The Wave Is Building

In the wake of the passage of the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza bill in the House earlier this week, it seems that a wave of momentum is beginning to emerge: a return to true conservatism.  Observe some more opposition:

Last night's House vote on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy. Team Obama is now regrouping in the face of mounting criticism of this package.

And...

[I]t was written by the House, by Pelosi, and it is one of the ugliest ever produced by an American legislature.

 

It has got pork. It is a 40-year wish list. It has all the stuff that you heard about. It's novel length-a late Norman Mailer novel long. You throw a dart at it and you will have on any page six items which are outrageous.

 

Now, what's ironic about all this is that Obama ran as the man who would redo our politics, who would eliminate the lobbying and the special interests and the earmarks.

 

This is the largest earmark bill - earmark, but without stealth, just out in the open—of special interests, favors, parochial interests, in American history. And it is under his aegis.

 

I think it contradicts his idea of the new politics, but he's stuck with it.

The good news is that the GOP isn't just saying no - they're coming up with legitimate alternative plans.  More on that in a moment...it'll knock your socks off!  Anyway, it seems that there is a group of hardcore conservatives in the Senate who are already leading the charge on this issue in order to begin ramping up support for the upcoming vote:

Sen. Tom Coburn's (R., Okla.) comments were the most direct: "This is about spending money we don't have, for things we don't need. That's 80 percent of this bill . . . This bill is the generational theft bill. It's denying wealth to future generations."

 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) said: "There's very little likelihood of a significant change in this collossal bill. As such, we will rally and point out the failures in it. We're talking about the largest bill in the history of the Republic."

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.): "Ladies and gentlemen, a trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is talking tough, too, saying that Obama won't get many, if any, Republican votes in Senate if the "stimulus" bill looks a lot like the one that just passed the house.  Let's hope he can get all the GOP Senators in line...it'll be very tough to corral that handful of RINOs, but that's McConnell's job.  We'll see if he can do it.  In response to all this conservative muscle-flexing, the Democrats are toying with the idea of a high-priced game of chicken:

Democrats rattled some sabers yesterday by threatening to withdraw the tax cuts after getting no Republican votes.  According to Rasmussen, a plan with only government spending gets the worst response of all.  Overall, voters oppose that idea 70%-15%, and it flops in every demographic Rasmussen tracks.  Even Democratic voters oppose it by a solid majority, 57%-23%, as do self-described liberals, 54%-29%.

The Democrats are on thin ice with this package.  It's not exactly unpopular, but it's starting to get there.  They need Republicans badly in the Senate, but will they start negotiating and begin to trim off the excessive spending to get them on board?  The House Democrats wouldn't do it, and it will be interesting to see whether Harry Reid will want to bargain or to give a demonstration of power.

This is why the Senate battle will be very interesting to watch.  Anyway, conservatives have good reason to start talking a little louder - the American people are on their side.  We as a collective are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of bailouts...

The Obama administration is trying to fix the bank bailout process. But they have their work cut out for them.

Just 40% of those polled in the Financial Trust Index survey said they believe former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acted in the interest of the country last year. The same number said he acted in the interest of his former employer, Goldman Sachs.

"That's just shocking," said [Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business]. "That shows how deeply trust has been undermined."

...but we're also not liking the overall philosophical direction of the people running those bailouts:

Coming off a shellacking at the polls in November, the plurality of GOP voters (43%) say their party has been too moderate over the past eight years, and 55% think it should become more like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the future, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 24% think failed presidential candidate John McCain is the best future model for the party.

Unaffiliated voters are much more closely divided. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the party has been too conservative over the past eight years, while 34% think it's been too moderate. For 14%, the party's been about right, and 13% are undecided.

Regarding the future of the party, 46% of unaffiliated voters say follow Sarah Palin, while 26% like McCain.

Once again: most Americans live like they're center-right.  The GOP base, in particular, has been increasingly alienated by the moderate leadership of the party over the past few years, and likes the idea of a return to its conservative roots.

Very good news.

Here are a couple more pieces of great analysis regarding the status of the GOP in terms of the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza:

First, the loyal opposition was the unanimous loyal opposition. Because Republicans lined up unanimously against the Debt bill and all 244 of the votes for it came from the Democratic side of the aisle, we might as well cut and paste H.R. 1 into the Democratic-party platform. They own it, politically as well as substantively.

 

Second, the House Republican substitute offered a clear, bright line alternative. The Republican alternative was simple to understand because it had only three moving parts — tax relief, tax relief, and tax relief. It's now readily apparent that the Republican approach to the economic crisis is to reduce the tax burden on all American taxpayers and (most) American employers, and that Democrats see more government spending as the solution to our economic ills.

 

This came as a pleasant surprise to those of us who were watching the process unfold. Why? In the weeks leading up to this week's vote, the conventional wisdom was that the Republican substitute would ultimately contain a significant amount of new spending, though not as much as was in the Democrats' bill. Kudos to the House Republican leadership team, which worked constructively with back-bench conservative members to convince their entire caucus to stick together and rally around a principled, vastly superior approach that  won the support of all but nine House Republicans.  

 

Finally, the vote lifted the spirits of conservatives outside the Beltway, who now believe it's possible to influence the outcome in the Senate. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) was optimistic that the vote would inspire frustrated constituents to create a groundswell of opposition to the Senate Debt bill, thereby uniting Republicans in opposition and even convincing some Democrats to reconsider their stands.

Did you catch that reference to the 'conventional wisdom'?  That's precisely what I mean when I talk about how compromise still means we lose.  If the House GOP had caved in for a slightly smaller 'stimulus', they would have undermined their own position, leaving us with the porkapalooza bill and zero leverage for the future; by refusing to compromise, we still got the porkapalooza bill (elections have consequences...!), but we now have tremendous leverage for the future.  Equally important is the fact that the base has been energized in a way that we haven't seen (aside from anything dealing with Gov. Palin) for a very, very long time.  Compromise on core principles = lose.  Stand firm on core principles = win.

Here's more analysis:

When they manage to unify the entire House Republican caucus with David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, you know the Democrats have seriously botched something up. And boy, they really have. The more you look at the stimulus bill the clearer it becomes that it is the Congressional Democrats, not the opponents of this bill, who have failed to see that we are in a genuine and exceptional crisis. They're working to use the moment as an opportunity to advance the same agenda they haven't been able to move (with good reason) for a decade and more, and in the process are showing that agenda to be what we always knew it was: a massively wasteful, reckless, profligate, slovenly, higgledy-piggledy mess of interest group troughs and technocratic fantasies devoid of any economic thinking or sense of proportion.

The challenge for conservatives is not just to oppose this—that's important but it's the easy part—but to offer another way over the coming months and years that is plainly more responsible and sensible. It can only be offered in speech; Republicans have little real power in Washington now. But if it is well conceived and ably offered, it could both help to curb the worst excesses of what the Democrats seem to have in mind, and help to reconnect conservatives with the problems of the day, not just in this crisis but beyond.

Fortunately, it appears that some conservatives are up to the task (emphasis mine):

 

[Sen. Jim] DeMint plans to offer a pro-growth alternative plan, one that generates so many new jobs it practically short-circuited Heritage's econometric model when we analyzed it. It already boasts the support of two key Senate Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), the Minority Leader, and Thad Cochran (R., Miss.), the senior Republican appropriator. His plan would drop the top marginal tax rate to 25% on wage earners, mom-and-pop business owners, and other employers, maintain the top rate on investment income at 15%, keep the children's tax credit at $1,000, and impose a modest 15% tax on estates valued over $5 million.  

 

Once our model cooled down, we learned the DeMint plan would lead to the creation of 1.3 million new jobs in 2010, 7.5 million by 2013, and an astounding 18 million within ten years. Residential and commercial real estate activity would also soar, by almost $300 billion over 5 years.

Now that's a stimulus plan!  That's conservatism.  Works every time it's tried.



Sources:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/republicans_like_gop_s_conservative_direction_democrats_don_t
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzQ0YTc0YmNmOGE1ZmE3NjNlZTQyY2RmZDMwZWIxZDE
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_lawrence_kudlow/stimulus_criticism_mounts
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/30/popularity-of-stimulus-package-dropping/
http://minx.cc/?post=282007
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTBhNjgyMmFkMDY3MWZjZDQ1NTc5NTQ3ODExMDIzNjQ=
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/29/news/bailout.fairness.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009012903
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGY1ZmQ5YjhlODkxNWY5NGIwZWEyNzQ0MjQ2NDdlMTI
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2EzZDU4OTI2NDIyMTAwZDk3YmZlNmEyNzZlMGIxYWI