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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the left and the right today, there are grandiose motivations offered as to the hidden ambitions or backgrounds of political opponents. Much as some Tea Partiers have accused the current administration of being socialist in outlook, commentators on the left have been throwing around the term fascist to criticize those opposing the policies of the Obama administration. The irony is that fascists would accuse their opponents of socialism, and socialists would accuse their staunchest critics of fascism. Commentators in the employ of  reputable newspapers ought to be smarter than to confuse the legitimate qualms many have with the current administration for the bellicose ideology that dominated Europe in the nineteen thirties. If recent polls are an indication, Tea Partiers too, as a whole, ought to know better than to deride their political opponents in some of the ways that they have.

In reality, there is nothing fascist about expressing concerns over runaway spending in Washington. Though it is curious that on specific costly programs, there is support from Tea Partiers for their continuation, indications are that Americans in general who are concerned about spending are reluctant to alter the cost burdens of Social Security and Medicare in any serious way. Interestingly, those maligned as fascists also seem to be content with present levels of federal income tax if recent polling data is correct. The immediate response to this could be itself frustrating. However, as a group concerned over long-term fiscal policy, Tea Partiers are right to worry about the hidden costs of health reform and financial reform down the road, regardless of how they feel about present levels of federal taxation. Except for differences in overall wealth, education level, and racial composition, Tea Partiers may well be within the American mainstream after all. Indeed, Republicans are not alone in their concern over the fiscal health of the United States in the coming years and decades.

Press accounts offering a fairer representation of the citizens demonstrating peacefully around the country still don’t get the story entirely right, however. While it is true that the Ron Paul supporters have been visible critics of this administration, it is incorrect to identify the socially inclusive and fiscally conservative among Tea Partiers as in any way affiliated with the rather more paleoconservative movement championed by the Texas physician. In that sense, identifying Tea Partiers with Sarah Palin is equally as ridiculous when considering how polling has found them to stand on the question of a potential presidential bid by the former Alaska governor.

Much to the chagrin of some, President Barack Obama cannot accurately be portrayed as a Socialist. In one recent attempt to dispell the myth regarding the ideology of the present U.S. President, CNN failed abysmally. Political ideology is far more complex a picture than mere party identification, particularly in the United States where party discipline is low, and the parties themselves are relatively weak when compared to parties internationally. Nonetheless, CNN reached an accurate conclusion despite making a lousy case for it. President Obama is not a revolutionary, and is committed to maintaining private industry as a significant force in the U.S. economy. Barack Obama, like the allegedly fascist Tea Party set, is committed to the democratic process, in the sense of being firmly committed to  electoral politics.

Pegging the political ideology of Presidents of the United States is a daunting task, though most are pragmatists, governing with only nominal commitments to a party base. George W. Bush presents an interesting example. While not pragmatic in his foreign policy, the latter President Bush sought a middle course in the most significant of his domestic policy pursuits. A national crisis early in his administration put on hold some of the policy priorities of George W. Bush. The most sweeping of Bush-era reforms came in the area of national security policy, reacting directly to the crisis faced. Despite the bipartisan support offered to his domestic reforms, and the similarity of his platform to that of his principal opponent in 2000, George W. Bush increasingly came to be seen as a partisan figure, in no small part due to congressional leaders.

With this in mind, analyzing the Obama administration thus far becomes rather interesting. While not a socialist, the current President of the United States is not exactly a pragmatist either. Nothing in the policy priorities nor approach of the Obama administration thus far suggest pragmatism. While it is true that President Obama has continued the Iraq policy of his predecessor, Bush had committed to a tentative draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq. If something goes wrong in the coming months of years regarding Iraq, the Obama administration is in the clear to blame it on Bush.

While socialism is the wrong label, so too is liberalism. Just as it is not pragmatic to overhaul one-sixth of the U.S. economy merely to provide insurance to ten percent of the American people, it is not liberal to establish new business monopolies. Republicans are not wrong that the new health care law practically amounts to a government takeover of healthcare with respect to the sheer levels of regulation imposed on insurers. Indeed, insurance companies are to remain in the private sector, however nominally, under Obamacare. While this would ordinarily seem to be a bad deal for any business, the effect is to prevent potential new competitors from entering the market, and prop-up existing businesses as costs inevitably rise. In essence, the health insurance industry now constitutes a federally-managed, regulated utility.

Thus, Barack Obama is perhaps best characterized as a proponent of the Third Way, that trend in politics popularized by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. While billing itself as “centrist”, the Third Way is better described as a progressive acceptance of the realities of globalization. The problem with the Third Way approach is that it retains all of the wrong assumptions made by champions of stronger state control over the economy while also seeking the benefits of the free market. Indeed, the third way is an ideology in which no crisis can be allowed to go to waste. However, the Third Way is an idea which seeks progressive ends through crony capitalist means.

What makes the free market strong is not private ownership alone, but its coupling with private management. Bailouts render private businesses little more than government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The United States Senate this week is tackling the topic of financial reform. Lacking in these discussions is a narrow, precise focus on the causes of the housing bubble that triggered a worldwide economic slump. Instead of focusing on a narrow problem, Democrats are once again using a crisis to try and get their pet causes put into law. It is this that will make elections in 2010 and 2012 so interesting, and that has diminished the credibility of President Obama with the American public.

I’ve held off jumping into the iPad fray for the most part, waiting until I can actually buy the 3G version outright before making my own conclusions. But there was always one thing I knew the iPad could truly revolutionize- and it’s already in development.

According to Tech President via TechRepublican-

Project Vote, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization that promotes higher voter registration rates in low-income and minority communities, announced last week that they are working on a mobile-device-friendly voter registration application, according to a press release, that will work on anything from the BlackBerry to the magical iPad.

But a magic wand it ain’t: In the release, Project Vote admits that there are only four states (Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) that allow electronic voter registration. …

Using a mobile voter registration application, a volunteer canvassing a neighborhood […] is supposed to be able to collect the information of a prospective voter right there on his iPad, then electronically transmit that information along to that state’s board of elections, or secretary of state, or whichever group is responsible for administering elections and voter registration.

Pretty impressive, no? This could truly revolutionize the way we think of political volunteerism. This has already been used in small part in several races recently- from the McDonnell to the Scott Brown race- I even was able to use a blackberry in a local special election.

However, while the Project Vote organization calls itself “a nonpartisan organization”, when you do more digging you find this little gem-

Working with our field partner, the community organization ACORN, Project Vote in 2007-2008 conducted the largest and most comprehensive voter registration drive in the history of our two organizations, a 21-state community-based operation that succeeded in collecting over 1.3 million voter registration applications.

That’s right- the same Acorn that was recently involved in the prostitution scandals, and more importantly, embroiled in the voter fraud scandals over the last few elections. Project Vote claimed responsibility for the surge in support for Obama campaign in the last election, and was also critical in the 1992 election, bringing in more than 150,000 new African American voters. While Politifact says that Project Vote is was directly an arm of ACORN in 1992, their relationship since then has been rather murky, with Project Vote defending accusations against ACORN as “absolutely false”- even as the FBI launched a probe into the allegations of fraud.

The simple truth is that it’s just a matter of time before we have an entirely paperless campaign experience. Volunteers might be able to download an application onto their own devices and head out to targeted areas near them via their GPS-enabled Google Maps service. From there, they can go door-to-door, armed with an entire visual interactive experience for constituents. Or perhaps they’ll collect names and signatures for ballot initiatives or primary ballots, showing a compelling video that leads directly into a signup form. All of this will come directly from a single paperless device that broadcasts the signature to the database instantaneously.

But what happens when this tool is first used by the same people who infamously enrolled the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada? The potential for abuse is tremendous. This will be something Republicans need to watch carefully, as oversight on matters like this will be hard to scale. As a developer of iPhone applications, the potential excites me- I would love to have a client that would recognize the potential of such a service, but I am also concerned about the potential impact on elections when people attempt to use this for more nefarious purposes. We need to move political volunteerism into the future, but not at the cost of election fraud and manipulation.

In two separate U.S. Supreme Court cases (here and here) the majority has held that the federal constitution requires a specific process for the passage of legislation; an identical text must pass in each house of Congress prior to going to the president for signature. What has been called the Slaughter solution in press accounts, for Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), would deem the Senate bill to be accepted by the House as is without a formal vote on the text of the bill itself. Democrats, in effect, are proposing to use a stunt to pass legislation while being able to claim that they did no such thing. In reality, legislators sworn to uphold the constitution will be remaking one sixth of the U.S. economy through parliamentary gimmickry. Yet, it was precisely this sort of thing that the framers of the United States Constitution opposed.

There are now, and will forever be, disputes over what precisely is allowable or not under the federal constitution. However, rational people on the left and the right generally agree that its provisions offer broad support for personal liberty. For this reason, the first and fourth amendments to the U.S. Constitution are well known. The broad interpretations offered over many years of the fourteenth amendment to said constitution define rather broadly its guarantee of due process of the laws. The amendments to the U.S. Constitution, usually crafted to defend one’s rights against excesses of government power, are not the only portions of the world-renowned document safeguarding personal liberty.

Disputes over due process often arise in instances of criminal law. However, its pertinence applies to the law generally, and the framers of the U.S. Constitution had a precise reason for establishing two legislative chambers to comprise the Congress. Nearly any student of the U.S. political system knows that the two houses of Congress are apportioned differently to prevent any one state from dominating the national government. Inferring though that such is the reason why the Congress is bicameral would be inaccurate. Indeed, James Madison’s Virginia Plan called for a bicameral Congress wherein both chambers were elected on the basis of population. The formation of the United States Senate resulted from a compromise between that Virginia Plan and one offered by William Paterson of New Jersey which would have given each of the thirteen states equal representation regardless of population. The purpose of bicameralism on the federal level was to better secure the liberties of individuals and the states within the Union. To pass health insurance reform through the Slaughter solution, or its proper name, the “self-executing rule” would undermine bicameralism and fundamentally go against the best values of the U.S. political system.

One thing was actually correct in the justly maligned changes proposed to the Texas school curriculum; the government of United States of America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. While this constitutional republic functions democratically, unbridled democracy can produce the greatest of human tragedies. The pure democracy affirms the interest of the collective over that of the individual in every possible instance. A purely democratic system is one in which the leader can be voted more power without checks on his new authority.

Civil libertarians were correct to criticize the excesses of the previous administration in its efforts to combat terrorism. Yet, there has been little more than silence from them now that the party and president in power are engaged in every activity imaginable to grow the power of the state in another area of public policy. This is particularly disturbing when considering the expanse of the present measure and its lack of any real fiscal constraint. The use of the self-executing rule in the House and budgetary reconciliation together to pass health reform would be the largest single abuse of federal authority since FDR proposed packing the Supreme Court with sycophants in 1937 to further his partisan agenda.

Democrats, to defend their legislative shenanigans, have argued that Republicans used the budget reconciliation process numerous times in the past. Quality, however, matters more than quantity; adjusting rates of taxation or adding a prescription drug benefit to an existing program is substantively different from overhauling the entire health insurance system. Using reconciliation, as has been proposed, for health care reform would go against the fiscal policy nature of the process. Senator Byrd (D-WV) opposed using reconciliation for the aborted 1993 health reform plan precisely because of its substantive reach beyond short-term fiscal policy, and the constraints on debate imposed by such a process.

The Tea Party movement has been widely criticized. For the record, this author has shown concern over its excesses in the past. Speaker Pelosi in recent weeks suggested that Democrats share some sentiments with the Tea Partiers. Unfortunately, it seems the sentiments shared aren’t those pertaining to personal liberty, but rather those disdaining good governance and bipartisanship.

The President, in his weekly address Saturday, sought to reassure members of Congress that there would be aspects of the health insurance overhaul which would occur right away. A very real concern seems to exist among members of Congress that voting public will not experience the expected benefits of reform until sometime after this year. Knowing this, Republicans wisely selected member of Congress and former Democrat Parker Griffith to deliver their response to President Obama’s saturday address. Nonetheless, it was President Obama, in his effort to reassure wavering Democrats, who made the stronger case against the present legislation and approach.

Members of Congress are legitimately concerned with the unpopularity of the health reform bill, and have expressed worries that little of any immediate benefit will come from the legislation in time for the elections this November. To assuage such fears, President Obama in his video address Saturday emphasized the provisions of the legislation set to come into effect upon his signing the bill into law or shortly thereafter. However, the provisions stated are those which happen to be the most popular, or could pass Congress with broad bipartisan support if enacted in a bill on their own.

In other words, to sell the faulty legislation before Congress, the President of the United States listed those broadly popular provisions while strategically glossing over the expense and largesse of his reform plans long term. Behind all of the progressive rhetoric about holding private businesses accountable is the reality that this legislation will not rein in spending, and could drive prices up due to the creation of a big business monopoly. President Obama decried the abuses of private sector bureaucrats, but seems indifferent to the far more consequential government bureaucrats. By mandating that every American above 26 have health insurance, as the present proposal before Congress does, Democrats not only invalidate the claim that they are against imposing their values on others, but also establish a monopoly favoring large, entrenched insurance firms over smaller, and stifle innovation through the imposition of unnecessary new regulations in the process. President Obama boasts in his weekly address that the bill would pay for itself. However, a bill which focused on the popular provisions he said would take effect right away and not not on increasing the role of government and its expenditures substantially would cost far less, and gather far more support.

The benefit to starting over, as some Republicans have proposed, is that it would present a clearer picture of these broad points of agreement. Simply put, if all the current legislation did was bar insurers from dropping the sick, require that coverage be available to those with preexisting conditions, and closed the Medicare “doughnut hole” alluded to in the video adress, then health care reform would pass easily and with Republicans voting with Democrats on this issue. Unfortunately, common sense was not the change President Obama sought to bring with him to Washington.

The Political Climate blog linked to a post here by Abby Alger from March of last year. However, it seems that the comments following that post are what drew the ire of the other blog. Since I commented on the post referenced, and the discussion seems to have been the focus of the decision to link here, I feel that the need to respond is pertinent.

On the merits of the broader Political Climate post, the author and I incidentally seem to agree; that conservative charges of bias in academia are overstated and unhelpful. College students generally are not necessarily that politically attuned. We agree further that students inclined towards political science are more likely to be civically attuned.

So long as institutions of higher learning instill in their students critical thinking skills, allegations of bias in the classroom are ridiculous. The criticism offered to the spinning of a poll conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is quite valid; there should be no surprise that young adults are more socially liberal than many of their older counterparts. This topic has been touched on in previous NextGenGOP posts and discussions by various authors.    

However, just as it is bogus to cite a poll of college students as proof of liberal biases in the classroom, the absurd parallel drawn on the Political Climate between ethnocultural minorities and the disability community is equally bogus. Even as the author allegedly favors ethnocultural diversity, there is no way the quoted passage below is valid to this discussion as it compares apples to oranges.

We celebrate racial diversity; one does not celebrate a slow child merely for being different.  We offer him extra resources to help him overcome his challenges.   That process of achieving against the odds is laudable, but wallowing in inferiority is not something to be applauded.  Especially when there are ways to train your mind. 

Political colorblindness has nothing to do bona fide needs-based support, and everything to with upholding the best ideals of racial equality. If someone has a real need for unique help, then that assistance should be available to them. However, a wealthy black student lacking developmental disabilities ought to have neither more nor fewer political rights than his equally wealthy white counterpart also lacking developmental disabilities. Fortunately for all concerned, members of Congress from both parties are tackling issues faced by individuals with disabilities.

Ethnic and cultural diversity are valuable and desirable both inside and beyond academia. Nonetheless, such forms of diversity are not all of those important to the ability to think critically. Furthermore, such forms of diversity are judged too narrowly if differing perspectives are truly the aims sought by liberals in their promotion of politics based on race.  The 2000 United States Census found that German-Americans (15.2%) and Irish-Americans (10.8%) both outnumbered African-Americans (8.8%), the largest racial minority group in the country. All three of these groups, albeit to vastly different extents, have faced prejudices earlier in American history. In Census 2010, Hispanic Americans are expected to outnumber African-Americans. Thus, to value one particular cultural group over another of demographic significance in the country is silly without specific context. Yet, to many on the left it seems as if color matters more than other defining factors.

Religious background can add another layer of diversity insofar as fostering greater understanding is concerned. But, religious background or lack thereof is rather more crucial to what is arguably the core aspect of critical thinking; competition among ideas. Spirituality can be an absurd topic to debate as there is nothing to be proven in such discussions. Though rather not absurd, the discussion of political ideas involves competing visions and philosophies, many of which also cannot be proven despite a (theoretical) basis in fact for such notions.

Many on the right may miss the point when it comes to the value of post-secondary education, but so those on the left when they prefer differences in ancestry to contrasts in ideas. While it would not be accurate to draw ideological parallels in these terms, the Soviet Union championed ethnic and cultural diversity just as long as the various groups shared a common ideology. While this does not mean that liberals are communists (sorry Glenn Beck) it does mean that race and critical thinking are generally unimportant concepts with respect to one another.

Republicans, however, must do a better job of reaching out to various communities in the country where its following is presently lacking. To be clear, the goal of such outreach is to grow the party, add to it more perspectives, and enhance its base of support. Despite what some may believe, people of a particular color or culture do not all think alike, as the Conservative Political Action Conference this year demonstrated.

While their points of view differed, it is clear that both sides agree that reform is prudent in some form. In a just world, this would wipe away the liberal lie that Republicans intend only to be obstructionist. While both sides distort and mislead to score cheap points in politics, real policy development does actually occur. President Obama and Democratic senators have asserted that the Senate bill and the modificaions proposed to it by the administration include Republican ideas. However, to use a phrase that got then-candidate Obama into some trouble on the campaign trail in 2008, including Republican ideas in legislation disliked by congressional Republicans is tantamount to putting lipstick on a pig.

If it is indeed true that Republicans and Democrats agree on some aspects of reform, then those should be the basis for what the President seeks to have passed into law. This means abandoning the existing legislation, and working from scratch on the basis of those points of agreement. If the present proposal put forward by President Obama was as urgently needed as Democrats suggest, then it would come into effect far sooner than is written in the legislation itself. By 2012, if the economy has recovered, then with more people employed, the number of uninsured will presumably go down anyway, making the need for broader reform slightly less urgent.

No one in the Obama administration nor in Congress has answered a fundamental question coloring the reform debate. Until it is clear why an overhaul of the entire health care system is needed to insure ten percent of the U.S. populace, reform will be slow to advance. A side-by-side comparison of existing reform plans-Republican and Democratic-reveals that only around thirty million additional people would be insured if these changes were enacted. In a nation of over three hundred million, thirty million is not that significant.

With existing proposals, such as Senator Coburn’s bill,  Republicans have provided a framework for actually embracing reform. Both pieces of legislation, no doubt imperfect as they may be, provide a framework with which to test the obstruction hypothesis. The question moving forward is whether or not President Obama is willing to risk unpopularity with the firmly statist left by actually building consensus and getting reform implemented. In a move truly representative of change, Barack Obama once suggested he would forego a second term if it meant actually achieving health reform. Sadly, for the President of the United States, reelection seems to be a more pressing goal.

As in the gubernatorial contests last November, Independents are fueling the success of the Republican candidacy. However, as a rule, the GOP brand remains unpopular thus far with too many outside of the party. With this in mind, party leaders must focus their attention not on rigid issues of social policy in planning for the November midterms, but rather in dealing with the economic concerns of the electorate. Indeed, instead of tackling job growth, the present admininistration in the seat of our federal union has focused continuously on its ideologically-driven policy goals rather than tackle the immediacy of the sagging economy.

The reform of health insurance access and delivery is an important goal. However, a populace out of work is one which cannot be expected to pay the taxes necessary to carry on the ever-increasing functions of government. While it is true that President Obama inherited a recession, he can act to mitigate its effects. The Democrats did pass, and President Obama did sign, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, it failed in its basic aims of job creation and reducing unemployment. The Obama approach to tackling the economy has not worked. However, Republicans must provide a clear alternative if GOP candidates are to succeed in the congressional races this year.

John McCain was hurt in the presidential race less than two years ago by failing to offer an actual economic plan. The electorate knew what McCain opposed, but not what he favored. To President Obama’s credit, he gave an indication of what his approach to the economy would be, even if he was for some ideas before being against them. Conservatives were broadly against the Bush bailout. Obama supported that bailout, and enacted more of his own as president. From McCain in 2008 came a bold pledge to temporarily suspend campaigning to offer a better proposal, and then he failed to devise one. The esteemed senior senator from Arizona, who has since losing the presidential election, emerged as an important leader in the Republican Party, might be in the oval office today had he offered a real contrast on the campaign trail.

Whether it will ultimately succeed or not, this is an area in which the Scott Brown for U.S. Senate campaign has been successful. Within and beyond the locally-televised debates, Brown has offered up sound policy proposals which he feels would address the economic recession in the United States presently. Coakley, like McCain, has presented herself as a good person. Like McCain, she may well be a fundamentally good person. However, as the change agent-in-chief has made apparent over the last year, being intelligent or interesting is not as important as the capacity to tackle big problems.

What made Obama successful in the 2008 election weren’t the racist factors alluded to by the Senate Democratic Leader, but rather his ability to give the impression that he was a broad-minded leader who had pragmatic solutions to large problems. Conservatives weren’t wrong to portray candidate Obama as a celebrity per se; where they went wrong was in challenging him effectively on policy. It was policy ideas, not dissatisfaction with or disdain for Democrats that made Newt Gingrich Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Whether successful or not, the Brown campaign should remind Republicans going forward of the importance of both the moment, and the need to offer an alternative rather than meer opposition in the legislative process.

There can be little doubt that the health reform “debate” which lacked too many voices not already committed to a particular set of statist reform ideas. Indeed, the partisan, government-growing approach embraced by the U.S. House led one member of Congress, Parker Griffiths of Alabama, to leave the Democratic Party for the GOP. This might not be of note were this particular ex-Democrat a supporter of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 who has voted 85% of the time with Nancy Pelosi, breaking most significantly with that party over health care and the stimulus.

Also apparent is the way in which partisan appeals were used by Democrats to push the public option. A rather comical email circulated to Obama supporters offered praise to Senator Roland Burris, an ally of ousted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is not seeking election to a full term next year. Curiously, the email, dated December tenth, made no mention of whether or not the Senator from Countrywide and temporary Iowan Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) should be excluded from financial sector regulatory reform discussions. A relevant portion of the email from Jim Dean of “Democracy for America”, the remnant of his brother Howard’s presidential campaign apparatus, and progressive activist organization is available below.

*Insurance Interests have contributed over $80 million to the campaigns of Senate Democrats.*

Insurance Industry Senators like Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, and Ben
Nelson are working against the very people they represent: Voters in their
states back home.

Now is not the time to give up and accept less. We must fight for both.

*CALL ON SENATORS TO SAY ENOUGH IS ENOUGH AND REJECT ALL AMENDMENTS THAT
WEAKEN THE PUBLIC OPTION*

Let’s be clear. Joe Lieberman doesn’t care about the 68% of Connecticut
voters who want a public option. Joe only cares about himself. So when Aetna
and other insurance interests give Joe over $3,308,621, Joe’s ready and
willing to do their bidding and kill real reform.

And we all know insurance interests don’t just own Senator Lieberman.
They’ve spent $80 million funding the campaign of Senate Democrats like Ben
Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu.

We still have progressive champions who can beat back this so-called
“compromise.” Every amendment to the healthcare bill still needs 60 votes to
pass. We have Healthcare Heroes like Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders,
Rolland Burris, and Sherrod Brown who can stand up.

We have to make sure they know we demand it. They must know we’ll have their
back. Because, we’re done negotiating. *Enough is enough.*

Were this email not comical enough with its allegations regarding the “true” motivations of those proposing the public option, one would surely find it amusing over its characterization of Ben Nelson. As it turns out, Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid would rather offer pork and generous concessions to individual members or their states-not to the private sector as the Dean email alleges-than work with Republicans to produce a better bill. Perhaps, in that sense, Democrats were done negotiating, and had moved on to payoffs. The bill passed by the Senate gives residents of Ben Nelson’s state, Nebraska, a potentially illegal and unwanted free ride at the expense of their fellow Americans in the other 49 states when it comes to sharing the burden of paying for Medicaid. Even Bernie Sanders, who was praised in the Dean email, earned concessions for his “yea” vote by adding to the bill assistance to small health centers, but this concession applies to those both within and beyond his state, Vermont. Other Democrats earned smaller concessions for their states. While Senators are elected to represented the people of their states, actually working with Republicans to produce a reform plan with broad support surely would have been both easier and more ethical than bribing members to sign onto a bad bill. As it turns out, the numerous Senate adustments to H.R. 3590 garnered only sixty votes, all within the Democratic Caucus. A truly bipartisan bill would carry support in both chambers, and even sime more progressive members could be brought on board. Consider, for example, that Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), a major proponent of the public option and the majority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, has given indication that reform proposals excluding such a measure are acceptable to him. Such an approach may have also spared Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) his latest political headache.

However, since Jim Dean and his fellow progressives are concerned with ethics, perhaps they will come out against the blank check that Congress is issuing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-owned corporations whose lending and financial practices helped to cause the current recession. Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake is certainly one progressive who is sincere enough in her convictions to take the White House to task over its stonewalling on inquiries into the financial practices at the state-owned mortgage giants.

Early in the year, the main impetus presented for reform was a legitimate concern to address the burgeoning cost of health care in the United States. Now, as the year closes, the upper chamber of the United States Congress has passed a bill heavy on mandates and new regulation, but lacking in mechanisms to bring costs down. A measure requiring individuals to hold health insurance is one which by itself removes an incentive for cost containment. Essentialy, the Senate is praising itself for failing to do what it sought. Indeed, Senator Franken is emphasizing in his messaging on this legislation the unsupportable claim that the Senate bill will slow the increase in the cost of health insurance, even as the new coverage mandates will force providers and consumers to accrue new costs.

More troubling, however, is what the final product is likely to do for the deficit. President Obama made the lofty pledge that the health care bill should be “deficit neutral”. In reality, however, every gigantic social policy program enacted since the nineteen thirties has cost substantially more than was estimated. With Congress to date divided on how to pay for the Senate package, there should be no anticipation that the measure will ever pay for itself. Senator McCaskill (D-Missouri) had the audacity to compare Republicans unfavorably to a character in a children’s story best known for attempting to steal Christmas. Unfortunately for her, the bill she voted for will do more to steal Christmas from posterity than the proposals offered by Republicans to reform health care. As Joe Lieberman is learning, lacking common sense is becoming a prerequisite for good standing in the present majority caucus of the U.S. Senate.  It seems that a national debt already in excess of twelve trillion dollars is not enough for Democrats. In a separate measure, Senate Democrats voted to raise the debt ceiling for government spending. Vague, and likely meaningless attempts at requiring better accounting practices garnered a single Republican vote, that of the retiring George Voinovich from Ohio, who also voted with most Senate Democrats against a July bill to allow licensed gun owners to cross state lines with their weapons.

From day one of his administration to the end of this year, one thing is apparent above all else; that portrayals of the new commander-in-chief as a broad-minded and innovative moderate  were inaccurate at best. Indeed, President Obama has governed as a partisan, and has been reluctant to push for greater transparency in the debate process. His signature achievements to date have been passed without significant bipartisan support. The only change delievered by the Obama administration to date has been to replace one polarizing big-spending administration with another. With 2010 now merely days away, Democrats ought to reflect on what it was that caused Republicans their majority. A failure to put principle above party gave Nancy Pelosi her majority. We will know one year from now whether the same will give John Boehner his.