In a recent Washington Post article titled “A Good Time to be a Conservative”; Mr. Kristol made a bold assumption, claiming the “center of gravity” within the Republican Party would shift farther to the right, propelled in that direction by a collection of conservative personalities from beyond the Beltway. Indicating a lack of faith in the G.O.P.’s elected leadership, Kristol says: “Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.” Kristol’s logic is derived from two polls. First, the Gallup Poll of October 26, 2009 that puts the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives at 40 percent, and an earlier Rasmussen Poll indicating that the only 2012 Republican presidential prospects polling double digits are Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. When one looks inside the numbers, it would appear that there are more than a few flaws in Mr. Kristol’s math and intuitive reasoning.

The Gallup results show that the net increase in the percentage of people identifying as conservatives had taken place within that subset of the electorate classified as independents. Quoting Gallup: “Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008. By contrast, among Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who are "conservative" has increased by one point each.” In spite of the shift in independents identifying as conservatives, the actual percentage of voters who identify with the G.O.P., which is the defacto conservative party, has fallen to historical lows. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 25 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans. That percentage improves when registered and likely voters are polled, but the G.O.P. still trails the Democrats here as well. To date, had independents firmly embraced the principles of the conservative movement generally or the G.O.P. in particular, the percentage of voters identifying as Republicans would show a marked increase and so far that is not the case. I would argue that the shift to the right among independent voters is far from solid and is conditional, being subject to a set of factors that will likely change by the time of the 2012 election. In fact an even newer Gallup Poll reveals just how transient independent political attitudes actually are. That poll: “Race for 2010 Remains Close; Democrats Recover Slight Lead”, which came out on December 14 states: “The current generic-ballot results are similar to those Gallup found in July and October of this year, and indicate that the Republican gain observed just after the Nov. 3 elections was not sustained. Shifts in candidate preference for Congress typically occur primarily among independents, whose "unanchored" status makes them much more vulnerable to short-term events in the political environment than are those who claim allegiance to either major party.” I would go beyond the latest Gallup findings to suggest that the number of independents identifying as conservatives will decrease proportionately to the degree to which the G.O.P. moves to the right, especially if the Republican Party finds its public image welded to the personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd.

In his reliance on the results of the above cited Rasmussen Poll, Mr. Kristol is in effect betting the house on a collection of would be candidates that, in spite of polling in the double digits, leave much to be desired when it actually comes to getting elected. Kristol is one of Sarah Palin’s most passionate cheerleaders, but in suggesting that the future of the conservative movement might lie in the fortunes of Ms. Palin, he seems to be gambling on a horse not worth the wager. Mid-December poll results from both Pollster.com and Polling Report.com show Palin registering an unfavorable rating of 48 percent. An ABC poll of November 15^th showed that 53 percent of respondents would not vote for Palin with 60 percent saying she was not qualified to be president. More damaging still is a CBS poll of November 15, which revealed that 62 percent of those Republicans polled felt that Palin lacked the ability to be an effective president. At the time of Palin’s resignation from elected office, Republican strategist Mike Murphy opined: “If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don’t think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, reflecting on Palin’s resignation said: “She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party.” The reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are, according to Pew Research, now at a seventy-year high.  Recently, two Republican heavyweights: Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC, and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) both declined to endorse a 2012 Palin presidential bid when they appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.

In spite of the fact that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have double-digit support among Republicans, none of them breaks a 40 percent favorability rating among voters generally, except Huckabee. However, Huckabee’s 40 percent approval rating was registered before Maurice Clemmons, an inmate pardoned by Huckabee, gunned down four police officers in late November. That said, we might see a decline in Huckabee’s overall standing in the polls.  Poll numbers aside, in the 2008 Republican primaries, Huckabee was only able to win in the south and thus his viability as a national candidate is questionable. Furthermore, Huckabee’s past equivocation on the topic of evolution works to his detriment when it comes to appealing to that large segment of the population that believes in science as well as religion. Mitt Romney, as a result of his Mormon faith, had problems with the evangelical base of the G.O.P., which plays a crucial role in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. Moreover, Romney may well run into formidable headwinds from the far right as a result of his relatively moderate approach to politics and policy positions. Newt Gingrich, who’s favorable ratings are the lowest, at 14 percent, has a closet full of skeletons of his own which led in 1998 to his stepping down as the Speaker of the House and his departure from Congress altogether.  Needless to say these issues will surely be resurrected and they will be in the forefront of the debate in the event that Gingrich becomes a serious presidential contender.

It is in his rather absurd suggestion that the G.O.P.’s center of gravity might travel further to the right as a function of the influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party Movement, that Kristol, having slipped his moorings to reality, has embarked on what can only be considered a voyage of political fantasy. Neither Limbaugh nor Beck are particularly compelling personalities beyond the realm of their audience. Both traffic in the sensational, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction with their primary purpose being incendiary commentary rather than legitimate hard news analysis. The media watchdog, Media Matters for America has compiled fifty-three pages of citations detailing Limbaugh’s distortion of facts or their deliberate misrepresentation for political purposes. For Glenn Beck there are forty-two pages. The latest NBC/WSJ poll (June 2009), which I was able to find on Limbaugh’s popularity, showed that 50 percent of those responding viewed him in a negative light. A similar poll in September showed Glenn Beck registering a positive rating of just 25 percent. In spite of the fact that both Limbaugh and Beck have a committed following, accurately measuring the true size and composition of their respective audiences and the extent to which they actually reflect more than a thin slice of this country’s political spectrum is almost impossible. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post attempted to plumb the length and breadth of Limbaugh’s audience and therefore his influence, in a March 2009 article: “Limbaugh's Audience Size? It's Largely Up in the Air.” Relying on interviews with media industry sources, Farhi claims that Limbaugh’s audience fluctuates between 14 to 30 million, depending on the issues of the day. Quoting Michael Harrison of “Talkers Magazine”, Farhi puts Limbaugh’s average audience at 14.25 million listeners per week, which is just under 5 percent of the population. Glenn Beck’s audience is far smaller and his largest audience to date was roughly 3.4 million viewers on September 15, 2009, which amounts to just 1.1 percent of the population. 

When it comes to the Tea Party Movement, it is equally difficult in coming to an agreement as to just how many people are involved here and to what extent they really reflect more than a microcosm of American political life. According to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, a pro-Tea Party group, just 578,000 people participated in the 2009 April Tax Day Protests. Their website does not display figures for the July 4^th protests nor does FreedomWorks.com or any other pro-Tea Party website that I came across. The largest number I remember seeing is in the neighborhood of 215,000 protestors. Regarding the September 12^th Washington D.C. protest rally, Talking Points Memo described the turnout as follows: “FreedomWorks, the main organizers of the Tea Party event in Washington this past weekend, has dramatically lowered its estimate for the size of the crowd at the event from 1.5 million, a number the group now concedes was a mistake, to between 600,000 and 800,000 people -- though this is still substantially more than the tens of thousands that most mainstream media outlets have estimated, and which FreedomWorks wholeheartedly rejects.” Thus if we add up the total attendence at all three Tea Parties, using the higher estimates, we come up with a gross attendence of roughly 1.6 million or just one half of one percent of the population.

What the math reveals is that the actual number of people who either participate in Tea Parties or who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, presumably many do both, is a rather small percentage of the overall population, even considering that portion that would identify as conservative. That said, its a bit of a strectch to assume that such a statistically insignificant number of people is either enough to move the Republican Party further to the right or that it is likely to do so.

There is one final flaw in Kristol’s analysis and that is his ignoring the rising tide of moderates within the party that are opposing any suggestion that the G.O.P. needs to be purified of any moderate tendencies via litmus tests that even Ronald Reagan would fail, that political orthodoxy should be the face of the G.O.P. or that Republicans can only win elections when they embrace ultra conservative ideas. The now formidable array of moderates seeking to stem any drift to the far right encompasses a spectrum of Republican notables from sitting Senators to strategists and political commentators including: Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Inglis, Mickey Edwards,  Christie Todd Whitman, Newt Gingrich, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker and a host of Republican strategists. Gingrich, appearing on Meet the Press (5/24/09) stated that the G.O.P. has to be “broad enough to incorporate divergent views and can’t be purged to the smallest conservative base.” Tom Ridge stated that the G.O.P. “needs to be less shrill and less condeming of those who don’t hew to a far right view.” Following the departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican Party, Olympia Snowe, in a New York Times editorial opined: “There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and contiuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of  governing majorities.” At an April debate over the future of the G.O.P. Lindsey Graham made the following observation: “We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.” I could go on, but anyone who has been paying any attention to the civil war within the Republican Party knows that there are more than enough voices and intelligent arguments being made to more than call into question the logic and wisdom of people like Bill Kristol and their fanciful notions that the redemption of the G.O.P. lies in the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the rank and file Tea Party participant. All one has to do is examine the results of the 2009 off-year elections and what is evident is that where Republicans won elections, in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, they did so by running moderate campaigns that played to the centrist voter. In contrast, the great and financially costly effort by the far right in trying to influence the congressional election in New York’s 23^rd Electoral District resulted in a conservative failure with a Democrat capturing a seat held by the G.O.P. since as far back as the Civil War.

Over the course of his career, William Kristol is a man who has backed more political losers and also-rans than winners and it would be nothing less than disastrous for the Republican Party to heed his advice or put any stock in his predictions. Kristol worked for former Secretary of Education William Bennet, the voice of personal responsibility during the Reagan Administration, who subsequently lost much of his credibility when he admitted to losing over a million dollars in Las Vegas slot machines. He was Vice President Qualye’s Chief of Staff.  Kristol managed the failed Senatorial campaign of Alan Keyes in 1988 and Keyes would go on to fail twice more in seeking a seat in the Senate and then two more times when running for president. Kristol championed the pardon of Scooter Libby and the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, a decision that McCain’s staffers would later admit to be his single biggest mistake. But it is in an examination of Kristol’s unabashed cheerleading for the War in Iraq that his predictive abilities are revealed to be so totally lacking. It was Kristol who predicted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would unleash a chain reaction of democratic reform across the Middle East that to date has failed to materialize.

Bill Kristol represents that desperate sort of conservative that can’t abide the dynamics of political change wrought by the election of Barack Obama. Likewise, the relatively rapid decline in the influence of Neoconservatives since the 2004 election can’t bring him much joy either. To my mind, Bill Kristol falls into that category within the Conservative Movement that is firmly wedded to the notion that their orthodox ideology is the only one acceptable for America and that anything else is either politically irrelevant or treasonous.  Kristol’s faulty logic gives rise to the notion that he is engaged more in wishful thinking than objective political analysis. His prediction as to future direction of the G.O.P. amounts to nothing more than a political “Hail Mary pass” in hoping beyond hope, that somehow or other the Republican Party can be moved to embrace the orthodoxy of the far right.  In my opinion, having watched him over the past decade and read his articles, he seems to be increasingly assuming the role of a shill for ultra conservative ideas, becoming as a result less objective in his political analysis. Republicans would be well advised to part company with Mr. Kristol, least they find themselves facing a future of continued electoral defeat and a decline in the party’s appeal among that now indispensable factor in American politics, the unaligned independent voter.

Steven J. Gulitti

New York City

12/19/2009

It is a cardinal rule in American political discourse that one refrain from associating an opponent or an opposing position with Adolph Hitler or the Nazis. Senator D. Durbin (D-IL) discovered this all too well when he found himself on the floor of the Senate, apologizing for having associated American military police personnel at Abu Ghraib with Nazi concentration camp guards. That said; it makes for a rather insightful discussion when we stop to analyze several of Rush Limbaugh’s recent insinuations that the present administration of Barack Obama resembles the regime of Adolph Hitler.

Back in August, at the height of the health care town hall follies, Mr. Limbaugh attempted to theoretically tie the Obama administration to that of Adolph Hitler by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis opposed big business, cigarette smoking, Jewish Capitalism and environmental degradation. Limbaugh’s grasp of the Nazi platform is largely accurate. The Nazi 25 Point Program of 1920 called for the nationalization of all corporations, profit sharing by large industries, a communalization of department stores and, where necessary, the seizure of land without compensation for the good of the community. German doctors were the first to link tobacco consumption with lung cancer and the Nazi regime instituted the world’s first government backed anti-smoking campaign. By the 1930s, Germany had the most powerful conservation program in the world. My problem with Mr. Limbaugh lies in his ipso facto reasoning that reaches back in history to elements of a particular regime and suggests that they are in some way organically linked to the present. Beyond this elementary appreciation for Nazi economic and social policy, Mr. Limbaugh has strayed far from reality in his assertion that Hitler affected a reduction in chronic unemployment by a policy of mass arrest and internment at the Dachau concentration camp. Limbaugh has gone so far as to suggest that Nancy Pelosi has advocated the arrest of those who refuse to purchase insurance under a reformed health care system and have the arrested interned in prisons, which would thereby reduce the level of unemployment.

In a July 2009 interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News, Limbaugh boasted of his “refusal to go to college” as if this were somehow a badge of honor. Perhaps it is this lack of a formal education that lies at the root of his constant misapplication of history as a means of explaining present day politics. With regard to government efforts to stabilize the economy, Limbaugh has wrongly conflated sound Keynesian measures with all-encompassing state control in a centralized economy. Outside of a relative handful of libertarian economists, you would be hard put to find any reputable economic thinker today who does not agree with the fact that government action a year ago prevented the world from sliding into another depression. On the topic of health care it is impossible to deny that the system here is not broken and that the market has failed to adequately deliver affordable care at a reasonable cost to the majority of Americans. Would Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have preferred a collapse of the banking system and Detroit along with it so as to test conservative economic theories in real life? The mere fact that the federal government has acted to shore up the financial system and the auto industry does not equate with a centralized program of nationalizing all industry nor is it a harbinger of some economy-wide profit sharing scheme. Most educated individuals are sophisticated enough to see this so my question is, why can’t Mr. Limbaugh? Does the fact that the Nazis recognized the dangers of smoking do anything to undermine the now more than established fact that tobacco consumption is unhealthy? With regard to Nazi environmental policy, a recently published book: How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, points out that the environmental movement’s popularity pre-dated the Nazi regime and many of the policies enacted under Hitler would have come about anyway.

It is in his contention that the Nazis reduced unemployment via a policy of mass arrest and internment that Mr. Limbaugh reveals just how little he actually knows about Nazi policies aimed at reducing unemployment in pre-war Germany. As a college senior, I undertook a yearlong study of German labor policy from 1876 to 1976 and over the course of this project and all of the material examined in the course of a year, I never once came across any evidence that mass arrest and internment were a major component of pre-war German labor policy. During the course of the three-hour oral examination that I took at the conclusion of this study, my supervising professor never once interrupted me to point out that arrest and internment were an essential element in reducing unemployment in Nazi Germany. Rather than through mass arrests, unemployment was reduced by public works and conservation corps projects, paid employment within the Nazi Party, the subtraction of women from the labor force via family building and marriage incentives, the recruitment of one million men into the military and the economic disenfranchisement of Jews, Communists, Socialists and Pacifists and their subsequent classification as being no longer in the work force. While many in this last category did in fact find themselves behind bars that was never the main element in pre-war Nazi labor policy. A concise review of this subject can be found at Nazi Economics: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm.

It is one thing for Mr. Limbaugh to try to spin historical facts upon the present policies of the Obama administration and thereby attempt to force fit the past into the present. It is an altogether different matter when Mr. Limbaugh misrepresents one narrow element of the Nazi regime as having been it’s main policy tool for reducing unemployment and then, beyond that, to suggest that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi actually intend to enforce adherence to a reformed health care program by way of mass arrest, which would have the corollary benefit of reducing unemployment. Such a misrepresentation of history goes beyond the pale of a polite and informed disagreement and crosses over into the realm of fraudulent misinterpretation. One can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh’s actual intent is the undermining a legitimately elected president who, for all of his missteps, is still grappling with the worst economic environment in eighty years. If Mr. Limbaugh has a problem with Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with this nation’s present predicament then let him endeavor to confine his arguments to the realm of established facts. It would benefit Mr. Limbaugh to leave the intellectual flights of fancy and the fantasizing about Hitler and the Nazis to the denizens who inhabit the netherworld of the far right blogosphere. On the other hand if Rush Limbaugh sees his future in reinterpreting history to the point of corrupting facts beyond recognition, then so be it. It will be his reputation that will suffer far greater damage than it already has. Mr. Limbaugh’s content free cackle about Communism, Socialism, Fascism and his conflating of these three ideologies to the point where one can only wonder if he really understands the difference between them in the first place, adds nothing to the national political debate. From what I can observe, the only discernable positive that emanates from Mr. Limbaugh’s commentary is that it further burnishes his image as America’s national buffoon.

Steven J. Gulitti

New York City

28 November 2009

In 1281 medieval Japan was spared a Mongolian invasion thanks to a massive typhoon that swept across Kyushu Island, thereby destroying the invading fleet and drowning the Mongolian warriors. The storm was deemed a divine wind or kamikaze, sent by the gods to save the Japanese. In the waning days of the Second World War, Imperial Japan would invoke the legacy of the 1281 typhoon in an attempt to forestall defeat in the Pacific by crashing wave upon wave of kamikazes into allied invasion fleets as they made their way toward the Japanese home islands. Today an ideologically challenged G.O.P. is failing in its effort to forestall the current administration’s recovery plan.  Many commentators on the right have chosen to meet the new political reality with waves of virtual kamikaze attacks through all manner of media.  The recent New York Post comic portraying a monkey shot by two policemen and insinuating that the monkey is Barack Obama is the latest, and most tasteless, example of the Right’s desperation.

Lead by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly and even the venerable Tony Blankley and Pat Buchanan, the public has been bombarded with dire warnings about “the end of America as we know it.” Readers of Town Hall have been treated to a RED ALERT, which warns: “Economic Collapse is Imminent”. Meanwhile, the conservative website Newsmax is soliciting money for the defeat of the three Republican Senators that supported the stimulus, portraying them as “traitors”. While I am all in favor of intelligent political arguments aimed at maintaining some semblance of fiscal sanity and reigning in wasteful government growth, we are at a time and place that requires a course change in our political economy and drastic remedial actions aimed at economic fundamentals. The reiteration of conservative theories for theory’s sake just doesn’t cut it now. Neither does a partisan reinterpretation of the New Deal do much to guide us out of the current economic abyss into which we have stumbled. Conservatives are wont to say that it was World War II that ended the Depression and not the New Deal; in doing so they fail to point out that spending for armaments as well as for public works are one in the same as both are public spending. Consumers don’t purchase bridges nor do they buy aircraft carriers only governments purchase those kinds of products.  Maniacal attacks and fear mongering about “collectivism”, “economic crapshoots” and “savior based economics” do absolutely nothing to get us out of our current predicament and appear only to be aimed at undermining the present administration for political ends. Conservative columnist Lorie Byrd’s recent piece entitled “Obama Voters’ Remorse” appeared on a day when polling averages showed Obama with a 65 percent approval rating, a Congressional Republican approval rating of 34 percent and Democrats on Capitol Hill garnering an approval rating of 48 percent. The day before, while conservative commentators railed against the stimulus package, 80 percent of those polled by Gallup said that passing the stimulus package was either important or very important. Linda Chavez in a piece entitled: “The Audacity of Hope” would claim: ”Indeed, investors have been noticeably bearish since the election.” trying to blame Obama for the current dissatisfaction between Main Street and Wall Street. While the Dow has lost 1327 points since Election Day, it lost 4317 points between May 2008 and November 11^th.  Can we really blame the current administration for our dissatisfaction with Wall Street or is Ms. Chavez just playing games with facts in an effort to undermine Barack Obama for political reasons?

There is a curious trichotomy on the right today. First and foremost, there is something disingenuous in the GOP’s newfound conservative fiscal ethos. For the first six years of the last administration the national debt doubled with George Bush amassing more debt than the previous forty two presidents combined and Dick Cheney claiming: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” The very Republicans who opposed the stimulus package were more than eager to spend public money during most of the Bush presidency. That said, in spite of their opposition to the Obama recovery plan, Republicans on Capitol Hill know that given the current situation, increased government involvement in the economy is inevitable. Let us not forget that it was House Republicans that insisted on a partial socialization of banking in the autumn of 2008.  Is the newfound Republican devotion to fiscal responsibility real or merely a political ploy affected to procure the support of the party faithful? Meanwhile, outside of the Beltway there is considerable support for the Obama recovery plan among Republican Governors. But like the suicide pilots of 1945, many conservative commentators seem unwilling to admit that political change is upon us and instead have chosen to incessantly--if not at times recklessly and dishonestly--attack Barack Obama at a time of deepening national crisis. While many of these attacks are cloaked in the garment of “true patriotism” this conservative media assault may very well have the net affect of further undermining the GOP’s appeal among moderate voters without which the party cannot hope to return to power. To quote political commentator Steve McMahon: ”The Republican leadership is stuck between Rush Limbaugh and the American people who want an end to partisan bickering.” In the past, when Republicans have suffered an election defeat when running a pragmatic candidate, they have chosen to turn to ideological purists in the next election cycle. That may be a formula for defeat in 2010, but the G.O.P. may be driven in that direction anyway thanks to a base that is riled up by a conservative media that seems more interested in undermining a popular president for imagined political advantage. Many conservative commentators are now beholden to a misguided belief that conservative dogmatic purity and ideological zealotry are ends in their own right. While the “true believers” may feel tremendous satisfaction in their ideological purity, just as kamikaze pilots did sixty-four years ago, their chances of driving a wedge between the greater body politic and the Obama Administration are less than a sure strategy for victory and may very well derail the Republican Party when voters head to the polls in 2010.

Steven J. Gulitti

New York City

February 22, 2009

Historically there are two types of elections in this country, changes in speed or in direction. The election of Barack Obama is unquestionably of the latter and with it comes an inherent change toward a more progressive political climate. His inaugural address signaled the end of the era of Reagan as well as that of the Clintons as the driving force within the Democratic Party. But within this historical realignment there are daunting challenges facing both parties. A key challenge for the Democrats is to avoid falling back into the bad old habit of throwing money at social problems without adequate examination of those problems or insuring intelligent oversight so as to avoid fiscal waste. Likewise, there is the age-old temptation to create voter allegiance tied to steady streams of government largesse. Already the stimulus plan has more than a few questionable spending proposals that will do little to create economic activity but will certainly increase government spending. If these items have been included as bargaining chips that can be traded off for real simulative measures in the final legislation that is one thing, anything else is unacceptable. Democrats should not fool themselves into thinking that the failed Bush Administration will somehow, as if by magic, guarantee the party a free ride into the future. In crafting government programs designed to deal with the current economic downturn or which attempt to bring American social policy into the 21^st Century, progressives need to be mindful of the future entitlement-funding crisis that is looming just over the horizon.

 The ideologically exhausted Republicans face a far more complex set of challenges. While many will pay lip service to the values of small government, free markets and deregulation, there is the undeniable realization that large-scale government participation in the economy, in the near term, is a foregone conclusion both in public spending and financial regulation. Commenting on the proposed stimulus last week Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) said: “Democrats should break out pieces of the huge stimulus that both parties agree will work and quickly approve them. You could take the $30 billion for roads and bridges that is truly shovel ready and pass that this afternoon. Lets pick those pieces out, pass them right away, and then say, O.K., this is a down payment on the $800 billion.” It’s more than apparent that any Republican, especially one from Utah, who is accepting $800 billion in a stimulus program, is not in opposition to the concept of government involvement in the economy. The real debate across the aisle revolves around cutting taxes vice spending but most economists come down on the side of spending, as tax cuts, while quick to enact, don’t necessarily create immediate economic activity. Consider the Bush tax rebate of last summer, 80 percent of it went to pay down debt or into savings thereby creating little in the way of a spending stimulus. Building public works creates demand for construction materials, puts people to work who in turn spend and the end product is a public good that lasts for generations. On the other hand, outside of tax credits for equipment or facilities, businesses will not necessarily expand output due to receiving a tax break unless they see a demand for their goods or services. In the final analysis, Republicans on Capitol Hill have reverted in form to the role they played in the era before Ronald Reagan, that of advocating a better way to mange government as opposed to being the purveyors of policies that guide the country to the right. In commenting on the House version of the stimulus, Eric Cantor (R-VA) said:” We must reconcile the nation’s need for quick action with the need for prudent policies designed to spur sustainable job creation here in America.” That there is not much in the way of rhetoric about “government being the problem” or relying on the private sector to pull us out of the slump just goes to show you how much the Republicans have had to accept the paradigm shift that has taken place in the American political economy.

Outside the Beltway, on conservative talk radio and in the blogosphere, there is a growing chorus of opposition that centers on the inability to accept the fact that the Reagan Revolution is over and that many of its precepts may no longer be applicable. From Michelle Malkin’s recent article admonishing the GOP to work to undo anything progressive that Obama advocates to Dick Morris suggesting that Republicans insist on “free market measures” as part of any stimulus to the serial draft dodger Rush Limbaugh’s unpatriotic prattle that he hopes Obama fails, there is an element of political dead enders who just can’t accept the fact that things are changing in America. The President addressed this very situation in his inaugural address: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

It is not insignificant that Republicans picked an African-American as the new face of the GOP. Implicit in this development is the fact that the idea put forth by Karl Rove that there could be a permanent Republican majority is a pipe dream and that the GOP must broaden its base to remain relevant. Moreover, an analysis of voting patterns in the last election showed that even in most Red States there was an increased trend toward voters who choose Democrats. Republicans only gained voters in a swath of the country beginning in Oklahoma and stretching in an arc across Appalachia, that part of America that is the least ethnically diverse, least educated and the most economically depressed. While many on the right admire Rush Limbaugh it is important to note that his following is but 14 million in a nation of 330 million people, roughly 4 percent of the population. Collectively this extreme element on the right further complicates the fortunes of those Republicans on Capitol Hill who know that outright obstructionism coupled with a dogmatic regurgitation of conservative principles will be a formula for failure in the next election cycle, baring an unlikely rapid return to economic prosperity.  In the debate surrounding the stimulus, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed criticism from the right aimed at upending bi-partisan efforts in the Senate: “Anyone who belittles cooperation resigns him or herself to a state of permanent legislative gridlock and that is simply no longer acceptable to the American people.” Thus the Republicans are faced the dual challenges of a pressing need to reassess their core ideology while at the same time containing the self destructive zealots within the extreme right wing of the GOP and the wider conservative movement.

Steven J. Gulitti

NYC

February 1, 2009