Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Harris County Republican Party: How do we pay for the SD conventions?

by

Ed Hubbard

Frankly, I have been amazed, and humbled, by the reaction to my last post.  Much of what I wrote has been known and discussed openly among Harris County Republican Party activists for years, but I guess sometimes it takes a catalytic event, like the horrible idea of a speakers’ tax for our candidates and elected officials to speak at a public meeting, to open the window shades and let the light into the room.

If those of you who read my last post were as upset as your comments (on this site, and on Facebook) reflect, it’s time to make a promise to each other—let’s never allow this to happen again.  Let’s agree to take responsibility for our local party by becoming involved—and staying involved.

And to do that, we must address first things first:  we must pay for the cost of the upcoming countywide SD conventions to be held at Grace Community Church on April 21st, without taxing our candidates and elected officials to speak.  I said toward the end of my last post that I would “post soon” and offer “some mechanism for contributing to the cost of the upcoming SD convention in Harris County.”  Well, this post is to address that issue.  But, first, some background.

As you gathered from my last post, the HCRP did not get into this mess overnight, and unfortunately, our current leadership has refused over the years to be candid about this situation.  Now I will be the first to admit that our current Chair is a nice, perpetually cheerful man, who always tries to show the public, including our activists, the rosiest picture of our party and its policy positions.  Under most circumstances, this would be a good trait to have in our leader, but this rosy cheerfulness has led to a lack of candor that has perpetuated and deepened the mess we are in to the point that we don’t have the money to pay the costs for the event on April 21st.

I am sure that many of you are scratching your heads at how our local party could be broke, when we are the home to a former GOP President (who once served as HCRP Chair), a former GOP Secretary of State and his institute, other former GOP cabinet members and administration officials, and so many of the largest donors to our national party and its candidates.  But the way in which we grew between 1988 and 1994 to take over the countywide elected offices, led to a rift between the faction that sought (and eventually obtained) control of the party, and the donor base—the former didn’t want the involvement of the latter any more, and the latter obliged by closing their wallets.  In the meantime, the new faction stopped seeking the type of small donations that typically form the sustaining base of any non-profit entity, and continually sought big checks from an ever smaller group of willing donors.  To supplement the shortfall, they increasingly turned to the candidates and elected officials to fund the party’s operation, and they simply prayed that these contributions would hold the party over until it received the funding from the state every two years to conduct the local primary.

So, we eventually ended up where we are today, with the totally upside down situation in which the party relies on the candidates and elected officials to prop it up and pay for the party operations, while the party can provide no independent financial support to the general election effort for the ticket.  The vacuum created by this mess was filled by the private pay-for-play system, and led the current leadership to think they could go one step further and implement the speakers’ tax.

Anyone who has served on the HCRP’s Finance Committee over the last few years knows how frustrating this situation has become.  And now the chickens have come home to roost—we have to hold our SD Conventions before the primary, and the party has no money to pay for the event.  Rather than wring our hands, or tax our candidates and elected officials to speak, we need to seize this moment to take control of this situation.

Remember that in my last post I said some very harsh things about our own contributions to this mess—and I meant them:

… I also am ashamed that you and I have let our local party deteriorate to the extent that this plan could even be considered.  …

… And, those of us who

  • voted in GOP primaries,
  • used the three men’s endorsements to choose our candidates, rather than do our own homework, and
  • ignored and didn’t contribute time or money to the local party, so it could develop an organization to support our candidates and fall tickets independent of these three men,

were the ultimate enablers.

Regardless of whether our current leadership ever sees (or admits to seeing) the light, we have; and we need to stop enabling this system.  We need to break our party free from the hostage situation in which it has found itself between those who seek to maintain control of the party without a donor base, and the donor base who refuse to fund the party.  We need to start this breakout by paying for the convention ourselves.

I have been told that the cost for holding the convention on April 21st is anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000, though the costs reflected in recent TEC reports filed by the party seem to suggest that the actual costs are closer to the $5,000 to $10,000 range.  Regardless of which estimate is correct, I believe we can cover this cost ourselves, especially given the few thousand delegates who routinely attend this event.  Here is what I am proposing:

  • Bring $25 dollars to the April 21st event.  We were told on Thursday night by Chairman Woodfill that lunch will cost $15 if purchased the day of the convention ($10 if purchased online before the convention).  So, I am asking you each to contribute the remaining $10 to cover the cost of the convention.  Contributions of that size may be made in cash;
  • I will approach the party this week to offer volunteers (from our clubs and from the Tea Parties) to man tables throughout the facility to accept the donations and process the forms required to accept them, on behalf of the HCRP.  These volunteers will work under my direction, as a current member of the HCRP Finance Committee, and will turn over the funds and paperwork to the party leadership at the end of the day; and
  • Any shortfall will be underwritten by a group of people who are working with me.

Although this mechanism should provide the party with all the money it needs to pay for the convention, others are free to give more if they wish.  I have asked David Jennings to help by creating a Pledge button on this website, which anyone can use to make a pledge to cover the cost of the convention.  Moreover, candidates and elected officials are still welcome to contribute as they can afford, but I make one request to the candidates and elected officials—don’t agree to the speakers’ tax, even if you think it gives you an advantage in your race, but demand, instead, that all candidates and elected officials of our party be given a free opportunity to address the delegates.

Then, before we commit the volunteers for the delegate contributions, before the underwriters will commit to release payment for any shortfall, and before we ask anyone who has pledged to then donate, we will demand the following from the party:

  • Proof of the actual projected costs for the event;
  • A promise to share with us the documentation for the actual final costs incurred for the event; and
  • A public statement from the HCRP that the speakers’ tax has been canceled, and that any candidate or elected official of our party may speak to the delegates.

I believe this approach will work to cover the costs of the convention.  In fact, last night, Melissa Rowell, a wonderful local activist, posted this comment to my earlier post on this website:

… The HCRP could come out and ask all the precinct chairs and volunteers and candidates to pitch in a little and help raise a little, so that everyone pitches in and the primary candidates don’t get hit hard in the pocket book if they want to speak.  If the building and function costs so much, then I don’t mind helping out some.

Melissa, we are thinking the same way, and it is doable.

Now, I am asking the rest of you to please join us in covering the costs in this way.

Then, after the convention, let’s agree that we won’t let this situation continue.  Our candidates this fall deserve a functioning party organized and funded to identify our voters and get them to the polls.  And we need that type of party to defeat the Obama machine that is gearing back up.  Let’s commit to giving them that party.

The Fist of the Obama Administration Must Not be Re-Elected

by

Ed Hubbard

My father liked to tinker with writing simple poetry—the type of “greeting card” poetry that can be very touching or funny, or simply lame.  I recently have been reminded of the following part of a funny poem he wrote for me when I graduated from law school, which he entitled “Lawyer to Client”:

 

You say you hit the other guy,
Broke his nose and blackened his eye,
Split his lip and damaged his face.
I think you’ve got an excellent case.

The man is daft and obviously
Was in a place he never should be.
With devious means and grievous twist
He put his face in front of your fist. …

As I’ve followed the debate over the “Obama mandate” for insurance coverage that narrows the conscience exception that had protected religious institutions for many years, I feel as though we conservatives have once again put our face in front of the left’s fist on this issue.  Normally, I would advocate just licking our wounds and changing the subject back to the economic issues facing the country.  But, the problem is that what underlies the thinking of the left on this issue is what also is strangling the long-term neck of our economy.

Before we go further with that point, we first need to understand how our face found its way into the left’s fist. Back in January (it seems like years ago), during one of the many GOP debates over the last few months, George Stephanopoulos asked the candidates about their view of a half-century old Supreme Court ruling that constitutionally prohibited states from banning the sale or use of contraceptives.  Virtually everyone on the stage, and in the auditorium, was shocked by the question because it seemed to come out of left field.  The candidates all answered in one way or another that the issue was irrelevant and no one is advocating banning contraceptives, and Stephanopoulos looked really silly and petty as he continued to press for an answer from the candidates—but the key is that he continued to press for an answer.  Why?  It made no sense—at the time.

Then, not long after that debate, Secretary Sebelius announced that the Obama Administration would mandate that all employers would have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their insurance plans, including religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities.  The “conscience exception” that had previously exempted such institutions from such mandates was to be narrowed to just the direct employees of the houses of worship of such religious institutions. 

The negative reaction was stunning and swift, but it was not about women’s health or access to contraceptives—which must have further surprised the likes of Stephanopoulos and Sebelius.  Instead, it was about the use of the governmental fist in violation of the First Amendment to force churches to act at variance with their beliefs, or get fined—the type of direct assault on religious liberty that the U.S. Supreme Court had just told the Obama Administration it could not do as the court struck down another attempted regulatory invasion into the operation of a religious school. Hoping to find a compromise, people of goodwill from all over the political spectrum called on the Obama Administration to reconsider and re-embrace the full conscience exception that both political parties previously had honored, and that had provided a federal safe-harbor from mandates at the state level, while exploring other constitutional ways to maximize women’s access to medical treatments and prescriptions.  Instead of such a compromise, Obama announced a unilateral “compromise” with himself, which—of course—was no compromise at all.  It, instead, was a new fiat that was even more extraordinary for its hubris—mandating that insurers pay for, but not charge for, providing contraceptives to employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities.  Incredible!

Why was the second fiat incredible?  Let’s look closer at Obama’s magnanimous act of self-compromise for a moment:

  • it ignores the fact that, in order to take advantage of the historical safe-harbor provided by the federal conscience exception, many religious institutions became self-insured, and those plans cover both the employees of the churches as well as the affiliated entities;
  • it ignores one of the most basic facts of economics—there is no free lunch.  Regardless as to whether we are talking about free-market or government-planned economies, goods and services (including contraceptives, and the doctor visit and prescription needed to obtain the contraceptives) cost money; and, in this instance, those costs will be paid either directly by the employer or self-insurer, by all the insureds of the insurance company (including the religious institutions and their employees) through higher premiums, or by taxpayers through higher taxes or more public debt;
  • it continues to ignore that these religiously-affiliated institutions only exist in order to fulfill the mission of the church in the community, so that they are an important part of the practice of religious faith  by the ministry of the church, regardless of whether the church employs or serves persons of other faiths (or of no faith) in the performance of such practices; and
  • in making all these mistakes, it shows that Obama refuses to acknowledge and abide by the limitations on governmental power, and the exercise of that power, that our Founder’s enshrined in our Constitution, including the preservation of a separate church and the importance of its separate institutional role in our society.

So, the Obama fist came in a second swing toward the face of those of us who still believe in those limitations on government power, and in religious liberty.  But this time, like on so many other occasions over the last two generations, it is our face that was now alleged to be the aggressor, rather than the victim.  Those on the left who initially had called for Obama to re-consider his decision miraculously found this new fiat to be a welcome compromise, and then fell back in line as the lemmings that they are.  And, of course, their fellow travelers in the media lauded the magnanimity and wisdom of Obama’s act of self-compromise, and fell in line, too.  Then, returning full circle to the Stephanopoulos question, they found further criticism of the second swing of Obama’s fist to be a new assault on women’s health by the face of conservatives—an assault so grave that it could not be tolerated.  Unfortunately, some of our candidates and pundits played into this narrative, by allowing themselves to be drawn into debates about specific religious views of contraception, rather than keeping their focus on the fundamental flaws with Obama’s aggressive mandate.  As a result, in the latest twist in this story, the U.S. Senate could not muster the votes to return federal policy to the full conscience exception, and the left walked away from the debate claiming their fist had been assaulted by our face.

I want to be clear about some things.  I am not a Catholic, though I have great respect for the Catholic Church. I am a father of three girls, and I’m a grandfather.  I care very much about the health of my wife and daughters, and their access to the care they believe they need.  Finally, I see no societal, economic or political benefit to, or wisdom in, re-visiting the legal issue of medical privacy related to the sale and use of contraceptives, which was decided a half-century ago.  Contraception should not be, and really never was the issue in this political debate—we must remember that point as we move forward from here.

Now, back to my the point I started to make.  The shear arrogance of a political leader of this nation who would so cavalierly ignore basic economic principles, ignore basic constitutional rights, and ignore the basic limitations of governmental power that allow us to practice our constitutional rights, in order to advance an agenda to regulate by fiat an industry that represents at least 17{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of our economy, and, in the process, create a new entitlement scheme, has not earned our trust and must not be re-elected.  We will never recover our economic vitality as a nation, let alone our full individual freedoms and responsibilities, if we re-elect this arrogance and give it four more years at the helm of our country.

To those of you who are involved in GOP campaigns this year, I remind you of the seriousness of the mission we have this fall, and ask you to keep your focus on that mission and what the real issues are.  Don’t get sidetracked into the left’s narrative—don’t stick your face into the left’s fist.  Simply fight back based on our narrative of liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and economic opportunity.  As Reagan once told us a generation ago, “there is no substitute for victory.”

We Must “Choose Wisely”

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 But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

I was reminded of this line, delivered in the soft, time-wearied voice of the Medieval knight from the third Indiana Jones movie, as I was reflecting on the remarkable string of events over the last two weeks—events that are changing and defining the nature of the 2012 election.

At the start of this period Romney looked as if he was going to walk away with the GOP nomination, and that the election would become a referendum on Obama’s economic policies.  The emerging shape of the battle was reflected by two new and inconsistent reports coming from Washington.  On the one hand, the CBO issued a report that should have scared the dickens out of everyone and made the case for a Republican sweep.  It showed that the economy had lost more than 2 million jobs in just one month, and that the projected growth and unemployment figures would be anemic through 2013.  On the other hand, the administration produced “seasonally adjusted” job numbers that magically showed a growth in jobs, and a drop in unemployment, which defied reality and made a mockery of government statistics, but which the chattering classes took as positive news and as gospel for the wisdom of Obama’s policies.

But, then the ground under our feet shifted, as foreign policy and social issues diverted everyone’s attention away from the economic debate.  Every news report focused on the growing civil war in Syria, and our confrontation of Russia and China at the UN.  Panetta and Obama sent mixed signals over Israel and Iran, and their words (and Israel’s intentions) became a focus of news reporting throughout the week.  Progressives embroiled the Komen charity and the Catholic Church in controversies over abortion, contraceptives, and the First Amendment.  Then, that never-ending source of liberal lunacy, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, gave us a double-whammy of cultural chaos:

  •  it reinstated the California Supreme Court’s construction of the California Constitution that changed and expanded the definition of “marriage” under California law to include same-sex couples; and,
  • to do so, it determined that the people of California could not amend their own Constitution to re-instate a 3,000 year-old status quo that did not violate the federal constitution, because, once the California Supreme Court had decided to expand rights or privileges to a new class of people, the people could not change that decision.  

Therefore, in one stroke the 9th Circuit stoked the fires of the culture wars and shredded the concept that the people, not the judiciary, are the ultimate source of power and authority in this country.  Given these developments, and the predictable rise of Santorum in the polls in three states where, like Iowa, social conservatives make up a large portion of GOP activists, is it any wonder that Santorum, whose career has focused on these foreign policy and social issues, has risen from the ashes to upend the GOP race once again?

Before you get whiplash from all of this, let’s go back to the quote at the start of this post.  We must remember that the story of America has been a story of choices made—some wise, and some not-so wise.  And it now appears that recent developments are creating a new, epic choice for us to make this November.  The choice will not be over the looming debt that is crushing individuals and governments alike, or what our position should be as to when or how Israel may attack Iran, or the wisdom of the Komen foundation’s changing decisions about funding Planned Parenthood, or the availability of contraceptives, or the future of religious freedom, or even the future definition of “marriage”.  No, the choice is larger than all of these issues, though they each will be pieces that will fit together to ultimately form the puzzle picture in the end.

If you’ve followed any of my prior posts on Big Jolly Politics, you know I have a specific view of our history.  Our Settlers—those dissident Protestants who began leaving England and the Netherlands in the 17th Century to come and start a new life on this continent, saw a “fork in the road” of human history and made a choice to go down what Robert Frost would call “the road less traveled.”  They chose to come to America and begin an experiment not tried in human history—to live as free men and women in shared communities—rather than stay in Europe and continue on the age-old path of living under the thumbs of kings and bishops. Our experimental path was to preserve and promote man’s free will (the blessing of liberty) and to promote the exercise of that will to “pursue happiness” (“pursue a life well spent”, “love thy neighbor”) in local communities organized into states joined into a federal union.  The paradox, as Franklin would allude to, was, whether we could “keep it” merely by depending on the preservation of a “Christian” character among our citizens.  

Over the centuries, we became a people who were taught to look at our past as having been created from fundamental promises—a contract—that incorporated man’s greatest ideals.  We were taught that even though the promises weren’t always properly or evenly enforced, our challenge was to fix those flaws to sustain the experiment.  And we were taught that the experiment embodied in that contract was fragile, because it could always be derailed by undermining the character of the citizenry; meaning it could be derailed by one or more of four impulses:

  • the impulse of man to believe in himself, and in nature, rather than God;
  • the impulse of man to fight and die for false Gods;
  • the impulse of some men to re-enslave the will of other men to keep the enslaved from pursuing their own impulses (good or bad); and
  • the impulse of otherwise good people toward complacency and autonomy.  

I believe our best leaders over the centuries recognized these enemies and rallied us against them.  Since 1776, we have faced and defeated each of these enemies at one time or another.  If we should ever lose this fight for the preservation of our experiment, or choose to no longer fight for our experiment when any of these impulses emerge, I believe the consequence will be both a political and a spiritual backslide, and the ensuing “darkness” will last a long, long time.

When we look around us we see evidence of that our experiment in self-government is backsliding, and I am not ready to choose to stop fighting the impulses that have brought us to this point.  At some point between the election of FDR and the assassination of JFK, a core group in this country saw our nation, not as an imperfect experiment embodied in a contract to be enforced, but as historically illegitimate.  These people worked quietly for decades to convince the last two generations of Americans to look at our past as having been illegitimate from the start; and to see America’s basic contract as so wrong that it needed to be reformed and replaced with a new contract that mirrored the social contract that had emerged within Europe since Bismark.  To accomplish this task, they preyed on the four impulses that were always the enemy of our experiment, and have tried to rip-up the old contract.  In its place, they have tried to re-assert a model of government by and for the elite that our Settlers rejected, and which has condemned a vast number of our neighbors to under-education and under-employment, and to an artificially low standard of living during a time of great wealth creation, while they have increasingly enjoyed unrivaled materialism and an autonomy from their responsibilities as citizens.  Their efforts have torn deep holes in the fabric of our culture and society, and the policies they’ve implemented to create a new contract have nearly bankrupted our governments and our citizens. 

What the developments over the last two weeks show is that the election this November presents another historical “fork in the road” for America—another time to choose.  It presents a choice between—

  • continuing the backslide to a form of society our Settlers rejected, and that thrives off a vast system of materialism, dependency and victimhood among so many of us that it has put our society on the road to societal bankruptcy; and
  • re-committing our society to that experiment embodied in the original contract we inherited—a society of free men and women who believe that if our ideal promises are properly preserved and enforced, we can address all of the challenges that face us without bankrupting the system for our children.

We have a choice to make at this fork—we can’t take both paths from here, and the path we choose this year will determine the course of our history for generations to come.  I for one, choose the path of the promise our ancestors made to preserve, protect and promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all our citizens, and of the commitment to share and enforce that promise and its benefits with all Americans; rather than the path of autonomous materialism and victimhood, and the ultimate dependency on elites, to which the other path will condemn the future.

I hope you will join me and “choose wisely” as this year unfolds toward the November election, for the stakes couldn’t be much higher.

A Basic “Conflict of Visions”

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In 1987, Thomas Sowell published a landmark book entitled “A Conflict of Visions,” in which he identified and explained the historical and intellectual roots of the differences between the modern worldview of Western liberals and that of Western conservatives.  Since that first work, Sowell has published other works expanding on this theme.  For any conservative who wants to fully understand the philosophical root cause of our political and cultural divisions with the modern left, these books are essential for your reading list.

But I want to focus on a more basic and practical conflict of visions facing us in 2012, and challenge you to listen to what our leaders say over the next two evenings.  As you know, tonight the four remaining Republican Presidential candidates will debate in Florida on national television, to be followed tomorrow night by President Obama’s State of the Union speech.  As you listen to these five men, I ask you to listen for their views on one topic:  what provides for the general wellbeing of the people of this country?  If you listen closely, the answer to this question will illustrate the basic conflict of visions between our two parties, and what is at stake in this election.

I believe you will find that the four Republicans, though they each will articulate the answer differently, will agree that the general well-being of the people is provided by private-sector jobs:  jobs that employ people; jobs that provide for families and churches and neighborhoods; jobs that expand wealth by creating new goods and services, and return on investments to be re-invested to create new jobs; jobs that provide tax revenue for our infrastructure and schools; and jobs that channel and nourish individuals’ energies, hopes, dreams and ambitions.  In turn, they see the role of government, like a private-sector business sees its staff or administrative departments—necessary to provide security and support for the people engaged in the creation of revenue for the company, or in this case for the creation of wealth by the private sector, but not as the primary creator of that revenue or wealth.  For more than a generation, the private sector has been reducing the footprint of staff and administrative jobs, and making those functions more responsive to the needs of the people producing the goods and services, and the revenue, of their businesses, and conservatives believe that government at all levels should be similarly reformed.  It doesn’t matter whether the conservative has been a lifetime elected official, a private-equity investor, or an entrepreneurial professional, conservatives share this fundamental view.

But what you will hear from President Obama is a completely different vision.  He and his fellow travelers believe that government provides for the well-being of the people, and that all institutions, including private-sector businesses, function at the pleasure and direction of the government.  Whether it is a re-distributive stimulus to try and spark employment, re-distributing resources to increase public-sector employment, or increasing taxes and then re-distributing them from providing security and infrastructure to providing entitlements, the underlying vision is that government owns and controls your wealth to use as it sees fit to provide for the “masses.” 

Let’s see how the left’s vision works in the real world.  Take public elementary and secondary education.  The production of education occurs in the classroom between the teacher and the student.  While we have re-distributed so much money to school districts over the last generation that we by far lead the world in per pupil expenditures, look at where it has gone.  It hasn’t gone to the classroom, but instead to bloat the size and scope of staff and administration and their facilities to the extent that in many school districts the number of staff and administrators now equals or exceeds the number of teachers.  When government sees itself as providing for the well-being of society, it increases its size, and runs every agency the same way—the perpetuation of the agency through increasing employment of staff and administration is seen as more important than the production of the service the agency was designed to provide.  Because of this inherent inefficiency, little or no effective service is provided, and the wellbeing of the people is not furthered.  Rather than reform this model, the left’s insane answer is to just continue to increase the wealth redistribution and the size of government until they “get it right.”  The joke on all of us is that they’ll never get it right following this model.

The left’s model—its vision—simply doesn’t work in the real world over the long run.  Not in Europe, and not here.  And, as we are seeing in Greece, and throughout the Western world, we can’t afford (culturally, economically, or politically) indulging this vision anymore.

Regardless of who you are supporting in the Republican primaries this year, remember that it is this basic conflict of visions between the importance of a private sector job and the importance of bureaus and bureaucrats, which is at the foundation of our battle this year for our nation’s future.

Citizenship and “Right-Wing Social Engineering”

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Last night, as I listened to Newt Gingrich’s victory speech after winning the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary, he made several statements the caught my attention—but none more than his nod to Governor Perry’s endorsement and their shared commitment to the 10th Amendment and returning power to the states.  As he discussed this point he said that one of the reasons he was asking voters to be “with me not just for me” was because as “we shrink the federal bureaucracy” we must “grow citizenship back home to fill the vacuum.”

I could not agree more strongly.  As I’ve tried to challenge fellow Republicans over the last few years, if we are successful in electing Republican majorities at every level of government and a Republican President, in 2012; and if we are successful in passing the legislation needed to limit the size and scope of the federal government and balancing its budget—what then?  The needs of our fellow citizens that the left has tried to address through federal-government schemes over the last 50 years won’t miraculously disappear.  The divisions that Charles Murray discusses in this new article, The New American Divide, which culturally exist within every racial and ethnic community in this country, won’t magically dissolve.  No, the paradox of our victory will be that it only will start our job to fix this country, rather than end it.

For our victory to last, we must use our political freedom to re-assert our liberty, which includes our reciprocal responsibilities as citizens—responsibilities to govern ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, and our states. This renewal of self-governance will require our active participation in the life of our communities, rather than continuing to delegate such participation to faceless bureaucrats in distant capitals.  This active participation is the growth in “citizenship back home to fill the vacuum” that Gingrich is championing.  If we don’t accept this responsibility, the activists of the collectivist left will re-emerge and re-take control of government from us—and our unique system won’t survive another spasm of leftist policies.

Now for those who think this is just another “off the cuff” idea from Gingrich, you’re wrong.  In fact, he has been tremendously consistent about the relationship between limiting the federal government and a re-assertion of citizenship for many years.  He made this point in his first major speech as Speaker-elect to the National Press Club in late 1994, and in the “American Civilization” college courses he taught in the mid-1990s.  Nor is this idea new and revolutionary—it formed the heart of our Settlers’ and Founders’ view of America that de Tocqueville observed in action, and it formed the foundation of Reagan’s blueprint for his “New Republican Party” in 1977.

In fact, in a uniquely Gingrichian way, his widely derided critique of Paul Ryan’s budget proposal last year was consistent with his view of the need for citizenship.  His point was not that he disagreed with the ends or the means of that budget, but that such broad and fundamental reforms contained in that budget would not work unless and until the people were ready to re-accept their responsibilities at the local level—it was putting the cart before the horse.  To force such a sweeping change on people until they are persuaded to accept what that change means to their lives, would be “social engineering” from the present status quo that depends on federal involvement.

Now, I agree that Newt’s choice of words was wrong, but his point was correct.  As we fix the federal government, we must persuade the American people to re-assert their citizenship and to accept the responsibilities that citizenship will require from all of us.  Like you, I want, and the country needs, Paul Ryan’s approach to fixing the budget and the federal government, but it won’t work, and it will only delay the day on which we become a European welfare state, if we don’t become real citizens of this great nation again.  In fact, look in the mirror and ask yourself—isn’t this re-commitment to citizenship what the Tea Party movement was all about?  I can tell you that this re-commitment to citizenship is what forms the basis for the “Renewing the American Community” plan that I and others have been working to develop for the last two years.

So, whether Newt, Rick, Ron or Mitt becomes our nominee, we must dedicate ourselves like our forefathers did—with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor—to not just taking back the government from the left, but to rebuilding the bonds of citizenship with each other in order for our reforms to work and for America to remain the exceptional and indispensable nation—and Reagan’s ideal of a Shining City on a Hill.

 

My Letter to Mitt Romney

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Well, as the Republican Presidential roadshow moves on to South Carolina, I must admit that the disappointment I expressed in my last post is turning, slowly, to a begrudging acceptance of the looming reality we face.  No matter how much I still hope that another candidate will emerge during the primaries, or at the convention, whose views and experience show him or her to be a real Conservative reformer, history shows that such a development is highly unlikely now.  Therefore, I must prepare to support Mitt Romney if he wins the nomination, because I can not stand by and let Obama’s Democratic Party win this election.

But, bowing to such reality does not mean that I, and those of you who agree with me, must drop our desire for reform based on Reagan’s New Republican Party blueprint of 1977, and the recent 10th Amendment movement.  Instead, we should work to give Governor Romney (or whoever may still emerge from this process) the tools and support he will need to make the reforms we want:  retention of the GOP’s House majority; gaining a GOP majority in the Senate and changing the filibuster rules once and for all to allow the basic business of government, like the passage of a budget, to be done; and retention and expansion of our majority in state houses and governorships.  Above all else, we must continue to remind Governor Romney of what we want to see our party accomplish if it wins this election.

To that last end, here is my open letter to the Governor:

Dear Governor Romney:

As a supporter of another candidate in the GOP field this year, I congratulate you on your victories to date, and on the progress you are making toward winning the nomination of our party for the Presidency.  Though there are many contests still to be fought in this process, and through those contests I will remain part of the loyal opposition, I want you to know that, as a Reagan Conservative, I will support you and work for your election if you win the GOP nomination.  That said, I want to share some thoughts with you about this race from someone who has not supported you to date.

I have been told from a close friend who worked with you after you took over the 2002 Winter Olympics, that you are one of the finest managers of people and of business with whom he has ever worked.  That is high praise, indeed.  Moreover, your history of accomplishments in the private sector, and as Governor of a very Democratic state, supports this praise of your managerial skills.  But, many of us believe that we need more than just a better manager to fix what ails this country, and we desperately hope that you are ready for the challenges you must face if you win this election.  In light of this concern, I, for one, was impressed by one of the answers you gave in a recent debate in which you outlined what you believed to be the core issue against Obama as a conflict of visions of this country and for its future.

I hope you will expand on this theme over the coming months in the context of addressing the deep, structural problems that we as a people must address, debate, and resolve if we are to climb out of the whole we have dug for ourselves over the last few years.  Although others may articulate these problems differently, I believe we face three fundamental problems that underlie virtually every problem you and your fellow Republican candidates have been discussing and debating during this campaign:

  • The American people need to decide what role they want government to have in their lives, in the lives of their families, and in the lives of their communities—and why government should have such a role.  To make this decision, we will need to take a hard look at how and where we (currently, and will in the future) live and work in the 21st Century, and what activities must remain within the responsibility of individuals, their families, and their private organizations and churches to address.  Once we take that hard look, we then will need to determine what activities need the attention of the collective responsibility of government (by itself or in coordination with the private sector), as opposed to remaining solely within the responsibility of the private sector.  My guess is that the outcome of this debate will result in a different allocation of responsibility than what our ancestors, and even our parents, would have made, but we will never be able to address the future spending and revenue needs of the public sector of this country unless we have a candid discussion of this issue.
  • Once this basic decision is made, we need to determine which responsibilities involve international or interstate activities, and which involve local or intrastate activities.  Based on that determination, we need to apply our constitutional rules to determine which level of government should address each responsibility.
  • Once this determination is made, the federal government needs to be reformed—branch by branch, and department by department—to address its international and interstate responsibilities efficiently and cost-effectively, and state and local governments need to be encouraged to do the same.  Then, budget and tax policies need to be reformed to provide the resources needed to address these responsibilities in a manner that recognizes that wealth and property, in the first instance, belong to those who created them.

Governor, my guess is that most people will want government to continue to take responsibility for many of the activities that government programs currently attempt to address.  The difference will be that such responsibilities should be, and will be re-allocated so that they are addressed more efficiently and cost-effectively at the local and state levels, and at those levels will be more likely to share their work with the private sector in each community.  Moreover, such re-allocation will naturally cut from government much of the bureaucratic duplication that leads to the growth in the size, cost and debt of government at all levels. Finally, if people realize that the GOP doesn’t want to throw their grandparents into poverty, or abandon safety nets for our neighbors in true need, but, instead, wants to reform government consistent with its properly limited structure to make it more effective and to engage our citizens again to become active participants in the lives of the neighbors and neighborhoods, much of the wind will be taken from the sails of the great Democratic argument that has portrayed Republicans as unfeeling and uncaring extremists for generations.

That last point leads me to the final part of this letter.  You recently have been criticized over the activities of Bain Capital while you managed that company.  While some conservative commentators are wringing their hands over this development, I believe that this criticism, coming now, is a blessing to your candidacy, because it gives you an opportunity to turn this criticism into a strength during the rest of the election cycle.  To create this strength, you need to understand the fears that the stereotypes underlying these criticisms arouse, and address the country about how the free market works and how you would apply your experience from your role in the free market to reform the government.

Ever since Commodore Vanderbilt took advantage of the economic depression of the late 1830s at the dawn of the railroad boom, Americans have had a love-hate relationship with those who have provided the financial capital within our free market system.  We know that we have needed the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Carnegies, the Mellons, … and the Bain Capitals, along with banks and bondholders, to provide the loans, the bonds and the equity entrepreneurs need to turn their ideas into products and services—and wealth. In turn, we know that the wealth that is created employs people, whose earnings support their families, their communities and their states, and the nation.  But most Americans have never embraced the bankers and investors as the positive image of the free market.

Instead, we tend to identify the free market with the “Horatio Alger” story of the entrepreneur—the man or woman who has the initial idea, who puts his or her own money and labor into the development of the idea into a product or service, and who creates a successful business that employs people, and builds and spreads wealth, from such efforts.  Meanwhile, we have come to view the bankers and the investors as necessary evils in the free-market process who obtain their wealth without rolling-up their sleeves and building a business, and who retain the interest and dividends they were paid even after the businesses fail.  Indeed, a popular post-war novel that was later made into a popular movie—Cash McCall—had as its central character such an investor, who endured many of the same criticisms that are now being leveled at you and Bain Capital.

But the ending of that story is instructive.  McCall buys a business that appears to be about to fail, and then merges it with its main customer and receives what appears to be a fast, windfall return for his investors.  The founder of the business who sold it to McCall is irate and feels swindled, until he realizes that McCall’s fresh set of eyes found a nugget of value that the founder never understood and would have never marketed—patents on the products he had developed.  Those patents, locked away and forgotten, had hidden value in the market for the company, and it took an outsider to find it.  Companies like Bain Capital bring that fresh pair of outside eyes that are able to objectively reassess the value of an entity and reform it to make it more effective, in return for a fee and/or a dividend.

Like McCall, sometimes Bain’s efforts work, and sometimes there is no long-term value to find or develop and the company fails.  Anyone who has ever laid-off or fired an employee, or closed a business, knows how hard that is—you’re not just asking a person to leave, you are ending a source of income and benefits that supports a family, and that indirectly supports a community. When that happens, stresses are put on families, neighborhoods, schools and churches—and governments—to help these people through their time of transition.  In part, investors use many of the dividends they receive to pay, through contributions and taxes, to support the organizations and governments that provide the support to individuals in time of need and to create the infrastructure in our communities.  In the end, investors and banks that provide capital play an indispensible role in the creation of wealth and employment in a free market, and in the maintenance of our communities.

Your experience from providing that fresh pair of eyes in the evaluation of businesses can translate well to the need we now have for reform—and you need to tell the American people about the relevance of that experience to the challenges we face.  We need a fresh pair of eyes to look at the responsibilities that the federal government has assumed, and to re-allocate them; to look at how the federal government is structured, and to reform it; and to look at how the money is raised and spent by the federal government, and to stop deficit spending.  The only difference between your time at Bain and the challenge you face is this—you can’t just close the federal government; but you can, and you must, close agencies and departments, and stop paying for activities, if their missions no longer fit the proper allocation of federal responsibility or an efficient allocation of federal resources.

Governor, you have been given a great opportunity to tell this story of the free market, of how your experience in the free market (coupled with your unique experience as a Republican Governor of an archetypal Democratic state) applies to the challenges you will have to address, and how our Republican vision contrasts with the economic vision of the Democrats.  Please use the criticism you are now getting to further refine a positive narrative before the general election campaign, so that we truly can present a vision to the American people this fall that competes with the socialist vision of capitalists and the free market as evil.  If you develop such a positive message that dovetails with a positive plan for government reform, you can carry the Reagan mantle into the fall election.  I hope you will.

Sincerely,

Ed Hubbard