Jon Henke's blog

We've seen a lot of social conservatives upset over today's intemperate attack by Kathleen Parker (Note: she was unnecessarily contemptuous, but her point that "the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs" is worth serious consideration).

Well, I am a libertarian, so let's talk about the Kathleen Parker of the social conservative crowd: Mike Huckabee.

This week, Huckabee called libertarians the "real threat" to the Republican Party...

In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism." ... "I don't take issue with what they believe, but the smugness with which they believe it," writes Huckabee, who raised some taxes as governor and cut deals with his state's Democratic legislature. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument." 

We've come quite some way since 1975, when Reagan said "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."  

Oh, and it happens that Huckabee does, in fact, take issue with what we believe. In May of 2008, Huckabee called blamed election losses on Republicans being too "libertarian" (this is obviously some strange usage of the word "libertarian" that I was previously unaware of), accused us of being un-American (my response to that is unprintable, but I would be glad to say it to his face if he wanted to repeat his comment to my face) and then proceeded to make the standard, cartoonish Democratic argument against libertarianism.

The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. ...

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff."

Excepting the anarcho-capitalists (who basically aren't a part of the electoral equation, anyway), I don't know a single libertarian who says we shouldn't fund police, prisons or courts.  Most libertarians who are aligned with the Right or the Republican Party are less concerned about the few billion that Huckabee describes here than they are about the few trillion other dollars the government is spending, or the uncountable additional costs of unnecessary regulation and legislation. (This is a perfect illustration of my problem #3 with Mike Huckabee, noted below)

So, let me boil down my problems with Mike Huckabee.

• Huckabee is a Rawlsian liberal + social conservative: Mike Huckabee describes his political philosophy as (a) the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto to you", and (b) a passage from the Bible ("Inasmuch as you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me").   This is not "conservatism"; it is basic Rawlsian liberalism.
• Huckabee makes little distinction between religion and politics: It's not that he's religious.  It's that Mike Huckabee appears to be incapable of drawing a meaningful distinction between religion and politics.  For instance, in 1997, Governor Huckabee held up a disaster relief bill for weeks because he objected to its description of floods and tornados as "an act of God".   He explained his position on another bill by saying "I drink a different kind of Jesus juice."  He has asserted a Christian duty to support other policies.  The Right desperately needs to remember that where the government intrudes, church recedes.
• Huckabee accepts the Democratic framing: Mike Huckabee seems to have far more complaints with Republicans than with Democrats.  Worse, he embraces liberal or Democratic caricatures to attack Republicans.  Whether it is his attacks on libertarians, business or the Club for Growth, Huckabee almost invariably misrepresents their views, portraying them in the same cartoon terms that Democrats like to use (see the examples quoted earlier in this post).

This is easily as contemptuous, as offensive as anything Kathleen Parker has written about social conservatives.  So, yeah, a columnist express disdain for social conservatives.  Cry me a river.  We libertarians had a social conservative Governor and Presidential candidate call us the "real threat" and "smug", and brazenly misrepresent our views before calling our message un-American.

Social conservatives have to realize that they need the fiscally conservative, socially moderate/tolerant voters if they want to be a part of a winning coalition.  The limited government message won revolutionary victories for Republicans in 1980 and 1994; it is the only viable organizing principle for the current Republican coalition. 

Huckabee may believe libertarians are the "real threat", but his God, Guns and Butter agenda would destroy the Right far more effectively than the libertarian cartoons that exist in Huckabee's head.

It's important for the Right to be aware of what the Left is doing.  Few, if any, on the Left are doing it better than the Center for American Progress...

[T]he Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.  [...]

To help promote its ideas, CAP employs 11 full-time bloggers who contribute to two Web sites, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room; others prepare daily feeds for radio stations. The center's policy briefings are standing-room only, packed with lobbyists, advocacy-group representatives and reporters looking for insights on where the Obama administration is headed. [...]

CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach. [...]

Podesta modeled the center on the Heritage Foundation, which became the go-to policy-research organization in 1981 when newly elected President Ronald Reagan embraced its conservative ideas embodied in a book called ``Mandate for Leadership.'' Heritage was just seven years old. [...]

Podesta likes to say, ``we're not a think tank, we're an action tank,'' said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.

This is important.  The Center for American Progress has adapted and modernized some of the Right's best strategies and tactics.  They have a conceptually superior understanding of how best to do what they are doing.

• They realized that information and ideas already existed, and action - the organization and application of information - was what the Left needed.  So they created a Marketing Tank.
• They realized that a think tank was two different organizations - policy (501c3) and communications (501c4) - and those two organizations required structural separation to be most effective.  
• They realized the Permanent Campaign was reality, so they built infrastructure to construct the permanent campaign outside of actual campaigns - to ensure the permanent campaign would be both permanent and ideological (rather than merely partisan).
• They realized the internet was their most effective channel - their killer app - so they prioritized the internet as a more effective means of communicating and mobilizing people around ideas, resulting in ideas that very quickly enter the bloodstream of policymakers, the media, influentials and activists.  As John Podesta has said...

Address the issues—in real time. “When we got into this, conservatives had natural outlets on talk radio, Fox, etc. Progressives were weak at this. So we designed a suite of products—a daily e-mail, a blog, etc.—to engage with policy decisions every day.”

Get the long-term message out. “Traditional progressive research institutions devote about 5 percent of resources to outreach. We’re around 40 percent, and it’s paying off. In 2005 we put out a plan for affordable health care for everyone. Now all the Democratic presidential candidates are in favor of universal health coverage.”

Whatever you think of their agenda, it's difficult not to admire how smart the Center for American Progress has been about building an effective new machine that marries policy, communications and action.  In a town that had grown comfortable and complacent about building new political infrastructure, the Center for American Progress helped produce a revolution.

There is much to learn from that.

At Pajamas Media, I write about the key to a revival of the Right and the Republican Party.  The key points....

The Left didn't change their ideals, they changed the story.

In the years since 1980, Democrats cast about for a motivating purpose — a story that would carry them back to a long-term governing majority. They tried liberalism, moderation, and triangulation.

Now, they’re back. But the Left did not retake the executive and legislative branches by being more liberal or more moderate, or by clever political jujitsu. Democrats became the majority because they changed the story.

The Left and Right each built their movements out of paranoia at the machine they believed the other side had built.

[T]he modern progressives have very explicitly modeled their new movement on the movement built by the Right in the ’60s and ’70s.  Paranoia is an excellent strategist.

On what the Right must do now.

For now, the goal should be to build ideological infrastructure — organically — outside the entrenched political establishment. We should build unifying grievances. We should organize ideas and then people. The Republican Party will not lead the Right out of the problems that plague the Republican Party; it will have to follow.

If a movement is to draw a party into its orbit, the movement must have the gravitational pull of messaging, mobilization, and fundraising capacity. For now, it is our role to uncover, organize, and deliver information.

In other words — to change the story.

You can read the entire article here.

Republican officials and strategists debating how bad things really are for the Republican Party.  They break down between don't worry, we'll be fine and we've got a problem.  It is very instructive to note how they are divided, though...

GOP officials and strategists at party conferences last week offered sharply contrasting assessments of what went wrong, and of how difficult it will be to rebuild. Perhaps not surprisingly, the split tended to fall along generational lines.

Older party hands pointed to John McCain’s lackluster campaign and the difficult terrain on which Republicans found themselves battling this year, and they eschewed any sky-is-falling rhetoric.

The up-and-comers, meanwhile, sounded the alarm of impending permanent minority status unless the party changes.

The Republican Party is drunk.  They have gotten drunk on power, drunk on status, and drunk on their own BS.

The divide on the future of the Republican Party is not ideological (they basically agree on the core ideals), but between the old guard and the new guard.  This is ultimately a fight to maintain the status quo - to preserve the political fiefdoms of a party of drunks.

The old guard wants to maintain the status quo.  They believe a little "we've learned our lesson" will bring the pendulum swinging back to them.  That's been the approach for a long time now, and sometimes it has even gotten Republicans elected....though they never seem to make much progress with that political capital. 

The old guard is an alcoholic.  They don't need rehab; one more drink will ease the pain.

The new guard understands that Republicans didn't just have a difficult cycle.  They had a difficult cycle because Republicans have very real problems and merely waiting for a better political environment won't address those underlying problems.

The new guards are also alcoholics, but they are ready for rehab.

The new guard is right.  The questions are what kind of rehabilitation they have in mind, what the Republican Party looks like on the other side, and how sustainable a project that will be. 

The Drunk Party needs new ideas, not merely a new drug.

The poor seem to be getting richer and richer in the New York Times editorial pages...

Debra, a single mother who works in health care administration, is one of millions of Americans who do their jobs, believe in paying their bills and are still facing the threat of losing their home. Debra ... bought a home in the East New York section of Brooklyn for more than $600,000 in 2006. The house has plenty of room for herself, for her son and for tenants. ...

At Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, Debra found some relief. They gave her $1,650 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund for her mortgage and utility bills. But her payment plan is unsustainable. Catholic ... Debra is still waiting for a workout that she can afford, hoping to stay in her home. “I wanted my son to have a home, a place to live. This is the legacy I have for him,” she said.

Won't you donate to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, so that Debra doesn't have to move into a house she can afford?

Chris Cilliza argues there were 5 myths about the 2008 election.  However, on #2, I'm not sure the data necessarily supports his conclusion...

2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory.

Afraid not. ... Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.

The surge in young and African American voters is not entirely the stuff of myth, however. Although their percentages as a portion of the electorate didn't increase measurably, Obama did seven points better among black voters than Sen. John F. Kerry did in 2004 and scored a 13-point improvement over Kerry's total among young voters.

The flat total turnout, but higher margin of victory among young voters could tell us one of two things.

1. The wave was a myth: The youth vote was the same, but they swung to Obama.  The composition changed by persuasion.
2. The wave was a reality: The youth vote likely to vote for McCain stayed home, while a wave of new young voters turned out for Obama.  The composition changed by differences in enthusiasm, ground game and coalition expansion.

 If #2 is correct, it implies these Obama voters are not persuadable swing voters, but a new generation of likely Democratic voters.  That will be a far harder barrier for Republicans to overcome in the long term.

Michael Gerson seems to think the Fairness Doctrine is a real threat.  Steve Benen correctly calls BS on this...

He's warning Obama not to embrace a policy that he already opposes, and which Democrats have no apparent interest in pursuing.

Indeed, the timing of Gerson's column makes it look especially foolish -- today, the LA Times ran a detailed piece explaining that no one is seriously pushing the Fairness Doctrine, it has no realistic chance of passing, and "right-wing radio" is sounding a "false alarm."

The LA Times is correct.  The Left knows the Fairness Doctrine is a political loser.  It's dead.  The Center for American Progress has even said there is "no need to return to the Fairness Doctrine."   While it's mentioned now and then, there's just no chance the specific Fairness Doctrine regulation itself is coming back.  However, that's quite different from saying the Democrats are not still trying to achieve the same goals as the Fairness Doctrine.  They are.

The Center for American Progress says the Fairness Doctrine would not "address the gap between conservative and progressive talk ".  That's important.  They're not dismissing the underelying goals of government-managed fairness and opinion egalitarianism.  They're simply saying this is not the way to do it.

The roadmap to the Fairness Doctrine is laid out quite clearly in a 2007 Center For American Progress/Free Press report, entitled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio."  In that report, they lay out how they can bring about the Fairness Doctrine through other means. 

Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.

Now, pay attention to the Center for American Progress recommendation on FCC policy for the Obama administration. 

There has been an unprecedented increase in media concentration over the past decade, which has reduced the number and quality of local voices and elevated commercial interests at the expense of the public interest. The new president and the Federal Communications Commission should restore the primacy of the public interest standard and our national commitment to diverse voices and diversity of ownership. The FCC should also prioritize including all of our rapidly diversifying population in the mainstream of the technological revolution so that women and members of minority and immigrant communities are not just consumers of technology, but also owners, producers, and creators of content, applications, and facilities.

The Left has not abandoned their desire to use government to shape the landscape of political speech.  Their policy remains an "opinion diversity mandate".  But instead of approaching as an "equal time" mandate, they are trying to implement the ends of the Fairness Doctrine through an “equal access” mandate.

The Fairness Doctrine is dead.  Long live the Fairness Doctrine.

Matt Margolis has some interesting thoughts about the state of the Rightosphere - parts of which I agree with, parts of which I do not. 

Back in 2004, we were all united because we had the same goal, and we worked together to achieve it. But now conservative bloggers, unable to duplicate the fundraising prowess of the left-wing blogosphere, have made their objective to try to recreate the party in their own image from the top down rather than by true grassroots buildng from the bottom up.

The Rightosphere was unable to duplicate the fundraising prowess of the Leftosphere because we aren't really passionate about a mission.  Oh, sure, there are things about which we are all passionate.  Some people care a lot about taxes, others about spending, others about the war, or Iraq, or immigration, or earmarks, or any of a hundred other things.  But what is the common thread?  What do each of those things have to do with the other, except "it's what our team generally advocates"?   If there's any unifying thread to the Right's issues, it has been undone by the Republican Party's actual behavior.

But in what sense are Righty bloggers trying to recreate the party in their own image from the top down?  By arguing for their own conception of what the Party should be?   That's exactly what the Left did.  Progressive bloggers organised the netroots by telling a story about what the Democratic Party could and should be.  The communities arose because people rallied around the conception of the Democratic Party being espoused by people like Markos, Jerome Armstrong, Matt Stoller, Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum, Duncan Black, Chris Bowers, Josh Marshall, John Aravosis and others.

I see plenty of top-down objectives on the Right, but not much of that in the Rightosphere.

Conservative blogging used to be about building community. But it has become something that is elitist, DC-centric, and contrary to grassroots empowerment.

This is exactly backwards.  The Rightosphere has never been about "community".  Some Right-of-center blogs have developed sizable communities in the form of comment sections (LGF, Malkin, Hot Air), but very few right-of-center blogs have developed genuine, interactive, participatory communities.   Red State has been a diary/community site for quite some time, though (for a variety of reasons) never approaching the size of Daily Kos.  Next Right is a diary/community site, but still much newer and smaller.  The Rightosphere has been about media criticism and punditry, not community and activism.

And the Rightosphere has never been DC-centric and elitist.  Many of the prominent Lefty bloggers are DC residents, but very, very few of the prominent Righty bloggers are based in DC.  Glenn Reynolds (Knoxville), Ed Morrissey and Powerline (Minneapolis), Pajamas, Volokh and Red State (scattered), RealClearPolitics (Chicago).  The people behind The Next Right are an exception, but the point of this site is that Ruffini, Dayton and I are in the unusual position of being at the nexus between the political world and the internet media.

It's difficult for non-DC bloggers to do DC-centric things, of course, but the Leftosphere became powerful by going outside of the Democratic establishment.

We were destined as a community to fail our party’s nominee when we made the primary season the quest to find the next Ronald Reagan. ... too many decided that since McCain didn’t score high enough on the “Ronald Reagan Scale” that they weren’t going to help him win.

This strikes me as an odd criticism.  If a sports team doesn't attract enough fans to make money...the problem is the team, not the fans.  McCain lost because he didn't get enough votes.  The problem is not Republicans (or bloggers) were insufficiently loyal.  The problem is that Republicans are not offering people an an agenda that people want to vote for.  If Republicans are alienating voters, don't get indignant at the voters.  "Blame the victim" is not a good way to stop losing elections.

Now, an area of agreement.  Margolis suggests ways to get back on track.

Get Local ... All politics is local and it doesn’t matter what I, a blogger in New York, says about about a congressional race in California or a gubernatorial race in Washington...

Do you know how you can have the biggest impact with a blog?  Skip the 10,000th blog about national politics and start a hyper-focused blog.  Write about either (a) something on which you have real expertise, or (b) something you can do genuine research and information gathering.   Start a blog about your city council, the EPA, your local newspaper, a Lefty blog, a think tank, or your school board.   If you do it well, you probably still won't have a lot of readers.  But those you have will be very, very important readers. 

We need less punditry, more information gathering, information organization and specialization.

Promote Candidates, Not Your Own Agenda ... I am sick and tired of conservative bloggers wasting time and effort on the wrong things. Trying to influence who is chosen for leadership positions in the Senate or who becomes chairman of the party are the wrong battles.

I certainly encourage Margolis to fight the battles he wants to fight, but bloggers can and have had an impact on leadership races.  I can attest that political offices pay attention to what bloggers are writing.  It matters.

But "promote candidates, not your own agenda" sounds an awful lot like "shut up and sing".  Supporting the party is not a good way to fix the party.  It only subsidizes bad behavior.  Eventually, the Republican Party will again align its agenda with a sufficiently large coalition, and retake a majority. 

Until that happens, bloggers should promote candidates who do promote the blogger's agenda.

Margolis seems unhappy that the Rightosphere has been unable to unite behind Republicans, and there are certainly a variety of things the Right and the Republican Party needs to do better online.  But blaming the bloggers confuses the symptoms for the disease.  In order to fix the problems on the Right, we need...

• ...better information organization, which helps create coalesce a movement around...
• ...the organizing agenda, out of which flows...
• ...the storyline, narrative, which motivates...
• ...the grassroots/netroots to get engaged, mobilized and donating, all of which is channeled effectively by...
• ...the infrastructure, both online and offline.

Paul Krugman was "radicalized" in 2000 by the realization that Republicans were being "dishonest".  "We're being lied to by our leaders", he said, "and I just felt I really needed to put that very strongly in context."

Well, Paul Krugman has found a context for lying that he can get onboard with.

The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.  So this looks very good for the reformers. There’s now a reasonable chance that universal health care will be enacted next year!

Remember, it's not lying.  It's just tactical politics!

At Culture11, I've written a piece on how Republicans and Democrats can and should work together.  A little.  While they still can.

Rather than giving advice to President Obama on the policies he should offer, I would advise Congressional Republicans to take Obama up on some of his offers … and quickly, lest the opportunity slip away. ...

For a very brief period after President Obama takes office, there will be an alignment of political interests.

• Republicans philosophically support federal transparency and responsible budgeting — at least, they are supposed to; theory and practice have diverged in recent years.

• Democrats have marketed themselves as supporters of transparency and responsible budgeting — at least, they claim to; theory and practice will diverge in coming years.

But remember, Democrats aren't cleaning up the problems.  They're just putting new pigs in the mud. The time for idealism and cooperation is short.

However, there will only be a very brief window to do that. Whatever Senator Obama has claimed, President Obama will have very different interests. The new Democratic administration and Congress will act according to their own incentives, just as Republicans did in the past.

The election of Obama did not empower people. It empowered politicians. [...]

Hope and Change got people on board the Democratic bus. Political convenience will throw them under it.

There's a lot more to it.  Read the rest at Culture11.