Into the wilderness?

The Republican Party is going into exile and the wilderness as the Children of Israel did after the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC. They had broken their covenant with the Lord and were punished. The GOP also has forsaken its principles and succumbed to media pressure to enact big spending programs, alienating its base and its reason to exist. Whether or not the Republicans ever come back, or disappear as did the Whigs, is not clear. It will take more than tired exhortations to conjure up the long-dead Ronald Reagan. The last time I went to a GOP breakfast, I talked about the necessity of an online presence. I told of the online communities and bloggers our opponents have. I told about how Republican candidates were being trashed on the Internet with the "assassination by search engine" technique. All I got from the elderly party leaders was glazed eyes. They moved on to speaking of "getting the next mailing out" and the necessity of "working the precincts and hanging brochures on doorknobs".

Thus, the GOP is hopelessly out of date and being left in the dust, at least at the local level. And is not "all politics local"?

I'm not sure what mechanism remains to regenerate the situation. One wakeup call might be Wahhabist Islam finally showing its face in its vicious way. Or as the progressives hammer into place more and more European social democratic welfare dependencies, the toll on the economy will begin to manifest itself. But it may take more time than anyone foresees.

Was Keynes right, "In the long run, we're all dead"? Or was Moses, in his confidence that eventually the Jordan would be crossed, even if he didn't live to see it?

What is GOP's paramount object?

Today, on Lincoln's birthday, and in the midst of a struggle over the soul of our party, we Republicans need to remember his example in balancing principle and prudence when facing a dilemma. Determined as he was to keep slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction" as he believed the Founders had intended, Lincoln could still insist at a dark hour early in the Civil War:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union... If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

The Great Emancipator knew his paramount object and allowed nothing to divert him from it. In doing so, he was able to achieve his other cherished object as well. It couldn't have worked the other way around. He knew that if the Union were broken in the 1860s, slavery's future would be extended -- exactly as slavery's human, moral, and political cost would have been greater if the Union had never been formed to begin with in the 1770s and '80s.

Republicans now, as America's conservative party, must think with the same cool clarity as Lincoln in fixing our paramount object for 2008. Is it purity in the presidential nominee? Is it electoral victory at any price? Is it avoidance of a Democratic president even at the cost of a (further) liberalizing makeover to the GOP identity? Is it arm-twisting McCain and his supporters to move right in the spring or face certain defeat in the fall?

None of those objects is paramount, in my opinion. I see the first as unattainable, the second as unworthy, and the others as desirable but lesser objects. None of the four involves a principle by which personal inflexibility and costly sacrifices can be justified. All come under the heading of prudential judgment -- messy choices in the gray area. (See Lincoln's blunt acceptance of freeing some slaves and not others; exactly what he later did by proclamation.)

Protecting America's constitutional heritage and our national interest in the world, over the span of decades and not just months or years, is the paramount object in this struggle as best I can tell. Show me a better. And show me how that paramount object can possibly be served by actions this year that result in splitting the GOP and electing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. and political cost would have been greater if the Union had never been formed to begin with in the 1770s and '80s.

Republicans now, as America's conservative party, must think with the same cool clarity as Lincoln in fixing our paramount object for 2008. Is it purity in the presidential nominee? Is it electoral victory at any price? Is it avoidance of a Democratic president even at the cost of a (further) liberalizing makeover to the GOP identity? Is it arm-twisting McCain and his supporters to move right in the spring or face certain defeat in the fall?

None of those objects is paramount, in my opinion. I see the first as unattainable, the second as unworthy, and the others as lesser object. None of the four involves a principle by which personal inflexibility and costly sacrifices can be justified. All come under the heading of prudential judgment -- messy choices in the gray area. (See Lincoln's blunt acceptance of freeing some slaves and not others; exactly what he later did by proclamation.)

Protecting America's constitutional heritage and our national interest in the world, over the span of decades and not just months or years, is the paramount object in this struggle as best I can tell. Show me a better. And show me how that paramount object can possibly be served by actions this year that result in splitting the GOP and electing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Bracing for President Obama

It appears at this writing, the 2008 presidential contest will be Obama vs. McCain. My daughter text-messaged me the other day: "I'm at the caucus!" She lives in Seattle, Washington, which had them on Feb. 9. It is significant in that this is the first time my 25 year old daughter has expressed any interest in politics of any kind. I am sure she is not the only one. It is Barack Obama that is firing an enthusiasm of the young today that more than likely will sweep him into the White House. In perusing the professional and elegant Obama website, it's hard to see anything blatantly objectionable or alarming. For that one would probably need to drill down. But without a doubt the election is shaping up to be the Old vs. the New. When I was my daughter's age, it was John F. Kennedy inspiring the young to sign up for the Peace Corps. I remember seeing all the Peace Corps volunteers undergoing physical training at Cal Berkeley (as if pushups in gym suits would aid them in filthy, disease-ridden villages in Africa). My preference: if I were going to some Third World country, I'd rather go with a Marine division rather than being stuck alone and unsupported in some dirty little village. And that's how I went to Vietnam in 1966.

But an underlying Obama assumption is that one can build heaven on earth with government tax and spend programs. This is pure European social semocracy! As our secular society turns from faith, they pray the "Our Government who art in Washington, Hallowed be thy benefits" as opposed to the traditional "Our Father". But the European social democracies are dying! Their "progressive" culture of death policies have resulted in birth rates so low that the populations are halving every 35 years! This means the cradle-to-grave nanny state is economically unsustainable.

It also means the Islamic <a href="immigration invasion will turn Europe Islamic. Though the Left <a href="">deludes itself into thinking this will result in a "truly multicultural Europe and a more progressive Islam", a Taliban-style Europe is more likely, because the <a href=" ">Wahabbists are building and running the mosques.

A few things come to mind: unfortunately, Satan is the Prince of this world. Inevitably personality, back biting, and corruption follow what always turns out to be just another massive government bureaucracy established in the name of a problem without solving anything.

One has to ask: what happened to Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"? What happened to Richard Nixon's 1972 "War on Cancer"? What happened to our effort to "protect the liberty of the people of South Vietnam from Communist aggression"? Billions spent with no results!

As for John McCain, he is basically "the last man standing" in the Republican primary process. He will be the Bob Dole of 2008. His campaign has concluded that conservatives "have nowhere else to go". But we do! We can lose interest in politics and go about our lives doing other things, like visiting grandchildren, like bracing ourselves for the massive tax increases that are on the way, moving our holdings offshore where possible.

Not me, not yet

The favorable words about John McCain from Newt Gingrich on Fox News last night were measured, not glowing. He indicated an intention to vote for the GOP ticket (on which I'd love to see Newt himself as VP), but there was no ringing endorsement of Mac the Maverick. My sentiments exactly. It's all very well that Sen. Wayne Allard, former Gov. Bill Owens, former Rep. Bob Beauprez, and Attorney General John Suthers found a way to formally declare for McCain before the sun went down Thursday, mere hours after their former endorsee and mine, Mitt Romney, suspended his campaign. But sorry, I'm not there yet. I'd ask those four friends of mine: What's the hurry?

The very meaning of "suspend" in Romney's statesmanlike announcement at CPAC is that he's keeping his options open. He's still in formal control of his delegates. He too, like Gingrich, is looking to the main event, recognizing the need to beat Barack or Billary, and talking unity -- but he's not yet endorsing McCain. When they do, and Huckabee does, then maybe I will. We do have some time. It's only February.

Sen. McCain's speech at CPAC, conciliatory in tone and solid in substance, was a start, as Patrick Buchanan has written. Buchanan approvingly noted its contrast with Goldwater's open defiance of internal party detractors at the 1964 convention.

However we've yet to see from McCain anything like the strenuous fence-mending efforts of another famous episode from that era, the Treaty of Fifth Avenue in 1960 when Nixon averted a conservative-liberal GOP fracture by paying court to Rockefeller. What would that look like in 2008?

Some kind of summit with conservative movement leaders -- not just elected senators, congressmen, and governors -- might or might not lead to a similar "treaty" as the understanding of 1960. But it would be a long step beyond the rhetoric of CPAC. It might occur as a side meeting at the Council for National Policy's next quarterly conference, a high-level gathering of Reagan faithful and the Christian right, members-only and closed to the press.

I have no idea if any such summit is in the offing, but if McCain is really serious about working with conservatives and not just play-acting, he should be actively seeking it. His pick for Vice President will also be an important signal and gesture to the right. Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth makes several good suggestions there, though Gingrich is still my first choice.

Bottom line, American conservatives aren't mainly a political party or party faction. We are a movement dedicated to conserving, protecting, and where necessary renewing, America as it was meant to be. We can readily acknowledge, at this juncture, that our country would be better defended against most external enemies and threats under President McCain and a Republican administration than under President Hillary Clinton or Obama and a Democratic administration.

But defense and national security, though paramount, are not definitive as far as conservative political choices in 2008 are concerned. Supreme Court appointments, highly important as well, are not definitive either.

We want a conservative movement that preserves its integrity, its spirit and soul, to fight another day -- regardless of defeat within the party or between the parties this year. We insist on one of the two major parties remaining a distinctively conservative party, not a pale centrist echo of the distinctively liberal party opposing us. That way lies a European-style social-democratic future, utterly un-American. That we reject.

Are these non-negotiable goals best achieved by a tactical accommodation with the unconservative John McCain for the purpose of contending for the White House next fall -- which is still a fight against the odds, remember -- or by a parting of ways with McCain despite the short-term political losses certain to result? What leverage do we still have over the presumptive nominee, and what should we demand? What constitutes settling too cheap?

As of today, I honestly don't know. But I know these are the right questions to be asking and the right priorities to be weighing. We'll have to see how it plays out. Again, it's only February for pete's sake -- the convention isn't until September. That's why I prefer to bide my time, even as Allard, Owens, and the others rush with their endorsements of Mac. Not me, not yet.

Tax Ritter rides again

Republicans wouldn't have dreamed of this storyline, but for the second time in less than a year, Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter is proposing a major tax increase. And just like last time, he doesn't want to let you vote on it.

Taxpayers who have just received their property tax bill could be forgiven for mistaking last year's tax "freeze" for a tax hike. After all, when the legislature and the governor pass a new law that causes you to pay more than you would have otherwise, most people understandably think their taxes have been raised.

But since your taxes were "frozen," you don't get to vote ­ even though the Taxpayers Bill of Rights in the state constitution says you should. (If only you had a law degree or a union membership, it would all make perfect sense.)

Now the governor wants to pull a similar legal slight of hand on the cost of renewing license plates on your vehicle.

Ritter's latest plan, cooked up by another of those infamous blue ribbon commissions, is to raise the cost of licensing your vehicles by an average $100 per vehicle per year to raise money for highways.

This would generate about $500 million a year, which sounds like a mighty hefty tax increase. Except that it's called a "fee," not a "tax." Colorado has no Feepayers Bill of Rights, so when lawmakers raise "fees," you don't get to vote.

How subtle is this distinction? It's merely a matter of accounting. Your vehicle registration receipt shows the vehicle's ownership tax and license fee side-by-side.

If the governor wanted to raise the ownership tax by $100, he would need you to approve it at the next election. But if he can get the legislature to raise the license fee, maybe you will forget about it by the next election.

Fat chance, since you will remember each time you renew the license plates on every vehicle you own.

Even the Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Transportation recognized that smacking taxpayers with a $100-per-vehicle increase without a vote would be playing with fire.

In November, the commission noted that "the legislature can pass an increase without voter approval. However, referral of the fee to the voters may be more acceptable to the public." Unfortunately, that word of caution is mysteriously absent from the final report.

What's also subtle -- and downright underhanded -- is the legislature's habit of raiding existing highway funds (more than $40 million last year alone) to spend on other pet projects.

Ritter could have protected transportation funding by vetoing those bills, but he didn't. Before taking more money from Colorado drivers, he should demonstrate his commitment by restoring those funds and stopping future raids.

Certainly, a case can be made that funding for the state's transportation system is lagging. Fuel tax revenues don't begin to keep up with inflation because gas and diesel are taxed at a fixed amount per gallon (22 and 20.5 cents, respectively) rather than a percentage of the price.

At $1.062 billion, the transportation budget is at its highest level since 2001-02 when it was bolstered by much lower gas prices and proceeds from Gov. Bill Owens' TRANS bonds which voters approved in 1999.

Since then, gas prices have increased and so have fuel efficiencies and the use of hybrids and alternative fuels, all of which keep fuel consumption relatively flat. Meanwhile, population and miles driven have increased substantially.

The vehicle fee increase would boost transportation funding by about 50 percent, but the blue ribbon commission is backing a much bigger package that would raise more than $1.5 billion a year in from taxes and fees. Also on their wish list are increases in fuel taxes (13 cents a gallon), sales taxes, oil and gas production taxes, and hotel and car rental fees.

"We probably haven't made the case yet to get that on the 2008 ballot," Ritter recently told state legislators.

Definitely not, and if the governor thinks that case will be stronger after drivers are smacked with a $100-a-vehicle "fee" increase, he is in for a big surprise.