First, let’s start with Solyndra.  (Seriously, how has this not been the name of a Bond girl?)  It was an exceedingly well-chronicled corporate bankruptcy involving a $535 million federal loan guarantee to a solar company that had a rise and fall not unlike several of the GOP presidential candidates (e.g., Perry, Cain, Gingrich, etc.).  Notwithstanding the fact that many Republicans supported the loan guarantee program and voted to establish it back in 2005 (pre-Obama), it has been repeatedly cited as an example of why government should not be investing in energy projects.  Further, Republicans are now describing Obama’s economic plan as the “Solyndra economy,” which probably ranks it somewhere between socialism and anything French in terms of derided economic models.  (Although France has been so xenophobic lately, maybe Republicans like them now?)

OK, Republicans don’t like idea of government actively picking winners and losers and investing in energy companies. But, what does that have to do with fracking?  Isn’t that a technological innovation of the private sector?

Well, some really fantastic investigative work by the Breakthrough Institute revealed that government funding was critical to the development of the fracking process.¹  Are you telling me that without active government investment, fracking wouldn’t exist as we know it?  Get the frak out of here!  No, I cannot.  It’s serious.

According to the Breakthrough Institute:

The technological revolution allowing for the cheap extraction of natural gas from shale occurred thanks to more than three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration, and production, a new Breakthrough Institute investigation finds.

Both directly and indirectly, the government was behind the critical moments and tools in the shale gas revolution – massive hydraulic fracking (MHF), 3-D mapping, horizontal drilling, and horizontal wells.

“I’m conservative as hell,” Dan Steward, the former Mitchell Energy geologist whose company pioneered shale gas in Texas, told us. But when asked about the role of government, Steward told us, “They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can’t give them enough credit for that. [The Department of Energy] started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE’s involvement.”

Of course, this revelation may put some Republicans in a bit of a pickle.  For example, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) has called for the U.S. Department of Energy to stop “risking billions of taxpayer dollars on unproven sources of energy.”  He was referring to wind and solar, of course, and not fracking, which probably has nothing to do with the fact that he raised over $145,000 from the oil and gas industry during the last election cycle.

Now admittedly, not all Republicans are 100% sold on fracking – and not all are as confident about its safety as Rick Santorum – but I haven’t heard one Republican grumbling about how all those years ago the federal government wasted our tax dollars trying to figure out how to do it.  No one is assailing fracking as the bastard child of bloated government bureaucracy.  It sounds like to me that this omission is tacit approval for government playing an important role in developing our energy policy.  Now there may be some differences of opinion as to what segments of the energy industry government should be actively supporting, but Republicans clearly have their favorites.

So, the next time you hear about how government dollars were wasted on Solyndra, think of Republicans and how government helped them learn how to love fraking.  I mean fracking.

• I’m writing these notes on behalf of my two-year old daughter and I wonder if she will ever handwrite thank you notes in the future, or will she only send them via email, Facebook or whatever replaces Facebook in five years.
• Now that I think about it, will my daughter ever learn to write cursive, other than for her signature?  (Of course, I’m assuming signatures will eventually be replaced by retinal scans or some sort of DNA signature.)  Why would she ever really need to learn how?
• I’m going to stick these envelopes in the mail and within a couple of days they will arrive at the homes of friends and family all over the country.  And I 100% expect them to be delivered in a timely manner.
• For all of the people’s complaints about the U.S Postal Service, it is a pretty amazing government enterprise, one that benefits everyone – including (especially?) Republicans.

First of all, it is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the U.S. Constitution.¹  How can a Republican not love a government agency created by this holy document?

Next, Republicans love the military and hold veterans – at least symbolically – in high regard.  In exchange for their service, military veterans are given hiring preference for many federal jobs, including the Postal Service.  As it turns out many veterans take advantage of this preference and in fact more than one in five Postal Service employees is a veteran, and one-third of them are disabled veterans.  Since the only part of President Obama’s 2011 jobs bills Republicans supported – and ultimately became law – was the “Returning Heroes Tax Credit” creating incentives for employers to hire veterans, they must love the Postal Service.  They hire a ton of veterans!

Of course, geography is important, too.  For many rural communities, their local post office is their only government building.  Furthermore, the Postal Service is legally obligated to serve all Americans at a uniform price.  So sending a letter to a remote county costs the same as sending a letter down the street in your own neighborhood.

And guess who lives in these rural communities?  Republicans!  For example, let’s look at Wyoming.  In the 2008 Presidential Election, Wyoming gave John McCain his widest margin of victory over Obama of any state — 65% to 33%.  This is a pretty solid red state.  Its biggest county, Laramie, has 9 post offices for ~92,127 residents – a ratio of one post office for every 10,236 people.  (That’s about on par with the national ratio of one post office for every 9,633 Americans.)  Now what about Wyoming’s smallest county, Niobrara?  It has a population of ~2,482 and 4 post offices.  That’s a ratio of one post office for every 620 residents.  Those Niobrara residents are certainly getting their money’s worth and 79% of them voted for McCain.

Now this fact – that post offices provide important services for rural, and often Republican, Americans – is not lost on Congressional Republicans.  Last summer when the Postal Service announced plans to close over 3,700 post offices to address its ongoing budget deficits, several U.S. Senators – including Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) – introduced the “Protecting Rural Post Offices Act.”  This bill would create, well, let’s just say it, a new government regulation prohibiting the closure of any post office which results in more than 10 miles distance between any 2 post offices.  Know thy constituents and use government to protect them…

Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent (or in Mitt Romney’s case, all three), there are dozens of things you like receiving in the mail, including wedding invitations, holiday cards, birth announcements, tax refunds, magazines like US Weekly² Scientific American, and, of course, handwritten thank you notes.  Granted there are many things we’d rather not receive that come in the mail, too – such as utility bills, tax bills, credit card bills, unsolicited credit card offers, and unsolicited offers to buy rare gold coins of buffaloes or Elvis.   And, even though we all have a horror story of an important letter being lost or a waiting in line at a post office, it is really an incredible operation, processing over 170 billion pieces a mail each year.  (That’s ~6,500 per second.)

While my daughter will likely need a Rosetta Stone to read and write in cursive, I’m going to make sure she still handwrites – or at least prints out – thank you notes to send to relatives.  I know my Republican family members in Oklahoma (McCain 66%; Obama 34%) will appreciate it.

Republicans are marvelous at this, too, particularly when it comes to abortion.  The way I see it, the Republican approach to abortion is best characterized as small government activism – they don’t want government to pay for it, but they want government to prevent women from doing it.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re a pro-life Republican and you want to reduce the number of abortions to zero.  Fantastic!  So how do you go about it?

First, do some stretching, because you’re going to have to be pretty limber to force your political beliefs and rhetoric into a small government box.  Let’s start with some easy ones.  Romneycare is good; Obamacare bad, even though they’re essentially the same thing.  Good.  Next, federal budget earmarks are bad, unless they benefit my community.  OK, now you’re warmed-up.  On to preventing abortions…

To begin with, you have to largely ignore anything Republicans did in relation to abortion before the early-to-mid 1970’s.  You see, during the 1960’s restrictions on abortions were lifted in numerous states, including one such law signed by then California Governor Ronald Reagan.  Additionally, a 1972 Gallup survey found that 68% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats agreed that “the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician.”¹  It’s easy enough to block out those years, anyway.  They were filled with smelly hippies, drugs, anti-war protests and sexually suggestive music, like The Beatles’ “I want to hold your hand.”  OK, good start.  Denial is an important part of this process.

Next, you need to stop government from spending money funding abortions.  Less government spending and fewer abortions?  Sounds great and should fit into the small government box quite well.  You’ve got the recurring Hyde Amendment going back to 1976 that prohibits most federal funding of abortions, except in limited circumstances.  But come on, that started decades ago.  You can do better than that!  Luckily, some brave Congressional Republicans have recently tried to further limit federal expenditures on abortions just last year.  Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” to make the Hyde Amendment permanent (amongst other things) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) introduced a bill to specifically strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding.  Neither became law, but I’m feeling good about where you are headed.

However, make sure you think big.  How about stopping abortions in other countries?  That’s where the Global Gag Rule (or Mexico City Policy) comes into play.  It basically prohibits U.S. foreign aid from going to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or promote abortions.  Curiously, it was first signed into law by then President Reagan, rescinded by President Clinton, reinstated by President George W. Bush and rescinded again by President Obama.  Of course, this starts to get into a bit of a gray area.  Sure, you don’t want to spend more government money on abortions, but you are essentially using our federal government to influence the health practices in other countries.  Sounds a bit like active government…

But that’s childs play.  Now things are going to get tricky.  Dealing with government money is pretty straightforward.  But what about people who have abortions without using government money?  Well, obviously, you have to pass some laws and have government enforce them.  Duh!

35 states require some form of parental involvement – consent and/or notification – if a minor seeks to have an abortion.  Other states have laws that require women see ultrasounds before having abortions, be presented with information about adoption, and the list goes on and on.  Of course, these are all government regulations that Republicans love.

This means your flexibility will start being put to the test.  It’s tough to have a small, limited government when you want to heap a pile of regulations on doctors and the healthcare sector.  Additionally, all of these laws and regulations need to be enforced.  Someone has to revoke medical licenses, assess fines and adjudicate malpractice lawsuits and I’m fairly certain government is involved in all of these steps.  In fact, you’ll need lots of taxpayer dollars to make all of this happen.

Although, all of these regulations and enforcement actions are making it tougher to say you support small government, but I think you can still squeeze in a bit more hyprocrisy…

Hold on.  I’ve got it!  What if you made having an abortion a felony?  Even better, a felony punishable by life in prison or even the death penalty?  In fact, that’s exactly what a Georgia state legislator (Republican Bobby Franklin) proposed last year.  An active government jackpot!

At this point to fit into your small government box – politically and philosophically speaking – you’ve got your head under your arm under your leg under you toe.  After all, as a good Republican you want smaller government and that’s very consistent with spending less government money on abortions.  But, you want to use our federal government to influence other countries, create all sorts of new laws that regulate the healthcare sector and people’s private lives, and spend taxpayer dollars enforcing those laws.

Sounds like a very activist and expansive government to me – exactly the kind of government Republicans love.

Alas, this is probably not true (or is at least difficult to prove).  However, there may be another, more obvious explanation – Newt Gingrich loves government.  Could it be that his lifelong devotion to an active government is functioning like a dog whistle to Republican primary voters?  Is he just saying all the things Republican voters wish they could say out loud, but are afraid to mention?  (Much like my embarrassing and secret love for the admittedly schmaltzy movie, Love Actually.)  Let’s take a look at some of the things he has said about government…

• To begin with, Gingrich believes that government can play an important role supporting – if not stimulating – economic development.  Back in 2007, he stated there are times “when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development,” specifically citing the importance of government in the expansion of our country’s electricity and telephone networks.

• Also, let’s not forget that in the 1990’s then Congressman Gingrich was a big fan of government mandating that individuals purchase health insurance.  In fact he said, “I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.”  Furthermore, in May of this year he stated on Meet the Press that “…all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care,” and described his position as a “variation” on the individual mandate.  (Of course on the campaign trail he also refers to individual mandates — and “Obamacare” — as unconstitutional.  But come on, he’s running against Mitt Romney.  He has to engage in a little cognitive dissonance if he wants to compete!)

• Much like his one-time support for individually-mandated health insurance, Gingrich also once embraced a government-enforced cap-and-trade policy to address global warming.  In another 2007 interview, Gingrich stated, “I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.”  Now he has since backed away from that position — and devoted a section of his campaign website to calling cap-and-trade “destructive” – but his denial strikes me an insincere, kind of like when my daughter poops in her diaper, but then vigorously denies it with a sly smirk on her face.

• While Gingrich feels that NASA has wasted money in bureaucracy and failed programs, he likes that idea of spending that money (government money, that is) on a massive program to build colonies on the moon to, among other things, mine minerals.  Yup, you read that correctly.  He has also suggested that “a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.”  Again, you read that correctly.  These are some pretty lofty ideas and, let’s face it, ludicrously expensive taxpayer programs whether they are implemented directly by government or indirectly through incentive programs for the private sector.  Go big government!

• And let’s not forget the famous “Contract with America” from 1994.  Although rhetorically it was intended to spell the end of “government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money,” it was really a blue print for a remarkably active federal government.  For example, it sought to – through various government programs and expenditures – “discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy,” “promote individual responsibility,” “fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools,” establish “stronger child pornography laws,” and “create jobs and raise worker wages.”  Now to be fair, some of these goals were to be accomplished by reducing government involvement, but the vast majority of them cost money and were, frankly, variations of social engineering.

As David Brooks recently put it, Gingrich’s “core political refrain” is that government should be used “in energetic but limited ways to increase growth, dynamism and social mobility.”¹  (Although I fail to see how using massive orbiting mirrors to illuminate highways at night is at all a “limited” use of government.  “Crazy,” yes, but certainly not “limited.”)  So what we have here is one of the top two Republican candidates for president who’s a not-so-closeted – though maybe not-so-self-aware – advocate of an active government.  In fact, he’s really a government historian and for the very reasonable price of $1.6 million you can have the benefit of his consulting firm’s historical perspectives.  Just don’t ask him for a blood sample or to pee in a cup.

Should this man host all Texas executions?

Last week Oregon’s Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber once again thrust the issue of the death penalty into the forefront of public discourse.  However, in contrast to Texas’ Republican Governor Rick Perry, Kitzhaber wasn’t touting government executions; rather, he issued a temporary moratorium on them until the Oregon State Legislature can review potential reforms in 2013.

Now, you might expect this kind of namby-pamby liberalism from a Democrat – it’s soft on crime and promotes more bureaucratic navel gazing.  Republicans, on the other hand, like to use government a bit more decisively.  For example, in 2007 the Bush Administration sought to give then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the ability to shorten the appeals process in death penalty cases, or as put by Stephen Colbert, make him a “one-man justice system, like RoboCop.”

So maybe Republicans would like to streamline the process a bit, but there’s no denying that they love using federal and state government to execute convicted criminals.  For example:

• This past October, nearly three-quarters (73%) of Republicans surveyed across the country indicated they support the death penalty “for a person convicted of murder.”¹
• If you look at a map of the number of executions by state since capital punishment became legal again in 1976, it has a decidedly red-state tilt to it.
• The 2008 Republican Party Platform called for more efficient executions: “Courts must have the option of imposing the death penalty in capital murder cases and other instances of heinous crime, while federal review of those sentences should be streamlined.”
• In 1986, California Republicans – led by Republican Governor George Deukmejian – successfully removed State Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird from the bench due to her opposition to the death penalty.
• A Florida State Representative (Republican Brad Drake) recently introduce a bill to bring back electrocutions and firing squads and replace lethal injection as a method of government executing criminals.
• And it probably the most famous, recent public display of affection for capital punishment came during a September Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library earlier this year.  While Rick Perry was proudly defending Texas’ administration of “ultimate justice” (since he became governor, Texas has executed 234 criminals, or roughly one person every 17 days), the audience twice burst into applause.  Imagine their delight if the executions were broadcast live, perhaps on a show hosted by Chuck Norris in character as Walter, Texas Ranger!

What’s particularly interesting about all of this, though, is how fickle Republicans’ love for government involvement in end-of-life decisions is.  Setting aside abortion and the debate about when life begins, let’s instead consider the sinister Obamacare.  Remember how deathly extremely afraid Republicans were of government-run death panels back in 2009?  Fast forward to 2011 and Republicans are now applauding government executions.  I suppose the lesson to be learned is that government shouldn’t be involved in providing counseling services for the hundreds of thousands of people who face their mortality each year, but it should be involved killing a handful of people who committed heinous crimes each year.  Wait, maybe Republicans do want limited government, after all?

(Obviously, the best way to resolve this debate would be to subject each candidate to several waterboarding sessions and then ask them whether or not they felt they had been tortured.  For the record, 2008 Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain – who was tortured in Vietnam for years – believes waterboarding is torture.  However, 2012 Republican presidential aspirant Rick Santorum – presumably based upon his comparable experience as an attorney representing the World Wrestling Federation – believes McCain, “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.”)

While the candidates were divided on this particular issue – Bachman, Cain and Perry seemed to think waterboarding was not torture, but Huntsman and Paul thought it was – they appeared united in their support of our government using “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  This is not surprising given that anything “enhanced” is obviously good and that these sorts of techniques always seemed to work for Jack Bauer on 24.

In the end, this debate highlighted how much Republicans love giving our government – particularly the CIA and military – the ability to use enhanced interrogation techniques to keep our country safe, even if defining what those techniques are is somewhat challenging.

Republicans really fell in love with enhanced interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush years, when the United States was fighting the War on Terror using extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, and other tactics generally used by, well, terrorists.  Former Bush Chief of Staff Dick Cheney has repeatedly defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques during this time, saying they were “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States,” and asserting that he was “OK” if the techniques went beyond their “specific legal authorization.”  (In other words, his love of enhanced interrogation techniques is so strong that it can’t be contained by things like “laws.”)

Another prominent figure during this time – former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – spoke out in defense of enhanced interrogation techniques earlier this year after Osama bin Laden was killed.  He stated that if our government had not used enhanced interrogation techniques, “We very likely would not have captured or killed Osama bin Laden.”  This was a sentiment echoed by many prominent Republicans, including the ranking Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) (enhanced interrogation “did provide leads to bin Laden”) and Jose Rodriguez, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center from 2002-2005 who oversaw the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (information provided by captives subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques “eventually led to the location of [bin Laden’s] compound and the operation that led to his death”).

What about rank-and-file Republicans?  Turns out they love it, too!  According to a May 2011 Suffolk National Survey, 78% of Republicans believe “it OK to use enhanced interrogation techniques or some forms of torture on suspected terrorists if they might have information that helps keep America safe.”  Also, in 2009 polling by Resurgent Republic found that 76% of Republicans believe that “harsh interrogation techniques of detainees are effective.”¹

Of course, this does bring us back to the question, “What are enhanced interrogation techniques?”  Obviously, the Republicans presidential candidates are somewhat divided on whether waterboarding counts or not.  However, Republican Congressman Allen West (R-FL) recently shed some light what types of interrogation techniques the U.S. Government should use.  For example, he noted that Demi Moore was waterboarded in the movie G.I. Jane, suggesting that the staged waterboarding of an actress provides a solid basis for our government employing similar interrogation techniques.

This obviously opens the door for the United States to broaden the definition of enhanced interrogation techniques to include many other techniques successfully employed in movies.  For example, clearly we should consider using the mind-controlling larvae that enter humans through their ears from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (Ceti eels), the life-sucking machine in the Pit of Despair from The Princess Bride, and the mutated, ill-tempered sea bass from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.  And remember, these techniques are not considered torture.  Torture is bad.  Torture is having to watch this video on a continuous loop.  By calling these techniques “enhanced,” they are really more similar to the soft cushions and comfy chairs used by the Spanish Inquisition.

At first blush, you may not think of airports as part of government, but all of the big ones we use typically are.  Who owns the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)?  Why it’s owned by the City of Los Angeles.  Dallas/Forth Worth?  Shockingly owned jointly by the cities of Dallas and Forth Worth.  JFK, LaGuardia and Newark?  They are owned by New York City, New York City and Newark (respectively).  Also, many airports are operated by pseudo-independent government agencies, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey which operates those three New York area airports.

All told, there are 4,122 publicly owned airports in the United States.¹  That reality, combined with the fact that there are over 620 million passengers flying each year, indicates that hundreds of millions of Republicans use government-owned airports on an annual basis.  Now, the airlines may be private — and therefore models of efficiency and customer service — but the actual airports, the runways, the air traffic controllers, and the security screeners are all part of government.

Now that we’ve got that established, let’s look at some ways that Republicans love airports:

• Perhaps the most obvious way Republicans express their love for airports is naming them after beloved Republican politicians.  Most famously, the Washington National Airport was renamed the Reagan National Airport and now sports a nine-foot tall statue of The Gipper proudly surveying his government land.  Houston has the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, named after President George H. W. Bush, and Orange County, CA has the John Wayne Airport.²
• Republicans love free trade and it would be very difficult to have trade products between countries without airports.  In fact, air freight currently accounts for over 40% of global merchandise trade by value and provides estimated annual revenue of almost $55 billion worldwide.³
• Republican presidential nominees love airports because they like to fly around the country campaigning and they love taking “presidential looking” pictures getting off and on their special campaign airplanes which feature cleverly located URLs to their campaign websites.
• Airports are a key battleground in our war against terror.  For example, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confiscates four to five guns every day.
• Republicans love flying on corporate jets and have even fought against closing tax loopholes for those who own them.
• Congressional Republicans love using earmarks to build, expand and maintain their favorite airports, often conveniently located in their districts or states.  For example, even though he is dead, a Senator Ted Stevens $77 million earmark to build an airport for an Alaskan island with fewer than 100 year-rounds residents still lives on today.
• Some Republicans also view airports as great places to meet new people.

So you see airports are just another great example of government spending Republicans love.  And the next time you fly out of Reagan National Airport, think how important that piece of government property must be in order for Republicans to want name it after one of their icons.  And if you have to be patted-down, take comfort in knowing Ronnie is watching you.

While presumably this is just a phase for my daughter, using government to redistribute wealth has been a three-decade obsession of Republicans, and a key component of the “Reagan Revolution.”  While the free market distributes wealth on its own, if you really want to direct wealth to specific groups of people, government can be a more effective tool, a tool Republicans have used exceedingly well.

By just about any measurement — and this page shows just about all of them — income and wealth have been radically redistributed over the past 30 years.  Using 1979-2007 Congressional Budget Office figures, the average after-tax (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the bottom 80% have decreased since 1979, while only the top 20% have increased.  What’s more remarkable is that in 1979 the top 1% took home 7.5% of the nation’s total after tax income, but by 2007 that percentage had increased to 17.1%.¹  (That’s a lot of wealth being accumulated by the top 1%.  Someone should point this out.)

So, what does this have to do with Republicans and government?  Well, tax policy has an awful lot to do with it and last time I checked, government implemented tax policy.  I know I’ve touted this before, but according to the Republican National Committee two of the most significant Republican accomplishments ever are the “Reagan Tax Cuts” of 1981 and the “Republican Tax Cuts” of 2001.  Although some Democrats were complicit in these tax cuts, they were driven by Republican presidents and significant contributors to the country’s overall redistribution of wealth.  For example, during the Reagan years, the top marginal tax rate when from 70% to 28%.  (Yeah rich people job creators!)

Another way in which wealth gets redistributed is from blue state to red state via the federal government.  This sort of data has been sliced and diced a lot over the past couple of years, but I tend to like this little analysis by the Economist from earlier this year.  It’s not an exact correlation, but over the past 20 years a lot of “blue” states (e.g., California, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, etc.) have sent more money to the federal government than they have received.  Conversely, a whole lot of “red” states (e.g., Mississippi, West Virginia, Montanan, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, etc.) have received more than they have contributed.²

More recently, several Republican presidential candidates have proposed their own tax reform plans to use government to redistribute wealth to, well, the wealthy.  Perry’s optional 20% “flat tax” sounds pretty good to those in the top tax bracket, currently paying 35% on their marginal income, though it sounds a little less interesting to someone paying 10% in the lowest marginal bracket.  (So low-income people won’t opt-in, but high-income people will in order to lower their taxes.  Brilliant!)  However, Cain’s 9-9-9 plan puts that to shame.  Some estimates of the 9-9-9 plan predict the bottom 84% of taxpayers would pay more in taxes and those with more than $1 million in income would receive an average tax cut of $487,300.  (In Cain’s defense, he claims to have a secret plan to help the poor, a plan developed in secret by his secret economic advisors.)

If you combine the reduced tax rates for the wealthy, disproportionately distributing tax dollars to red states, and tax reform proposals that increase taxes on low-income taxpayers (not to mention proposals to slash programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit which are far more important to low-income people), we’re talking about some fantastic wealth redistribution Republicans can really be proud of.  And none of it would be possible without government.

While my daughter will likely grow out of her “she who dies with the most toys win” phase, I don’t see the same thing happening to Republicans.  And why should they?  In terms of using government to redistribute wealth, they’ve been incredibly successful, so much so that — according to the CIA — our income distribution is now less equal than the egalitarian role models of Cameroon, Iran, Cambodia, and Uganda.  There’s still some work to do if we want to catch Namibia at #1, though.

Philosopher king

And you know what?  Republicans think voting is pretty damn awesome.  After all, isn’t getting the public to vote (a certain way) the primary purpose of the Republican Party, or any political party, for that matter?  They love voting because, to different degrees over time, the results of voting allow then to do all sorts of great things with government, such as blowing things up, putting people in prisons and securing our borders.

The following are several examples of Republicans’ love of voting:

• Republicans throw huge parties — also known as conventions — to talk about voting and encourage people to vote, often by lionizing Ronald Reagan, promoting “family values” and repeatedly chanting “U-S-A.”
• Republican Party committees (not including candidates) spent $792 million in 2008 and $590 million in 2010 to help register people to vote and to educate voters on the issues and candidates.  You don’t spend that kind of money on something you only “like” or even “like like.”¹
• Roughly two in five voters identify themselves as Republicans, and if 131 million people voted in the 2008 Presidential Election, that means approximately 52.4 million Republicans voted in that election.  That’s a lot of Republicans walking around with “I Voted” stickers.
• As is conveniently noted on the Republican National Committee’s list of accomplishments, millions of Americans wouldn’t have the right to vote without the efforts of, you guessed it, Republicans.  For example, in 1869 “Republicans passed the 15th Amendment…extending to African-Americans the right to vote” and in 1878 “a Republican wrote the 19th Amendment…according women the right to vote.”²
• Republicans are much more excited to vote in next year’s presidential election than Democrats.  While only 45% of Democrats are “enthusiastic” about voting next year, nearly three in five (58%) Republicans are “enthusiastic.”  And no wonder, Newt Gingrich has said that next year’s election is the most important election since 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected President.³
• Republicans see voting as sacred and are passing all sorts of tough laws — such as requiring photo IDs — to maintain the integrity of the system.  Voter fraud is so pervasive that from 2002 to 2008 over 100 people were convicted of committing federal voter fraud.⁴  If all 100 of those people had voted in the 2008 election, 0.00008% of the votes would have been fraudulent.  Yikes!

Voting is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.  For example, I have a cousin who after voting for Richard Nixon declared himself unfit to vote ever again.  (And to the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t voted since).  Though I have yet to hear of any Republicans similarly disciplining themselves after voting for George W. Bush, Republicans clearly hold voting in high regard.  And every couple of years — if not more frequently — they get to exercise their right to vote and send a little love note to government, even though it may be of the “I love you, but want to change you” variety.

Judicial Activist & Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

With the U.S. Supreme Court starting its 2011-2012 term this week, it seems like the perfect time to talk about one of most important reasons Republicans love government – activists judges.  I know this may seem confusing.  After all, during the Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Republican senators repeatedly warned against the evils of activist judges and this Friday, Newt Gingrich is planning a big speech about his plan to allow Congress to essentially fire activist judges.  (In his own humble words, this will be “one of the more important speeches of the campaign.”)

Of course, activism is all in the eye of the beholder.  I know what you are thinking…this is remarkably similar to whether someone believes his or her favorite baseball team was cheating in the 2000’s when pretty much every team had a few power hitters using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).  I was thinking the same thing.

Personally, I’m a San Francisco Giants fan and I thoroughly enjoyed Barry Bonds’ assault on the record books, even though his suddenly enormous head clearly signaled he was using PEDs.  Likewise, I haven’t heard any Boston Red Sox fans suggesting the Red Sox should vacate their World Series championships, even though they had their own cheaters.  Basically, during the 2000’s a baseball player was cheating if he was taking PEDs and on someone else’s team, but not a cheater if he was taking PEDs and on your favorite baseball team.  Sounds a lot like how Republicans view activist judges.

Let’s first try to define the term “activist judge.”  Unfortunately, that’s not an easy task.  There are several different points of view on this, but best I can tell,¹ it is when a judge makes a ruling based upon their own personal political or policy preferences rather than the rule of law.  It’s this last part that gets a little sticky.  I’ve read arguments that the “rule of law” (as I’m using it here) can be the Constitution in its original meaning, anything passed by Congress, or simply legal precedent.  At least the Heritage Foundation admits it “may be either liberal or conservative.”

Personally, I like to focus on the first part of the definition — advancing a political or policy preference.  Using this definition, here are three great examples of Supreme Court judicial activism Republicans love:²

Bush v. Gore (2000)

One of the long-held pillars of “judicial restraint” (the opposite of “judicial activism”) is that federal judges should restrain from interfering with states’ rights.  However, in this case, the Supreme Court functionally took away power from the Florida Supreme Court, who in interpreting Florida election law, had deemed it appropriate to order a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes.  (And gave us one of the worst presidencies ever, according to noted political scientists.)

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

In this case the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment.  Notably, it was first time in American history that a Federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds.  That may sound weird, given what you’ve probably heard about the Second Amendment, but historically the right to possess a firearm has been connected to militia service and not an individual right.³

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)

In this decision the Supreme Court gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law and overturned roughly a century of legal precedent by ruling that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns.  Essentially, they said that corporations have the same free speech rights as human beings, a sentiment echoed earlier this year when Mitt Romney said that “corporations are people.”  Get prepared for some excessively-expensive, overly-dramatic and marginally-truthful campaign ads this election cycle.

Finally, there are all sorts of laws and prior Supreme Court decisions Republicans would love some activist judges to overturn, including Roe v. Wade, any recent law or ruling permitting same-sex marriage and, of course, “ObamaCare” (previously known as the Heritage Foundation’s, Newt Gingrich’s and Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan).

So, it seems abundantly clear to me that Republicans love activist judges seeking to advance Republican policy goals.  To be honest, that’s totally rational.  Of course they want judges who do everything they can to advance a Republican agenda.  Democrats want the same thing.  In fact, we all want activist judges interpreting the law in ways consistent with our own world views.  After all, the song goes, “Root, root, root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame…,” and not “root, root, root for the any old team, we don’t care who wins the game…”