OK, so I did it. I went to the local Coffee Party on Saturday, March 13th.

I’m conservative with a long track record of supporting whatever walks the right side of the street. Although born a Democrat, back in 1972 I even joined the ‘Democrats for Nixon’ campaign as a highschooler — in Florida there were no Republicans elected to state office until 1978. None. Long story short: I have never identified with liberal or Democratic groups, even though I was born a Democrat — registering as a Republican only when that other former Democrat ‘God bless Ronald Reagan’ ran for president.

Bottomline: I wasn’t sure how these Coffee folks would take to someone with an NRA ballcap, who openly describes themself as conservative, or how they would deal with someone willing to discuss issues from a more conservative perspective. Certainly I have seen how more liberal-minded people were treated by the opposing view in my community — not a pretty sight.

There were a few things said by fellow attendees that made my ears twitch. At one point a group moderator even pointed me out and said “OK, so you smiling. So why the smile?” Blink. Blink. “Oh, crap” thought I. “She mistaked my smirk for a smile.” Time to put up or to shut up. So I did. Blink. Blink. “OK, well that’s a helpful perspective to understand a different view”, said she … and on we moved in the conversation. Hmmm …

Our group conversation focused on issues that we all individually believe should be of interest and worthy of group investigation. The issues added up: 15, 20, 25 … perhaps 30 different issues got listed. Then each participant got two votes to select two issues that they personally would like the group to focus on. Issues with the most votes were rolled into four study groups.

Hmmm … so the rumors that I heard beforehand that this was just a disguised group pimping for liberal causes or the Democratic party were … they were … bogus. Solidly bogus.

By the day’s end I found myself in the ‘Financial Oversight’ issue study group responsible for issues such as taxation, banking regulation, etc.

Boom! So now we would get our agenda if it were ever to happen. Someone would surely guide the study groups to what breadcrumbs should be followed. Nope. Didn’t happen.

We six group members decided what topics we wanted to study, set our own agenda for meeting, created a Facebook page to exchange info and to build whitepapers that can be used within the group and for approaching our legislators. The Coffee leadership didn’t even get involved in asking what we had decided upon. They’ll find out when we report back later in the month.

America stands at a crossroads. We are always arriving at some crossroad but the issues today are huge and imminently in front of us. The outcome will directly affect our children and grandchildren, leaving them incredible debt. We owe trillions to foreign countries and investors (and to Americans, too) — almost $2 trillion is due in October 2010 to pay back money borrowed in the early 2000s.

We have major healthcare issues that are at an impasse; our system is one of the best medicine that people can buy. Yet we rank just ahead of Cuba in the general health of our population. Obamacare to me is an abomination that will bankrupt the country and yet the alternative is “personal responsibility” — even though healthcare insurers are a monopolistic industry and some recently announced hikes of 25-36% in annual premiums.

Enough of labels. Enough of political party hacks and support groups — both the Democratic and Republican parties are focused on the next election. Neither can be trusted to hold real discussions and to make hard decisions. Each put party before country.

As for all the liberals, moderates, conservatives and wingers of every stripe: I’m not Satan, and you ain’t Lucifer … even though you drink coffee, tea and/or koolaid.

If you want to sit down with me and discuss issues then good. Check your name calling and label machines at the door — I don’t have time for you or that if that is what you are about.

Here is what I am about: God bless the U.S. Constitution, the 10th Amendment has real meaning, don’t put your hands in my pockets to pay for programs — unless we are both paying the same, and we should pay as we go. I don’t believe that “cut taxes” is the answer to everything, but taxes should be minimal and government intrusion into our lives should also be. But be assured “we” includes both you and me. We are both Americans — and I’ll drink any beer that you buy me. … :^)

I’ll meet with you any time and any place — except Sunday afternoons when I’m either enjoying my Second Amendment rights or playing soccer, or doing both.

BTW – I drink both tea and coffee. Both are OK with me.

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If you haven’t noticed, there is a new magazine out there called “Alternative Right.” The name makes it sound like its made up of conservatives who don’t fit the mainstream and are interested in moving the conservative movement forward.

Nope.

As Tim Mak, Alex Knepper and E.D. Kain have noted, this magazine is basically a gathering place for racists using intellectualism to make themselves look respectable.

As I heard all this criticism from other bloggers, I had to see for myself what all the hubbub was about. Is Alternative Right really that bad?

Short answer: yes. It is bad. Very bad. Take what they have to say about the coming demographic shift in America, as we become a “majority-minority” nation:

Look, group differences are a scientific fact. For a website that denounces those who don’t believe in evolution, it’s logically inconsistent but depressingly predictable that those at Frum Forum would deny the natural differences between whites and blacks or men and women…

Anybody who wants to take the time to learn about the “pseudo-intellectual” studies that have been done on group differences and how we know they have a biological basis can read J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, Michael Levin, Arthur Jensen, Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein on race and Steve Rhoads, Steven Pinker, Geoffrey Miller and Judith Rich Harris on gender. Or they can open up their eyes and look at the disparities in crime, socio-economic status and standardized test scores found always and everywhere.

We would have the luxury of ignoring all this if it wasn’t for our current demographic shift, massive anti-white discrimination in the form of affirmative action or Stalinism at our universities in the name of fighting “hate.”

White Americans have gone from 90 percent of the US population to 70 percent in the last forty-five years. They’re scheduled to become a minority by 2042. We can anticipate that there won’t be a single part of our society or culture unchanged by these population trends. It is those advocating we move ahead with this unprecedented demographic shift who should have the burden of proof on them to show that we’ll be better off.  Anyone who tries to will find calling people names to be much easier.

It’s hard not to look at all this and see a bit of white nationalism hiding behind all the nice sounding words. There is sense that people who are not white are inferior and will mess up America come 2042. Will American culture be changed by this demographic shift? Yes, of course. But the way it is worded in this blog post, you’d think we were talking of some coming apocalypse that will destroy our nation.

It’s gets better. Here is what they have to say about the head of Detroit schools and about all African Americans.

Notice that even the black woman who is supposedly in Mensa (I wonder if they race norm, or she isn’t just lying) thinks that not being able to write makes the school board chief a great representative of his community. Now I don’t blame this man for being unable to tell the difference between making it in the private sector and making it as a government bureaucrat in an affirmative action system. If he had the brainpower for that, he would’ve graduated from college within his first ten years or so. But all whites with hopes of ever seriously engaging the black community in America need to know the intellectual and personal qualities that they’re likely to come across among the African-American leadership.(emphasis mine)

Huh? This is the story of one African American and its taken as some kind of indicator that African Americans are dumb illiterates. Affirmative Action puts stupid blacks into the workforce.

Good heavens.

I doesn’t go without saying that as an African American, I am offended by all of this. But what really bugs me is that sites like Alternative Right will just feed into the belief that all conservatives are racists and that black conservatives and Republicans are “Uncle Toms,” ashamed of the African American heritage. It makes people think that conservatism is a racist ideology, something that it is not.

I have long advocated a Big Tent Republican Party. In the past, that has meant accepting moderates within the party. But it also means accepting people from every race and creed to represent what America is: e pluribus unum- out of many, one.

For those of us who see ourselves as Republicans and conservatives, we have to be willing to speak out against people like those associated with Alternative Right. This is my America too.

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Current Transportation Secretary and former congressman makes a Republican case for the health care overhaul supported  by the President. He highlights several Republican ideas in the bill:

There are several Republican ideas in the bill. It allows Americans to buy health insurance across state lines. It increases the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to pool together — much like large corporations or labor unions — to bargain for a better insurance rate. It gives states the flexibility to come up with an alternate health care plan, and it gives them resources to reform our tort system by developing new ways to deal with medical malpractice.

He’s correct that these are Republican ideas. However from what I’ve gathered, the GOP was never asked for their imput on the bill. The ideas were added in believing that it would attract a few moderate Republicans.

I’ve faulted the GOP for not being serious in the current debate on health care. That said, the Democrats were never that serious about bipartisanship. They added a few bones and hoped a few moderates would take the bait.

While I appreciate LaHood’s willingness to “get things done,” bipartisanship has to be about treating other with respect and not cynicism.

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With a Black Democrat in the White House we are experiencing an unusual upsurge in concern about “government takeovers, “creeping socialism,” and other claims that can only fairly be described “in quotation marks.”  The Republican Party has a very important role to play as the country adjusts to the demands of 21st century global capitalism, but so far we have our guns trained on ghosts.  This hysteria seems to be blooming densely in the South, where it is part of a wider suspicion of any sort of government intrusion into personal life, regardless of the legitimacy, purpose, or merit.

Perhaps a metaphor would be useful.  In the fall of 2004 I moved my family from Houston to the Chicago-area.  Never mind for a moment what this says about my sanity or morals.  It happened.  Let’s all learn from it.  One of my earliest introductions to Yankee life came in the form of a charming orange flier delivered to our door by the town council.  It was printed front and back in small type with a laundry list of laws governing the disposal of our leaves.

This is a topic I had never given much thought.  Growing up in Beaumont we just burned them in the backyard.  The greasy odor of oak and pine smoke clinging to the ground under the cool, humid air is what fall always smelled like.

Living in Houston we piled them into the garden where they seemed to break down into mulch before we could finish raking them up.  If there were any formal ordinances about what we could do with our leaves, or with just about anything else from discarded car batteries to old jugs of Roundup, I never knew what they were.  Viva Houston, viva Libertad

The town’s little orange flier seemed uptight and faintly oppressive.  Until the leaves came down.

I had a great time with the kids making piles under the big maple.  Then we raked them into the beds around the bushes.  Done.  Take that, rule-obsessed Yankees.  When the frost hit them they dried up like parchment.  They seemed to rise and hover in the crisp air like paper embers.  With few fences in any of the yards, we found ourselves a couple of days later apologizing to our new neighbor three doors down, Mrs. Chicago-alski, while we corralled our leaves from her yard and hauled them back.

The town really won’t pick them up in plastic bags.  They were actually serious about that.  Apparently hefty bags don’t mulch well.  They want you to buy these big paper bags which are relatively costly, don’t seem to hold much, are hard to stand up, but are environmentally friendly.  And it turns out that, like the flier warned, if you just dump the leaves in your garbage cans for pickup they are in fact likely to freeze into a wad at the bottom and remain with you after the taillights of the garbage truck have disappeared around the corner.

In my first Yankee year this was just one of a thousand little brushes with what my Southern mind saw as a police state, but now seem like the necessary compromises required to maintain civility in urban life.  My little town consists of 43,000 people crammed into a space considerably smaller than Bush Airport.  In this dense warren its not safe for me to burn my leaves in the backyard and the cloying smoke would not be appreciated by my neighbors with their windows open to capture the cool night air.

But without the rules, I might have done it anyway.

I was raised on the ethic of a Southern man virtually sovereign under God on his own patch of soil.  That model makes perfect sense in Thomas Jefferson’s rural vision of the republic.  It makes no sense under Alexander Hamilton’s vision of an urban, capitalist nation.  To live in an urban environment we have to learn to live together with some rules.

These days Republicans are throwing around words like “collectivist” and “communist” to describe our concerns with Obama, but they sound silly even on our own tongues.  Obama is not a communist and my little orange flier was not oppression.  Southerners are not struggling against socialism.  They are struggling to come to terms with the demands of modern, global capitalism.

Like a lost memory we are feeling the same impulse that animated our Confederate ancestors who mistakenly railed against “wage slavery” and “Yankee Industrialists.”  They feared that capitalism would destroy their values and undermine their rural way of life.  They failed to recognize the tremendous potential of capitalism to not only make us more prosperous, but to open our world to more personal liberty.  They were wrong then with gruesome consequences.  We are wrong now and marching in their footsteps.

There are bright days ahead when we as Republicans put down our pitchforks and give up the search for the village monster.  There are bright days ahead learn to adapt Republican ideas to traditionally Democratic domains, when we learn to apply conservative solutions to problems of environmental protection, urban schools, healthcare, and developing new sources of energy.

And by the way, I found a way to get rid of my leaves without breaking the rules and without buying all those ridiculous bags, but that’s another story.  Junior was right, a country boy can survive, even in the big city.

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Politico has a worthwhile piece on the Tea Party movement and how the religious right is responding.  Both movements are making waves in the GOP and both have very different agendas.  The Tea Party movement as far as I can tell, does not place as much emphasis on social issues like abortion and gay marriage than the religious right has over the years. 

The article reminded me of what seems to be missing in the GOP these days.  Being a gay Republican, I tend to like that the Tea Party folks are not so interested in going after gays.  That said, I’m less satisfied with how we as a society should address issues like entitlement reform or care for the poor.  As Christian, I like that there are some evangelicals that do want government to do something for the poor, but I then they tend to not really like people like me.

What is sorely missing in the GOP are voters that tend to be socially liberal, fiscally conservative and willing to see the government help those who are poor have a better life than they did.  I know that there are wags out there that will claim that such Republicans exist and are called Democrats, but the fact is, there used to be very die hard Republicans who were “pragmatic progressives” (I use the word, “progressive” in its old form, not in the new form which is a euphemism for “left”) when it came to the welfare of people.  New York Governor and Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey was one of the pragmatic progressive Republicans who in his time as governor did a fair amount for social reform. 

This is what Geoffrey Kabaservice had to say in a profile on him last November

:

Unlike the stalwarts who continued to dominate what little remained of the Republican representation in Congress in the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Dewey believed that the Depression had permanently reshaped the political landscape and that it was insufficient for Republicans simply to denounce the New Deal and hope in vain for the eventual disappearance of the welfare state. As Dewey said in his first gubernatorial address, “There has never been a responsible government which did not have the welfare of its people at heart… anybody who thinks that an attack on the fundamental idea of security and welfare is appealing to people generally is living in the Middle Ages.” As governor, he put forward social programs that included unemployment insurance, sickness and disability benefits, old age pensions, slum clearance, state aid to education (including the creation of the State University of New York), infrastructure projects (particularly highway construction), and pathbreaking anti-discrimination legislation.

Dewey attempted to distinguish his programs from similar Democratic programs by running a government that was acknowledged to be clean, honest, and efficient. His was pay-as-you-go liberalism, as he managed to implement his social programs while cutting taxes, reducing the state debt by over $100 million, and still achieving budget surpluses. He also argued that while Republicans and Democrats might agree on social ends, the parties would differ in their means, with moderate Republicans emphasizing individual freedom and economic incentive over collectivization. However, this relatively sophisticated position inevitably opened Dewey to conservative gripes of “me-tooism” and Democratic claims that he was offering a lesser version of the genuine article.

These days, such a combination of liberalism and fiscal conservatism, the kind that Ross Douthat hates, doesn’t have as much of a place in the party as it used to.

Of course, I tend to think it should.  What if there was a Thomas Dewey in Congress today that could come up with a viable alternative to the Democratic health care proposals that was able to cover everyone and bring down health costs and the over all deficit?  What if Republicans came forward with ideas that would preserve Social Security and Medicare, that would also save us from fiscal peril?

Maybe that will happen…someday.

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Surely 2010 will go down in American history books as one of the more interesting years in American history.

2010 is in many ways a lot like both 1884 and 1992.

1884 gave us the Mugwumps - conservative and moderate Republicans that revolted and openly distanced themselves from the official choices of the Republican Party. In many cases the Mugwumps actively worked against Republican candidates, this includes even the Republican nominee for president. Unlike today, Mugwumps were a top down revolt of Republicans already elected that thought the party was on the wrong path.

1992 – how quickly we forget the anger that existed, to include real concern about our national debt. National polling shows that Americans were much more “angry” at the government back in 1992, significantly much more angry. That anger got channeled however through the candidacy of Ross Perot who stepped forward and very explicitly challenged the political establishment — with charts and predictions in hand Ross Perot made a difference. We later got “Contract with America” which turned out to be: vote us in, we promise to use all of your favorite buzzwords, and then we’ll do what is best for the party.

Ross Perot got my vote and the vote of 19% of America in 1992.

The lessons of 1884 and 1992 are that populist movements to reform government are usually shortlived. They can linger on for a few years; Ross Perot later formally founded the Reform Party which actually won some elections. We have some few remaining elected officials here in Virginia that are officially Reform Party … this is now a party footnoted in history.

Without structure and organization there is no future for a movement. Perhaps even with structure there is no future; witness the inability of the Libertarian Party to connect, or the Constitutionalist Party — the “fastest growing party in America” as it bills itself … I don’t think so.

So here we are at 2010. Anger we have plenty of, but alas no Ross Perot to represent us or any central personality capable of convincing America that someone with a name cares. There is no cross-generational Ronald Reagan, whom we literally had decades to know and to mature with and to evolve with. 2010 is all about chaos, impending financial entropy on a scale that we cannot yet imagine … although some are trying hard.

2010 is all about having to represent ourselves against the machine — and the machine is both red and blue.

Tea or coffee? Coffee or Tea?

Until now I have been uninvolved in the TEA Party movement. I don’t do anger. Anger blinds you and makes you do silly stuff. I’m a solutions person. I have never let not knowing what I am doing get in the way of achieving something. Until recently the TEA Party movement has largely been against and not for anything. That is changing.

The TEA movement is maturing, and now that the Republicans (Romney/Rove/Steele) have informed TEA Partyers that they really are Republicans and that they should act accordingly, there is more sober thought among TEAers to consider what comes next. Conservative Texas’ voter thumping of TEA candidates has also caused many TEAers to pause and to reflect.

Now comes this new creature: the Coffee Party. The premise of Coffee is that government is not the enemy. It may not have the answer, but it is not the enemy.

We are the government. If it is wrong then we are wrong. Coffee suggests that ‘we the people’ should focus our energies on helping guide government by being both its watchdog and by being involved. We must do more than be angry. We must be part of the solution.

So for me I will now get involved in both. Although many in TEA distrust Coffee, and certainly Coffee is in reaction to TEA, we are at a crossroads in American history. They both are a distraction and yet they both may hold answers.

One thing is certain: 2010 is the chapter that follows 1884 and 1992.

BTW #2 – Republicans claim to be serious about passing some form of a Balanced Budget Amendment if only we give them the chance. Really? Those two wild and crazy South Carolinians Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint (both R-SC) introduced a Balanced Budget Amendment in 2007. Surely you remember!? Don’t you? Surely you do. Anyway, Republicans always run to this ploy when politically in trouble. I believe that Graham and DeMint were serious about it — but where was the rest of the party?

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It is not Social Conservatism. It is something that, wherever we are in the economic/governing ideological spectrum, most of us as reform republicans can agree on.  As the health-care bill continues in its congressional struggle and more and more eyes begin to look towards the 2010 elections, we start to see the basic and obvious themes that will more than likely dominate or play important roles in the races.  The Tea Party movement, and its populist conservative theme has already played an important role in the race for governor in my own home state.  Although there was a supposedly absolute “pure” tea party representative republican candidate in the form of Debra Medina who along with Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged the incumbent governor Rick Perry for the spot during the GOP primary, it was Rick Perry’s ability to harness a good deal of the energy that was the Tea Party being especially powerful here in Texas which played a key role in his winning of the primary.  Going a bit further back, it is possible that the Tea Party may have had some sort of impact on Scott Brown’s victory, although how much is not quite certain as national Tea Party support is a different perspective than that of the average Massachusetts voter.

This movement cannot be confused or assumed to represent the discontent of the state voters that put him in power in a traditionally Democratic state as while general discontent with the status quo was evident, most Massachusetts voters nevertheless did not want the healthcare bill because it lacked a public/government run option: a very different view than the anti-government tea baggers.  His voting along with the other New England Republicans for the jobs bill instead of joining a filibuster with the conservative majority of the minority party shows how whether he or the Tea Party movement likes it or not, he will have to represent from the center and be a centrist Republican if not a center-left liberal Republican as Mitt Romney was pre-2008 presidential primary race.  Now whether or not the movement will continue to play a major role in upcoming races for the final 2010 remains to be seen, but the basic message of anti-government which was in response to a potential public option laden healthcare bill may play a huge role.  This potential “vote against government” does not necessarily mean a libertarian-conservative view although that makes up part of it, but as the race in Massachusetts showed, it is a vote against how government is being run.  It therefore becomes a two-sided vote among those of rather different ideologies that has seemingly generated this anti-establishment atmosphere around the races.

At the roots of this is general discontent at the lackluster stimulus which has seemingly overall had only minimal positive impact at the cost of driving the already large debt even higher, which by the way is another concern.  Job growth and the ending of the recession will be a major variable in the whole equation come November which leaves out an interesting part of the ideological makeup that has dominated the conservative movement:  Social Conservatism.  There was no major play on social issues during the Scott Brown campaign, which surely would have sunk it in a state that is overall quite socially liberal, naturally dictating any real candidacy to be as such.  During the previous races of New Jersey and Virginia social issues did not take precedence as they did in the early millennial years and even victory by uber-conservative Rick Perry was done with barely a shout out for some evangelical crusade against…well something that would be seen as not socially conservative.  Let’s not make the mistake of saying that social conservatism is gone from politics as I had noticed that many of the Tea Party members at least in this state’s rallies were the same conservatives that voted for W. Bush for “morality and moral issues” and Tea Party candidates at least here in my state tend to automatically align with socially conservative issues.  Many of them are social conservatives, but in my observation social conservatism as we have known it during its rise in the 90’s to its climax in the ’04 elections to its modern day silence has run its course.

It may be because average Americans, while still having opinions on social issues realize that there is something more important to deal with than with whether or not their state allows gay marriage or whether abortion will determine presidential elections.  They may realize that it’s about jobs, a stable and growing economy; that it’s about our foreign affairs in the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our nation’s ultimate future that is threatened by debt and an economically insecure future.  Again, social conservatism is not gone, and already some right-wing challengers have attempting to once again create a divide between themselves and opponents who may not share their religious views.  Regardless of how we view of the outcomes of the past few races whether it be from Massachusetts or here in Texas, whether it is about the Tea Party and it’s conservative-libertarian/anti-government hatred or a general discontent with how Democrats have failed to run (which includes those of centrist or even liberal leanings who believed that said party would run government appropriately), the basic message that may have started back in the New Jersey and Virginia races is simple:  It’s the basic ability in governance in order to pass bills from healthcare to creating jobs to a viable and secure economy.  It’s the running of government.  It’s the government…stupid.

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The short answer? Probably no one.

It seems that way at times. Republicans tend to consider moderates and their liberal Republican cousins, traitors. Democrats profess their love of moderates usually years after they were in office.

The history of moderate Republicans is one that is not well known. It tends to be forgotten because in the battle between conservatives and moderates the winner (in this case, the conservatives) wrote the history. When they are remembered, it isn’t very fondly. While Ross Douthat is too classy to call Northeastern Republicans both past and present “RINOs” he basically has said that many times in blog posts and op-eds. He does so again today in a post about the current health care bill. This is his take on the current Senate bill and what kind of Republicans would like this bill:

The Senate legislation is the kind of bill that the early-1970s Richard Nixon might have backed, or the early-1990s John Chafee (who crafted a Republican alternative to Clintoncare), or (self-evidently) the Mitt Romney of 2005.

But keep in mind that the kind of “moderate Republicanism” (or “Rockefeller Republicanism,” to use a better term of art) that bound all of those figures together was often closer to a liberal Republicanism — a pro-business version of the prevailing liberal paradigm, that is, rather than a intellectually-distinct alternative. On domestic policy, Richard Nixon generally resembled a more cynical version of Lyndon Johnson, not a Ronald Reagan avant la lettre. (Is anyone nostalgic for the days when the Republican Party was “moderate” enough to favor wage and price controls? I hope not.) Likewise, John Chafee’s views on most domestic issues (like those of his son, and successor) bore roughly the same relationship to an ideologically-consistent conservatism that Zell Miller’s views on, say, defense policy bore to the liberal mainstream when Miller was a Democratic Senator from Georgia. And while conservative health-care wonks did have some input on Mitt Romney’s health care efforts, calling Obamacare a centrist-Republican proposal because it resembles a compromise forged in the nation’s most liberal state is still a little like claiming that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 were a centrist-Democratic effort because Ben Nelson voted for them.

Nelson Rockefeller might well have liked the current health care bill. So would Jacob Javits, Lowell Weicker and a whole generation of politicians for whom the point of being a Republican was to head in the same direction as the Democratics, but more slowly, with more attention to the concerns of corporate America, and with a greater zeal for balancing the nation’s books. But while I have all kinds of problems with what the contemporary Republican Party has become, and where it might be going, I can’t say I’m sorry that Rockefeller Republicanism no longer plays a major role in shaping the G.O.P.’s agenda. In the end, the country is better off with an opposition party that offers Americans a real choice — whether on health care or any other issue — rather than being content to supply a “moderate” and business-friendly echo.

I will agree that the Republicanism that Douthat disdains was responding to the then-dominant liberal paradigm. But responding to that era when liberalism was the main thrust in America doesn’t make one just simple echo. Their views are lost to history, but I’ve read books by some of those liberal Republicans that Douthat disses, and they stake out their positions. They had convictions and strong beliefs that were once part of the Republican party. Read Jacob Javits’ Order of Battle and you see a man that gives strong compelling reasons for why he was a Republican. One might read one of the many biographies written by Geoffrey Kabaservice on moderate Republicans to see that these moderates were not spineless.

Frankly, Douthat’s disgust for moderates in the GOP both past and present make no sense to me. Douthat has long argued that the GOP needs to adopt a more robust agenda. In the book he co-authors with Reihan Salam, he maps out a plan that would use the government to help the working class and the poor. It’s a worthwhile read. Douthat laments that Republicans have not yet taken this new agenda to heart and in looking at the current crop of Republicans, he is correct- they have no interest in his ideas. Of course, there is a certain sector of the party that might be interested, moderate Republicans. Mind you, the moderates he spurns came up with ideas in response to what the Democrats were proposing. They had an interest in dealing with poverty or trying to help the working class. They were interested in making sure that Americans had access to health care.

The problem is, Douthat expects that the current crop of Republicans will somehow come up with bold, new ideas that will rejuvenate the party. Well, Ross can keep waiting, cause it ain’t going to happen. It’s not that there aren’t conservatives in the GOP that are coming up with good ideas, but there aren’t enough of them to make a difference. Even if a conservative Republican comes up with an idea, like Bob Bennett of Utah and health care, he is attacked by outsiders for consorting with Democrats. How many conservatives have come up with a decent health bill?

I understand Douthat’s game. To maintain some gravitas in the conservative realm, he has to learn to take down moderates. But that means taking down the one group that has the passion and the willingness to carry the water for his ideas.

But maybe the thing that bothers me most is that while he shares his disgust of moderates over here, Douthat raves about the Conservative Party accross the pond. The rejuvenated Conservatives got that way because they started listening to their moderates. They decided to branch beyond the base instead of looking down on them.

The moderates of today can’t be the moderates of yesteryear. Moderates in the GOP from the 40s until the 70s were dealing with aftermath of the New Deal. Liberalism is no longer dominant, so moderates of today have to learn to respond to the current situation.

But the leaders of that time, the Javitses, Chaffees and Brookes, should not be looked down upon. They worked for the poor in urban areas, supported legislation that cleaned up our water and air, and helped African Americans gain their civil rights. These are achivements that should never be forgotten.

I don’t expect Douthat to ever be nice to moderates like me. After all, he has a reputation to maintain. But he also should not expect that the GOP will ever rise to dominance. Unless the Republican party listen and accepts the moderates in its midst, Douthat’s words will be like speaking to the wind.

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There is a runoff election in Houston scheduled for April 13^th that will determine who will hold one of the most important political offices in Texas.  From that platform, the winner will be able to wield significant influence over the Party structure in that state and elsewhere.  It will receive very little press and almost no campaign contributions.  Few citizens will show up to vote.  What am I talking about?  First, a little background.

Years ago I was volunteering on a state-level Republican campaign in Houston.  The candidate struck me as a solid, reasonable guy.  His conservative credentials were strong, but he also seemed to have enough realism and good sense to have a chance to accomplish something.  We were looking to take a long-standing Democratic district and he seemed like our best shot.

One evening we were discussing his frustrations over campaign signs being stolen and other petty vandalism.  He explained to me casually that Democrats do these things because they have nothing “beyond this life.”  I was confused at first and thought I hadn’t heard him right.  He went on to elaborate on how Democrats used dirty tactics because they have nothing to look forward to but this material existence, while we (Republicans???) had our eyes on an eternal life so the things of this world were less important to us.  I see…

I ended the conversation as gracefully as possible.  What struck me most was the fact that this was not an intimate chat between longtime friends.  If he was saying this to me then he felt safe saying this to practically anyone.

Perhaps comments like that from a relatively moderate Republican officeholder can explain why our politics has become a winner-take-all bloodsport where compromise equals betrayal.  After all, if my political enemies are merely marinating for a long roast, why should I treat them with any respect?

How did we get to a point where this kind of extremism is normal?  The story goes back more than twenty years to a time when people who share this worldview recognized the neglected potential of the grassroots.  Fundamentalists, particularly in the South, began targeting downballot races and local precinct leadership in the eighties.  Precinct chairmen don’t seem like power players, but when you dominate the precincts you dominate the Party.

Since the ‘90’s (1994 in particular) local GOP politics in the South has been dominated by religious fundamentalists and Houston is a fine example.  Until ”Scary” Gary Polland stepped down as chairman in 2002, the Party posted on its website a questionnaire for potential candidates with long lists of leading questions on religious affiliation like ‘How often do you attend religious services?’  Party caucuses and major meetings that were once held in schools or county buildings are now held in churches.

Bizarre fundamentalist activists like Terry Lowry and Steven Hotze among others have been quietly allowed to build power until they can influence primary elections and help shape policy.  Tolerated for years as a marginal tool to bolster Party influence, these extremists have learned to wag the dog.

Hotze helped promote the fundamentalist movement’s grassroots strategy, observing back in the 90’s that “the precinct convention is the most critical meeting for you to attend if you want to have an impact on civil government.”  His power slackened a bit after his drunk driving arrest and his problems with the state medical board.  But he hasn’t gone away, sending anti-gay mailers in last year’s Mayoral election and organizing local events for Mike Huckabee’s Presidential campaign.

Lowry has long been accused of a form of political payola, doling out fundamentalist endorsements critical in local downballot Republican primary races while accepting advertisements from those candidates for his “Link Letter” and “donations” to connected charities.  There’s no online link to the Link Letter because it’s kept off the Internet.  Lowry has been pressing for a strict rule to disqualify any potential precinct chairmen who would disagree with fundamentalist positions on abortion or gay rights in particular.  He has claimed on his Facebook site that “the Devil” is trying to divide the local GOP.

In the wake of a disastrous Republican decade, there is a growing realization inside the GOP that these cartoon characters are wielding actual power. These characters in Houston are not unique.  You’ll find versions of them influencing Republican policy and tactics all over the country.  If they aren’t confronted we risk becoming a political party centered on an extreme interpretation of political Christianity rather than the party of personal liberty and responsible government.

On April 13^th the Harris County Republican Party will choose a chairman in a runoff election.  It sounds like a parochial, administrative matter and turnout is likely to reflect that belief.  But this is one of the most influential political positions in the state.

Republicans in Harris County have an opportunity to put in place reasonable leadership that respects the proper role of religion in personal and public life while also preserving other vital values.  Party activists are supposed to be committed, but the extremism has gone too far.  Harris County Republicans have a chance to take one more quiet, but significant step in rolling back a movement that has damaged both religion and politics in our generation.  Let’s hope they use this opportunity to make the Party stronger.

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I really used to believe that if you present someone with the facts, they would be persuaded to see another person’s viewpoint as valid. 

Case in point: I used to believe that if I showed my liberal friends that one can be a gay Republican and be out and proud and also show that there are a number of conservatives out there that don’t have an issue with gays, they would see gay and gay-friendly Republicans as their allies in the fight for gay eqaulity.

How silly of me to believe this.

What I’ve come to find out over time is that no matter how hard one tries, it makes no difference.  Gay Republicans are still viewed as tragic figures or anomalies, no minds are changed.

I’ve been reminded of that after reading David Link’s post today at Independent Gay Forum.  Link is talking about the recent revelations of California State Senator Roy Ashburn, an anti-gay senator that turns out to be gay.  He uses this post as a way to talk about the sad state of the GOP and how they oppress gays and lesbians.  I don’t have an argument with that, but then he makes this statement:

That is what his party not only demands of its followers, but seems to prefer – the willing (if not mandated) suspension of disbelief.  No GOP candidates can ever be (openly) homosexual.

The confines of that small parenthetical contain the entire culture war over gay rights.  Of course some GOP candidates and elected officials are homosexual.  Of course GOP voters are, as well.  But that observable and unavoidable fact can’t be honestly and straightforwardly talked about in the party.  Log Cabin and now GOProud keep trying, while the party leaders and voters put their fingers in their ears and shout “Lalalalala!” as loud as they can.

While there is some truth to all of this, he seems to ignore some changes that have been made. He didn’t read a Christian Science Monitor article that talks about the openly gay Republican in Virginia that is running against a Democrat, or the openly gay Republican running for Lt. Governor in Massachusetts. He forgets the growing list of conservatives who are in favor of same sex marriage. He discounts groups like Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud, that work and support gay and gay friendly candidates and have made a difference in changing the minds of many a Republican.

Link then goes on to heap praise on the Democrats, showing how open-minded they are.  Yea.  The thing is, the reason the Democrats are where they are is because of political action.  Gay Democrats got active and worked to change hearts and minds.  Gay Republicans are taking a page from that book and are working to change hearts and minds in the GOP as well.  It’s a long road, but I see more progress than Link does.

In the end, all that a gay or gay-friendly Republican can do is keep to keep plugging away, working for social change and ignoring the David Links of the world who will never see the changes taking place.

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Washington (CNN):

Mitt Romney has a message to Tea Party candidates nationwide: If you lose your
Republican primary bids, stay on the sidelines.
The former Massachusetts
governor on Monday warned the grassroots movement not to mount third party
efforts in general elections, which he said would siphon votes from Republican
nominees.

“If there is a conservative candidate that runs in the general
election, then obviously, divide and fail is the result,” Romney said in an
interview with the conservative Web site Newsmax. “Hopefully Tea Party
candidates will run in respective primaries and they will either win or lose.
And if they win, they will go into the general. If they lose, they won’t, and
they will get behind the more conservative of the two finalists.”

Romney explained that “dividing our conservative effort in the general elections” would “basically hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made similar remarks last month in a speech sponsored by the Arkansas Republican Party. “Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this Tea Party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party,” she said, adding that the GOP would be the most natural fit for such activists.
Romney had kind words for the Tea Party movement. “I’m really pleased that the silent majority is silent no longer,” he said, predicting that the movement “will have have an impact on this election.”
“Not all the Tea Partiers are Republicans, not all of them vote for Republicans, but I think most of them will,” he said.

Continuing with the Tea Party series, I thought what Romney said was quite appropriate. Earlier, I said that the GOP could use the Tea Party, and in fact needs the Tea Party, because the Tea Party has engaged the “silent majority” to be silent no longer. Then, in the second part of the series, I showed that while the GOP needs the Tea Party, it also needs to make sure to silence and repudiate the “crazy parts” and the fringe of the tea party in order to make sure that the whole is not defined by the rotten few.

Here, I think what Romney says is that while the GOP needs the Tea Party, the Tea Party also needs the GOP. It may be the more conservative part of the Republican Party, but it is undeniably part of the Republican Party. A limb cannot survive without the body, but the body can survive without a limb.

If the Tea Party were to put more conservative candidates in the primaries, that would be great. Let the voters decide. But if the Republican voters choose a more progressive or moderate candidate, like Brown, then the Tea Party needs to honor that choice and try elsewhere. To try and then push someone as a third, more conservative party, would only mean that both the conservative and the republican candidate would split votes, and what would happen? I think Romney said it best: It would “…hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”

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Eleven Republican incumbents had Tea Party challengers in the recent elections in Texas.

Ten of the eleven Tea Party challengers went down to defeat. Incumbent Republican State Rep. Tommy Merritt lost to Tea Party challenger David Simpson, running as a Republican.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, commented after analyzing Tea Party candidates and voting results: “there was a lot more flash than bang.”

Most Tea Party candidates were soundly defeated with incumbents garnering 80% of the votes in most cases.

The highest level of votes received was 19% by Debra Medina in her bid as the Republican candidate for governor.

Rep. Kay Granger, a Fort Worth Republican and seven-term incumbent, received 70 percent even though Tea Partyers specifically targeted her as being a probable win for them. Granger got 70 percent of the vote despite having two opponents.

Texas 2010 primary elections had a record turnout with 1.4 million Republicans casting votes, almost double that of 2008.

Bill4DogCatcher sez: There were some local races where Tea Partyers won. Ultimately local candidates have to discuss local issues. How you fill potholes and pay for it requires some level of specificity. Tea Partyers either have answers or they don’t. Some did.

However, raging against Washington when you really don’t have a plan of your own obviously doesn’t sell well. Rage may get lots of attention in front of cameras at town hall meetings but we don’t want to elect angry people. If ultraconservative Texas is any indication, Americans continue to prefer the devil it already has rather than vote for rage and a set of fuzzy political beliefs that do not seem to point to any definable sense of what it all means as public policy.

Sources:

• McClatchy, “Texas primary shows Tea Party has a weak brew“, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/03/89777/commentary-texas-primary-shows.html
• CNN: “Tea Party changes tone, but not outcome of Texas primary“, http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/05/texas.tea.party/index.html
• TaxDayTeaParty.com: “Tea Party Factors Playing Into the Texas Primary“, http://taxdayteaparty.com/2010/03/tea-party-factors-playing-into-the-texas-primary/
• Chron | Houston & Texas News: “Lackluster showing puts damper on Tea Party“, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6896043.html

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I read an interesting op-ed piece today, by Leonard Pitts Jr., entitled Crazy and Incoherent. It was printed in the Oregonian, and you can read the entire article here.

Pitts talks about the Tea Parties and many of the extremists found within its ranks. He gives a surprising quote, by Editor in Chief Erick Erickson of RedState, a big name conservative blog:

“At some point, you have to use the word ‘crazy.’”
…
Erickson was recently quoted on Politico in a report about how he and other
conservatives are attempting to distance their ideology and the Republican Party
from the paranoid theorizing and loud, incoherent screaming that have recently
passed for discourse on the political right. And of course, the darkly comic
thing about it is that, less than a year ago, some conservatives were exulting
over the tea parties, believing they brought needed energy to a movement
demoralized by its 2008 shellacking at the polls. “The Republican comeback has
begun,” declared GOP chief Michael Steele.

What a difference a year makes. Or not.

Some of us after all, have argued all along that the tea parties were about
as “conservative” — insofar as that term has traditionally been understood –
as ladies night in a Castro Street bar. Indeed, some of us made the same point
about George W. Bush, the putatively conservative president who nevertheless
presided over an expansion of the federal government and of a federal
entitlement program (Medicare), a costly war of choice in Iraq founded on a
shifting rationale, and financial mismanagement that turned surplus into deficit
seemingly overnight. For at least the last decade, then, conservatism has not seemed particularly conservative — a
disconnect many of the ideology’s adherents managed to ignore so long as it was
useful to do so, i.e., so long as it played well at the ballot box. “Just win,
baby” was their mantra; intellectual honesty, their casualty…

This, I believe, is completely on the nose. The reason Republicans lost so badly in 2008 wasn’t because the Democrats and liberals are great—far from the truth, as we have clearly seen with our current administration and Democrat majority. Washington is still broken. No, Republicans didn’t lose due to their competition; Republicans lost because of themselves. One thing Americans hate, hate, is hypocrisy. And when Republicans talk about conservativism, less government, fiscal responsibility, and then use their majority to do the opposite, America reacts. And that is why we currently have a Democratically controlled, well, everything.

Pitts continues on why the Tea Parties really haven’t accomplished a lot in the last year:

…the tea party movement [was found] to be amorphous and largely without
an organizing principle other than its anger toward government and fear of a
supposedly imminent dictatorship. Beyond that, partiers are an unwieldy amalgam
of tax haters, global warming holdouts, illegal-immigration protesters,
secessionists, gun rights advocates, white supremacists, militia types and
conspiracy theorists, all banging their gongs at the same time. Like the liberal
noisemakers who follow the World Trade Organization around, their lack of
message discipline renders them — that word, yet again — incoherent. Like
them, they have yet to figure out that to protest everything is to
protest nothing.

Make no mistake: every movement or marginalized people has its fringe
extremists who threaten to define the whole. Thus, moderate American Muslims are
periodically required to rebuke Islamic terrorists, environmentalists are
obligated to rebuff eco-terrorists, and moderate African-Americans are expected
to reprove Louis Farrakhan.

But conservatives, outside of a few integrity-driven souls over the years,
have not rushed to repudiate the crazies among them, even as the crazies have
grown crazier and threatened to engulf the whole.

And here he is right. We need to continue to repudiate, as Erick Erickson has done, the crazier parts. Otherwise, the fringe of the tea party will take over the tea party, and the tea party will, in turn, define the Republican Party. And that would be disastrous for the party, not to mention for the entire country.

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The Honorable Senator from Kentucky has been increasingly irritable, erratic, and downright ornery in recent years.  He has alienated colleagues and nearly lost his seat to a Democrat.  Now he has sealed his “cantankerous old codger” credentials with a stunt that was costing thousands of out of work Americans their unemployment benefits.

Until yesterday, Bunning was using one of those arcane Senatorial prerogatives to halt progress of a funding bill for that includes numerous projects including money for unemployment.  His complaint was that the bill should not move forward until the Senate finds funding to cover its cost.

In and of itself this is not such an unreasonable demand.  What’s strange and pointlessly spiteful about it is that about a quarter of everything Congress spends right now has no revenue behind it and Bunning has played an enthusiastic role in getting us into this mess.  He could have refused to designate any of his earmarks until Congress found funding for them, but that would have severely impacted Bunning’s campaign contributors.  We don’t want to let idealism get out of hand.

Beyond the realization that one guy with a loose grip on reality can hold up Senate business, there is a cold lesson in this experience if we choose to see it.  Bunning is, accidentally I’m sure, playing out for us in microcosm an ambush we have set for ourselves.  We are facing a scenario in the medium-term future, perhaps as few as eight to ten years out, when world financial markets will “pull a Bunning” on us.  When this happens, it won’t affect one government program, but all of them.  We could potentially lose the ability to deliver basic services for brief periods.  This is an opportunity to learn.

These days we aren’t just borrowing “a lot.”  We are borrowing far more money than we can find lenders for.  Our total debt is now almost as high as a full year’s complete economic output for the entire country.  So how have we avoided a collapse in government funding?  We are covering this frightening scenario by having our own Treasury and Federal Reserve purchase the debt that can’t be auctioned in the marketplace.  Under normal conditions this couldn’t be sustained because it would trigger high levels of inflation.  But (again, simplifying), the scale of the recent economic collapse was so vast that even now deflation remains a greater concern than inflation.

So what happens to debt finance when we have finally worked our way through the effects of the housing bubble and the financial industry collapse?  The honest answer is no one really knows.  But you can be pretty certain that we won’t be able to continue to print money to cover our debt.  If we have not found a way to stop running massive annual deficits we face a terrible dilemma -  either run a risk of hyperinflation or run out of money, perhaps rather suddenly.  At that point, the kind of pain Jim Bunning is causing will look like a joke.  Depending on how unprepared we are for the problem, we may not have an opportunity to prioritize whatever available funding there is.  Bills may not be paid based on which day or month they come due, be they military, medical, educational, etc.

This is a scenario other countries, like Argentina and Malaysia have experienced recently with great human suffering.  But if we let it happen to us the pain will reverberate around the planet.  The collapse of Argentina’s currency didn’t destroy the machinery of the global commodities markets and international finance. The collapse of the dollar would have broad global impacts that are difficult to predict.  That makes it likely the world will work to keep it from happening, but ultimately we are in the drivers’ seat.  That’s why you hear so much talk these days about countries and international entities wanting to find an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency.

Taming our spending problems will be painful and unpopular.  It remains unclear whether we have the will, even within the GOP, to do it.  Over the previous four Administrations, it was Republican Presidents that more than quadrupled our debt to GDP ratio while Clinton actually produced a surplus.  Crazy ‘Ole Uncle Jim is showing us a vision of our future.  It is a future we can avoid if we choose.

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