Thursday, September 29, 2011

What the Chris Christie Buzz Tells Us

Unless you've been living under a rock lately in Republican politics, several of the establishment and conservative intelligentsia are excited about a possible candidacy of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  Ann Coulter has offered to have his babies.  Bill Kristol wrote something that has to be a spoof, otherwise he deserves to be rightly accused of idolatry.  The New York Post today reports that apparently Henry Kissinger and the entire Bush dynasty have urged him to run.

Let me throw some cold water on them and anyone else considering it:  Chris Christie will not run for president.  Oh sure, he might "think" about the decision, if only to get some great free media attention.  Yet his earlier decision will stand.  He's an inexperienced half-term governor.  He has done some great things in New Jersey as a Republican, when you grade on a curve.  A "New Jersey Republican" is not a Republican in any particular sense of the term as most conservatives understand it.

Faced with regional problems, Chris Christie responded to the financial crisis in his state as a result of massive unfunded pension/heatlh care liabilities of public sector employees.  On the federal level this isn't really a problem for a variety of reasons.  (Number one being their inability to collectively bargain on many things.)  You get away from those things, and you have a typical Northeastern Republican who lives in a state where the governor's office has something just short of divine power.  This typical Northeastern Republican makes George W. Bush look like Tom Tancredo on immigration.  He backs affirmative action and gun control. Global warming?  Think Chris Christie would stop cap and trade?  There is reason to doubt it.

I say this as a fan of Chris Christie.  He's accomplished things in deep blue New Jersey none of us ever thought possible.  Which is all the more reason for him to stay there and continue accomplishing it.  If he got in the race, he would come under immediate fire for these positions from Santorum and Bachmann, the demagogue twins who have absolutely nothing to lose and are still in the race simply to feed their own egos.  (Hush my socially conservative Catholic brethren, anyone who has actually looked at the facts on the issues in regards to Santorum can come to no other conclusion.)

Far more interesting is what the buzz about Christie says about other people.  Mainly Mitt Romney.  He is learning that establishment love is a fickle thing.  They care about one thing and one thing only, and that is winning.  If there is a doubt that you can win, they will turn on you.  Yet why would I claim that this shows Romney's weakness, given his weakening of Rick Perry in the polls?

The simple reason is that Perry is on the ropes, but he wasn't knocked out.  In order to place Perry on the ropes, Romney had to demagogue hard on Social Security and immigration.  Everyone knows he isn't Tom Tancredo.  As far as Social Security, it is one thing to not like the fiery rhetoric Rick Perry utilized, or to demand he stop being coy and actually put forth a realistic plan for how to deal with the mess.  It is quite another to run to Obama's left on the issue.  Romney's explicit strategy was to scare the hell out of seniors.  People will start to remember that, and will turn on Romney.  Even if he wins the nomination (a 50/50 chance), he will in a best case scenario have the same kind of relationship John McCain had with the Republican base.  While that might be enough, don't count on it.

Seeing this, the powers that be are looking to get rid of their Romney problem.  Right or wrong, they feel that Rick Perry cannot win.  Yet they also realize that long-term, Mitt Romney is terribly flawed.  While he could still beat Obama without the base, they do not want to take their chances.  Better to go to Chris Christie.  He is someone who is for the most part a moderate Republican, but he doesn't have the image of one willing to change any position if it means an extra half percent in the polls.  He also has the added bonus of not having the undying hatred of the base.  The base might not be excited by a Christie presidency, yet they aren't cold to it.

The establishment GOP is forgetting something:  Mitt Romney has no desire to walk away from this quietly.  Mitt Romney's father was destined to be president until he had something akin to a mental breakdown.  The younger Romney feels as if the presidency should belong to his family.  Rather than face defeat in re-election for governor in 2008, he began running for President in 2006.  When he managed to lose to Mike Huckabee (let that sink in), he "suspended" his campaign until January 20, 2009.  For over 5 years, Romney has ran for President, changing his message like a girl changes shoes.  He will fight Chris Christie with every ounce of strength he has.  Who benefits from this?  Rick Perry, and Rick Perry alone.  With a divided front against him, he is able to pick up the pieces.  That is why Chris Christie will not run.

If Romney is paying attention, there is much to learn about this recent turn of events.  He is far from finished.  Yet he will not be able to count on reliable establishment support.  If he wants to win, he needs to form an alliance with someone conservative yet who isn't backing Perry.  Sarah Palin or Jim Demint, you have Mitt Romney on line one.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

I'm Sorry, I Thought the "R" Stood for Relevant

Before starting, let’s get the obvious out of the way.  Rick Perry was terrible in the recent debate.  On the question of offering in state tuition rates to the children of illegal aliens who live in the State of Texas and attend high school in Texas for at least 3 years, his answer was about as bad as you can get.  The essence of it was if you opposed his plan, you have no heart.  This is regrettable, especially when you consider the idea is a lot more sensible than you might originally think.

There is another obvious point that must be established before we continue.  In Plyler vs. Doe, the Supreme Court mandated that states must provide education for the children of illegal immigrants for K-12.  Essentially, those children were not independent moral agents in the decision to enter this country illegally.  To deny them education in the public schooling system would be to punish them for something they have no control over.  That is neither fair nor just, so the Courts reached this decision.

The state of Texas decided that when it comes to determining college tuition rates, residents of Texas would be counted as residents of Texas, as National Review’s Kevin Williamson remarked.  The caveats being that:

-The student must have lived in Texas for at least 3 years prior to graduation

-The student must have a high school diploma

-The student must sign an affidavit that they are either seeking permanent resident status or will do so as soon as they are able to.

  According to a 2010 report in the Dallas/Forth Worth Morning News, this effects a whopping one percent of Texas college students.  For a simple comparison, the top 5 Texas Universities have about 190,000 students.  This would mean 1900 benefit.  Since the law passed in 2001, 22,697 students benefitted from the bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate and with only 4 objections in the Texas house.  There are millions of people living illegally in Texas.  We are dealing with an incredibly small data set here.  I point this out only to tell my conservative friends who disagree with the issue:  from a pure political and optical standpoint, this is not the hill to die on. 

From a policy standpoint, the influence this has on immigration overall is pretty insignificant.  Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum stated that this acted as a magnet towards increasing illegal immigration.  Yet one percent of college students are involved in this discussion.  What they are saying is that a starving immigrant family from Mexico who can’t survive subsistence wise in Mexico is going to come to America because 10-15 years down the line (at the very least 3 years, but considering the logistics of moving an entire family with teenagers, this is tougher), so their child can save 25% and still have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college.  I submit that if most of these families were able to focus a lot of time on long-term problems, they wouldn’t be trying to flee their country.

Furthermore, one can hold the position I do and not sit on the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board favoring open borders.  One can favor enhanced crackdowns on those illegal aliens currently in America by going after those who exploit them in their jobs.  You can implement things like E-Verify.  You can even increase border security.  These things actually have an impact on immigration levels.  The tuition rates of one percent of Texas college students do not.

The political aspects aside, there is a humanitarian issue.  All of these children participating in the program were minors when they were taken to this country illegally by their parents.  As they were minors (most of these very young), they weren’t free to make their own decision.  When one cannot make an independent decision of their own, they cannot be held liable for a crime.  If they cannot be held liable, they cannot be punished.  They are indeed being punished. 

Two children go to school together from the first grade, grow up together and become best friends.  They play on the same sports team together.  They have the same teachers.  They compete for the heart of the same girl.  They both get accepted into the same college.  Yet one has to pay more.  The reason?  When he was three years old, his parents decided to cross the border illegally.  As such he faces a punishment for something committed before he even reached the age of reason.  Such a scenario is neither just nor fair.

To make this into an issue upon which we decide our nominee for President is absurd.  While some may believe this to be mere “pandering to Hispanics”, let us give this further thought.  Republicans would be going out of their way to sink someone’s candidacy over something that affects one percent of one state’s students, and those students aren’t even responsible for that action.  You want to try and defend that come November 2012?

Conservatives need to get serious.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Bachmann's Amateur Hour

Whenever I wish to talk about politics, there is one person I turn to frequently.  In conversations with my good friend Shawn McElhinney, the subject of Michele Bachmann frequently comes up.  Both of us have always been in agreement that she would never be the nominee.  I believe she may have won the straw poll, but her political corpse will lay there.  Yet out of the interest of encouraging a wider debate, I advocated keeping her in the field, as I believed (at the time) she served a useful purpose and spoke to a constituency that, while I do not identify with them, they have a place in the Republican Party.

It has become harder and harder to maintain this position, especially in light of the past week's events.  First, let us do a recap.

In 2007, Texas Governor Rick Perry decided to issue an executive order, mandating the use of Gardasil amongst girls as young as 12 years old.  Gardasil is a vaccination against HPV.  An HPV infection can lead to cervical cancer, something which is very serious for women.  At the time, not much was known about Gardasil, and the idea of using an executive order to mandate an injection against a sexually transmitted disease was controversial.  Realizing a losing battle when he sees one, Perry withdrew the order, and went back to making Texas an absolute monster when it comes to job creation.  When his GOP primary challenger in 2009 tried to make this an issue, Perry apologized for the EO, and then went on to absolutely crush the Bush machine's hired gun to take him down.  (Precisely because the likes of Karl Rove saw in their intra-party rival a future presidential candidate.)

During the GOP primary debates for the Presidency, now presidential candidate Rick Perry has had the same line of attack come up again.  For the most part, this is a fair line of attack.  Even if I dismiss the idea that Perry was bribed by big Pharma to do this, when companies like Merck (the maker of the drug) donate to you (even if it is just 5,000 out of tens of millions of dollars raised), you have to answer those questions.  Mrs. Bachmann took this entirely legitimate line of attack and did what too many Tea Partiers (and social conservatives) do with a legitimate issue: demagogue it so hard you end up saying something colossally stupid.

Bachmann turned the issue into a full fledged crusade against vaccines in general.  She then made a whopper of a claim that the HPV vaccine Governor Perry wished to mandate caused mental retardation in innocent 12 year old girl taken to the CIA black site and injected with the latest biological weapon called Gardasil, or something.  Failing that, she then turned to stating the drug was unsafe, making it sound like after the CIA injected you with the latest doomsday device, people were dropping dead left and right.

There is absolutely no evidence for this.  Bachmann didn't care.  She saw a chance to smear an opponent, and took it.  In FDA studies, they have records of Gardasil being administered 35,000,000 times.  Out of those incidents, there were 1500 incidents that were deemed worthy of further investigation.  No conclusive evidence after rigorous testing was found that Gardasil caused these incidents.  Out of those 35 million injections, 68 deaths resulted.  That's essentially statistical noise, and the FDA confirmed that.  Not one of those deaths was related to Gardasil.  They concluded that the relevance of them being injected with Gardasil is as relevant as sweaters causing deaths because people die when wearing sweaters.  (Source)

Needless to say, the evidence is beyond non-existent for mental retardation as a result of the drug.  Mrs. Bachmann claims she heard it from someone during a campaign stop.  I'm going to go out on a limb:  there was no person she heard this from.  She relied on junk science and flat out made it up.  (The junk science being a thoroughly discredited study which claimed certain injections led to an increase in autism amongst children.)

The other concerns about the HPV vaccine (outside of the mandate) do have some weight, but I think ultimately fall up short.  One of the most popular concerns is that providing the vaccination encourages risky sexual behavior and experimentation amongst minors.

This sounds plausible.... in theory.  Cervical cancer tends to develop amongst those who are past their teenage years.  If we want to believe that teenagers are considering cancer decades later as a reason to keep their clothes on before engaging in carnal acts, sorry, that's an adult talking.  The flipside of this argument is that we need to keep the threat of cancer around to punish those who engage in risky behavior.  I know that's not what people mean, but care to offer an alternative that precludes it? 

This is different than funding contraception, abortion, and the like.  These activities do encourage risky behavior.  Why?  Contracting something like HIV or causing a pregnancy is a rather visible side-effect of the sexual act in the immediate sense.  At most, you've got 3 months before your deed becomes known, and consequences start.  The incentive against sex isn't an intellectual one here, it's entirely emotional, because it is so darn visible and apparent.  Subsidizing the elimination of these barriers will lead to more people engaging in the act.  In short, Gardasil could encourage risky behavior, but the evidence is extremely thin when one remembers the circumstances surrounding adolescence and the pressures of sex they face.

Megan McArdle brings up several salient points.  First and foremost, half of sexually active individuals, at one point in their life, are infected with HPV.  The majority of the time the infection is harmless and does nothing.  Yet all to often, something else occurs.  With such a high occurrence, this can't be dismissed lightly.  Can you guarantee, as a celibate to the night of your wedding, that your spouse has done the same?  What if they had a moment of weakness?  What if they amended their life and started living chastely?

Knowing these things, the issue of Gardasil isn't as cut and dry as those in Bachmann's camp wish to make it.  This long ago stopped being whether or not one should use EO's to carry out these things (a perfectly legitimate point, and something I agree with Perry's critics on), it has become a crusade against the facts.  Bachmann deserves the strongest of condemnation, and if she is written out of the Presidential race tomorrow, it will be too long.  We need to get back to real issues.  Make Governor Perry reconcile the mandate for Gardasil with his profession of belief in limited government, and if he would want such a mandate nationally.

The only thing left to wonder is if Minnesota has finished their redistricting, and if not, how can we redistrict Bachmann out of existence, so she no longer plagues the nation with her stupidity?    If a President Perry were a vengeful fellow, I would not doubt if he behind the scenes engineered a primary challenge, or tried to get her out of Congress.  I really don't think anybody could fault him for such an act.  Perhaps a President Romney should do so as well, if only to save himself from when she eventually implodes and damages his credibility.