One feature I always liked at the old FrumForum was the notice for "Books by Friends." Since I too have some friends (who write), I'm pleased to point to Kevin Singer's novel The Last Conquistador. Kevin is a friend and former colleague from my days at Scientific American and pharmaceutical/medical editing, as well as a talented writer. I look forward to reading this eclectic-sounding book.
Finished reading: Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving the New Healthcare Law, by Betsy McCaughey. I think the book succeeds in concisely and clearly identifying substantial causes for concern about this legislation and what its impacts will be. I think it fails to live to up to its title and subtitle (the word "surviving," incidentally, is something I had to add, as it is on the book's cover but often not showing up online; did someone have second thoughts about the subtitle?). There is little practical advice as to what to do about the health care law, though in fairness that may be because there is little an individual or business can do. The thing is Big Government in action.
Current reading: Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for the New Healthcare Law, by Betsy McCaughey. UPDATE: Review here.
Since the November election, there has been increased discussion of a “conservative bubble,” whereby pundits and activists on the right rely excessively on shared ideology and shared information sources. (This criticism sometimes uses other metaphors, such as “cocoon” and “echo chamber,” but these convey essentially the same point.)
Such a bubble seems to have shaped expectations among some conservatives that Mitt Romney was going to win—and even win in a landslide—despite polls indicating he was likely to lose. A conservative following grew around UnskewedPolls.com, a site that purported to uncover polling bias. “All the vibrations are right,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote just before the election, predicting a Romney win.
At this point, I should make some disclosures. First, I too predicted that Romney would win, back in the August issue of Research, taking a position contrary to that indicated by polls and prediction markets at the time. My reasoning, that the October debates would give Romney a decisive boost, later seemed prescient, but not for long.
Second disclosure: In retrospect, some wishful thinking surely was involved in my prediction, as I am a longtime Republican who voted for Romney.
Third disclosure: During the Obama presidency, I have been one of those internal GOP critics—sometimes derided as RINOs or Republicans In Name Only—who argue for the party to move more toward the political center. A prominent proponent of such a stance is CNN and Newsweek commentator David Frum, with whom I’ve collaborated in blogging ventures.
Having said all that (and, I hope, helped readers take my biases into account) let me now suggest that indeed it’s true: There is a conservative bubble, or tendency to disregard or distort information that doesn’t match conservative desires and expectations. Let me suggest as well that such a tendency is not unique to conservatives, but also afflicts people belonging to other ideological persuasions and interest groups.
To acknowledge climate disruption need hardly lead one to embrace Al Gore’s policy agenda. It is perfectly reasonable to doubt the merits of pushing for a global deal to cut carbon emissions—a deal that is almost surely beyond reach—and to argue instead for a focus on adaptation and investments in new and emerging technologies. Republicans could back an entrepreneurial approach to technical and scientific investment as opposed to the top-down approach of unwieldy government bureaucracies offering huge subsidies to favored companies such as Solyndra. (See above, under “corporate welfare.”)
Confronting climate change is important in and of itself. It is also important as a matter of epistemology, to show that Republicans are not, in fact, at war with the scientific method. Only then will Republicans have adequate standing to criticize junk science when it’s used as a tort weapon or as an obstacle to new energy technologies.Me: This is a vast improvement over the currently pervasive Republican denialism and glibness ("government can't control the weather") on this issue. The policy approach is not exactly what I'd prefer. A carbon tax that includes imports (and thus pressures other countries to adopt carbon taxes or pricing) is far more feasible than a global agreement, and would be complement and spur to the R&D that the authors want.
Are there really moderates in this fight? Marco Rubio because he’s the Hispanic point man on immigration? But wait, he was a Tea Partier last year? What happened? Karl Rove? The layer of the party behind Rove seems very thin and brittle. They have lots of money. So that makes them consequential. But the Tea Party isn’t the fringe of the GOP. It’s actually most of the party. And a little discussed aspect of the post-2008 crash period (combined with the rise of Obama but distinct from it) is the rise of hard right ideology within significant sectors of the business community — especially Wall Street which used to lean relatively Democratic.Me: That part about Wall Street is a good point, and I've written about the huge shift of Wall Street money to the right. But a countervailing trend, which I've also delved into a number of times, is the simultaneous rise of anti-Wall sentiment elsewhere on the right. All of which makes for a pretty dysfunctional conservative coalition.
Comparing Rubio's November comments on the earth's age with last night's on climate offers a couple interesting insights, in addition to his abrupt acquisition of scientific acumen. First, climate change appears even more of a third rail for conservative politicians than evolution and creationism. Rubio was able to split the difference on evolution, at once bowing to the science, nodding to his own faith, and offering a sop to religious conservatives who object to the teaching of evolution (he later explained that parents should be able to teach their children what they want). With global warming, there's no such split: Rubio rejects both environmental policy solutions and the scientific consensus. Case closed.
Assuming that climate politics don't shift drastically in the next four years -- though stranger things have happened -- and the presidential field remains roughly similar, this sets up an interesting dynamic for 2016. In a Republican primary, Rubio might find himself squaring up against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose state sustained an estimated $29.4 billion in damage during Hurricane Sandy. Christie has said that man-made climate change is real. If Rubio won the GOP primary, he might find himself running against Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, which saw $42 billion in damage from the same storm.
But Democrats realize that they succeeded
in making their way back to power
by moving to the center. And this led to
the rise of Bill Clinton, who defeated
Bush in 1992 and broke the Republican
hold on the White House. He did it by
avoiding ideological stubbornness and
zealotry. Many Republicans today see
Obama’s re-election in November as a
wake-up call signaling that the nation
is changing demographically and politically,
and the GOP needs to adjust.
They’re right, experts say. Forty nine
percent of Americans hold a negative
view of the Republican Party, its
worst negative rating since 2008, and
only 26 percent have a positive view,
according to the latest NBC News/Wall
Street Journal Poll. In contrast, only
38 percent hold a negative view of the
Democratic Party, and 44 percent hold
a positive view. Obama does relatively
well, with 52 percent approving of his
job performance.
Revival will be a long process, but expertsI am very sympathetic to the need for the Republican Party to reform--meaning, change some if its positions and priorities, not just do better messaging--but "experts say" this and "experts say" that carries about zero weight. Who are these experts? Do all or most experts agree? Does the author have anything significant to add to what the supposed experts are saying?
say it’s probably a necessary one if
the Republicans are to remain a viable
national party over the long run.
