Pennsylvania: A GOP Keystone?

The Cook Political Report suggests that Pennsylvania could play a big role in the GOP's hopes for 2016:

The only blue states that have become less blue since 1998 are Iowa, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
Of the three, Pennsylvania is the biggest prize with 20 Electoral Votes.
The last time a Republican won the state was in 1988 when George H.W. Bush managed to eke out 50 percent of the vote in the Philadelphia market, and carried the rest of the state with 52 percent of the vote. Since then, however, Republicans have failed miserably in Philadelphia--which makes up 40-42 percent of the vote--and haven’t run up the score enough in the rest of the state to make up the difference.
In 2012, Obama carried the Philadelphia area by 63 percent, while Romney won the rest of the state by 55 percent. If Romney had gotten just 45 percent of the vote in Philadelphia--and still carried the rest of the state by 55 percent--he would have won the state. In other words, if a Republican could lose Philadelphia by the same percentage they win the rest of the state, they could turn the state red.
The Romney campaign spent $8.9M on broadcast TV in Nevada during the general election to get 46 percent of the vote. In Pennsylvania, the Romney campaign spent a paltry $2.4M and got 47 percent. In other words, Team Romney spent four times as much in Nevada as they did in Pennsylvania, to get essentially the same percentage of the vote. Now, imagine that the money invested in Pennsylvania came earlier--and more intensely. 

 With the right policy steps, Pennsylvania could have been in play in 2012.  It was very close with relatively little direct spending by the Romney campaign.  It is very possible that the Republican road to the White House is through the Rust Belt.  But putting this area in play might demand that the GOP rally around the message of middle-class and working-class uplift, industrial renewal, and a popular prosperity.

Many Republicans are sympathetic to the Gang of Eight immigration bill because they hope it will benefit the party electorally.  But the Gang of Eight's guest-worker provisions---the corporate giveaways and enshrining of a two-tier labor model---could undercut the outreach to workers needed to edge states like Pennsylvania into the GOP column.

Is What's Good for the Middle Class Good for the Economy?

I consider this question over at the Corner.

Medical Cost Release

The release of hospital expenditure data (and what federal reimbursement for these expenditures) seems like it could have significant effects on the evolving US debate about health-care policy.  The Washington Post notes the vast range in medical charges for the same procedure:

In the District, George Washington University’s average bill for a patient on a ventilator was $115,000, while Providence Hospital’s average charge for the same service was just under $53,000. For a lower joint replacement, George Washington University charged almost $69,000 compared with Sibley Memorial Hospital’s average of just under $30,000.
Virginia’s highest average rate for a lower limb replacement was at CJW Medical Center in Richmond, more than $117,000, compared with Winchester Medical Center charging $25,600 per procedure. CJW charged more than $38,000 for esophagitis and gastrointestinal conditions, while Carilion Tazewell Community Hospital averaged $8,100 in those cases.

 The lack of price transparency has probably been a major challenge for getting more market-oriented reforms.

The Battle over Heritage

While many in the media are focusing on the personal views of one of the authors of the Heritage report on the Gang of Eight bill, David Frum wonders why the evidence of this report is not gathering nearly as much media attention:

Sorry, no. If you agree with the Heritage study - and so far I have not heard any good reason to doubt it - the results are so important and explosive that the coauthor's other views dwindle into a mere footnote to history. It's not some personal quirk of Jason Richwine's that has caused him to doubt that the legalized immigrants will rapidly raise their skill levels or education standards. 

Some in the media could also perhaps bear to spend a little more time analyzing the various provisions of the bill itself---rather than the biographies of its critics.

A Few Immigration Points

A fairly big news day for the immigration bill, so a slight round-up might be in order.

Heritage has released its controversial report estimating the cost of a mass legalization.  It's worth noting that government costs are not the only reason to be skeptical about the bill.

Yuval Levin suggests some ways to improve the Gang of 8 bill.

Bill Kristol thinks the House should support piecemeal reform.

The NYT reports on opposition to the bill.

Guest Problems

In National Review, I explore the Gang of Eight's guest-worker plans and suggest how they might be problematic for the GOP:

The vast majority of media attention on the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill has focused on three aspects: the legalization of illegal immigrants, the promise of future enforcement (and to what degree that promise will be broken), and the political fallout of the bill and debates about it. However, the Gang of Eight bill also makes far-reaching reforms to other aspects of the immigration system. Under the proposed bill, the nation’s guest-worker programs would be considerably expanded — and this expansion has major implications for the nation as a whole, especially its workers. This guest-worker program could have three big outcomes: bigger government, bigger downward pressure on wages, and bigger problems for the GOP and the future of conservative principles.

Under this bill, the three principal guest-worker programs would be agricultural, low-skilled labor, and high-skilled labor. According to Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, the U.S. already issues 700,000 guest-worker visas a year. Some of these visa-holders work in the U.S. for a short period of time, but others can stay for much longer. The Gang of Eight bill significantly increases the number of guest-worker visas. The annual cap on H-1B visas — meant for “high-skill” guest workers, especially those in technical fields — would immediately jump from 65,000 to 110,000. This new cap would be the floor for H-1B visa numbers in the future, and it would have the potential to rise in further years, all the way up to 180,000.

 Read the rest here.

It's the Middle Class

Byron York notes what really harmed Governor Romney's electoral chances in November:

Romney lost because he did not appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline over the past decades. They're nervous about the future. When Romney did not address their concerns, they either voted for Obama or didn't vote at all. If the next Republican candidate can address their concerns effectively, he will win. And, amazingly enough, he'll win a lot more Hispanic votes in the process. A lot from other groups, too.

It would do more than any immigration bill or outreach program ever could.

For Better Days

Bill Kristol attacks the complacency of the "new normal":

By the way, the new normal is bipartisan. It’s of course true that the administration in power during this period of national decline has a particular interest in selling the concept of a new normal. It’s true that the idea fits uncommonly well with the fatalism that, beneath the airy talk of hope and change, lies at the heart of modern liberalism. But Republican elites aren’t immune to the charms of the new normal, which excuses subpar performance in so many areas.

So it’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders in Congress to be more interested in exempting themselves from Obamacare than in laying the groundwork for repealing it, and thereby exempting all Americans. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP elites to spend all their time, money, and effort trying to quickly muscle through a poorly crafted immigration bill—which once passed will have irreversible effects—than trying to do anything significant for American workers or against crony capitalism. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders, at once terrified and contemptuous of their own base, equally intimidated by donors and voters but uninterested in treating either group as grownups, to think they too can simply shelter in place, under the awning of the new normal. (One might add that, when it comes to the leaders of both parties colluding to preserve power and perquisites, the new normal bears a striking resemblance to the old normal.)

Still a City upon a Hill

In National Review, I have an essay up looking at the meaning of the Boston Marathon as a terrorist target:

Boylston is empty.
It is Sunday, and Boylston Street — the avenue of the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, the Prudential Tower, and the Old South Church — is, nearly a week after the terrorist attack of Patriots’ Day, empty. One of the central arteries of the great New England metropolis — usually crowded with vitality and ambition and the hectic beat of urban life — is bare, with the exception of a few police officers and FBI agents. In a grim reminder of the toll of terror, a few signs celebrating the Boston Marathon remain in that empty space. A crime scene, that stretch of Boylston has also become a time capsule.
There is a hole in the city. There is a hole in too many families and too many hearts.
John Winthrop, a leader of those Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, proclaimed in 1630 that the new commonwealth would be a “City upon a Hill” to serve as an exemplar of success or failure to people around the world. Well, nearly 400 years after Winthrop’s sermon, the city of Boston serves yet again as an example: of what terror would destroy and of the means of resisting terror.  

Read the rest here.

It's the Workers

Ramesh Ponnuru turns his attention to the dangers that a "guest-worker" program could pose to the United States's civil fabric:

The guest-worker program is where they go wrong. For the Republican politicians who have in the past been its main supporters, this provision is like a dessert with no calories: Businesses get the benefit of the temporary workers’ labor and they get to make some money, but the rest of us don’t have to make room for immigrants in our society, and Republicans don’t have to worry how they will vote.
That’s exactly what’s wrong with the idea. One of the worst things about illegal immigration is that it creates a class of people who contribute their labor to this country but aren’t full participants in it and lack the rights and responsibilities of everyone else. A guest-worker program doesn’t solve this problem. It formalizes it. 

The guest-worker component is a key and under-discussed aspect of the Gang of 8 bill.  If the GOP is going to restore itself as a party of upward mobility and middle-class uplift, a guest-worker program could pose a significant political problem.

Coordination Between CATO, ATR, and Others

Breitbart unearths some emails showing some coordination between CATO, Americans for Tax Reform, and others to counter skepticism about the Gang of Eight immigration bill after last week's events in Boston.

Obamacare and Immigration

Jed Graham raises an interesting point about the immigration bill, arguing that it may incentivize the employment of recently legalized immigrants:

Under the immigration reform bill, some employers would have an incentive of up to $3,000 per year to hire a newly legalized immigrant over a U.S. citizen.
In avoiding one controversy — the cost of providing millions of newly legalized immigrants with ObamaCare subsidies — the Senate "Gang of Eight" may have risked walking into another.
The bipartisan legislation released Wednesday dictates that those granted provisional legal immigrant status would be treated the same as those "not lawfully present" are treated under the 2010 health law.
That means they would neither be eligible for ObamaCare tax credits nor required to pay an individual tax penalty for failing to obtain qualifying health coverage. It also means some employers would face no penalty for failing to provide such workers affordable health coverage.

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill: Bigger Government?

Over at NRO, I explore two aspects of the Gang of 8 immigration bill: how it could affect far more than 11 illegal immigrants, and how it could open the door to a massive new government agency.

Amnesty Incentives?

Mickey Kaus notes an interesting tweet from Senator Marco Rubio's press secretary, Alex Conant:

Rubio press aide Alex Conant tweets that

Without temporary worker program to fill US demand for low-skill labor, people will find way to come illegally despite new fence

Really? Hasn’t Rubio been busy telling us that his plan would secure the border? Now his flack tells us people “will find a way to come illegally” despite it? Doesn’t this mean that those who can’t get into the guest worker program (maybe because it’s full, or because they don’t qualify) will be able to “find a way” in as well–so the elaborately negotiated limits on the number of guestworkers will be routinely violated and, in practice, meaningless? Doesn’t it also mean that those who are drawn by the prospect of the next amnesty (because, you know, ”we can’t deport them all!” and “Latino voters”) will “find a way”in too?

But Conant isn't the only one suggesting that future border enforcement might be less than effective.  Senator Rubio himself says it, this post from Hot Air notes:

“A lot of it is going to hinge on the viability of a guest worker program. There are elements in organized labor that don’t want one. I think, really, that’s going to become the critical issue in this debate … whether we can create a viable guest worker program that protects American workers, but also ensures that in the future [if] we need foreign labor for limited periods of time, we’re able to access that in a legal way. Because if we don’t have a program like that in place, we’re going to have 10 million illegal immigrants here in a decade again.”

This statement obviously contradicts the line taken by the New York Times and others that we needn't worry about an amnesty encouraging further illegal immigration because there are few people left abroad who would want to immigrate illegally.

Terror in Boston

As the evidence piles up, it seems increasingly clear that the explosions that interrupted the Boston Marathon today were acts of terrorism.  A large number of the specific facts regarding this tragedy remain unclear.

What should remain clear, though, is the endurance of a resolve of a free people.

Not Just Legalization

The Los Angeles Times notes that the "Gang of 8" proposal could significantly increase the rate of legal immigration:

The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.
The immigration package includes at least four major provisions that would increase the number of legal immigrants, according to people familiar with it. Some of the parts could generate as much controversy as the provisions dealing with those who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, according to those with long experience of the politics of immigration....
Opponents such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has long opposed measures to increase immigration levels, say new workers would depress wages and crowd out Americans looking for work during a time of persistently high unemployment.
"The masters of the universe in glass towers and suites, they may not be impacted by this, but millions of struggling American families will," Sessions said in an interview Friday. "We do need to be sure we aren't exacerbating unemployment and wage erosion in America."
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S. The 11 million now in the country without legal authorization would be eligible for citizenship only after that backlog was resolved. Reunification efforts would require boosting the number of visas issued each year. To keep the additional inflow under control, the bill would stop allowing adult siblings of immigrants to qualify, but children and parents would continue to be eligible.
In addition to family unification, which allows people into the country permanently, the bill also aims to increase temporary visas for both high-wage and low-wage workers. The number of visas for high-tech workers could nearly double to more than 120,000 per year. At the other end of the wage scale, a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers. The numbers would start small, but as the unemployment rate declined, it could reach 200,000 a year by the end of the decade. And growers could bring a total of about 330,000 new farmworkers into the country during the decade. At least some of those low-wage temporary workers eventually would be allowed to seek permanent residency.

A New Serf Class?

It seems as though big business, purported "labor" groups, and ethnic lobbyists have pulled together a compromise on the agricultural part of the Gang of 8's immigration "reform" proposal, as Reuters reports.  However, the details of this legislation could have big implications for big government.

Here's what Reuters has to say about how farm workers who are currently illegal immigrants could gain legal status under this proposal:

Farm workers in the country illegally who agree to work in agriculture for an additional five to seven years would become eligible for a "green card" allowing permanent U.S. residence, according to two officials. The workers hold legal status, dubbed a "blue card" by negotiators, during the interim.
The new guest worker program would include a system for setting pay scales and initially would have a high ceiling for the number of visas that could be granted. After five years, the cap could be adjusted by the Agriculture Department. There would be a mechanism for meeting emergency needs for workers.

This kind of farm-worker amnesty could give growers great power over workers.  After all, continued employment in agriculture would be the only way for these amnestied immigrants to secure a path to citizenship, so they will be dependent upon agricultural employers.  This proposal would in some ways lock agricultural workers into a kind of caste, where they are only permitted to work into a certain industry.  This system could lead to considerable number of abuses at the workplace.  Moreover, this agricultural proposal would be a considerable experiment in centralized government planning.  Government would set pay scales and even change worker allocations as central planners see fit.  This is government interfering in the market in a radical way.

The Hill notes a further interesting detail: these legalized farm workers would potentially be able to bring their family members over soon (emphasis added).

“Under the proposed new immigration process, farm workers would be able to work in the fields without fear of getting deported immediately and will be able to reunite with their families in a relatively short period of time. The bill would give professional farm workers presently in the U.S., who have been contributing to our country, temporary legal status and the right to earn a green card in the future by continuing to work in agriculture,” said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.

So would these amnestied farm workers be able to bring their families over with them before they become citizens?  What counts as family members for the purpose of this act?  A spouse and minor children?  Or siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and so forth?  So this legislative component might not only affect illegal farm workers (and Reuters estimates there could be as many as 900,000 of them), but numerous family members for each worker.  This part of the immigration "reform" proposal alone could set a few million on the path to citizenship, and it could further penalize would-be immigrants who have waited in their home countries for permission to immigrate to the US legally.

Obviously, the legislative language is still in process, but these details will need to be further explained.  The American people deserve to know whether government will be taking over the agricultural sector and how many people will be granted legal status through the Gang of 8's attempt at "comprehensive immigration reform."

Who Knew What When

As USA Today reports, the release of a heretofore confidential memo raises new questions about how much the educational administration of former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee knew about an epidemic of cheating on standardized tests within the school system:

DCPS officials have said they take all cheating allegations seriously, but it's not immediately clear how they responded to Sanford's warnings. Only one educator lost his job because of cheating, according to DCPS. Meanwhile, Rhee fired more than 600 teachers for low test scores — 241 of them in one day in 2010.
The cheating issue first came to light in 2011, after USA TODAY reported that, between 2008 and 2010, 103 schools had test-erasure rates that surpassed districtwide erasure-rate averages at least once.
Erasures are detected by the same electronic scanners used to score tests. When a teacher or student erases a bubble sheet, this leaves behind a light smudge. Computers tally the smudges as well as the new answers.
The USA TODAY investigation found that, as far back as 2008, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), D.C.'s equivalent of a state education department, asked for an erasure analysis. Among the 96 schools flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff." In all, Rhee bestowed more than $1.5 million in bonuses based on increases in 2007 and 2008 test scores.

 These numbers suggest far more teachers were punished for low test scores than were punished for cheating.

Investigative journalist John Merrow has more details about the limits of Rhee's administration.

Financial Federalism

Over at National Review, I outline a case for "financial federalism," an approach to financial reform prioritizing market competition and a diffusion of interests:

Conservatives have an opportunity here to argue on behalf of a financial federalism that would attempt to ward off the dangers of asset concentration, revise limits on leverage for a variety of institutions, and draw clearer lines between various banking activities. Just as the political doctrine of federalism entails a broad distribution of government power (in federal, state, and local entities), financial federalism would put in place a financial system in which systemic risk is lessened through a broad distribution of capital and a variety of capital flows. Financial federalism would undo the distortions of Too Big to Fail. There are various economic, policy, and political reasons for Republicans to move toward market-oriented financial reform.

Read the rest here.

Is the AFL-CIO Still about Labor?

National Journal reminds us that "business" and "labor" have supposedly agreed to some kind of guest-worker plan that would be part of the Gang of 8 immigration proposal.  The AFL-CIO, now headed by Richard Trumka, has endorsed a guest-worker program.  NJ also reminds us that the employment picture isn't looking very good.  At 7.8%, the unemployment rate is higher than it had been at any point in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.  And millions have left the work-force.  And wages are stagnating.  So a guest-worker program would be implemented under less than auspicious economic conditions.

One might be forgiven for wondering what Big Labor would exactly get out of a guest-worker program.  The AFL-CIO might want to give the White House a win on a major issue, but would such a program be in the interests of actual workers?

Let's look at what John Sweeney, the former head of the AFL-CIO, had to say about guest workers:

"Guest worker programs are a bad idea and harm all workers....They cast workers into a perennial second-class status, and unfairly put their fates into their employers' hands."

"The compromise legislation has two fatal flaws: a guest worker program that would institutionalize and expand a second-class workforce easily exploited by employers and an unjust, inhumane and unworkable three-tier system of treatment for immigrants who are in this country.
"The original guest worker operation--the post-war Bracero program--was shamed out of existence in 1964 because of egregious employer abuse, cheating, racial oppression and more."

"[A guest-worker program] will assure a steady flow of cheap labor from essentially indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, chiseled benefits and unsafe working conditions. Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad experiences with such shortsighted answers to a complicated problem."

 Mickey Kaus notes that labor activist Cesar Chavez was not exactly a big fan of "guest workers" or illegal labor, either.

So whose side is Big Labor actually on, here?  The workers' or the White House's?

Society and Virtue

Matt Lewis continues to reflect on some of the broader conceptual stakes of the "culture war":

Of course, there has always been a tension between virtue and liberty. But at some point, America ceased emphasizing community values and began valuing extreme individualism. More and more, Americans — including many conservatives — now believe that individuals should do whatever they want so long as it isn't hurting anybody else.
But the cultural conservative says that there is a "tragedy of the commons" problem with this — that the "if it feels right, do it" mentality will eventually hurt society collectively.
And while social conservatives attempt to argue this point on purely secular grounds, the truth is that it makes little sense without God. As Dr. Benjamin Wiker writes in his new book, Worshipping The State, "For liberalism to make sense, we would have to live in a world without ends — to put it in technical philosophical terms, in a non-teleological universe (telos means "goal" or "end in Greek), where, since there are no ends written into nature (including human nature) by God, we are free to create them ourselves."
Absent a higher purpose, laws are arbitrary. Never was this spelled out more clearly than in the Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
In a moral relativist world, aborting an unborn child becomes "giving a mother the right to pursue happiness." Making divorce easy becomes "unburdening individuals to pursue happiness."
Almost every hot-button issue we wrestle with can fundamentally be traced to the struggle between what traditional conservatives deem to be virtue (based on tradition and Judeo-Christian teaching) and the desire to satisfy the individual's desire for extreme freedom.

A Way Forward?

The New York Times hopes that Republican opposition to an immigration amnesty is fading, but Ross Douthat raises doubts about the electoral benefits of a Republican pivot toward amnesty:

The Republican National Committee’s extended autopsy on the G.O.P.’s 2012 defeat, which officially abjures policy recommendations but then goes on to nudge the party toward supporting comprehensive immigration reform and gay marriage, is the highest-profile distillation of what I described last week as the “donorist” view of how the Republican Party needs to change. As Ramesh Ponnuru suggests, this the party elite’s vision of domestic policy reform, reflecting the views of people who are already “more likely to favor same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform on principle,” and who don’t “tend to have any major problems with the Republican economic agenda and do not believe it needs to be rethought in any serious way.” Or to put it another way: If you believe that Mitt Romney’s economic platform and “you built that” rhetoric would be the basis for a durable majority if they weren’t associated with the religious right and anti-immigration sentiment, then this is the vision of Republican reform for you.

Mickey Kaus reminds ambitious politicians that the establishment consensus on amnesty presents a political opportuninty.

The Next Spark?

A potentially very troubling bit of financial news from Cyprus:

ATHENS — In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus over the weekend, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new €10 billion bailout be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers....
Under an emergency deal reached early Saturday in Brussels, a one-time tax of 9.9 percent is to be levied on Cypriot bank deposits of more than €100,000 effective Tuesday, hitting wealthy depositors — mostly Russians who have put vast sums into Cyprus’s banks in recent years. But even deposits of less than that amount are to be taxed at 6.75 percent, meaning that Cypriot creditors will be confiscating money directly from retirees, workers and regular depositors to pay off the bailout tab.  

As some have noted, this kind of move could lead to a spike of uncertainty and increase the instability of banks across the EU (and elsewhere in the world).

Sustainable Conservatism

In The Weekly Standard, I lay out a case for a "sustainable conservatism," which would combine civic fellowship with targeted reforms:

Even as Washington settles into another battle over the budget, an increasing number of conservative writers (and a few elected officials) are becoming aware of the fact that anti-government platitudes are losing their electoral punch and of the need for conservatism to be about more than the budget. Now is probably not the space to give a laundry list of the names of pundits who have considered conservative reform, but it might be worthwhile to turn to a recent online debate between Hot Air's Ed Morrissey and the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis as revealing two major trends for the future of conservatism---and to look at what a synthesis of these approaches could mean.

Lewis has suggested the value of a return to a "compassionate conservatism," one that would go beyond celebrating selfishness to think of our broader commitments to one another. This interest in rehabilitating compassionate conservatism can be seen more widely on certain parts of the right (Peter Wehner's and Michael Gerson's recent cover story in Commentary, for instance, seems informed by this impulse). Morrissey has proposed instead the value of a "practical conservatism," which would focus on reforming rather than blowing up many of the institutions that have become central to American public life since the New Deal (such as Social Security). This theme also percolates throughout various sectors of the reformist wing of the right. Perhaps I might pose a synthesizing variant of these two: "sustainable conservatism." The goal of such a conservatism would involve nurturing the public and private institutions and tendencies that help sustain a free republic. It seems as though maintaining a free republic demands, among other things, faith in government and the rule of law, a sense of civic participation, a belief in personal freedom, virtue on the part of its citizens (and especially its government officials), and some kind of wisdom or prudence. Sustainable conservatism would seek to foster these tendencies in order to renew the civic compact. 

Read the rest here.

Changing the Game

In The Weekly Standard, Matt Continetti explores the GOP's political "double bind," arguing that possible steps the GOP could take for reform could shatter its political coalition.  As he puts it:

Trying to appeal to the coalition of the ascendant and the Reagan coalition simultaneously would give the party a severe case of political schizophrenia. The GOP would bewilder its historic base of support while disappointing newcomers, leading to confusion, disillusionment, apathy, and perhaps (ultimately) dissolution.

The Republicans, like feminists, can’t have it all. They are trapped in the double bind.

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, who worked for President George W. Bush, have a cover story in Commentary on how to revive the Republican party. Their proposals are well intentioned, cogent, and in some ways persuasive. When they get into the nitty-gritty of specifics, though, they bump up against the double bind.

For example, Gerson and Wehner propose “ending corporate welfare as we know it”; “supporting the breakup of the big banks”; and “thoroughgoing reform of the federal role in education, focusing on public and private choice.” Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner made similar arguments shortly after the election, when he called for a “new Republican populism” that “can promise to level the field by getting the bureaucrats and politicians out of it” and by cutting regulations and ending bailouts.

Sounds great. But a word of caution: There is little evidence these policies would be any more popular than traditional Republican ones. And one reason there is so little evidence is that there is no serious advocate for these ideas within the ranks of Republican officeholders. Why is there no advocate for these ideas? Because major elements of the Republican party oppose them.

Continetti suggests that one strategy Republicans might turn to in the face of this double bind is the acceptance of the idea of a "conservative welfare state."  This kind of conservatism would accept the legitimacy of the state but then try to reform this state so that it accomplished conservative ends.  This wouldn't necessarily be totally centrally controlled state; Continetti leaves a big space open for federalism.

As he concludes his vision of a conservative welfare state, Continetti writes:

The conservative welfare state of our dreams would be, well, a state. That is, it would be an effective federal government. And it would be a community. Human beings are not faceless monads choosing identities at will from a universal menu of options. Human beings are born into families, faiths, and nations.

The security of all three of these pre-liberal forms of association is important. For families, that means growing incomes while lessening the costs of child-rearing, and giving parents blocking gear against the offenses of a hazardous popular culture. For faiths, that means protecting ministerial exceptions and religious liberty. For the nation, that means borders that are secure, a trade policy that puts the interests of American laborers over the interests of multinational corporations, a sound currency, and a fearsome military.

The emphasis on "community" in Continetti's vision has considerable merit, especially the recognition that we find ourselves members of community and that people are social animals and not just profit-seeking automatons.

Whether one agrees with all the details of Continetti's alternative vision or not, he certainly does make a good case for Republicans changing the policy playing field.

Should High Worker Wages Be a Problem?

David Frum argues that a guest worker program would pose a threat to the economic revitalization of the working and middle classes:

The immigration debate is often premised on the assumption that high wages for American workers are a problem to be overcome. If you'll look again at the Cleveland Fed chart above, you'll notice that the collapse in labor's share of national income coincides with the start of the mass immigration influx after 1970. Since then 40 million people have migrated to the United States, most of them very low-skilled. About one-third that number arrived illegally.

Immigration advocates insist that this huge surge of cheap labor has nothing to do with the persistent decline in wages that began about the same time. If so, that's one hell of a coincidence. With President Obama proposing accelerated flows of immigration in future, American workers should ready themselves for more coincidences ahead.

In Defense of Virtue

Matt Lewis picks up an important---but often ignored---component of the American founding: the importance the Founders placed not on relentless private acquisitiveness but on self-restraint and sacrifice in the name of the public good.  As Lewis puts it:

Our founders believed self-imposed responsibility was essential to the preservation of freedom. An immoral majority will eventually discover that they can vote "themselves largess from the public treasury." But a nation's elite must also be moral — which is to say, not greedy. As Ed Morrissey noted, "Any society with a large class of exploited poor will have no end of social difficulties and instability, the costs of which in a properly ordered system would far exceed the assistance extended." That's the invisible hand at work.

Without private and public responsibility, the enterprise of this republic could founder.  There's a reason why Jefferson spoke of a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent.

Conservatives Must Continue in Search for Health-Care Solutions

The recent announcement by Chris Christie that he is seeking federal funds (secured by Obamacare) to extend Medicaid has ignited a lot of wrath from the right.  But, as I note in The Weekly Standard, anger at Christie or other GOP governors for accepting Obamacare isn't enough:

With New Jersey governor Chris Christie's announcement that he would accept funds for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, the number of Republican governors accepting Obamacare Medicaid expansion money rises to eight: Jan Brewer (Arizona), Rick Scott (Florida), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Brian Sandoval (Nevada), Susana Martinez (New Mexico), Jack Dalrymple (North Dakota), John Kasich (Ohio), and Christie. Many of these governors rode to power in 2010 on a Tea Party wave and protested vociferously against Obamacare, so their about-face on Obamacare money stokes more than a little ire on the part of some on the right. I am not sure, however, that conservatives should rest content with excommunicating these governors from the Church of True Conservatism and casting them into the darkness of the RINO Establishment.  The acceptance of these Obamacare funds—however tentative—drives home the need for Republicans to offer an alternative health care model.

There might be an aspect of political self-interest in these governors' decisions. Many of these governors are from states that President Obama won in 2012.  But it would be a mistake to attribute this decision solely to politics. Mitt Romney carried both Arizona and North Dakota handily, and Republican governors who embrace Obamacare funding likely risk a considerable backlash within their own ranks.  So politics alone cannot explain this conversion. 

- See more at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/absence-conservative-solutions-health-care_704924.html?nopager=1#sthash.Er84eUAB.dpuf

With New Jersey governor Chris Christie's announcement that he would accept funds for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, the number of Republican governors accepting Obamacare Medicaid expansion money rises to eight: Jan Brewer (Arizona), Rick Scott (Florida), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Brian Sandoval (Nevada), Susana Martinez (New Mexico), Jack Dalrymple (North Dakota), John Kasich (Ohio), and Christie. Many of these governors rode to power in 2010 on a Tea Party wave and protested vociferously against Obamacare, so their about-face on Obamacare money stokes more than a little ire on the part of some on the right. I am not sure, however, that conservatives should rest content with excommunicating these governors from the Church of True Conservatism and casting them into the darkness of the RINO Establishment.  The acceptance of these Obamacare funds—however tentative—drives home the need for Republicans to offer an alternative health care model.

There might be an aspect of political self-interest in these governors' decisions. Many of these governors are from states that President Obama won in 2012.  But it would be a mistake to attribute this decision solely to politics. Mitt Romney carried both Arizona and North Dakota handily, and Republican governors who embrace Obamacare funding likely risk a considerable backlash within their own ranks.  So politics alone cannot explain this conversion. 

- See more at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/absence-conservative-solutions-health-care_704924.html?nopager=1#sthash.Er84eUAB.dpuf

With New Jersey governor Chris Christie's announcement that he would accept funds for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, the number of Republican governors accepting Obamacare Medicaid expansion money rises to eight: Jan Brewer (Arizona), Rick Scott (Florida), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Brian Sandoval (Nevada), Susana Martinez (New Mexico), Jack Dalrymple (North Dakota), John Kasich (Ohio), and Christie. Many of these governors rode to power in 2010 on a Tea Party wave and protested vociferously against Obamacare, so their about-face on Obamacare money stokes more than a little ire on the part of some on the right. I am not sure, however, that conservatives should rest content with excommunicating these governors from the Church of True Conservatism and casting them into the darkness of the RINO Establishment.  The acceptance of these Obamacare funds—however tentative—drives home the need for Republicans to offer an alternative health care model.


There might be an aspect of political self-interest in these governors' decisions. Many of these governors are from states that President Obama won in 2012.  But it would be a mistake to attribute this decision solely to politics. Mitt Romney carried both Arizona and North Dakota handily, and Republican governors who embrace Obamacare funding likely risk a considerable backlash within their own ranks.  So politics alone cannot explain this conversion.

Read the rest here.


Earlier this week in the National Review, Avik Roy also stressed the need for conservatives to think in a more sustained way about health-care reform.

Why Rand Rose?

Matt Lewis offers some interesting thoughts on why Randian thought has risen on the right---at the expense of certain kinds of conservative traditionalism:

But in recent years, additions to the movement have largely served as a backlash against the family values stressed by this Judeo-Christian coalition.
After 9-11, a lot of Americans were shocked out of their reverie — and into the conservative movement. Some of these folks have gone on to play key leadership roles in conservatism. This is fine, in and of itself. But being conservative is about more than being anti-terror.
The election of Barack Obama, coupled with a huge debt and the stimulus, led to the rise of the tea party movement — bringing a lot of new activists into the fight. But despite the fact that many of these same tea party members were also Christians, there is little doubt that the movement adopted a much more Randian ethos.
Because politicians eventually adapt to please their base, some Republicans adapted to this new brand of conservatism with a little bit too much gusto. And so you had Mitt Romney making “you didn’t build that” the theme of the convention. And, of course, there was the “47 percent”…
To be sure, this message plays very well within the base of the movement. But if it were possible to make conservatism even less appealing to average Americans (not to mention Hispanics), overemphasizing the rugged individualism aspect of conservatism, and downplaying its communitarian aspect, was the coup de grâce.

Immigration Conflicts

In The Daily Caller, I explore how a poorly designed immigration bill could harm the GOP's reinvention:

One of the central issues confronting Republicans after 2012 is how to reinvent the GOP to make it a more viable national political force. This need for a GOP reinvention or at least restoration is in the background of the contemporary debate over comprehensive immigration reform, including the recent Senate “Gang of 8″ proposal. Republican advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” often argue that such reform would be a necessary step toward political modernization. However, there are also many reasons to believe that a poorly designed immigration bill could actually get in the way of Republican renewal. There is an increasing awareness on the part of many analysts that the hollowing out of the economic middle is deeply connected to the current long-term stagnation, and a growing segment on the right has found that middle-class restoration could be key to restoring the vitality of both the Republican Party and conservatism. It seems hard for Republicans to be the party both of middle-class renewal and of unlimited (and government-subsidized) cheap labor. The GOP has perhaps far more long-term viability in advocating the former position, but a flawed immigration bill could easily lead to the latter scenario.

Read the rest here.

Mickey Kaus also reflects on the effects of an amnesty on American employment and wages.

Oops

According to the BEA, GDP growth went negative in the fourth quarter of 2012:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012
(that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent. 

Senate Coalition Makes Immigration Play

Members of the Senate released their plan for immigration "reform" and a "normalization" (legalization) of illegal immigrants.  The four key principles of this measure:

Four Basic Legislative Pillars:
1. Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required;
2. Reform our legal immigration system to better recognize the importance of characteristics that will help build the American economy and strengthen American families;
3. Create an effective employment verification system that will prevent identity theft and end the hiring of future unauthorized workers; and,

4. Establish an improved process for admitting future workers to serve our nation's workforce needs, while simultaneously protecting all workers. 

 Once you dig underneath this vague language, though, the actual details of the legislation might be more problematic.

David Frum argues that a massive legalization could undermine conservative policy goals while not helping Republicans electorally, a point Ross Douthat echoes.  Mark Krikorian notes that promises of enforcement of immigration law are rarely delivered on.  Mickey Kaus has 6 major questions regarding normalization.

The National Journal games out the legislative path for a legalization.  The House could stop this measure easily, but reportedly a secret committee of Republicans and Democrats have been meeting to try push some legalization through.

Fitch: Play Nice, Washington

A report out from the ratings agency Fitch suggests that the company will downgrade the USA's AAA credit rating if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling in a timely fashion:

Fitch Ratings' expectation is that Congress will raise the debt ceiling and that the risk of a U.S. sovereign default remains extremely low. Nonetheless, and in line with our previous guidance, failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner will prompt a formal review of the U.S. sovereign ratings. On 31 December 2012, U.S. federal government debt reached the statutory debt limit of USD16.394trn and consequently the Treasury has begun to implement extraordinary measures that will create an estimated USD200bn of additional headroom under the debt ceiling. A repeat of the August 2011 'debt ceiling crisis' would oblige Fitch to review its current assessment of the reliability and predictability of the institutional policy framework and prospects for reaching agreement on a credible medium-term deficit reduction plan.
In Fitch's opinion, the debt ceiling is an ineffective and potentially dangerous mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline. It does not prevent tax and spending decisions that will incur debt issuance in excess of the ceiling while the sanction of not raising the ceiling risks a sovereign default and renders such a threat incredible.
So a refusal by Congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and strike a deal with the president could cause the ratings agency to lose faith in America's abilities to pay its bills.

 But there's a warning for the president, too:

The U.S. 'AAA' status is underpinned by the country's relative economic dynamism and potential, diminishing financial sector risks, respect for the rule of law and property rights, as well as the exceptional financing flexibility that accrues from the global benchmark status of U.S. Treasury securities and the dollar. These fundamental credit strengths are being eroded by the large, albeit steadily declining, structural budget deficit and high and rising public debt.
In the absence of an agreed and credible medium-term deficit reduction plan that would be consistent with sustaining the economic recovery and restoring confidence in the long-run sustainability of U.S. public finances, the current Negative Outlook on the 'AAA' rating is likely to be resolved with a downgrade later this year even if another debt ceiling crisis is averted. 

So Fitch (and no doubt others) are looking for a plan to reduce the deficit's burden in the medium term.  It's not demanding immediate cuts, but it is looking for a more positive trajectory.  Cooperation from both parties may be required to realize this trajectory.

Slow Growth, Slow Gains

In the New York Times, two separate but related stories.  The first notes that gains in economic productivity have not been matched in gains by compensation.  The median hourly wage has increased, when adjusted for inflation, by only 4% since 1973.

For the great bulk of workers, labor’s shrinking share is even worse than the statistics show, when one considers that a sizable — and growing — chunk of overall wages goes to the top 1 percent: senior corporate executives, Wall Street professionals, Hollywood stars, pop singers and professional athletes. The share of wages going to the top 1 percent climbed to 12.9 percent in 2010, from 7.3 percent in 1979.

Some economists say it is wrong to look at just wages because other aspects of employee compensation, notably health costs, have risen. But overall employee compensation — including health and retirement benefits — has also slipped badly, falling to its lowest share of national income in more than 50 years while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share over that time.

Conservative and liberal economists agree on many of the forces that have driven the wage share down. Corporate America’s push to outsource jobs — whether call-center jobs to India or factory jobs to China — has fattened corporate earnings, while holding down wages at home. New technologies have raised productivity and profits, while enabling companies to shed workers and slice payroll. Computers have replaced workers who tabulated numbers; robots have pushed aside many factory workers. 

Elsewhere in the NYT, Annie Lowrey argues that low growth has contributed to political dysfunction:

Consider how different our politics might be today if the economy had not collapsed in 2008 and not been mired in sluggish growth ever since. A ballpark estimate suggests that if the economy were to grow one percentage point more than expected in each year over the next 10, the deficit would shrink by more than $3 trillion. That would be more than enough to set the ratio of our debt to our annual economic output on a comforting downward trajectory. Moreover, it would happen without making cuts to a single program, like Medicare or food stamps, or without raising a single dollar of additional tax revenue. Even a much smaller boost to growth — say one-tenth of a percentage point per year, or even half that — would make Congress and the White House’s burden hundreds of billions of dollars lighter. 

While I might note that growth prior to 2008 wasn't exactly supercharged, Lowrey's broader point has some merit.  We can also connect these two points: the decline of popular prosperity could also be harming the ability of the economy as a whole to grow, and this slower growth saps the vitality of government finances.

Expulsion Differences

The Washington Post dug into the expulsion rates at DC schools and found that charter schools expelled students at a far higher rate than traditional public schools:

D.C. charter schools expelled 676 students in the past three years, while the city’s traditional public schools expelled 24, according to a Washington Post review of school data. During the 2011-12 school year, when charters enrolled 41 percent of the city’s students, they removed 227 children for discipline violations and had an expulsion rate of 72 per 10,000 students; the District school system removed three and had an expulsion rate of less than 1 per 10,000 students.

So the expulsion rate at DC charters was over seventy times that of traditional public schools.  Expelling poorly behaved students could be a strategy that these schools use to improve test scores.  Whether one supports the use of expulsion as a pedagogical tactic or not, this report does make clear that DC charters and traditional public schools are operating on very different disciplinary playing fields, which makes it more difficult to compare their academic performances.  The law has made it very difficult for traditional DC schools to expel students, forcing them to educate everyone.  Charters do not operate under the same public demands.

Moreover, as a factor only hinted at in this story, charters also have the ability to more credibly threaten expulsion.  This threat could also affect student behavior.  And, as this story notes, many charters offer students the ability to voluntarily leave the school instead of being expelled; these "voluntary" removals are not included in the tallies of expulsions.

Moody's: Fiscal Cliff Deal a Mixed Bag

After the fiscal cliff deal passed, Moody's, which still gives the USA a AAA credit rating, warns that further deficit reduction will be needed:

Moody's Investors Service said that the fiscal package passed by both houses of Congress yesterday is a further step in clarifying the medium-term deficit and debt trajectory of the federal government. It does not, however, provide a basis for a meaningful improvement in the government's debt ratios over the medium term. The rating agency expects that further fiscal measures are likely to be taken in coming months that would result in lower future budget deficits, which are necessary if the negative outlook on the government's bond rating is to be returned to stable. On the other hand, lack of further deficit reduction measures could affect the rating negatively. Notably, yesterday's package does not address the federal government's statutory debt limit, which was reached on December 31. The need to raise the debt limit may affect the outcome of future budget negotiations.
Although the fiscal package raises some revenue through higher tax rates on individuals earning more than $400,000 ($450,000 for joint filers) and through some other smaller measures, the estimated amount of increased revenue over the next decade is far outweighed by the amount of revenue foregone through the extension of lower tax rates for those with incomes below $400,000, the indexation of the alternative minimum tax, and other measures. 

This portion of the ratings report seems to be generating the most headlines.

But there's another portion of the statement suggesting that this deal was a net economic positive:

The macroeconomic effects of the package are positive, since it averts the recession that would likely have occurred had personal income taxes gone up for all income levels. However, the increase in the Social Security payroll tax from 4.2% to 6.2% of income that became effective on January 1 will likely be a constraint on growth in coming quarters. Furthermore, expenditure cuts that may be decided in coming months could also affect the rate of GDP growth in the near term. Overall, therefore, the recent package mitigates part of the fiscal drag on the economy associated with the fiscal cliff but does not eliminate it. 

 That paragraph is one McConnell and Boehner might take some solace in, along with President Obama and his allies.

Perhaps the principal thing driving the debt over the short and medium term is the sluggish economy.  Keeping the economy from slipping into a deep recession is also a powerful deficit reduction tool.  Both Republicans and Democrats could keep that in mind.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday!

Stotsky: Common Core Has Problems

Over at Heritage, long-time educational reformer Sandra Stotsky assails the new, nationalized "Common Core" standards as undermining the integrity of the English curriculum:

Why do Common Core’s architects believe that reading more nonfiction and “informational” texts in English classes (and in other high school classes) will improve students’ college readiness?
Their belief seems to be based on what they see as the logical implication of the fact that college students read more informational than literary texts. However, there is absolutely no empirical research to suggest that college readiness is promoted by informational or nonfiction reading in high school English classes (or in mathematics and science classes).
In fact, the history of the secondary English curriculum in 20th-century America suggests that the decline in readiness for college reading stems in large part from an increasingly incoherent, less challenging literature curriculum from the 1960s onward. This decline has been propelled by the fragmentation of the year-long English course into semester electives, the conversion of junior high schools into middle schools, and the assignment of easier, shorter, and contemporary texts—often in the name of multiculturalism.
From about the 1900s—the beginning of uniform college entrance requirements via the college boards—until the 1960s, a challenging, literature-heavy English curriculum was understood to be precisely what pre-college students needed. Nonetheless, undeterred by the lack of evidence to support their sales pitch, Common Core’s architects divided all of the ELA reading standards into two groups: 10 standards for informational reading and nine for literary reading at every grade level.
This misplaced stress on informational texts (no matter how much is literary nonfiction) reflects the limited expertise of Common Core’s architects and sponsoring organizations in curriculum and in teachers’ training....
A diminished emphasis on literature in the secondary grades makes it unlikely that American students will study a meaningful range of culturally and historically significant literary works before graduation. It also prevents students from acquiring a rich understanding and use of the English language. Perhaps of greatest concern, it may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking.
Indeed, it is more than likely that college readiness will decrease when secondary English teachers begin to reduce the study of complex literary texts and literary traditions in order to prioritize informational or nonfiction texts. This is because, as ACT (a college entrance exam) found, complexity is laden with literary features: It involves characters, literary devices, tone, ambiguity, elaboration, structure, intricate language, and unclear intentions. By reducing literary study, Common Core decreases students’ opportunity to develop the analytical thinking once developed in just an elite group by the vocabulary, structure, style, ambiguity, point of view, figurative language, and irony in classic literary texts.

 Stotsky makes the point that education isn't just about processing information; it's about increasing the subtlety and complexity of thinking.

More Educational Centralization

Kevin Carey argues against the credit hour as a measure of college student learning:

A main reason the scandal persists is that our system is built around the strange idea of the “credit hour,” a unit of academic time that does little to measure student learning. The credit hour originated around the turn of the 20th century, when the industrialist-turned-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie moved to create a pension system for college professors. (It’s now known as TIAA-CREF.) Pensions were reserved for professors who worked full time, which ended up being defined as a minimum of 12 hours of classroom teaching per week in a standard 15-week semester.

But colleges were left to judge the quality of credit hours by affixing grades to courses, and the quality of colleges themselves would be judged by — well, there was the rub. Colleges didn’t want to be judged by anyone other than themselves, and remarkably, the government went along with it. Yes, colleges are held accountable by nonprofit accrediting organizations — but those are, in turn, run by other colleges. When asked, Western Oklahoma’s accreditor said it had never heard of the school’s three-credits-in-10-days scheme and would look into it. But the next scheduled accreditation review isn’t until 2017.

The lack of meaningful academic standards in higher education drags down the entire system. Grade inflation, even (or especially) at the most elite institutions, is rampant. A landmark book published last year, “Academically Adrift,” found that many students at traditional colleges showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing, and spent their time socializing, working or wasting time instead of studying. (And that’s not even considering the problem of low graduation rates.)

...But the most promising solution would be to replace the anachronistic credit hour with common standards for what college students actually need to know and to be able to do. There are many routes to doing this. In the arts and sciences, scholarly associations could define and update what it means to be proficient in a field. So could professional organizations and employers in vocational and technical fields. 

Carey's argument, one numerous "progressives" are also advancing, could open the door for some kind of centralized definition of what a college education would mean.  For his part, Walter Russell Mead welcomes our new national standardized testing overlords.

There are perhaps some good reasons, though, why conservatives should be skeptical about a further standardization of college-level curricula.

More Power

Harry Reid pledges to force through changes on the filibuster:

Keeping with his post-election pledge to reform the filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday proffered that changes to the rules of the upper chamber will be made, leaving it up to Republicans if they would like to participate.
"There are discussions going on now [over filibuster reform], but I want to tell everybody here. I'm happy I've had a number of Republicans come to me, a few Democrats,” Reid told reporters Tuesday at his weekly press availability. “We're going to change the rules. We cannot continue in this way. I hope we can get something that the Republicans will work with us on.”
“But it won't be a handshake,” he added. “We tried that last time. It didn't work.”
Asked to confirm if his comments meant that the rules would change and Republicans can choose to be a part of that change if they want, the Nevada Democrat responded, “That's right. Yup."

Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan reflect on the notion of an opportunity-driven conservatism.

Toward the Economic Middle

Ramesh Ponnuru has an interesting essay on what has gone wrong for the GOP electorally:

Republican weakness emerges even more clearly when we look at a longer timescale. From 1896 through 1930, Republicans were the dominant party, holding the White House and Congress most of the time and losing the presidency only when they split, as in 1912 and 1916. The Great Depression made the Democrats into the dominant party until 1968. Only one Republican won the presidency during that period, and under highly unusual circumstances: He had won World War II, the Democrats had held the presidency for five consecutive terms, and the country was beset by inflation, corruption, and an unpopular war in Korea.
The Democrats lost majority status in 1968 — they would lose five of six presidential elections from that year through 1988, and win one by a hair — but Republicans did not gain it. They never held the House and rarely held the Senate during that streak of presidential wins. Why didn’t Republicans become the dominant party then? It wasn’t because of foreign policy: That boosted them during the second half of the Cold War, when the Democrats became the relatively dovish party. That’s a big reason Republicans did better at the presidential than at the congressional level. It wasn’t because of social issues: The hippies and McGovernites helped make Republicans the party of middle-class values.
What they did not do is make the Republicans the party of middle-class economic interests. Most Americans associated the party with big business and the country club, and did not agree with its impulses on the minimum wage, entitlement programs, and other forms of government activism designed to protect ordinary people from cold markets. Americans came to be skeptical of government activism mainly when they thought it was undermining middle-class values (as they thought welfare undermined the work ethic). And even when voters thought Republicans were better managers of the economy in general, they thought the GOP looked out for the rich rather than the common man.

 (Via David Frum.)

Back in the Day

Andrew Kaczynski brings us back to a distant era (2005), when Senate Democrats celebrated the value of the filibuster as a way of preserving Senate traditions.

Skills and Pay

Adam Davidson looks at manufacturing wages:

Eric Isbister, the C.E.O. of GenMet, a metal-fabricating manufacturer outside Milwaukee, told me that he would hire as many skilled workers as show up at his door. Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. From what I understand, a new shift manager at a nearby McDonald’s can earn around $14 an hour.

The secret behind this skills gap is that it’s not a skills gap at all. I spoke to several other factory managers who also confessed that they had a hard time recruiting in-demand workers for $10-an-hour jobs. “It’s hard not to break out laughing,” says Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, referring to manufacturers complaining about the shortage of skilled workers. “If there’s a skill shortage, there has to be rises in wages,” he says. “It’s basic economics.” After all, according to supply and demand, a shortage of workers with valuable skills should push wages up. Yet according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of skilled jobs has fallen and so have their wages.

In a recent study, the Boston Consulting Group noted that, outside a few small cities that rely on the oil industry, there weren’t many places where manufacturing wages were going up and employers still couldn’t find enough workers.

Moving Forward

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal makes some smart points about how to strengthen the Republican Party.  Some key points:

2. Compete for every single vote. The 47% and the 53%. And any other combination of numbers that adds up to 100 percent. President Barack Obama and the Democrats can continue trying to divide America into groups of warring communities with competing interests, but we will have none of it. We are going after every vote as we try to unite all Americans.

6. Quit "big." We are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, or big anything. We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive. We are the party whose ideas will help the middle class, and help more folks join the middle class. We are a populist party and need to make that clear.

 Republicans and conservatives can make a case for a politics that will provide opportunity for all.

It's the Economics

Over at the National Review, I have a piece examining the economic slice of the exit polls.  Among the working class, Romney slipped from McCain's level of support in 2008, and this slippage may have cost him a few states:

According to exit polls, Romney improved on John McCain’s national performance among households making under $30,000 a year and over $50,000 a year (though he still decisively lost those making under $30,000 a year). However, for those households making between $30,000 and $49,999, he underperformed: McCain lost those voters by twelve points, while Romney lost them by 15. Moreover, because of the economic travails of the past four years, members of those working-class/lower-middle-class households rose from 19 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 21 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, members of households making under $30,000 a year rose from 18 percent of voters to 20 percent of voters. So the income segments of the electorate in which Republicans perform worse have been growing, and, among those on the economic edge, Republican electoral performance is declining.

This trend was exaggerated in many swing states. In New Hampshire, Obama went from winning the $30,000–$49,999 demographic by three points in 2008 to winning it by 21 in 2012. In Ohio, the president went from an 8-point margin of victory to a 12-point one in that demographic. In Virginia, his margin went from ten points to 22; in Colorado, from three points to 23. In Nevada, McCain lost that economic category by 18, but Romney lost it by 36, and, in Pennsylvania, the gap between Obama and his Republican opponent grew from 17 to 23 points. And not all these changes can be traced to changes in the ethnic composition of the electorate. In Virginia, for example, the Hispanic portion of the vote remained the same, as did the president’s victory margin among Hispanics, but Romney still lost considerable ground among working-class voters.

Read the rest here.

Ramesh Ponnuru has some further reflections along these lines.

Not Just Romney

Some on the right are arguing that Romney's loss last week was due to his weakness as a candidate or his purported moderation.  That argument would need to address the fact, however, that, in fourteen out of eighteen hard-fought Senate races, the Republican candidate ended up performing worse than or equal to Romney in that state.  In some states (such as Missouri, Indiana, and Montana), the Republican performed more than eight points worse than Romney.  So Romney in many places performed better than other Republicans in key match-ups.

The Morning After

A few thoughts:

In the twenty years between 1992 and 2012, Republicans have won the popular vote once (2004).  1932-1952 was the last twenty-year period where the GOP won the popular vote only once (in 1952).  Democrats went through a similar dry period between 1968 and 1988, only winning the popular vote in 1976.

According to exit polls, Romney lost ground in many states with working class voters, especially those making between $30,000 and $49,999.  For those making under $30,000 and those making over $50,000, Romney improved on McCain's performance, but, for those in that middle range, Obama improved his performance, going from a 55-43 lead in 2008 to a 57-42 lead in 2012.  Obama's gains with the working class was particularly pronounced in states like Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, and Colorado.  That working-class swing helped pull down Romney in many battleground states.


Independents did swing toward Romney (he won them in many battleground states) but not by enough.

Immigration-related politics cannot really be blamed for the losses in New England, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana (for the Senate), Missouri (for the Senate), or a number of other outstanding nail-biters.

Election Day 2012: Results Thread

(To be updated throughout the night)

In Virginia, things are still close.  In Prince Edward County, Obama is performing at about the level he did in 2008.  In many other counties, though, Romney seems to be exceeding McCain's margins by a point or two.

CNN has now called Michigan for Obama.

UPDATE: Scott Brown concedes to Elizabeth Warren.

And George Allen has conceded in Virginia.

UPDATE 11pm: North Carolina called for Romney.
Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida all seem to be crucial steps on Romney's path to the presidency at the moment.

UPDATE after midnight: Most of the networks have now called the national race for President Obama.

UPDATE 12:53am: Romney concedes.

On Election Eve

Quin Hillyer (who has a pretty good record from the past) suggests a significant Romney win.  Allahpundit games out some of the conventional routes to 270 for Romney.  The polls are really tight, but supposedly some internal polling for the Romney campaign shows that a number of swing states are close.

Common Disappointment or Popular Prosperity?

Over at the Daily Caller, I think about an undercurrent of the 2012 presidential race: can we break out of the rut of the present?

We’re all familiar with the depressing statistics. Over three years with unemployment above 8%. A dropping labor-force participation rate. Persistently large and growing trade deficits. A collapse in family net-worth and family incomes. A lack of opportunity for America’s young people. Year after year after year of trillion-plus deficits. Social Security and Medicare going bankrupt even faster than expected.

An undercurrent of this election — one the Romney campaign has grasped — is the debate about whether to accept as normal the past decade’s hollowing out of the middle class and the downgrading of prosperity. The “new normal” is one of skyrocketing gains for the few and treading water for the many and a stagnation in growth for the economy as a whole. This outcome is not necessarily the result of free markets (indeed, it has taken considerable government intervention to arrive at the current state), and it also imperils long-term growth: the rich may have absorbed almost all the economic gains of the president’s anemic recovery, but the economic pie is smaller than it could have been.

Read the rest here.