Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Sarah Palin's Resignation

A couple thoughts on Sarah Palin’s announcement that she is resigning as governor of Alaska.

1. I wonder why so many commentators felt the need to criticize her on her way out. She’s going. Isn’t that what they wanted? Instead of spending so much time criticizing her yet again, why couldn’t they just be happy she was going and get on to some real issues?

2. A comment to those who criticized Ms. Palin for quitting on the people of Alaska (most of whom, I noticed, were not residents of Alaska): At least she was upfront about it. Barack Obama basically quit as senator from Illinois at the beginning of 2007, but he didn’t resign. He took the money; he just didn’t do the job. He would show up now and then for a vote if it was absolutely necessary or if it would help his campaign, but that was it. Remember when he said, in one of the Democratic debates, that his NATO subcommittee had not held hearings on NATO’s role in Afghanistan because, in effect, he was too busy campaigning? We might have been better off getting Roland Burris two years earlier. At least he would have showed up. (And yes, it was true of John McCain, too.)

3. Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole thing was the utter shock of so many of those for whom politics is their life. This isn’t how you move up in politics, they said. This isn’t how you get to the President. You can’t just quit. Except maybe politics isn’t the only thing in Sarah Palin’s life. She’s got five kids (something else most of those for whom politics is their life can’t understand). Maybe she knows how much fun kids are. Maybe she figures she will do things the way she wants to, and if it works out in politics, fine. And if it doesn’t, well that’s fine, too. Which many of her critics, regardless of what party they belong to, just don’t understand.

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Update (July 12, 2009 3:45 p.m.): Re point # 2, the subcommittee was the Europe subcommittee, not the NATO subcommittee, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  For the cite, see here and here.

Sarah Palin – Is It All Looks?

Steve Chapman, in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune, analyzes Sarah Palin’s appeal and comes up with this:

"[I]t's really not hard to see why Palin inspires such devotion. And I do mean ‘see.’ … She's a babe, and she doesn't try to hide it. …

Palin is a clear rebuttal to the old line that politics is show business for ugly people. …’

This may explain why, for all the talk about her as the stirring embodiment of the Wal-Mart-shopping hockey mom, Palin's fans are heavily male. A June poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found her approval rating was 48 percent among men and 41 percent among women."

Except that men are also more conservative than women. According to a recent Gallup poll, 44% of men view themselves as conservatives, compared 37% of women. According to another Gallup poll, 41% of women were Democrats compared to 32% of men.

In other words, the gap between conservative men and conservative women is 7%. The gap between women who are Democrats and men who are Democrats is 9%. So why does the 7% difference between men who like Sarah Palin and women who like Sarah Palin show that it is her looks as opposed to her beliefs?

Mark Sanford – Three More Comments (One Serious)

First, as I understand the situation, Mark Sanford has four boys that he cherishes, a marriage he wants to save, and another woman he loves. I don’t know if that is a political scandal or a country music song.

Second, the Sanford situation reminds me of the musical "Camelot". Guinevere is married to King Arthur. Lancelot comes to join Arthur’s Round Table. LanceIot wins a tournament among Arthur’s knights, and Guinevere, though married to Arthur, falls in love with Lancelot. I could never understand how this was romantic. Basically, the queen falls in love with and then shacks up with the king’s best knight. That doesn’t sound romantic to me – unless having an affair with your husband’s best friend is your idea of romantic, which also sounds like a country music song.

Third, with most things, you work on something and then you get it. In love, you get it and then you work on it – to keep it.

Mark Sanford

Three comments on the Mark Sanford situation.

First, what would you rather have, a governor who cheats on his wife (and family) or a governor who cheats the entire state? Or a senator who, effectively, lies to the entire state?

Second, a note to Democrats: You can't demonize Mark Sanford if you are going to lionize Teddy Kennedy. Both the Kopechnes have now passed away, but for an awfully long time there was a hole in their lives that was the result of what Senator Kennedy did and did not do that night in July almost 40 years ago. And that doesn't even take into consideration others Senator Kennedy may have been involved with.

Third, in spite of what the moralists are saying, Mark Sanford is not a hypocrite because he had an affair. He would be a hypocrite if he criticized others for doing things that he knew he had done or would do without remorse or guilt; if he criticized others for failing to live up to a standard he did not think applied to him or that he did not really try to follow himself. I don’t think that is what Mark Sanford did.

I think Mark Sanford is a sinner, not a hypocrite. Most of us set standards for ourselves, rules we try to live by. And unless those rules are nothing more than "do whatever in the heck I want", we will fail to live up to our standards from time to time. That doesn't mean we are hypocrites. It means we are not perfect. It is better to set a standard, to try to live up to a standard, that we fail to meet from time to time, than to follow some rule that we are always meet because it requires nothing of us.

Ted Stevens Isn't Guilty and He's Not a Senator

The reversal of former Senator Ted Stevens’ conviction and the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to drop the charges against Mr. Stevens (see here) raise some interesting "what ifs" and a couple of "thank heavens". First, the "what ifs".

What if then-Senator Stevens had not been improperly convicted before the November election? As it was, he only lost by 3,724 votes. If he had not been convicted, or maybe even acquitted, would he have won re-election? Given the small margin by which he lost after being convicted, a good argument can be made that he would have won.

What if Republican Ted Stevens had been in the Senate for the past three months instead of Democrat Mark Begich? Instead of a 58-41 party split (we’re still waiting for Minnesota), we would have a 57-42 split. Would have made a difference on some of those bills that passed without a vote to spare? Even if the bills would still have passed, might some changes have had to be made in them to pick up another Republican vote?

And now for a couple of " thank heavens". What if, instead of Senator Stevens, the Bush Justice Department had gone after a Democratic Senator and convicted him or her through prosecutorial misconduct, thereby flipping a Democratic seat Republican. If the Minnesota seat finally goes to Franken, would that Republican senator be the difference between 59 Democrats and 60 Democrats in the Senate? Thank heavens it was a Republican seat, not a Democratic one.

What if there had been a Democratic President in office last year? What if it was a Democrat-led Justice Department that got a conviction of Senator Steven through prosecutorial misconduct? Would some people think it was part of a plan to get to do whatever was necessary to get to 60 seats in the Senate? Thank heavens it was a Republican-led Justice Department, not a Democratic one.

One final note. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this of the decision by Attorney General Holder to ask that the charges against Senator Stevens be dropped: "Ted Stevens is 85 years old. He's already been punished enough. I'm satisfied." Uh, Senator Reid, with his conviction reversed and the charges against him dropped, former Senator Stevens hasn’t been convicted of anything and has no charges against him. Why should he be punished at all? How much punishment is enough for somebody who hasn’t been found guility of anything? But, I guess, that is just Harry "this war is lost"/"we won’t seat anybody appointed by Rod Blagojevich" Reid.

Joe Biden Does It Again

On Monday Joe Biden said that President Obama "inherited the most difficult 100 days of any president, I would argue, including Franklin Roosevelt. It was clear the problem that Roosevelt inherited. This is a more complicated economic calculus. We’ve never, ever, ever been here before, here or in the world."

Peter Brown did a fine job in The Wall Street Journal’s Capital Journal blog explaining why this is just silly vis-à-vis Franklin Roosevelt, so I won’t go over that. But look at that statement again: "the most difficult 100 days of any president". Uh, did you say "the most difficult 100 days of any president," Mr. Biden? Actually, we just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of a president who I think had a slightly more difficult first 100 days than President Obama. I realize the AIG bonus brouhaha may be a big deal to some, but I sort of think that seven states leaving the Union before your inauguration and four more leaving right after your inauguration was a little tougher than anything President Obama has had to face.

Actually, this brings to mind a statement that then-Senator Biden made back in 2006 when he was getting ready to run for President. Senator Biden was in South Carolina, talking to the Columbia Rotary Club. To try to show he was one of them (I guess), he noted that Delaware was a "slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way."

Could somebody please explain to me again why Joe Biden was so much better of a choice for vice president than his opponent?

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Update (3/22/09 8:30 p.m.):  I corrected "AGI" to "AIG" in the second paragraph.

A Request to Former Vice President Cheney: Please Be Quiet

Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized President Obama and his administration on Sunday for increasing the chances of a terrorist attack on the United States by abandoning certain Bush administration policies. The former vice president also made a number of other criticisms of the new president. (See here.)

I am not going to go into whether the former vice president was right or wrong in his criticisms. I just want him to be quiet. (I would have said that I want him "to shut up," but I decided that would be disrespectful.) Mr. Cheney isn’t saying anything that couldn’t be said – and actually is being said – by lots of other Republicans.

By talking out like this, all Mr. Cheney does is to help President Obama. Instead of President Obama having to defend what he is doing, Mr. Cheney’s attacks allow President Obama to continue blaming President Bush for all our problems.

In the past, when a president or vice president left office, he would not criticize his successor. That was a good tradition that unfortunately former President Carter has ignored in the extreme. I hope Mr. Cheney will do his part to reestablish it. It will be better for Mr. Cheney, for Republicans – and for the country.

Paying for the Stimulus

One of the concerns some people have about President Obama’s stimulus plan is that is too expensive. How are we going to pay for it, they ask. Well, I have an idea. It won’t cover the whole cost, but it should help,

All we have to do is nominate a few more Democrats to President Obama’s cabinet. Based on the unpaid taxes we have seen first Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and now Tom Daschle agree to pay upon being nominated, it shouldn’t take too many more nominees before we can cover a pretty good chunk of the cost.

Why Should Anybody Believe Us Republicans?

As Republicans try to re-group (and, hopefully, to re-identify and re-establish their principles [see here]), one is beginning to hear talk again about limited government and controlling government spending. Obviously, these are traditional Republican principles. Or should I say, these "used to be" traditional Republican principles.

And this is the problem Republicans face as we attempt to re-establish our principles. We have to convince the voters that we will really mean them this time.

Limited government and controlling government spending were, for many years, pretty solid Republican ideas. Voters understood this. Maybe the voters didn’t want them at times, and maybe we didn’t explain them well all the time, but whether we were in power or out, this was something voters understood that Republicans stood for. But then along came the "K Street Project"* and the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush.

While we never called it that, conservatives have always believed that conservatism is compassionate because we believe that conservatism, done right, helps people more than liberalism does. But the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush and Karl Rove came to mean not much more than spending money to buy off enough interest groups to get re-elected. Earmarks. Bloated farm bills. Prescription drug benefits for seniors without a way to pay for them. Too often, these programs seemed to be, and were sold to doubting Republicans in Congress as, a way to get re-elected.

Maybe it worked for a little while. But then came incompetence: Katrina; Iraq before Petraeus; the Harriet Miers nomination; etc. And the bills came due, too. By the time 2008 came around, Republicans were left without competence or principles. It is amazing McCain did as well as he did.

Since the election some Republicans have been talking about 1966 and 1994 as examples of how 2010 will be a good year for Republicans. Karl Rove said that in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. There may be some truth in that. After two bad elections in a row, a little turnaround would be expected. But are they going to be real Republican victories – or just Democratic losses?

The difficulty in achieving real Republican victories (and why we should be happy with whatever Democratic losses there may be in 2010) is credibility – and our lack of it. As I said above, Republicans used to have it, but we have lost it in the last eight years. It will take some time to get it back, but we have to start.

We have to really follow our principles. If our principles are limited government and low spending, then that is what we have to do. No more "yes" votes on special little (or even not so little) programs to favor this interest group or that. No more unreviewed earmarks. Some earmarks can be useful, but they should be disclosed ahead of time, not hidden away so they can’t be seen.

Rebuilding our credibility is going to take time. It won’t happen overnight. We can’t get mad at people who say they don’t believe us. We just have to say what we mean and mean what we say. We need to state our principles and then follow them.

It is going to take time. But we might as well get started now. The sooner we start, the sooner we will get where we are going.

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* See here for an explanation of the K Street Project.

Where Do We Go from Here?

So, where do Republicans and conservatives go from here? It would be nice if we could intelligently and rationally figure out what went wrong, determine how we can correct the mistakes, and get ready for when things start to go bad for the Democrats.

But it won’t happen. At least not for a while. We are in for lots of shouting and screaming, blaming and accusing. It was McCain’s fault. It was Bush’s fault. It was the House Republicans’ fault. It was Palin’s fault.

But at least Republicans will be lucky in that we will be able to have our fights and arguments in private. A media that was so enthusiastic about an Obama victory will spend all of its time speculating on and preparing for an Obama administration. All new presidencies get a media honeymoon, but Obama’s will be longer than most. And so we will be able to fight each other and blame each other without the world watching.

In fact, the recriminations have already started. Rush Limbaugh has tried to read people like Christopher Buckley out of the party for endorsing Obama. He says "good riddance" to what he calls "Republican moderates" who did not support John McCain. Tony Blankley has lashed out at what he calls "me-too conservatives" and ends his article by asking "Whose side are you on, comrade?" I am sure more attempted excommunications will follow. It is phase some of us have to go through. Part of the grieving process, I suppose. We just have to try to keep it as short as possible.

But after the grieving, what should we do? We need to ignore personalities and ignore individual people. The rebuilding of the Republican Party as a reasonable, conservative, center-right party, must start with principles, not people.

In that regard, the first thing we need to understand is that Ronald Reagan is not coming back. Our search is not for another Ronald Reagan. Our search is to rediscover the reasons we became Republicans and conservatives. We need to re-identify and re-establish the principles we believe in.

Let me make a start: Limited government. Low taxes. Federalism and local government. Freedom, both political and economic. Strong defense. A responsible foreign policy that protects us at home and abroad – and protects our friends, too. Free trade. Helping those in need. I am sure there are more, but that is a good start.

After we have refocused on our principles, we need to come up with policies that will implement these principles today. This is where too much focus on Ronald Reagan can misdirect us. Ronald Reagan’s principles are still true, but his policies, which worked so well in the 1980s, need some adjusting for 2009. It has been 20 years since Ronald Reagan left Washington. The Berlin Wall is down, and the Soviet Union has dissolved. Our nuclear threat is no longer from the USSR but from North Korea. A tax code that Reagan helped simplify has become more complex than ever. Health care has become an issue that must be dealt with. The principles are the same, but the policies will be different because conditions are different.

There will also be differences from our most recent Republican administration. Too often in the last eight years, instead of basing our policies on our principles, we did what we thought would get us elected. The theory was that we needed to be in power to do good, so we did things to stay in power so we could do good. But we spent so much time doing things to stay in power, that we never got around to doing the good things we were allegedly trying to stay in power to do.

Earmarks would help us stay in power, so we became earmark machines. To get the senior vote, we passed a senior drug bill when the nation didn’t even have a plan to pay for Social Security and Medicare, let alone a huge new program for seniors. Spending on defense needed to increase after 9/11 and after Bill Clinton achieved a good share of his budget surpluses by cutting defense spending. But many of the increases in domestic spending were about getting re-elected instead of implementing our principles.

The changes we need, however, will not be in our principles. We just need to re-establish them and re-focus on them. The changes will be in the policies that implement those principles. This is what ideas like Mark Kirk’s (R., IL) suburban agenda are aimed at doing. The Republican Study Committee is working on other good policies. And there is Frank Wolf’s (R., VA) SAFE Commission, which follows the successful example of the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, to force up-or-down votes on the elimination of whole lists of programs that are no longer needed.

Finally, what about those who would read people out of our party? They are wrong. We don’t need to kick people out of our party. We need to re-establish our principles. We need to identify policies that will implement those principles. And we need the help of everybody who wants to join us.

We don’t need to set up some kind of test to decide who can join and who cannot. Our principles and our policies are designed for all, so all can join. And as for those who left, for whatever reason, we should joyfully welcome them back when they want to return, as the father in that parable welcomed back his prodigal son.

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Update (11/5/08 9:50 a.m.): This is a an updated version of the article that was originally posted.