Today’s establishment minded Republicans are fond of placing what they perceive to be important principles over common sense, transforming their positions into a classic suicide pact. History provides a better guide to a be a successful GOP President.
There’s no doubt the second Republican debate was a disorganized mess, marred by poor moderation, worse questions, and seven candidates who could not control themselves or each other, making it clear that none of them, at least at this time, has either the star power or the gravitas to unseat former President Trump from his frontrunner position. This doesn’t mean there weren’t moments both instructive and illuminating, revealing the challenges populist conservatives face as they attempt to break free from an establishment that believes talking a good game while managing American decline is the best path forward or at least, that’s the impression of this observer. One such moment between former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy was covered widely after the debate and just as widely seen as a memorable zinger from Governor Haley. She was said to have put the upstart entrepreneur and political novice in his place, but as so much of what passes for conventional wisdom these days, a peek beneath the surface reveals something different entirely. The exchange itself began with a classic gotcha question from moderator Stuart Varney, who should have been embarrassed and ashamed of the self evidently biased phrasing, but continued anyway by asking Mr. Ramaswamy, “TikTok is banned on government-issued devices because of its ties to the Chinese government. Yet you joined TikTok after dinner with boxer and influencer Jake Paul. Should the commander-in-chief be so easily persuaded by an influencer?” Setting aside the “when did you stop beating your wife” tone of the question, it is a reasonable one considering former President Donald Trump began taking aim at TikTok even before the pandemic and it’s no secret that the app shares data with the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Ramaswamy, however, was undeterred and responded directly. “So the answer is I have a radical idea for the Republican Party. We need to win elections. And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are. So, when I get into office, I’ve been very clear — kids under the age of social — under the age of 16 should not be using addictive social media. We’re only going to ever get to declaring independence from China, which I favor, if we actually win. So while the Democrats are running rampant reaching the next generation three to one, there’s exactly one person in the Republican Party which talks a big game about reaching young people, and that’s me.”
It is difficult to find fault in Mr. Ramaswamy’s reasoning. Younger voters tend to be more liberal, and consume more information on social media. If Republicans are interested in reaching them, they need to connect on the platforms they prefer and whether the GOP likes it or not, TikTok engages tens of millions of young people. If Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money was, politicians win elections because they go where the votes are. Pretending a voter rich platform does not exist or has already been banned does not benefit Republicans in any way, except as some abstract principle, which as Mr. Ramaswamy correctly pointed out, is entirely useless unless Republicans actually win elections. We can talk about the horrors of TikTok and Chinese infiltration as much as we want, but we need the Presidency and likely a significant majority in Congress to do anything about it. In a rational party that had any understanding of the dynamics of power and politics as the classic zero sum game, that is if you do not win, you cannot do anything, this would not have been a controversial position, but today’s establishment minded Republicans are fond of placing what they perceive to be important principles over common sense, transforming their positions into another classic expression, the suicide pact. Hence, it was little surprise that Governor Haley couldn’t help injecting herself into the conversation, complete with the supposed “zinger,” which is perhaps better seen as a deeply personal attack on Mr. Ramaswamy for stating the obvious. “This is infuriating,” she declared from the safety of holding no elected office and being incapable of doing anything meaningful, “because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have and what you’ve got — honestly, every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber for what you say because I can’t believe they hear you got a TikTok situation.” We might forgive the Governor for appearing to have little grasp of social media platforms in general considering it’s unclear what a “TikTok situation” actually is, but still she plowed ahead refusing to allow Mr. Ramaswamy to respond to the personal insult. “What they’re doing is 150 million people are on TikTok. That means they can get your contacts. They can get your financial information. They can get your e-mails. They can get text messages. They can get all of these things.” We might also forgive her for failing to realize that the same could be said for most major social media platforms and apps, several of which engaged in a government coordinated campaign to suppress free speech, a campaign of harm the likes of which TikTok is not accused of and Governor Haley has little remarked upon because TikTok, you see is dangerous, as are the Chinese, and apparently Mr. Ramaswamy himself, or at least this what I can glean from the rest. “China knows exactly what they’re doing…And what we’ve seen it you’ve gone and you want China go make medicines in China, not America?…You now wanted kids to go and get on this social media that’s dangerous for all of us? You were in business with the Chinese that gave Hunter Biden $5 million. We can’t trust you…We can’t trust you. We can’t have TikTok.”
Perhaps we should all be forgiven for being forced to make sense of this: TikTok is bad. China is bad. Ramaswamy is bad because he’s on TikTok and at some point did business with China, which we can’t have, either TikTok or China, but which we do most certainly have nonetheless. Precisely who feels dumber after all this? Not the media, apparently. They were downright enthused at Governor Haley’s verve even in the service of the nonsensical and the “little bit dumber line” launched near a thousand headlines. The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, The Hill, Politico, The Washington Post, Forbes, even People Magazine, all weighed in with variations of “bashed,” “slams,” “explodes,” and “tore into,” describing Ms. Haley as “fiery” and in “beast mode.” Of course, one has to wonder how these publications might have covered a male politician describing a female politician as making him “dumber” every time she spoke, and one would be equally remiss not to mention that Mr. Ramaswamy is, in fact, a person of color and we can only imagine the reaction if the same was said about a Democrat minority politician, but that is beside the point. None of these publications or others that I could find addressed the underlying question: How are Republicans supposed to win elections and ban TikTok if they do not connect with important blocs of voters where they are? This might seem like a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things and to a large extent, it is, but it’s also illustrative of the collective failure of establishment Republicans in general to adapt to the brave new world of politics. The same as Governor Haley rails against TikTok, many Republicans rail against mail in voting and the resulting ballot harvesting operations as if they weren’t the new normal. To be sure, if I had my way we would return to the singular election day prescribed by the Constitution and traditional absentee ballots, but the world doesn’t work according to my wishes. The reality, for better or worse, is that mail in balloting and all the rest simply isn’t going away because Republicans would prefer that be the case. The choice is whether to adapt and ultimately exploit, or continue to lose elections. There is no alternate scenario, and yet many in the Republican party appear convinced that nobly fighting a rear-guard action to “secure” elections is the optimal path forward. While there is some indication this strategy might be changing in advance of the Presidential election next year with former President Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis, and Governor Haley all urging Republicans to embrace the new reality, it remains to be seen if anything productive will actually be accomplished and, in any event, several close elections already appear to have been lost.
Nor is winning elections the only area where Republicans seem set on placing some nebulous principle above producing actual results. The primary debate was rife with suggestions to embrace federalism and return power to the states, a frequent Republican talking point. For example, former Vice President Mike Pence declared, “You know, my former running mate, Donald Trump, actually has a plan to start to consolidate more power in Washington, D.C., consolidate more power in the executive branch. When I’m president of the United States, it’s my intention to make the federal government smaller by returning to the states those resources and programs that are rightfully theirs under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. That means all Obamacare funding, all housing funding, all HHS funding, all of it goes back to the states. We’ll shut down the federal Department of Education. We’ll allow states to innovate. We’re going to revive federalism…” This is a wonderful thought in principle. I myself would desperately like to return to some form of the federalism that prevailed in the early 20th century, but once again my wishes will not make it so. The fact remains that there will never be 60 votes in the Senate to dismantle the federal government, or at least as close to never as one can get in this lifetime. Republicans have been calling to shut down the Department of Education for thirty some odd years. It’s still here, and it was a Republican President, George W. Bush that most recently strengthened it with the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. What is Vice President Pence’s plan to make any of this happen? There is none, except to call for legislation that will never pass, and apparently, keep talking about it. Likewise, I would very much prefer to replace the current hodgepodge of almost 100 means-tested welfare programs with a streamlined, more effective system managed by the states, but there remains no such legislation drafted, much less one with any chance of actually becoming law. Vice President Pence is not alone, either. Governor Haley herself called for “breaking all of it” in the health insurance market, “When I am President, we will break all of it, from the insurance company, to the hospitals, to the doctor’s offices, to the PBMs, to the pharmaceutical companies. We will make it all transparent. Because, when you do that, you will realize that’s what the problem is.” Previously, she had said “We will stop the spending. We will stop the borrowing. We will stop the earmarks.” All that’s missing is how.
Domestic policy isn’t the only area afflicted by wishful thinking either. On foreign policy, the majority of candidates declared that the United States must defeat Russia in Ukraine or China will take Taiwan, which constitutes the aforementioned conventional wisdom on that matter, as if there was nothing at all between our current policy and China taking Taiwan. After Mr. Ramaswamy noted, “So I think this is a good topic. It’s a good topic for debate,” the pile on began. Governor Haley declared, “A win for Russia is a win for China…But I forgot. You like China. That’s why you’re.” Later she offered a litany of things she would do to stop China, or lat least a litany of things former President Trump didn’t do to stop China. “This is where President Trump went wrong. He focused on trade with China. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were buying up our farmland. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were killing Americans. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were stealing $600 billion in intellectual property. He didn’t focus on the fact that they put a spy base off our shores in Cuba. They didn’t focus enough on the fact that all of our law enforcement drones in America are Chinese. And we’ve got all these little surveillance cells. We need to start focusing on what keeps Americans safe. That hasn’t happened in a long time. As your president, I will make sure every American is safe, and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.” Left unsaid, is how she actually plans on doing any of that, the same as her prior assertions regarding the federal government and pretty much the rest of the field as a whole.. Likewise, Vice President Pence insisted, “Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.” Former Governor Chris Christie said, “And let me tell you, if you think that’s where it’s going to stop, if we give him any of Ukraine, next will be Poland.” Once again, I do not necessarily disagree with these statements, but the real question is how? The Ukraine war is well into its second year. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent, dozens upon dozens of sanctions have been issued. Does anyone reasonably believe more of the same is going to solve the problem? China is an even more difficult beast to tame considering the entire United States corporate elite is heavily invested in the country, both in creating products and in believing there is a market to sell them. If President Trump faced stiff opposition simply pushing for tariffs, does anyone reasonably believe companies from Apple to the NBA are going to embrace long term economic warfare?
What’s missing are actual creative solutions and in that regard, what connects these crucial issues together is Republicans’ seeming inability to devise creative uses of executive power. Over the past several decades, progressives have made creativity in the executive a cornerstone of their approach to governing outside of Congress and the traditional process of how a bill becomes a law. Former President Barack Obama infamously described it as having a “pen and a phone.” Democrats have not always been successful in the courts, but variously, they have advanced multiple amnesty policies, a vaccine mandate, student loan forgiveness, equity initiatives based on race, pro union labor policy, social media regulation, transgender and proabortion policy in the country and the military, and more, all without a vote in Congress. The Republicans, meanwhile, have not had nearly the same success. For the most part, they haven’t even tried. Vice President Pence, for example, appears to be actively arguing against using the power at our disposal for conservative ends when he noted, “my former running mate, Donald Trump, actually has a plan to start to consolidate more power in Washington, D.C., consolidate more power in the executive branch.” Apparently, he believes Congress will somehow vote to achieve the goals he has identified, despite that no one could possibly believe that in a closely divided country where a filibuster proof majority is little more than a fantasy. Meanwhile, governing in the real world will require the next President to get incredibly creative in the exercise of power as Republicans have in the past. The government will not be cut by Congress, but discretionary spending can be cut by the President alone simply by refusing to spend the money in the mode of Calvin Coolidge. Similarly, the President could shrink the overall size of government by instituting a hiring freeze and refusing to fill open positions after workers retire. In principle, the executive branch itself can be completely reorganized without a vote in Congress. Control of military deployments, tariffs and sanctions provide the President with economic power in foreign affairs, power other Presidents have used to our advantage over and over again in the past in the mode of Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, every successful Republican since the very first has advanced their cause through the creative use of power. From Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation to the National Parks, successful Republican Presidents have all embraced power, rather than ran from it. It is past time for modern Republicans to do the same.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 