Posted on 12/15/2007 9:37:10 AM PST by Sherman Logan
Since the 1960s, conservatives have chafed and seethed against liberal elitism.
Liberals have used their influence in the courts and government bureaucracies to win political victories they never could have won at the ballot box. Conservatives have reacted by turning to populism -- to a defence of the commonsense wisdom of ordinary voters against the pretensions of know-it-alls.
Conservatives have drawn strength from populism. But you can overdo any good thing --and I am beginning to think that on this one, we've zoomed the car into the red zone.
For me, the lights started flashing in 2005, during the battle over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court of the United States. Defenders of the president's under-qualified nominee began attacking the concept of qualification. One wrote: "The GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness. Nor does the Supreme Court ideally consist of the nine greatest legal scholars." Harriet Miers, we were told, had a good Christian heart. That was enough.
In the end, it was not quite enough for Ms. Miers. But it may be enough for many voters in 2008. Look, for example, at the state of the Republican presidential race.
The currently front-running candidate in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has built his campaign on a plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax.
Economists and tax experts virtually unanimously agree that the plan is beyond unworkable -- that it is downright absurd. (It does not help that it was originally drafted by the Church of Scientology.)
The idea was taken up by the radio talk-show host NeilBoortz ("the mouth of the South"), who published a book called The Fair Tax in 2006. Governor Huckabee read the book--and was sold on the spot.
Now you might expect a presidential candidate to do a little more thinking about his top domestic policy proposal than reading one pop best-seller. But you'd be wrong!
Just a little lower down in the polls is a libertarian candidate named Ron Paul. Paul is best known for his vehemently isolationist foreign policy views. But his core supporters also thrill to his self-taught monetary views, which amount to a rejection of everything taught by modern economists from Alfred Marshall to Milton Friedman.
Huckabee and Paul have not the faintest idea of what they are talking about. The problem is not that their answers are wrong -- that can happen to anyone. The problem is that they don't understand the questions, and are too lazy or too arrogant to learn. But say that aloud and their partisans will shout back: Elitism!
On its face, this retort is ridiculous. How exactly is it elitist to expect a candidate for president to be immune to obvious flim-flam? Or to submit his ideas to criticism--and change them if they cannot stand up?
And yet it also has to be admitted: Many of us on the conservative side have fed this monster. (Rightly) aghast at the abuse of expertise by liberal judges, liberal bureaucrats and liberal academics, we have sometimes over-reacted by denying the importance of expertise altogether.
"'Heart' is crucial," one of George W. Bush's early evangelical supporters argued in a 2005 newspaper column. This same writer accused those conservatives who questioned Bush's "faith-based initiative" of having "holes in their souls."
So now instead of holes in our souls, we conservatives are getting candidates with holes in their heads.
Here's the lesson to learn: It's always important to respect the values and principles of the voters. But politicians who want to deliver effective government and positive results have to care about more than values -- and have to do more than check their guts. They need to study the problem, master the evidence, and face criticism.
It's not only conservatives who succumb to gimmicks of course. The left still feels a lingering attachment to socialism, the most disastrous gimmick of them all. Tough-minded conservatives slashed that illusion to pieces decades ago. But since then, we have begun to go a little easy on ourselves. And over the past half dozen years, the consequences of our militant anti-elitism has come home to roost.
If elitism means snobbishness, then of course it is a vicious thing. If it means being impressed by credentials instead of evidence, then again: good riddance. But if it is elitist to expect politicians to be able to see through glaringly false and stupid ideas -- well in that case, call me elitist.
Excessive elitism is bad. But expertise has its place, too.
I think David needs to have a little more faith in the common sense of Republican primary voters.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Frum needs to get his facts straight....
I am no supporter of Huckabee or Paul, but I notice a lot of the globalist crowd attacks the FairTax
First, it was not devised by the Scientologists. We have had a “FairTax” before....before the start of Income Tax in the early 20th C., we raised almost all of our Federal revenue from taxes on goods (the liberal globalists would call these “tarriffs”). We always had enough revenue to run the Federal govt before the Income Tax
This was well before L Ron Hubbard was born
The income tax was an idea orginated from that friend of capitalism...Karl Marx....one of Marx’s ten points of his Communist Manifesto was an income tax.
The FairTax is a much better way to raise revenue, and, it actually encourages free market economics and free trade. An income tax always stifles growth because it puts limits on how much one can make
Also, the income tax is a way to control people...punish those not in favor of the government...while rewarding its favorites. Government loses that control in a FairTax
Of course, most globalists fear the FairTax, because it takes away control from govts friendly to globalist entities. Many multi-nationals fear a FairTax would promote competition.
There are many honest criticsms of Huckabee and Paul, but whenever I hear someone bashing FairTax or “Populism”....you can bet its always some nutty liberal globalist
Hear! Hear!
Taxing consumption rather than income makes the ultimate sense in a society that relies on tax revenue for it’s continued function.
I much prefer the Fair Tax over the alternatives offered to this point, and certainly over the current model. For all the arguing over the details, and the ongoing discussion over what should be the correct rate, etc., the Fair Tax is in fact just that...Fair. If I choose not to pay taxes, I don’t spend.
A big problem I have with SOME California Republicans is that instead of adhering to conservative principles, they instead embrace the "will of the people" populism which is contrary to our founding documents. Yeah, the sheep, er, people may vote to restrict the benefits of illegal aliens one day, but tomorrow they can also vote to take your guns away.
Remember, Democracy = two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.
Feelings are all fine and dandy in determining what the goals of a society should be. I’m all with you in despising the income tax.
However, whether something will work as intended or not is not influenced by mine, your’s or anybody else’s feelings.
I’m not enough of an expert to really judge whether the Fair Tax will work as claimed. I do believe that Mr. Frum is correct when he says that the vast majority of credentialed economists believe that it will not. Since I’m not an economist myself, I will take their word over that of those whose primary reason for support of the FT is that they don’t like the income tax.
But it should be noted that he's very much in Giuliani's camp.
Excessive sentimentality has never got in the way of careerism for David Frum.
On the Fair Tax, most know that I’m a supporter, but I also think that an incremental method of introduction must be devised and that is above my pay-grade. If we are wrong and it turns out to be a disaster, how do we reconstitute a functional method of revenue collection out of thin air?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.