Jon Henke's blog

[Disclosure: I worked with the Doug Hoffman campaign. However, the views here are my own. I have not discussed this at all with the Hoffman campaign.]

The bottom line on NY-23:

• Doug Hoffman just won the Republican Primary. The general election is next year.

• There are two broken, corrupt, arrogant political parties we need to defeat.  We beat the Republican establishment in 2009.  We'll beat the Democratic Party in 2010.

• NY-23 is not really about Conservatives VS Moderates.  It is about the Establishment VS the Movement.

What happened in NY-23:

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that blue state Republicans had to nominate a "not too hot, not too cold" candidate - what my friend Max Borders called a Keynesian political strategy of tweaking the policy variables until you get a candidate whose positions seem most appealing to the most people.  Like Keynesian economic tinkering, it all works very well....until some fundamental shift reveals the underlying artificiality, and it all falls apart.

Political parties gain power by standing for something appealing.  But when a party gains power, it loses definition.  Rather than standing for something appealing and well-defined, they try to stand for anything appealing enough to win.  But you can only tinker so much before you destroy the brand that people had elected, and then you become the minority again.

The minority is where Parties and movements go to be reborn.  There, they have to figure out who they are, and what their mission is.  You can't storm the castle until you're all facing the same direction and focused on the same goals.  Sometimes - as in NY-23 - that involves telling the establishment "Thank you, but our mission is in another castle" (If I might borrow political wisdom from Super Mario Bros).

The establishment GOP - the NY GOP, the NRCC, the RNC and a few prominent Republicans - got behind another establishment GOP type in Dede Scozzafava. In any other recent year, she would have sailed through.  Not in 2009.

The public - including moderates, libertarians and alienated Republicans - has grown much more nervous about Democratic governance.  The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of the sparks that are flying, but it goes far deeper than that, and the establishment GOP has been oblivious to, or dismissive of, these sparks. With Dede Scozzafava, the establishment Republican Party threw gasoline on top of the sparks and a brushfire erupted.  The result was the quintessential "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" campaign of Doug Hoffman.

What NY-23 Is About

The story of NY-23 is not "conservatives beat moderates" or "conservative loses to Democrat".

The story of NY-23 is "the Right starts dismantling the Republican establishment."  This is about how the Republican Party is defined and who defines it.

Right now, the movement wants the Republican Party to be defined by opposition to big government. Gradually, as new leaders arise, we will demand that the Republican Party be defined by its own solutions, as well, but rebuilding is an incremental process. We can hammer out the policy agenda and the boundaries of the coalition later.

For now, our job is to disrupt the establishment GOP.  If we beat Democrats while we're at it, great. But the first priority is to fix the Drunk Party - the Living Dead establishment Republicans. They're history. They just don't know it yet.

NY-23 was the first shot in that war.  It was a direct hit.  Next year, we start storming the castle.

Note: Below, I offer a suggestion that would actually help President Obama against his critics. And yet, his critics should support it because it is the right thing to do.

Virtually everybody - Right, Left and Media - agrees that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is somewhere between premature and ridiculous. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has beclowned itself again. Given that context, it will be very difficult for Obama to accept the prize without appearing...well, ridiculous.  He might turn down the prize or even hand it over to one of the people who genuinely accomplished things. Both would be noble gestures by President Obama to correct an error he did not create.

However, the exceptionally smart James Pethokoukis offered a better idea...

Obama should accept [Nobel Peace Prize] on behalf of Reagan (defeating USSR), Bush I (freeing Kuwait), Clinton (free trade) and Bush II (liberating 50m)

This would be a masterful move by President Obama. Imagine this speech being given directly to the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the entire world:

I thank you and accept the honor you have bestowed. However, I do not accept the Nobel Peace Prize on my own behalf.  I accept it on behalf of The United States of America, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.

• I accept it on behalf of President Ronald Reagan, who led the final victory over the evil empire of Soviet communism.  America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because Ronald Reagan had the courage to win that fight.

• I accept it on behalf of President George H.W. Bush, who led the liberation of Kuwait. America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because George H.W. Bush had the courage to win that fight.

• I accept it on behalf of President Bill Clinton, who fought for, and won, more free trade around the world. America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because Bill Clinton had the courage to win that fight.

• And yes, even though I opposed the war in Iraq, I accept this Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of President George W. Bush, who fought for the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether or not the Iraq war was the appropriate policy, America is right to support freedom and democracy, and the world is a better, more peaceful place because George W. Bush had the courage to remove the tyrants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I do not accept this Nobel Peace Prize on my own behalf.  I accept it on behalf of America, that Shining City upon a Hill that has made this world a better place for us all.

Nothing would disarm his critics and rally the American public to President Obama faster than him giving this speech to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. 

UPDATE: President Obama's remarks this morning are a step in the right direction.  I hope he will go further and tell the world exactly what that leadership has been over recent decades.

"Let me be clear," Obama said. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

Steven Hayward's "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead" has been much-discussed in the last few days, prompting some valuable introspection within the Right. I'll excerpt some of the more important points.

The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.  Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We've traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.

President Obama has done conservatives a great favor, delivering CPR to the movement with his program of government gigantism, but this resuscitation should not be confused with a return to political or intellectual health. [...] When the ideas are absent, the movement has nothing to offer -- except opposition. That doesn't work for long in American politics. [...]

[S]ome on the right think talk radio, especially, has dumbed down the movement, that there is plenty of sloganeering but not much thought, that the blend of entertainment and politics is too outre. John Derbyshire, author of a forthcoming book about conservatism's future, "We are Doomed," calls our present condition "Happy Meal Conservatism, cheap, childish and familiar."

The key to fixing this problem is leadership - among elected officials, traditional movement leaders, grassroots...and, hopefully, new movement leaders. The question is whether those people will pick up this opportunity to lead...or make excuses, point fingers and retrench.  I'll repeat what I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election.

The rebuilding and renewal of the Right will start soon.  This will be very important.   The Right and the Republican Party are at an inflection point, and there are many directions things can go.   The destiny of the Right and the Republican Party will be determined in large part by the decisions you make in the days, weeks and months ahead.

• Some of you will say "we have learned our lesson", and then try to pass off cosmetic changes as Reform.  You are the problem.


• Some of you will say "Republicans need to fight/hold Democrats accountable", as if it is sufficient to be against Democrats.  The pendulum may eventually swing back to you, but you won't know what to do with it.


• Some of you will say "Republicans need to carry our message to the American people", as if the problem is that Republicans haven't been saying "tax cuts and limited government" loudly enough.  The problem is not the inability to communicate; the problem is that you have no idea how to actually deliver on those ideas.


• Others will say "Republicans need to be more principled", as if the problem is a mere lack of personal courage and principle by Republicans.  Even the best people can't limit government if there is not an effective strategy for implementation - for getting "from here to there".  You don't need better people.  You need a better strategy.

The problem is not Republican politicians, although many Republicans politicians are a problem.  The problem is not with the basic ideals of limited government and personal freedom, either.  The problem is a movement that plays small-ball and cedes responsibility for infrastructure to business interests, leadership that rewards those who make friends rather than waves, an entrenched Party and Movement support system that mostly supports itself, an echo chamber that has rotted our intellect, a grassroots that is ill-equipped to shape the Republican Party, and a Republican Party that has replaced strategy with tactics, substance with marketing.

Leslie Graves emailed me earlier today with an interesting point: The institutional Right is finally spending money online, but there's still a mis-alignment between the organizations and the Rightroots.

[L]egacy orgs are starting to be active online...like righty e-activists have always wanted them to do ... but for the most part, they are not doing the things online that we wish they were doing. ... Thus, there is no love lost between the conservative e-activism community and the orgs.  [A]ll this money being spent ... finally ... online but generally not doing the things that e-activists probably would prefer be done.

The institutional Right has realized there's a new battlefield and they have finally moved into it.  But I'm reminded a bit of the British troops versus the Colonists in the American Revolution (the analogy is tactical, not political).  The Left built new institutions and adapted their tactics to the new battlefield - guerilla warfare, as it were - while the Right is trying to port over the institutional cultures and tactics that they have built up over generations, regardless of the new battlefield.

Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and Michelle Malkin's Hot Air are excellent examples of good, innovative projects on the Right.  We need more guerilla media, like Breitbart is doing.  And Malkin had the right idea with Hot Air - take successful, iconoclastic bloggers (Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit), give them free rein (rather than pandering and red meat) and build around them.

The continuing cultural divide between the Left and Right approach to online media is best illustrated by this: While organizations on the Right tend to hire a single blogger (generally from internal or junior political staff, rather than the blogosphere), organizations on the Left very often (a) hire successful bloggers and give them freedom, and/or (b) have very large staffs focused on muckraking, research and blogging.  Huffington Post has something close to 50.  Talking Points Memo has a staff of close to 20...and they're expanding.  Think Progress has something like 14-17 people working on their 3 blogs and daily email.  Media Matters has a staff of many dozens, most aimed directly at the web.

The Right cannot invest in simply pushing an institutional message; the Right has to invest in adding value.  That means research, muckraking, fact-checking, policy wonkery, information organization and information activism. That's what it takes.

Mark McKinnon says it's unsurprising that Obama has dropped the "change" charade.

[T]he presidency is all about politics. Obama did an artful job of creating an image of someone divorced from the nitty-gritty of hardball, brass-knuckled politics. But it’s far from reality. Obama got elected, in part, because he put a team around him of combat-proven veterans who know how to, as Bill Clinton once famously said, put his opponents’ teeth on the sidewalk. [...]

It was pretty clear to me early on that President Obama understood the importance of maintaining and fueling a political machine. He was presented with the option to kill the budget for the political operations that work out of the White House. It would have sent a powerful signal about ending politics as usual. But then he would have handicapped his ability to enact the kind of change he’d promised his supporters.

This is exactly right. Obama has been more artful at this "iron fist in a velvet glove" game than most, but he's always been a ruthless machine politician.  The appointment of Rahm Emanuel was a very clear signal that Obama had no intention of changing the game.

Obama knows his strength, his brand, is his ability to appear conciliatory, thoughtful and sympathetic.  He can't be the Bad Guy in his administration.  So Obama has hired a Chief of Staff who can handle the Enemies List.   Rahm Emanuel will be the ruthless guy who knocks heads, threatens opponents and generally does the dirty work, leaving Barack Obama to sweep in as the nice guy who wins friends and charms enemies.  Good cop, bad cop.  We won't necessarily see it happening, but it will happen over and over again.

I measure the seriousness of a politician by how willing they are to work against their own interests to enact good policy.  It is a rarity.  As McKinnon points out, Obama's unwillingness to close the political shop - to elevate governance above politics - is a sign that he'll probably be an effective advocate of his policies....but he certainly wasn't serious when he wrote "it's not enough to just change the players. We have to change the game."

Democrats have not changed the game.  They aren't even changing the players.

Erick Erickson is right.

Let’s be honest. One of the reasons the left is so head over heels in love with the online left is because of the moonbat ability to turn on the cash. [...] [I]f we want to be taken seriously, we need to step up to the plate.

As he says, "the establishment of the Republican Party will keep ignoring us" until the online Right has a tangible impact on the measurable metrics of politics: messaging, mobilization and money.

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The LA Times reported on the Right's struggle against the fevered swamp fringe.  My favorite part: "WorldNetDaily's Farah [had] asked" CPAC to hold a panel on "whether Obama was a native-born US citizen", but CPAC rejected their request and said:

"It would fill a room," said event director Lisa De Pasquale. "But so would a two-headed monkey."

I couldn't have put it better. However, I should clarify one aspect of the story which I think does not characterize my intent.

Henke said, "There is a substantial discomfort among the people who want to make intellectual arguments and want to have a substantive role in the debate." He compared the Obama birth theorists to those who said Obama's healthcare overhaul would create "death panels."

" 'Death panels' is not a substantive contribution to the discussion. It's a cartoon," he said.

Actually, I think there's a substantial difference between the birther and "death panel" comments. The former are irresponsible, dishonest conspiracy theories that divert us from important matters; the latter are absurd, hyperbolic characterizations without real reference to anything in the bill (optional counseling on end of life patient choices are not remotely comparable to "death panels"), but at least there's a plausible argument that more government involvement in health care will inevitably lead to the government making cost/benefit decisions about treatment.

Still, we shouldn't defend "death panels" any more than Democrats should defend Ted Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" smears.  The comment may have been tactically effective in making Democrats cringe (for all the good that did), but it didn't get us any closer to good policies.  Tactics are not replacement for strategy, and a month spent discussing "death panels" only helps discredit Republicans among the people who might be willing to listen to more substantive policy proposals.

Finally, I reject the idea that this is a division between the elite and the grassroots for a couple reasons.

1. It is a very cynical and patronizing view of the Right's grassroots, which does not deserve this tyranny of low expectations.
2. It excuses the "elites" (or "insiders" in the LA Times description), who don't necessarily deserve credit for being thoughtful and serious.  As Conor Friedersdorf has pointed out, there are many "movement conservative elites in positions of power who sell out the base and never get called on it." The elites are not just part of the problem; they are, in some senses, responsible for the culture and state of the movement.

Mary Katharine Hamm tosses the narrative and examines the data.

One public calendar, compiled by RedState.com, lists more than 400 congressional town hall meetings in the month of August. It's likely not an exhaustive list, but it represents an average of more than 13 live town halls conducted per day in America during the monthlong span. At these meetings, there were fewer than ten documented incidents that could be described as violent, and most of them involved very little physical contact.[...]

In more than 400 events: one slap, one shove, three punches, two signs grabbed, one self-inflicted vandalism incident by a liberal, one unsolved vandalism incident, and one serious assault. Despite the left's insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics. If you add a phoned death threat to Democrat representative Brad Miller of N.C., from an Obama-care critic, the tally is 7 of 11.

The RNC still has not responded to my questions about whether they will continue associating with the conspiracy peddlers at WorldNetDaily.  That's disappointing, but there is better news.

In addition to CPAC declining to have WorldNetDaily speak on the "birther movement" at CPAC 2010, a variety of other very prominent conservative & libertarian organizations have privately told me they would not be working with WorldNetDaily, either.  One said they would ensure their staff put WND on the "blacklist".  Understandably perhaps, they prefer not to go on the record. However, they represent some of the largest, most prominent conservative & libertarian organizations.  I consider these encouraging victories for the ethics and integrity of the Right.

If your organization will commit to not associating itself with these irresponsible fringes on the Right, please email me.  I'd be happy to report it.  In the meantime, you might consider asking Walter Williams, Nat Hentoff and Thomas Sowell why they continue to associate with the disreputable WorldNetDaily.

President Obama gave a speech tonight extolling the virtues of getting his way on health care reform, and paying for it by finally tracking down the Bigfoot of federal spending: Medicare Waste.  Politicians have stalked it for decades on campaign trails, yet this elusive savings has never been captured by actual politicians. (Note: Perhaps "the Flying Dutchman of federal spending" would be a better metaphor; table it for now)  Cato @ Liberty has a good live-blog.

But let's skip a discussion of Democratic health care proposas for the moment.  And let's skip the standard Republican proposals - inter-state health insurance markets, tort reform, ending the employer-based health insurance problem, etc.

What health care reform proposals should Republicans consider? I'll start with a couple:

• Safety Net: Eliminate Medicare/Medicaid and replace it with Megan McArdle's suggestion: "catastrophic federal insurance for those whose medical bills exceed 15-20% of gross income".  The safety net would still be in place for everybody - stronger, even - but it would be more targeted on actual need and unpredictable, catastrophic health care bills.  Plus, since insurance companies wouldn't have to worry about unpredictably escalating costs, health insurance should cost dramatically less.

• Break up the Medical Cartels: Absurdly restrictive licensing barriers to providing even rudimentary care make health care very, very expensive.  Any parent can tell you children's ear infections are about as common as weekends.  And they're about as hard to diagnose, too.  Yet, instead of just picking up the amoxicillin over the counter and giving it to the crying child (20 minutes, tops), parents have to spend a very substantial portion of a day trying to see the doctor (and kids never have ear infections during regular doctor's hours) and getting a prescription filled.  That's insane.  It doesn't take a decade's worth of medical training to diagnose an ear infection.  So let's have a more graduated licensing system, with vocational schools teaching the lower-level diagnostics and treatments.  Let's expand the Physician's Assistant and Nurse Practitioner classifications (a good start), so that more people can provide more health care options (supply) at lower prices. 

Your turn.