The Big Tent

and

the Empty Suit

Curt Mudgeon

February 2008

Super Tuesday is behind us and Mitt Romney has suspended his campaign. On the Republican side, the candidate best fit for the presidency is out of the race, and a run-of-the-mill politician will probably be the party nominee. On the Democrat side, brainless emotionalism has turned an empty suit into a providential man. All that does not bode well for the country.

In announcing that he was suspending his campaign, Mr Romney delivered a remarkable speech, the kind of speech that we had not heard in twenty years. He expressed an unambiguously conservative vision and a platform that made his rivals’ repeated claims of "true" conservatism look contrived. It is probable that dishonest attacks by Messrs McCain and Huckabee played a part in Mr Romney’s relatively lacklustre showing on Super Tuesday and his decision to withdraw from the race. The trouble with this election is that the remaining top Republican candidates are pushing the party to the left. This was predictable, with all the talks of turning the Republican Party into a Big Tent where about anyone can find his place, and where membership trumps ideology. There was a Big-Tent flavour to President G. W. Bush’s "compassionate conservatism" and its big-government approach which was meant to get wide popular support for the Republican Party and somehow unite different political viewpoints around objectives of common interest. The Big-Tent principle, however, only leads to populism by blurring the line that separate Right and Left. Instead of widening popular support, it may make many a voter stay home on Election Day because a choice between Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum is not really inspiring. In November, regardless of campaign propaganda, we will likely have a choice between Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum, the conduct of the Iraq war being the only clearly distinguishing issue. Then, whatever the result, a "Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum Health Care Act" will follow and Canadians will have to travel elsewhere to get proper medical care.

Mr Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, claims that he is the most conservative candidate for his stance on social issues. This claim finds an echo among voters who equate conservatism and certain shades of religion. About fiscal policy, he supports lower taxes, but his idea that a consumption tax, which he calls "Fair Tax," could do away with the IRS is just a clever piece of propaganda. For obvious reasons, the institution of a consumption tax as a substitute for the income tax has very little chance to succeed, because it should not take place before the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, an iffy undertaking that is guaranteed anyway to take a very long time. For economic recovery, the Arkansan proposes government programs of works reminiscent of the WPA. This is expected from a populist who claims to be watching out for the "little guy’s" welfare. In an interview, he submitted that his foreign policy would be governed by the Golden Rule. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you has a nice ring to it, but it is not to elicit much reciprocity on the part of Islamists and other miscreants bent on exterminating us. It is the kind of policy often voiced by the Left and extolled by a peanut grower who thirty years ago gave America a French malady called "malaise" and is remembered as a pathetic failure. Mr Huckabee’s immoderate granting of pardons to felons when he was governor also hints at a liberal bent. In the course of the campaign, he had to make a few corrections to his originally "humane solution" to the problem of illegal aliens. His platform, however, appears to be concerned mostly with stemming further invasion, but is not clear about those aliens illegally established in our country. These little chinks in the Arkansan’s conservative mantle cannot and should not be ignored. He has declared that his faith defines him, but that definition is not all virtuous as he impugned Mr Romney with a calumnious representation of his religion to secure the support of bigoted evangelicals. This and sermons in churches obviously aiming at gaining votes just for being a minister of religion gave his campaign an overly sectarian tone out of place in a presidential election. Mr Huckabee is not a conservative.

Mr McCain, who keeps asserting that he is the most conservative candidate and describes himself as a "foot soldier" of the Reagan revolution, carries much baggage. This is not unexpected, considering that the man has spent twenty-five years in Congress. As a good career politician, Mr McCain has a conservative record on some issues, which he uses as a cover for joint projects with Senate Democrats known for immoderately leftist positions. These included (1) a bill co-sponsored by Mr Kennedy on the problem of illegal aliens, which granted a form of amnesty to the gate crashers (it failed); (2) a contraption apt to cripple our economy, the "Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act", which essentially put a tax on energy and could have been written by Al Gore himself (it failed); (3) the "McCain-Feingold Act" that purported to remove from the electoral process undue financial influence, but actually restricted political speech and allowed subversives like George Soros to pour oodles of money in left-wing campaigns (it became law). There were also marked departures from conservative principles with votes against tax cuts with the excuse that spending cuts should be a prerequisite—a fatuous excuse, considering the habit of Congressmen to court votes by overspending. Even more serious is his intention to shut down the Guantanamo camp and to provide enemy combatants with legal representation and access to criminal courts. This makes no sense at all, as it grants franc-tireurs privileges denied POWs under the Geneva Conventions—there was a time, not too distant, when it was generally accepted that franc-tireurs could be executed upon capture. To ward off criticisms, Mr McCain invokes his experience as POW, on which he also bases his opposition to coercive interrogation techniques. In short, the senator wants to treat terrorists and combatants considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions as American common criminals. This is the subversive position advocated by Democrats and pushed abroad by countries where anti-Americanism is a favourite sport. Mr McCain is no conservative. His "straight talk" image is entirely bogus. Winning by any means is his game, as shown by his false, dishonest accusations that Mr Romney would withdraw our troops from Iraq on a publicly announced schedule. He is in the race for himself and little else. His Big-Tent strategy banks on the view that an increase in numbers of Independents and undeclared supporters would largely compensate for the defection of those disaffected conservatives who might stay home on Election Day.

Some conservatives in the media and radio talk programs have speculated that, come November, Republicans disgusted by the Big-Tent McCain campaign could just withhold their votes, or cast a Romney or Thompson protest vote. Others, including Ann Coulter, have suggested the possibility of a "subversive" vote for Mrs Clinton. The subversive vote, which a friend of mine called a "Lenin strategy," supports the candidate best able to screw up whatever works in the country, so that after four years of doom and gloom the other party can take over and stay in power for a long time. Yet other pundits, in agreement with Mr Romney’s view that the war in Iraq should trump any other consideration, recommend that a vote for Mr McCain, the likely Republican candidate, is the only sensible choice. Rush Limbaugh, however, points out that this argument is not as strong as it may look, as Mrs Clinton would not likely "cut and run" because the Democrats are intent to pin a premature and disastrous exit on President Bush, but not on themselves. It remains that a one-term Democrat president can have a long-lasting effect by the appointment of liberal judges. But would Mr McCain resist the temptation to please the likes of Messrs Kennedy, Feingold, and Lieberman with judicial appointments?

In contrast with the Republicans, the Democrats have passion for their candidates. Of course, Democrats are always driven by emotions, not by reason. Their dilemma is to choose between two firsts: the first woman having a real shot at the presidency, and the first black to be a serious contender. Besides being firsts, these people have not achieved much in their lives. About everything Mrs Clinton may have gotten after leaving the university has been a side benefit of being married to Mr Clinton, which she counts as executive experience—no kidding. Mr Obama, having nothing to recommend him to the voters, just claims to be "hope and change," without much explanation of the nature of the hope and the change other than a laundry list of what he thinks is wrong in our society, and for which he is careful not to propose any remedies. All we know is that his politics are definitely on the Left. His main talent is an ability to recite long strings of platitudes with authority and conviction. Yet, he seems to arouse in his supporters a level of devotion which goes beyond normal campaign exuberance and has been a subject of puzzlement not only here but also abroad—a cover of the German magazine der Spiegel shows the title "der Messias-Faktor" superimposed on a photograph of Mr Obama. Mr Edward Kennedy managed to put together the remains of his brain to announce that a vote for Mr Obama would be like a vote for his brothers John or Robert. Although these cryptic words may not mean anything of substance, we know that they will have that magic effect on the Kennedy worshippers. This endorsement, however, does not explain the Messias-Faktor, the true reason of which has remained untold because it touches the sensitive subject of race. The Obama adoration is based on a simple, self-evident fact: Mr Obama is black and acceptable to white liberals—remember that Senator Biden found him "articulate." To vote for him is for white liberals a way to prove once and for all that they are not racist. Mr Obama is the saviour who will finally rid white liberals of the guilt induced by the race-baiters’ persistent accusations of racial bigotry. Of course, this messianic aspect of Democrat contender will remain somewhat unspoken and the mainstream media will keep pretending that the groundless transformation of an empty suit into a messiah is entirely natural.

Now, the funny part of the campaign is that, against expectations, the empty suit is about to win the Democrat primaries, which says much about his competition. Does anyone remember seeing the 1972 movie "The Candidate"?