Reagan

Here’s another classic DO NOTHING, SAY NOTHING moment for our ‘do nothing of substance’ President, as the people of Iran struggle to throw off the brutal yoke of repression as represented by the Islamo-Fascist regime of Ali Khamenei. This week has seen more unrest and demonstrations throughout the country, following the death (it is reported) by natural causes of dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri seven days ago.

Iranian police opened fire killing several people, among them the nephew of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Witnesses said they saw a sniper on a building shoot Sayad Al Hossein Mousavi, 35. Later reports from a hospital indicated he had been shot through the heart.

Creating instant martyrs, the killings took place on Ashura, the highest of holy days for Shi’ite Moslems. The day commemorates the death of the grandson of the prophet Mohammad in battle. The ongoing and brutally repressed unrest, which began with the disputed and highly questionable presidential election results of 2009, resulted in more than 100 deaths and the arrest, imprisonment and torture of over 4000 people has never been entirely quelled. Unrest has been percolating just below the surface. With dissidents marking currency, chanting from rooftops after dark, graffiti on walls and incidents of violence here and there, it is apparent that all it would take to spark more mass unrest would be an incident such as this.

With Iran’s radical Islamo-Fascist regime on their fast march to obtain an atomic weapon and its increasingly belligerent stance towards the US, Israel and the west, such unrest at home should prove to be an opportunity for us to support the freedom-seeking people of Iran in their struggle.

Except that we have a leader of no character or strength who will stand passively by, as this murderous dictatorship slaughters its own citizens in the streets and in the dungeon torture rooms of its prisons. One cannot help to contrast this weak, insipid presidency to that of the great Ronald Reagan who challenged the arch-dictator of the Soviet Union to “tear down these walls”. But that would take a man with the courage of his convictions. Barack Hussein Obama  has none.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

For Republicans, the words "Ronald Reagan" have become code for "policies and election results I like" (whether or not Reagan-era policies and election results match those of the speaker).  Republicans remember Reagan so fondly because his ideals were powerful, poignant, and his rhetoric was red meat for limited government/national defense Republicans.  Indeed, I suspect we often remember him more for his soaring rhetoric than for the specific details of his governance.

John Harwood's New York Times story, Republicans Rethinking the Reagan Mystique, contains some interesting points.

That’s not to say Republicans disavow Mr. Reagan’s achievements, which include cutting tax rates, presiding over the successful conclusion of the cold war and, as Mr. Obama noted, boosting morale after a period of national self-doubt. [...]

What’s needed instead, said Reihan Salam, co-author of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” is “something new — the anti-Obama, anti-Reagan.” [...] Mr. Salam said he favored a new prototype of Republican leadership that projected humility rather than grandeur, understated competence rather than soaring rhetoric and vision. [...]  

There is also the arrival of a new slate of pressing issues. It has been 20 years since Mr. Reagan’s plea to “tear down that wall” was answered by the fall of Communism. The 70 percent top income tax rate Mr. Reagan called confiscatory now stands at half that level. And the cultural appeals he made to blue-collar voters and evangelicals have lost their immediacy, displaced by economic concerns. Many remember that Mr. Reagan identified government as “the problem.” But today an increasing number of voters look to the government for security and stability.

The problem with the Republican fixation on Ronald Reagan - and Republicans say "Reagan" like Smurfs say smurf - isn't with the ideals of limited government that Reagan espoused in 1980.  The problem is that Republicans never evolved past the 1980's.  The conservative movement that arose in the 60's and 70's reached maturity in the 1980's.  That period became the conservative movement's frame of reference; the experiences, lessons and skills learned up to that point became the Republican Party's hammer, and when all you have is a hammer...

The result is two problems...

• Republicans are still trying to fight the same fights, even though the situation has changed.  It's one thing to mobilize people around tax cuts when you're cutting the top rates from 70% to 28%.  It's a lot harder to persuade people to vote on the difference between 39.6% and 35%.  Republicans are still trying to run against the vulgar great society liberalism of 1979, but (for a variety of reasons) that's just not as relevant to voters.

 

• Republicans are still offering the same solutions.  But over the last few decades, the viable Republican solutions have generally been passed.  Republicans are left advocating "limited government", but they either (a) have no idea how to actually accomplish it (thus, all the kvetching about "spending cuts", yet Republicans can only manage to find a few billion dollars per year), or (b) they're too beholden to interest groups (business money, elderly voters, etc) to stake out a position that would accomplish their goals (lest it endanger campaign funding, a seat in Florida or the mid-terms).

Republicans don't have to abandon Reagan.  Republicans just have to evolve beyond the 1980's.  Unfortunately, the culture, infrastructure and people that reached maturity in the 1980's may now be a barrier to evolution - not because their intentions are malign, but because they are adapted to a strategic and tactical era that has passed.

African Americans were a liberal leaning constituency prior to the 1960s and partly for good reasons.  Breaking the Jim Crow system would inevitably involve the aggressive use of federal government power and the most reliable supporters of civil rights laws were among northern liberals. The intensity of the African American community's antipathy towards conservatives was born in the civil rights struggles of the mid 1960s (and every conservative really should read William Voegeli's Summer 2008 CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS article on conservatives and the civil rights movement).  But we should not mistake the roots of the division between African Americans and conservatives to be the sole cause of this division.  How many Americans of any race remember Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and relate it to contemporary politics?

In my experience, younger and better educated African Americans have a much clearer (and more hostile) collective memory of Ronald Reagan than of Goldwater or William F. Buckley.  The memory of the "welfare queens" remark has been passed down as a slur on black women in general, and this (among other hostile impressions) has influenced how many educated African Americans view Reagan and the conservatives who admire Reagan.  It is worth remembering that different communities can remember the same person in different ways and that for many African Americans, "welfare queens" is much more intensely remembered than "tear down this wall".  This collective memory of Reaganite hostility (whether this hostility was real or not) is also much more powerful in shaping their view of Reagan and conservatives than Reagan's record on economic growth or anything else.

This hostile communal view of Reagan and conservatives is not an accident or a conspiracy.  It is a dominant narrative that is passed on by politicians, journalists, academics, and of course family members.  Conservatives should not dismiss the sincerity of much of this collective memory.  Sure hacks like Charles Rangel manipulate (and help perpetuate) this hostility for partisan purposes, but millions of people truly believe it and pass it on.  This narrative forms the screen through which contemporary events and personalities are viewed. 

The assumption that conservatives are hostile or indifferent helps make sense of events.  If the Democrat controlled government of Louisiana fails in Katrina relief it is incompetence.  If a Republican (which is by association conservative) administration fails in the same task it is racist indifference at best or racist conspiracy at worst.  This is a case in which rapper Kanye West's comments that Bush did not care about black people have particular importance.  Conservatives are used to hearing celebrities slander conservative politicians, but they should listen a little closer to West.  West's mother was a college professor.  He was raised as part of the educated, striving, black upper middle class.  West's opinion was hardy unanimous but it does indicate that conservatives have a problem that extends beyond Grammy winners.

There is also the problem of being a black conservative in the black community.  This is not the same as having conservative opinions on abortion, the death penalty, or taxes.   This is a problem of associating yourself with conservative tainted organizations - the Republican Party most of all - and thereby cooperating with the enemy.  Even if one has basically conservative opinions, the social barriers to joining such an organization are significant.  Most of all is the disinclination to join groups that one has assumed are hostile.  There is also the knowledge that such association opens you up to all kinds of hits big and small.  The rules of civilized debate will only sometimes and partially apply to you and you are vulnerable to social ostracism.  Emerge magazine (a news monthly marketed towards African Americans) put Clarence Thomas as a lawn jockey on its cover.  Conservatives bitterly complained that Michael Steele did not stick up for them when D.L. Hughley compared Republicans to Nazis.  What conservatives would do well to remember was that Hughley was trying to slyly portray as a Nazi collaborator.  This suspicion was only to be expected when he took on the RNC chairmanship.  There is the Spike Lee movie Get On the Bus in which a (demonized) African American conservative is thown off a bus going to the Million Man March and is symbolically expelled from the African American community.  Real life is generally less dramatic than Spike Lee fantasies (though the fantasies have their own subtle influence), but conservatives should not dismiss the less overt pressures.  Picture a person in a predominantly conservative community who has a strong affinity for Code Pink.  It can't be easy. 

Well, that is one (white) guy's opinion about some and only some of the challenges that conservatives face.  What can we do about them?

We now live in a climate gripped with fear.  It's the worst economic times since the Great Depression, we are told.  Government must act swiftly, boldly, and decisively if we are going to survive the coming maelstrom.  We have Depression countdown clocks and the like.

But, is the fearmongering justified?  Here are a few facts to illuminate the discussion.

Let's look at unemployment.  The most recent statistics from December 2008 reveal that the national unemployment rate is 7.2%.  That's bad, but is it the worst it's been since the Great Depression?  Hardly.  It is worse than the 2001 recession, but we are still below the peak of 7.8% set in June 1992 for the most recent recession since then.  We are still far below the peak of 10.8% experienced during the 1980-82 recession.  In fact the unemployment rate was at or above 7.2% all the way from December 1974 to March 1977.  They were bad times, sure, but definitely not a Second Great Depression.  Did you know that the unemployment rate was above 7.2% for most of 1958?  You normally don't think of the 1950's as a time of great economic peril.  So, to put in perspective: The unemployment rate is high, but not even as high as it was in the 1980-82 recession, and definitely not approaching Great Depression levels of 15-25%.

Let's look at GDP.  The data for 4th quarter of 2008 isn't out yet but one group has forecasted that it will fall at an annual rate of 2.9%.  But, that was way back in November.  A more recent forecast is that it will fall at an annual rate of 6.0%.  Six percent!  That's huge, right?  Well, yes and no.  The last time GDP fell by this magnitude was in 2nd quarter 1980, and then in 1st quarter 1982, when GDP fell by 7.8% and 6.4%, respectively.  But, suppose the forecast is wrong - suppose GDP falls by more?  Well, from 1930-32 GDP fell by 8.6%, 6.4%, and 13.0%, respectively.  But this was because we were in a deflationary spiral (see below), and things could only get as bad as the Great Depression if GDP were to fall by similarly large amounts for three consecutive years.  If this were to happen, the Democrats' economic stimulus wouldn't do a damn thing about it anyway.  To put it in perspective: Right now the US GDP is about $14.5T.  If it were to fall by the same amounts as it did from 1930-32, by time we were done, the GDP would be at $10.8T, or a loss of $3.7 trillion dollars.  So based on $800B of spending, you'd need a Keynesian multiplier of about 4.5 in order to generate economic activity of that magnitude.  So quibbling over multipliers of 1.2's and 1.3's would thus be ridiculous.

Finally, inflation.  Are we in, or on the verge of, a deflationary spiral?  Deflation is caused when there is a simultaneous contraction of the money supply and expansion of the supply of goods.  Because there's less money around, the price of goods falls, and the deflationary spiral starts when the price is lowered below a company's profitability margin.  The result?  Disaster, as companies cannot afford to stay in business, leading to bank failures as the companies cannot repay their loans... and the spiral begins.  But in order to have a deflationary spiral, there's gotta be a contraction in the money supply.  One perusal of this graph should convince you that there isn't.  The money supply has increased beyond all historical precedent.  What we have to fear most is devaluation of the currency via inflation, rather than a deflationary spiral.

So, to sum up:  Things aren't as bad as the fearmongers would have us believe.  Our most recent historical precedent for when things were this bad was the 1980-82 recession.  And, did we need massive economic stimulus to get out of that one?  No, I think this man had other ideas.

Dear friend (I wrote it to a buddy of mine but I thought it could be good for anyone supporting B.O.),

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121366622024479591.html?mod=todays_columnists
I’ve pulled six quotes that I think are quite illuminating. I wonder how you would answer them:
1) 'Are we going to tell [Iraqis] that the game is over? That the Americans are pulling out?'
2) 'Liberating Iraq is a very good dish. And now you are going to hand it over to Iran?'
3) The Iraqis are even more incredulous about Mr. Obama's willingness to negotiate with Iran, which they see as a predatory regime. 'Do you Americans forget what the Iranians did to your embassy?' asks the governor. 'Don't you know that Ahmadinejad was one of [the hostage takers]?'
4) It's not just Iran. 'There is no other country that supports us,' says Gov. Awani. 'What is happening in Iraq scares everyone,' by which he means the neighboring autocracies that have something to fear from a successful democratic model in their midst.
5) “That's why we need the (American) army to give a final push so the Iraqis can feel the fruits of our democracy.'
6) 'The Democrat kept saying that Americans have committed a lot of mistakes. Yes, that's true, but why don't you concentrate on what the Americans have achieved in Iraq?'

These comments seems to be the prevailing consensus of the leaders of the Western world also who are speaking with a more unified front. Bush is doing a round of talks with these leaders and we’re hearing from these allies tougher talk of increasing pressure on Iran and furthering sanctions. These key leaders are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with America in its efforts against Islamofascism even though polls show that the people in their countries are overwhelmingly Obama supporters.

Maybe they’re on to something good. Are you still for Obama's precipitous withdrawal?

Give me some feedback if you’ve got a few free moments when you’re not carrying dusty equipment to the next diamond to watch the your son strike fear in the hearts of his opponents with his big stick.

Peace through strength,

Neville Chamberlain

This piece was originally posted at The Hinzsight Report. I posted a comment earlier linking to it, and thought that perhaps it would be better to post it in it's entirety.

Subtitle:  IS THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT DEAD? 

I heard a political pundit on one of the News Channels say Ronald Reagan is dead, and so is the Conservative Movement. I have heard much the same sentiment in recent months, such opinions expressed by experts in the Mainstream Media. I have heard the same from amateurs on various blogs, as well.

In his acceptance speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention, President Ronald Reagan said;
 

Four years ago we raised a banner of bold colors—no pale pastels. We proclaimed a dream of an America that would be "a shining city on a hill."

We promised that we'd reduce the growth of the Federal Government, and we have. We said we intended to reduce interest rates and inflation, and we have. We said we would reduce taxes to provide incentives for individuals and business to get our economy moving again, and we have. We said there must be jobs with a future for our people, not government make-work programs, and, in the last 19 months, as I've said, 6 1/2 million new jobs in the private sector have been created. We said we would once again be respected throughout the world, and we are. We said we would restore our ability to protect our freedom on land, sea, and in the air, and we have.

 

I would postulate that the Conservative Movement is still very much alive, but it has simply become a banner of pale pastels. It takes a leader with a vision for the future to achieve those bold colors.
 

Ronald Reagan was such a leader. He stood for smaller, less intrusive government. He stood for lower tax rates as a means of stimulating the entrepeurial spirit that founded this great nation. Reagan stood for strict constructionalist judges who would not legislate from the bench. (That is what he stood for, regardless of the judges he was able to nominate by way of a Democrat controlled Congress.)

President Reagan believed in a strong national defense, rebuilding a US Military decimated by the neglect of the Carter Administration.
 

President Reagan was not only a Conservative, he was the very articulate leader of the Conservative Movement. This is a very important distinction. Because of the leftward lurch of the modern Democrat Party, the leader of the Republican Party will, by definition be looked upon as the leader of the conservative movement.
 

It was apparent, even at the time that he was selected to run as the VP on the ticket, that George H W Bush was never a conservative, he was, at best, a pale pastel.  While campaigning for the nomination, he referred to Supply-side Economics as "Voodoo Economics." Nonetheless, as the sitting Vice President, the party chose him to carry the standard in 1988 to carry on the Reagan legacy. Fortunately for President Bush, the Democrats nominated one of the most pathetic figures in modern political history -- remember the helmet and the tank? -- guaranteeing him election.

The coalition of Reagan Democrats, social and defense conservatives, held together with fiscal conservatives to elect GHWB, but after his betrayal -- Can you say "Read my lips..." -- Republican enthusiasm waned. Even so, Bush 41 would have probably been re-elected in 1992 had it not been for Ross Perot and the fact that Bill Clinton did not run as a classic Democrat.

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran as a "New Democrat." He distanced himself from the Washington liberal elite, running as a Conservative Democrat. To hear the man in 1992, with his promise of a middle-class tax cut, he was more conservative on several issues than President George H W Bush. He was NOT conservative, a fact that the electorate would only learn AFTER the election, but at the time, the voters believed that they were voting for the conservative.

President Clinton immediately demonstrated that he was nothing more than a typical tax-and-spend liberal, jettisoning his "middle class tax cut" less than a month after taking office, instead providing the American people with, at the time, the largest tax increase in history. When he assigned his wife, the worst lady, to create a Nationalized Healthcare plan that would have destroyed the American healthcare system, the American voters rebelled.

The congressional scandals relating to kiting bad checks on their congressional accounts, and widespread abuse of the franking privileges, provided a backdrop to Newt Gingrich's Contract With America." Among the provisions that Republicans pledged to impliment were:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
 

SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;

THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
 

FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
 

FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;

SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
 

SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
 

EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

In addition, the Contract promised that the Republican congress would inact ten bills:

1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-
of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
 

2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in- sentencing, "good faith" exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
 

3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.

4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT: Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children's education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.
 

5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
 

6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.
 

7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.
 

8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.
 

9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT: "Loser pays" laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.
 

10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT: A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

With a Democrat holding the White House in the presence of President Clinton, Newt Gingrich became both the face of, and the de facto leader of the conservative movement.

That mid-term election of 1994 demonstrated that when a conservative message was articulated to the American people, they would respond. When Republicans fail, is when they fail to live up to those conservative principles on which they run.

While much of the apparent government "surplus" at the end of the 1990s was nothing more than an allusion -- Dot-com bubble; Corporate Accounting Scandal anyone? -- it was the fiscal responsibility forced upon the Clinton Administration by Newt's Contract With America that finally brought federal spending under control. Responsible federal spending, along with much needed reforms of entitlement programs brought about the longest period of economic prosperity in this nation's history.
 

Unfortunately for this country, personal scandal forced Newt Gingrich to resign from congress. At the precise moment in history when the Conservative Movement was poised to turn back the tide of liberalism, the movement was left leaderless. At no point since that time has there been any conservative leadership from congress. In fact, that freshman class of 1994, by the time of the 2000 election, had become just as entrenched in the Washington establishment as the Democrats who controlled congress before them; they had become pale pastels.
 

It was during the run-up to that 2000 election that we heard the dreaded phrase, "Compassionate Conservative." Texas Gov George W Bush, the "Uniter, not a Divider," offered us that new lexicon. It is certain that the good governmor did not mean to suggest that because he was a compassionate conservative, that other conservatives were not. Still, that was the message sent. Just as Jack Kemp thoughtlessly impuned all Conservatives when he allowed Vice President Gore to praise him as not being mean-spirited like other Republicans, Gov Bush allowed conservatives to swing in the wind with his rhetoric.
 

As the President, he, like his father before him, has become the de facto leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. While he is the leader of the conservative movement, he is not, in fact, a conservative. He has some conservative beliefs, but overall, he is not a conservative.  He has shown moments of Bold Colors, but overall, he has demonstrated hiself to be a pale pastel.

Under this president we have seen the greatest expansion of both the size and the intrusion of the Federal Government since President Lyndon Johnson. No Child Left Behind expanded both the size and the role of the Department of Education, without providing any accountable way for children trapped in failing schools to go elsewhere. Medicare Part-D will, over the life of the program will ultimately cost the American taxpayers more than the War in Iraq.
 

While many conservatives have been understandably critical of this president over his domestic agenda, and his unwillingness to rein in any federal spending for more than six years, because of his strong stance against terrorism, his appointment of strict constructionalist judges and his tax cuts for every American who pays taxes, he has been able to enjoy the support of the entire Republican Party.

For all intent and purposes, the Conservative Movement in this country has been leaderless since 1998. President Bush has been spotty at best.  As three special elections in "safe" Republican districts have demonstrated, the people will elect candidates who offer conservative values over moderates -- even if those conservatives are Democrats.

And this is what Conservatives fear most about the 2008 Presidential Campaign.  In John McCain they HOPE for a conservative; they HOPE for BOLD COLORS, but they fear they will elect another moderate, more pale pastels.

Long before he became president, while campaigning for Senator Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, Ronald Reagan gave what has come to be known as his A Time For Choosing speech. From that speech;

This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

More than forty years later, those words are even more accurate today than they were at the time he spoke them. As a nation we have strayed even further from those unique ideals set forth by our founding fathers. Our people need a leader; someone who will once again articulate the conservative message of Ronald Reagan.

This nation hungers for that leader.  This nation hungers for BOLD COLORS, not the pale pastels that both parties are offering.

First Posted at: The Hinzsight Report

Of all the insidious conservative rationales for witholding support from John McCain, the most foolish one has to be the idea that by allowing Barack Obama, Republicans will save the party from being redefined leftward.  Yet, some clearly not-stupid people cling to this canard as a justification for abstention.  What this amounts to is an act of petulance gussied up in the finery of lofty principle.

These intractable conservatives have convinced themselves that a McCain victory in the fall will be interpreted by the press as a rejection of the core principles of the Republican Party by the rank and file.  However, there is no reason that this must be the case.  There are other ways to interpret a McCain victory, and the responsibility for how it is ultimately portrayed rests in the hands of Republicans themselves.  A vote for McCain need not be a vote for a cap-and-trade system for reducing carbon emissions when it can more accurately be described as a vote against windfall profits taxes and extreme regulatory controls.

But, in the end, a McCain victory won't be interpreted in either way.  When the election is over, and the media outlets start pouring over the exit poll results, the winner is going to be defined by the war in Iraq.  McCain supporters won't be going to the polls because they think he has the best answer to the global warming/climate change "crisis".  They won't be going to the polls to show appreciation for his efforts toward campaign finance reports.  They won't be going to the polls because they believe he was right to have opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001.  None of those things will register very highly, if at all, among the priorities of McCain voters.

Instead, the winner will be decided on three issues, any one of which could take precedence over the others between now and November:  (1) Gas prices, (2) the economy, and (3) the war in Iraq.  None of McCain's stances on any of these issues is a threat to conservative orthodoxy or the traditional Republican Party platform.

However, if Barack Obama wins the election, you can rest assured that it will be interpreted by the press as a wholesale rejection of the every bit of conservatism that marked the Bush years by the voting public as a whole.