Redstate

Every time he speaks it makes it harder for me to vote for him, especially on economic issues. His speech at CMU was especially bad. The only parts on it that were good were the promise to veto any bill with earmarks (which I don't believe for a minute, but I might be surprised), and the tax simplification parts.

Everything else showed him to be an expansive government guy who sees regulation and government programs as the solution to every problem. He has no problem with big government, he just has a problem with wasteful spending and corruption.

I've moved from the 'not a chance in Hades he'll get my vote' to 'ugh, the opposition is so horrible I may have to' camps. But dadgummit he's not making it easy.

"Everything else showed him to be an expansive government guy who sees regulation and government programs as the solution to every problem."

His plan is to cut corporate case, not bail out bad mortgage owners or businesses, cut back on the Medicare Drug Bribe, create an alternative flat tax that a taxpayer can choose instead of our system, and a halt to all increases in non-veteran, non-defense spending.

That's massive more small government than Bush or the current Rs in Congress. He's not perfect, but he's a move in the right direction from where Rs are today.

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Let's look at some of those. In the speech at CMU, he speaks about taking 100 billion dollars a year from earmarks, and other waste, and applying that to reduce corporate taxes. Sounds good? Well, no it doesn't. Because there's an implicit ceding to the Democrats there that tax cuts have to be 'paid for', and the Laffer curve doesn't exist.

On the Medicare drug bribe he said "Those who can afford to buy their own prescription drugs should be expected to do so. This reform alone will save billions of dollars that could be returned to taxpayers or put to better use."

A small-government conservative at heart would have left out the last 5 words.

To me, the optional flatter tax doesn't really fit in here as having anything to do with smaller government. It's not bad, exactly. But everyone whose taxes are of any complexity at all is going to use something like turbotax anyways, and I'm sure it will just file whichever way gives the bigger return. The number of people who would use this, is, I suspect, vanishingly small, unless you're going to get more back, and thus you're still going to have to figure it both ways. The only benefit I see to this is being able to adjust the rates downward more easily than in the complicated tax scheme.

as for the halt in spending increases? It's a temporary thing. One year. That doesn't really do much for me at all. Many presidents have said they were going to do exactly what McCain says he's going to do in terms of going through all the federal programs, and it never ever does any good, so I don't particularly see this ad a good thing.

But you didn't mention some other things. Like, for example, health care. He's proposing a massive new influx of government regulations, probably a new agency, because to him, people's health care is a problem government should be solving.

And on the credit problems, he says "It's important as well to remember that the foolish risk-taking of lenders, investment banks, and others that led to these troubles don't reflect our free market as it should be working."

In this, he's exactly wrong. Bear Stearns took some foolish risks, and as a result they were basically completely wiped out. The 'bailout' was simply to isolate the fallout so far and no further. So once again, he sees additional layers of government regulations as the answer. Because, at heart, he's not a small-government free market guy.

As another example, let's look at his bill on combatting global warming. I'm not going to get into a debate about whether or not it was a good idea in general, but one of the things he touted about it was that it would harness the power of the free market and the engine of American innovation to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions "harness the power of the free market and the engine of American innovation to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions".

Let's look at what he meant by that. Basically he was calling for creating a new government agency (the "Climate Change Credit Corporation") that's going to sell permits to create greenhouse gasses, capped at the 2000 emissions level. Presumably there will be a huge enforcement regulatory scheme. He's then going to apply the money from all these taxes into R&D grants for projects to reduce emissions. Presumably the small fraction that is left after paying for the regulatory regime anyways. This does a lot of things, but "harnessing the power of the free market" is not one of them. If you accept that global warming is a problem, it's a big government solution to the problem, not a small government solution.

Everything else showed him to be an expansive government guy who sees regulation and government programs as the solution to every problem. He has no problem with big government, he just has a problem with wasteful spending and corruption.

McCain's maverick status--his willingness to depart from GOP orthodoxy--is precisely what makes it possible for him to still win in a year when the incumbent President Bush, the leader of McCain's party, is widely perceived as a failure. Conservatives don't want to hear that, because they don't consider Bush to be a failure. But most Americans do.

A doctrinaire conservative candidate would get clobbered in a year of collapsing housing prices and rising unemployment, all presided over by an incumbent Republican president. Conservatives don't like to hear that either, but that's the uncomfortable truth: This is NOT their year.

Bush's approval rating is now so low--around 30%--that any Republican candidate must find ways to appeal to voters who disapprove of Bush. Voters such as moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans and Independents, in states like Ohio where the traditional GOP party is disliked. That's a tall order. The GOP is so far in arrears, thanks to Bush's fecklessness, that no GOP candidate can win solely by the Karl Rove playbook of turning out the base. The base has now shrunk too far for that. Conservatives don't like to hear that either, but that's the uncomfortable truth: They can't win elections anymore on the strength of turnout.

I consider Bush's second term to be a failure. But probably not for the same reason the liberals do. And to a certain extent I agree with you. A liberal Republican may well be needed to win in this election.

But that's just it. He's not really a conservative, and he's not a small government guy at all. And yet people still keep trying to push the meme that he is. And that offends me.

My problems with McCain were not that he was liberal for a Republican, but that he was actively hostile to conservative interests. I was just fine voting for a different guy with liberal tendencies (which both Huckabee and Romney qualifying under that). And I still believe that McCain winning the nomination has done enormous harm to the Conservative movement, which will take decades to repair. People trying to rebrand conservatism to include him only exacerbate the problem.

Usually the party formerly in power has to get the boot put to them a few times before they realize they gotta drop the "true believer" nominees and move to the center to win back power. Dems usually take about 3 presidential election cycles to figure this out. GOP seems to learn a bit faster.

Amazingly, this year we learned from the off-cycle election in 2006, read the tea leaves, and got proactive. Against all odds, we nominated the one candidate with a good chance to keep the White House in GOP control. If we had chosen a so-called "true conservative" we'd be looking at almost certain defeat this year.

As soon as McCain got out into the open field and had some room to run, he started showing why he is such a formidable candidate. During the primary, many complained that he was running on his bio. But his bio is a powerful advantage among the general electorate. It makes him invulnerable to charges that he lacks toughness, fortitude, strength, courage, patriotism, or determination. With those base characteristics locked in, he is free to maneuver on his opponent's weaknesses.

A few months ago, the Conventional Wisdom (tm) said that the GOP had almost no chance this year, and the Dems figured whoever they picked would be a shoe-in. Now the Dems are worried and both Clinton and Obama are posturing themselves as the "candidate most able to take on McCain."

This is just awesome. I love winning.

"If all men were just, there would be no need of valor."
- Agesilaus

underpinning of this is weak even while I concur with the assessment of what McCain's bio does for him in the race.

First, I don't think a Dem "true believer" has ever won the White House. Clinton, over time, compares in domestic and foreign policy more to Carter than anything that would be considered "left." I don't think Clinton believed in much of anything, other than he should be president. Same with Gore and Kerry. Both of these were center-left and had more in common with the Rockefeller/George H W Bush wing of the Republican Party than they did with their party platform.

On our losses, I'd say you would be hard pressed to identify Ford, Bush, or Dole with "true believers" in conservatism. Ford was a special case (full disclosure, this was my first election and I voted for Carter), but Bush and Dole lost because they'd moved so far to the center that their base deserted them.

"A man does what he can and endures what he must."

Of course "true believer" Dems don't win. That's the point. But it generally takes the Dems 2 or 3 cycles to figure that out and nominate a centrist with a chance of winning:

History:

64 - Johnson wins
68 - Humphrey (liberal) loses
72 - McGovern (really liberal) loses
76 - Carter (centrist) wins
80 - Carter loses
84 - Mondale (liberal) loses
88 - Dukakis (liberal) loses
92 - Clinton (centrist) wins
96 - Clinton wins
00 - Gore (center/left) barely loses
04 - Kerry (liberal) loses

See the pattern? Liberal-lose, liberal-lose, centrist-win

And so now they are engaged in a deathmatch to see whether they will nominate a centrist (Clinton), or a liberal masquerading as a centrist (Obama). But note that the tone of their debates is already trending centrist as they realize they will have to take on McCain.

The GOP is a little more complex, I admit. Our problem is not so much nominating true believers as it is keeping the true believers from rebelling. We can't keep our nuts like Pat Buchanan contained. But I think your analysis of the reasons Bush I and Dole lost is a somewhat self-serving over simplification. Ross Perot had a big part to do with both of them losing, as did the fact that neither had the retail political skill that Bill Clinton did.

"If all men were just, there would be no need of valor."
- Agesilaus

That is unless your scale runs from Stalin on the left to FDR on the right. Then and only then can you call her a "centrist". Sheeesss!
Tim Schieferecke

I almost threw up when I saw her characterized as a "centrist"

At leastthe promise to suspending all increases in discretionary spending for agencies seems as something you ought to qualify as good.

McCain's record on spending speaks for itself. McCain voted against the three biggest budget-busting bills of the Bush presidency - the $180 billion farm bailout, the $558 billion Medicare Prescription Drugs Bribe - wich he even filibustered, and the hiper-multi-billion highway bill. He has been a fierce critic of ethanol subsidies, he was one of the few republican senators who campaigned hard for the social security reform, he introduce more killer-cost amendments than anyone in the Senate and he voted against the energy bill. He's tough as nails on restraining government spending and, very important, he's not poll driven - remember his opposition to the federal hurricane insurance in Florida during the primaries.

And earmarks are very important. I understand why many people don't put much pressure on this issue, but they're wrong. If we really want to achieve success in reforming entitlement programs and big government spending, we must start by addressing earmarks. Because it's earmarking that creates the current mindset, the spend-at-will habit of mind. Without earmarks representatives would have their incentives changed: they couldn't keep on bribing their constituents, so they'd better start protecting their money. That's the first step. But wide public support will also be necessary - and it's impossible to explain Americans that we must reform social security because the federal state lacks the funds as long as the same federal states keeps allocating money to "bridges to nowhere". McCain never requested an earmark - if he says he'll veto any bill with earmarks in it, don't doubt he will.

Big government is only effective and sustainable as long as it's feed with big spending. We have to "starve the beast", not by reducing taxes (as we've seen, it doesn't work), but by cutting spending. Unless one embraces the "metaphysically mad" anti-statism (Russell Kirk dixit) of Ron Paul, who votes against funding the troops and then requests federal money to the marketing of wild American shrimp to fund shrimp-fishing research, McCain was, from the very beginning, and despite al his flaws, the only fiscal conservative in this race - that's probably why he gathered the early support of more robust (I reckon) small-government guys like Jeff Flake and Coburn.

I've been bitter - and ashamed - about the way the GOP has been behaving like a socialist party for these last year(sorry Snobama, I was a believer in God before that). But as a small-government, hayekian conservative, I wouldn't have chosen another candidate. As someone said: "I know in this country our liberty will not be seized in a political revolution or by a totalitarian government. But, rather, as Burke warned, it can be “nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”".

Just that a temporary suspension doesn't do much for me. One year, and then business as usual. And the actual terms of what he's describing aren't particularly different from the FY09 discretionary spending budget that Bush proposed in February, and we all know what kind of a big spender Bush has been.

As for the votes, I also don't put a lot of stock in high-profile meaningless lopsided votes. I mean, Clinton voted against the Medicare drug bribe - does she now get credit as a fiscal conservative?

You say "Big government is only effective and sustainable as long as it's fed with big spending". That's not really correct, in my view. Big government is fed by heavy levels of stifling regulation, which strangles innovation in the economy. Spending is really just an aside. If we have unleashed our economy we can afford tremendous levels of spending. And I just don't see anything that indicates McCain understands that. The global warming bill he was pushing with Lieberman is a premier example of this, but there are many others. The McCain solution here, which he characterized as a 'free market' one was a huge bureacracy, regulating and taxing productivity across the board in the US, and then redirecting some portion of the tax receipts to government-controlled research grants. If this is his idea of a free market solution, I'd hate to think what he considers a government one would be.

And I'm sorry, but voting against the tax cuts, while adopting the class warfare rhetoric of the left (much of which was repeated in the speech at CMU this week) pretty much negates everything else in terms of being a small-government guy. Budget hawk I'll grant you. Small government, fiscal conservative? Not a chance.

Is he better than the opposition on these things? Mostly. Is he good on them? No, not at all. Because his instincts are all wrong.

Yah, that worries me too.

That said, I don't think the money the D's are raising right now is all that bad, at least not for the next month or two. So long as they are spending it tearing each other apart, that's just good for us.

"I ain't never votin' fo another Democrat so long as I can draw breath! I'll vote for a dog first!" - Leola Thomas

hand for the moment

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp?cycle=2008

Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion

I think we just don't have our competitive instincts riled up yet. We're still watching the Dems tear each other apart in the pre-season. As the main event approaches and we know who our opponent will be, we'll get our blood up and the money will come in.

The silly Dems are raising so much money because A) they are locked in a real knife fight for the nomination, and B) they think they are still going against George Bush. At some point they will figure out he isn't running again.

Yep, I think we'll peak at about the right time, while the Dems are peaking now and will be exhausted come Sept/Oct. Obama may not be broke but I'll bet many of his supporters will have expended their budget for political contributions.

"If all men were just, there would be no need of valor."
- Agesilaus