Paul Krugman continues to demonstrate that brilliance in one field doesn’t necessarily translate into sound insights into others. He’s upset that some Republicans took pleasure in President Obama’s embarrassment in not landing the Olympics for his adopted Chicago and their cynicism in positioning themselves as the defenders of Medicare in order to fight his health care reform proposals. His explanation for both: “the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama.”

But that’s rather silly. The Olympics matter was one of schadenfreude. I know plenty of people who voted for and continue to support Obama who nonetheless question his hubris and the cult of personality that surrounds him. And the Medicare issue is one of tactics, choosing a politically expedient means to an end.

Moreover, Krugman continues this to Friedmanesque extremes.

How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern. Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

Reagan won landslide victories and was still opposed by Democrats at every turn, often in vitriolic terms. Who can forget the late Teddy Kennedy’s vicious harangue against “Robert Bork’s America”? And goodness knows, George W. Bush wasn’t exactly treated with kid gloves. Our politics have taken a nasty turn this generation — hardly unprecedented in our history but magnified by a changed media climate — and now it’s Obama’s turn to feel the heat.

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance.

Only because the Democrats have long since embraced the same rhetoric, forcing the Republicans to either adopt extreme positions or be “Me Too.” They’ve done some of both.

Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.

Again, this has been equally true of Democrats when they cycle out of power. It requires blindness or sheer partisan hackery to think what Obama’s facing now is any more ruthless or impolite than what Bush did during his eight years.

Newt Gingrich has weighed in with a plan for a Sarah Palin political comeback which Taegan Goddard summarizes as:

1. Write a book.
2. Land a regular commentator slot on television.
3. Consider getting a condominium in New York or Washington.
4. Write and master three types of speeches: to make money, to project her brand, to gain attention.
5. Create some sort of national project or center.
6. Plan on working really, really hard.

There’s an old saying about free advice being worth what you paid for it.  That’s doubly true, I suspect, if it’s a potential rival offering said advice.

Steps 1 and 2 would almost surely reinforce Palin’s existing handicap of being thought rather shallow on the important public policy issues of the day.  She’s not a professional writer and having to make the rounds defending what someone else ghost-wrote for her is what got her into trouble during the 2008 campaign.  And engaging in regular, off-the-cuff analysis is surely not her strong suit.

Step 3 would undermine her chief selling point as being Regular Folk.

She’s already mastered Step 4; it’s her main skill as a politician.  Raising money and, Lord knows, gaining attention are not things she’s had any difficulty with at all.  Her brand is another matter, I suppose, but she appears to be doubling down on securing the loyalty of the hard right.

Step 5 might actually be useful.  Gingrich suggests a “National Energy Project.”  The problem is that actually getting anything worthwhile done with such a thing would take years; starting it up and then running for the 2012 nomination (the race starts next Thursday, I believe, with pancakes in New Hampshire) would make her appear a dilettante.

To have gotten to where she is, she’s already done step 6. So, really, it’s a gratuitious insult disguised as “advice.”  Or maybe it’s not really disguised: “Many ex-politicians confuse being a celebrity with being a serious political player, Gingrich said. “She can be a personality for a long time,” he said. “But that is very different from becoming a national leader.”

Ezra Klein and Steve Benen are recirculating this somewhat interesting chart on political polarization in America by political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal.

Ezra argues that “this level of polarization makes it virtually impossible to govern in a system that is designed to foil majorities and require a constant three-fifths consensus. It’s not good if the country is virtually impossible to govern.”  Steve says this is especially true when, pace Harold Meyerson, the opposition party “is dominated by Southern neo-Dixiecrats.”

Given this situation, Ezra observes, “Problems don’t stop mounting while we try and figure things out. We could respond to this by making it easier for the majority party to govern and thus less likely that we have some sort of massive crisis that totally realigns our politics.”  He’s not talking about amending the Constitution but rather implementing unspecified rules changes in Congress that would strip power from the minority to get in the way.

Newt Gingrich made a bunch of changes in 1994. Democrats made a bunch of changes in 1975. John F. Kennedy made some big changes in the early 1960s. FDR changed the way Congress worked, and so too did Woodrow Wilson. This isn’t something invented by a bunch of bloggers in the early 21st century.

My recollection of both the Gingrich and post-Watergate reforms is that they were aimed at breaking down the power that came with seniority and to deal with public perception that Members were unduly influenced by outside interests rather than the ability of the opposition party to shape or block legislation.   And I’ve got no idea whatever of what Kennedy did to reform Congress; indeed, I’m not sure how he would have done that from the White House. In the cases of FDR and Wilson, they simply seized power for the presidency during extreme national crises with the acquiescence of Congress.

Regardless, as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein document, there have been numerous and nearly-continuous efforts to reform Congressional rules over the years.  And I’d be quite happy, for example, to do away with or seriously limit the use of the filibuster, secret holds, and various other measures which make it easy for the minority to block even relatively minor legislation.  Those are extra-constitutional at best and are not supposed to be used routinely as they now are.

At the same time, however, I disagree with the underlying premise of Ezra and Steve’s complaint.  The fact that we’re more polarized on politics as a nation than we have been in decades, by definition, means that there’s little national consensus.  That’s simply not a time for radical policy changes.  Ramming through unpopular programs in a very polarized nation is a recipe for more polarization.

George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 along with Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress.  Among the signature programs he ran on was a radical overhaul of the Social Security retirement system that included a private option.   Once we got to the legislative phase, however, and the public saw the actual program rather than an abstract notion, it became decidedly less popular.  And the Democratic minority in Congress was able to block it.   We may well be on the road to the exact same thing happening on health care reform, with the public option failing to catch on for now.

That is how our system is supposed to work.  It’s precisely designed not to allow big change based on a small majority.

Furthermore, the Democrats have a reasonably comfortable margin in both the House and the Senate.  To the extent that they’re failing to get things done, it’s not because “Southern neo-Dixiecrats” in the minority party are using dastardly tricks to foil the popular will but because of fissures within the Democratic coalition.   Which, incidentally, the Republicans faced, too, back when they had the majority.

The nature of putting together a governing coalition in a politically polarized country is that getting over the top requires winning seats in states and districts that are either closely divided or are usually won by the other party.  “Blue dog” Democrats are no more in line with the Progressive wing of their party than the Northeastern Republicans of yore were with the Southern Conservative wing of theirs.

A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, “More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.”

This is pretty stark but, as Nate Silver points out, “not exactly anything new.”

88 percent of George W. Bush’s voters in 2004, and 91 percent of them in 2000, were white. And nearly 98 percent of Ronald Reagan’s voters in 1980 were white as were 96 percent of Gerald Ford’s in 1976. The GOP is, in fact, slightly less white than it once was, as they do relatively better among Hispanics and Asians than among blacks (if still not particularly well), and Hispanics and Asians are starting to make up a larger fraction of the nonwhite (and overall) voting pool.

Silver continues,

The Democrats, however, are becoming less white at a much faster rate than the Republicans. Whereas 85 percent of their votes were from white voters in 1976, the number was just 60 percent last November. This is, of course, a helpful characteristic, since the nonwhite share of the electorate, just 11 percent in 1976 and 1980, represented more than a quarter of the turnout in November.

Consider this remarkable statistic. In 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Democrats (or at least white Carter voters) — likewise, in 2008, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas, in 1980, just 9 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Obama voters last year. Thus, Carter went down to a landslide defeat, whereas Obama defeated John McCain by a healthy margin.

He wonders if this isn’t the Southern Strategy coming home to roost.  One might counter that the Democrats have answered  with a racially and culturally divisive strategy of their own, which accounts for their declining percentage of the white vote concomitant with their gains among minorities.  But, from the standpoint of winning elections, that’s probably a smarter strategy.

It’s going to be increasingly difficult in the future for Republicans to win nationwide appealing only to whites.  The party has long written off black voters, who tend to vote as a bloc, but can’t afford to also write off Hispanics; together, they comprise more than a quarter of the population — and growing.

Eleven years ago this month, Atlantic Monthly published a brilliant essay by Christopher Caldwell entitled “The Southern Captivity of the GOP.” It detailed how the party went from the 1994 “Revolution” that swept up both Houses of Congress to getting crushed in the 1996 presidential election and was on its way to a midterm setback in 1998.  A big part of that was losing the Hispanics.

Democrats who had arrogantly assumed that standard-issue minority politics would easily pull Hispanics into the party fold were proved wrong throughout the 1980s. Hispanic voters turned out to be disproportionately entrepreneurial and disproportionately receptive to Republican family-values rhetoric, and gave the party roughly a third of their votes in the three presidential elections from 1980 to 1988. Leaving aside Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, who do fit the Democrats’ minority paradigm, the Republicans were doing better with the Hispanic vote than might be expected.

But the Republicans in the 104th Congress tried to shore up their Texas and California right wings with hostile rhetoric on immigration. They passed legislation that sought to deprive not just illegal but also legal immigrants of federal benefits. (Newt Gingrich and other Republicans backpedaled in 1997, reversing some of the measures, but the damage was done.) And California’s Proposition 187, supported by Republican Governor Pete Wilson and aimed at denying benefits to illegal immigrants, brought angry Hispanics to the polls in unprecedented numbers. Clinton took 72 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, including 81 percent in Arizona and 75 percent in California; he took 78 percent of Hispanics under thirty. He nearly split the Hispanic vote even in Florida, where 97 percent of the Cuban population voted for Reagan in 1984.

Recall that, prior to Clinton’s win in 1992, California’s massive electoral vote block had been a “lock” for Republicans.  Since 1996, Republicans haven’t even bothered to contest it in presidential elections.  And Florida has gone from a pretty solid Republican state to an intense battleground.  Beyond that,

As southern control over the Republican agenda grows, the party alienates even conservative voters in other regions. The prevalence of right-to-work laws in southern states may be depriving Republicans of the socially conservative midwestern trade unionists whom they managed to split in the Reagan years, and sending Reagan Democrats back to their ancestral party in the process. Anti-government sentiment makes little sense in New England, where government, as even those who hate it will concede, is neither remote nor unresponsive.

Of course, while the GOP did lose seats in 1998, costing Gingrich his job, it rallied to win the presidency (although not the plurality of votes for president) in 2000 and again in 2008.   But it’s lost congressional seats in every single election since, losing its majority in both Houses in 2006 and becoming a decided minority in 2008.

Granting that there was a perfect storm working for the Democrats in 2008 — an unpopular Republican incumbent, an unexciting Republican ticket, two unpopular wars, a collapsing economy, and a charismatic Democratic candidate with a compelling backstory — the Republicans lost states that it had theretofore been thought theirs in perpetuity.

Demographics isn’t destiny and this trend therefore isn’t set in stone.  But the Republican Party will need to drastically change the inertia if it wishes to be other than a regional party in the coming years.

“The base is plenty excited already, as you know if you’ve ever read a comment thread on a conservative blog. Comment-thread conservatives, like their mirror-image warriors on the left (”Worst person in the woooorrrlllddd!”) are perpetually agitated, permanently enraged. They don’t need to be revved, they’re already revved. Newt Gingrich twitters that Judge Sotomayor is a racist. Does anyone believe that? He should rest his dancing thumbs, stop trying to position himself as the choice and voice of the base in 2012, and think.” – Peggy Noonan, arguing Republican leaders need to start acting like grown-ups.

Incidentally, she doesn’t advocate “rolling over” on Sotomayor for those who oppose her for principled reasons rather than simple partisan grandstanding.

Josh Marshall has noted something peculiar in the recent media tour of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:

He seems to insist with members of the press that he still be referred to as “Speaker Gingrich.” And actually his website is speakergingrich.com. Not former Speaker Gingrich, Speaker Gingrich. And it goes beyond him. On Meet the Press this weekend, he repeatedly refers to former intel committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra as “Chairman Hoekstra.”

It’s worth noting that on his “Meet the Press” appearance Sunday, Gingrich qualified his reference thusly: “Chairman Hoekstra, as he was at the time.”  Marshall may have seen Gingrich on a different show where he dropped the appositive.

Regardless, I’m not a big fan of these honorifics.  They may make sense within the halls of Congress but Congressman or Senator should suffice elsewhere.   Speaker of the House, at least, is a Constitutionally proscribed position but committee and subcommittee chairmanships are a creature of the institution.  And, indeed, Senators seem more satisfied with their plain title; Harry Reid doesn’t seem to insist on being called Leader Reid.

Tip O’Neill is the only other former Speaker in my recollection that had much of a public life after leaving office.  I honestly can’t recall whether he was addressed as Speaker O’Neill afterwards. At any rate, though, perhaps Gingrich is trying to get the same courtesy as we routinely offer executive branch officials, whom we routinely refer to by former titles.

I still refer to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, neither of whom were among my favorite occupants of the Oval Office, as President Carter and President Clinton and this custom is generally followed in the press as well.   While I’m less likely to do that when writing about other lesser former (or, indeed, current) officials, I’ll address retired flag officers, diplomats, and cabinet officers as General or Admiral or Ambassador or Mr. Secretary and, again, this seems to be the custom on TV news shows.

I mentioned Newt Gingrich’s article “Are You an Obama Winner? Or an Obama Loser?” at the tail end of Wednesday’s episode of OTB Radio (”Republican Party, RIP?“) but never got around to blogging it.  It is both a classic Frank Luntz-inspired use of obnoxious language to paint a dire picture of the Democrats — and thereby quite amusing — and yet a pretty decent argument against some of Obama’s policies.

The boldface Winners/Losers are very much the former.  Some examples.

Winners: The People Who Are Evading Responsibility for Chrysler’s Bankruptcy
Losers: Consumers Who Want to Buy Good American Cars

Winners:  Terrorists and Anti-Americanism Worldwide
Losers:  The New Neighbors of Terrorists and The American Tax-Payers

Winners:  Anyone the President Deems Deserving of Judicial “Empathy”
Losers:  Everyone Else

Winners:  Government Favored “Green Industries”
Losers:  Anyone Who Heats a Home, Drives a Car or Has a Job

The last is my favorite.  It’s hyperbolic to the point of absurdity.  But he follows this with an explanation that’s more reasonable:

I’m in favor of doing all we can to protect our environment, but I have a fundamental difference with Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House:  I believe in incentivizing Americans to produce the innovations that will protect our environment, not punishing Americans with taxes, regulation and litigation.

The Administration’s cap and trade legislation makes losers of the American people by imposing a $1 trillion-$2 trillion energy tax on an already struggling economy.  And the winners?  They’re the lobbyists for favored special interests and “green” industries who are already lining up in Washington to collect the spoils.

A little sketchy on the public policy prescription angle, to be sure, but the outline of a counter-argument.

Matt Yglesias justifiably has some fun with the news that twice divorced, thrice married Newt Gingrich is charging that “The Democratic Party has been the active instrument of breaking down traditional marriage.”  And one can’t blame him for being amused that twice divorced, thrice married Rudy Giuliani is championing traditional marriage as a cornerstone of a possible gubernatorial bid.

To be sure, divorce doesn’t carry the stigma it used to  and remarriage after divorce has much more tradition behind it than marrying someone of the same sex.  This stance doesn’t make them hypocrites or even insincere — merely horrendously bad spokesmen for the cause of traditional marriage.

I attended a breakfast this morning with Newt Gingrich as part of the rollout for the American Solutions Winning the Future effort.  As usual, he was an extremely forceful speaker and passionate strategist.

Newt Gingrich CPAC 2009 Bloggers Breakfast

He opened by saying that he is an optimist and that “President Obama is doing us a huge favor” by showing how “radically different” the Left’s ideas are from those of conservatives.

He noted, for example, two polls showing that between 77 percent and 80 percent of Americans oppose “giving one more penny to GM.”  He said that it was a foundational idea of the country, articulated by Captain John Smith to the aristocrats at Jamestown that “He who will not work will not eat” and that the current policies are trying to overturn that basic ethic.   The Declaration of Independence articulates “the right to pursue — an active, responsible verb — happiness,” not a guarantee of achieving it.

Gingrich dubbed the current bailout ethic “the Bush-Obama” plan and argued that conservatives must articulate an articulate vision.  Republicans’ job is not to simply be an opposition party but rather a “better solutions party.”

He believes the massive stimulus plan gives us an opportunity for a “clarifying national dialog.” To win, the Speaker argued, we need ideas that are both popular and that work. Given how many issues there are to fight about, then, it makes sense to pick ones where there’s already a strong reservoir of good will — “tripartisan” ideas that 80 percent of people listening to drive time radio would agree with.

Here’s his 12 point alternative plan:

1. Payroll Tax Stimulus.  With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.
2. Real Middle-Income Tax Relief. Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.
3. Reduce the Business Tax Rate.  Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.
4. Homeowner’s Assistance. Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.
5. Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget.  This begins with eliminating Congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.
6. No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud.  Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.
7. More American Energy Now. Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.
8. Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains. Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.
9. Protect the Rights of American Workers. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.
10. Replace Sarbanes-Oxley.  This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups.  Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.
11. Abolish the Death Tax. Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.
12. Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure. This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.

This, certainly, would have been a more compelling alternative than we had last November.

Former Texas congressman and minor Reagan administration official Mickey Edwards claims his old boss wouldn’t recognize the modern GOP were he alive today. He believes modern Republicans are simply reflexively anti-government with no agenda otherwise.

What would Reagan think of this? Wasn’t it he who warned that government is the problem?

[...]

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this:

“In the present crisis,” referring specifically to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Carter administration, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then went on to say: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work.” Government, he said, “must provide opportunity.” He was not rejecting government, he was calling — as Barack Obama did Tuesday — for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

But which Republicans are trying to do away with government?   Certainly, we didn’t see any attempt to dismantle any cabinet departments under the eight years of the Bush administration.  And the federal budget skyrocketed.   And we got the first installment of the almost-certainly-wasteful bailout boondoggle under Bush’s signature.

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Hmmm.  But I thought all Republicans cared about was making government smaller?  How do you do that while simultaneously undertaking a “blind and narrow pursuit of power”?!

And, um, Bush was twice elected president of the United States.   Promptly at the stroke of noon on January 20th, he turned over the keys to a successor from the opposition party who had pledged to undo many of Bush’s signature policies.    If that’s a “blind and narrow pursuit of power,” Republicans really suck at it.

Stacy McCain notes, too, that the faces of the party Edwards names are a disparate lot, indeed.

So, on the one hand you have two politicians and a political strategist — people directly involved in the politics and policy of the Republican Party — and on the other hand you have a radio star and an author. Between these two groups, a vast chasm exists. Much that President Bush did, with the advice of Rove, was adamantly opposed by Limbaugh and Coulter, and sometimes opposed by Gingrich as well.

Trying to lump these five very different characters into a single category is not an answer to the question, “What’s wrong with the GOP?” Rather, it is a response to the question, “Can you name five famous people hated by liberals?”

Quite.   Edwards continues:

One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.

Umm, no, Joe the Plumber was a desparate symbol grasped by a desperate, floundering campaign to demonstrate elitist Democrats who didn’t understand how their policies would impact the little man; he was never going to be put in charge of anything and turned out to be a rather ridiculous symbol to boot.

As for Goldwater and Reagan, they were outsiders railing against the system.  And Goldwater’s philosophy was soundly defeated at the polls by a lifelong machine politico.   Because Republicans had been in the ascendency since Reagan, they’ve been running on his fumes ever since.  (Yes, Bill Clinton won two elections but he did it as a “New Democrat” who promised that “the era of Big Government is over” and to “end welfare as we know it.”  Further, Newt Gingrich — another one of those conservative intellectuals with Big Ideas — led a resurgence in the party’s fortunes in Congress two years after Clinton’s election.)  It’s a good bet that the next Republican president will be a leader with a convincing message that speaks to the future.

Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich and editorial page editor of the Washington Times, has a new book out that, among other things, argues for reinstatement of the military draft.  Unlike liberals like Charlie Rangel or even centrist Phil Carter, he doesn’t do so on the basis of “fairness” or spreading the burden but rather on the sheer need for manpower.

John Hawkins interviews him. Here’s an excerpt:

Let me give you, to me, the biggest argument and that is the almost 4500 troops that have been killed in Iraq and more thousands than that that have been seriously injured. All of that came after we defeated the Republican Guard. Rumsfeld was correct that we only needed about 80,000 troops to knock off the Republican Guard. They were wrong to think that we could occupy that country with only those 80,000 or 100,000 troops. In Germany, after WW2, we flooded the zone. When the 80,000 elite forces finished their fighting, we needed to flood the zone with 300,000 or 400,000 ground occupying troops. Every village, every main intersection, every building guarded — the resistance would never have arisen. We would have saved 4000 lives if we’d had enough troops. We sacrificed lives.

[...]

This was a relatively small war. Now, what happens if the Jihadis overthrow the Pakistani government — a very unstable government. …They have nuclear weapons. If we want to stop the Jihadis from getting nuclear weapons, we’d have to go into Pakistan and try to stop that. We don’t have remotely the number of troops to do that.

Moreover, as the years unfold, according to the intelligence community — the day before I sent my manuscript to the printer — we’re likely to have resource wars over water and oil in the coming decades. China already has a lot of troops in Sudan guarding their oil fields right now.

So, I think it’s obvious that we can’t raise enough troops by the voluntary method. I’ve got a young son, a new 2nd Lieutenant in the Army — I’ve met his friends, …I’ve talked with the generals, and I know how wonderful the volunteer service is, but there just aren’t enough of them.

Blankley, with whom I’ve had conversations and genuinely like and respect, is almost certainly right that, if we need a radically larger force than we now have for some future contingency, we’re not going to be able to achieve it through the current system.  But a slightly plausible future emergency strikes me as a weak rationale for a definite present infringement on personal liberty and weakening of the morale of a military that he admits is superb.

Beyond that, the most manpower intensive missions are those like we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan: post-combat or combat-plus operations like COIN and SASO that require a large, continuing presence.  The scenarios he envisions would likely be met with massive aerial strikes, not infantrymen fighting door-to-door.

Photo: Sharing Miracles.

Jack Kemp has been diagnosed with cancer.

The office of Jack Kemp says the former housing secretary, congressman and Buffalo Bills quarterback has been diagnosed with cancer.   A statement issued in Buffalo, N.Y., says Kemp is undergoing tests to assess the origin of the disease and the best treatment.  The statement issued Wednesday did not disclose the type of cancer.

The 73-year-old Kemp says he will continue to serve as chairman of his Washington-based Kemp Partners consulting firm and will remain involved in charitable and political work.

After his football career, Kemp represented western New York for nine terms in Congress.  He ran unsuccessfully for president bid in 1988, then later was President George H.W. Bush’s housing secretary and ran for vice president as Bob Dole’s running mate.

Thanks to his sponsorship of the “Kemp-Roth” tax cuts during the first year of the Reagan Administration and other initiatives, he was an iconic figure in the fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party during my formative period.   Along with Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich, he was one of a handful of elected Republicans who could truly be thought of as wonks.

My best wishes for a recovery.

Kevin Drum seconds my concerns about conservative public intellectuals and offers two example where the Right isn’t offering useful policy alternatives.

Conservatives on Global Warming

Take global warming. Here’s the rough conservative reaction to it starting in the early 90s:

1. It doesn’t exist.
2. It exists but it isn’t manmade.
3. It’s manmade, but it’s too expensive to do anything about.

Even this is a generous assessment. A lot of conservatives are still stuck at #2, and sizeable chunk at #1. What this means is that they’re basically shut out of the conversation entirely. Which is too bad, because I’d actually be sort of interested to hear a conservative take on how to address global warming that accepts both its reality and the necessity of doing something about it. If we really are facing a global environmental catastrophe, what shape would a conservative solution take? I don’t think anyone knows.

On the first, I’d note that John McCain made quite a bit of noise about being a Teddy Roosevelt Republican and the need to do something about the problem.  He launched a set of policies he dubbed the “Lexington Initiative” and mentioned it quite frequently.  It was, however, not at all a centerpiece of his campaign.  Newt Gingrich has been touting the need to adopt a sensible strategy on global warming for nearly two years now and included some interesting market-based suggestions in his book A Contract with the Earth.  There was even a group blog called Terra Rossa, to which I was a very occasional contributor, that tried to suss out a center-right approach to energy and climate issues.

None of these initiatives took off.

In my own case, it’s just not a topic I’m particularly interested in at a wonkish level.  I’m pretty sure global warming is happening and that human technology is a contributor to it and even think we’ll need government — indeed, intergovernmental — solutions.   I just don’t have the scientific interest to get excited beyond the margins.

More generally, though, I think conservatives were skeptical of the motives of the environmental movement and this particular aspect of it and always viewed it as a backdoor attack on business and progress.  That, combined with a general conservative faith in free markets to solve problems and lack of same in government, explains the general dearth of useful discussion of the issue on right-of-center blogs.

Presumably, though, there are conservatives who take the issue seriously.  Presumably, too, their solutions involve market-based incentives.  What are they?  Who’s talking about these issues?  Why am I not seeing it on the center-right blogs?

Conservatives on Wage Inequality

Kevin continues:

Likewise, conservative reaction to wage stagnation and growing income inequality has gone down a similar road:

1. It doesn’t exist.
2. It exists, but consumption inequality is what really matters.
3. ???

Again, conservatives are dubious of motives here, as well as means.  The Left generally hasn’t been helpful here, framing the problem as one of a handful of rich people making obscene amounts of money (Why, the CEO of Acme Corporation makes 10 gazillion times what the guy who mops the floors in the executive washrooms makes.  It’s an outrage!) rather than figuring out to make people at the low end of the wage scale more competitive.

Second, most of us do in fact think absolute living standards matter much more than the distribution of income.   Bill Gates’ lifestyle is of little interest to me; that of me and my family is of great interest.   If our real purchasing power goes up a third and his triples, I’m pretty pleased.

That said, it’s important for a variety of reasons that there be a huge middle class rather than a division of haves and have-nots.   We’ve still got that — we live in bigger houses and have more stuff than our parents did at comparable points in their lives — but it’s taking two incomes, constantly changing jobs, and 24/7 connection to the office to do it.

What’s the solution to that?   The hackneyed consensus solution for decades has been “Education!”  I’m not sure that’s sustainable anymore as an answer, given the diminishing returns on college degrees.  If it takes an MBA to get a job flipping burgers, we’re not making much progress.

Just as surely, though, the answer isn’t some sort of salary cap on what executives can make — although I’m amenable to reforms on how executive compensation is set, given the incestuousness of corporate governance — or an arbitrary minimum wage that’s not related to a worker’s value to the firm.

I don’t have the answer.  What are the smart folks on the center-right who actually focus on these issues (one presumes there are in fact people who fit that description)offering up as solutions?

Attendees at a Family Research Council convention were buying up “Obama Waffles” like hotcakes before organizers decided they contained images that could be deemed racist and suspended sales.

Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed ”offensive material.” The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.

David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama’s policy positions but had not examined them closely.

Republican Party stalwarts Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were among speakers at the forum, which officials said drew 2,100 activists from 44 states.

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama’s politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.

On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for ”Open Border Fiesta Waffles” that says it can serve ”4 or more illegal aliens.” The recipe includes a tip: ”While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?”

This sort of thing is quite juvenile.  But racist?  Aside from the bit about illegal aliens, there’s not much ammunition for the charge.

Cartoon images, especially satirical ones, always exaggerate people’s physical characteristics.  That’s what makes them cartoons.  But the cartoon images of both Obamas depict them as attractive people.

The main distortion in Barack Obama’s drawing is to over-exaggerate his slightly oversized ears.  That’s not a racist stereotype; it’s making fun of him as an individual.   His nose is quite slim.  His lips are rather dark but not particularly large.  This is hardly Barack as Sambo.  No giant afro — even though there are old photos of him sporting one — no giant lips, no huge nose.

The Michelle Obama cartoon is even more flattering.  She’s wearing a rather odd expression on her face but she’s well coifed — in straightened hair — has a very thin nose, and thin, light-colored lips.   Indeed, she has no African American characteristics, stereotypical or otherwise, except brownish skin.

Barack Obama is running for president.  He’s black.  (That’s his self-proclaimed identity despite being half white and being raised almost entirely by his white mother and grandparents.)  Because of the former, he’s going to be the target of satire.  Because of the latter, the satirists are going to be vulnerable to charges of racism.

But let’s not be silly about it.  The images on the Obama Waffles box are quite benign.  Compare them, for example, to some of these:

Black Republicans get satired, too:

Okay, some of those are racist.   There’s a line that can’t be cross that, like the late Potter Stewart, I can’t quite define but I know it when I see it.  The Obama Waffles are safely on the other side.

I should note that they’re not particularly funny.  Good satire is based on a strong kernel of truth and Obama doesn’t have a reputation as a flip-flopper.  Why should he, after all:  He’s only taken public positions on most controversial issues in the last two years.    Stacy McCain is right:  This is just a recycled joke from 2004.

I’m sure that if Hillary had won the Democratic nomination, Whitlock and DeMoss would have marketed “Hillary Waffles” — and then would have been accused of promoting sexist stereotypes, no doubt.

More troubling, though, is that he’s almost certainly right about this:

Is it possible to caricature a black man without being accused of “racial stereotype”? (Note to editorial cartoonists: If Obama is elected, you’ll have to endure four years of this crap.)

Either that or we’ll figure out more clearly where the lines are.

Box art courtesy Samantha Chang at The Improper.

Newt Gingrich is counseling the GOP not to pick any more boring white guys:

With speculation mounting that John McCain may be close to choosing his running mate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday went public with his recommendations for the GOP vice presidential nominee.

First choice: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Runner-up: Alasaka Gov. Sarah Palin.

“What I’m afraid of is that if Sen. McCain picks one more relatively boring, normal, mainstream Republican white guy … he just makes the ticket seem boring compared to the level of energy and drive and excitement that (Democrat Barack) Obama has,” warned Gingrich, himself a silver-haired, middle-aged white politician out of central casting.

Well, Jindal has stated rather categorically that he’s not interested, which would leave Palin. Gingrich insists he’s not racist and that, indeed, some of his best friends are white:

“And this is not a comment on any of my many friends who are competent people,” said Gingrich, who helped the GOP capture Congressional majorities in the 1994 Republican Revolution. “It’s a comment on the objective reality that this fall, there is going to be a lot of energy surrounding the Obama campaign,” he said.

I never thought I’d see the day when being white and male would be considered a political liability in this country. When Esquire asked, “Can a White Man Still be Elected President?” I presumed they meant it tongue-in-cheek.

Jindal, ever the romantic, said this:

I think the most important thing in picking a vice president is not what state they come from, not what demographic they appeal to, but rather whether the senator thinks this person would be ready to be president if — God forbid — that situation arises. That’s probably the only thing that should matter.

That, plus being entertaining and, if possible, female and non-white.