In an otherwise good bit of reporting about Newt Gingrich’s “deep ties” to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the NYT couldn’t leave well enough alone. Here’s the totally false sentence in the otherwise solid story, with my empahsis in italics: House rules appear to require him to have filed a report within 30 days after he left Congress under an ethics cloud in January 1999 . Well, no he didn’t leave it under and ethics cloud. There were no pending ethics charges at the time, nor even any known, pending, unofficial allegations of wrongdoing. He left Congress because he screwed up the management of Congress and of the 1998 campaigns. As a result, as has been reported and confirmed so many other places by now that it’s not worth linking to them all, he just flat-out didn’t have the votes for re-election as speaker. But ethics were not a component of his leaving, at least not in any immediate sense, although there may well have been sort of a hangover from his one ethics violation that was disposed of more than a year earlier — but that hangover, if a part of it, was just part and parcel of the whole overall record as speaker; it did not cause a “cloud” hanging over him by the end of 1998 and early 1999 that directly caused his ouster. This is just a sheer matter of fact. To repeat, not a single ethics charge was outstanding against Gingrich when he left Congress. The New York Times knows this. The New York Times doesn’t care. Not content with publishing facts that tend to discredit the former speaker, it adds an old fiction with which to smear him — thus discrediting the rest of its otherwise decent work on this story in the process. As with the racism charge leveled against Gingrich that I dealt with here , this is a load of crud that should not be allowed to stand. Lord knows I’m no Gingrich fan, but fair is fair. The story on Fannie and Freddie should stand on its own, without a smear being added to it.
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NYT Smears Gingrich
The Republican presidential campaign thus far has been so bizarre and, frankly, depressing, that some of us have failed to adequately cover worrisome developments on a number of other important fronts. By ineptness and, worse, by deliberate design, Barack Obama daily makes this nation weaker abroad, less free (and more authoritarian) at home, economically more feeble, and in the civic realm more bitterly divided than ever. Meanwhile, ominous developments crowd the world stage. In short, we’re in a big heap of trouble. The recent litany of Obama’s odiousness begins with his growing, unambiguous war against traditional Christianity. He has now left no room for any pretense otherwise to be believed. Right on the heels of a unanimous Supreme Court, including his own two appointees, smacking down his administration’s attempt to kill the “ministerial exemption” for employment practices of faith-based institutions, an unchastened Obama has decided that even faith-based organizations must provide insurance that covers contraception — even including abortifacients. This is not just a narrow policy disagreement; it is, as Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh wrote , the president’s way of saying “To Hell With You” to people of faith — “To hell with your religious beliefs. To hell with your religious liberty. To hell with your freedom of conscience.” Zubik continued: “This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone — not only Catholics; not only people of all religion. At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens.” Obama’s broadsides, plural, against religious liberty are only a part of his radical transgressions against the U.S. Constitution. Conservatives are rightly up in arms about Obama’s illegal recess appointments . Obamacare, of course, contains several anti-Constitutional abominations , including the “individual mandate” and the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Meanwhile, his administration is flagrantly violating precedent by trying to force explicit hiring quotas on the Fire Department of New York, in a case in which a key amicus brief was filed on January 24 at the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. And so on. Abroad, this man leading the Occupy the Oval Office movement is even worse. He threw away a clear victory in Iraq and may be doing the same in Afghanistan. His fecklessness regarding Iran, perfectly in line with his long record of favoring Shia interests, is now leading to a crisis of the first order. His strange mishandling of the Egyptian revolution has left the United States with very little leverage in a country that for more than three decades was a major American ally, and has left Coptic Christians scared to death . He long ago insulted allies such as Israel and Great Britain, repeatedly and with malice aforethought. He seems to have no real relationship of any positive nature with any allied foreign leader, perhaps with the exception of those in Brazil, whose oil exploration he subsidizes while blocking tens of thousands of jobs that would come from domestic energy production he has snuffed out. And he seems hell-bent on a mission to starve the American armed forces to dangerous thinness. Killing the private college-loan industry. Hobbling private for-profit colleges. Illegally seizing auto companies. Whoring for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Turning public policy over to thuggish union bosses and destroying jobs in South Carolina to do so. Turning the Justice Department into a thoroughly corrupt, lawless, racialist, hyper-politicized, gun-running, vote-fraud-enabling, bullying arm of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Regulating the life out of almost every aspect of the economy. Buying political support by funneling taxpayer money to failing private alternative-energy companies. Lying with the Supreme Court sitting in front of him about what they decided in the Citizens United case. Lying about so many things that one loses count. Roiling racial tensions every chance he gets. This is a man who has no interest in serving the United States that most of us know and love. Instead, he’s a man who, by hook and definitely by crook, serves the despicable vision of the utterly foreign America he wants to impose on us. Four more years of this guy in power, and we are doomed. He is a menace, and, by every legal means possible, he must be stopped — and his maladministration reversed and thoroughly buried.
This week is a career milestone for me. I appear in Time magazine writing about the state of the conservative movement. As a kid living overseas, my American history teacher subscribed us all to Time and U.S. News and World Report. So it is kind of cool to be in an issue of, between the two, the still printed survivor. The point I try to make is that the conservative movement is going through a necessary transition after the Bush years. You can read the whole thing here but a really relevant part is here: The internecine fights we are witnessing are about a conservative movement starting to separate itself again from Republican Party. Unfortunately, neither of the front runners have legitimate conservative integrity to claim the banner of conservative movement leader, but they will both try. Romney will hold the banner for conservatives within the GOP and Gingrich will hold the banner of the traditional alliance of conservatives with the GOP. I see this playing out in, of all things, my friend Ann Coulter’s column defending Romneycare . Mark Levin offers the definitive rebuttal, which you can listen to here , but there is a point that too few are making that needs to be made. It relates to the dangers associated with supporting Mitt Romney and Ann Coulter’s column is exhibit A on why supporting Romney portends disaster for the conservative movement. There is no need to fisk Ann’s column line by line. I’ll only quote the first paragraph, which is If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles — as it was at the time. I love Ann. She is brilliant. In fact, she is too brilliant to think that Romneycare is a “massive triumph for conservative free-market principles.” It is free market economics 101 that a free market requires that individuals have the right to opt-out of a transaction. In other words, zero must be contemplated in the equation. Consider it a null function. When individuals are, through state power, forced to opt-in to a transaction as individuals are forced to buy health care as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts, it is inherently not free market because a free market depends on the freedom to not purchase. Forcing demand is more akin to the keynesian economics Obama is pushing, not Milton Friedman or Adam Smith. But it also is not conservative. As Mark Levin notes in his monologue, when the state — whether it is a nation or one of the fifty states — can force an individual to engage in commerce it upends the relationship between the individual and the state. The conservative view of government is that the individual is supreme. The socialist view is that the state is supreme for the betterment of the collective. In other words, in Ann Coulter’s first paragraph she calls Romneycare both free-market and conservative, when any intellectually honest review of the facts would have no choice but to conclude it is neither. She confuses federalism and conservatism. Certainly, in our federal system, a state has plenary power to do as it wishes except for those powers it chose, in adopting our federal constitution, to cede to the federal government. But just because something is federalist does not make it conservative. To use an analogy based on hyperbole as Ann does in her column, under the constitutions of one of the fifty states that state could constitutionally require all people buy a copy of the Communist Manifesto. It would be arguably permissible under the concept of vertical federalism, but it sure would not be conservative. Delete “Communist Manifesto” and insert “health insurance” and you have Romneycare. During the Bush years, conservatives all too often sided with the Republican Party rather than their own principles. As I note in this week’s Time : By the time George W. Bush arrived in Washington, the conservative movement had fully moved within the Republican Party. Conservative Democrats had walked across the aisle making bipartisan outreach unnecessary. By the the mid-point of George Bush’s Presidency, people were talking non-ironically about “big government conservatives,” which prior to Bill Clinton’s term would have been merely Republicans who put party ahead of principle. As George Bush left office, conservatives who had seen his father put David Souter on the Supreme Court were championing Harriet Miers, fighting each other over immigration policy, supporting TARP, were okay with saving General Motors, and turning a polite blind eye to Bush’s claim that he had to kill the free market to save it. Leaders and strong voices within the conservative movement have an obligation to speak up in favor of, so to speak, true north within conservative principles and then leave it to the politicians to decide how far away from true north they must drift to build a coalition to enact policy. Debasing ourselves with silly defenses of Republicans along with a willingness to put party politics ahead of principle will, yet again, see voters rejecting conservatives. Groups like the American Conservative Union, the Heritage Foundation, etc. have all made mistakes and have usually had to repent. But in making those mistakes, they have opened up both conservatives and the Republican Party to temptation and temerity that ultimately caused collapse at the polls or ceding issues in debates. Look at the Heritage Foundation and healthcare mandates. Look at the Republican politicians who expand the federal government’s budget while hiding behind their ACU rating as proof that they are conservative. The conservative movement has been sick for the past decade. The further it became absorbed within the Republican Party, the less it could shine with conservative ideas. It compromised with itself because it had become part of the Republican Party and was as much about the acquisition of political power as it was about advocating particular policy. I am afraid supporting Mitt Romney will undo a lot of the repairs made to the conservative movement in the past few years. Already people are defending inherently not conservative ideas by calling them conservative. Already people are too willing to keep their mouth shut to do no harm to the party and, in the process, are doing harm to the intellectual capital built up within the conservative movement. Ann Coulter’s defense of Romneycare, released on the same day Romney rejected years of conservative arguments against the social safety net and the welfare state, is a canary in the coal mine. We are returning to that point where the voters decided they could no longer trust conservatives to be principled.
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Danger Will Robinson . . . or Ann Coulter
Today is February 2nd. On this date in 1863, Mark Twain was “born.” Which is to say, Samuel Clemens (born November 30, 1835) used the pen name for the first time. Also on this date, Buenos Aires was founded, and New York City was incorporated (at the time named New Amsterdam), in 1536 and 1653 respectively. Today would also be Ayn Rand’s 107th birthday. If she weren’t dead. Which she is. Thanks a lot, OBAMA ! And finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t note that today is Groundhog Day. And finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t note that today is Groundhog Day. And finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t note that today is Groundhog Day. Links, Open Thread , etc. Mitt Makes Himself a Target Again | Rush Limbaugh “But I even have a problem with this in context. ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.’ The safety net is one of the biggest cultural problems we’ve got! We had better be worried about it …” Calls Confirm Planned Parenthood Misleads on Offering Mammograms | LifeNews.com “Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.” Indiana: the Nation’s 23rd Right to Work State | Hoosier Access “After over 40 hours of testimony, debate, and discussion over the past year House Bill (HB) 1001, Employee’s Right to Work passed the Indiana House of Representatives last week and today passed the State Senate.” Obama: Biblical principles prompted me to push for Dodd-Frank and Obamacare | Hot Air I think I speak for everyone when I say … THEOCRAT!!!!11!!!!! Today’s Word of the Day comes from Dictionary.com , and applies to so much in politics. peroration (per-uh-REY-shuhn): noun 1. A long speech characterized by lofty and often pompous language. 2. Rhetoric The concluding part of a speech or discourse, in which the speaker or writer recapitulates the principal points and urges them with greater earnestness and force.
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Daily Links – February 2, 2012
Jeffrey Lord, who has intellectual integrity about equivalent to Bill Clinton’s, has become a purveyor of smear jobs utterly divorced from facts, logic, and decency. After an exchange of about a dozen emails back and forth in which he refused to acknowledge simple facts — not opinions, facts — the time has come to show him up for his growing and despicable hackery. One of Lord’s obsessions these days seems to be the idea that Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post , and formerly of this publication, is “in the tank” for Mitt Romney (oh, really? How about this , Jeff?) and that she has written almost nothing in favor of any real conservative. I noted to him that she has written literally several dozen pieces that are absolutely glowing about Rick Santorum, whom Jeff does indeed accept as a real conservative. Despite easy Google access to the evidence, Jeff continued to refuse to acknowledge this fact, and refused to retract the smears against Rubin (which included smears against Elliott Abrams and others). So, to set the record straight, here are a number of posts Rubin has written that are favorable to Santorum, or on balance critical of Romney, or more favorable of Santorum than of Romney. Here (way back in August) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here (“Romney’s lack of connection to voters is precisely the opening Santorum can use to wedge himself in between Romney and a conservative base that has not yet embraced Romney wholeheartedly”) and here and here and here and …. oh gosh, I’m tired, but I could go on and on after these 21 I’ve already cited. Why does this matter? Because there’s a sick trend out there, which is to try to read between the lines of a writer’s posts and ascribe motives to them that are different from what they actually write — in other words, to accuse them of deliberate deception, based on nothing other than some extensions of logic (as in: hmmm… if somebody is AGAINST Gingrich, AND it is accepted wisdom that this is a two-man race between Romney and Gingrich, AND if the conventional wisdom is right to the effect that Santorum has no chance and that a late entry has no chance, THEN, ergo, anybody who criticizes Gingrich, even if praising Santorum, must secretly be trying to help Romney). Readers of these columns and blog posts repeatedly accuse me, for instance, of being in the tank for Romney even though they can find not one shred of evidence that I have written in praise of Romney’s substance in the past four years, and even though I have written several full columns and numerous blog posts harshly critical of Romney. In short, everybody’s integrity is made suspect even without a shred of evidence that there is a reason for suspicion. Jeff did this to Rubin, for instance, through his long, rambling, connect-the-invisible-dots attempt to smear Rubin’s integrity by means of some imagined guilt-by-association-by-association-by-association link to Elliott Abrams’ wife. Here’s a suggestion: Let’s discard the idiotic labels (Establishment Romneyite; RINO; Right-Wing-nutso; Neocon), and instead just focus on the substance of people’s records, proposals, and, yes, demonstrable public character. And let’s stop asserting that everbody who opposes one’s own candidate is therefore automatically excluded from the conservative club.
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An Answer to Jeffrey Lord’s Absurd, Speculative, Smear Jobs, Plural
