Reform Conservatism

At The New York Times Magazine, Sam Tanenhaus writes of Yuval Levin and other conservative reformers:

Levin and company, who do have the policy mentality, will happily fill in the blanks. In the wake of Cantor’s defeat, April Ponnuru said she was still hearing from legislators interested in connecting with the ideas of the YG Network, and she had more events scheduled to spread the word. Rubio volunteered to speak at one such event in late June. He, too, shrugged off Cantor’s defeat. “I don’t think Eric Cantor lost because he gave a few speeches advocating reforms,” said Rubio, who seems to understand that being elected as an insurgent — riding the crest of a movement — doesn’t mean he has to govern as one. American politics is the story, in large part, of outsiders who became skilled insiders, not by selling out but by growing into the demands of the office. It happened to Barry Goldwater and also to Reagan. It might happen again. When I spoke with him, Rubio also stood by his own antipoverty proposal, acknowledging it would not save any money but suggesting it might in the long run since it would lift many out of poverty. This is exactly the case Lyndon Johnson and Democrats made generations ago. “Our debt isn’t driven by discretionary spending on poverty programs,” Rubio said. “We’re not going to balance the budget by saving money on safety-net programs.”

It is hard to imagine the Republican candidate who will say this in a closely contested Red State primary in 2014 or during a presidential race in 2016. But some politicians say otherwise, including Levin’s own favorite senator, Mike Lee, the Tea Party firebrand from Utah, who stood by Ted Cruz’s side during the October shutdown but also has adopted the reformers’ middle-class agenda as well as its idioms

Cantor Loses, Graham Wins

What account's for Eric Cantor's surprising loss in a GOP primary?  At The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jeff Schapiro writes:

In Tuesday’s primary, Cantor was trapped in a crossfire over immigration reform. He attempted to strike a hard line against amnesty, dramatically scuttling a House vote on legislation that would make it easier for illegal immigrants serving in the U.S. military to become citizens.

But Brat, echoed by high-profile conservative broadcasters and pundits, attacked Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, as soft on immigration. They noted that he’d spoken of reaching an accommodation with the Obama White House, perhaps allowing children born in this country to illegal immigrants to naturalize.

Cantor’s maneuvering on immigration was illustrative of a larger issue: a perception within Republican circles that Cantor, in his determination to succeed John Boehner as speaker, seemed more interested in positioning for the next phase of the nonstop news cycle than embracing a distinct agenda.

Further, Cantor — a self-styled Young Gun, who along with Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential nominee, was a symbol of Yuppie Republicanism — became a distant figure to many of his Virginia constituents, seen only on Sunday talk shows and in the pages of national newspapers.

Cantor’s priority was traveling the country, raising money from corporate and financial leaders. The torrent of Cantor-generated cash would shore up a smaller but more influential constituency for the often-aloof lawyer: a handful of conservatives within the Republican caucus who would decide the speakership.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) cruised to an easy primary victory, even though he had a closer association with immigration reform.  How did he survive?  Josh Kraushaar writes at National Journal:

Unlike other targeted Republicans who have rebranded themselves in the run-up to an election, Graham has stuck to his moderate principles on immigration (he supports comprehensive reform), the environment (he's argued climate change needs to be addressed), and Supreme Court justices (he voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the principle that senators should judge on qualifications, not ideology). In contrast to several other endangered Republican senators who spend most of their time in Washington—neighboring Sen. Thad Cochran, who's at risk of losing a runoff this month, is a prime example—Graham regularly returns home on weekends to rallies, party events, and American Legion posts, where he tells well-wishers to greet him by his first name. "Everyone calls him Lindsey back home, no one calls him Senator Graham," [Katon] Dawson said.
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Graham's comfortable victory is a testament to the fact that mastering the fundamentals of politics—strong relationships with colleagues and maintaining regular connections with voters—still plays an outsize role in winning elections. As Slate's Dave Weigel pointed out, while many Republicans have lately lost primaries for ideological reasons, a disproportionate number were defeated because they're old. Cochran might have won his primary against Chris McDaniel if he campaigned more vigorously in the final week, but instead he faced late-breaking questions about his rustiness on the campaign trail.

That's never been an issue with Graham.

Syria, Solarz, and Support

Syria grows as a political problem for the president. At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green notes that George H.W. Bush won congressional approval of the Gulf War because he was able to build an alliance with Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY).  President Obama, he says, has not even tried to find Solarz's House GOP doppelganger.

In early January 1991, Solarz penned a piece in The New Republic titled “The Stakes in the Gulf.” His influential essay combined idealism with realpolitik. As he wrote, “There is, for a start, the question of oil. If Saddam succeeds in incorporating Kuwait into Iraq, he will be in a position to control, by intimidation or invasion, the oil resources of the entire Gulf.”
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Meanwhile, Obama is constitutionally incapable of doing serious outreach to the House GOP. For the record, he has taunted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, publicly embarrassed Congressman Paul Ryan, and pulled the rug out from under the Speaker Boehner.
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Obama’s quest for congressional support is also hobbled by the public’s widespread opposition to the war, a fact Obama now acknowledges. According to a Washington Post-ABC poll, Americans say “no” to U.S. involvement in Syria by a 2:1 margin. Scott Clement of the Post writes, "There is no political or demographic group in which a majority supports military action in Syria." According to a CNN poll, more than 30 percent say they would be more likely to vote for a congressman who opposed the war, while a bare 11 percent would reward a congressman who backed a war resolution. Apparently, the only constituencies for war are policy elites, as Peggy Noonan observed, and a few foreign governments. Interestingly, members of Congress who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are strongly opposed to U.S. intervention.

All told, Obama faces a challenge stiffer than passing health care. The public is even more opposed, the House is controlled by the GOP, and there are no goodies to ladle out to large swaths of the electorate. The touted gains of attack are intangible, while its downside is real and grave. Going to war simply to keep a campaign promise doesn’t cut it, and the cry of “Do it for Obama!” is trivially self-referential. When Nancy Pelosi’s discussion with her grandson is offered as a rationale for war, Obama is clearly in trouble.

Shutdown?

Robert Costa reports at National Review Online:

“A shutdown? It’s not happening, it’s really not, but I guess you won’t hear people say that out loud, including me,” chuckles a senior House Republican. “No one, you see, wants to be ‘out-toughed’ on Obamacare. We’re out here talking about repeal everyday. But the speaker and everybody else here know that the Senate votes, unfortunately, will never be there to pass a continuing resolution to defund Obamacare.”

This delicate political situation has forced Boehner and Cantor to work against the shutdown caucus but without antagonizing it. It’s a wink-wink kabuki dance of the highest order. They can’t alienate their conservative members who have been enthralled by the shutdown talk of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, but they can’t have them dictating the fiscal negotiations, either. “Look, we want to protect the American people from Obamacare, and we’ll look at any realistic strategy to do that,” says a leadership aide. “Right now, though, no one seems to able to explain how we win a shutdown fight. Until that changes, it doesn’t make any sense to have one.”

GOP Wonks and Pols

At Politico, Jonathan Martin writes:

Almost daily, there is a fresh op-ed or magazine piece from the class of commentators and policy intellectuals urging Republicans to show a little intellectual leg and offer some daring and innovation beyond the old standbys of cutting income taxes and spending. It’s not that the eggheads are urging moderation — it’s more like relevance. The standard plea: The GOP will rebound only when it communicates to working-class and middle-class voters how its ideas will improve their lives.

But there is virtually no evidence that these impassioned appeals for change are being listened to by the audience that matters — Republican elected officials. With few exceptions, most of the GOP leadership in Washington is following a business-as-usual strategy. The language and tactics being used in this winter’s battles with President Barack Obama are tried-and-true Republican maxims that date back to the Reagan era or before. And that, say the wonks, spells political danger and more electoral decline.
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“We had a false dawn from the 2010 midterm election,” said [former Bush aide Peter] Wehner, now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “It reinforced this belief from some people that dusting off the old Reagan playbook was the way to go, that we should be more ideological and concentrate more on cutting back government at the expense of other issues. That’s not unreasonable, but I think it was wrong.”
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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor delivered a speech to the American Enterprise Institute last month touching on such topics as jobs training, overtime flexibility and education reform; and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has savaged the Washington GOP’s “obsession with government bookkeeping.”

But even these speeches are heavy on recycled conservative ideas (school vouchers in Cantor’s case; a balanced budget amendment is a Jindal favorite).

“They are an example of what’s both encouraging and discouraging,” said Wehner of Cantor and Jindal. “Their language is good, but the policy they’re proposing is old wine in new wineskin.”

The Cantor Rebranding

At Time, Michael Scherer writes:

There is a single chart—three colored lines on a grid—that shapes the political reality of this country today. During the 2012 campaign, one of President Obama’s senior strategists called it “the North Star,” and started his internal Power Point presentations with it. When Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor speaks Tuesday about his vision for the future of the Republican Party, the chart’s central message will bind together his words.

 

The chart tracks as lines three economic trends over the last two decades in America, between 1992 and 2009. The first two lines are rising–productivity and per capita gross domestic product. This is the unmistakable American success story, the one reflected in record corporate profits, growing wealth accumulation and the unmatched efficiency of this country’s economy. The third line tracks median household income, as measured by the U.S. Census. It shows the story of frustration and stagnation that so many Americans long ago accepted as a reality.

The Majority Leader's office has a page for the "Making Life Work" agenda. Excerpts from Cantor's speech:

We will advance proposals aimed at producing results in areas like education, health care, innovation, and job growth. Our solutions will be based on the conservative principles of self reliance, faith in the individual, trust in the family, and accountability in government. Our goal – to ensure every American has a fair shot at earning their success and achieving their dreams.
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In America, we do have higher expectations for our nation. Since our founding, we believed we could be the best hope to mankind. That hope led generations of immigrants to risk everything, to endure a tough journey to our shores, looking for a better future. The driving motivation for millions of immigrants passing by Lady Liberty in New York Harbor was the generation that came after them. And because of that hope, those high expectations, coupled with a determination to see them come true, every generation since has had it better off than the one before. Until now.
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Lately, it has become all too common in our country to hear parents fear whether their children will indeed have it better than they. And for all of us parents, that is a scary thought. Our goal should be to eliminate the doubt gripping our nation’s families, and to restore their hope and confidence in being able to protect tomorrow for their children.
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Government policy should aim to strike a balance between what is needed to advance the next generation, what we can afford, what is a federal responsibility and what is necessary to ensure our children are safe, healthy and able to reach their dreams.
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One of our priorities this year will be to move heaven and earth to fix our education system for the most vulnerable.
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Explaining that rising health care costs are depressing take-home pay is little consolation to a working mom. Her grocery bills are higher, her kids' school needs are more expensive, rent is up – and now, she's just trying to get by. And getting by is not the American Dream.
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If you're a working parent, you know there’s hardly ever enough time at home to be with the kids. Too many parents have to weigh whether they can afford to miss work even for half a day to see their child off on the first day of school or attend a parent-teacher conference.
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In 1935, the Form 1040 was accompanied by a two-page instruction booklet. Today, taxpayers must wade through over 100 total pages of instructions. Just filling out a W-2 at a new job is confusing. You shouldn’t need a worksheet to know how many dependents you have.
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Scientific breakthroughs are the result of – and have helped contribute to –America being the world’s capital of innovation and opportunity in nearly every field. For this and many other reasons, people across the globe want to become a part of our country. We must never diminish that desire, or worse, become a place that is no longer desirable.
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While we are a nation that allows anyone to start anew, we are also a nation of laws, and that’s what makes tackling the issue of immigration reform so difficult. We must balance respect for the rule of law and respect for those waiting to enter this country legally, with care for people and families, most of whom just want to make a better life, and contribute to America.
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We are committed to ensuring that the next generation does indeed have it better than the one before it. Because, when we lose that promise, we lose the absolute promise of everything that has been built before us.

The Buffoons' Rebellion

A rebellion this week illustrated the political problems facing Speaker Boehner and the political ineptitude of his internal foes.  Robert Costa reports at NRO:

It was 15 minutes before the big vote for speaker on Thursday afternoon, and Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, was ready to sit back, clap, and get on with his day. As he waited, he walked to the back of the chamber to catch up with some friends. Then, out of nowhere, a conservative colleague, whom he won’t name, came up to him, tapped his shoulder, and pulled him aside. The colleague whispered that when the vote began, a few backbenchers would attempt to mount a rebellion against Speaker John Boehner. They had kept their plot quiet for weeks, the colleague explained, and he regretted the eleventh-hour mention, but they wanted his support. The colleague thought Franks would participate in the revolt, especially since the Sun Belt conservative has, at times, broken ranks with party leadership.

But Franks wasn’t interested — at all. He shook his head and said, “No, thanks.” Franks couldn’t believe that a small bloc of conservative House Republicans would haphazardly plot against the speaker, especially so close to the roll call. Franks ended the conversation and found a seat. Several other members who were approached, he says, did the same. “I’m one of the most conservative guys here and I find out about this thing 15 minutes before the vote?” Franks asks, in an interview at the Capitol. “To me, it was a ridiculous miscalculation by a sincere but inept group.”
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Members say the rebellion was mostly a project of the libertarians (Justin Amash of Michigan and Walter Jones of North Carolina) and a clique within the Jordan-affiliated RSC, especially members of the class of 2010 (Mulvaney and Labrador) and their allies. It was never something that involved widespread outreach. “I only heard about it from a reporter,” says Phil Gingrey of Georgia, a longtime figure in conservative circles. “That was a real mistake,” acknowledges a House Republican staffer involved with the coup attempt. “My boss didn’t say much to anybody beforehand. They were thinking that maybe they could help Eric Cantor or someone else find a way to win.”

Just-retired Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) tells Molly Ball:

I think it's ridiculous. They should kick them all out of the Republican conference. The picture in Politico of a sitting Republican member of Congress on the floor with an iPad showing a screen with a whip count to deny the Republicans the speakership of the House is asinine. This is what I'm talking about: These guys are OK when it comes to ideology and dogma, but they don't have a clue how to participate in the legislative process.

I don't know what their objective is. If it was to deny the speakership to Boehner and hand it to Mrs. Pelosi, I don't know how their cause would have been furthered. If it's to force the vote to a second ballot to make some demands, well, who the hell do these people think they are? Twelve out of 233, and they're making demands? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Social Media and House Republican Strategy

Kathleen Parker writes:

For Boehner, being called the "Party of No" isn't a regrettable invective. It is a strategy aimed at highlighting the contrast between those running things and those who want to run things. That deafening silence you hear from Republicans about the gulf oil spill? All the better for Americans to hear the glubglubglub of Democrats and the administration going down the drain.

Boehner & Co. are busy, meanwhile, conducting a massive digital listening tour via the GOP's new "America Speaking Out" Web site, where voters can submit and vote on ideas. It's user-friendly to a fault, with undertones of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," such that Dick, Jane and even Spot can play.

YouCut, unveiled by Rep. Eric Cantor this month, where Americans can vote on spending cuts. In one video, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announces the winner: pay raises for Congress and federal employees (except military personnel).