2024 WAKE-UP CALL

 

[Published on Newsmax. 2024 Wakeup Call | Newsmax.com]

Republicans are euphoric about Biden’s slump in the polls.  They must realize that their path to victory on November 5, 2024, is not assured.

Biden’s latest poll numbers are terrible, but not historic. They pale in comparison with other Presidential low points: Nixon (23%), Carter (28%), Bush 41 (29%), Bush 43 (19%), Trump (29%). A large plurality of the electorate remains loyal even with everything falling apart.

The 2023 elections should be a wake-up call.

Once again, Republicans under performed.  They lost both houses of the Virginia Legislature.  The parental revolt went nowhere.  Conservative, pro-parent Schools Board candidates made little headway.  No change in Loudoun County, the epicenter of the parents’ revolt.  A pick-up of one in Prince William County. A complete shut-out in Fairfax County.

Loudoun County’s Leftist Commonwealth Attorney, Buta Biberaj, was defeated, but only by 300 votes. Amazing given everything that was exposed about her ideological reign.

Across America, voters ignored parent rights candidates.  This raises the question as to whether Youngkin’s 2021 narrow upset victory over Terry McAuliffe had more to do with the Democrat ignoring calls to step aside and letting two African-American women compete for the Governorship.

The lessons of 2020, 2022, and now 2023 need to be understood if Republicans have any chance of retaking the White House and Senate, while maintaining their razor-thin majority in the House.

Money is one factor.  Republicans were out-raised and outspent.  While some candidates can overcome the money deficit with tireless door-to-door campaigning and imaginative social media, money remains a major determiner of success.

The biggest issue is abortion. 

Fear drives votes.  When fear goes away so does the fervor.  The Dobbs Decision turned fear for the unborn turned into fear for those seeking an abortion.  Republican turnout faded as Democrat turnout soared. 

Something similar happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Legions of “Cold War” conservatives and “Captive Nations” activists declared victory and retired.  They won the war, but few remained to win the peace.  The Balkan wars and rise of Putin are just some of the results of those leaving the battle.

The same thing is happening in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

Justice Samuel Alito’s brilliant ruling should have ushered in conservative ascendancy. Unfortunately, pro-life activists bungled their messaging.  Even with a two-month head start from the leaked opinion, Republicans and their pro-life allies ceded the initiative to pro-abortion forces.

Fear became the message.  Leftist media and candidates declared Republicans would make the fictional totalitarian story of the “Handmaid’s Tale” a reality.

In Virginia, Democrats poured nearly $17 million on abortion-focused ads, warning that if Governor Youngkin won legislative majorities he would “ban” abortion. Republicans spent less than $2 million in counter ads.

Republicans undermined their cause.  Alito built a constitutional firewall around his decision.  He countered the dissenters by explicitly asserting Dobbs only applied to abortion not other rights. He established the threshold for reviewing future state abortion laws, “abortion is not a fundamental right, the lowest standard of review must apply to abortion laws, under which the laws must be sustained if they rationally relate to a legitimate state interest”. 

Unfortunately, Alito’s firewall vanished before the decision was officially released.  In his concurrence, Justice Clarance Thomas opened the door for challenging other rights granted under “substantive due process”, including contraception, gay marriage, and private sexual acts. 

Republicans in Congress introduced national abortion bills, completely misreading Alito’s decision.  Republican Governors and legislators pushed for severe abortion restrictions and hinted at pursuing Thomas’ concept of eradicating other “rights”.

This messaging disaster was a windfall for Democrats.  They will build on their 2022 and 2023 success by amplifying the “Handmaid’s Tale” theme in 2024.

Democrats are shaping the Republican apocalypse: Trump is a crook, Trump is dangerous, January 6 must be avenged, Republicans are racists, Republicans are coming for all your rights.

Republicans must fight back.  They will not get a perp walk for the Biden family, they will not get a Senate conviction if they impeach Alejandro Mayorkas or Joe Biden. 

Republicans need something huge to breakthrough the Left’s media wall.  While Fox News programs beat the competition one-on-one, the Left drowns it out 8-1 for total television news audience.  The Left’s margin among major print media is worse.  Biden corruption, crime stories, and economic woes are not even covered by most media outlets. 

Republicans confronting hate may trump Democrats promoting fear.  A few Democrats broke ranks on Rashida Tlaib’s pro-terrorist remarks.  Donors to some colleges and universities pulled their funds to protest religion-based assaults. 

Reacting to the Democrat’s reality is a recipe for failure.

Republicans must shape a resonant reality to gain victory in 2024. 

Republicans' Uncivil War

This was published in Politico

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/republicans-uncivil-war-89696.html

By Scot Faulkner & Jonathan Riehl

The Republican Party is at war with itself and it is losing. For every successful Republican governor, there are Republican state legislators who embrace personally oppressive and interventionist initiatives. For every reasonable Republican member of Congress there are more who embarrass. Every compelling soundbite from Republican candidates and pundits are overwhelmed by those that repel.

It wasn’t always this way. Republicans used to be known for ending wars not starting them. Eisenhower negotiated the end of the Korea War, Nixon ended the Vietnam War, and Reagan ended the Cold War. Republicans used to be known for competent management. Truman turned to Herbert Hoover to bring order to the chaos of the New Deal. Reagan established the Grace Commission to focus on government waste and reform, while launching the Baldrige Award to provide stellar examples of leadership, organizational effectiveness, and customer service to make America more competitive. In 1995, Republicans in Congress cleaned-up the scandal-ridden mess left by decades of institutionalized corruption.

Republicans were also once known for their emphasis on science, empiricism, and environmental responsibility. Teddy Roosevelt established parks and a national ethic for conservation. Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. Reagan led the way for private-public partnerships for historic preservation, notably the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and started planning the moon missions. Man landed on the Moon under Nixon and dominated space with shuttles under Reagan.

Americans rewarded these policies and actions. The Reagan Revolution dominated America in the 1980s with three consecutive landslides of 489, 525, and 426 electoral votes. There was talk of the Democrats’ demise. Then something went wrong for Republicans. Terribly wrong.

Politics is about prevailing. To prevail you have to garner enough support to overcome opposition and apathy. This requires actions and rhetoric that are reasonable and inspirational. Republicans have become terrible at both. Rather than listening to the American people, they are listening to their failed paid consultants and media echo chamber.

In the late 1980’s conservatives were pioneers in new media. The end of the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987 opened the door for radio and TV stations offering political points of view. Rush Limbaugh’s show premiered in 1988 and ushered in “conservative talk radio.” The Fox News Channel launched in 1996. MSNBC shifted to the left as a counter. On the other hand, William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” ended its 33-year reign in 1999. This shift created larger-than-life personalities that were more interested in self-promotion via hyperbole over rational discourse.

This tilt was a mixed blessing. “Firing Line” attracted approximately 32,000 viewers, but now Fox News dominates audience ratings, besting its nearest competition by 4-1 in viewers, while its personality driven shows blow-out their competitors by as much as 6-1. The conservative movement’s annual convocation, the Conservative Political Action Conference, went from a microscopic 200 attendees in the 1970’s to a major political event with over 10,000 participants being covered by all major news outlets.

While Buckley conservatives and Reagan Republicans attracted smaller real-time audiences, their ideas and discourse appealed to an ever-expanding universe across the political spectrum. On the other hand, the three million who regularly watch Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and the upwards of 15 million who listen to Limbaugh each week, are content with their solid, but stagnant universe. Republican office holders and candidates have tailored their messages and thinking to this reality, as Bill Maher says, it’s “life in the bubble.” Unfortunately, 15 million fanatical fans are dwarfed by the 130 million people who voted in 2012. Yet Republicans seem ambivalent to expanding their domain.

Another phenomenon fed this myopic Republican universe. Pro-government Democrats entered the Republican Party in the late 1970s. NeoCons were Hubert Humphrey/Scoop Jackson Cold War Democrats who fled the dovish accommodation policies of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter to rally to Reagan’s victory over rather than coexistence with anti-communism. Around this same time the TheoCons arrived. These were a mix of pro-life Democrats and Southern Democrat evangelical Christians who felt betrayed by Carter. They helped Carter get elected in 1976, only to have him promote government policies that felt like a war against religion and family values.

At first the Republican Party welcomed these refugees. The NeoCons were Cold War soul-mates, while the TheoCons aligned with the libertarians in fighting intrusive left-wing policies and regulations. However, when Reagan left office, these two groups were no longer content to be junior members of a diverse coalition. These pro-government and pro-interventionist groups saw a weak and malleable leader in George H.W. Bush. The death of powerful Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater left a power vacuum within the party. The Neos and Theos marched in and took over.

A new self-perpetuating political echo chamber was in place. The naturally exclusionary Neo and Theo factions drove out or silenced the broad Reagan coalition. They espoused big government ideas, a legacy of their Democratic Party roots, which alienated core Republican constituencies and trumpeted bible-based science and morality that drove off independents and blue collar Democrats.

Fox News and conservative talk radio were more than willing to be forums and advocates for this ascendant coalition. George W. Bush, and his political Svengali, Karl Rove, embraced the Neos and Theos to cobble together a narrow victory in 2000. In exchange, Bush was willing to fight their wars and move their policies, cheered on by the ersatz conservative echo chamber. The fact that these actions contradicted decades of Republican and conservative thought seemed irrelevant to all involved.

Bush 43 added his own straw to the political camel’s back by his willingness to allow cronyism to trump competence. By promoting amateurs to bungle the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and allowing the once noble Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to make an epic mess of Hurricane Katrina relief, Bush eviscerated the long-standing Republican reputation for management competency. The Republican echo chamber remained silent to this dismal record, violating another of their core principles – holding power accountable. A Republican world view, devoid of facts and critical thinking was taking hold. Like Thelma and Louise, Republican politicians and pundits alike grasped hands and floored the gas peddle into the abyss.

Except for some stellar governors, the Republican movement has been in free fall since late 2005. Like a cancer patient on remission, the tea party-fueled 2010 election blowout offered a fleeting and aberrant reversal of fortune. It remains to be seen if Republicans can heal themselves or whether the Democrats will over-reach clearing the way for a GOP comeback by default. Either way, America’s political landscape is denuded when rational thought and competence are edged out of the picture.

Scot Faulkner was Personnel Director for the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 and the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jonathan Riehl, J.D., Ph.D., is a communications consultant for political campaigns and national nonprofit organizations and a former speechwriter for Luntz Research, and an instructor in Communications Studies.

Where have all the REAL Conservatives Gone?

Published in History News Network

http://hnn.us/articles/where-have-all-real-conservatives-gone

By Scot Faulkner & Jonathan Riehl

Recent Republican and Conservative convocations have displayed one common thing. Those who pass for thinkers and leaders of these intertwined movements think they can keep doing the same things but achieve better results. With the notable except of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, most Republicans, after sifting through the debris of November 6, think they need new spokespeople and better packaging.

The only thing standing between Republicans and the great Reagan landslides of 1980 and 1984 is them. This is a sad commentary on once noble movements. Republican and Conservative “leaders” think 21st Century Americans are waiting to embrace 10th Century stands on social issues and science, and blustery vague pronouncements on government spending. Does any rational person think today’s Republicans and conservatives bear the slightest resemblance to those who rallied around Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan? Those two icons would not have finished in the top ten in the 2012 Iowa Caucus or South Carolina primary.

What built the success of late 20th Century Republicanism and conservatism was not just charismatic and articulate candidates. After World War II, the Foundation for Economic Education and its publication The Freeman (1946), the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (1953), and National Review (1955) formed a triad of scholarly forums where the great thinkers of 20th Century conservatism discussed issues. Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Heyak, Milton Friedman, James Burnham, and countless other great minds, applied the principles of the Enlightenment (1650-1789) and 19th Century liberalism to modern challenges. This three hundred year provenance of reason, critical thinking, scientific inquiry, and the nature of man and his relationship to the state formed a solid foundation for philosophical exploration. It is hard to go wrong using John Locke, Isaac Newton, Denis Diderot, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and America’s Founding Fathers, as touch stones for civil discourse on the role of government in society.

Unfortunately, today’s conservative touch stones are Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. The forums are soundbites on Fox News and Talk Radio. Today’s activists came of age under George W. Bush’s NeoCon global adventurism, theocratic government activism, and opportunistic federal spending. They view the libertarian/conservative fusionism of Goldwater/Reagan through this clouded lens. The Republican and conservative movements have become what Russell Kirk once stated he despised a party of “millenarian ideas of pseudo-religious character.”

Where are the REAL Conservatives? Who today mentions Enlightenment ideas, or bases their policies on this noble philosophical heritage? What the Right has now is a handful of pundits, and a disdain for those who possess any scholarly credential. The demise of the conservatives is not a matter of “messaging” as many on their side has claimed. It is a demise of intellect. The great sages of conservatism, from Edmund Burke to John Adams and contemporary figures like Buckley, spent their time reading not blogs, but books. Further, they spent time writing dissertations on them; unlike today’s “leaders” who wear their ignorance as badges of honor and electability.

Has conservative philosophy been lost? In the words of Kirk, citing T.S. Eliot, has “wisdom” been lost to a vapid neoconservative philosophy of “information”?

The exchange of ideas -- the cornerstone of philosophy and democracy -- depends upon differing sides exchanging ideas. It cannot consist of one side saying, for example, diplomacy means blowing up the United Nations building in New York, and the other wanting to cede America’s sovereign authority to an unaccountable and dysfunctional international body.

This shows only how the extremes have grown so far from the roots of Western political and philosophical thought. Yet there are a handful of us who still think these matters deserve consideration aside from partisan politics, electioneering, and fundraising.

We are in a different place now. Conservatism has been drawn into the blogosphere, the talk radio universe, and the cable news echo chambers in which each satisfies their own micro-targeted audiences. Even “live” forums like CPAC and the National Review Institute Summit are more forums for media soundbites than critical discourse. Conservatives, but also all Americans, need civil forums for the purpose of good governance and debate, deeply rooted in conservative principles and tempered by liberal ones, supporting openness, and nurturing common sense and common ground.

We write in that spirit and in the hope that both sides in our democracy reclaim their roots. Conservatives, in particular, must re-examine their evolution over the several centuries, and return to key philosophical principles, if they wish to remain relevant. Our view here is that a robust democracy only flourishes when both sides match each other. Today there is no balance, and we are hopeful that will change.

NLRB's Homework Assignment

One of the reasons Washington, DC is so dysfunctional is that no one does their homework. The latest case in point, literally and figuratively, is Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board.

On January 25, 2013, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that President Barack Obama's three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on January 4, 2012 were unconstitutional. These appointments raised eyebrows because: (1) they were made just one day after the expiration of Member Craig Becker's term. This left the five-seat Board with only two confirmed members - Mark Pearce and Brian Hayes. This meant the NLRB lacked a quorum to issue decisions; and (2) the circumstance that would allow a President to make “Recess Appointments” under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution did not exist, because the Congress was in Pro Forma Session, not in a formal recess.

The case centered on Noel Canning challenging a February 8, 2012 NLRB decision on the grounds that its quorum only existed with the presence of invalid recess appointments. The D.C. Court of Appeals unanimously agreed.

There are many potential ripple effects from this decision, including some expansive language clarifying the Constitution’s “recess appointment” clause, dramatically limiting the circumstances when a President was empowered to act. This case is definitely bound for the U.S. Supreme Court with the potential of an historic ruling on the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative Branches. [For more background on this issue read my earlier columns - http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/2011/03/congressional-adjournments-unintended.html  and http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/blog/category/guest-constitutional-scholar-essayists/scot-faulkner/  ]

Overshadowing the broader Constitutional issues is the immediate issue of the continued operation of the NLRB in light of the ruling. The Court’s decision only invalidated the NLRB’s decision and stated the grounds. The Court did not issue any injunction against further NLRB activity.

Here is where everyone flunks their homework assignment. Today’s talk shows had every side tying themselves up in knots over whether it is legal to stop the NLRB’s activities, and if so, how. Some said cutting the pay of the NLRB Commissioners was one way to do it, but they did not know if had ever been done. Others said cutting pay was unconstitutional.

If only all these over paid talking heads, or their underpaid research staff, spent ten minutes on Google or simply knew someone who remembers the George Dunlop – Jamie Whitten fight of 1987. In 1987, Rep. Jamie L. Whitten, (D-MS) was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. George Dunlop was Assistant Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Dunlop and Whitten had been antagonists since the days when Dunlop was Senator Jesse Helms' (R-NC) top agriculture staffer. Their battle came to a head in 1987 when Dunlop refused to attend one of Whitten’s hearings, opting to avoid another nasty and unproductive confrontation.

Whitten was not amused. The Chairman moved the FY 1988 USDA Appropriations bill through his subcommittee, the full Committee, and on to the House for consideration. It was soon discovered that FY1988 funding for Dunlop’s position had been omitted from the bill. Dunlop promptly met with Whitten, buried the hatchet, and funding for his position was added to the bill. Congress asserted its Constitutional power of the purse as a way of humbling a wayward Presidential appointee.

Thus, targeting positions through the Appropriations process is Constitutional. A little homework would have avoided all the “sturm und drang” on the talk shows. It also should serve as a guide for Republicans looking for ways to cut federal spending. There is nothing wrong with targeting specific programs, projects, positions, and offices to force the implementation of Inspector General and Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations. A much more rational way to deal with the debt instead of the meat axes unleashed through Sequestration.

Amazing where completing a homework assignment can lead.