Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
The Hiring Hypocrisy of The New York Times
Mark Thompson, a former director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, began his new job Monday as president and CEO of The New York Times. The lack of embarrassment was remarkable. Thompson claimed he was the worst kind of ignorant buffoon, knowing nothing about the massive sex-abuse scandal -- and then its censorship -- that's rocking the BBC. Scotland Yard has been conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by the late disc jockey and TV personality Jimmy Savile over six decades, describing him as a "predatory sex offender." In mid-October, the metropolitan police stated they were pursuing over 400 lines of inquiry based on the testimony of 300 potential victims. Chris Patten, the head of the BBC's government body called it "this great tsunami of filth." BBC's "Newsnight" was about to broadcast an expose last December -- but BBC bosses spiked it, and, incredibly, aired Christmas tributes to Savile instead.
Disaster Ignorance
Here's a which-is-better question for you. Suppose a New Jersey motel room rented for $125 a night prior to Hurricane Sandy's devastation. When the hurricane hits, a husband, wife and their two youngsters might seek the comfort of renting two adjoining rooms. However, when they arrive at the motel, they find that rooms now rent for $250. At that price, they might decide to make do with one room. In my book, that would be wonderful. That decision would make a room available for another family who had to evacuate Sandy's wrath. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others condemn this as price gouging, but I ask you: Which is preferable for a family seeking shelter -- a room available at $250 or a room unavailable at the pre-hurricane price of $125? It's not the intention of the motel owner to make a room available for another family. He just sees an opportunity to earn more money. It was not the intention of the family of four who made do with just one room to make a room available for another evacuating family. They are just trying to save money. Even though it was no one's intention to make that room available, the room was made available as if intended. That's the unappreciated benefit of freely fluctuating prices. They get people to do voluntarily what's in the social interest -- conserve on goods and services that have become scarce.
Is Demography Destiny?
Some media pundits see in the growing proportion of non-white groups in the population a growing opposition to the Republican Party that will sooner or later make it virtually impossible for Republicans to win presidential elections or even to control either house of Congress. But is demography destiny? Conventional wisdom in the Republican establishment is that what the GOP needs to do, in order to win black votes or Hispanic votes, is to craft policies specifically targeting these groups. In other words, Republicans need to become more like Democrats. Whether in a racial context or in other contexts, the supposed need for Republicans to become more like Democrats has long been a recurring theme of the moderate Republican establishment, going back more than half a century.
Did Freedom Win?
Democrats won big last week. So government will continue to grow. Individual freedom will yield. At least some people with records of supporting liberty were elected: Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona and U.S. Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio in Michigan and Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Also, Washington and Colorado voted to allow any adult to use marijuana. (But users beware. Your newfound freedom may be short-lived thanks to that extraordinary human being in the White House -- you know, the one who smoked pot when he was in school. Despite promising that he wouldn't, he has cracked down on pot dispensaries far more often than President Bush did.)
Legal Pot Could Be Contagious
Colorado and Washington Show Us the Way Out of the Senseless War on Marijuana
The Right Isn't Waving a White Flag
The conservative Gotterdammerung is finally here. "Like dazed survivors in a ravaged city, America's conservatives are wailing and beating their collective breasts," opines the Economist's "Lexington" columnist. "A leading conservative thinker," asked by the Economist to "list today's conservative ideas, laughs bitterly and replies, 'Are there any?'" Former Reaganite Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) laments in the conservative journal Policy Review, "I have never been so concerned about the future of conservative ideas." A Washington Post columnist announced that "the long descent of the Republican Party into irrelevance, defeat, and perhaps eventual disappearance" has finally begun. William Kristol of the Weekly Standard concludes that the "conservative movement, which accomplished great things over the past quarter-century, is finished." His magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the "conservative crack-up."
Pushing Back Against Stealth Jihad Charter Schools
Americans around the country are catching on to the Gülen movement.
Maybe Minorities' Values Need Changing
The most widely offered explanation for Mitt Romney's defeat is that the Republican Party is disproportionately composed of -- aging -- white males. That is, alas, true. But the real question is what Republicans should do with this truth. There are two responses. The nearly universal response -- meaning the response offered by the liberal media and liberal academics (and some Republicans) -- is that the Republican Party needs to rethink its positions, moving away from conservatism and toward the political center.
A Flip-Flops President
We mighta, coulda, woulda, shoulda, still-some-day-may elect a president serious about the matter of the nation's freedoms. Or, possibly, not. The second possibility -- so an ancient mariner reflects -- arises from a sea change in our culture. It could be that more than half of us - a fast-rising proportion -- don't understand "serious" the way it was understood until half a century ago. The loose, lax, louche United States of 2012 seems dissimilar in important respects to the country that chose Dwight D. Eisenhower for president. A week after the Nov. 6 debacle, the post-mortems go on: the if-onlys and why-didn't-we's, the slams on Mitt Romney, the moans over Superstorm Sandy and the putative treason of Gov. Chris Christie.
Before We Give Up, Could We at Least Try Selling Our Ideas?
We conservatives may never reach a consensus among ourselves as to the main factors that caused our election defeat, but surely we can agree that we must do a better job of selling our ideas. Never mind, you say. The electorate has irreversibly become a taker class, and conservative ideas of self-reliance, personal responsibility and individual liberties will never appeal to a majority again, especially with demographics working against the GOP. We must reject that, or we are as good as surrendering. To accept it, we are confessing our skepticism of the power of ideas, which itself is contrary to the conservative spirit.
Changing America
"The color of the world is changing day by day." -- "Les Miserables," the musical A look at the electoral map indicates the Republican Party won in square miles. Unfortunately for them, electoral votes, not landmass, won President Obama a second term. Analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that total spending on federal elections would peak at nearly $6 billion, an all-time record. This spending included ads that carpet bombed swing states; yet we are still an almost equally divided nation. But America is rapidly changing. Historically, the losing party turns introspective and asks itself how to attract more voters. Some Republicans are suggesting that social issues be jettisoned and the GOP should become more like Democrats. Why, then, have two parties? Step one in a reform agenda would be to remove "old" from the GOP moniker.
It's Hard to Be a Republican
Even when the economy is terrible, when the incumbent Democratic president has not been able to demonstrate success on job creation or growth, and even when the standard of living for Americans is declining on his watch, the country will choose a Democrat "who cares about the problems of people like me" over the Republican. That alone is enough to make Republican heads spin for some time. Many established beliefs about presidential politics have been proved false by Obama's reelection: 1.) The idea that, when unemployment is above 7 percent, incumbents fail; 2.) The notion that incumbent presidents who are reelected always increase their percentage of the vote over their first race; 3.) The idea that late deciders break for the challenger; 4.) The belief that if majorities say the country is on the "wrong track," the incumbent will be defeated. All wrong.
Nice Losers
Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment -- nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have. The list of Republican presidential candidates like this goes back at least as far as 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey ran against President Harry Truman. Dewey spoke in lofty generalities while Truman spoke in hard-hitting specifics. Since then, there have been many re-runs of this same scenario, featuring losing Republican presidential candidates John McCain, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and, when he ran for reelection, George H.W. Bush.
Resistance With Respect
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term, Kansas editor William Allen White, a staunch Republican, wrote: "We who hate your gaudy guts salute you." President Obama: We have never hated your gaudy guts. And we acknowledge that a majority of our fellow citizens of this Great Republic have saluted you and conferred upon you for the second time the office of President of the United States. We thank God that more than 120 million Americans voted in a peaceful and orderly election. That alone is a wonder of the world. (You will pardon us, Sir, if we also thank Heaven for the Twenty-second Amendment, another legacy from FDR.)
Business Rejects Obamacare
How the law will slash low-wage worker hours while failing to provide them with health insurance.
Kicking the Can Over the Fiscal Cliff
The election wasn't over for 48 hours before both sides started laying down their opening bids on dealing with what has become known as the "fiscal cliff." At its core, the "fiscal cliff" (and I'm going to stop putting it within quotes from here on) is the result of the Congress and the President (to use another phrase I wish I could excise from the political lexicon) "kicking the can down the road." Unwilling and/or unable to come to agreements on a number of issues, both sides have continued to offer really tough-sounding, but temporary solutions, which have more-or-less amounted to "We'll deal with that when we get there."
Rx for the Mass. GOP: Clarity and Conviction
When Whittaker Chambers broke with the Communist Party, he mournfully declared that he knew he was "leaving the winning side for the losing side." Compared with today's Massachusetts GOP, Chambers was a cockeyed optimist. Last week's election was a misery for Bay State Republicans. US Senator Scott Brown lost his "people's seat" to Elizabeth Warren. Scandal-tainted incumbent John Tierney survived Richard Tisei's challenge in the 6th Congressional District. And the tiny Republican band on Beacon Hill grew tinier: Three GOP state representatives were ousted, giving Democrats a 130-30 advantage in the House and 36 of the Senate's 40 seats.
Obama Wins by Going Negative and Turning Out Base
Lukewarm. That's the feeling I get from the election numbers. Turnout was apparently down, at least as a percentage of eligible voters. The president was re-elected by a reduced margin. The challenger didn't inspire the turnout surge he needed. Every re-elected president since Andrew Jackson has won with an increased popular vote percentage. Barack Obama didn't. He won 53 percent to 46 percent in 2008. His numbers as I write are 50 percent to 48 percent over Mitt Romney. That could go up to 51 percent to 48 percent when California finishes its count, which took five weeks in 2008. Obama owes most of his electoral vote majority of 332 to negative campaigning. His strategists barraged the target states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia with attack ads against Romney for months.
Liberal Hypocrisy
Speaking of education, I found it fascinating that in a recent poll, 93% of Chicago's public school teachers rated themselves superior or excellent. This is in spite of 45% of students dropping out of high school. I bet Chicago's kids wish the teachers graded them as generously as they grade themselves