almost universally credited with launching both the modern conservative and the modern libertarian movements.

In an acceptance speech most famous for its much misunderstood but biggest applause line – “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” – Goldwater laid out a definition for political conservatism without once using the word “conservative.”

Something of a précis of his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's convention speech endeavored to explain conservatism – or what he called “Republicanism” on that occasion – to listeners who had not yet learned much about it.

In the same speech, Goldwater displayed a certain amount of prescience regarding the course of human history and offered advice to his fellow Republicans who, then as now, often found themselves among bickering factions.

In one, brief paragraph, the Arizona Senator summarized the conservative view of individual liberty and the proper role of government.

Private property and diversity
Conservatives, he said, “see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.”

Goldwater also drew a contrast explicitly to the communist, totalitarian vision and, implicitly, to big-government liberalism then in vogue.

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good,” Goldwater asserted, “are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”

In a line that would be welcomed equally by the Tea Party and by the Occupy movement, Goldwater said that conservatives must “resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

A vision of the future
And as if envisioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire a quarter-century later, Goldwater made remarkably accurate predictions in this paragraph:

“I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.”

Toward the end of his speech, just before the famous line about “extremism,” Goldwater pointed out the factionalism in the Republican party was not new, but also was not necessarily bad.

Discord and hostility
The GOP, he said, is “a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.”

Then he quoted Abraham Lincoln in 1858 “because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "[The Republican Party] was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.'”

As if he were anticipating the divide between the Tea Party and “establishment” branches of the conservative movement in the 21st century, Goldwater then admonished: “Let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

He explained that “the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.”

It was in that context – between “stupid labels” and the beauty of the American system – that Goldwater added:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

He concluded with the modest thought that conservatives have “a very human cause for very humane goals.”

Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech of July 16, 1964, can be viewed in its entirety on the C-SPAN web site.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Present at the creation: YAF co-founder Carol Dawson remembers the 1960 Sharon Conference
Amity Shlaes discusses significance of Calvin Coolidge at Heritage Foundation
Veteran journalist Evan Thomas draws contrast between Obama and Eisenhower
JFK was 'cautious, conservative' says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato
Current politics has Nixons but no Eisenhowers, says biographer Jeffrey Frank

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/barry-goldwater-s-1964-extremism-speech-still-defines-conservatism-50-years-on

50 Years Later, Barry Goldwater's GOP Convention Speech Still Resonates

“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” was the biggest applause line of Barry Goldwater's speech accepting his party's nomination as a presidential candidate.

It is probably also the most misunderstood, ripped-out-of-context line in a speech that stands, even today, as a succinct definition of conservatism.

Surprisingly, in 3,186 words, Goldwater never used any form of the word “conservative” in this famous speech. This stood in contrast to four years earlier, when he scolded supporters who threatened the cohesion of the Republican Party by saying, “Let's grow up, conservatives.”

Fifty years ago today, on July 16, 1964, grown-up conservative Barry Goldwater spoke to the GOP convention in San Francisco.*

Most readers of this blog are too young to remember Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, yet it is almost universally credited with launching both the modern conservative and the modern libertarian movements. The principal founders of the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation worked on Goldwater's campaign. The founding members of the Libertarian Party were Goldwater campaign volunteers, and Virginia's current Republican National Committeeman, Morton Blackwell, was the youngest Goldwater delegate at the 1964 convention.

The campaign set the stage for a transformation of the Republican party and Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. As George F. Will has put it, Goldwater won the 1964 election but it took 16 years to count the votes.

Something of a précis of his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's convention speech endeavored to explain conservatism – or what he called “Republicanism” on that occasion, eschewing specific references to the C-word – to listeners who had not yet learned much about it and who unfairly feared it.

In the same speech, Goldwater displayed a certain amount of prescience regarding the course of human history and offered advice to his fellow Republicans who, then as now, often found themselves among bickering factions.

In one, brief paragraph about halfway through the speech, the Arizona Senator summarized the conservative view of individual liberty and the proper role of government.

We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.

Goldwater also drew a contrast explicitly to the communist, totalitarian vision and, implicitly, to big-government liberalism then in vogue, and recognized the tensions inherent in simultaneous pursuits of liberty and equality.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

In a line that could be welcomed equally today by the Tea Party and by the Occupy movement, Goldwater said that conservatives must “resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

And, as if envisioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire a quarter-century later, Goldwater made remarkably accurate predictions in this paragraph:

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.

Toward the end of his speech, just before the famous line about “extremism,” Goldwater pointed out the factionalism in the Republican party was not necessarily new, but also was not necessarily bad.

The GOP, he said, is “a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.”

Then he quoted Abraham Lincoln in 1858 “because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "[The Republican Party] was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.'”

As if warning the Tea Party and “establishment” branches of the conservative movement of the 21st century, or the social conservative and the libertarian factions, Goldwater admonished: “Let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

Explaining that the Republican Party should require no litmus tests, Goldwater explained:

the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

It was in that context – between “stupid labels” and the beauty of the American system – that Goldwater added:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" -- the second part being so often forgotten while the first part so often misinterpreted.

He concluded with the modest thought that conservatives have “a very human cause for very humane goals.”

Perhaps suggesting that he knew victory in November was unlikely, Goldwater went on to note that his 1964 campaign was a first step in a long journey.

This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.

Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech of July 16, 1964, can be viewed in its entirety on the C-SPAN web site, where you can see people smoking openly on the convention floor.



*Twenty years later, when the Democrats chose the same city for their nominating convention, then-UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick repeatedly dripped with contempt the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” in her own GOP convention speech.

(Cross-posted, in slightly different form, from Bearing Drift. A shorter version of this essay also appears on Examiner.com.)

Winning through 'winsomeness, equanimity, and a moderate temperament'

(This article appeared originally on Virginia Politics on Demand on August 15, 2013.)

My long-ago colleague and collaborator at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Peter Wehner, has an insightful and instructive article posted at Commentary magazine, headlined "Why Tone in American Politics Matters."

He points out that, as personally satisfying as combativeness in politics may be, it seldom paves the path to electoral victory. (I'd add that it seldom leads to legislative success, either.)

Looking at history and at current conditions, Wehner notes that American voters are non-ideological by their nature, and that is why one's tone matters as much as, if not more than, one's stated positions on policy issues.

"The willingness to fight for a cause is often an admirable thing," he writes,

and many of us were drawn to politics in large part because of a desire to advance a set of convictions. That effort elicits opposition, which in turn leads to clashes. That is the nature of politics in a republic and something that can’t (and shouldn’t) be avoided. Politics ain’t beanbag.

But in choosing to fight, one needs to pick the most favorable terrain possible–and even then (and whenever possible) to wage battles with affability, a touch of grace, and in a manner that projects steadiness and reasonableness. Winsomeness, equanimity, and a moderate temperament (which is different than moderate policies) are what most voters are looking for in candidates–especially from people who have strong philosophical convictions. It’s a mistake to assume that in order to be principled one has to be alienating and agitated.

This is a message worth repeating -- and worth scrutinizing, for that matter -- but above all, it's a message that should be taken to heart by activists and candidates alike.

Debate and dissension on GOP's future will continue

College Republican National Committee's report on Millennial voters

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 6, 2013.)

Like it or not, members of the Republican party and the conservative movement are engaged in a strenuous debate about the party's (and the movement's) future. The various factions of the movement that were first brought together under James Burnham's "fusionism" in the 1950s have split apart, reorganized, reconfigured, split again, redefined themselves, and reunited on numerous occasions over the past six decades.

Taft vs. Eisenhower, Goldwater vs. Scranton, Reagan vs. Bush (yes, Reagan vs. Bush), and Mitt Romney vs. practically everybody else were just the figureheads in a struggle that has included traditionalists, libertarians, isolationists, internationalists, anti-Communists, country-club Republicans, Eastern liberal elites, fiscal hawks, social conservatives, and all manner of single-issue advocates on topics ranging from the Second Amendment to free trade to sexual permissiveness to home schooling ad nauseum.

A few weeks ago, the Republican National Committee published its lengthy post-mortem analysis of what went wrong for the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election. The results of the RNC's survey were not encouraging, and its prescriptions for improvement met with a range of responses from "meh!" to outrage.

This week, the College Republican National Committee brought out its own 95-page report on why the GOP fails to connect with the Millennial generation of voters aged 18 to 29. Among its findings: 58 percent of this age group get most of their news about current affairs from Facebook, while only 21 percent get their news through either talk radio or NPR. For fully a quarter of this cohort, the fact that the GOP is hostile toward marriage equality is a "deal breaker" -- they won't vote for Republican candidates regardless of their views on other issues.

As the Cato Institute's David Boaz summarizes the CRNC's report,

young voters are very much against excessive government spending (though they do support higher taxes on the wealthy) and are strongly in favor of gay marriage. They want to reform entitlements but see the Republican party as “closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.”

Yesterday on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, the last GOP candidate elected to be lieutenant governor in the deeply-blue state of Maryland, gave his take on the current discussions:

The old way doesn't work. The old strategies don't work. I think Reince Priebus proved that. Surprisingly, he didn't learn from me when I was chairman that you can't go back to the old model, and you cannot have a strategy that has a conversation with a 21-year-old, you know, African-American entrepreneur at the same time you're having that conversation with a 35-year-old mother, white mother of two.

So, you know, the reality is the reality. You're not going to change that. So adapting, recognizing that those core ideas of individual liberty, opportunity, responsibility, freedom, matter to people. Now how they translate that in their everyday life is up to them, but we can lay out some broad policy views and principles that they can then pull into their lives and say, oh, yeah, I like the idea of, you know, having the freedom to choose where to send my kids to school and what that means for me as a parent, how that empowers me as a parent, versus being stuck with the old model of having to go to the failing school in the neighborhood because it's in the neighborhood, and I live in that district.

So those are the types of opportunities and choices that I think are valuable to voters that I think the party needs to talk about and not losing sight of the fact that you raised about the numbers. In fact, I think that's the incentive to get off of the old stick and recognize the new opportunities.

In response to a listener's question, Steele specifically addressed how the GOP can win the votes of young people:

Millennials are changing the way we do politics. They deconstruct those old institutions. They break them out into pieces. And so their response to a problem is we can build an app for that.

We can create a universe of people that can generate action and activity around a particular issue without necessarily relying on these old institutions and these old strategies. We can bring something fresh to feeding people, clothing people, employing people. And I think that that's going to be very definitional for both parties. I think is uniquely opportunistic for the Republican Party to grab that energy that was just released in the report, for example, that came out this week from the [College] Republican National Committee - that talks about these words and these terms that are very important to people and how we translate that.

Steele also had advice for Republican candidates running in Democratic areas:

[T]here's a way which I think Republicans in blue states do win, and I always say it: Just be yourself. Our values, our ideas, our principles align with voters when we lay them out for them in an open, honest way, without trying to cherry-pick or make them like us.

You know, Republicans should run in the communities as they find them, not as you want them to be or think they are. And the moment you sort of get past that pretense and that falsehood that, you know, everybody, you know, is with you because they're with the other guy, you can have a conversation about the things that matter. You can have a conversation about the things that matter to people, as opposed to matter to your party.

Virginia is the first post-2012 state where the GOP can test new messaging techniques and improve upon ways in which the Obama campaign capitalized on social media. Whether the Republican ticket in the Old Dominion wins big or loses big, there will be lessons to be learned -- as long as we're willing to pay attention.

And as far as "like it or not"? I like it.

Post talking points on Bachmann and Dole

Michele Bachmann at CPAC 2010

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 1, 2013.)

Say what you will about Michele Bachmann's middle-of-the-night announcement that she will not be seeking another term in Congress next year, but the Washington Post has the commentary down-pat.

Here are the opening paragraphs of Dana Milbank's page A2 analysis piece on May 29:

Bob Dole must be some kind of prophet.

Not 72 hours after Fox News Channel aired the former Republican leader’s suggestion that the GOP put out a “closed for repairs” sign, Michele Bachmann announced that she’s going out of business. Just like that, the Republican conglomerate got an unexpected chance to shutter one of the balkiest shops in its supply chain.

And here's the first paragraph of E.J. Dionne's oped piece, published the same day

Maybe Bob Dole has more clout in the Republican Party than we think. He suggested on Sunday that the party put up a “closed for repairs” sign for the rest of the year. Then along comes Michele Bachmann declaring on Wednesday that she won’t seek reelection.

This is the sort of coincidence one finds after letting the print edition of the newspaper sit unread for a couple of days. At least we know that both Milbank and Dionne got the memo. Who sent it is a question yet unanswered.

Sarah Palin and Joe Heck at RightOnline 2012: Video

Sarah Palin at RightOnline

RightOnline is an annual conference sponsored by Americans for Prosperity that brings together political leaders, political pundits, political bloggers, and others involved in the free-market movement to meet each other, talk about issues, and learn about techniques to improve communication in the online world of both journalism and social media.

This year RightOnline took place at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas.

The the featured speaker on the opening night of the conference, June 15, was former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who was also the 2008 Republican nominee for Vice President.  In the years since Palin resigned mid-term as Alaska's chief executive, she has become a political commentator for Fox News and has also raised a stir with her talent for using social media (particularly Facebook) for promoting her views.

I caught Palin's speech on video and posted it to YouTube after I returned home to Charlottesville from Sin City. Including a brief introduction by AFP president Tim Phillips, the address lasts just about 35 minutes.

The next afternoon, because the conference was occurring in Las Vegas, the local Member of Congress -- U.S. Representative Joe Heck, a physician and Iraq War veteran -- addressed the lunchtime crowd. Congressman Heck spoke about the use of social media by his colleagues (he mentioned the Republican New Media Caucus, which is co-chaired by First District Virginia Representative Rob Wittman).

Here's the video of Joe Heck's speech. He is introduced by AFP vice president Tracy Henke.

Watch this blog for more video from RightOnline 2012.

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Is There a Litmus Test for Conservative Republicans?

In April, it was announced by the American Conservative Union that Christopher Malagisi had been hired as the new director of CPAC (the annual Conservative Political Action Conference), succeeding Lisa De Pasquale.  Malagisi's appointment was part of a changing of the guard that included the retirement of longtime ACU chairman David Keene and the tapping of his successor, Al Cardenas.

It's no secret that the choice of Cardenas was seen by many as a rebuke to Keene (and perhaps, indirectly, to De Pasquale) for being too open to libertarian and non-social conservative ideas and groups.  (The conflict came to head -- if it wasn't actually a tempest in a teapot -- when several social conservative organizations claimed to boycott CPAC this year because of the presence of GOProud, a gay conservative group.)  The ACU board, it was alleged, wanted to shrink the "big tent" that CPAC had been under Keene's leadership.

Last week, Malagisi stepped into a political tourbillion when, writing an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, he set up a five-stage litmus test for conservative Republican candidates that, by his estimation, disqualified Texas Congressman Ron Paul and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson as contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.  (It's noteworthy that in 2011, Paul and Johnson came in first and third, respectively, in the annual CPAC presidential straw poll.)

In his article, Malagisi asked, not rhetorically:

Why do Republicans let people like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson participate in Republican presidential debates? They are obviously trying to win the “Who’s more Libertarian?” or “Who’s the least Republican” debate as opposed to the actual Republican debate taking place.

He argued that the Republican Party rests on five pillars (which he does not define):

The Republican Party as a whole though is based on five fundamental principles – individual freedom, limited government, free markets, a strong national defense, and preserving our traditional values and heritage. The modern Republican Party is based on the foundation of the conservative movement.

The conservative movement is a coalition made up of three disparate, yet amenable groups – classical liberals or libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists – or modernly referred to as fiscal, social, and defense conservatives. While each entity emphasizes different issues, they all work together in a political compact of sorts with a shared sense of reason operating within tradition. They also understand that together, as a fusionist coalition, they have the best chance of winning elections and actually legislating their conservative principles.

Malagisi's exclusionary position immediately came under fire, beginning with 92 comments on the Examiner's web site, nearly all of which were in disagreement with him.

Bloggers also took aim at Malagisi.

First out of the box was The Minority Report's Alex Knepper, who says in a piece called "Yes, Ron Paul Should Be Allowed To Debate" that he is no fan of either Ron Paul or Gary Johnson, yet he still called Malagisi's op-ed "misguided," adding:

The term ‘Republican,’ however, refers to party affiliation, not to political philosophy. Anyone whose priorities are right-of-center can find a home in the GOP. This is why Ronald Reagan, who famously stated that libertarianism represents “the heart and soul” of modern conservatism, remains the icon of a party in which Mike Huckabee, who believes that libertarianism is a greater threat to America than liberalism, finds himself leading many presidential polls.

The logic of exclusion would appear to be that candidates who espouse heresy should not be considered legitimate Republican candidates and should hence be shut out from the debates.

Really, now? What to do, then, about Rick Santorum, who has previously stated that he finds “the whole personal autonomy thing,” which Malagisi holds as a hallmark of modern conservatism, to be completely overrated?

Knepper concludes by saying:

As Malagisi probably knows deep-down, there is no such thing as this creature known as the “true conservative.” Conservatism proper is a disposition, not an ideology. It is an attitude toward life, not a checklist of particulars that can be legislated from on-high. It remains, as it always has been, an argument with itself. If Ron Paul is wrong about foreign policy — and I think that he is — then it’s up to others on the stage to demonstrate that he is wrong. I hope that they can do that, rather than take the cowardly route of shutting him down.

Oklahoma blogger Brian Altenhofel goes straight to Malagisi's list of five principles and finds them "exceptional," as you will see:

I would have expected a much better level of rationality from a "President of the Young Conservatives Coalition, a National Review Institute Washington Fellow, and an Adjunct Professor."

The Republican Party has been referred to recently as the The Party of No. But I don't think that's quite accurate the more that I read articles and hear people speak about alleged Republican principles. A more accurate term might be The Party of Buts — "...based on five fundamental principles – individual freedom (BUT only those we approve), limited government (BUT so long as 'limited' means 'slower than Democrats'), free markets (BUT with federal financial support of private companies), a strong national defense (BUT only if it includes nation-building and holding Israel high on a pedestal), and preserving our traditional values (BUT only if those values don't conflict with our personal religious beliefs) and heritage."

Another blogger, The Virginia Conservative, posted a lengthy rebuttal to Malagisi on Sunday, also calling him "misguided":

I believe that Malagisi’s conclusions are just flat out wrong. He starts out claiming that the Republican Party is a three-legged stool, a merging of libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists....

Malagisi’s work devolves into fairly mindless bashing of Paul and Johnson for embracing this libertarian or “classical liberal” wing. He claims that both men are more suited to be Democrats rather than Republicans because they don’t support the war on terror or imposed moral standards coming out of Washington D.C. Doesn’t it seem strange that Malagisi admits there are three legs of the party, while at the same time seeking to saw off one entirely? Although this news may come as a shock to those who lack either common sense or a basic understanding of physics, but this two-legged stool that Malagisi seems to be advocating cannot stand.,,,

Both Paul and Johnson are a welcome change to the current Republican politicians as usual who advocate a blend of fiscal irresponsibility, moral pandering absent any real commitment for meaningful legislation, wars without end, and the shredding of our Constitution. Now, I will admit that Johnson is too libertarian for my tastes, after all, I am a social conservative. However, with the recent debate as a guide, I would support him over Rick Santorum. Although Santorum and I agree on many social issues, his statements in the debate lead me to fear that he would support an agenda more akin to fascism than liberty.

Despite what you may think from this post and others populating this blog, I am not a libertarian. However, as a constitutional or paleo-conservative, I see libertarians as allies as we both seek to rein in the power of the federal government. We can and do disagree on a number of social issues, like abortion and defending our borders, but the party should welcome these folks to counterbalance the Republicans who abandon any notion of limiting the power of government while Republicans reign....

I would wager that either Malagisi is woefully ignorant of Paul and the conservative movement (unlikely) or he is a neoconservative who longs for the return to big government Republicanism. Either way, I encourage my fellow traditional conservatives and libertarians to steer clear of his poisonous rhetoric. Although he is welcome to his opinions, given his current political position, I fear how many other potential allies will become unknowingly tainted by his misguided and baseless words.

One final example.

Pulling no punches, the Northern Virginia Conservative begins like this:

I just can't stop myself...

...from fisking this piece from stereotypical neoconservadouche Chris Malagisi. This guy is one of Newt Gingrich's henchmen, and periodically plugs him, and even started this page on facebook to "draft" Newtie. I, of course, couldn't stop myself back then, either... and this appeared. Whoops.

And he ends like this:

Spare me your smarm, your condescension and your arrogance. No sale. Don't you have a Newtie event to go to?

In addition to the comments on the Washington Examiner's web site and the well-considered rebuttals on blogs, there has also been chatter about Malagisi's commentary piece on Facebook and Twitter. If his ill-considered attack on two solid conservatives -- Ron Paul votes "no" on virtually everything that comes to the floor of the House of Representatives, on the basis that Congress lacks the constitutional authority to do virtually everything it does, and Gary Johnson vetoed 750 pieces of legislation during his eight years as New Mexico governor, arguing that most of it was fiscally irresponsible -- has not already been withdrawn, you can bet that he'll think more carefully about making similar attacks in the future. It would be unseemly, not to say uneconomical, for the new director of CPAC to make enemies of the people who buy about half of the tickets to that annual conservative event.

For other blog posts that discuss disputes and divisions between conservatives and libertarians, check out "Mt. Vernon Is No Sharon" (February 16, 2010); "Rick Santorum's Views on Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan" (October 16, 2010);"Yep, I'm a Mugwump" (March 15, 2006); and "Obsessed with Sex" (February 22, 2010).

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Virginia's Political Blog Rankings

In what might be an interesting experiment, blogger Tom White at Virginia Right! has developed three ways of ranking the scope and influence of political blogs based in -- or focusing on -- the Old Dominion.

All such attempts at rankings must be rough around the edges.  White's three categories are (1) dollar value (a concept I'm not too clear on); (2) global ranking; and (3) local ranking.  In each category, he makes a further division between liberal blogs and conservative blogs.

White explains:

I believe the dollar ranking to be the best overall measure as to the reach of a blog. I also believe the dollar values should be taken with a grain of salt as to the actual monetary value, but if taken as “points” as opposed to dollars, it looks to be a pretty good measure.

Any Virginia blog ranking that fails show Not Larry Sabato and Bearing Drift at the top of the charts is, in my opinion, suspect, and fails the sanity check.

These rankings are not intended to offend anyone and are simply reflective of measurements and algorithms developed by someone with no interest in Virginia Politics and completely objective in their calculations.

For what it's worth, this blog (Rick Sincere News and Thoughts) has a "dollar value" of $7,665, for tenth place among all Virginia blogs, just ahead of Black Velvet Bruce Lee and just behind a six-way tie for ninth place. While my dollar value remains the same, my ranking rises to seven among conservative blogs.

Top-dollar-value political blogs in Virginia are Not Larry Sabato ($210,787), Bearing Drift ($109,500), and Vivian Paige (also $109,500).

On the measure called "global ranking," this blog places 37th overall among Virginia political blogs and 23rd among Virginia conservative blogs (global rank: 4,336,918). The top three in global rankings are Vivian Paige (global rank: 226,490), Bearing Drift (rank: 239,458), and Virginia Right! (rank: 292,312).

In terms of "local ranking," this blog is listed 22nd among all Virginia political blogs (local ranking: 712,222) and 14th among Virginia conservative blogs. The top three political blogs by this measure are, once again, Vivian Paige (local rank: 43,245), Bearing Drift (rank: 44,538), and Virginia Right! (rank: 67,745).

The full universe of blogs ranked in these three categories seems to number 73, though I might be misreading that figure.  If so, the number of conservative-leaning blogs is 51 and the number of liberal-leaning blogs is 22.

Although this is a static picture of Virginia's political blogosphere as of January 2, 2011, Tom White says he plans to rerun his survey on a weekly basis. Tune in to Virginia Right! next week and subsequently for results of future horse races.

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