Context

The mixed results achieved Tuesday means that the two parties will have to work together to pass bills into law. Had Republicans won control of both chambers, it is possible that legislation could have cleared both chambers with minimal Democratic support before arriving at the White House for presidential action. However, with Democratic control over the Senate, Republicans will be unable to pass legislation without real backing from the party of President Obama; this prospect renders impossible the already difficult prospect of reining in the excesses of the Affordable Care Act.

Nonetheless, the divided outcome resulting from the elections conducted last Tuesday is significant for another reason; this has been a year of hard-fought elections resulting in mixed outcomes. The British election held in May resulted in the first coalition government in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has led a minority government since her Labour Party lost seats in an election conducted this past August. Minority coalition governments in the Netherlands and Sweden are similarly reliant on small new parties to remain in power following elections in those countries earlier this year.

The Blame Game

After suffering a net loss of not less than sixty seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, leaders in the Democratic Party have started assigning blame for Tuesday’s results. Some Democrats blame the economy while others eerily suggest that the agenda of President Obama has not been progressive enough in the policies he has supported. Presumably, it is the latter group who are supporting Nancy Pelosi’s ill-conceived bid to again become minority leader after a four-year tenure as Speaker. Already before Tuesday, other Democrats were faulting Ms. Pelosi for dragging down the electoral prospects of their party nationally; The Speaker featured prominently in television spots around the country meant to associate local Democratic members of Congress with her progressive politics.  By making a bid to remain the leader of the Democrats in the lower House of Congress, Ms. Pelosi will either force out one of her lieutenants, either outgoing Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) or outgoing Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), or face an embarrassing loss when members of the Democratic caucus vote on leadership in January.

Meanwhile, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) stepped down from leading the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after serving at its helm for two election cycles. Van Hollen makes a convenient fall guy if President Obama really believes that Tuesday’s outcome resulted from a failure on his part to promote the actions of his administration. Somewhat surprisingly, Senator Harry Reid seems poised to remain Majority Leader in the United States Senate despite a reduction in his majority there.

The Tempest in a Teapot

Analysts have used various terms to describe the outcome of the 2010 midterms. Regardless of the term used, describing Tuesday’s events as a “rout” would be incorrect.

The election ought to have resulted in a rout, but Republicans fell short. With the exception of HI-02, every seat shown having changed in this video should be in Republican hands come January. Unfortunately, Republicans fell short. Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan asserts that the correct message is not enough to win an election; the quality of the messenger matters too. While this conclusion is essentially correct, a deeper analysis in support of it is required.

Proponents of the Tea Party movement  contend that many of the U.S. House candidates involved or associated with that group were successfully elected on Tuesday. This is obstensibly correct, but such candidates were often either incumbents or were elected to represent right-leaning congressional districts. Due to their size and often arbitrary design, congressional districts often lean liberal or lean conservative, regardless of overall trends in the states containing them. For example, the first and sixth congressional districts in Maryland presently trend conservative while the State of Maryland as a whole trends liberal. Thus, it follows that Tea Party candidates did well in conservative congressional districts.

Whereas the relatively small populations of congressional districts allow them to trend right or left, states in general are less bound to ideology due to the diverse views and professional backgrounds of their comparatively larger populations.  Most states, as is true of most U.S. senators, trend toward the middle politically. As a result, Tea Party senate candidates were resounding failures in states which do not lean conservative. Thus, for every Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Mike Lee (Utah), there was a Sharon Angle (Nevada) and Christine O’Donnell (Delaware).

One of the better aspects of the Tea Party movement when it started was that it was decentralized and without clear leaders. To some extent, this is still true, but Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation have tried to direct the movement to their own ends. While the latter was largely discredited by their for-profit “National Tea Party Convention” held in February, the former was a driving force in making viable the primary candidacies of Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell. Suddenly, a truly grassroots, bottom-up movement was ironically usurped by a national movement aiming to undermine popular local candidates and prop up more rightward, less popular individuals.

Somewhere along the way, the movement which pragmatically rallied behind Scott Brown in January abandoned its successful formula throughout the summer and autumn to back candidates other than those who could win win relatively liberal states. Much of the impetus to get Scott Brown elected was to derail the health reform excesses proposed and since enacted by the Democratic Congress. Any chance of successfully amending or repealing that horrid law required Republican control over both houses of Congress with only the presidency standing against those efforts.

Conservatives and Republicans have long subscribed to the idea that their candidates and ideas are not regarded fairly in reporting by much of the national media. Yet, proponents of candidacies for federal offices by people like Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell seem to forget this. The only way Republicans can survive in a hostile media climate is by rallying behind candidates who can win, and those interested who have local bases of support. One cannot help but accept the premise that the controversy surrounding far too many unsuccessful GOP candidates this term derailed viable candidacies elsewhere.

The national funding, for example, that went into dispelling Democratic propaganda linking Pat Toomey to Christine O’Donnell could have been spent propping up Ruth McClung against Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), the congressman who called for a boycott of his home state following its controversial efforts this year to enforce immigration laws. McClung, a rocket scientist, was one of many viable candidates in this wave year who lost narrowly. One is left to conclude that the constant press assaults on easy Republican targets this election cycle hindered support for promising first-time candidates and potential future leaders. Thus, Christine O’Donnell and the like not only weighed down GOP efforts to recapture the U.S. Senate, but also weakened prospects for a true rout in the House of Representatives.

Several gubernatorial candidates around the country lost in close races. Each of these too were probably weighed down by the “extremist” narrative so easily spun by press elites willing to ignore an administration too willing to use courts and administrative regulations to implement policies unfathomable to the electorate. One may recall, for example, that Tom Emmer  of Minnesota was caught up in a contrived corporate funding controversy which allowed the media leeway to portray him as a man far outside the American mainstream. That Chris Dudley nearly won the governorship of increasingly liberal Oregon also suggests that voters on the margins were impacted by lousy candidacies elsewhere. The same could also be true of Bill Brady in Illinois and Tom Foley in Connecticut, who also seem to have narrowly lost.

Reapportionment

Following publication of the decennial Census, each state is tasked with reapportionment following the announcement of how many congressional eats, if any, are gained or lost. The process of reapportionment, which varies by states, often results in states being able to manipulate the prospects within their state for one party or the other in what os often called Gerrymandering. Named for Elbridge Gerry, the specific idea is to prevent members of the other party from being elected or reelected by redrawing their districts so that their partisan or ideological base of support is diminished. With states like Oregon, Illinois, and Connecticut now remaining in Democratic hands, it could be quite easy to reverse Republican gains made this year in 2012.

Consequences

Since the Republican wave fell short, Democrats still in power are free to think that the election results were something other than a mass rejection of President Obama’s policies thus far. That said, there are moving forward several areas in which Republicans can find common ground with President Obama in the next Congress. The ratification of several trade agreements have been stalled by Democrats in Congress since the final years of the George W. Bush administration. With Republican control of the U.S. House, and a reduced Democratic majority in the Senate, these deals have a chance at raification and could help to lift the dour U.S. economy. There seems to be potential for cooperation on education reform too. Whether or not this movement to the center could help President Obama remains in doubt, however.

2011

The current year is not yet over, and already, American politicians are looking to the next two years. While much national attention since Tuesday has been focused on the presidential election now just under two years away, 2011 could be a very pivotal year. Three states have gubernatorial races next year; Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Of the three, two are now governed by Republicans. Events in the coming year will shape the 2012 election cycle, for better or worse.

This blog reported in earlier months on other Obama flunkies with no sense of irony, but now it seems that even the administration and its congressional allies have stooped to the level of crackpots and kooks in its effort to achieve victory in the election next month. This is a particularly troubling development for a President who faced so much unwarranted malignancy not two years ago when campaigning for the office he now holds. John McCain was rightly criticised-and likely lost votes-over the conduct of his presidential campaign. To those critics, Senator McCain said whatever he thought necessary to win, and did nothing to combat rumors on the campaign trail about his openent, then-Senator Obama, that had no basis in fact.

Now, not two years later, the man who has to bring hope in the wake of recession has resorted to those same tactics. Sadly, too few of those who rightly criticized McCain during the last election cycle have similarly chided Obama. Yet, rather than solutions to the problem facing the nation, all Democrats have offered for months has been fearmongering.

First, the American people were told that the frustrations expressed by Americans over the past two years in protests and rallies around the country were contrived, artificial constructs of conservative interest groups. When that strategy unraveled, the plan shifted to accusing the Tea Party set uniformly as racist. The timing of that bogus allegation may have helped to saddle this republic with an unredeemable health care reform law. Even if it shifted the vote tallies slightly on the health reform measure, this strategy ultimately failed; the legislation correctly remains unpopular.

Next, the new crop of Republican candidates were painted as extremists and their fellow partisans already in Congress were branded as obstructionists. Now that some of these grassroots candidates have expressed flexibility in their views, allegations of hypocrisy have been levelled by members and supporters of the other party. But when the press is not portraying protesters as kooks, it’s acknowledging the mainstream views the ralliers hold.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA, an organization which spent fifty years seeking to undermine this nation, sponsors a rally the reputable media described as being in support of the Democratic agenda. This alarming development was met with silence rather than condemnation by leaders in the Democratic Party. After backtracking on claims that the new health care law would add rather than reduce coverage options for older Americans, desperate Democrats are signing onto a pledge not to bring much needed reform to Social Security.

As if trying to scare American retirees and baby boomers about a never-responsible government program was not enough, the party in power has resorted to more spurious allegations. Senior Adviser to the President David Axelrod has repeatedly pushed the allegation that the United States Chamber of Commerce has funnelled foreign funds into congressional campaigns this year. As the New York Times reported, however, the claim by Axelrod has no basis in fact.  

When confronted on this by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, the White House official suggested that it was up to the Chamber of Commerce to provide exonerating evidence, rather than for the administration to support its contention. The unfortunate tactics to which Mr. Axelrod has resorted reek of birtherism, the crazy conspiracy theory, with no basis in fact, which asserts that the 44th President of the United States was born in Africa rather than Hawaii. Like supporters of that preposterous, repeatedly discredited notion, David Axelrod has asserted that it’s up to the side being accused of wrongdoing to prove innocence, rather than for the accuser to produce evidence of guilt. Such is a fundamental perversion of even the most basic notions of American jurisprudence. In this republic, the accused are innocent until proven guilty.   

There is, however, a deeper problem with the despicable allegations the White House has yet to rescind against the Chamber of Commerce; Democrats have been endorsed by and received funding from the pro-business interest group. If what David Axelrod alleged had any basis in fact, then Democratic candidates endorsed by the Chamer of Commerce would be renouncing the support offered, and dispensing with related campaign funding. This, however, has not happened.

In recent days, a new allegation was levelled by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee suggesting that a group concerned about illegal immigration has ties to racists and Neo-Nazis. The DCCC has criticized Republican candiates endorsed by the group, but has said nothing about the Democratic candidates supported by the same interest group. Instead, Democrats in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race are up with a television advertisement that implicitly suggested belief in Christianity should be a prerequisite to Senate election. The party allegedly of diversity and tolerance should not stoop so low. 

One is left to conclude that either the Democratic Party is influenced by foreigners and phantom fascists, or that candidates and elected officials in that party will say whatever is necessary to win. There is no hope in that; only fear. Democrats may be banking on young people to vote on the basis of impulse next month. But, if it is hope and not fear which the electorate seeks, then the Republicans will win back control of Congress this cycle.

This idea has found its way into debates over policy. During the George W. Bush administration, critics contended that the proposed surge strategy in Iraq  would fail because it was seeking to do the same thing while achieving a different result. However, the Iraq surge was not the same as what had been done before. Once the Ba’athist regime was defeated, providing stability in Iraq had become a daunting task costing thousands of lives. A new strategy was needed, and that is what the Bush team proposed. The surge was not the same thing as had happened; indeed the new approach entailed a counterinsurgency strategy and provided the stability necessary for Iraq to be governable. It is this very surge, which then-Senator Obama opposed, that made it possible for an American draw-down from Iraq earlier this year.

In a press conference Friday, President Obama offered his support for a fresh round of economic stimulus spending. There’s just one problem; more of the same has not and will not end this recession. The fact that the administration in Washington is shying away from calling the proposed new stimulus package such suggests that there is a lack of confidence regarding its level of effectiveness. If, as President Obama has suggested, his latest proposals include a tax cut for the middle class and, again as he has contended, the Recovery Act did so too, then the White House will be seeking to do the same thing while hoping for a different result.

The $800 billion dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, this administration promised, was necessary to keep unemployment under eight percent and put people back to work. With unemployment now hovering around ten percent nationally, this clearly has not happened. The Obama administration now expects the job shortage to remain for quite some time.

The trillion-dollar Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed with the promise that it would bend downward the  health care cost curve thereby reducing costs for the taxpayer and the ecomony at large. Thus far, the opposite has and will continue to happen. Democrats nationally are so confident about the rationale given for the passage of that travesty, that they are either running against the reform law or avoiding the topic entirely.

It should be clear that the approach offered by this administration for ending the recession has not worked. In response to failure, President Obama has thus far offered only more of the same, and blames Republicans for opposing his ideas. The last eighteen months have validated such opposition. Keep that in mind when voting in November.

Every elected President of the United States since Wilson has left office, whether through retirement or death, physically much older than at inauguration. Administrations of both parties have made tough decisions on when and how to employ military force abroad. Historians will long debate the merits of decisions made by various commanders-in-chief. The most complicated of these decisions, however, occur when one administration inherits a conflict from another.

Harry Truman inherited a war from FDR, and made some tough, much debated decisions that shaped American foreign policy for fifty years. After concluding the war he inherited, President Truman led the nation into another conflict, the Korean War, which resulted in an armistice after he left office. A long, costly conflict in Southeast Asia would only a few years later outlast several U.S. administrations. The latter conflict shook landscape of American politics in ways still being felt.

In this century, President Bush led the country into two distinct, yet related conflicts in one of the most volatile regions of the last fifty years. One of these, the conflict in Afghanistan, has fostered more good will than the other, the conflict in Iraq. President Obama inherited both conflicts, but like Truman, who inherited the disaster that was the Second World War,  history will judge him on his handling of events independently of those of his predecessor.

As a candidate for the office he now holds, Barack Obama vowed to end the war in Iraq. However, he did so on the timetable established by his predecessor. Effectively, President Obama has stayed the course in Iraq. While correct in several portions of his remarks, such as the resillience and strength of the U.S. armed forces, the forty-third President of the United States, Obama did too little to acknowledge historical reality.

Perhaps one of the better speeches delivered by President Obama, the address Tuesday evening was both precise and strategic. Left unsaid, for example, was the fact that the Iraq withdrawal carried out under this administration occurred according to the timetable established by President Bush. While this probably the correct corse to take, it is disappointing that a candidacy built around opposition to the Iraq conflict resulted in a maintenance of existing policy.

If it was his intention to follow the Bush policy, candidate Obama ought to have said so during the last presidential campaign. Instead, President Obama has taken credit for the departure arranged by his predecessor. It seems as if Barack Obama decided he did not want to own the Iraq conflict the way he now does that still being waged in Afghanistan. Such is another sad reminder that the “fundamental change” brought to the country in January of last year did not extend to the political class.

Following the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised to lead the most ethical Congress in history. With two prominent liberal members of her party now facing ethics charges, and another member having resigned earlier over unwelcomed “tickle fights” with male staffers, it would be slightly more accurate to describe this Congress as the most venal in history. While the present Congress is technically the second one during which Ms. Pelosi has been the Speaker, scandals and ethics inquiries easily take more than two years to develop. Thus, the controversies of this Congress already existed in the  one previous. Furthermore, if it is true that Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Charlie Rangel (D-NY) have been singled out to face ethics charges on account of their race, then it follows that other members not (yet) facing charges have behaved less than ethically. But, as seasoned readers of this blog know, the current Speaker of the House has a way with words.

Just this week, Speaker Pelosi personally blamed the last administration, and Republicans in Congress for the ongoing recession. Reality, however, suggests that the policies of this administration and its lackeys on Capitol Hill are to blame. It is true that President Obama inherited from his predecessor this recession, but it is also true that American allies have better weathered this downturn. Countries such as Canada and Germany that have practiced fiscal austerity since the recession are so far making a stronger recovery than has this republic to date. Britain under Gordon Brown’s Labour Party took an approach like that of the Obama administration, and, fortunately for the people of the United Kingdom, the new government there has a different policy.

By now, readers inclined to support the agenda of Democrats in Washington are thinking that strides were taken by Congress to constrain the costs of its new programs, particularly with respect to health reform. It is now known, however, that the cost estimates put forward by the administration and Congress were smaller than ever was realistic. An IRS report suggests that current budget allocations in health reform are too small for that agency to fulfill its responsibilities under the excessive new law. Analysis of a separate report from an agency overseeing federal social spending further suggests that the cost savings of health reform were grossly exaggerated. Another consequence of that irresponsibly expansive legislation was that pediatric hospitals were inadvertedly removed from certain discount eligibility relating to drug purchases.

Naturally, challenges to the new law, which no thinking person can seriously claim will reduce health care expenditures, are ongoing. While states begin to implement various requirements under the legislation, others have sought to escape its draconian impositions. Voters in the Missouri primaries Tuesday, overwhelmingly voted for a ballot initiative meant to relieve its residents of the individual mandate imposed by the new law. To put this into perspective, President Obama only narrowly lost Missouri in the last presidential election, while more than 70% of those who turned out Tuesday rejected the individual mandate. A Democratic candidate for Congress was among that majority.

The ongoing problems with the health reform law should have alerted the press to the need to hold legislators to account for their deeds. Sadly, the fourth estate remains a fifth column for sleazy, self-interested politicians and their government-growing cohorts, to the detriment of the essential liberty possessed by the American people. Evidence of this became apparent following the financial reform bill passed last month.

The Securities & Exchange Commission, embroiled in a pornography scandal recently, secured a carve-out from Freedom of Information Act rules in the financial reform legislation. Congressional Democrats say that they will now hold hearings on the issue, but the challenges of the legislative process and lingering policy priorities may stymy any change to the law this year. Were the press actually accountable, this issue would have arisen prior to passage. While a slow legislative process was meant to serve the American people, so too was the free press. A regulatory agency which did little to reprimand emplyees who surfed the web for pornography while the financial market collapsed is not one which merits greater secrecy. Of course, in a just world, financial regulatory reform would require greater accountability on the part of existing regulators and agencies before creating more of what already exists.

Supporters of the the often poorly-understood Tea Party Movement say that they want legislators to read the bills on which said lawmakers vote. The demand, however, should be for people outside of Congress to read proposed legislation. Flaws and problems in legislation should be noticed before bills are passed into law. Whether intended or not, legislators and their staffs will rarely catch all potential pitfalls present in bills, and when they are caught, the lawmaker weighs that provision against the broader measure. Compromise should be a welcomed aspect of the lawmaking process, but the public should know precisely what is being compromised. Media exists to fill that role, but has failed to so often enough in recent years. To make matters worse, video surfaced this week of a town hall meeting in which another prominent Democratic member of Congress, Pete Stark (D-CA) suggested that the powers of the federal government are without substantial limitation.

The task before Republicans this November may not be insurmountable, but will be difficult given political conditions. Democrats, nonetheless, seem to be making things easier. Henry Waxman (D-CA) seems to believe that a defeat of conservative Democrats in November could be desirable. Waxman is not alone. It seems that the Democratic congressional leadership is disinterested in the ideas members seeking fiscally responsible policies. This sort of arrogance cost Republicans their majority in Congress nearly four years ago.

The notion that one party is stupid while the other is evil is something on which activists in both majory U.S. parties can agree. Though the facts aren’t on their side, activists in the Democratic Party use this concept to contend that the passage of their irresponsible financial reform overhaul is in doubt because the legislation was watered down to placate GOP centrists, thereby alienating some progressive Democrats. In this bogus example, Democrats are the stupid party for focusing on reaching out to an “obstructionist” GOP, the “evil party” for them, instead of passing more comprehensive legislation with enthusiastic backing from Senate Democrats, and scant support from Senate Republicans. In reality, lingering uncertainty about the legislation, and broader concerns about the economic policies of the Obama administration are due to an approach to governance focused on enhancing the power of bureaucrats and organized labor at the expense of shareholders, taxpayers, consumers, and entrepreneurs. 

But for Republicans, a rather more concrete example of this concept became apparent in recent days. RNC Chairman Michael Steele offered poignant remarks late last week regarding history, and recent events surrounding the war in Afghanistan. Instead of viewing these remarks in context, however, prominent Republicans and bloggers on the right gave the Obama White House a narrative it desired.

Anyone paying attention would know that Chairman Steele was making the point that President Obama owes the American people an explanation regarding Afghanistan. Regular readers of this blog know that essentially the same point was made here not long ago. It is fundamentally inconsistent for the White House to claim that a military surge will work in Afghanistan when the administration refuses to admit that the Iraq surge was a success.

Furthermore, the current effort in Afghanistan is Barack Obama’s war. To credit the ongoing effort in Afghanistan to George W. Bush would be to attribute Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policy to Lyndon Johnson. President Eisenhower drew to a close the Korean War prosecuted initially by President Truman. Sometimes wars are won or lost very early in the fighting, but even then, the leader then in charge is responsible for how things end. Thus, when President Obama appointed Stanley McChrystal to lead the effort in Afghanistan, he was fully taking ownership of the war.

At no time did Michael Steele directly question the legitimacy of the present conflict in Afghanistan. Rather than come out against the war, as some have suggested happened, Mr. Steele was pointing out that past ground wars in Afghanistan have failed miserably. The last incident of blatant Soviet aggression took the form of a decade-long civil war in Afghanistan, one which ultimately permitted the rise of the Taliban. More than half a century earlier, the British Empire with little success attempted to subdue Afghanistan. The success-if it can be called that-of the British misadventure was the Durand Line, better known now as the wholly artificial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rather than promote the idea that Republicans are for war without end, Chairman Steele put forward a realistic appraisal of a very difficult war. Analogies to Vietnam are popular, but “Af-Pak” is fundamentally different from the states of Southeast Asia. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, all three party to one degree or another to twenty years of war between 1955 and 1975, are largely culturally cohesive countries. There are ethnic minorities of note in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but their cultural and political development relative to the more numerous, neighboring nationalities is quite limited; the Mon, for example are a majority in no country. In Afghanistan, the Pashtun are the prominent ethnic group, and decades of civil strife have only reinforced the sizeable Pashtun population in nearby areas of Pakistan.  The Mekong and Red rivers  provide an impetus for commerce and development in Southeast Asia which has largely never materialized in Afghanistan, despite the presence of the Helmand River and tributaries of the Indus.  

Iraq, a state with a long and proud history of commerce and societal development, is a state lacking in the geographical difficulties of Afghanistan. As a largely urbanized society, the people of Iraq have a sense of belonging that transcends ethnic or religious identity despite local revalries and mistrust. Simply put, if Iraq, despite having been a state sponsor of terrorism and a safe haven for al-Qaeda, was a ‘war of choice’ at the time that it was denounced by Barack Obama, then so too must the present struggle in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda has been broken, and the forces once supportive of terrorist group have been removed from power.

More essentially, however, if the administration in Washington stands by their campaign rhetoric regarding the Iraq war, and if the surge has not improved the situation there, then the American people are owed an explanation as to why Afghanistan will, despite all odds, be different. Republicans are right to support  military personnel in their endeavors on behalf of this great country. However, the right has been wrong to clamour for an approach to war in which no discernable goal has been established. In so doing, too many Republicans have revealed that they learned nothing from the experiences of the last Bush administration.

For once, it is Michael Steele who is right, and the political establishment that is deeply mistaken. The unwarranted chastising of Michael Steele’s remarks has taken the focus of Republicans away from the pivotal elections set for later this year. Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, it is the ruling party that is politicising this war. The American people are grappling with a recession left unhelped by a big-spending Democratic Party that would rather stick to its bad habits than fund the war and not billions of dollars in special projects. While Republicans have been busy infighting over a non-issue, the other party has continuated unabated trying to implement its unfathomable agenda.

In 1973, the highest court in the U.S. judiciary reached a decision which still today impacts electoral politics. That case was Roe v. Wade. Even at this early stage, parallels are apparent between the Roe and McDonald decisions.

Both Roe and McDonald had companion cases asking related questions which have been (or will be in the latter instance) largely forgotten in the popular discourse. Like abortion rights, the right to keep and bear arms was gaining steady statutory support in the United States already at the time that the Supreme Court reached its decision. Also, both Roe and McDonald reached the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal from lower federal courts. Furthermore, the constitutional justifications offered in the Roe and McDonald cases for the majority position was less than some observers thought should be the case. Indeed, whether or not abortion should be legal remains a very distinct question from whether the reasons put forward by the Court for its decision legalizing abortion were valid.

In both majority opinions, recent court dictrines or approaches to legal evaluation were used so to avoid their application in broader contexts. For the decision reached in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court used a vastly different, privacy related case, Griswold v. Connecticut, decided in 1965. The problem posed by the reasoning offered for the decision reached in Roe v. Wade is that its constitutional foundation, already weak if based on Amendments four and nine, is rendered rather more dubious by being enshrined thoroughly within judicial precedent. The question posed in Griswold dealt with the right of married couples to use birth control, a clear matter of privacy, and one which is distinct from the termination of pregnancy as it dealt with efforts aimed at prevention. Even Cass Sunstein, a lawyer and liberal legal scholar in the employ of the Obama administration, has been of the view that the Roe decision was weakly justified.

As Elena Kagan in the past has noted, the judicial appointment process has its curiosities. Potential appointees routinely dodge questions and distance themselves from past controversies. Both justices appointed by President Obama’s predecessor dodged questions pertaining to abortion rights, or stated that the matter is now “settled law.” As justices, however, John Roberts and Samuel Alito have ruled in favor of restricting abortion rights. Asked about the Court’s holding in McDonald v. Chicago, Justice-to-be Kagan declared that the individual right to keep and bear arms is “settled law.”

In some respects, the decision reached by the U.S. Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago renders the controversial judicial doctrine of incorporation more credible and less arbitrary. What the effects will be long term are less than certain, however. To be brief, the doctrine of incorporation has been used by federal courts to hold the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights against state governments citing as a legal basis the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Building on the decision reached in District of Columbia v. Heller, the majority opinion in McDonald v. Chicago assures that Second Amendment protections are fundamental rights of American citizens in good mental health or never found guilty of a felony offense.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas offered a separate justification, more in line with originalist thought, for the decision reached by the majority. As with the majority, Thomas asserted that there is a clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which justifies applying the individual right to keep and bear arms against the states. Justice Thomas sought to apply the effectively nullified “priviledges and immunities” clause, reduced to nothingness in the nineteenth century by jurists to uphold limitations on the legal rights of African-Americans. While use of this clause by the majority in its decision would have been appropriate due to the racially-charged history of gun control laws in the United States, doing so would have opened up challenges to laws and policies having nothing at all to do with gun rights. Justice Scalia alluded to such a possibility in his own concurrence addressing the contentions raised in John Paul Stevens’ last authored dissent.

I join the Court’s opinion. Despite my misgivings about Substantive Due Process as an original matter, I have acquiesced in the Court’s incorporation of certain guarantees in the Bill of Rights “because it is both long established and narrowly limited.” Albright v. Oliver, 510 U. S. 266, 275 (1994) (SCALIA, J., concurring). This case does not require me to reconsider that view, since straightforward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it.

On the basis of reasoning applied, and the concerted effort of the judiciary past and present to narrowly apply its rulings, it cannot be doubted that gun control will remain a contentious political issue for years if not decades to come. Already this week, Chicago began investigating ways of implementing restrictive new gun laws short of outright prohibitions. Citing her record in the Clinton administration, the National Rifle Association is encouraging senators to vote against the conformation of Elena Kagan.

There can be no doubt that proponents of gun control will fundraise off of the McDonald v. Chicago decision. Needless to say, those dollars will flow into the coffers of candidates and causes inclined against private firearms ownership. Rather than render gun control a non-issue, the U.S. Supreme Court may have actually reignited a policy debate Democrats likely wanted to avoid in an election year as potentially difficult as 2010.

While this author previously supported the choice of McChrystal to command operations in Afghanistan, this controversy necessitated his departure. If a war is not going as desired, a general should be free to say so. However, sharing his concerns with Congress would have been a more appropriate means than openly criticizing the Commander-in-Chief to a columnist. Whistleblowers serve a valuable function, but if the Vietnam War was any indication, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things.

The left-wing issue advocacy and political action committee collectively known as MoveOn.org made their weight felt in the last election cycle. The progressive organization backed then-Senator Obama’s candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, and subsequently in the 2008 Presidential Election. True to form, MoveOn has been at it again this election cycle with mixed success. MoveOn was among the many groups to back Joe Sestak over Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Primary. Earlier this week, a MoveOn-endorsed candidate won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in North Carolina where the incumbent Republican Richard Burr may be vulnerable. The more recent attempt to oust another sitting Democratic U.S. Senator, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, was unsuccessful. That MoveOn viewed Ms. Lincoln as insufficiently liberal is itself disturbing, but rather less so than another former MoveOn campaign.

In September, 2007, Move On posed a rather offensive question.

The text which followed the excerpt above (pdf) made various bogus contentions with respect to the war in Iraq and the surge strategy being employed by the Bush administration to draw that conflict to a close. In reality, the successes of the surge strategy led to the ability of the Bush administration to set a draw down plan into place. Indeed, General Petraeus has won wide praise for his keen understanding of what is at stake in Western Asia.

As with Vietnam, there are many just criticisms of the war in Iraq. Like Vietnam, the necessity or validity of U.S. involvement there will be a long debated topic. However, maligning a general serving a free society making the best of a bad situation is an offense not far off from the sort of disgusting treatment offered to American personnel returning from service in Southeast Asia during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

President Obama was right to have pursued victory in Afghanistan upon taking office. There may be no person better suited to do so than the general responsible for the much-maligned Iraq surge. However, the choice is curious considering that the current President of the United States has never acknowleged the success of the surge strategy in Iraq. How MoveOn and its defenders will address their Petraeus dilemma has yet to be seen.

If it remains the belief of President Obama that the Iraq surge did not work, then proposing Petraeus to direct the ongoing Afghanistan surge and reconstruction is irresponsible. However, if instead the ‘agent of change’ today running this great country now feels that the Iraq surge did work, he owes it to those that elected him as well as those who opposed him to declare such. Making such an announcement would give credibility to the notion that President Obama is above the partisanship that has thus far been the hallmark of the Democratic Party under his leadership.

Going into the contentious primaries on Tuesday, revelations broke pertaining to a state where nomination contests had yet to be held in the 2010 cycle; Connecticut. A piece appearing this past Monday in the New York Times alleged that Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General and Democrat of Connecticut lied about his military service record. Mr. Blumenthal is seeking to fill the seat being vacated by the ethically challenged Chris Dodd. While word has since surfaced that a Republican campaign fed the story to the paper of record, the veracity of the claims made have been verified. Richard Blumenthal remains in the Senate race, and has received renewed support from the leadership of his state party.

The Oregon mail-in primary Tuesday failed to generate much interest. Overall, candidates favored to win in both the Republican and Democratic primaries there did so. This was very much true of Republican primaries held in Arkansas and Pennsylvania as well. Things however were rather different on the Democratic side in the keystone and razorback states.  Pennsylvania party-switcher Arlen Specter was defeated by Congressman Joe Sestak, while in Arkansas, a three-person primary has forced sitting centrist Senator Blanche Lincoln into a run-off against comparatively liberal Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter.

Despite these upsets, the big news of the night Tuesday came from Kentucky.  There, preferred Democratic Senate candidate and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway defeated Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo in what was a rather close primary. In the Republican primary, meanwhile, ophthalmologist Rand Paul trounced Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Rand Paul is the son of Ron Paul, a member of Congress representing the fourteenth congressional district in Texas.

Ron Paul, a physician like his son, is often criticized for his political views. Nonetheless, this particular father and son have more in common than the practice of medicine; they hold many of the same views. The Grayson campaign operated a website highlighting many of the more controversial positions espoused by Rand Paul. However, since the primary results were announced Tuesday evening, one particular set of views held by the younger Dr. Paul has generated national controversy.

A critical editorial in the left-leaning Louisville Courier-Journal published on the twenty-fifth of April this year expressed disapproval of both GOP senate candidates running for Senate this year. One claim made alleged that Rand Paul holds views out of the mainstream on civil rights.  According to the paper:

The trouble with Dr. Paul is that despite his independent thinking, much of what he stands for is repulsive to people in the mainstream. For instance, he holds an unacceptable view of civil rights, saying that while the federal government can enforce integration of government jobs and facilities, private business people should be able to decide whether they want to serve black people, or gays, or any other minority group.

Rand Paul admits to holding such a view, but has reiterated that he would not seek to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act if elected. Unlike some earlier civil rights bills passed into law, this particular one sought to end segregation in private businesses. When ruling on the validity of the intervention permitted  under the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Supreme Court more or less agreed with the view of Dr. Paul, but what resulted was an undoing of the strides made toward racial equality that followed the war between the states. This reversal of fortune for the newly liberated and their descendants culminated in the infamous Supreme Court decision reached in Plessy v. Ferguson that invented the bogus notion of separate but equal accomodations being acceptable under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Contemporarily, federal and state courts have held as constitutional the particular federal regulation of the private sector mandated in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Many on both the Right and the Left have condemned Rand Paul’s views on civil rights. Those of a rightward persuasion have been particularly scathing. Given the popular narrative of contemporary conservatism in much of the mainstream press, such condemnation of Rand Paul has largely been warranted.

Conservative critics have pointed out that William F. Buckley, Jr., a late pioneering figure on the American Right, saw his views evolve on civil rights. In earlier decades, the esteemed Mr. Buckley held a position not dissimilar from that of Rand Paul, but later in life suggested that federal intervention probably was needed to guarantee the long denied rights of minorities within the United States. Such comparisons are nonetheless a disservice to the late sage of conservatism however valid the underlying contentions put forth may be.

Other conservatives continue to wrongly propagage the popular but dubious contention that the two doctors Paul are anything like the late Republican Barry Goldwater whose Senate vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act won him only the deep south and his home state of Arizona during his ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson. On national defense and some social issues, both Ron Paul and Rand Paul diverge considerably from the views expressed by Barry Goldwater. It is more accurate to claim, as another has done, that Ron Paul-and by extension, Rand Paul-is the ideological successor to the isolationist conservatives of the New Deal era.

While criticisms of Rand Paul are justified, he has shown himself to be an independent thinker. The ability of a candidate to think independently is something to be respected in an age when Democratic primary votes actively put ideology above electability in primaries. A consistent if unrealistic current seems to run through the views of Rand Paul. To some extent, this is similarly true of the rather more rightly criticized Ron Paul. Even the Louisville Courier-Journal has praised the sincerity of Rand Paul:

Dr. Paul’s father, Ron Paul, is a well-known congressman from Texas who has run for president twice — in 1988 as a Libertarian and in 2008 as a Republican. But with Rand Paul, it’s not merely a matter of “like father, like son.” Dr. Paul, 48, is an independent thinker, whose articulate, good-humored approach to politics has caught many in the Grand Old Party by surprise.

Rand Paul likely won the Kentucky primary not because Kentuckians support all of views, but due to the sincerity of his convictions. Democratic voters nationally saw much the same thing in Barack Obama two years ago. Buyer beware.

The controversial views of Rand Paul, known since as far back as 2002, pale in comparison to the controversy surrounding Richard Blumenthal. Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal, who has claimed that he served in the Vietnam War as far back as 2007 was once popular with veterans groups in his state. Fortunately, many of these actual veterans, who served their conutry honorably, have since condemned a man once (wrongly) viewed as their champion. Yet, Connecticut Democrats have not done so. Instead, the Democratic Party remains behind a man who has had perhaps too  long of a career in public service. If the national party brass wanted Blumenthal out of the race, they could and would surely intervene, but to date have not.

The real lesson of recent primaries is not that hyperpartisanship is on the rise. Rather, the American electorate longs for authenticity. Senator Bob Bennett, who was defeated for renomination last week at the Republican convention in his home state of Utah,  had once vowed to only serve two terms if elected. He was seeking a fourth. The American people want leaders who are honest about what they believe. That the Democrats in Washington are not such leaders is a tragedy the people of this great country have the opportunity to change by voting Republican in November.

The first of these lessons strikes a personal note. As other contributors to NextGenGOP.com can attest, this author has seen his position evolve on the Arizona controversy. Initially, there seemed reason to be skeptical of the measure. The legislation appeared well-intended but flawed, and conservatives were not helping their cause. While many on the Right were indelicate in their defense of the measure, so were some among its critics. Then, the intricacies of what the carefully-worded Arizona statute meant to do eased the objections of this writer. Nonetheless, further developments would recalibrate where this author stood on the reviled Arizona immigration statute.

Indeed, as delicately worded as the Arizona statute was, the authority it gave to state officials was entirely too broad. This did not entirely change in a subsequent revision of the law.  The ends of enforcing immigration laws are just and to be praised, but the means made law in the forty-eighth state are entirely too broad. As a result, the law is rightly criticised. That this effort in Arizona has generated discussion of an issue more important than trillion-dollar health reform is certainly a good thing. However, the fallout generated from this legislation borders on the absurd.

Despite the problems with the Arizona law, its critics have overreacted. The Phoenix Suns basketball team wore attire displaying the team name as “Los Suns” as a means of protest against the law. Some businesses and other organizations have considered boycotts of Arizona, and may reschedule conferences or large events to other locales. This sort of nonsense has extended to government too.

The Arizona law was roundly denounced in Washington, D.C. Leading figures in the GOP condemned the law soon after the story broke. Senate leaders saw the controversy as an opportunity to promote their immigration reform plan. For some activists on the Left though, any measure that improves border security while also accomodating existing unlawful immigrant populations is unacceptable. A members of Congress from Arizona, Raul Grijalva, called for a boycott of his home state over the new law. Hopefully, the people of his district will see such absurdity for what it is, and put said “representative” out of work when the election rolls around in November. Press reports speculated that Republicans within and beyond Arizona could be hurt by their widespread suport for the law. Curiously, however, national policymakers may have misread the situation slightly. Indeed, Republicans may make gains as a result of the law.

Throughout this ongoing controversy, one thing remains apparent; Americans are obsessed with race. While it is true that the United States has had a rough history with respect to those of other backgrounds, matters are not helped by U.S. laws and policies throughout the country which reward considerations of race in numerous contexts. As has been discussed before, diversity of ideas matters more than diversity of culture or creed.

Several children in California were sent home from school on threat of suspension last week for expressing patriotism on the fifth of May. The students, who wore shirts depicting U.S. flags offended Mexican classmates. Instead of being condemned for their lunacy, however, school administrators have been defended by the very same people who were the loudest in their denunciations of the Arizona immigration statute.

Critics who rightly condemned the excesses of the pilloried Arizona immigration law should be no less opposed to students in a state of the United States wearing patriotic attire if not in violation of a school dress code. To do otherwise is to tacitly validate Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature and their approach to immigration reform. There is no consistency in condemning the Arizona law for its excesses while defending school administrators in Morgan Hill, California for sending home those five students.

There were protests in Lebanon the week that the Arizona controversy made national headlines. The two events offered a fitting but unexplored contrast to one another. The people of Lebanon were demonstrating against the lack of a civil society in their country. Lebanon is a country so concerned with diversity that it is in practice a segregationist state where members of one community can have little to no legally-sanctioned relationships with those of another. Such an obsession with differences over similarities has left Lebanon a country in name only.

When students attending a school in the United States can be sent home for the day on the basis of offending peers who desire to celebrate the holiday of another country, an excess has occurred, and one no less drastic than a state law meant to enforce existing laws.  Indeed, there are surely those proponents of the Arizona immigration law who would point to the incident in California last week as vindication of their efforts, including the passge of another law in Arizona cancelling the “Chicano Studies” program at a state university.

Promoting differences of culture or appearance over similarities has driven Lebanon to constant instability. Though intending otherwise, too many on the contemporary left would lead the United States down a similar path. This is something the people of Arizona sought to prevent, and something they were right to do, even if the means employed were wrong. Republicans should make the case for civil society even as they criticise governmental excess on the campaign trail this year.