GOP

The War on Terror, the TSA, and Useful Partisans

by Ryan Young on November 30, 2010 · 1 comment

in Politics as Usual

Partisans are strange creatures. They can support a policy for years when their guys are in charge, then oppose it in the blink of an eye when the other team takes power. Ross Douthat takes a thoughtful look inside the partisan mind in yesterday’s New York Times:

[M]illions of liberals can live with indefinite detention for accused terrorists and intimate body scans for everyone else, so long as a Democrat is overseeing them. And millions of conservatives find wartime security measures vastly more frightening when they’re pushed by Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano (as the Drudge Report calls her) rather than a Republican like Tom Ridge.

He also identifies a bright side to partisanship that I hadn’t thought of:

But for the country as a whole, partisanship does have one modest virtue. It guarantees that even when there’s an elite consensus behind whatever the ruling party wants to do (whether it’s invading Iraq or passing Obamacare), there will always be a reasonably passionate opposition as well. Given how much authority is concentrated in Washington, especially in the executive branch, even a hypocritical and inconsistent opposition is better than no opposition at all.

Good point.

Image credit: turtlemom4bacon’s flickr photostream.

An Optimistic Take on the Election

by Ryan Young on November 3, 2010

in Politics as Usual

CEI President Fred Smith and I have an article in The Daily Caller expressing cautious optimism about yesterday’s election results. Our main points:

-We are (cautiously) optimistic because voters turned out in droves to make a statement against big government, not to endorse GOP policies. But no reforms will happen unless people keep fighting for them.

-Activists have a lesson to learn from the Bush-era anti-war movement. Anti-Iraq War protestors vanished into thin air almost the moment President Obama was elected. They gave up. That’s one reason there are still 50,000 troops in Iraq and America’s presence in Afghanistan has doubled. The next few years will be the true test of the tea party movement. Will it grow complacent in victory?

-GOP politicians have a lesson to learn from their 1994 victory and subsequent fall from grace. The 1994 Republicans gave up as reformers after about six months. Voters kept them around because they did a tolerable job of checking Clintonian excesses. But six years of one-party rule under Bush were more than enough to show that Republicans were far more concerned with staying in power than with shrinking government. Federal spending roughly doubled under Bush, and that was enough to give them the boot.

It will be interesting to see what happens. The 2010 election might be nothing more than a blip on the radar. Or it could be the start of a genuine reform movement that will take on the coming entitlement crisis. We’re hoping for the latter.

The East German Immigration Model

by Ryan Young on October 19, 2010

in Economy, International, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

A U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska thinks that the U.S. should follow East Germany’s example when it comes to immigration. GOP nominee Joe Miller told a town hall audience, “The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . .  East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow.  Now, obviously, other things were involved.  We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border.  If East Germany could, we could.”

He’s darn right “other things were involved.” See CEI’s video on the Berlin Wall for details. What a terrible choice of example.

Miller also forgets that East Germany’s 858 miles of fence weren’t meant to keep people out. That fence was meant to keep people in. Against their will. On pain of death.

It’s almost certain that Miller doesn’t really want the full-on East German border enforcement model. It was probably just a tasteless slip of the tongue. But he clearly favors a border fence. Which, of course, he should oppose if his goal is actually to reduce illegal immigration.

Many undocumented immigrants only stay in the U.S. for a few months. Get a job, make some money, go back home and share it with family. A border fence will keep a lot of people like that out, yes. But it also keeps current undocumented immigrants in. Unwillingly, in many cases.

If Miller wins his election, there is a lot he can do to reduce illegal immigration. Building an American version of the Berlin Wall is not one of them. As Alex Nowrasteh and I wrote, “The immigration black market only exists is because the government has made the legal market as cumbersome as it can.”

Miller should make legal immigration less cumbersome. People will come to America, no matter what. That’s what happens when you have one of the freest, richest, most dynamic nations on earth. That’s a fact of life that our broken immigration system does not take into account.

Neither, apparently, does Joe Miller.

What’s ahead for free trade?

by Fran Smith on July 2, 2010

in International, Politics as Usual, Trade

In her column today, Kimberley Strassel throws some light on what’s behind President Obama’s recent endorsement of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and what might lie ahead after the November elections. Strassel points out that Obama seems to be waiting for the revival of a trade agenda to be rescued by the post-election GOP.  She says:

Having presided over the most anti-free trade Congress since the days of Smoot-Hawley, having protected Democrats from any vote that might earn them union retribution, and having had little positive to say about trade, the president is now looking to a bolstered GOP caucus to pass a trade agenda.  That is, if even a GOP majority can rescue Democrats from their increasingly unfettered protectionism.

Strassel also notes the lost economic opportunities for the U.S. in not ratifying the bottled U.S. -Colombia FTA, which has cost the U.S. a whopping 31 percent of its market share in products in Columbia, while other countries making trade deals with that nation have seen their market share rise by 22 percent.

Even if the Republicans make significant gains in the elections and push a free trade agenda, Strassel says, they’ll still need some Democratic support.  And that’s where Obama needs to be serious about free trade and lead that charge against the protectionists and union blockers.

Don’t go “lite,” shrink the state, says Smith

by Fran Smith on November 11, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Nanny State

CEI’s president Fred Smith is featured today in a video interview with InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds – now appearing on Reason’s blog.  Fred talks about “moving government out of the way” as impediments to innovative approaches to issues.  The interview was based on his recent article in The American Thinker, “GOP should grow the Party, grow the economy, and shrink the state.”  As Fred says, GOP must resist pressure to go “Democrat-lite.”