Whither CPAC?

By Scot Faulkner & Jonathan Riehl

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) begins today.  Ironically attendance has skyrocketed while the quality and diversity of discussion has plummeted.  It is as if the movement that vanquished the Soviet Empire has adopted the Soviet Comintern model.

Diversity of opinion is prohibited. Tired old leaders are favored over new experimental thinkers. Ideological purity, not intellect, is the requirement for admission. Empty slogans are shouted to the uniform applause of rooms of people who strangely seem to all look the same. Down with Obama! Up with the Tea Party! Down with the climate change hoax! All hail Limbaugh! Down with the lies of the Lame Stream Media!

CPAC was formed in 1973 as a forum for geographically and ideologically diverse conservatives to exchange ideas, and build an ever expanding network of activists to eventually prevail on the major issues of the late-20th Century. Members of Congress, and their staff, attended to report on legislative ideas at the national level while learning about successful legislative ideas at the state level. Networking turned new ideas and energy into creative ways to govern and to shape dialogue on emerging issues.

Cold warriors, libertarians, values voters, economic conservatives, and traditionalists heard the icons of their movement as well as the up & coming leaders. The conservative movement was born in the Enlightenment, forged during the American and Industrial Revolutions, and launched as a counter balance to an ever expanding federal government and the external threat of Communism. CPAC was designed to grow this movement through learning and applying new ideas, and attracting new allies, to core principles. This was an expanding intellectual universe and it was thrilling to attend.

The CPAC that gave traction to the Reagan Revolution is long gone. Conservative organizers seem to now be taking meeting tips from the Communist Chinese Party Congress on how to further stifle innovation, democratic exchange of ideas, and how to alienate a nation. TheoCons, NeoCons, and Tea Partiers are using CPAC to perfect ways to build ever smaller tents for their movement. The true conservative legacy is in dire peril.

Of course the Chinese, and the Soviets before them, didn’t care much for debate anyway; they were after all single-party regimes. We would point out to the organizers of CPAC that people have a rather clear historical tendency to reject this kind of governance. Stifling debate in favor of ideology does not shore up a movement. It destroys it. The Soviets learned this the hard way in 1989; we hope the Chinese will learn a similar lesson sometime soon.

The analogy to the Communist system goes further. What we have been witnessing in the GOP ranks over the last several election cycles even uses the old Soviet term: “Purge.” This is what Stalin did after Trotsky; what Khrushchev did after Stalin; what Mao did during his Cultural Revolution; and what Deng did after Mao.

CPAC’s ongoing meltdown was highlighted again with the snubbing of Governor Chris Christie, probably the most popular Republican office holder in the country today. This decision is illogical in the extreme to anyone not sufficiently indoctrinated. A group of gay Republicans, GOProud, has also been shut out, making a mockery of the noble conservative tradition of personal freedom. This is proof positive that the movement’s hard core is more interested in biblically inspired government intervention than defending individual rights. Just like the old Central Committee, they are so insular that their eventual crash will come as a complete shock.

As a coda, we recall that in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 convention speech, he stressed that conservatism values proven ways, "not because they are old, but because they are true." CPAC is turning its back on traditions dating back to the Enlightenment where truth is not announced, but arrived at through an evolutionary process of debate and exchange. The current rejection of empiricism in science mirrors the closing of its doors to those with differing ways to apply conservative principles. We doubt Barry Goldwater would be invited to CPAC today, or would want to go even if he were.

It is a sad day for those of us who have been part of the conservative movement, and no less so for those who study it and respect its legacy even if disagreeing with its favored policies at times.

Scot Faulkner attended twenty-one CPACs and spoke at three of them. He was 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 former speechwriter for Luntz Research, and 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.

Pat McCrory's College Comments Betray Conservative Principles

By Jonathan Rielh & Scot Faulkner

Published in http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/01/30/2644321/pat-mccrorys-college-comments.html

Gov. Pat McCrory has made news with his recent comments on conservative talk radio, attacking liberal arts education in general and UNC-Chapel Hill in particular. In doing this, he has lit the fires of progressive academics and riled up the Fox News tea party base. With the governor’s star rising in the GOP, his comments no doubt were strategic.

They also represent a total betrayal of conservative principle.

The meltdown of the conservative movement in recent years has many causes, including an addiction to the media echo chambers of the blogosphere, talk radio and Fox News. Anti-intellectualism is another part of this new, destructive ideology. A spokesperson for this anti-intellectualism was, of course, Sarah Palin, who famously could not identify what newspapers she read. To be conservative means not reading newspapers?

Not so. As a political philosophy, conservatism is grounded in intellectual thought and deliberation. The governor’s statements about education are therefore not only counterproductive but also anti-conservative.

Ironically, the notion of colleges and universities as factories for job-performance smacks much more of leftist, socialist societies where individuals were not valued for their knowledge or perception but for their ability to perform tasks. As a philosophy, conservatism has in fact battled this idea for hundreds of years. The governor is apparently not familiar with this history. Perhaps his education was not liberal enough.

Is it not practical, in preparation for entering the workforce, to have read deeply in philosophy, cultural history, politics and literature? Those 3 a.m. debates with college roommates about these ideas produce individuals better able to obtain rewarding positions in the ever-more competitive global marketplace.

The point of a liberal arts education is to make those debates possible, to give young students a broad-based knowledge that allows them to think about matters widely and deeply, to form their own opinions and find their place in society. Only an environment that teaches the value of knowledge, not just “information,” will allow them to decide what path they wish to take and what identity to choose: liberal or conservative. Choices cannot be made without perspective.

We are proof positive. We benefited from superb liberal arts educations, one at the University of Virginia, the other at Lawrence University. In both cases, we were able to explore wide-ranging topics and were required to read deeply in topics we knew little about and have little involvement with now (from geology to astronomy). We were taught to think about matters that had little to do with the careers we would map for ourselves and to consider ourselves better for it. We also would like to think we have given back, as educators, political activists and private sector businesspeople.

We find ourselves voting for different parties, but we share a deep admiration for the conservative movement and its heritage. Not just in recent times, when intellectuals like William F. Buckley Jr. forged the coalition that produced a revolution under Ronald Reagan, but in history dating to our founders Madison, Adams and Jefferson, and tracking from there to Burke, Montesquieu and even Plato.

Would the governor have students in North Carolina schools reading technical manuals rather than these thinkers, not to mention contrarians from schools of Marxism and postmodern deconstructionists? Young conservatives need to understand the ideas they might oppose.

Turning colleges into trade schools is counterproductive as well as anti-conservative. If there is to be a revival of conservatism, which is today moribund at best, it will happen only if an educated new generation can converse with its opponents in well-informed terms.

Technocratic specialization is the enemy of democracy, which asks us to have a wide lens – a “liberal” view not sequestered within our own limited perspectives. Conservatism, properly understood, asks us to engage, not disengage.

That is the purpose of a liberal education.

Sadly, our hypermediated age leads us to place too much attention on superficial labels. Identities are formed by talking points, not principle. Leaders on the left and the right flock to media outlets whose viewers already agree with 99 percent of the “news” they are delivered. The governor is playing to that crowd.

Conservatism is grounded in a very different heritage. Democracy was founded on the principles of rhetoric – reasoned debate and exchange among citizens. This cannot occur if we eliminate liberal arts education in our public schools.

North Carolina has a proud history of supporting broad-based liberal arts education, thanks in large part to the leadership of a popular Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, who eschewed partisan politics in favor of consensus. Hunt understood that economic growth depends upon broad education, and the job growth in the Triangle is testament to this strategy.

Conservatism is in freefall. We have no successors to William F. Buckley Jr. in our midst. We will be able to nurture new conservative thinkers only if we teach our young people about the intellectual legacy that produced intellectual leaders like him.

Conservative Chaos Theory

This was published in Politico

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/a-vacuum-of-conservative-leadership-85961.html?hp=r19

By Scot Faulkner & Jonathan Riehl

The continuing crisis in Washington illustrates many things: A dysfunctional, wholly unproductive Congress, a total lack of long-term thinking or leadership from either party, and nonstop partisan bickering. Aside from these systemic problems the past few weeks also illustrate the complete and utter breakdown of conservatism as a force in politics. Republicans may complain of an intransigent President. But President Obama, at least, has an agenda. The Republicans have none. There is no conservative vision, no conservative agenda, no conservative movement.

Others have argued that an emerging problem on the right is the lack of any conservative identity aside from disliking, disparaging, or despising the President and his agenda. Years of opposing instead of proposing has put more nails in the coffin of responsible conservatism. The strategic defeats of 2012 laid bare the vacuum of conservative leadership. The Christmas crisis draws that vacuum into stark relief.

Some may agree, along with the Senate Majority Leader, that the only job of current Republican legislators is to stop anything Obama wants to do. Earlier conservative Congresses have seen it as their primary task to throw sands in the gears of liberal administrations. The problem is that this Republican Congress is not backed by any intellectual or policy foundation that would replace that which they oppose. These Republicans, unlike earlier movement conservatives, are, to borrow a phrase, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

A favorite film of ours, David Lean’s masterpiece “Lawrence of Arabia,” offers some valuable lessons, providing a cautionary tale on the difference between warfare and governing. In the movie, T.E. Lawrence and his Bedouin army become experts at blowing up trains, but fall into utter chaos when they try to govern Damascus. Current conservatives hone their demolition skills, while avoiding governing skills. Recently, Sean Hannity admonished Republicans on his radio show to, “forget about governing – focus on fighting”. Worse yet, Republicans are now taking a two week recess instead of building their public case for an alternative approach to budgeting and governing. Instead of oversight hearing exposing government waste and proposing management reforms, they are waiting to pounce on the President’s inaugural address, State of the Union speech, and official budget submission. The Republican game book of defensive guerilla tactics is a recipe for marginalization.

Conservatives love to heap praise on Ronald Reagan, though their mythologizing often masks the hard fought political battles and compromise which led to his election. Movement conservatives devoted years preparing for that election, preparation that included a conservative cohort in Congress wrecking President Carter’s trains and tearing-up his rail lines on a daily basis. Our parliamentary warfare was designed for a purpose – every bill defeated was one less law we would have to reverse once Reagan was President.

The difference between 1978-1980 and the current warfare is that that earlier generation had a core understanding of what was to come. Reagan and the conservative movement that propelled him had a clear vision of what was needed to revive America, defeat communism, and reform government. Reagan was able to articulate that vision in a way that resonated with a majority of the nation not because he had a handful of focus-grouped magic phrases, but because his rhetoric conveyed an actual political and cultural vision grounded in a concrete conservative philosophy.

The current Republican “leadership” offers no vision, because it is no longer grounded in the conservative tradition. Their only vision is further disruption. There is nothing conservative about this. In fact, it smacks more of leftist anarchy. Great conservative thinkers like Friedrich A. Hayek, for example, were championed by Reagan and Thatcher precisely because they sought to create order out of chaos.

The current Republican leaders have indeed become experts at blowing up trains. Both sides display skill at stopping things and ratcheting up the rhetoric in their favored media echo chambers. But the real problem is that both sides have lost the ability to govern. These Republicans (we hesitate to even refer to them as conservatives) have no plan or vision for bringing order out of the chaos they continue to foment. Common ground has vanished. Worse, it is viewed as the domain of the weak.

Wreaking havoc with your opponents is necessary when you are preparing the way for political victory and a fundamental change. However, what if there is no plan after battlefield victory? Republicans have forgotten the lessons of their own conservative movement’s history, which waged tactical political warfare only in the service of a positive political vision, not for warfare’s sake alone, and not for the vilification of an enemy.


Madness

To understand the current deadlock on the Fiscal Cliff one should read Barbara Tuchman’s masterpiece “The Guns of August”.

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning-Outbreak/dp/0345476093

In “The Guns of August” Tuchman vividly describes how institutionalized bias and determinism led to an avoidable world war and unnecessary carnage.  Her work offers lessons for the current political combatants, who are spending their time digging deeper trenches rather than finding common ground.

The Republican world view –

Republicans assumed that they would be welcoming the incoming Romney Administration and a new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.  From this vantage point spending and taxes would be cut and entitlements would be reformed.  How they were going to get past January 1, 2013 to the promised land of the Romney era on January 20, 2013 was never discussed.  How the voters were supposed to support a new Republican era based upon no details was also left off the table.  What details there were included a tepid embrace of the “Ryan Plan”, cherry picking of the Bowles Simpson plan, some partisan swipes at Public Broadcasting, an overall sense that the current tax code was just fine as is, and an unwavering belief that there is not one penny of waste or inefficiency in the Defense Department.

Was it possible that Congressional Republicans hoped that anti-Obama barrages from the movie “2016”, Fox News, and conservative talk radio would get them over the finish line?  How would they have sorted things out had victory been theirs? 

The Democratic world view –

Democrats assumed that Obama would win by a landslide allowing them to retake the House of Representatives and surge to 60+ seats in the Senate.  They assumed Republicans would be so shell-shocked by their overwhelming defeat that there would be no effective opposition to whatever the Democrats wanted to do.  The Democrats firmly believe that the main problem with the federal government is that it does not have enough money.  They also believe that the tax code’s main deficiency is that it does not take enough money from people making over $250,000.  Coupled with this is a fundamental orthodoxy that the federal government is a well oiled efficient machine that only wastes money in the Defense Department, that the fiscal cliff is only real when discussing revenue, and that the economic and moral future of America depends on expanding government’s role.

Just like the English, French, Germans, and Russians in the years leading to World War I, the opposing political forces in Washington, DC, assume their facts are facts no matter the real facts. They also assume that the tactics they have used over the previous decades are sufficient to help them prevail in changing circumstances.  The devastation of August 1914 proved the madness of the political and military leadership among the great powers.  The gridlock and impending chaos of December 2012 is now proving the undoing of the political parties and eliminating the last shred of trust Americans hold for their elected officials. 

The Mayan Calendar predicts the end of their 13^th b'ak'tun on December 21, 2012.  America’s fiscal cliff calendar runs out on midnight December 31, 2012.  Only time will tell which date denotes the end of an era.

The Republican Party Needs a Paradigm Shift

[Guest Contributor - Donald Mutersbaugh]

The Republican Party needs a paradigm shift. The Party has become fossilized by preferring the familiar to the unfamiliar, the proven to the unproven, and not shifting its election strategy to the changing times and culture. It's as if the Republican Party exists within a bubble that totally ignores the storm outside. I do not believe that tweaking and in-flight modifications are going to work; a major overhaul needs to be done.

One of the first things that has to be decided is whether the Republican Party is to continue to be a Party of set principles and attitudes or whether it should become a living party that adapts to the changing circumstances and the culture of the times. Inherent in this decision is whether the Republican Party wants to have a firm stand on a plethora of issues that will define it as a Party of unbending conservative, rich, white, males [perception]; or, whether it wants to stand a chance of winning any future elections. A complete rethinking of many issues is necessary, including how to attract people of color – African-Americans and Latinos. A new attitude needs to be developed concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters. The other major block of voters, the female population, needs to be invited back into the Party with a more realistic outlook on the issues that are of primary concern to them – and not the Republican establishment.

Out of this will come another set of hurdles that will need to be addressed; these are all centered on perception versus reality. Allowing the mainstream media and others to define what the Republican candidate and agenda are of course presents a problem from day one. Very little progress will be made winning the electorate as long as the message is not getting through the way the Party and candidate wish it to. The voter perception of what the candidate and Party platform stand for when the lever is pulled will be based on that frame of reference – and not necessarily the reality of what is really being presented. A paradigm change is inevitable.

The Republican Party needs to establish an alternative to the mainstream media. It is of primary importance that a communications plan be developed which bypasses the mainstream media and goes directly to the public. The Party has to make a decision that the mainstream media will attack conservatives regardless and that they should basically ignore them and work around them anyway possible to get the message directly to the people. The Republican Party also needs to get into a more sophisticated electronics game communicating a soft message about the Party and what it's doing to make for a better America (e-mails, blogging and tweeting, Facebook). Mental inertia has to be overcome when trying to convince voters that there is a new platform in place so that the word “Republican” doesn't evoke the negative image that the word apparently has today.

Another major decision that might need to be made: delegate more activities and finances to the state and local parties. The Republican Party needs to strengthen its grass roots organizational structure. This is especially important to a strategy of bypassing the mainstream media. One way to help in this effort at the national level might be to form several rapid response teams which could be deployed quickly to key states. These units, consisting of 10 to 15 people who are trained in a variety of political activities, should be specialists and professional organizers. These rapid response teams could be deployed to assist each of the statewide organized Republican committees.

Currently, it is estimated that the United States has approximately 47% of the people on some form of government entitlement. I personally believe that the number is greater, maybe even more than 50%. This becomes a very large problem because we are moving into a world in which there are more takers than givers. It appears that we have a government of: “Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy): a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.” [http://www.urbandictionary.com]. On first blush this may seem to be humorous; but in reality, it is quite scary.

The revolution and the paradigm change are necessary; the question is how to resolve the crisis and facilitate a paradigm change without completely destroying the Republican Party. There will have to be some deep soul-searching and negotiation to assimilate all ideologies while differentiating what the Republican Party really stands for within the context of the current culture. Unfortunately, it might take a generation to implement the changes necessary to bring the Republican Party back into parity with the majority of the voters. Something has to be done or the Republican Party needs to resign itself to continual losses in the political arena. While there might be parochial gains within state legislatures, governorships, and occasionally a U. S. House of Representatives or U. S. Senate seat, competing at the national level for the position of President of the United States will be difficult at best, and perhaps, futile in the long run.

________________________________________________________

Donald G. Mutersbaugh, Sr. earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland and his Master of Business Administration degree from Mary Washington College. He is the former Associate Administrator of Information Resources for the U.S House of Representatives.

Fiscal Flim Flam

The following appeared in the Washington Examiner

http://washingtonexaminer.com/congress-white-house-budget-trickery-now-backfiring/article/2514965

The only way the real fiscal cliff can be addressed is for everyone in Washington, D.C., to stop talking about the fake one. Here's the reality: The bomb is about to explode in the hands of its own maker. There is no disaster looming, only one created by the same Congress and the same president who are now voicing dire warnings about sequestration. The coming demise of federal programs is a manufactured problem, designed to meet the partisan needs of each side of the current debate.

Congress and the White House assert that $1.2 trillion must be cut from the federal budget over the next 10 years. This multiyear effort commences on Jan. 1, 2013, with $50 billion in cuts from the Defense Department and $70 billion from discretionary domestic programs. Everyone in Washington, D.C., including the pundits, has been creating increasingly apocalyptic visions of what will happen should these cuts occur.

It never had to be this way. There is currently $2 trillion in unexpended balances arrayed throughout the federal government for the current fiscal year. According to both the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, $687 billion of these balances are completely unobligated.

Again, in 2012, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, and the 73 department and agency inspector general offices identified more than $650 billion in annual, ongoing waste. The vast majority of these findings, and the actions recommended to address them, have never been acted upon by either the executive or legislative branches.

Finally, there's the federal government's legendary and perpetually unaddressed inefficiency. Large private corporations, like Walmart, have at most five layers of management between their front line service personnel and top executives. The federal government has upwards of 23 layers.

Given these three facts, why are our political leaders saying that federal spending cannot be cut, and that they must have more of our earnings and wealth to make ends meet?

The sequestration cuts are a bogeyman, specifically designed to inflict as much damage as possible on American citizens. For example, 53 percent of the sequestration cuts within the Department of Education are within the Elementary & Secondary Education Act programs -- funds sent to states to supplement the salaries and hiring of teachers. The sequestration cuts 60.9 percent of these funds. That is why so many politicians and pundits are predicting massive teacher layoffs. Meanwhile, the sequestration targets only 4 percent of the Department of Education's headquarters budget. The bureaucrats wouldn't be missed, but they are safe. The teachers will be missed, and they are ground zero for cuts.

What should have been a serious management exercise has become a race to see who can paint the worst scenario should budget talks fail. Democrats cite the collapse of social services and education, while Republicans predict massive layoffs of defense contractors and the hollowing out of our military. Both sides predict chaos in the economy leading to a second recession.

Democrats won the election, so they are now in the best position to use this crisis that both parties manufactured. They are setting off a stampede for more tax revenue that Congress will probably just spend away anyway. Had Republicans won, they would probably be calling for ideologically focused spending cuts (like public broadcasting) to prevent the ruin of the military.

Congress and the White House designed the sequestration to wreak destruction on government services and the economy as a way to create a false sense of urgency for a substantive budget solution. Their plan, if it was a plan, has backfired.

Conservatives at a crossroads: Harold Hill vs. William F. Buckley

Published in Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84101.html
By: Scot Faulkner and Jonathan Riehl


The GOP’s trouncing has triggered a wave of “soul searching” typical in its post-election timing, but more significant in its impact for our politics and for the conservative movement — if there is one. We think not. The conservative crisis of 2012 is not just a crisis of messaging; it is a crisis of conscience.


The cast of characters now presenting themselves as conservative leaders bear nothing in common with the intellectual cadre that brought the movement to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. For months we watched in horror as a parade of Harold Hill hucksters mouthed empty tea party phraseology, followed the advice of Dick Morris and Karl Rove, and parroted Frank Luntz’s magic words — all the while selling a boy’s band that simply does not exist. Their polls, their news, their understanding of America, are a façade. The people of River City — the conservative base — were willingly sold a bill of goods. They got their reality check on Nov. 6.

Like the traveling salesman from “The Music Man,” the right’s media echo chamber has captivated the townsfolk. It is full of rapid-fire talkers, fearless pugilists and moralistic re-enforcers. To be clear, media access and its persuasive power have always been central to the conservative cause. But how far we have come from the days when William F. Buckley, Jr. hosted a PBS program called “Firing Line,” where conservatives of all stripes, liberal intellectuals and policymakers debated issues in depth. Today the conservative base prefers the endless recitation of things it already believes.

In a larger sense, the problem extends far beyond the “dumbing down” of a noble policy movement into cartoonish diatribes mouthed by one-dimensional personalities. It’s not about bad messaging. It’s the lack of any coherent framework or foundation for that message.

The movement, once a coalition of cold warriors, traditionalists and free marketeers, no longer exists. Buckley did not preach an ideology; he helped maintain a fusion of different factions. The key players, and candidates, came from very different camps but were united in a fundamental understanding of the limited role of government and the power of the individual. These groups often disagreed. But their differences were worked out through reasoned debate and exchange, guided by a 300-year provenance dating to John Locke and earlier.

What we see today, in contrast, is a dialogue of empty sets of talking points with no intellectual content or critical thinking to back them up — epitomized by Mitt Romney’s foundationless candidacy that pandered to a shrinking and ideologically extreme base. But conservatism, as it was understood by those who built the movement in the postwar years, was never an ideology. The great conservative philosopher Russell Kirk wrote in the early days that properly understood conservatism is not an ideology, but rather “a mood.”

Ideology and ideologues were imported into the party in recent years, especially by extreme theocratic types whose embrace of an intrusive Big Government is in fact antithetical to Republicanism and conservatism. Others, including the neoconservatives, embrace expanding government for their adventurist war agenda abroad and anti-libertarian activism at home.

A different conservative intellectual legacy extends back to Edmund Burke and beyond, a legacy emphasizing the long view over the short one, which thrived not on political marching orders but on debate and diversity. It is a tradition that dates to the dawn of Western civilization and the invention of democracy grounded in the practice of rhetoric. The modern conservative media machine, in its vapid self-congratulation, is a total negation of this tradition. While a few survivors still try nobly to maintain the real conservative tradition, their voices are drowned out by those who want to blame the media, demographics, Obama flimflams, and anything else — except themselves.

The two authors here come from different generations and our own politics are not in line with each other all of the time. Still, we have both studied conservatism, and share an admiration for the movement built over the past 60 years. We are saddened to observe what has become of its legacy — and its cast of pretenders to the throne. If you are a Republican, it is a sad day for your party and the movement that built it. If you are a believer in American democracy, it is a sad day for the country.

Scot Faulkner was Director of Personnel for Reagan-Bush 1980 and Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Newt Gingrich. Jonathan Riehl, J.D., Ph.D., is a communications consultant for political campaigns and national nonprofit organizations.

What were they thinking?

Elephants supposed to “never forget”, but do they ever learn? They didn’t learn much from being defeated in 2008 [see http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/2008/11/perdition.html  ]


The 2012 elections provide a new cornucopia of lessons learned. Only time will tell if any of them sink in. Here are just a few of them…

Getting out the Vote
Project ORCA was a dismal failure. It was supposed to either supplement or supplant local Republican GOTV efforts. It did neither. Poorly trained and clueless ORCA workers siphoned resources away from real voter efforts. Worse – ORCA was an ill-conceived band-aid for the decades-long decline of Republican precinct capabilities.

Democrats figured out years ago that early voting would be a boon to their cause. Republican leaders hung onto getting out their vote on Election Day – ceding up to thirty days of voting opportunities to the Democrats. Worse – if Republican rhetoric is to be believed – that their supporters work for a living and are family focused – then why assume that these busy working people will either get up early to stand in long voter lines before going to work, or delay being with their families after work to stand in long voter lines? OCRA not only shrunk GOP voting efforts to one day – it shrunk it to the first and last hours of the voting day. No wonder 3 million less Republicans voted in 2012 than 2008.

Voter Fraud
There is always some voter fraud. This happens in the original voter registration or in counting the votes. Republicans chose to ignore these facts to focus on possible irregularities during actual voting. Countless days and weeks of activism, along with mountains of political capital, was spent on solving the one part of the process that worked. Imagine if all this Republican effort was spent on early voting. It also gave the Main Stream Media (MSM) an easy and ongoing target to pummel the GOP.

War on Women/Gays/Science/Privacy
No matter how much conservative talk radio and Fox News denies it, there are large swaths of Republican activists and elected officials, especially at the state level, who yearn for the 10th Century over the 21st. It is a fundamental contradiction to real conservatism and Republicanism to selectively promote unwarranted and aggressive government intervention into personal lives. You cannot assert there is either no or only a limited role for government in society and then create a huge “BUT” flashing in neon lights for imposing narrow theocratic-based dogma.

Originally, faith-based activists within the conservative and Republican movements stood for getting liberal dogma out of schools, homes, and churches. Sometime in the late 1980s things flipped around to replacing left-wing onerous government interventions with right wing ones. Outbursts by Republican Senate candidates were not isolated incidents. They were a mere sampling of a tragically obtuse thread of anti-intellectual totalitarianism that undermines both the movement and the party.

It is long overdue for Republican and conservative leaders to have their own “Sister Souljah” moment with fanatical theocrats. This moment is named for the pivotal Bill Clinton speech where he sealed-off racial hatred in rap music from mainstream public discourse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment

Bush Legacy
The Bush dynasty diverted the conservative movement and the Republican Party into an agnostic pandering abyss. [See my earlier post http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/2012/06/wrong-track.html  ]

Bush 41 purged conservatives from the Executive branch, raised taxes, expanded government, bungled the end of the Cold War, bungled Iraq, and undermined everything Reagan stood for. Why revere him?

Bush 43 turned conservativism and Republicanism into micro-targeted pandering mush. He bungled Afghanistan, launched a totally unnecessary and dilatory war in Iraq, reduced America’s influence in the rest of the world to fixate on Iraq, undermined civil liberties, and expanded government. Why revere him?

Conservatives and Republicans can and should revere true the leaders of our movement as timeless role models – Presidents Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Reagan; intellectual leaders Buckley, Goldwater, and countless other thinkers ranging back to the Enlightenment. None were perfect, and true independent thought requires critically assessing their legacies, but their writings, speeches, and actions will always remain the touch stones from which 21st Century conservatives and Republicans get their bearings.

A few words about Romney

Romney could have won. His flawed campaign was no where near the fool’s errand of McCain 2008. However, there were numerous opportunities lost and self-inflicted wounds that sank him.

No theme – the conventional wisdom was that 2012 had to be about Obama or Romney would lose. How many think 1980 was only about Carter? Americans in 2012 felt powerless. They were being harmed by an out of control economy. They feared a world spinning out of control. They no longer trusted an unaccountable government. Romney could have spoken to these issues, but didn’t.

Bain – What the federal government needs most are Bain-like teams tearing apart, rethinking, and restructuring every agency and program. Romney could have proudly asserted his value proposition of committing to this long overdue weeding of the federal garden. Instead, he ran from Bain and its positive impacts, ceding the field for his opponents to demonize his strongest credential. When pressed on cutting federal programs Romney opted for going after Big Bird instead of using the question to discuss $650 billion in annually documented waste and how his management background could do something real.

Rope a dope – Why did Romney allow Obama to carpet bomb him from April through August? This period of negative ads created a deficit that was almost insurmountable. Why didn’t Romney run ads about his saving the Olympic movement during the Olympics? Why did he make this historic accomplishment a pre-primetime throw-away at the National Convention? Why did it take a pre-convention Fox news interview at his home to finally show he was a normal human? It is sad that highly intelligent and successful Republican business people (Steve Forbes, Pete DuPont, and now Mitt Romney) cannot connect with the party of business. They should all go back and read about how successful utility tycoon Wendell Willkie became a folk hero during his presidential run in 1940.

Class warfare – Republicans chided Obama and the Democrats for fermenting class warfare. Why oh why then did Romney spew his own version of class warfare? “47%” was a gift that kept on giving to the MSM and the Democrats. First, who in their right mind today, thinks that in this world of smart phones anything they do or say outside of their own home will not be documented and shared if it is deemed stupid enough? The “47%” comment is the antithesis of the type of empowering and inclusive conservatism espoused by the late Rep. Jack Kemp. His world view was that everyone can and will become a conservative once they realize how the free market is in their best interest. This positive message has been drowned out by vapid negativity among the so-called conservative and Republican leaders.

2016 & Beyond
There remains a small hope that (1) Obama and the Democrats will overplay their hand, creating backlashes and opportunities, and (2) that the next generation of Republican leaders – Jindal, Christie, Martinez, Fallin, Haley, Rubio, and others at all levels of government, learn from the past while shaping the future.

Breaking Bad – Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff

A shorter verison of this column appeared in the Washington Examiner

http://washingtonexaminer.com/breaking-bad-avoiding-the-fiscal-cliff/article/2512227

The impending “fiscal cliff” is the most thoroughly predicted disaster since the end of the Mayan Calendar. The problem is no one is willing to design and implement a real solution that has any chance of bipartisan support.

The cycle of dysfunction has existed for decades. The Federal Budget Act of 1974 created what was supposed to be a rational process for planning, approving, and implementing government spending. It quickly became an empty paper exercise as appropriations ignored the Budget Resolutions. When the difference became embarrassingly stark, the Senate simply gave up on passing one at all. Additional budget reform legislation was passed and immediately ignored. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, Budget Reconciliation, and the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), all gather dust. Annual budget deals, and continuing resolutions, put off the day of reckoning. Reagan’s 1982 budget deal resulted in more revenue and no spending cuts.

Administrations annually create a new budget. Hidden inside the hundreds of pages is the “Current Services Budget”, or “Baseline”. This outlines how much it costs to maintain existing services at current levels. It factors in various cost drivers - cost of living increases, escalation clauses in contracts, etc. Budget battles are fought over the increase above current service levels. When officials propose budget cuts they are talking about cutting the increase, not cutting current service funding levels. Therefore, there is a built in “ratchet effect” to expanding government spending.

The latest looming cliff is supposed to wrench the Washington policy players out of denial and avoidance, forcing them to actually do something real. This will not happen unless certain things change.

Start with the basics – Use the “Current Service Analysis” levels as the budget framework. Administration and opposing budgets can be aspirations compared against the true baseline. That will level the playing field and keep everyone honest about what is really an increase and what is really a reduction.

Rise above ideology - Both Democrats and Republicans contributed to the cliff. Both sides spend like there is no tomorrow. Both sides embrace “sacred cows”. Both sides live in a world where their people are angels and their opponents are demons. A good first step is to admit that each side has some good ideas and each side has looney ones.

Democrats need to understand that even their most cherished domestic assistance programs are riddled with waste and inefficiency. Republicans need to realize that the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are just as bloated and dysfunctional as the liberal programs they assail.

Make Inspector Generals and the GAO “rock stars” – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has 3,100 employees. There are also 73 Inspector General Offices embedded in Cabinet Departments and major agencies. All these offices are filled with highly trained, dedicated, objective civil servants who document waste, fraud, abuse, and inefficiency as well as recommend actions to eradicate and prevent future squandering of public resources. They document over $650 billion in waste annually. That is $6.5 trillion in cost avoidance and direct spending reductions over the ten years everyone uses to discuss the fiscal cliff. Except for a rare instance, these reports, and their detailed recommendations, are universally ignored.

The next Congress will be as grid locked as the last few. Partisan votes in the House will die in a Senate unable to muster sixty votes to move legislation. Then there are possible White House vetoes.

Therefore, why not check ideology at the door and embrace stewarding public funds? One hopes overwhelming numbers of Members from both parties, as well as the White House, would agree that waste is waste. Pass budget bills that specifically mandate GAO and IG recommendations are implemented and corresponding amounts of documented waste, fraud, and abuse are cut from programs and agencies. Resurrecting effective Congressional Oversight is long over due.

Having everyone discover that they can all agree on something will shift from the culture of confrontation to a culture of collaboration. Beginning swimmers start in the shallow end of a pool and then move into deeper waters as their skills and confidence improve. Congress and the White House could move into more complex and contentious waters as their ability to respectfully and constructively disagree improves.

Allow for public input - “Crowd sourcing” is being successfully used in several European countries to harness collective wisdom for public policy. Using either an ongoing “crowd sourcing” process, or an annual referendum tied to tax returns (like the Presidential Campaign fund check-off), citizens could either identify what to cut or what to fund. Their input would initially be advisory and mature into binding guidance as seriousness and sincerity are displayed by all involved.

If Congress, the White House, the agencies, and the media, do not explore these ideas, America faces a crisis that will dwarf the chaos in Greece.

[Scot Faulkner was Chief Administrative Officer for the U.S. House of Representatives. http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/]



Return of the Jedi

By selecting House Budget Chair, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Governor Romney has put the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement back on track.

In 1980, Reagan was supposed to pick Rep. Jack Kemp as his running mate. FBI and other background checks had been done. However, last minute rumors about Kemp's "roving eye" sunk his chances - leaving the Reagan team in disarray in Detroit. Reagan’s longtime friend, Senator Paul Laxalt, was "Option B", but this was an era when running mates from adjoining states was unheard of (regional balance) and some felt Nevada was still viewed as a mob-run den of sinners. Senator Lugar and former Treasury Secretary Simon were Options C & D, because neither was viewed as capable of igniting national excitement.

Many commentators fixate on the Detroit Convention being about forging a “Dream Ticket” of former President Gerald Ford as Reagan’s running mate. Outside of party moderates and a few operatives, bringing Ford and his sidekick, Henry Kissinger, onto the podium with Reagan would have been a “Nightmare Ticket” – undermining everything Reagan and the conservative movement stood for. As one of Reagan’s Congressional Liaisons at the Convention and as a close friend of most of his Regional Political Directors, I watched this strategic turmoil play out within the Renaissance Center and the VIP Sky Suites ringing the Joe Louis Arena. Ford and Kissinger went public with their own delusion of a "Co-Presidency". This included Walter Cronkite infamously egging them on during his live interview. Reagan and many of his inner circle felt the only way to regain control of the situation was by reaching out to his former opponent George H.W. Bush.

Thus history took a strategic, and for many true-believers like myself, terrible turn. It was supposed to be a “Conservative Continuum” of Wilkie-Taft-Goldwater-Reagan-Kemp allowing a limited government ideology, rooted in the Enlightenment and America’s founding principles, to evolve into an ever more inclusive and creative political force. Reagan to Bush brought in a family dynasty, where Bush 41 "cleansed" the Executive Branch of Reaganites, turned-off rank and file conservatives, and opened the door for faith-based big government activists to fill the void. Bush 43 turned everything upside down with big government at home and Neo-conservative adventurism abroad. Bush and the ersatz Republicans also embraced Rove's micro-targeting the electorate, which plunged the sixty-year modern Conservative movement into a pandering mush.

Paul Ryan got his start working with Wisconsin Senator Bob Kasten (a good friend from my own years in Wisconsin politics), who embodied the “Conservative Continuum”. Ryan then worked directly for Jack Kemp, the great hope of the “Conservative Continuum”, as his speechwriter during his 1996 Vice Presidential campaign. Therefore, Ryan’s basic instincts run to the “Conservative Continuum” instead of "big government conservativism" of the Bush dynasty. In a master stroke, Governor Romney has made 2012 about not only America’s past and present, but about an inspiring vision for its future.

WRONG TRACK

There is a current ground swell of articles on the decline of true conservatism and the rise of dysfunctional partisanship (blamed mostly on the "new new" conservatives).
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_145/Different_About_the_New_New_Right-215042-1.html
http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-world/

There is also a new book making the rounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U6rcJOUQLM
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151522725/even-worse-than-it-looks-extremism-in-congress
http://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-4-2012/exclusive---norman-j--ornstein---thomas-e--mann-extended-interview-pt--1

So how did Post-Reagan conservatism not only end up on the wrong track, but in ruin?  There are many reasons for the morphing of Goldwater/Reagan conservatism into one now dominated by theocratic statists:
 
(1) The end of the Cold War cycled out "fusionist" conservatives, many of whom were also retiring due to old age. This removed a major counter balance to big government conservatives regarding funding and fervor.

(2) The faith-based conservatives moved from getting government out of schools and bedrooms to embracing government in both as long as it was there for "their" agenda not the liberal agenda.

(3) Reagan picking Bush 41 over Jack Kemp in 1980 ending the conservative continuum and "big tent" conservatism where leaders looked for ways the philosophical core [dating to the 1600s] could attract new adherents by showing them how it helped them.

(4) The end of the conservative continuum left the movement rudderless. It opened the door for "Republicans" and "conservatives" [I use quotations because these people are neither] to decline into micro-targeting/pandering of fringe interest groups within the electorate, the same way the Democrats/Liberals had formed their winning coalitions since the 1960s. Karl Rove was the master of this new "art". He developed the current method of cobbling together fringe groups to form a winning coalition with no philosophical core, except for how bigger government can help them.

(5) The Internet, Cable TV, and Talk Radio ushered in the era of hyper-partisanship where middle ground solutions are ignored or shouted down by both extremes. It also opened the door for the new generation of pundits to assail anything not of their party, even if it made sense; and to embrace anything of their own party, even if it was crazy.

(6) Viewing reality through this hyper-partisan prism led to the “Rip van Winkle” effect. For the eight years of George W. Bush, most “conservative” officials and pundits cheered Bush’s leap into theocratic statism and his ill-conceived and poorly executed foreign adventures. The Tea Party eruption in 2009 arose, in part, because all of a sudden these same “conservative” officials and pundits, who had cheered Bush, were denouncing Obama for following these same policies. Average citizens who followed Fox News and “conservative” talk radio “woke-up” and realized their government was now 9+ years down the wrong rabbit hole.

What is sad is that “conservatives” and “Republicans” still assert that 2012 is about reversing the last four years, when it should be about reversing the last twelve. If you include the Republican Congress losing its ways after the 104th Congress’ “Revolution” than 2012 is really about reversing the last sixteen years!

Perdition

I will always remember the horns. Washington, DC sounded like downtown Cairo with its deafening cacophony of automobile horns.

I was driving along 14th Street and then onto K Street, traveling home after seven hours of broadcasting at the Voice of America. Exuberant people were everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the middle of the street, in doorways. All were chanting “Obama! Obama!” and waving Obama signs, posters, and hand lettered Obama bed sheets. Federal Protective Service guards at the Reagan Building were smiling and waving back at the lines of honking cars. DC policemen were smiling and waving from each intersection. One would have thought the Washington Redskins had just won the Super Bowl by sixty points.

The cheering for Obama’s brilliant victory will echo throughout his Presidential transition and again spill into the streets during his Inaugural. At some point, the serious business of whom Obama selects for his Administration and how he begins to dig America out of two wars and a major recession will supplant the festivities. In the meantime, Obama’s supporters deserve their celebration.

The Republican Party has suffered similar defeats in the past. Bill Clinton trounced incumbent George H.W. Bush by 370 electoral votes in 1992 and then beat Bob Dole by 379 electoral votes in 1996. People forget that the only close elections in our lifetime were George W. Bush’s, Jimmy Carter’s, and John F. Kennedy’s. You then have to travel back to 1884 for the next close race.

The Republican finger pointing and fratricide began, even as the votes were being tallied. Acolytes for Romney and Huckabee were already blaming Palin. Bush people were blaming McCain. Conservatives were blaming Bush or minimizing the loss as an aberration rising out of the financial crisis. Before things get any further out of hand there are some things to keep in mind as the Republicans seek a way back to the halls of power.

First, the Republicans deserved to lose. They had morphed into a sad vivisected version of themselves. There was very little said or done by President Bush, his administration, or the Republicans in Congress, that would not have ignited a conservative firestorm had any of it been done by a Democrat. Yet the movement was mostly silent.

The Republicans ran out of ideas and began losing their way in the spring of 1995. They had a brilliant game plan to win the 1994 election and ram through the “Contract with America” in record time. But they had nothing after that. Only President Clinton’s “zipper problems” gave them the opportunity to consolidate power in 2000. Then the tragedy of September 11 placed America in a war culture through 2004. During this time the Republicans undermined personal liberties, pursued ill-advised foreign adventures, and financially drove America off a cliff with spending, debt, and incompetent administration.

The devastating 2006 election should have been a wake-up call. It was not. Widespread denial reigned in the conservative and Republican salons of Washington. What was worse, many people who should have known better continued to drink the Bush “Kool-Aid”, offering up ever more preposterous explanations for why things were going off the rails.

The Republicans have made their way out of the wilderness before – 1952, 1968, 1980, 1994, and 2000. If they ever hope to repeat this achievement they must do several things:

· Throw-out Bush and everyone associated with him. Every office-holder who enjoyed taxpayer wages and the power-trips of office should be banished from think tanks, universities, and media forums. Their hubris destroyed the Republican and Conservative brands and almost eradicated a 300-year-old movement.

· Throw-out every Republican leader who voted for ridiculously large budgets, who trampled on our freedoms, or refused to conduct oversight and hold the Bush Administration accountable for its many failings. They reneged on their most fundamental duties to our country.

· Refuse to listen to anyone who was a Bush apologist. This means most of the cartoonish pundits on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC who refused to utter a single syllable of criticism during the last eight years. Many of them, including Karl Rove, have already begun revisionism to avoid retribution for their roles in the current mess.

Many of these “Bushies” are already repositioning themselves to become players in the Republican resurrection. It would be as if Benedict Arnold popped-up the Constitutional Convention offering to write a section or two.

Actions should have consequences. Those who were silent now say they did it out of loyalty. Their inaction was, in fact, the worst treachery of all.

William F. Buckley

I only met William F. Buckley once. That was during the fortieth anniversary reception for National Review in 1995. I shook his hand and thanked him for reshaping America.

Mr. Buckley was the Thomas Paine of 20th Century conservatism. He gave the isolated pockets of conservative thought and activism a central identity. In an era before the Internet and cable television, his show “Firing Line” and his magazine “National Review” reminded conservatives that they were not alone and that their philosophy was both noble and ascendant.

The campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would not have been possible without William F. Buckley. They would have still run, but they would not have had the ability to so immediately and effectively tap the grassroots wellsprings of conservatism. The revolution within the Republican Party in 1964 and the revolution in America in 1980 were his progeny.

I pay homage to William F. Buckley on page 74 in my book, “Naked Emperors”. For me, and millions of other young conservatives, Buckley was more than a great writer and more than an icon of our movement. He rose to the level of being an “Epiphany Person.”

An “Epiphany Person” is someone who guides us to a profound understanding of life itself. These encounters are epochal moments, as uplifting and all encompassing as the light entering the cave described in Plato’s “Republic”:

“At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision.”

Buckley’s insights, commentary, and humor gave us lessons about philosophy, public policy, and life that we took with us wherever we went. For many of us, his words propelled us to elective and appointive office and shaped our actions and deeds while in those offices. Buckley’s words and thoughts continue to guide us through new encounters and experiences in the 21st Century.

William F. Buckley was the “indispensable man” of our time. I, like every other conservative, will be forever in his debt.