NEW YORK — There is little silver lining in the pitch-black funnel cloud that is ObamaCare, now the law of the land. For the American Right, this grim occasion offers an opportunity to praise a rising star and excoriate another so-called Republican who deserves significant blame for this severe blow to small government.
Paul Ryan, take a bow.
Karl Rove, go eat a cactus.
Throughout the seemingly ceaseless healthcare debate, GOP Congressman Paul Ryan displayed quick wit, clarity of expression, and commitment to limited government — the precise characteristics that escaped so many Republican leaders during the Bush-Rove-Hastert-Frist years of “Compassionate Conservatism.” What could be more “compassionate” than the fastest-growing federal spending curve since Lyndon Baines Johnson?
Ryan, 40, is chief Republican on the House Budget Committee, where he highlighted ObamaCare’s pitfalls. He did so most dramatically by confronting President Obama at February 25’s bipartisan summit at Blair House. Chiding ObamaCare’s Enron accounting, Ryan said, “Hiding spending does not reduce spending. And so, when you take a look at all of this, it just doesn’t add up.”
Ryan may have been the youngest policymaker at the table and surely was its most youthful — a strong positive in a party stereotyped as the natural habitat of wizened, gray-haired, bald men. Nonetheless, Ryan spoke his free-market truth to Obama’s socialist power. Ryan emerged as an erudite brainiac who pierced the Democrats’ illusion that Uncle Sam magically can buy 30 million people health insurance at a $2.5 trillion 10-year operating cost while simultaneously slashing the federal deficit.
As ObamaCare faces vigorous challenges in the courts and a rendezvous with enraged voters on Election Day, Ryan has yet more to offer. Among many prescriptions, Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future wisely would introduce a five-year spending freeze, 10-percent and 25-percent income tax rates, and voucherize much of Medicare and Medicaid.
Ryan’s Racine, Wisconsin district was held for many years by the late Les Aspin, a Democrat who became President Clinton’s first defense secretary. While G.W. Bush carried this district in 2000 and 2004, Democrat nominees have won there, too, as Obama did in 2008. Since 1998, Ryan has won between 57 and 67 percent in this classic swing district. His secret? He runs toward, not from, free-market principles. He understands the philosophy behind and details of pro-enterprise solutions and discusses both with words and a tone that regular folks understand and appreciate.
Save for his unfortunate vote for the federal bank bailout in fall 2008, this ascendant figure in American public life should inspire conservatives and free-marketeers to ask in moments of crisis: “What would Paul Ryan do?”
Conversely, on such occasions, Rightists should ask, “What would Karl Rove do?” — And then dash the other way.
Rove, 59, is on Fox News so often, he must live there. He occupies priceless column inches in every Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. His spherical face mars the cover of his recently published door-stopper. His advice is as ubiquitous as dust.
Yet a genuine mystery endures: Why does anyone listen to a syllable this man utters?
“The architect,” as G.W. Bush called him, designed a skyscraper that supposedly would house, in Rove’s words, a “durable governing majority.” But, like earthquake victims crawling from the wreckage of Rove’s “architecture,” free-marketeers were wounded by fleeting GOP control of Congress and the executive branch. Republicans now do not govern while in the minority.
Rove whispered in Bush’s ear that if only Republicans impersonated Democrats, salvation would follow. While applauding tax cuts, Rightists otherwise derided steel tariffs, farm bailouts, highway boondoggles, the Medicare drug entitlement, No Child Left Behind, and no pork left behind: As Citizens Against Government Waste reports, earmarks exploded from 4,326 under President Clinton in 2000 to 13,997 under Bush in 2005.
Average, inflation-adjusted annual spending, according to the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, more than tripled from 1.5 percent under Clinton to 4.9 percent under Bush. Even subtracting the War on Terror, Homeland Security, defense spending, and Katrina recovery, spending growth still averaged 4.2 percent annually, well ahead of that period’s 2.8 percent average inflation rate.
The GOP’s reputation for fiscal discipline was crushed beneath Rove’s porcine “compassion.” Voters fired the GOP Congress in 2006, which ushered in Obama’s victory in 2008 and the Left’s triumphant achievement of government medicine in 2010.
Thanks, Karl.
Heeding Rove’s counsel is like taking sailing lessons from the captain of the Titanic. Rove should mimic his old boss’ merciful example and return to Texas for a life of quiet, obscure solitude.
The Right should lift Ryan on its shoulders and kick Karl to the curb.
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-New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Longtime readers of this site know that one of our long-term goals has been to commission polls of early primary/caucus states. The means to do so have always remained out of reach. But thanks to the generosity of a few of our loyal and generous readers, we have finally been able to commission our first poll. Many thanks to the generous folks who made this possible. So without further ado, here is the first ever poll of the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucuses:
Race42012.com/RightWay Marketing 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus Poll
Among Likely Voters
Among Registered Voters
Among Conservatives
Among Moderates
If Sarah Palin does not run:
Among Likely Voters
Among Registered Voters
Among Conservatives
Among Moderates
If Mike Huckabee does not run:
Among Likely Voters
Among Registered Voters
The poll results were collected via telephone surveys of 300 registered Republican voters on March 2nd and March 4th, 2010. The sample includes a subset of 223 likely 2012 Republican Caucus attendees. The margin of sampling error is +/- 5.66 percentage points among registered voters; +/- 6.56 among likely voters. Political ideology (among registered voters): 67% Conservative; 20% Moderate; 2% Liberal. Political ideology (among likely voters): 71% Conservative; 19% Moderate; 3% Liberal. The poll was conducted on behalf of Race42012.com by Right Way Marketing of Nashville, TN. Full crosstabs will be released later in the week.
Kavon W. Nikrad: Is it a little bit surreal to likely be facing Mr. Specter as your Democratic opponent in the general election this November?
Pat Toomey: Well, you know, I think it’s very early to try to judge who my opponent is going to be. I think Joe Sestak has a very real chance of defeating Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary.
But, I acknowledge, it could go either way and yeah, it would be a pretty major reversal to be facing Arlen Specter as a Democrat especially after he so adamantly stated he would never leave the Republican party only to take one look at a poll that showed he couldn’t win a primary and then, promptly, did exactly that what he said he wouldn’t. But you know, the substance of his, the very liberal record of his career in politics, his siding with big government and bailouts and staggering spending, unacceptable deficits, I mean, all those things, he’s been guilty of for a long time. So it really won’t change the contrast in this race.
KWN: What are the short-term and long-term consequences to the American economy if the fiscal insanity that has gripped Washington continues?
Pat Toomey: Well, in the short term, I think it impedes the rapid kind of recovery that we would normally expect after a dramatic recession.
I’m not a believer in the Keynesian interpretation, if you will, that some in Washington think that you can simply borrow and spend your way to prosperity and if the government borrows and spends enough, everything will be fine. I think that is patently ridiculous. This is a huge misallocation of capital. It might in some areas create a temporary illusion of some economic activity but, in the short run, it actually impedes our growth, and in the long run, the effect is much worse.
In the long run at some point, we’re going to pay a very, very dear price for the staggering, unaffordable amount of debt that they’re creating. It could manifest itself in different ways; it’s always hard to predict how this kind of irresponsibility catches up. It could be with skyrocketing interest rates that make it prohibitively expensive for people to buy a home and then finance it with a conventional mortgage, or to afford a car payment on a car loan, it could wane small businesses’ ability to grow because they won’t have access to capital. In addition, or perhaps, instead, we could have a huge bout of inflation, which is one of my greatest worries, if the federal government decides to essentially modify this debt, to just basically to print the money with which to pay a bank, that flood of dollars that would be inappropriately created in that context would almost certainly lead to very dramatic inflation and, of course, that wipes out people’s savings. People who played by the rules, and worked hard, and put some money away, they would see the value of that savings dramatically diminished, if not destroyed, so I think there are serious both short-term and long-term consequences associated with this incredibly irresponsible spending.
KWN: Regarding healthcare, how do we improve access, hold down costs, and still preserve the quality of our system without rationing or raising taxes?
Pat Toomey: Well, I think fundamentally we do it by putting people in control of their own health care, giving patients the power to be the consumers, to be the first person that gets to make decisions about their own health care and we have a system that does not do such a good job at that and we have a government that wants to really dramatically diminish individual and personal control over health care in favor of giving the government control over health care.
So, for instance, some of the things we can and ought to do that will help improve affordability and access: I think we should give individuals the same tax deductibility when they go out and buy health insurance that businesses get. That would make health care more affordable to the millions of Americans who have to buy it on their own if they were able to deduct the cost. It would also encourage individual ownership, which diminishes some of the other problems we have with our current arrangement such as the worry that people would be denied coverage based on preexisting conditions. That problem arises because most Americans don’t own their own health insurance, their employer owns it. And if they lose their job, or leave their job, well, that insurance doesn’t travel with them and they’re now subject to real challenges obtaining new insurance. Well, if people had their own insurance and it were renewable as it currently is under current federal law, then we wouldn’t have that problem.
An additional measure that I think would be very, very constructive is to force the insurance companies to compete for our business. I mean, it’s amazing to me that we can buy car insurance from a little green lizard, but you can’t buy health insurance from someone from Ohio if you live in Pennsylvania. It’s ridiculous. And if we force the insurance companies to compete for our business, how would they that do that? They would do it by being more responsive. They would compete on price, they would compete on service, they would compete on all of the things that any other insurer competes on in other aspects of our economy.
Ultimately, I would say some tort reform needs to be part of this mix, as well. That would not only diminish the direct cost of a very onerous legal system and the insurance that people have to pay, health care specialists have to pay, but also it would diminish the defensive mechanism that contributes to a lot of the cost—unproductively–to health care.
So all of these things would help improve access, they improve affordability, they would give patients more control over their health care rather than less, it wouldn’t jeopardize a single American’s existing health coverage and it wouldn’t cost the federal government billions or trillions of dollars. This is the kind of thing that we ought to be doing.
KWN: How to do you feel the people of Pennsylvania will react, the voters of Pennsylvania, will react if Democrats ram through their health care reform by reconciliation?
Pat Toomey: I think people will be livid. You know, it’s really unambiguous that the American people have made clear their opposition to this gigantic, enormously expensive, unaffordable stack of mandates, and taxes, and new bureaucracy. The American people have made it clear every way they can. I mean, it spawned the whole Tea Party movement. It generated thousands of people standing in line to get inside town hall meetings to express their opposition. It showed up in elections in Virginia, and New Jersey, across Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts.
I mean, if the Democrats willfully decide that they are going to ignore and absolutely repudiate the wishes of the American people and jam this through despite the overwhelming opposition, I think they will pay a huge price and rightly so. This will be a real miscarriage of the responsibilities of elected representatives of the people if they do this and the people of Pennsylvania will not just take this sitting down. They’re already angry about this, they’re very engaged, they are paying attention, they know what’s going on, and boy, I tell you, there’ll be quite a reaction if the Democrats jam this through.
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Note: This interview was originally published on March 2nd, 2010 on Race42012′s sister site, Rightosphere.-KWN
Kavon W. Nikrad: Many Independent or Centrist voters regard a track record of implementing innovative policy solutions as a requisite of successful, modern governance. The conservative grassroots, of course, look for candidates who promise to closely adhere to our principles of reducing the size and influence of government when deciding whom to support. How does a successful Republican juggle these seemingly mutually exclusive demands?
Gov. Tim Pawlenty: Well, I think that the role and idea of a limited and effective government is consistent with the founding principles of our country, it’s consistent with good public policy and it’s consistent with what our country needs, particularly now. So, I don’t think being innovative and being conservative are in contrast–in contradiction.
So, for example, one of the main issues right now is jobs and the economy. And the conservatives would suggest that the best way we can grow jobs and stimulate the economy is to reduce burdens on the private sector and not add burdens to the private sector; to do things to encourage entrepreneurs and businesses to grow, not discourage them, so, when you see, for example, Republican proposals to shrink government or reduce taxes, that would lighten the load on the private sector, whereas you see the Democrat and liberal proposals to increase taxes or to extend government-run health care or to have cap and trade or to have card check, those are the things that would all burden the economy or an example of things that would burden the economy the other way so I think you can be certainly both conservative and innovative and empowering individuals in the private sector in a way that is pro-growth and pro-opportunity without having government have to do that.
KWN: President Obama has called on Republicans to share their ideas regarding health care reform. How do we improve access, hold down costs, and still preserve the quality of our health care system?
Gov. Tim Pawlenty: Well, we can make it more affordable, for one, and by making it more affordable, more people would have access to health care and of course Republicans, including me, have put many ideas on the table ranging from things like medical malpractice reform, and allowing people to buy insurance across state lines and bring more choice and more competition, to switching how we pay for health care from paying for fines and procedures performed to paying for better health care outcomes to making sure we have portability of health care since people need to switch from job to job and many other ideas and so making it more affordable will make it more accessible. But the current system is broken, we all can agree on that.
But Republicans and Democrats have a very different view about what would be the appropriate steps to fix that, what would be the most effective steps to fix to that, which is heated in the debate unfolding across the country.
KWN: Democrats and many in the Mainstream Media in Minnesota are absolutely livid with your budget proposal. Star Tribune staff writers, seemingly with a “straight face” described your budget as, “bad news for low-income Minnesotans who rely on state health care and for mayors already struggling to balance their own budgets, but good news for corporations.” What is the truth regarding your budget?
Gov. Tim Pawlenty: Well, the real story is this: Minnesota needs to be a place where private sector businesses want to start, stay, and grow.
The number one pathway to a quality of life—a good quality of life—for most Minnesotans is a job, a good paying job, and we need to do those things that will make it more likely that businesses will be in our state, will grow in our state, and provide jobs in our state, and that’s why we have proposed a number of initiatives to reduce taxes, to try to create incentives for job growth in the private sector in Minnesota, and we’ve also had to and continue to shrink government.
My state is perhaps one most liberal states in the country. It’s one of the biggest government-spending states in the country and throughout my time as governor, I’ve tried to slow that down and reduce that and that doesn’t sit well with the kind of historical, liberal trajectory of my state. A lot of the current day liberals here, they just have a different view. Many of the cuts that we have made do affect healthcare programs or other programs, but that’s also where most of the money gets spent and those programs were going up in cost so fast that they were just no longer sustainable.
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Note: This interview was originally published on March 1st, 2010 as the inaugural post of Race42012′s sister site, Rightosphere.-KWN
