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Here are complete details of the economic agenda:

1. A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY WILL LOWER GAS PRICES

• We’ll lower gas prices by increasing supply, expanding environmentally sound production of American energy, promoting new technologies to deliver new, cleaner energy and provide incentives to increase our energy efficiency – implementing energy reforms long delayed at America’s expense by short-sighted Democratic politicians.

2. A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY WILL CUT THE PORK

• We will restore fiscal responsibility in Washington by reining in spending, passing meaningful entitlement reform and balancing the federal budget by 2012 without raising taxes.
• We will enact an immediate moratorium on congressional earmarks and establish a bipartisan panel to fundamentally reform how Washington spends taxpayer dollars.
• We will reduce the size of government, make it more efficient and transparent while eliminating eliminate duplicative or wasteful programs.
• We will limit the growth of federal spending to a level families can afford by adopting a spending limit that would prohibit federal spending from growing faster than the economy except in time of war or national emergency.
• We will eliminate the exclusive tax breaks Democrats have given rich trial lawyers, and enact reforms to stop lawsuit abuse and prevent American jobs from being destroyed by abuse of the legal system.

3. A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY WILL STOP THE DEMOCRATIC TAX HIKE

• We will stop the largest tax increase in American history on workers, parents, married couples, small businesses, and those saving for retirement. We will offer new tax breaks for Americans – including eliminating the unfair Alternative Minimum Tax and making the Internet permanently tax-free.
• We will end a tax code that is too long, too complex and too unfair by providing individuals an alternative, two-tier flat tax system that can be filed on one page. Taxpayers can choose the new, simplified system or stay with the current tax code—whichever option suits them.
• We will make the tax code more family-friendly by reforming the child tax credit and lowering taxes on retirement benefits.

4. A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY WILL FIX A BROKEN WASHINGTON TO SUPPORT LONG-TERM ECONOMIC GROWTH

• To encourage a welfare safety net that fosters marriage and work, we will extend many of the current welfare work requirements to other programs – namely food stamps and housing – so that those who are not old, young, or disabled are either working in the private sector or serving in their community.
• We will strengthen education by supporting increased state and local control and flexibility, increasing parental options through school choice, and encouraging states to provide extra support for good teachers through teacher performance pay initiatives.
• We will tear down barriers that prevent U.S. products from being sold abroad. We will reject policies that retreat from world trade and segregate America from the rest of the world, in favor of policies that level the playing field for American employees and employers and give our workers the ability to go toe-to-toe with workers overseas.
• We will level the playing field for American workers and start importing jobs here by cutting taxes on American industry.
• We will strengthen homeownership in America through a series of reforms that encourage home purchases and help needy homeowners who are truly victims.
• We will reform and improve our current health care system. The House GOP health care reform agenda, to be unveiled in detail in the coming weeks, will include reforms that will help small businesses deal with skyrocketing health care costs and help patients by broadening the array of health insurance choices available to them by allowing them to purchase health plans available in other states.

Thomas Crown: How’d that work out for the Party between 1932 and 1980?

Thomas Crown: Let me add something to that:

Much of the answer to your question depends on your goal and your perception. If your desire is to make a run at winning, and if you believe that there’s a potential majority constituency that will vote for conservative governance, then you play long ball. You risk a blowout in either direction — Goldwater ‘64, Reagan ‘80 — so that you have the chance to govern. If you believe that there’s no potential majority constituency for conservative governance (but you believe there’s a strong minority in favor of it, or at least of its leavening effects), then there is no chance to win unless you change your message to what the majority wants. You’re then either stuck with trying to win for winning’s sake (divorcing the GOP from conservatism), or running to hold a strong minority position, but never having the reins of power.

I’m simplifying interesting things like GOTV, donor response, etc., but I’m doing this during part of my nominal lunch break, so there.

The problem with that second state — you assume that there’s no majority market for conservative governance among real, actual voters who actually vote, and don’t just say they will — is that you’re not really going to win either way. I think the Democrats are full of horse-poo on most issues, but they internalized Goldwater’s dictum pretty well, with an unspoken a priori assumption: [If voters want a Democrat for office and] if you give them a watered-down Republican, they will go with the real Republican every time, because they believe that the Republican is at least being straight with them. Or something. Now, of course, if they want a Republican, you’re only going to beat the Republican if you’re prepared to be the Republican he’s not.

I would posit that this is why the GOP got its rear end handed to it in 2006: It’s not about stem cells (an issue that divided the caucus) or spending (something the Democrats do much of, too) or Iraq, or immigration, or any particular issue: It’s because the Democrats went into Republican-leaning districts and found Democrats who sounded, and presumably would act, like Republicans, while Republicans were perceived as not acting like Republicans. But that was a win at the margins. They haven’t won by being lefties across the board, they’ve won by supplementing lefties with a lot of nominal righties. There’s a reason why Kitten is running as a transcendant figure, rather than the anodyne liberal he is: Nationally, the majority market for liberalism still isn’t there. Which in turn means that, for all of the tearful navel-gazing in which the Right has been involved these last two years, the Democrats haven’t won and indeed probably won’t, at least in the only national referendum we have.

And if they don’t win that, as they well realize, they don’t win. We don’t either, but unless they can get past a veto, they’re stuck.

By contrast, the alternative outcome is the Republican situation from 1932 to 1980. Two, count them, two Congresses. Sixteen years of Republican governance at the Presidential level, eight of which were marred by one of the most bizarre, and damaging constitutional events in our history. A casual presumption that the Democrats were the ruling party. The ingrained belief that government was there to solve problems at every level. The New Deal. The Great Society. Irreparable damage to the Federal system, and a judiciary it took two and a half decades to (mostly) clean up. And Republicans ran as mild Democrats to get there. I’m not remotely clear that the loyal opposition either opposed anything, or even slowed anything down.

If the GOP exists merely to advance the GOP, regardless of ideology, the best tack to take is to find what the Democrats are selling, and sell it better. If it exists for some other reason, we do it no service by being Democrats-lite.

Ben Domenech: I think it depends greatly on the definition. If “temperamental conservatism” means Gov. Jindal, then I think it absolutely has a future. But Jindal still packaged his adult leadership, responsible reform message in a way that reached across typical political lines without sacrificing its true conservatism. As the NYTimes points out, this is a reformer who has gone from ethics and governmental reform to anti-stem cell research, pro-voucher, pro-tax cut policies - while hardly a group of issues that avoid headlines, this isn’t revolutionary new ground for conservatism.

The packaging and the product has to correspond, and it has to have an appeal that is far beyond Washington’s normal detail-focus. I think that the long lists of policy proposals designed to satisfy every interest group always lose to a form of political leadership that is simple, appealing, easy to understand, and has a message that cuts across lines of race and class. It comes down to: here are a few ideas. Here is why they will work, and why our opponents’ ideas will not. I tend to think it’s not the necessary “boldness” of these ideas that matter, as much as finding the ones that cut across the widest range of the population. Which is why I laugh a little bit, despite Ruffini’s cogent analysis, that the first issue on his list is earmark reform. Ah, yes, that’s what’s holding us back.

I think the answer to your question may be as simple as this: these days, it’s bold to be an adult.

Thomas Crown: I don’t think we’re disagreeing; perhaps I misunderstood Dan’s question (and if so, I apologize). I understood the question to be whether we should continue, however presented, with swinging for the fences, or whether, to botch the metaphor beyond all reason, we should try to hold the Democrats to a base at a time.

Dan McLaughlin: What I am not suggesting we consider is let’s-propose-a-small-new-entitlement-instead-of-a-big-one thinking. That way definitely leads to Bob Michelsville. What I am suggesting is more in the nature of choosing increments of progress rather than constantly going for the moon… let’s take some examples.

HEALTH CARE: Big proposals: Health savings accounts for all. Eliminate preferential tax treatment for employer-provided care. Radical overhaul of Medicare.

Small proposals: allow insurance to be purchased across state lines.

TAXES: Scrap the tax code, kill the IRS. Abolish corporate taxes.

Small proposals: Create an alternative optional simplified tax system.

Down the line, there are more modest ways to get a foothold for conservative ideas. They may be the way to go right now.

Pejman Yousefzadeh: Part of what makes it difficult to answer this question is the fact that a return to moderate, temperate conservatism of the Burkean variety does indeed involve bold and radical change.

It is difficult–if not impossible–to overstate the effect of the advent of the welfare state and the New Deal coalition. Not only did it bring about a massive increase in the size and scope of government, but it also created expectations for a continued increase in government. I have said it before and will say it again: Much of the appeal of Big Government is the fact that a call for governmental “solutions” constitute a Pavlovian response to a whole host of public policy problems. Is crime rampant? Take guns off the streets! Is there a health care crisis? Make the government give us health care! Is there an education crisis? Spend more money! You actually have to think to get to the small-government/free market solution to these problems but you can just press a button and emit a big government answer with no cogitation whatsoever. The appeal of that is enormous.

The same thing, by the way, applies when it comes to originalist jurisprudence and fights against judicial activism. Originalists denounce judicial activism but are themselves called activists for their desire to see a whole host of “living Constitution” decisions reversed. The originalist response gets lost in the noise; if you are going to return the country to a state where originalism is respected, you are going to have to reverse some decisions. Scalia, of course, tries to avoid this fight–though he gets dragged into it–by leaving a lot of precedent alone. But Thomas gets slammed for his willingness to hold nothing sacred.

Bear in mind as well that the politics of “doing something” go over a lot better with the public than the politics of being the next Calvin Coolidge. That, plus the need to take some actual action to return the country to a Burkean state means that in order to be a Burkean, one must be broad, bold and visionary.

Dan McLaughlin: That last sentence, Pejman, has been at the core of conservative disappointment for the last 27 years. I’m not saying we should surrender the idea of dismantling a lot of the Big Government machinery root and branch, but it is extremely hard work politically and ends up leading us into a lot of losing battles.

The Social Security fight continues to weigh heavily on my mind. I still think it was the right thing to do, and was just abysmally mishandled by the White House in general and the communications shop in particular. But I also recognize that a lot of the electorate just wasn’t prepared for anything that sounded like radical change to Social Security - and if we want real change, we need to be moving in a long series of increments that will build the functional constituency for each successive step.

Pejman Yousefzadeh: Interestingly enough, I think that a lot of the agenda that you laid out in your previous e-mail coincides very nicely with my belief that in order to be a Burkean and to return the country to a Burkean state, one must be broad, bold and visionary. So I think we agree more than we disagree.

As for the Social Security fight, that should not have been undertaken without a crack at tax reform coming first. That would have been an easier–or at least, more electorally appealing–fight and it would have had more of a chance of building up the appearance of greater political capital at the end of it.

Kevin Holtsberry: I fervently believe that a philosophical commitment to small government is a minority position in this country. Conservatives succeed when they convince voters that Big Government hurts them through higher taxes, wasted money, corruption, substandard service, less choice, etc. It is about effectiveness not ideology. Liberal Democrats have succeeded in convincing far too many Americans that they can get government to solve huge problems while Republicans have raised significant doubts about whether they can be trusted in the areas of competence and integrity.

I think one effective way to stop or slow some of these grandiose liberal plans is to remind people just how incompetent government can be. We need to keep pointing out that these programs always cost more, do less, and have nasty unintended consequences. This makes us the party of realism and of prudence. Universal health care may be well intentioned but it is the height of naivete to believe we can simply mandate it without serious problems.

In this vein, it is easy to imagine smaller proposals as a part of this recognition of the limits of government.

Thomas Crown: We have to convince people that incrementalism works, first. I’m not remotely convinced they know it or believe it. You can blame the social conservatives for a lot, but a lack of voter education is not one of them. By contrast, small government and fiscal conservatives have simply presumed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that everyone basically agrees with them, and that there’s no need to teach.

What that leaves us is a polity that believes in big, robust solutions to problems of any kind, and that if we effect a half-measure today, we’ll just have to go all the way later, so why not just speed things up? The enormous, disproportionate cost of these huge responses, and the human misery and cost that we have to endure before, during, and after we fix them, is lost on most. Hence the demand for universal health care (”But it’ll be different from Canada and Britain!”)

The massive, soul-deadening effects of the welfare State, for example, were largely not seen as connected to welfare except at a gut level that most folks won’t voice for fear of being called racist; and any attempt to solve the former by fixing the latter ran into enormous opposition that took thirty years, millions of lives, and God alone knows how much money to overcome. And that’s about the only successful education effort on government largesse I can think of, made possible in large part by middle class reactions to inner city crime, some (good) stinginess, and decades of work by the conservative movement. The lessons from that have not precisely made it into the population at large.

Robert A. Hahn: We can implement a small-government agenda and appeal to the “expectations for government solutions” segment at the same time. We do it by stealing an idea from Bill Clinton, and taking advantage of the fact that the “problems” people want solutions for are always changing.

Bill Clinton had a new government program every week. But they were nits. He’d learned his lesson about big, sweeping reforms with GaysInTheMilitary and LetMyWifeReformHealthCare. He replaced those with symbolism over substance. “Put 100,000 cops on the street.” Sounds good, costs little. And it expired in two years, leaving the cities with the problem of keeping the salaries funded after that. Clinton had lots of programs that were funded to the tune of five or ten million over ten years. “Clinton to spend $10 million on smiles for children.” “Clinton to spend $5 million on happiness for the handicapped.” It was a headline-a-day, on the cheap.

We could do that, while quietly making other things go away. Our problem has been a one-way “cut government” approach. We want to kill Barney and Big Bird. We never have a $5-million-over-5-years program to talk about at the same time. This allows the media to crucify us as a bunch of Meanies. Instead we could be buying 100,000 ballpoint pens for The Chill’run.

During the 1992 presidential campaign I was an active duty Army officer assigned to the Army Staff but detailed as military aide to an assistant secretary in one of the civilian agencies. My boss was a political appointee. My contemporaries in the immediate office of the assistant secretary were also all political appointees. Their jobs were dependent on GHW Bush winning the election and though they couldn’t campaign for him, and as far as I know they didn’t, I did come into daily contact with all manner of folks who were very active in GOP politics and the campaign of Bush père. So other than reading the papers I was pretty conversant in the campaign strategy and gossip.

There were two main themes present during the campaign:

Experience Deficit.
The Bush campaign was nearly ecstatic when Bill Clinton clenched the nomination. In their words he was “the failed governor of a small state.” Bush41 suffered lagging popularity but when viewed in the context of his entire presidency, even discounting the Gulf War boost, this was an anomaly. He’d successfully, or so it seemed at the time, negotiated the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union. His campaign could not believe that America would toss the most highly-résumé-ed president of all time for an obvious lightweight.

Character Deficit

Unlike today, 1992 was still close enough to the Vietnam War and a large population of live WW II vets that “draft dodger” was thought to be a killer. GHW Bush was the youngest commissioned aviator — he received his commission and wings at age 18 — in the US Navy in WW II and a combat veteran.

Anyone who thinks Bill Clinton’s horndoggedness was suddenly revealed after he was elected is simply delusional. Clinton’s serial philandering was well known to the Bush camp during the campaign. When Clinton was chairman of the National Association of Governors a group of his fellow governors pulled him aside at one of their conventions at counselled him to stop his relentless and public pursuit of everything that was even vaguely female. His Little Rock exploits were well known. And I heard convincing, to the point that I am still convinced, the Hillary, while not quite as heroic in her extracurriculars as Bill, was certainly not suffering in silence.

Against this was devoted husband and father. (The seriousness with which the Clinton campaign took this threat is best demonstrated in the shameless way in which that campaign flogged the Jennifer Fizgerald story)

Bill Clinton was a deeply flawed man, and contrary to many I look at his presidency and I see much more of a combinations “Animal House” and “holiday from history” than I see evidence of some immense political talent. Having said that, the Bush campaign had its own flaws.

Abandoned by the base
Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge and his subsequent punking by George Mitchell and Tom Foley — not to say they were the only ones but they were at the head of the train — resulted in a Republican base that was less than enthusiastic about donating time, talent, and treasure to the cause of a man who, rightly or wrongly, was perceived as selling them out. If you look at Bush’s political history you also can see that he was never a real good fit with the Reagan Administration (full disclosure, I voted for Bush in the 1980 primary) and his lack of conservative credentials restricted his ability to make a deal that Reagan could have made and walked away from unscathed.

It’s Mine
The Bush campaign believed that a combination of devine right and noblesse oblige would ensure his election. His experience, his upbringing, his talent, his demeanor were all in sharp contrast to the vertiable Star Wars bar scene of felons, unindicted coconspirators, degenerates, and mental deficients that was the Clinton campaign. There is a simple Rorschach test for where you stand on this. If you can recall the presidential debate in Richmond, VA do you remember Bush checking his watch or Pony-Tail-Guy as the main vignette?

Lack of Fire
This is a subset of the notion of the presidency being owed to a candidate and a failure to take your opponent seriously. If there was ever a more vulnerable candidate than Bill Clinton they have not run for office in my life time. Gary Hart was a veritable pillar of morality and propriety by comparison. Yet, for a lot of reasons, the Bush campaign made a conscious decision to not only not go after Clinton for the moral cretin he is, but they made the decision to actively discourage third parties from doing so on their behalf. The best explanation that I’ve ever heard for this came from a senior staffer on the Bush campaign who said that Bush was so personally stung by the allegations of racism directed at him over the Al Gore inspired Willie Horton ad that he refused to allow any attacks on Clinton’s personal life. Whatever. Politics, as they say, ain’t beanbag.

Of course there is a huge difference. Ross Perot is not running and in 1992 Ross Perot earned a place somewhere in the Ninth Circle of Hell for bringing eight years of darkness on this country. Contrary to what Paultards believe Ron Paul really isn’t as attractive, smart, interesting or substantial as Ross Perot.

The similarities here are stunningly obvious.

Right now a lot of conservatives are gleeful over an Obama candidacy. They believe that America will see Obama as they do. A lightweight, in fact, if we assume his public statements actually reflect his intellect he has to rate somewhere between “pinhead” and “zero gravity”. Inexperienced. A poseur. Most likely a crook. Insincere. All in all he has nothing in his character or experience to recommend him for the presidency. His Chicago background, given his association with convicted felon Tony Rezko, is much what we’d expect of a Chicago machine pol. His association with convicted terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn should be campaign killers as should his long and intimate association with a series of racist ministers. Obama is not only unqualified, he is a weak candidate.

That being said, McCain goes into the election with a base that is effectively alienated from him. Unlike Bush41, this is not the result of a single instance crystallizing latent suspicions. McCain has made a career of actively jamming his thumbs into the eyes of the conservative movement just for the fun of doing it. Though I will vote for him in November, I’m not really sure I’d cross the the street to pee on him if he were on fire. His campaign seems to think they can create history in 2008 by beating their opponent on the issues. Good luck. If we go back through the recent elections we find they were decided not on issues but on metaphors. Kerry windsurfing. Al Gore inventing the internet. Bob Dole falling off the stage. The Man From Hope. Dukakis in a tank. Etc. For those who think issues actually matter I’d remind them that Obama has carried the Democrat primary, the election where people who actually care about politics and policy vote in disproportionate numbers compared with the short bus general election, on nothing more substantive than being an attractive black candidate mouthing fairly nebulous rhetoric promising HOPECHANGE.

The McCain camp has decided, maybe rightly, that if they go after Obama on anything other than his policy positions they will be accused of racism. I have news for them. They are going to be accused of racism and the sooner they man up and deal with that the better off they will be.

Even if the low risk strategy for McCain in dealing with the inevitable charges of racism is to only deal with policy differences, somebody has to do the heavy lifting. The Reverend Wright is an issue that can strip away all but the most liberal white voters from Obama. Ayers is an issue. Rezko is an issue. His quote-a-matic wife is a potential issue. But they are only issues if McCain lets them be. People don’t form 527s and give lots of money if they become social pariahs on their own side. They expect to be disavowed, but they also expect the wink and nod. There is no evidence that McCain will do that. In fact, when you look at McCain’s experience in South Carolina in 2000, his reaction was not to fight back against some rather scurrilous rumors but to play Achilles and go off to his tent to sulk. Where he’s been for eight years.

Obama is imminently beatable and if elected promises to be an unmitigated failure. All that aside there is little evidence that the McCain campaign realizes their own weak position or is mentally tough enough to do what it takes to win.

It’s an apt comparison. On July 15, 1979, Carter went on national television and gave what became known as his malaise speech. Among other things said this:

I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.

In Roseburg, Oregon recently, Obama sounded a lot like Jimmy Carter did when the former president gave that infamous speech:

We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership. [Transcript courtesy of CNN’s Ballot Bowl]

Next thing you know, Obama will be talking about killer rabbits.

As I’ve told you, the Europeans already signaled higher interest rates last week. Elliptical remarks by European Central Bank Governor Jean-Claude Trichet on Thursday were the trigger for a big wave of dollar-selling and crude-oil buying. This was why oil prices hit $139 on Friday.

So what happened next was that Fed Chairman Bernanke piled on last night with a statement that he sees considerably less risk of an economic slowdown, but will aggressively meet any signs of increasing inflation in the US.

The whole time that Bernanke and his colleagues have been slashing policy interest rates since last September, they’ve always been very clear that they would reverse quickly if they caught the smell of inflation. Most of us expected rates to stay steady for the rest of this year. So if there is an early change to tighter monetary policy, it’s a surprise.

Markets have reacted strongly to this decided shift in the regulatory tone. Bond markets are steeply lower this morning, the dollar has rallied against both the yen and the euro (up from 1.57 to 1.55), and crude oil continues its retreat, trading this morning around $134.40.

What’s missing from the picture is any clarity on whether the Fed’s economy-watchers are actually seeing a return to stronger conditions. The other possibility is that they’re trying to walk back some of the inflationary impact of the extraordinary actions they took in the wake of the Bear Stearns collapse and the severe money-market disruptions that occurred in March and April. This is a question I’d ask Bernanke and Geithner if given the chance.

If we start moving to higher interest rates while the economy is still weak, it could prolong the weakness. But as I’ve said many times, this recession is different because it’s being driven primarily by weak credit formation. If we can address this problem (which actually is tied in deeply with the housing markets), then economic conditions should improve.

Watch this space. I’ll update the story as needed.

Oh, and as an aside: Here’s a question that I don’t see anyone in Congress asking: why is it that prices of crude oil have become so dependent on monetary policy and financial markets? Oil is supposed to be an industrial commodity, not a financial instrument, right? Well, no, that’s obviously not all it is. We do a lot of bloviating about drilling ANWR and building more refineries (and Barack Obama keeps chattering like a wind-up doll about windfall profits taxes), but the influences on oil prices are far more complex than many people appreciate. And therefore, their political impact is too.

-Francis Cianfrocca (“blackhedd”)