Winning the Present with TR and Civility

This piece was originally published eight months ago, on June 15, 2011 as the Republican presidential primary contest was just starting.  Its message is still relevant.

By Mary Claire Kendall

It might seem like an odd pairing, but what the GOP field needs is TR and civility to win the present — and defeat President Barack Obama in 2012.

TR, of course, refers to larger-than-life Republican Theodore Roosevelt[1], who served as president from 1901-1908, then ran on the Progressive Bull Moose ticket in 1912.

While he was a rock-ribbed Republican, when theory ran afoul of doing what’s right by the little guy, he always chose the latter[2].

His brand of politics is perfect for slaying today’s dragons that have gutted the middle class and precipitated runaway spending.

Take, for example, housing prices. The Case-Shiller index[3 ]recently revealed they’ve declined more steeply than during the Great Depression. The fact that 75% of consumers can’t even get loans to purchase a home, let alone refinance, is a big reason why.

Investment banker Christopher Whalen[4] , whose father served in Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet,” says the way around this problem is to raise the FHA loan cap and help small and medium size banks increase lending. This would mean giving more power and money to community banks. Obama prefers letting Wall Street call the shots — in spite of its role in precipitating the 2007-08 housing meltdown — while the little guy gets slammed.

But, Republicans, Whalen says, should out-progressive Democrats and do what is right, which is TR writ large. TR basically stared down Wall Street, thus saving it from itself; so should today’s Republicans.

One hundred years after TR’s Bull Moose gambit, many in the GOP field seem well-positioned to take up his mantle.

For instance, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty emphasizes Main Street production over Wall Street consumption. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has that “can do” spirit. And Texas Governor Rick Perry shares TR’s tough-as-nails persona.

Then there’s Mitt Romney, who, like TR, favors universal health care as the key to economic stability, signing it into law as governor of Massachusetts (2003-2007).

Many conservatives deride the 2006 Massachusetts law as ObamaCare’s twin and Tea Party poison — a comparison Obama smugly reinforces. But, in fact, ObamaCare and RomneyCare are apples and oranges. Whereas ObamaCare reduces what doctors are paid; RomneyCare ensures that doctors are, in fact, paid when a patient, who could otherwise afford it, lacks insurance.

Also, as Romney underscored in Monday’s CNN debate in Manchester, RomneyCare did not raise taxes, whereas ObamaCare does — to the tune of $500 billion — in addition to shifting $500 billion out of Medicare to fund it.

Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts residents favor the law, according to a recent poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Boston Globe, up 10 percentage points in the past two years, with only 21 percent opposed.

And what of the “individual mandate” that makes people think RomneyCare is ObamaCare? Well, considering there’s already a federal mandate to provide ER care to anyone regardless of ability to pay, it’s pretty important to make sure docs get paid, unless you want to drive them out of business a la ObamaCare.

Where it gets tricky is that an insurance mandate only make sense if, as in the case of automobiles, having coverage doesn’t encourage crashes, whereas standard health insurance increases utilization. Also, RomneyCare does not encourage medical savings accounts and streamlined, just-the-basics insurance.

But, as Romney is at pains to say, the Massachusetts law was a state solution to a state problem. He vows to rescind cost-prohibitive, one-size-fits-all ObamaCare if elected president — granting a waiver to all 50 states on Day One.

Meanwhile, Republicans have come up with a way to obviate a “mandate” — since understandably, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea — by assessing a fee on those who don’t buy insurance to hedge against costs incurred should they fall ill or suffer injury.

But, sensing political opportunity, Romney’s Republican opponents have been pouncing on him, with Sarah Palin tut tutting the Massachusetts law in Boston one hour before Romney announced for the presidency. Gov. Pawlenty called out “ObamneyCare” because, he explained in the debate, Obama claimed RomneyCare was his “blueprint.”

The good news, though, is Monday’s debate[5] signaled a truce of sorts.

Indeed, if Republicans hope to win the present, we must nominate a candidate who understands what ails the economy and how to cure it, of which health care is a big part. This means civility — honestly assessing opponents’ positions and presenting your own — will be critically important, lest we destroy ourselves from within.

So, with eyes on the prize, let the race be guided by the kind of civility our great Republican presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and, yes, even TR, practiced; and inspired by TR’s overflowing common sense in making life better for the little guy, now suffering under the weight of Obamanomics.

Originally published in Pajamas Media on June 15, 2010 http://pjmedia.com/blog/winning-the-present-with-tr-and-civility/

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URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/winning-the-present-with-tr-and-civility/

URLs in this post: 

[1] Theodore Roosevelt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt

[2] chose the latter: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/175141/teddy-right/jonah-goldberg

[3] The Case-Shiller index: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-09/shiller-says-u-s-home-price-declines-of-10-to-25-wouldn-t-surprise-me-.html

[4] Christopher Whalen: http://blogs.reuters.com/christopher-whalen/

[5] Monday’s debate: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/14/who-was-the-nights-biggest-winner/

Copyright © 2011 Pajamas Media. All rights reserved.

It’s 2012 - and no time for the rebel yell.

By Mary Claire Kendall

As James L. Petigru famously quipped after his state seceded, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

South Carolina Republicans’ choice of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich over former Governor Mitt Romney in their presidential primary is understandable given their desire to deliver a knockout punch to President Barack Obama in the fall debates. But, the notion the Republican Party is actually prepared, as Charles Krauthammer writes, to commit political suicide, is unthinkable.  

Still, the signs are there, which former Senator Rick Santorum’s triple win in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, reinforces.

A particularly unhealthy trend is the conservative penchant to try and relive the past based on an unrealistic dream of conservative purity.

One key conservative, passionately supportive of former Governor Sarah Palin, told me with great certitude months ago, the 2012 primary will be a replay of the 1976 primary, when former California Governor Ronald Reagan took the fight with President Gerald Ford all the way to the convention. Gingrich vows the same. 

The theory goes, if Republicans choose the Ford candidate, they will lose in the fall, paving the way to the next Reagan in 2016.  Many consider Palin (or perhaps Gingrich, though he would be 72/73) the 2016 Reagan. Funny thing, like clockwork, Palin suddenly began criticizing Romney when he all but had the nomination wrapped up, insisting that he prove he created some 100,000 jobs while at Bain. One week after husband Todd endorsed Gingrich, she said she would vote “for Newt” in South Carolina “in order to keep this thing going.” All the way to 2016!

Gingrich, alternatively, tag-teaming with Santorum, is clearly plotting a yellow brick road to conservative nirvana more reminiscent of 1980 when President Ronald Reagan was elected. That year, a true blue conservative finally triumphed over the Republican Party’s establishment wing—16 years after Senator Barry M. Goldwater’s (R-AZ) loss to LBJ.

Gingrich insists nothing but a Reagan conservative will do and fancies his foot fitting that Cinderella slipper. (Santorum is bursting that bubble.)  Romney, born to privilege, is the George H.W. Bush of 1980, and, ipse facto, must be defeated. President Barack Obama is, of course, Carter—on steroids! Fifty-six percent of Americans said a year out he did not even deserve re-election. 

Of course, 1964 looms large as well.  That year conservatives chose Goldwater, for whom “Extremism in the defense of liberty (was) no vice”—except at the polls.  (Bet on Gingrich hinting at Santorum’s extremism.)

The Republican primary leading up to the 1964 election was a brutally contentious fight between the establishment wing of the Republican Party, who supported New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D., Standard Oil founder, and the insurgent conservative wing backing Goldwater.  The political rancor that race injected into the Party lives to this day.   

In 1964, just like today, the polls were all over the place. And, while choosing the most conservative candidate seemed a no-lose proposition, given the sympathy vote favoring Johnson in the aftermath JFK’s assassination; this year, it’s thought no Republican can lose to Obama—no matter how out of tune with general election voters that candidate is. 

But, not only did Republicans lose in 1964—they lost by a landslide. 

Doesn’t matter, conservatives say. After the Goldwater debacle, Reagan spearheaded the conservative movement to restore America’s greatness—the kind of outcome, many conservatives say, would be just fine with them because it would set the stage for real conservative governance, after Obama is finished with America.  Indeed, many argue if Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, instead of Goldwater, had won the Republican nomination in 1964, edging out Rockefeller, we would never have had Reagan. 

But, wait a minute.  It’s not 1980, 1976, 1964… It’s 2012 and the stakes could not be higher.  Far better to wake up to reality now than endure a course of electroshock therapy were Obama re-elected.

So, what’s the reality?  Can Newt Gingrich win?  No.  Is Rick Santorum the best choice for Republicans?  Probably not, but he’d make a fantastic Veep. Can Mitt Romney restore Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” and lead the nation in its “rendezvous with destiny”?  Absolutely. His vision of transforming this into a new American Century—rejecting Obama’s vision of managing American decline—is Reaganesque, or, coining a new term, Romneyesque. That is to say, it is expressed with grace, skill and a sense of urgency and full recognition of this time of peril—in Winston Churchill’s words, “measureless peril.”