Review of the Republican Field

Electile Dysfunction. That's what Lisa Schiffren of NRO's the corner is calling it anyway: "Electile Dysfunction ....the inability to become aroused by any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year."

That I'm not pulling for a Democratic candidate is no surprise. That I'm still not enthusiastic about a Republican I think is (or should be?).

Two weeks ago, watching the New Hampshire ABC/Facebook Debate I came away with two distinct impressions: 1. Charles Gibson was a fantastic moderator who actually treated the candidates as adults and let them debate; 2. The field of candidates the Republicans are putting up is actually pretty good.

The New Hampshire Fox Debate thoroughly re-enforced my thoughts about the job Gibson did (which is saying something, since I'm an avid fan of Fox News Sunday, with Chris Wallace) but my opinion about the field started to slip. By the South Carolina Fox Debate my opinion about the Republican field was back to where it has been for most the primary reason ... which, summed up in a word, is unimpressed.

I think this quote from a column by Jonah Goldberg captures my thoughts well: "This slate of candidates has everything a conservative designer could want - foreign policy oomph, business acumen, Southern charm, Big Apple chutzpah, religious conviction, outsider zeal, even libertarian ardor - but all so poorly distributed ... Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything - all the traits, all the positions - we are looking for."

Fred is/was a consistent conservative who's platform was based on foundations I could resonate with. But he refused to run a conventional campaign, which for reasons that I think include being ignored by the media and voters assuming "he doesn't have passion ... he can't win in November", have led to dismal results in the contests so far... So dismal that I'm left saying "Fred is/was" to start that previous sentence, because I can't believe Fred will stay in the race much longer.

Huckabee, God-bless-him, has great socially-conservative credentials. He's also a skilled communicator and politicians, which would be a welcome change from President Bush. But the Huckster leaves me without confidence in him on immigration and national defense, and his record is certainly not one of small limited government. I'm an Evangelical, so for a little while around Christmas, part of me wanted Huckabee to do OK. At this point though, with his record of large net-tax-increases as governor and his comments about a national smoking ban, my inner-libertarian is scared to death of what a Huckabee presidency would be like.

Ron Paul. He's never been a serious contender. I'm glad he was in a bunch of the debates and that he seems to have created quite the gathering of pro-small-government, pro-Constitution, 20-somethings. He doesn't get the threat of Islamo-fascsism though, and his Iraq-policy would be probably even more devastating than that of Clinton or Obama.

Guilliani. He's the inverse of Huckabee. As much as my inner-libertarian trumps my social conservatism to reject Huckabee, I'm enough of a social conservative to have to reject Rudy. If you lack the conviction that an unborn child is in fact a human life that should be projected by the government like all other human lives, you certainly don't get my primary vote ... you may not get my general election vote.

McCain. For a while I was of the mindset that if McCain was our best chance to win in November, OK, maybe I could support him. The more I look at McCain, the less I like him though. Because the conservative blogosphere is going crazy over McCain right now I'm going to try to knock out a McCain-specific post here shortly, so I'll save my McCain thoughts for then...

Which leaves us with Romney. I'm a little nervous about this, but I think I actually like Romney. I'm cautious about him though because there is a strong case to be made about him being a "flip flopper." The positions he took when he campaigned in Massachusetts were certainly more liberal than those is currently campaigning on. But, The Gipper also started out more liberal. I'm also encouraged that when push came to shove, Romney actually seems to have governed as a conservative (despite the liberal campaigning.) That the editors of National Review have endorsed him, trusting his current positions are authentic, also helps.

And so, for the last several weeks, I've decided my vote will be headed Romney's way on February 5th. But am I enthusiastc about it? Nope ... I'm still suffering from electile dysfunction.

Liberal Fascism

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has new book out titled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Right Wing News has an interview with Goldberg that I highly recommend giving a read.

Here's some selections from the interview:

A short definition [of fascism] would simply be ... for a totalitarian, religious impulse, where everything has to go together, where the state has to govern every aspect of society ...

I think one of the things we get caught up with, when we talk about fascism, is that we think it is this incredibly unique thing and really, it's just another name for a kind of socialism. Fascism is socialism, Mussolini was a socialist, the National Socialists -- duh -- were socialists.

Instead, what we've done is turn fascism into this shorthand for evil. Nazism was obviously evil and Italian fascism was really, really bad, but fascism meant something else as well.

...Take the word socialism. More people were rounded up, put in camps, and murdered in the name of socialism than were ever killed in the name of Nazism or fascism and that's not even counting the National Socialists of Germany. Mao killed 65 million people in the name of socialism. Stalin killed, minimum, 20 million people in the name of socialism. But, if I call you a socialist, that's like I'm saying you're misguided, Utopian, idealistic, or goofy, but it doesn't mean I am calling you a genocidal murderer. But, we do that with fascism, where we just say it's sort of a codeword for evil. So, part of the book explains that fascism isn't as exotic as you think it is, it's really just a flowering of a different kind of socialism.


...

One of the central points of fascism is the cult of unity. This idea that -- and this is what I was getting at in the beginning with my definition of fascism -- that if everybody gets together, if everybody holds hands and agrees to the national program, to the progressive cause, to what the movement dictates is right and good, then we will be able to be delivered from history, we will be delivered to a promised land, a Thousand Year Reich, a Communist world, a perfect society, a utopia, the kingdom of heaven on earth -- that notion still runs straight through the heart of contemporary liberalism today.

... Hillary Clinton talks about how, if we can just create this idealized village of hers, that everyone will feel like they belong, everything will be in the village, nothing outside of the village. When Barack Obama is on the stump, his whole point is that if we can just be unified, public policy issues don't really matter, what really matters is unity -- that sort of thing.

...

You hear Hillary Clinton say constantly, we need to move beyond our ideological disagreements, beyond our partisan disagreements, beyond political labels -- and the thing is, in 15 years in conservative punditry I have never heard someone say, "I don't believe in labels, I think we need to move beyond our ideological differences, and therefore I am going to abandon everything I believe and agree with you, for the sake of unity." People only say we need to move beyond ideology, we need to put partisanship aside, or the time for discussion is over, when they want to tell you to shut up and get with their program. That is a fundamentally undemocratic, quasi-fascistic way of talking about politics.

...

One of the things that prompted me to write the book was this fundamental misunderstanding of what conservatism is in America and this slander, this projection, where liberals see in themselves similarities to fascism and project those things on to us.

I often like to ask college kids, except for the murder, bigotry, and genocide, what is it exactly about Nazism that you don't like? And they can't name anything. But, conservatives can come up with all sorts of stuff. They were socialists. They wanted free health care. They hated Christianity. They hated tradition. They were statists at the end of the day. All of those things are inherent to fascism and what was anathema to fascism was the idea that you can have, what the scholars of totalitarian theory call "islands of separateness" -- that churches can go their own way, that corporations can operate without coordinating with the state, that individuals can have free consciences, that there can be free debate, free and open discussion.