We’re pleased to bring you this commentary on the Texas economic record from Bill Peacock, Vice President for Research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Texas has been the home of the last two Republican presidents. With Governor Rick Perry now in the fray, we’re fixin’ to find out if Texas can make it three in a row.

When examining what makes Texas the benchmark conservative state, the best place to start is the size of its government. Back in 1987, total state and local expenditures in Texas were about 18 percent of private gross domestic product (GDP), versus a national average of just over 19 percent. In 2008, Texas was still at about 18 percent, while the national average had risen to over 22 percent. Spending in California, our biggest competitor, grew during that period from about 19 percent to more than 25 percent of private GDP.

Stats about where Texas ranks in taxes and spending tell the same story. The Tax Foundation says that Texas ranks 45th in state and local tax burden. StateHealthFacts.org ranks Texas 47th in total state spending. And the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau has Texas 42nd in education spending.

Of course, these figures are used by liberals to pillory some state officials — including Governor Perry — as uncaring. Texas conservatives, though, are quick to point out the connection between low spending and taxes and what Texas is providing Americans that no other state in the country can match: jobs.

Texas is the country’s leading job creator and has been for more than a decade. Between June 2006 and June 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Texas added 537,500 non-farm jobs — almost more than 10 times that of the next state, Louisiana.

Additionally, five Texas cities are in the top six nationally of newgeography.com’s 2011 Best Cities for Job Growth. Ten Texas cities are in the top 20, and only one falls outside the top half of the rankings.

At a time of anemic economic growth nationally, Texas is keeping Americans employed.

Texas’ job creation performance over the last decade is truly amazing and would have surely gathered much more prominence were it not so inconvenient to the proponents of big government.

In fact, our economic record has become such an inconvenient truth that people try almost anything to undermine it. One critic tried this approach: “Take a tech-oriented region like Greater Boston or the Bay Area, subtract out a housing collapse and add in an energy boom, and I suspect you’ve covered most of the discrepancy in performance” between Texas and other states.

Perhaps it is true that if Texas’ housing and energy markets had collapsed, our economy might look a lot like Massachusetts’ or California’s. But they didn’t. And it doesn’t.

Other critics point to Texas’ 8.2 percent unemployment rate — 26th in the country and slightly higher than New York’s — as evidence that Texas is not doing so well. But they overlook the fact that Texas’ unemployment rate stands at 8.2 percent after a net inflow of 1.78 million job seekers and their families in the last 10 years. New York, on the other hand, lost 847,000 people during the same period.

Of course, Texas still has some room for improvement. As the greenest state in the country when it comes to wind energy, we are spending billions of dollars subsidizing renewable energy. And though the Texas Legislature balanced its budget this year without new taxes, it accomplished some of that with accounting gimmicks that will have to be paid for in 2013.

Additionally, the Obama administration is doing its best to hamstring the Texas economy through air quality regulations, endangered species listings, and restrictions on oil and gas production.

Despite its opponents and blemishes, though, Texas is the one big state that has proven that free-market policies work for everybody — not just the rich. And that provides quite a platform for Texans moving out into the national stage.

Should this platform prove to be a boon for Perry, one of his first acts in office may have to be reining in his anti-trust lawyers at the Justice Department, who will be sorely tempted to investigate Texas’ recent preeminence in presidential contests. One can easily imagine their proposed remedy to dissolve Texas’ monopoly: imposing new taxes and spending to take Texas down off of its high economic horse.

Bill Peacock is the Vice President for Research and Director for the Center for Economic Freedom with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. He may be reached at bpeacock@texaspolicy.com.

If you don’t know how RedState started seven years ago, here’s the story. It’s a tale of a few guys with a few dollars and a few basic principles who got together and started something small.

In the fullness of time, that something small became something big. The cast of characters changed, too: the original three co-founders are now off doing many other things. I was the first to depart, and the others, like MacArthur’s old soldiers, faded away. When I met South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley this evening, I told her I was the fellow who had the idea that became RedState. She gave me a quizzical look, and I said, “Don’t worry — the only guy you need to know is Erick. He’s in charge.” That’s true, and I believe that encapsulates many of the reasons for RedState’s success.

Today, this success demonstrates itself in full. If you’re reading this, you likely know why. If you don’t know why — well, just turn on CNN, or Fox News, or C-SPAN at 1pm Eastern and have a seat. Anonymous Hill staffers may not think RedState matters — but about an hour after you start watching that television, all of America will know just how much it does.

If you’ve been here fighting the fight since the beginning, this moment is yours. If you’ve been here fighting the fight since a year past, the moment is yours. If you’ve been here fighting the fight for the first time today — this moment is yours. As St John Chrysostom said in a different context, all are welcome at any time on this, the front line of the political and intellectual battle for America.

Something big goes down today. It happens at RedState because RedState matters. It matters because of you. But also …. it matters because a few guys got together for cheap burgers seven years ago and shared a dream.

Now, then. Get ready.

I am pleased to bring to you this commentary by the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s own VP for Research, Bill Peacock, on the need to defeat the Texas “Amazon tax” that will be considered by the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday morning. RedState’s Erick Erickson was on the case of the “Amazon tax” back in mid-May, and since then, Neil Stevens has done yeoman’s work in sounding the alarm. Our Lone Star State may be America’s top job creator, but even our politicians need some reminding which way is right.

Texas has made a name for itself lately by luring businesses from other states, like California, looking to get away from heavy regulation and taxes. For instance, Site Selection Magazine recently named Texas the top state in the nation for the most new business projects and expansions.

However, if the Texas Legislature follows through with its current plan to adopt an “Amazon tax” on Thursday, Califonia’s VigLink, a Google Ventures-backed online marketing company, is one company that likely won’t be heading our way.

Viglink’s founder and CEO Oliver Roup has already moved his company’s operations out of Illinois into neighboring Indiana in response to the Amazon tax passed this spring by the Illinois Legislature. Now he faces a tougher challenge with a similar law being considered in California, where his company is headquartered.

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Here’s a cautionary tale for you from the states — and specifically the state of Texas. By way of full disclosure, I serve as the VP for Communications at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

From April 25th through May 20th, the Texas Public Policy Foundation ran a series of television advertisements — all available on the TPPF YouTube Channel — urging Texans to head to ConservativeBudget.com and let the 82nd Legislature know that they wanted a fiscally responsible Texas state budget. One of those commercials, featuring TPPF President Brooke Rollins, attracted the attention of PolitiFact:

What specifically seized PolitiFact’s attention was this line of Rollins’s:

“In the last five years, we’ve created more jobs than all other states combined.”

This is, in fact, objectively true, and you may verify it yourself at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data page. (We posted the graph and numbers here.) Suffice it to say that when the commercial was filmed, the latest confirmed BLS employment data was January 2011′s. Going back five years through January 2006 revealed that only ten states saw a net increase in jobs in that period — Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Montana. Texas’s total was 545,900 new jobs. The other nine states combined came to 183,700 new jobs. Call this what you will — we call it a resounding vindication of the Texas model of low taxes and small government — but don’t call it inaccurate.

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Egypt’s revolution is not over.

As I write this, Hosni Mubarak’s reign as autocrat of Egypt ended mere minutes ago. The scenes on Al Jazeera English — the only international-news channel worth watching for the past month — are of a delirium in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It is a panorama of popular victory unseen since Germans clambered up the Berlin Wall, and it may be just as epochal.

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You may not have heard about it, but there’s a tremendously important case that will be argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday. It’s the Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc. — and if decided wrongly, it has the potential to transform the federal government’s Freedom of Information Act into a powerful anti-business weapon in the hands of the left.

By way of background, the case stems from a 2004 incident in which AT&T discovered it was overcharging the federal government on work related to E-Rate. The company voluntarily reported itself to the FCC, which then opened an investigation. David Johnson recounts what happened next:

During the course of the investigation, the FCC ordered AT&T to produce invoices, internal emails and billing information, responses to interrogatories, names of employees involved in the alleged overbilling, and AT&T’s own assessment of the extent to which its employees’ actions violated its internal code of conduct.

Therein lay the cause of the trouble. Once this information was in the FCC’s hands, a trade association called CompTel — comprised of AT&T’s competitors — filed a FOIA request for all the hitherto-proprietary AT&T info in the FCC’s possession. This abuse of the intent of FOIA, which was meant to promote open government rather than corporate intelligence gathering, was — to the surprise of many observers — validated by the FCC in late 2008, when it ruled that corporations are not protected by FOIA’s privacy exemptions. Just over one year later, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the FCC (PDF) in a defense of FOIA’s plain intent.

Now the FCC has appealed to the Supreme Court, and the arguments begin in just two days. If the Court upholds the Third Circuit, all is well: the processes of government cannot be used to further either private agendas, whether driven by profit or ideology. If the Court upholds the FCC, on the other hand, American business is in for a rough time. There’s little doubt that liberals seeking to strike back after Citizens United will exploit FOIA to cause havoc and harm to any corporation that doesn’t toe their line. (As is on cue, here’s Senator Leahy weighing in for the FCC this past November.) It doesn’t take much imagination to see where this leads — especially with the executive agencies of the federal government in Barack Obama’s hands through at least January 2013.

Advocates for the FCC in this case generally argue that corporate personhood extends too far, and that FOIA privacy protections therefore don’t extend to them. Conservatives who are paying attention know the real score here: FCC v. AT&T is only about the extent of corporate personhood in the strict legal sense. In the larger sense, it’s about whether the left gets to use FOIA to pry open and terrorize American businesses at will.

That, friends, is a big deal. This is a SCOTUS case that deserves a close watch from conservatives.

November 2nd, 2010, will be a big day in American history. It’s the day we vote in the midterm elections that will likely see historic Republican gains in both houses of Congress. It’s also the day that the United States Supreme Court considers the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

This case stems from a 2005 California law that prohibited the sale of “unsuitable” video games to minors. The Entertainment Software Rating Board has long helmed a voluntary industry endeavor to rate the appropriateness of video games — and it’s been an acknowledged success, with the Federal Communications Commission citing it as a model for other creative-content efforts to protect families and children. According to the FCC, “the video game industry … provides one of the most robust voluntary rating systems available.” That’s good news if you’re a believer in private and voluntary initiatives rather than government-mandated standards.

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Tomorrow is primary day in California. By that evening, we’ll know whether Carly Fiorina, Tom Campbell, or Chuck DeVore is the choice of California Republicans to face off against Barbara Boxer in November. This election year is our last, best chance to dethrone the malign queen of the California left, with her black heart and bad ideas — and I hope we make the right choice. I hope we choose Chuck DeVore.

In fact, I think we will. The peculiar dynamics of 2010 aren’t captured by any poll, and we’re taking this effort down to the wire.

But I’m not writing this as a last-minute push for Chuck DeVore. I’m writing this to thank you. RedState mattered in this primary, for all the right reasons.

Let’s rewind back to September 2009. Carly Fiorina had formed her exploratory committee, and was boasting to private audiences about her recruitment by the NRSC. Chuck DeVore’s campaign was wholly staffed by volunteers, and widely expected to be a non-factor. He would neither affect nor influence Fiorina’s smooth path to the nomination. His years of conservative activism would mean nothing next to the celebrity newcomer and her millions.

Then RedState happened.

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Lee Siegel is an eminent cultural critic. I admit to being unsure what a “cultural critic” actually is, or how one ascends to the profession, but I do know that Lee Siegel knows. In this capacity, he writes for The New Republic and The Daily Beast. He writes about things cultural, including RedState.

And he gets things badly wrong.

Here’s how RedState began, according to Lee Siegel:

Go to Redstate and you might be forgiven for thinking Republicans were still in charge … [Erick] Erickson, a native Louisianan and former lawyer who lives in Macon, Georgia, sets the deceptively moderate tone. A Macon city councilman and a church deacon, he started the Web site in 2004, running it out of a coffee shop.

No. This is not just an error, it’s an error born of sheer laziness, and as such, is quite nearly unforgivable. Here’s how RedState actually started:

Sometime in March 2004, I posted at the now-defunct Tacitus.org that conservatives should get together and form their own online community hub.

I e-mailed the post to Ben Domenech with the suggestion that we create it together.

Ben Domenech suggested that Mike Krempasky would be indispensable to the effort.

On July 16th, 2004, Ben Domenech, Mike Krempasky and I launched RedState.org. That’s not a typo — the .com came later.

Sometime shortly thereafter — I forget exactly when — Erick Erickson became a regular. I resigned my leadership position in the site in mid-2005, and left it altogether that autumn. (Which makes me the Wozniak of RedState, I suppose: present at the creation, and deserving of no credit for its greatness now.) You know the rest: the site has grown, and frankly, under Erick’s leadership, it’s more relevant and huge now than I ever hoped for. Bravo for that.

But a coffee shop in Macon, Georgia? Where did Lee Siegel get that?

Unfortunately, it’s pretty obvious. Erick Erickson likes to work on RedState at a coffee shop in his hometown. When journalists write about him, he’s generally photographed there. Here’s one. And here’s another. It’s rather likely that Siegel saw these pictures, and/or their accompanying descriptions, and concluded that bloggers and blogs are where they began. Et voila, RedState’s founding is retold with all the veracity of a John Kerry war story.

A minor point? Well, sure. And yes, I admit it’s a bit annoying on a personal level: like the forgotten Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck, it would be nice to have credit for the idea. Vastly more important, though, is correcting the record for its own sake. RedState matters — and that’s fully a credit to those who run it now — and so its history matters too. Erick Erickson is attacked by the left now because they imagine that if they bring him down, they bring down RS too. They won’t, but even if they did, they’re wrong. RedState is Erick, yes. RedState is also you. RedState is also Ben. RedState is also Mike. And just a little, it’s also me.

And we’re not going away.

It’s the first full week of the new year, which means it’s back to work for most of us. In our case, at DeVore for California, it means back to work winning the Republican nomination for Chuck DeVore to face Barbara Boxer in November. In your case, it means following that race — first between Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina (and quite possibly Tom Campbell!), and then between Chuck DeVore and Barbara Boxer.

What’s that, you say? Hubris? Okay, it’s a long way from here to June, and still longer to November — but forgive us on Team DeVore if we’re optimistic. The past year was a good year for the grassroots movement that’s fueling Chuck DeVore’s run, and we have every reason to think 2010 will be even better. We blew past our first million raised in November, and the fourth-quarter numbers for 2009 will further solidify this campaign’s viability. In 2009, DeVore for Califorina went from a handful of volunteers, a Twitter account, and a vision …. to thousands of volunteers, a nationwide donor base, national-media exposure, and that most elusive of qualifications, electoral credibility. Oh, and we still have the Twitter account.

And what was Carly Fiorina’s 2009 like? In a word, lackluster. Coming in with every advantage, the Fiorina campaign managed to squander them all. A few of their more notable shortcomings and failures in 2009:

1. NO POLLING LEAD — This one belongs up top. Despite massive expenditures, despite a high media profile stretching back a full decade, and despite no fewer than four high-priced communications shops in her employ (that is, Hynes Communications in DC, Wilson Miller in Sacramento, Meridian Pacific in Sacramento, and Strategic Perceptions in Hollywood), no major poll in 2009 showed Carly Fiorina will a lead over Chuck DeVore larger than one point. That bears repeating: they couldn’t generate more than a one-point lead. Not even outside the margin of error. Not even against a State Assemblyman who only became a statewide figure this year. One point. That’s it. Will she open up a larger lead in 2010? Perhaps: it’s reasonable to assume that the difference in plain resources may tell at some point. But the failure to do it in 2009 is a tremendous indictment of Carly for California — and its increasingly dubious threat to Barbara Boxer.

2. THE REACTIVITY – Carly Fiorina’s public statements reflect her campaign’s decision to speak (poll numbers notwithstanding) as if she’s already directly facing Barbara Boxer. But her campaign’s actions betray a keen awareness of the threat posed by Chuck DeVore, and so a pattern of reaction has emerged. We saw it at the beginning, when Carly for California moved its official announcement up from November 6th to November 4th, in response to Senator Jim DeMint’s endorsement of Chuck DeVore on November 3rd. And we’ve seen it as Fiorina has moved steadily toward the right in her public pronouncements. Indeed, in the last six weeks of 2009, Carly Fiorina has rushed to occupy Chuck DeVore’s position on nearly every issue. Just a few examples:

She went from claiming no opinion on Obamacare in October, to being a staunch opponent of it in December.

She went from claiming no opinion on amnesty for illegals in November, to being a staunch opponent of it in December.

She went from claiming no opinion on Sarah Palin in early Autumn, to saying she shared Palin’s values in December.

She went from endorsing cap-and-trade as a McCain proxy, to being a staunch opponent of it in December.

She went from defending the Wall Street bailouts as a McCain proxy, to being a staunch opponent of it in December.

She went from a qualified endorsement of the Obama stimulus in the spring, to being a staunch opponent of it in December.

She went from claiming to be more electable than Chuck DeVore, to saying, “I do not believe I differ from Chuck DeVore either fiscally or socially,” in late November.

If Carly for California keeps allowing DeVore for California to set its agenda, it’s in for an unpleasant June.

3. THE ESTABLISHMENT COLLAPSE – This is one that you at RedState know well — and can take no small credit for. Back during her exploratory phase, Carly Fiorina was incautious about bragging that she was directly recruited by the NRSC — and the NRSC returned the love, with off-the-record support and on-the-record fundraising collaboration. As a corollary to that, Fiorina racked up the endorsements of several Republican U.S. Senators, versus the one supporting Chuck DeVore. But something happened on the way to the coronation: NY-23. That single House race crystallized the Republican grassroots’ discontent with the D.C. party establishment. Coupled with the fracas over Crist/Rubio, and the NRSC’s ineptitude with press and bloggers, the value of Fiorina’s establishment support has almost entirely evaporated. There’s still money in it, of course — but at this point, Carly Fiorina as the candidate of the NRSC and the D.C. Republican establishment is as likely to repel voters as attract them. And that’s a problem which brings us to item four –

4. THE TOM CAMPBELL THREAT – It’s well known by now that Tom Campbell is contemplating a jump from the gubernatorial race to the senatorial contest. It’s also well known that the persons urging Campbell to switch are Republican-establishment eminences who have lost faith in Carly Fiorina’s ability to win. This is terrible news for Fiorina, for three major reasons:

First and most obvious is the loss of establishment backers who have little use for the sort of grassroots-driven conservative campaign that Chuck DeVore is running.

Second is the probability that there just isn’t room for two Bay Area Republicans, drawing from the same milieu, in the race.

Third and most damaging is the probability that Tom Campbell seriously erodes Fiorina’s support, but not DeVore’s. If Chuck DeVore is the conservative, Carly Fiorina the moderate masquerading as a conservative, and Tom Campbell the moderate, that puts Fiorina in a bad position: both conservatives and moderates have the real deal available in DeVore or Campbell. It nullifies the Fiorina campaign’s argument for itself, and casts the folly of her reactive run to the right in sharp relief.

There is no way the entry of Tom Campbell is a good thing for Carly Fiorina — and even the rumor of it exposes the nervousness that her underperforming campaign has generated among her establishment base.

5. BAD FUNDRAISING – Carly Fiorina started fundraising with her exploratory effort in August. Then she formally announced on November 4th. Then she told press on November 18th that she had already made out a loan to her own campaign. This strongly suggests a top-heavy effort that isn’t paying for itself. Married to the lack of results enumerated above, Fiorina’s campaign loan less than two weeks into her formal effort is a leading indicator of a struggling campaign. When the fourth quarter 2009 FEC reports come out, check to see what’s a loan, and what’s actual funds raised.

6. THE VOTING RECORD – This has been covered in depth, and there’s little to add to it: simultaneous with the announcement of her exploratory effort, the San Francisco Chronicle uncovered Carly Fiorina’s terrible voting record, with participation in all of 6 of the 19 elections in which she was eligible to vote. “I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington,” wrote Fiorina’s ghostwriter in the November 4th Orange County Register op-ed that announced her candidacy, “and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered.” She felt so disconnected, in fact, she contributed, raised, and/or bundled hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC and candidate contributions over the past decade. The emergence of this story was assuredly not how Carly Fiorina wanted to kick off her exploratory effort.

7. THE IRAN EXPORTS – We know that Hewlett-Packard under Carly Fiorina exported millions of dollars’ worth of illegal technology to the Islamic Republic of Iran. We know that the Fiorina campaign has thus far taken two different tacks on this: denying knowledge on the one hand, and claiming that the exports were not actually illegal on the other. This story, which has yet to be fully developed — Carly Fiorina has thus far avoided hard and direct questions on it — is the time bomb waiting to detonate under the shaky edifice of Carly for California. It may well do so in 2010, depending on journalistic efforts — but it was placed in 2009.

8. THAT WEBSITE – One word: Carlyfornia.

That was 2009 in the California Senate race among Republicans. A good year for Chuck DeVore, with his grassroots-driven, disciplined, steady advance — and a bad one for Carly Fiorina, with her elite-driven, erratic, and overloaded bandwagon. Is this race over? Not by a long shot. Not even close.

But like I said, forgive us if we’re optimistic. With your help, we will put Chuck DeVore over the top — and head to head with Barbara Boxer. This fight is your fight, and these wins are your wins. He’ll be the first to tell you that this race isn’t about elevating or glorifying him. It’s about a conservatism that can win. It’s about the principles undergirding our great nation. It’s about liberty. It’s about you.

When Ben Domenech, Mike Krempasky and I founded RedState over five years ago, we spent much time discussing the new site’s mission: Would it be conservative first, or Republican first? What happens when the interests of conservatives and Republicans conflict? Are there lines that we as conservatives will not cross for the sake of Republicans; and are there lines that we as Republicans will not cross for the sake of conservatives? We settled on some answers to these questions that generally remain in effect for the site today — but we did not settle on the answers to those questions. The tension between movement and Party is, outside of foundational principles, the defining characteristic of our unwieldy, fractious, and beautiful union of partisan and principle: and I believe it’s a creative and necessary tension that anchors idealism to pragmatism, and preserves pragmatism from surrender.

It is in this light that we view the conflict between the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the Senatorial campaign of California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore on which I am privileged to serve as communications director. Enough has been written about it here at RedState and elsewhere, and it’s sufficient to note two things: first, that the conflict was consciously chosen by the NRSC when it decided to recruit and sustain Carly Fiorina as a moderate-pragmatist alternative to the conservative stalwart; and second, that this conflict is not the foundation for conservative victory in California in 2010.

It is therefore over as far as we’re concerned.

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Politico (here and here) and Plum Line (here) have gone after the RNC for a fundraising mail “survey” that asked donors how they felt about the possibility “that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system.”

Though the specific claim might be a bit too wildly speculative (the RNC has acknowledged it was “inartfully worded”), there is an underlying point worth serious consideration.  While there are few if any privacy protections in the Democrats’ health care bill, it does give government increased access to a lot of personal, private information about Americans.  There’s a section of the bill that will give the government “unprecedented” power to collect data about Americans’ personal bank accounts, tax return data, and even what kind of care you are receiving, whether you’re on the government-run “public option” or private insurance. 

 
So perhaps the RNC went too far, but they have a good point – there may be nothing in the bill enabling the government to use partisan affiliation to ration care, but there’s nothing disabling the government from doing so either.  What’s to say the new “Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission” established by the bill doesn’t discover that Republicans are less responsive to certain expensive but potentially life-saving care than Democrats are.  What would stop the Commission from then suggesting that it’s not worth investing our health care dollars on providing that care to Republicans?  Right now, there isn’t anything to stop it.

In case you need it, some background information on the case follows:

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From the diaries by Erick.

Is Carly Fiorina pro-life? The question has come to the fore of late, as she publicly contemplates a candidacy for United States Senate against Barbara Boxer — and as her opponent for the California Republicans’ nomination in that race, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, has publicly questioned her pro-life credentials. (Full disclosure: I’m a member of the DeVore campaign, so read the following with Reagan’s appropriated Russian dictum to “trust, but verify,” in mind.) An examination of the Fiorina record on this topic reveals worrying inconsistencies.

Any review of Fiorina’s pro-life convictions must acknowledge that for the past 20 months, when pressed on the issue, she has declared herself “pro-life.” This is laudable, and as it should be: the Republican Party is the natural political home for the majority of Americans who do not believe in the Democratic agenda of unrestricted abortion-on-demand, and so it makes sense that a would-be Republican nominee for office would endorse that point of view.

Unfortunately, it is all too easy to question the depth of Fiorina’s commitment to the pro-life cause. These questions range from the legitimate to the ungenerous. Among the latter would be noting, as many have, that Fiorina never uttered a public word on the topic, nor lent any support to pro-life activism, before embarking upon her political career. Indeed, pre-2008 media reports on Fiorina almost uniformly describe her as “pro-choice” — for example, this 2004 San Jose Mercury-News piece, in which “Republican insiders said Fiorina [is] moderate and pro-choice.” Like the father welcoming the prodigal son, we should laud the turn to what’s right. We should also note what it signifies: if Carly Fiorina says she is pro-life now, that is at minimum evidence of a California Republican base that embraces a conservativism and compassion that do it profound credit.

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This piece originally appeared at joshuatrevino.com.

Much ink has been spilled in the past 24 hours over a segment from ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The clip reveals Palin momentarily confused when confronted with a query about “the Bush Doctrine,” by which Gibson refers to the present Administration’s practice of preemptive war (or, to be euphemistic, “anticipatory self-defense”). You may view the excerpt here, or simply read the relevant transcript:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

The consequence of this exchange has been the predictable and familiar litany of hand-wringing over Palin’s purported ignorance of basic foreign policy principles, and her concurrent fitness (or lack thereof) to lead the country. See Andrew Sullivan for a succinct demonstration of the shrieking; the rest may be found via the usual suspects.

Sullivan writes: “[A]ny serious person who has followed the debates about US foreign policy knows what the Bush doctrine is.” Charlie Gibson apparently agrees. They’re both wrong. The fact is that the “Bush Doctrine” is a term which has had an evolving definition over this decade. Though it’s obvious Palin was momentarily baffled by the query, she was far closer to the truth when she interpreted the phrase as signifying the President’s “world view.” What we know as the “Bush Doctrine” has many meanings. A brief survey reveals the following:

In March 2002, the New York Times’s Frank Rich described the “Bush Doctrine” as the proposition, enunciated by the President, that “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

In March 2002, UK Guardian’s Tony Dodge declared that the “Bush Doctrine” was a set of American-imposed principles for the conduct of small states, “concern[ing] the suppression of all terrorist activity on their territory, the transparency of banking and trade arrangements, and the disavowal of weapons of mass destruction.”

In January 2003, Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute defined the “Bush Doctrine” as a principle of American global hegemony, with “anticipatory self-defense” as one of its enforcement mechanisms.

In February 2003, PBS’s Frontline’s “The War Behind Closed Doors” described the “Bush Doctrine” as the whole set of premises undergirding the 2002 National Security Strategy — of which “anticipatory self-defense” is merely one facet.

In March 2003, Slate’s Michael Kinsley put a unique spin on the “Bush Doctrine,” by asserting it signified the President’s claimed right to go to war without permission from international or domestic institutions.

In June 2004, the Washington Post’s Robin Wright wrote that the “Bush Doctrine” was comprised of “four broad principles,” of which “anticipatory self-defense” was only one.

In March 2005, Charles Krauthammer, in Time, described the “Bush Doctrine” as encompassing the policy of democracy-promotion in the Middle East.

In December 2006, Philips H. Gordon of the Brookings Institution defined the “Bush Doctrine” as encompassing a set of four basic assumptions, of which “anticipatory self-defense” was half of one.

In June 2007, Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada referred to the “Bush Doctrine” as the principle of democratization in the Middle East.

In July 2007, Senator Barack Obama described the “Bush Doctrine” as, as reported by ABC News, “only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States.”

In January 2008 and in May 2008, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe described the “Bush Doctrine” as the President’s warning to “the sponsors of violent jihad: ‘You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.’”

Two things to note: first, that “any serious person who has followed the debates about US foreign policy” should know that describing the “Bush Doctrine” as the President’s “world view” is actually rather apt; second, that even the Democratic nominee for president botches the definition by the Gibson standard. Logically, those denouncing Palin for unfitness to be vice president now, in these grounds, ought to be doubly concerned that Barack Obama is unfit to be president. This won’t happen, of course, because this entire affair is a passing tactical “gotcha” rather than a serious critique.

There’s a lot more where this came from — see Ricard Starr’s epic catalogue of ABC’s own variations on the term’s definition — but this is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that Charlie Gibson and Palin’s critics got it wrong. Sarah Palin got it right.

This piece originally appeared at joshuatrevino.com.

Barack Obama’s acceptance remarks this evening should be a source of relief to every Republican, conservative, and McCain supporter in America. The Democratic nominee for President walked to the podium with every advantage: eloquent, attractive, historic, gifted with a polling advantage, and bathed in the bright lights of one of the great football stadiums of America. He walked away from the podium having squandered every one of them. Barack Obama’s candidacy is not done by a long shot — he’ll have a post-convention polls bounce, and the electoral terrain is still favorable — but he could have put a victory in the bag this evening. He failed.

In assessing Obama’s speech at Invesco, it is useful to compare it to two prior speeches: Reagan’s 1980 convention speech, and Obama’s own 2004 DNC keynote. The former was the last time a self-consciously transformational candidate ran against a party in wholesale control of the national government. (Whether the candidates in question are actually transformational is debatable — but unlike Obama paying homage to Ted Kennedy, Reagan never genuflected before Nelson Rockefeller.) Making this case is more difficult than it may seem, as there is a simultaneous impetus to be appealing and condemnatory. Reagan did it in 1980, mixing the common man’s anger with his natural affability — and Barack Obama did it in 2004, combining sorrowful regret at Republican misgovernment with soaring appeals to America’s better nature. He established himself then as one of the great rhetoricians in an era where they are too few. He also set a high bar that he did not clear today.

Instead of the requisite deft interweaving of righteous indignation and sunny promise that made him a political celebrity in 2004 and propelled him to the nomination in 2008, Barack Obama delivered a surprisingly strident and joyless forty-five minutes of rhetoric. The remarks should have introduced him to the American people, and shown them what the Democratic base sees in him: hope, change, can-itude, or whatever other gauzy quality made him their nominee. What the American people got was less an introduction to Barack Obama than an exposition on what Barack Obama is against. It was fantastic for the base — and especially the left-wing base, which is especially animated by its hate objects — but it was alternately boring and disturbing for everyone else. As Marc Ambinder noted from the stadium, it was basically a primary-season stump speech.

How did Obama come to fail so remarkably, having delivered so often before? The clues lie in the candidate’s character. The remarkable thing about Barack Obama is how much of a cipher he remains: he is excellent at presenting himself as a tabula rasa upon which only virtue may be written, and there should be no doubt that the effort is deliberate. John McCain’s personal flaws are well known, but Obama’s are rather elusive. Still, they exist, and they show most clearly when Obama’s subject is Obama. I first learned of his ego problems when speaking with a former law school classmate of his; and there were glimpses of it for public consumption with things like the “I have become a symbol” incident. It was not till tonight, though, that Obama’s basic internal fragility was put on stark public view. This was the biggest night of his public life, and the defining moment of his historic turn — and what did he talk about?

Barack Obama talked about John McCain.

Take a moment to feed the plain text of Obama’s acceptance speech into a weighted word-cloud generator. You’ll get something that looks like this, and you’ll note that the biggest word — signifying the noun most often invoked — is “promise,” with 32 mentions. Ordinary enough for a political speech. Next is “America,” with 28 mentions, which is also expected. Third, though, is “McCain,” with 21 mentions. It is difficult to overstate how remarkable this is: Reagan in 1980 barely mentioned Jimmy Carter, and Obama in 2004 discussed John Kerry solely because he was keynoting for the man. Set against the light of precedent and the demands of this speech, the relentless focus upon John McCain emerges as profoundly strange.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Barack Obama has built up a sizable resentment toward John McCain. His remarks are shot through with ripostes to McCain-campaign attacks on him: “I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead,” or, “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.” The text also serves up counterattacks that can only be described as deeply dumb: are we truly to believe that McCain’s 26 years in elected office are responsible for the tripling, over that same period, of American oil consumption? The squandering — the sheer waste of political capital here — is epochal. We learned something important and disturbing this evening: Barack Obama believes his own press, and when others do not, he takes it personally.

Thus this speech. Thus this, the single most important address of his entire campaign, reduced to a stump-quality attack piece. How invested was Barack Obama in this one? Watch it again. Go to exactly 45 minutes in, as he closes, and turn off the sound for maximum effect. Note what you see. Barack Obama does not smile. His demeanor is grim, tight-lipped, and stern. His brow is furrowed, his face is taut. Twice, for mere seconds, he bares his teeth in a parody of a grin. He stalks the catwalk looking tired, tense, and joyless. Only when his wife and daughters appear, after an agonizing 80 seconds, does he regain humanity. He is a man who, in his own mind, administered a beating — and knows he cannot show how he enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, most of America’s television audience saw this followup ad, with a genial John McCain congratulating Obama. The contrast is more effective for McCain than any attack piece could be — and Barack Obama made it possible.

I wrote before that John McCain has long odds, and they remain so. This race is not over. But it could have ended this evening, and it did not due to the ego-driven indiscipline of the Democratic nominee. He missed his chance to put this away — and in missing it, showed his tragic flaw. What remains is for the Republicans to make that flaw fatal.

This piece originally appeared at joshuatrevino.com.

What Mikheil Saakashvili began at his discretion, Vladimir Putin ends at his pleasure. The Russians have called a halt to their offensive in Georgia, and none too soon for the Georgians. What remains is the postwar settlement, and the American part in it.

A look at the situation on the ground speaks to the Russian dominance of the little Caucasian republic: the Russians have near-total freedom of movement in the western plain, with soldiers in Poti. Georgia’s only meaningful lifelines to the outside world are the port of Batumi, and the long road to Yerevan. Neither of these are significant corridors for supply, and the port is free only at Russian sufferance. Further war would have seen a battle for Tbilisi in the coming 36 hours. The Georgians would have lost, and the war thence would probably have devolved into guerrilla actions centered about a sort of Georgian national redoubt in the south — in regions populated more by Armenians and Azeris than by Georgians. To be spared all this is a mercy that Georgians, rightly inflamed by what’s been done in mere days, may not fully appreciate.

The postwar settlement remains thoroughly opaque, even if, as the Russians report, the conditions of a ceasefire are agreed. The Russian war aim was never announced — or rather, it only announced itself on the ground — and its political end remains obscure. The formal disposition of the Russian-occupied secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia must be decided; the mechanisms of reparation, if any, must be agreed upon; and, most troublingly, the Russians are making noises about extraditing Saakashvili to the Hague. Here, a definitive settlement is to everyone’s advantage — not least the Georgians, who are ill-advised to act as if they are anything but beaten. Absurdities like putting Saakashvili in the ICC dock should be rejected, but otherwise, it is almost certainly best to let the Russians dictate their terms — and let resistance to those terms emanate from sources able to make that resistance count, like Europe and the United States.

With this in mind, the first task of America’s postwar policy in the Caucasus is distasteful in the extreme: pushing the Georgians to understand and act like what they are, which is a defeated nation in no position to make demands. This does not square easily with American sentiment — nor my own — nor with the Vice President’s declaration that Russia’s aggression “must not go unanswered,” nor with John McCain’s declaration that “today we are all Georgians.” Russia’s aggression and consequent battlefield victory will stand, and as the last thing the volatile Caucasus needs is yet another revisionist, revanchist state, it befits a would-be member of the Western alliance to make its peace with that. However inflammatory the issue of “lost” Abkhazia and South Ossetia are in the Georgian public square, it is nothing that the Germans, the Finns, and the Greeks, to name a few, have not had to come to terms with in the course of their accessions to the first tier of Western nations. We should not demand less of Georgia.

The second, and more enduring, task of our policy must be the swift containment of Russia. I use the term deliberately: to invoke another Cold War-era phrase, we’re not going to “roll back” any of Russia’s recent territorial gains, nor should we attempt to reverse what prosperity it has achieved in the past decade. (That prosperity, being based mostly upon transitory prices for natural resources, will itself be transitory in time.) Russia’s leadership has declared that it seeks the reversal, de facto if not de jure, of the “catastrophe” of the USSR’s end. Though not marked by any formal decision in the vein of Versailles, this is nonetheless a strategic outcome that America has a direct interest in preserving. That interest has only gone up with the admission of former Soviet-bloc states — and former Soviet states — to NATO. Inasmuch as Russian revisionism threatens the alliance that has kept the peace in Europe for generations now, it must be confronted and deterred.

The obvious question is how this may be done with the tools America has at hand. It is a media commonplace over the past several days that the United States has no leverage over Russia. This is false. American policy can and does tremendously affect several things of tremendous importance to Moscow. A brief (though not comprehensive) list of available pressure points follows:

First, the Ukraine. First and foremost, there is no former Soviet state that Russia wishes to have in its orbit more than the Ukraine. Not coincidentally, the Ukraine was also the only nation besides the United States to render Georgia material assistance in this war, when it threatened to deny Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. European reluctance to antagonize Russia scuttled the Ukraine’s potential NATO membership at the NATO Bucharest summit this past spring. In light of Georgia’s fate, issuance of a MAP, or even outright NATO membership, to the Ukraine, is an appropriate riposte to Russia’s war. Unlike Georgia, the Ukraine has no territorial or secessionist issues, nor an unstable leadership apt to launch unwinnable wars. It does, though, very much need the sort of guarantee that NATO exists to give.

Second, Russia’s G8 membership. The G8 is purportedly the group of the world’s largest industrial democracies. Russia, with a GDP smaller than Spain’s and a per-capita income lower than Gabon’s, was admitted in 1997 as a means of supporting its integration into international economic institutions. It’s a privilege, not a right, and it should be conditioned upon responsible membership in the community of nations. Expulsion of Russia from the G8 is a longtime policy favorite of John McCain’s, and it’s time to consider his preference.

Third, Russia’s client states. This is a short list, though Russian revisionism would wish to see it lengthen. Belarus is by far Russia’s premier client, followed by varying degrees of Russian influence over Armenia, Serbia, Azerbaijan, and the central Asian states. (We’ll exclude here clients like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, all of which have statuses that are dubious at best.) We’ve already seen that Russia reacts to defend Belarus when the latter is criticized. An available pressure point, then, is to turn up the heat on the Belarusian regime — specifically with support of dissidents in Belarus — and link it explicitly to Russia’s behavior elsewhere.

Fourth, Russia’s dissidents. Russian public life is nowhere near Soviet depths, but it is nonetheless notable that the Moscow regime places a premium upon the control of journalistic institutions and media. (A great, English-language example of the slick and statist nature of modern Russian media may be found at Russia Today — note the stories on Georgian “spy rings” and refugees from Georgian aggression fleeing into Russia.) Divergence from the Putin line is a good way to end up unemployed or dead, and so we ought to lend what support we may to independent media personnel — and their means.

Finally, Russia’s Internet. A major tool of Russian foreign policy in the past few years is what may only be described as cyber-warfare. We saw it when Russia wished to punish Estonia, and we saw it again this week against nearly all of Georgia’s .ge-domain sites. This is a tremendously thorny problem, both because cyber-war by its nature affords the perpetrators plausible denial, and because it is quite easy to respond to a wrong with a wrong — in America’s case, by using its leverage over Californa-based ICANN to invalidate .ru domains from which Russian attacks emanate. Here, the basic functionality of the Internet must be balanced against political concerns — and there must be some mechanism for determining when political concerns from nations like Russia damage the basic functionality of the Internet.

Beyond applying pressure to Russia, American policy must focus upon reassurance to the NATO nations that expressed alarm at Georgia’s subjugation. NATO allies Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic all know quite well what it means to be crushed by the force of Russian arms, and all were therefore demonstrative in expressing their dismay at events in Georgia. If NATO and the American connection in particular is going to retain its meaning for them, it is up to us to provide the necessary reassurance. Although NATO is no longer a formally anti-Soviet (and therefore anti-Russian) alliance, we cannot pretend that it does not hold precisely that meaning for several of its member states. A failure to recognize this would concurrently weaken the alliance.

The war in Georgia is done but for the details, and the occasional sniping. Georgia lost on the first day, and Georgia has mostly — though not wholly — itself to blame. But if Georgia is prostrate, America and the West are not. If some good is to come of this, and if Russia’s adventure in its “near abroad” is to be its last, we must act decisively — and now.

This piece originally ran at joshuatrevino.com.

America’s stake in the Caucasus war just went up.

In the past 24 hours, the Russians launched offensive operations beyond the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, marking a dramatic expansion in their war aims — well beyond the putative casus bellum of protecting Russian citizens. (It should be recalled that these “citizens” are Abkhaz and Ossetian locals who were issued Russian passports without, for the most part, ever setting foot in Russia.) The town of Gori, in Georgia proper, is apparently the first to face a determined Russian assault. Georgian Zugdidi, just south of the second front erupting from Abkhazia, is also apparently occupied, though reportedly ceded by fleeing Georgians. It’s Gori, though, where the real fight is: and a look at the terrain around Stalin’s hometown tells why. This map shows Gori at the southern end of the plain to which the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali is the northern entrance. (Recall that this war began with a Georgian assault on Tskhinvali; they’ve been tossed clear down against the mountains in two days.) Gori sits on a pass leading into a long valley that slopes toward the southeast. About 50 miles at the other end of that valley, against that long blue lake in the lower right-hand corner of the map, is the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

In light of the recent, and somewhat frantic, Georgian offers of truce, there aren’t many reasons to take Gori if the Russians are merely interested in the direct protection of their clients. Though it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for the Russian army to simply bludgeon a city because it’s there, the logic of events lends credence to what America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, charged today: that the Russians seek the overthrow of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. The synopsis of the exchange, at the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on Georgia, between Khalilzad and Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, makes for chilling reading:

Mr. KHALIZAD (United States) …. went on to say that Mr. Churkin had referred to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s phone conversations with United States State Secretary Condoleezza Rice this morning, a conversation that raised serious questions about Russia’s objectives in the conflict. Mr. Lavrov had said that President Saakashvili, the democratically elected President of Georgia, “must go”, which was completely unacceptable and “crossed the line”. Was Russia’s objective regime change in Georgia, the overthrow of the democratically elected Government of that country?

Mr. CHURKIN (Russian Federation) …. said “regime change” was an American expression that Russia did not use. As was known from history, different leaders came to power either democratically or semi-democratically, becoming an obstacle to their people’s emergence from difficult situations. The Russian Federation was encouraged by Mr. Khalilzad’s public reference to that, which meant he was ready to bring it into the public realm.

Mr. KHALILZAD (United States) asked whether the goal of the Russian Federation was to change the leadership of Georgia.

Mr. ALASANIA (Georgia) said that, as he had heard Mr. Churkin, the question asked and the answer received had confirmed that what Russia was seeking was to change the democratically elected Georgian Government.

Mr. CHURKIN (Russian Federation) suggested that he had given a complete response and perhaps the United States representative had not been listening when he had given his response, perhaps he had not had his earpiece on.

Dealing with Churkin is rarely pleasant, but the facts in Georgia now — and especially the assault on Gori — render this episode something more than one of his usual tantrums.

Here’s where America’s stake goes up. As I noted when this war kicked off in earnest, the Georgian state blundered into this with eyes open, and Saakashvili is not the sort of man to whom we ought to harness our own policy. Were the Russians content to merely fulfill their putative war aims of 48 hours ago, and strictly occupy Abkhaz and Ossetian territory — in other words, were Moscow content to deliver a Kosovo for a Kosovo — this would be painful but acceptable, and not worth a showdown between America and Russia. A Russian overthrow of the Georgian government, coupled with what must be some sort of occupation, is altogether different. It would mark the explicit debut of Russia as a post-Cold War revisionist state in fact, and not just in rhetoric; it would be an explicit repudiation of the post-World War Two order in Europe, as the first inter-state aggression of its sort since 1945; and it would be an explicit warning to those seeking America’s friendship and the aegis of NATO.

Defending the standards of Europe’s long peace, preserving the strategic outcomes of the Cold War, and upholding the credibility of the institutional guarantor of that peace and the winner of that war: these are things worth acting for — and yes, worth fighting for.

None of this is to argue that the United States must now fight Russia for Georgia. On a pragmatic level, there is no American manpower to spare, and the risk of such a confrontation spreading is too great. The Vice President has told Saakashvili that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered,” and one hopes he has not leapt direct to the idea of armed force. (There is, though, much we may do to help the Georgians help themselves short of that, from imagery sharing to signals intelligence to resupply.) But we must understand and swiftly come to grips with the realities of what this war costs us, and the institutions — NATO in particular — that protect us.

Already we see that several of our allies, and aspirants to that status, are tremendously alarmed at Russia’s war on Georgia. They understand what it signifies, because they remember all too well suffering aggression from the same source. As that memory drove them to seek refuge in alliance with us within NATO, it befits us to justify their confidence as an ally should. We noted yesterday the extraordinary joint communique from the Presidents of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia that condemned Russia’s “imperialist and revisionist policy in the East of Europe.” Poignantly, the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, is now allowing the Georgian government — whose online portals are blocked by Russian action — to use his own official website to disseminate news and photographs on the war. Most remarkably, Ukraine, which hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, is threatening to bar Russian access to the port. Ukraine was one of the two states denied a NATO Membership Action Plan at the NATO summit last April, specifically because of fears of Russia’s reaction. The other was Georgia.

America’s stake in the Caucasus war just went up. It may be too late to save Georgia — though we ought, within limits, to help Georgia save itself — but it is not too late to contain the damage to America and its allies that Georgia’s tragedy inflicts. As the Russian tanks roll toward Tbilisi, we should think hard about how far we’re willing to go to do it.