NASCAR driver Danica Patrick isn’t particularly concerned about the Obama administration’s dictate that religious employers provide health care plans that cover contraceptives.

“I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans,” Patrick, a Roman Catholic, told The Daily Caller Tuesday when asked about the controversy.

Danica is presumably under the impression that thinking is real hard, so it should be no biggie to just let our overlords in the government just do all our thinking for us.

Well, maybe in the case of Danica Patrick, it would be an improvement.

Sure, she’s just one crazy celebrity, so there’s no need worry about what a mediocre race-car driver has to think about the role of government.  Unfortunately this mentality is not as isolated as we’d like to think.

Purely to hurt Romney, the Iowa Republican Party fiddled with the vote tally to take Romney’s victory away from him and give it to Rick Santorum — even though the “official count” was missing eight precincts. Isn’t the party apparatus of a state considered part of the Establishment?

Ron Paul mocks such exaggerated conspiracy-mongering.

These Super PACs have come under fire.  They are the indirect result of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a law which itself amended the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), a law meant to restrict the amount of money that individuals could donate to individual candidates.  FECA created a two-tiered structure that basically divided federal contributions into two categories: hard money and soft money.  Professional sports fans probably recognize the terms as related to soft and hard caps, and it’s really the same concept. Under FECA individuals could only contribute $1,000 to a candidate per election cycle.  Yet there were no restrictions placed on “soft money,” meaning contributions to party committees.  This was the original end-run around campaign finance law.  Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), or McCain-Feingold, individual contribution maxes to candidates were raised, but soft money contributions were phased out.  This, in turn, gave rise to other organizations, mainly 527s, which were able to raise unlimited amounts of money to air issue advocacy ads against candidates.  These various organizations are not technically affiliated with any candidate, and it is a violation of campaign finance law for candidates to collaborate in any way with these groups.

So is it time for another set of reforms?  Indeed it is.  And the reform is simple: repeal all these ridiculous (and arguably unconstitutional) provisions, and allow individuals to contribute whatever amount of money they want directly to candidates.

I won’t delve too much into the constitutionality of these laws because they are terrible policy decisions.  It should be pointed out that the Supreme Court decision that upheld FECA, Buckley v. Valeo, is one of the most confusing, poorly reasoned messes in the history of the Supreme Court.  It was in essence a 4-4-1 decision, and the man who got to write the decision was the one Justice who disagreed with the other eight.  Look, I fancy myself something of a minor constitutional scholar, and this is one cluster-mess that just leaves me absolutely befuddled.  Long story short, SCOTUS upeld contribution limits but struck down spending limits.

The Court hardly covered itself in glory in the case related to BCRA.  McConnell v. Federal Election Commission featured a disjointed opinion that again upheld most of the law while striking down others.  It is only slightly less of a maze to sort through than Buckley.

The Citizens United case, the bete noir of the left, is probably the only consistent and well-reasoned of the Supreme Court’s campaign finance cases.  This is the decision that struck down limits on independent ads and helped lead to the creation of Super PACs.

Constitutional issues aside, attempts at campaign finance reform have not only failed to stem the tide of money rolling into federal elections, they have made campaigns even more disjointed and further removed from the candidates themselves.  At least under FECA and the reign of soft money political parties could control the content of ads on behalf of their candidates.  Now we have a system where small groups or even single individuals can work indirectly for a candidate and run ads over which the candidate has absolutely no control.  In other words, candidates are less accountable for the ads being run against their opponents.

On top of creating a system where candidates cannot directly control how money in their name is being spent, the system is so complex that it actually increases the amount of contact candidates have with groups trying to raise funds.  Candidates have to jump through hoops trying to comply with an intricate set of laws that tells them who they can talk to about what.  And now instead of fishing for a few large donors, candidates must try and solicit funds from a wider variety of groups.  So if the idea of the law is to keep candidates pure by prohibiting one large contributor from gaining an influence over them, we’ve created a system where a whole bunch of contributors have access.

All of this to avoid a problem that didn’t really exist in the first place.  Campaign finance reformers hyperventilate about the idea of interest groups influencing candidates.  But let’s pose a question here.  Does, say, the NRA contribute to a candidate in order to get that candidate to support them in office, or does the NRA contribute to candidates that they know will support them in office?  Campaign contributions are thought to be exercises in influence peddling, but in reality most campaign donations are essentially rewards for candidates already sympathetic to the donors’ views and causes.  I’m not naive enough to suggest that politicians are not at all ever swayed by campaign contributions; however, candidates have to get elected by voters.  Given a choice between kissing up to a donor and a voter, the voter wins every time.  Of course we’d never suggest that we curtail democracy in this day and age.  But democracy causes candidates to “sell out” more often than a contribution from Scrooge Inc.

Campaign finance reform is probably the best example we have of the folly of most reform.  Not only have these reforms not accomplished what the reformers originally envisioned, they’ve made matters worse in most ways.

Hooray for reform!

Rick Santorum has stated that he believes that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution.  Therefore, Supreme Court decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (striking down Connecticut’s anti-contraception statutes) and Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas’s anti-homosexual sodomy laws) were wrong.

Mitt Romney artfully dodged this question at a recent debate, so Santorum’s coming under fire for stating what should be taken as a given among so-called conservative constitutionalists.  As indicated in prior posts, Santorum does not suggest that he would personally favor such laws; in fact he has expressly stated that he would not vote for laws that banned contraception or sodomy.

Santorum’s main fault, evidently, is that he is expressing an originalist understanding of the constitution.  Both of the decisions referenced above were gross miscarriages of constitutional justice.  No matter what you think of the laws in questions, Supreme Court Justices are supposed to decide cases based on the constitution, not their personal policy preferences.   In both cases, the majority opinion was based on policy, though justified with a thin veneer of constitutional justification.

In the case of Griswold, Justice William O. Douglas wrote the famous majority opinion in which he stated that though there is no right to privacy expressly stated in the constitution, it is found in “penumbras” and “emanations” found in other constitutional rights.  Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence, relying heavily on the concept of substantive due process, a legal concept that has enabled the Court to completely trample on states’ rights.  In other words, the Court struck down state laws that ran afoul of no direct constitutional prohibition.  The writers of these majority decisions had to contort the plain meaning of the document in order to justify a decision they had already reached without reference to the constitutional text.

Both of these cases sparked notable dissenting opinions.  Potter Stewart in Griswold and Clarence Thomas in Lawrence said much the same thing: the law under consideration is uncommonly silly, and if i were a legislator in this particular state I would vote against such a law.  But my job as a jurist is to determine whether the law is constitutional or not, and neither Stewart or Thomas considered the law in either case to run afoul of the constitution.  The sentiment expressed by both Stewart and Thomas should inform any intellectually honest jurist.

Justice Arthur Goldberg offered a concurring opinion in Griswold that some conservatives have found to be more compelling, citing the Ninth Amendment as justification for striking down the Connecticut statute.  The problem with this rationale is that the ninth amendment ought to be read in conjunction with the tenth.  The Bill of Rights in general were meant to be restrictions placed upon the federal government.  The ninth and tenth amendments exists because the framers of the Bill of Rights fretted that the Bill of Rights would be read to imply that only the rights contained therein were protected.  in fact many of the opponents of the Bill of Rights opposed creating such a list precisely because they believed that a specific enumeration of rights would imply that rights not listed were not protected. So the ninth amendment assures us that the first eight amendments are not an exhaustive list of protections.  But again, this has to be read in light of the purpose of restricting the power of the federal government.  It is not a broad grant of individual rights, but an assurance that the federal government could not augment its reach beyond certain delineated fields. If anything, the ninth amendment should be used as a cudgel against the Court and the federal government in general in their attempts to restrict states rights.

Therefore I find it odd that those who claim to be averse to a centralized, big brother government are content with said government being able to strike down state laws for no other than the laws in question are of questionable value.  It suggests to me that those who cry “Nanny Statist!” with regards to Rick Santorum ought to look in the mirror.

So if you’re on twitter, feel free to follow me here for my semi-daily reflections.

The next day my wife talked to my mailman (new to this route) and he said that he couldn’t access the mailbox due to a car being parked next to it.  For point of reference, our house is at the end of a cul de sac, so our mailbox is situated at a narrow bend in the street.  According to the mailman, union rules prohibit him from leaving his mailtruck, and so we either had to get the neighbor to move his car or else no mail for us.

So we had to tell our neighbor that he couldn’t park his car in that spot or else the mailman won’t deliver our mail.  Keep in mind that he’s been parking there every day for the two-plus years that we have lived here, and we have absolutely no objections to him parking there.  But we had to tell our neighbor this thanks to some ridiculous “union rule.”  Moreover, just because we’ve told one neighbor that he can’t park in that spot it doesn’t mean other cars can’t park there.  Where we’re situated it is unlikely that non-residents will likely park there, but you never know.  And, as of this moment, some other car is parked in that spot, meaning that we are going to have to write another neighborly note informing this person that they can’t park there even though we don’t care.

All this because of some union rule put in place for who knows what reason.  Is it that much of a chore for the poor mailman to walk three feet and get out of his car?  If someone wants to suggest that it’s about the security of the mailtruck, I’ll tell them that they are full of shit right to their face.  Evidently mail security isn’t so imperiled that the mailman can’t get out of his car to leave a note saying that he won’t deliver our mail.

I can (and probably) will call the post office tomorrow, but can already sense that this will be a fruitless endeavor.

Thank you government unions. You just make life so much easier for all of us.

On the matter of fiscal policy Santorum has been portrayed as some kind of big government statist.  As a Senator he did cast votes for raising the debt ceiling, for Medicare Part 2, No Child Left Behind, and other big spending programs.  He’s admitted erring on a couple of these votes.  Overall, though, Santorum’s record as judged by free market policy institutes is fairly solid.  The Weekly Standard ran a piece on the National Taxpayer Union’s grading of Santorum, and he compares very favorably to most of his colleagues.  

For each session of Congress, NTU scores each member on an A-to-F scale.  NTU weights members’ votes based on those votes’ perceived effect on both the immediate and future size of the federal budget.  Those who get A’s are among “the strongest supporters of responsible tax and spending policies”; they receive NTU’s “Taxpayers’ Friend Award.”  B’s are “good” scores, C’s are “minimally acceptable” scores, D’s are “poor” scores, and F’s earn their recipients membership in the “Big Spender” category.  There is no grade inflation whatsoever, as we shall see.

NTU’s scoring paints a radically different picture of Santorum’s 12-year tenure in the Senate (1995 through 2006) than one would glean from the rhetoric of the Romney campaign.  Fifty senators served throughout Santorum’s two terms:  25 Republicans, 24 Democrats, and 1 Republican/Independent.  On a 4-point scale (awarding 4 for an A, 3.3 for a B+, 3 for a B, 2.7 for a B-, etc.), those 50 senators’ collective grade point average (GPA) across the 12 years was 1.69 — which amounts to a C-.  Meanwhile, Santorum’s GPA was 3.66 — or an A-.  Santorum’s GPA placed him in the top 10 percent of senators, as he ranked 5th out of 50.

Across the 12 years in question, only 6 of the 50 senators got A’s in more than half the years.  Santorum was one of them.  He was also one of only 7 senators who never got less than a B.  (Jim Talent served only during Santorum’s final four years, but he always got less than a B, earning a B- every year and a GPA of 2.7.)  Moreover, while much of the Republican party lost its fiscal footing after George W. Bush took office — although it would be erroneous to say that the Republicans were nearly as profligate as the Democrats — Santorum was the only senator who got A’s in every year of Bush’s first term.  None of the other 49 senators could match Santorum’s 4.0 GPA over that span.

The Club for Growth has released white papers on all the candidates.  They judged Santorum a little more strictly and found him wanting in areas such as spending and free trade.  Still, they still gave him a generally favorable review.

On the whole, Rick Santorum’s record on economic issues in the U.S. Senate was above average.  More precisely, it was quite strong in some areas and quite weak in others.  He has a strong record on taxes, and his leadership on welfare reform and Social Security was exemplary.  But his record also contains several very weak spots, including his active support of wasteful spending earmarks, his penchant for trade protectionism, and his willingness to support large government expansions like the Medicare prescription drug bill and the 2005 Highway Bill.

As president, Santorum would most likely lead the country in a pro-growth direction, but his record contains more than a few weak spots that make us question if he would resist political expediency when it comes to economic issues.

A rougher assessment than the NTU, but generally no worse than either Gingrich or Romney.  In fact this is what the Club for Growth writes about Romney:

Because of his long tenure in public life, especially his presidential run in 2008, Mitt Romney is considered a well-vetted candidate by now.  Perhaps to his consternation, he has developed an unshakeable reputation as a flip-flopper. He has changed his position on several economic issues, including taxes, education, political free speech, and climate change.  And yet the one issue that he doesn’t flip on – RomneyCare – is the one that is causing him the most problems with conservative voters.  Nevertheless, he labels himself as a pro-growth fiscal conservative, and we have no doubt that Romney would move the country in a pro-growth direction.  He would promote the unwinding of Obama’s bad economic policies, but we also think that Romney is somewhat of a technocrat. After a career in business, quickly finding a “solution” seems to be his goal, even if it means more government intrusion as a means to an end. To this day, Romney supports big government solutions to health care and opposes pro-growth tax code reform – positions that are simply opposite to those supported by true economic conservatives.  How much Romney’s philosophy of governance will affect his policy goals if elected, we leave for the voters to decide.

I’d hardly call that a rousing endorsement.

In the end, Ed Morrissey’s sentiments largely mirror mine:

 He’s not a perfect conservative, to be sure, and questions about how he would stack up against Barack Obama in the general election are legitimate concerns.  However, the alternatives are the person who signed an individual health-care mandate into law in Massachusetts, and the man who both backed individual mandates until 2010 and sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi to push global-warming alarmism a few years before that, and both of whom also spent three or four weeks sounding more like an Occupier on Bain Capital and Freddie Mac work than a Republican.  Those issues occurred  more recently than any sins committed by Santorum while in the Senate, which is why I’m not buying the idea thatSantorum is the big-government candidate about which I should be worried.

Now about those social issues.  Santorum is under fire for his supposedly out of the mainstream social conservatism.  The problem with this line of attack is that he is, by and large, in accord with the majority of Americans on most social issues.  The tide has been turning on abortion for years, gay marriage is still unpopular with a majority of the electorate (including majority opposition to the Prop 8 ruling in California), and the majority of the country is opposed to the HHS mandate.  Where Santorum evidently loses favor is his personal opposition to contraception, including his willingness to actually talk about the negative consequences of contraception.  To hear some of the libertarians on this issue you would think that Santorum has promised to deliver a series of fireside chats about the evils of contraception.  All he’s indicated is that he is willing to talk about it, but nothing more.  In fact he has insisted that he will not legislate on the matter.

The hypocrisy in this case, I think, is pretty obvious and we’re going to stand up and articulate what the truth is, which is, in this case, as in many cases, my personal feelings and personal moral judgments are not those that are going to be reflected in public law, nor should they all the time. Not everything that is immoral in this country should be illegal or should be within the governance of the federal or state government, or any government.

Yet Santorum’s refusal to completely abandon the contraceptive issue is enough to make libertarian and libertarian-leaning conservatives’ hearts go aflutter.  Evidently the fact that a president might mention that he thinks that the contraceptive mentality is harming society is just as oppressive as a government that actually mandates that all institutions cover contraception, or which is literally examining the content of our children’s lunchboxes.

Others are sympathetic to Santorum’s social conservatism, but fear it makes him unelectable.  Funny, it didn’t seem to hurt Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, both of whom were elected twice (yes, including W.).  Libertarians have tried to co-opt Reagan as one of their own.  Sure, he might have said friendlier things about libertarians, but he was not one of them.  In fact there is very little light between Reagan and Santorum philosophically.  Keep in mind that Reagan wrote an anti-abortion tract while in office.  No social libertine was he.

Ultimately what libertarians forget is that they are a distinct electoral minority in this country.  If we break Americans out into four broad ideological categories (conceding that this is an over-simplification), we have conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and, for lack of a better term, populists.  Populists are the flip side of libertarians, meaning they are socially conservative but economically more liberal.  This group is far more prevalent in the United States than libertarians.  Now libertarians might point to the advent of the tea party movement as proof that they are electorally ascendant, but that’s not quite right as the overwhelming majority of tea partiers are also socially conservative.  The tea party movement emphasizes economic issues, but those that make up the movement are not antithetical to social conservatism.  So while it is certainly true that an alliance of conservatives and libertarians is largely mutually beneficial, make no mistake about it: they need us a lot more than we need them to have an electoral impact.

Finally, let’s just look at the other two primary candidates.  Gingrich is so unpopular that Sarah Palin looks like the most popular politician in America by comparison.  Mitt Romney is perceived as a stiff, boring, out of touch plutocrat.  Santorum, on the other hand, can appeal and has appealed to the blue collar voters that make up large swathes of the population in swing states like Michigan, Ohio, and yes, Pennsylvania.  Of course the Democratic spin machine will demagogue Santorum to death, but they are going to do that to whoever the GOP nominee is.  With somebody like Romney, they’ll just have to be less dishonest about it than with Santorum.

“I’m just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can’t bear to watch what’s happened to our great country. Everybody’s got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, ‘Oh, Obama’s doing such a great job…’ I don’t think so. Not from what I see.

“Looking at the Republican candidates, I’ve got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney’s five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there’s some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he’s just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was – that angry little man. I still like him, but I don’t think I’d vote for him.

“Ron Paul… you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide – 98 percent of it’s inert gases, but it’s the two percent that’s left that will kill you. What that means is that he’ll make total sense for a while, and then he’ll say something so way out that it negates everything else. I like the guy because he knows how to excite the youth of America and fill them in on some things. But when he says that we’re like the Taliban… I’m sorry, Congressman Paul, but I’m nothing like the Taliban.

“Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn’t gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney’s done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.”

I have to admit that Mustaine struck me as a leftist, unless I completely misunderstood what Countdown to Extinction was all about.  Guess I misread that one, or Mustaine has had a change of heart over the years.

Red State’s all-out assault on Santorum comes as no surprise.  This is a blog that perceives all who fail short of achieving purity as a conservative (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as heretics.  So they have taken a few incidents where Santoum fell short – and in some cases, he did cast a wrong vote or endorsed the wrong candidate – and have now transformed Santorum into some kind of statist.

The shrill attacks on Red State are to be expected.  What’s disappointing is seeing an otherwise insightful blogger like Ace of Spades hyperventilate ignorantly about Santorum.  What set Ace off was this comment by Santorum from much earlier in the campaign:

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea … Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay … contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal … but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Ace is displeased:

Glad we’ve gotten all the Big Things squared away so we can now focus laser-like on the sin and moral emptiness of people having sex while avoiding pregnancy.

So he begins with a strawman.  Because Santorum has stated that he would use the bully pulpit to speak out against contraception, it means that Santorum is unconcerned with economic matters.  Evidently Ace has inserted wax in his ears anytime Santorum has talked because he’s spoken in great detail about our financial predicament.  What’s upsetting to Ace and others of his mindset is that Santorum understands that there are other items of importance.  Santorum has articulated one of the fundamental aspects of conservative political thought: the nexus between social and economic issues.  He understands that you can’t discuss one without discussing the other.  This is something that is beyond the grasp of the libertarian-minded.

Ace continues:

And if you say “gee he’s just talking about this stuff:” Um, if a plumber starts talking about the bad rap iron pipes have gotten over the years, and how they’re really pretty safe, I assume he’s open to the idea of using iron pipes in my house.

He is a plumber, speaking about what he considers to be his area of expertise.

So when a presidential candidate starts talking about the importance of the president taking the lead on the evils of birth control, yes, I assume he believes this to be within the proper functions of the executive.

Yeah, this might be one of the worst analogies I’ve ever heard.  Santorum was talking about talking about (not a typo) birth control.  At no point did he discuss legislating on this issue, but Ace believes he has some gift of foresight and therefore knows what Santorum believes more than Santorum himself does.

Ace then contorts a comment from Santorum about these being important public policy issues into an implication, again, that Santorum wants to abolish contraception.  But Ace focuses too narrowly on birth control, ignoring the broader context of what Santorum is getting at.  It is a bit fanciful to jump from one thing (these being important policy issues) to another (a wish to prohibit access to birth control).  This is all part of a wider discussion about public policy, but in no way indicates that Santorum actually wants to prohibit access to birth control.  In fact, he has said quite the opposite.  In several interviews and in debates he has clearly stated that while he believes states do have the right to make laws restricting access to birth control, he would not personally favor such laws.  When confronted with these quotes from Santorum, Ace ignores them, insisting that somehow he just knows better than Santorum what the latter is thinking.

Ace continued his assault on Santorum in the comments, huffily responding to Santorum defenders (including yours truly) that we really want to just use the machinery of government to legislate morality according to our whims.  Yet Ace himself admits to being okay with the majority decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut.  Here is his defense of his defense of Griswold:

I think everyone is missing a basic point of conservative governance: At what point did we agree to empower the state to such a degree?

People talk out of both sides of their mouths. They talk up “limited government” but check the details, and they don’t really support limited government, but empowered government, immodest government, overweening government.

People seem to like restricting liberties so long as it’s not a liberty they themselves approve of.

So in order to preserve liberty we have to empower the federal government to restrict states rights.  Even though there is no reasonable constitutional argument that justifies the Court’s decision to strike down Connecticut’s birth control laws, the decision was okay because . . . well, because birth control is some sacred right or something.  So we have to restrict the liberty of the states and their citizens to make laws as they see fit, and we should be able to do this through the power of the federal government.  Furthermore, Ace us willing to embrace an outcome-based jurisprudence where personal policy preference, and not the text of the Constitution, dictates how the Court should decide.

But Ace, and not Santorum, is the true conservative.

There are a couple of things at play here.  First of all, as I’ve said before, there is a strong Randian strain on the right.  Libertarian-leaning conservatives view Rand as a prophetess, admiring her strong defense of economic liberty while ignoring, or actually celebrating her moral nihilism.  Younger individuals on the right are especially drawn to this.  This is  a profound division that exists on the right, and is in some ways a divide between single, childless conservatives and those who have families.  I don’t want to over-generalize here as there are obviously exceptions, but it’s hard to miss the deep resentment towards traditional morality expressed in certain quarters on the right, often by young, single individuals who are perhaps not as sympathetic to traditional conservatism as those who have moved on from that lifestyle.

The other difficulty is that Ace is attributing to Santorum and other social conservatives the motivation of the left.  We’ve witnessed the politicization of everything under the sun.  Leftists have no problem using the machinery of the state to advance their morality.  So Ace naturally assumes that when Santorum discusses social issues, he is signaling his desire to “legislate morality.”  Ignore for a second the banality of the term itself.  What this demonstrates is the transformation of how we think about politics.  We are almost incapable of thinking outside of the legislative realm, so when somebody in the political arena extrapolates on what he believes are the most important issues of the day, we all assume that he is discussing his policy preferences.  But not all that is political is necessarily related to policy.  This is a distinction that has been lost due to 80-plus years of Progressive dominance.

Ultimately, what’s fracturing the conservative movement is the insistence that we can somehow segregare social and economic conservatism.  Let’s take a look at an abbreviated version of Russel Kirk’s six tenants of conservatism:

1. “Belief in the transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.”
2. “Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.”
3. “Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a ‘classless society.’”
4. “Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.”
5. “Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.”
6. “Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress.”

You see anything in there about tax rates?  That’s not to say that economic issues are secondary. The fourth tenant in particular has an economic tinge to it.  And of course we are not absolutely bound to Kirk’s tenants as though he handed down a magisterial document.  That being said, this gets to the hearts of what conservatism has been about since the time of Burke.  Convention, tradition, aversion to hasty change: these are the hallmarks of conservatism.  At the heart of conservatism is respect for social conventions.  This does not imply a slavish devotion to things of the past, but rather a thoughtful respect for tradition.  By and large conservatives have been fighting a rearguard action to defend against attacks by the left on traditional morality.  Others on the right who mock these efforts are betraying what it means to be a conservative, and at the same time endangering the very liberties they purport to value so dearly.  Because the last time I checked it wasn’t some wild-eyed so-con trying to destroy the first amendment in order to force insurance companies to dispense birth control for “free.”

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with Obama’s decision.  Not only did the Supreme Court get it right in the Citizens United case, I think that most of the campaign finance restrictions in this country are either unconstitutional or are simply bad policy choices that actually exacerbate the problems with how campaigns are financed.  Every new regulation only creates some other entity that further eliminates transparency from the process and merely complicates things unnecessarily.

What is amusing is the blatant hypocrisy, and this is one of those rare times when the term actually applies.  The word hypocrite is often thrown around incorrectly.  Jonah Goldberg has been one of the foremost crusaders against the incorrect usage of the term.  A hypocrite is not someone who claims to uphold a certain principle and then falls short of meeting the ideal.  If that were the meaning of hypocrisy, then all sin is hypocrisy.  No, a hypocrite is one who pretends to have certain virtues but who, in fact, does not posses said virtues.  We all fail to live up to our own moral standards from time to time, but the point is that we are at least trying.  Does anyone for one second really believe that Barack Obama truly doesn’t want to receive funding from corporations or wealthy donors?  Of course not.  It was a populist front meant to distract attention away from the failings of his own administration.  He was absolutely insincere at the State of the Union, and he’s been insincere on this issue from day one.  This is a guy who raked in more money from Wall Street and other financial institutions than his Republican competitor in 2008, who still collects a hefty amount from this sector, and yet who pretends to be absolutely appalled that these groups have the temerity to influence elections through their campaign contributions.

Yet there are still going to be those who act shocked – SHOCKED! – that Obama could betray his stated principles.  As the examples of Doug Kmiec and Kathy Dahlkemper show, never discount the blindness of those who just want to believe.  Darwin’s already covered this ground earlier, so I won’t belabor the point.  It just astounds me that a man can be so transparently dishonest time and time and time again, and yet there will always be obedient lapdogs ready to be fooled again.