Category Archives: Current Events

     Republicans were handed an unexpected gift this week when the Obama administration overreached and mandated – as part of its health care law – that Catholic organizations provide to their employees insurance coverage for several activities or products that are anathema to the Church – contraception, aborting drugs and sterilization. The churches were exempt – but not Catholic hospitals and charities – and the administration denied their edict applies to the abortion-inducing drugs – but no matter. Catholics were up in arms, precipitating the mass reading (forgive the pun) by priests in churches last Sunday of both the decree and the harsh, negative response of the Catholic bishops to the Obama diktat.

   One might recall that President Obama bought the last several votes he needed to pass his health coverage bill from Catholic Democrat Congressmen by assuring them that Catholic organizations would be exempt from these mandates. (He now reiterates that he meant churches and schools but not other organizations. The Congressmen now feel duped. Shame on them anyway.) Many Catholic leaders have vowed civil disobedience – just refusing to obey the law and its mandates. And the law itself, whose constitutionality will be heard next month in the US Supreme Court, should be challenged again because the hundreds of waivers only provided to companies favored by the administration create an unbalanced and unfair application of the law in any event.

Only true believers would seek to antagonize an entire voting bloc in an election year, and the Obama administration – the radical left of American life – perceives this issue as one of rights rather than morality or religion. Certainly, this decree panders to the feminist-left for whom abortion rights are a sacrament. But more importantly, Obama and his minions are in the vanguard of those who in the recent past have succeeded in the “privatization of morality,” in Melanie Philips’ felicitous phrase. They passionately reject the notion that religion, a divine-based morality that is actualized through divinely-inspired law, has any real validity or should be accorded any respect or deference in the modern era. They see it as archaic, backward, and the precipitant of untold wars – mostly true, until the 20^th century, whose wars and exterminations were largely the work of the political and atheist left (think Communism and, for the most part, fascism). Nonetheless, to man who is now the measure of all things, one who governs his life and shapes his public policy conclusions based on spiritual insight is deemed repugnant to democratic life. Religion, to this way of thinking, should be relegated to the churches and synagogues until it withers and dies, to be replaced by the new world order of reason and enlightenment. It should certainly have no right to be heard in public matters.

Thus, the administration exercised its tin ear and argued to the Supreme Court (in the recent Hosanna-Tabor case) that a religious school should not have the right to dismiss a math teacher who also performs religious functions but should have to follow the existing labor laws. The Court – this, most divided Court – rejected that argument 9-0, a judicial smack down of epic proportions, ruling that both the First Amendment Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause prohibit the Government from interfering in ministerial decisions. It was the first time in a long time that the Free Exercise clause (prohibiting Congress from making any law prohibiting the “Free Exercise” of religion) was bolstered. Certainly, Obama – adjunct professor of Constitutional Law that he was – should have known this before dispatching his Solicitor General to argue this matter. But the left is often blind to religion, its demands on the faithful and the superiority of its laws –preferring the rule of man.

One need not be Catholic to perceive the devastating effect on religious life that these edicts have (Or might have had, if the decision had gone the other way). Of course, Catholic employees at these institutions never anticipated having coverage for these situations, so it is not as if anything was taken away from them. And it again calls into question the troubling, coercive, heavy hand of government that seeks to micromanage every aspect of our lives – including what health insurance plans must cover. (Why can’t people just choose what they want covered, like from a menu of options? It would dramatically lower health coverage costs, as most people are forced to pay for things they don’t need or want because of these crushing mandates.) But the main effect of the war on religion is to sow distrust between religious institutions and government that should not, and need not, exist in American life.

For example, every same-sex marriage law to date bears an exemption for religious institutions. A rabbi need not perform them, nor must a shul host such an event. (Caterers, photographers, orchestras, halls, etc. are not so fortunate and can easily be sued by state “Human Rights Commissions” for refusing to accommodate such events.) But for how long? Personally, I would never trust the application of such a law, which requires only one leftist judge to rule that the “exemption” is “offensive, odious, hateful, racist, etc.” That is one reason – but there are, of course, others – why these laws meet with such resistance by most religious groups. In a society where religious sensitivities are trampled upon, even the ground is not the limit. There is no telling the depths to which society may fall.

The bedrock of American life is its moral core that has been steadily eroded for almost fifty years, leaving in its wake broken or dysfunctional homes, skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births, aimless youth who just want to protest and occupy, absentee fathers and sometimes mothers, and a relentless cycle of poverty and misfortune for millions.

Politicians are not always credible in advocating moral values, but Republicans have a golden opportunity here to convert the Catholic vote, angered as it is by the lack of discipline and heavy-handedness of the administration. They should exploit this blunder, before it is reversed, as it will inevitably be reversed – either through the political system or through the courts. They should remind people of faith that the ideology of the left that consecrates the pursuit of immorality (and frankly, has little use for a religion-based nationalism, on which the State of Israel was founded) is today embodied in the Obama administration and its policies. And those who fight this decree should have the support of the Jewish people as well.

Newt Gingrich is brilliant, mercurial, temperamental, eloquent, feisty, occasionally nasty, haughty, successful, acerbic, undisciplined, unpredictable and immensely talented. He clearly exceeds in originality all other candidates in this year’s election, and most presidents of the last century. He has an idea for every issue, and sometimes three or four, and a solution to every problem. He is assumed leadership positions wherever he has been and quickly flamed out after initial successes. Where have we seen this dynamic before ?  In baseball.

Newt Gingrich is the Billy Martin of politics.

Billy Martin managed five teams and was successful with each one, most famously with the Yankees from whom he was fired five times. That itself must be a record, and explicit evidence of his hard-driving personality. He brought teams from baseball oblivion to the mountaintop, winning division titles with Minnesota and Detroit, a world championship with the Yankees, and taking Texas from last place to second-place in one season. But he never lasted long in any one job. His peers admired and despised him, his bosses hired and loathed him, and those who knew him best seemed to like him the least.

The similarities are uncanny. Like Martin in baseball, Newt took the Republicans from a position of permanent inferiority in Congress to majority status – and then within a relatively short time offended his supporters and resigned. He took a bad team and made them play well – but could not sustain it for more than several seasons (i.e., two terms). Like Martin, Gingrich is a master manipulator of talent and the press, a strategist par excellence who is always seeing three or four moves ahead of the opposition.

Like Martin, Newt has a healthy sense of paranoia and a narrative of personal struggle and vindication. Like Martin, Newt is averse to admitting mistakes – except when such admissions are politically advantageous – and always feels himself embattled and encircled by the establishment. Like Martin, Newt easily re-invents himself, from job to job, position to position, with his record of immediate success. Like Martin, Newt found himself accused of ethics violations that led to difficulties with his employers. Like Martin, Newt has had serial affairs, although Martin’s wives numbered four in total, one more than the nuptials of Newt.

As such, Newt presents such a clear contrast to Mitt Romney that it is no wonder they are so frequently at odds, and with such vehemence. Romney is almost preternaturally calm and composed, almost always unruffled, and very controlled and deliberate. Newt is the anti-Romney – frequently ruffled, often scruffy in appearance, and constantly agitated about something. Romney is focused on marketing (himself), whereas Newt appears almost uninterested in marketing, preferring the generation of excitement and exhilaration to the details of campaigning (like getting on the ballot in Virginia and Missouri). And Newt generated enthusiasm, similar to that of Ron Paul supporters but much more grounded in reality.

It is Newt’s volatility that endears him to so many – at least at first – and makes him such a compelling contrast to Barack Obama. He is always on the edge, always ready for a good scrum, always ready with a verbal and intellectual comeback to any challenge. There is no question Newt can’t answer, no policy matter he hasn’t thought through, and no confrontation that he will duck. Many salivate at the prospect of Newt debating Obama, which will not only be exciting television, but will so easily distress the thin-skinned Obama. Newt without a note is more articulate than Obama with three Teleprompters. So that would be fun.

But is that what the presidency is supposed to be ? Presidents are never called on to debate anything, so they are meaningless as a measure of presidential performance. And as indicia of presidential success they are even less significant. They are reality TV – in the case of Republicans, a good way for the electorate to familiarize itself with them, even as it seems they are locked in a circular firing squad. (Come next fall, no one will remember or care about anything said in a January debate, and the election will more turn on some as yet unknown factor.) Newt’s strength as a debater is critical to his nominating chances but ultimately inconsequential should he become the president.

Newt’s capacity as an idea-man makes his candidacy so intriguing. Bright thinkers can produce an idea per minute, but many of them half-baked, some dangerous, and still others immensely profound. The last professor type who occupied the White House was Woodrow Wilson, and his musings – on economic policy and foreign affairs – shape America until today, and in a largely negative way. It was Wilson who laid the foundation for the modern welfare state (that was later expanded by FDR and LBJ) and for the US’s role as the world’s policeman. Often, professors are not sensitive to the real-world effects, consequences, or reactions to their suggestions, and simply develop a new idea to replace the previous failure. Thought, like talk, is often cheap when one is in an inconsequential role in an ivory tower, but hazardous when the real world with its real people intrudes on the speculations.

Many of America’s problems are so intractable that only out-of-the-box solutions should be considered. The unfunded liabilities of all the government welfare programs – Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and now Obamacare (may the Supreme Court overturn it) – run into the tens of trillions of dollars. America’s debt – now sixteen trillion dollars and growing (that’s $16,000,000,000,000.00) simply cannot be satisfied conventionally. Obama’s old idea of “tax the rich” – class warfare that depends for its success on two groups, the unintelligent and the recipient of handouts – is not only hackneyed and tired but also an obvious failure. Forget raising the rates on the rich: if Obama confiscated all the assets of every billionaire in the country, it would underwrite his budget for approximately two months – and then it would be gone, along with his class warfare argument.

Newt can make these arguments colorfully and compellingly. But will he flame out, as did Billy Martin again and again ? Will he offend his peers, co-workers and contemporaries even during the primary season ? He seems already to have inspired much opposition from Republicans with a personal animus towards him, an enmity that Romney never engenders even in his opponents.

A Newt Gingrich presidency would be a wild ride. He has already done an immense public service by pointing out the farce of the “peace process” and the vapidity of the Palestinian claims – the “invented people” remark from which he, to his credit, has not backtracked and has even reiterated.

If he is true to the Billy Martin form, Newt will win this election and then be booted out after one term. The difference – and this of course is critical – is that Martin had only one employer with a vote. Newt has to appeal to tens of millions of employers, who will either embrace or reject his voluble, out-sized personality.

   The winner of the Iowa caucuses in just a few days will be… the question: why is such disproportionate attention paid to the Iowa caucuses? Granted it is the very first time actual voting will take place, rather than just polling, in the 2012 presidential elections, but even that fact distorts the very process of choosing nominees in the coming elections that are so ominous both domestically and internationally.

    Indeed, these caucuses are not even real elections. Rather than enter a polling booth and cast a secret ballot as normal voters do, Iowans gather in various locations across their state (churches, schools, even homes), discuss the nominees and other concerns, divide up into various groups, write the name of their preferred candidate on slips of paper which are then collected and tallied. The “results” are not binding, and actual delegates are chosen at county conventions later in the year based on – or not based on (!) – the “results” from these caucuses. In terms of actually choosing a president, these results do not matter in the real world but only in the media world that is only capable of reporting winners and losers but little else of substance. The horse race becomes the be-all, end-all of this process.

And when the delegates are finally selected months from now, they will total a whopping 1% of all the delegates at the Republican Convention. That is because Iowa is a small state, with a population of about three million people and whose largest city – Des Moines – has, roughly, just five times the population of Teaneck, New Jersey. Iowa is also not very representative of the rest of the country – overwhelmingly white, rural (although the population is today more clustered in urban areas), and evangelical – not that there is anything wrong with any of those, or with Iowa itself (which, after all, gave us the “Field of Dreams”).

And, if Iowans are extremely enthusiastic about the caucuses, approximately 100,000 people will take part – meaning a winner who receives 25-26% of the vote will garner the support of some 25-26,000 people, smashing his defeated opponents by…oh, 2000 votes ? Perhaps even 4000 votes ? The also-ran who winds up in fourth place and is dismissed by the media as dead and buried can trail the triumphant victor by 5000 votes. Does that make any sense at all – that a country of 310,000,000 people can write off credible candidates for the presidency because they lost in Iowa by a handful of votes? No – it makes no sense at all.

History bears this out. If Iowa’s choices had any impact on the rest of the nation, we would have enjoyed Presidents Huckabee and Dole (even Pat Robertson attracted votes than George H.W. Bush did in 1988), never heard of Ronald Reagan again, and suffered through Presidents Harkin (76% in 1992, the most ever of any candidate!) and Gephardt. Bill Clinton received the passionate support of 3% of Iowans in 1992.

The Iowa results do serve a purpose of winnowing the candidates (strangely, Tim Pawlenty was long gone two Iowa corn harvests ago). But should he have left the race so early, before even a single vote was cast? Should a Bachmann, a Gingrich, or a Perry drop out simply because they trailed in this non-binding vote by a few thousand people?  Does a strong Rick Santorum finish mean anything more than in the peculiar demographics of Iowa he struck a receptive chord ? I would hope they would all continue regardless of the outcome here. Does a Ron Paul “victory” mean that he has any real support in more representative or diverse states, or would he just be this year’s Ed Muskie ? And far fewer Iowans participate in the caucuses than vote in the elections as it requires a much greater commitment of time than simply voting and occurs during the winter season when the weather can be unduly harsh in the American heartland. Turnout is key, but distorts rather than clarifies outcomes.

For sure, a Mitt Romney victory will vindicate his strategy of de-emphasizing Iowa this time around. During the last election cycle, Romney poured boatloads of money and spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Iowa, finishing second and scarring his chances of ultimate victory. In 2011, Romney was rarely seen in Iowa until recently, and low-keyed the state. In fact, Romney may have devised a winning tactic in the last year, generally, by carefully limiting his television appearances and interviews, avoiding the overexposure that these days is bound to make any candidate or president (memo to Obama) look pedestrian and uninspired. The average American voter has gotten to know Mitt Romney mainly through the debates in which he has performed well, notwithstanding that debating has as much to do with the presidency as swimming does with the Rabbinate.

And from Iowa, it is on to New Hampshire, the “first in the nation primary,” which is unique in that it even less important than Iowa – an even smaller state, if that can be imagined – and therefore plays an even bigger role in the election process. That makes even less sense. The city of San Antonio has more people than the entire state of New Hampshire, New Hampshire is even whiter than Iowa, and it is a state without any sales tax or personal income tax. How it supports itself is less important than understanding why these states’ electoral choices should really matter. It is obvious that these states insist on being first because, if they weren’t, they would not matter at all. Certainly, every vote counts the same, but these votes seem to count more.  Everyone who wishes and is eligible should have a voice, but no voices should be artificially augmented. These are, and the whole process becomes comically misrepresented.

As some have written recently (I recall both Fred Barnes and Daniel Henninger making these points), it makes one long for the days of the smoke-filled rooms. Before there were primaries, caucuses, polls, media favorites and beauty contests, party elders would meet either before or during conventions and nominate candidates they thought could win and could best represent their often diverse interests. Delegates were pledged, controlled and traded. Many of our finest presidents emerged from such a system (unfortunately, so did Buchanan and Harding), and many of those same presidents became independent of their original backers when they assumed the office.

Republicans have a fine group of candidates, almost all of whom would be immense improvements over the Oval Office’s current occupant. But there is a cachet, and strong advantages, to the smoke-filled rooms of the past that produced almost all the presidents through FDR’s time. It enables the country to use the election to focus more on the “what” – what needs to be done to rectify the country’s problems – than simply on the “who” – who wins and who loses, who is up and who is down. It forces voters to concentrate on policy and not personality or appearance – most Americans in the first century and more of American politics neither heard a president speak nor knew what he looked like.

And it would end the absurd spectacle of having potential presidents riding tractors in Iowa or snowmobiles in New Hampshire to prove their presidential credentials. Of course, like many things in life, what should happen will not happen, if only because – in this matter, at least – the states don’t want it, the media opposes it, and the whimsy of democracy demands it.

Who knows ? Perhaps one of the candidates here will win 30% (!) of the Iowan vote, and by virtue of his landslide victory – a margin of maybe 6000 votes – he will become the clear frontrunner and coast to victory in November 2012.

P.S. Here’s a better way: Have two separate dates for the primaries  – one in February for eastern and southern states, and one in March for northern and western states – instead of staggering them week after week. Then, let delegates be approtioned according to votes, not winner-take-all. This way, each candidate will receive the attention he or she deserves, even if trailing, and will be a factor in the final decision. The trailing candidate’s support will have to be earned by the frontrunner, making for a stronger party and a stronger candidate.

Of course, it is too late for this cycle, but a candidate like Mitt Romney, who will likely finish in the top two or three in every state, would benefit from such a system, as his support would clearly be more widespread. And if the VP nominee was the runner-up, so be it. That might incline all the candidates to avoid scorched-earth campaigning that destroys each other and only benefits the incumbent.