Five things Republicans should just stop talking about already

The Republican Party is doing well in recent polling. The Obamacare implosion has left the party in position to make significant gains in this year’s midterm elections. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report shows the Republicans to be competitive in at least seven Senate seats held by Democrats. Only six seats are needed for the Republicans to win control of the Senate.

The recent Republican success is not purely by strategy. It can be said to be as much or more in spite of the actions of Republicans than because of them. For example, the most memorable strategic move by the Republican Party in the past year was the drive to defund the Affordable Care Act. The strategy resulted in a shutdown of the federal government that caused Republican approval ratings to plummet to levels normally inhabited by used car dealers and lawyers that advertise on daytime television. The shutdown likely sealed the fate of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.

Fortunately for the GOP, Democratic incompetence in formulating Obamacare is proving greater than Republican incompetence at opposing the Democrats. In a comeback that was nothing short of miraculous, only a month after the shutdown had failed and pushed GOP approval to historic lows, Republicans rebounded in the generic congressional ballot to take the lead over Democrats. The poll reported in Examiner showed a statistical tie but was a vast improvement over the deficit seen in the September shutdown.

If Republicans seriously want to win control of Congress, and eventually the presidency, they must win over moderate voters, roughly a third of the electorate according to Gallup. In order to do that, Republican candidates and supporters should avoid certain topics that make are almost guaranteed to push moderates toward the Democratic Party. Thankfully, birtherism is no longer in the headlines, but several other topics may be just as poisonous to Republican vote-seekers.

“Indefinite detention.” First, conservatives should stop talking about the nonissue of the NDAA. Examiner debunked the claim that the NDAA allowed indefinite detention of U.S. citizens two years ago, but many still believe the conspiracy theory.

The NDAA is an appropriations bill that is passed annually to fund national defense. In spite of claims by some on the right, the 2012 NDAA specifically excluded U.S. citizens and legal aliens from indefinite detention. The text of the 2013 NDAA also states that the law “shall not be construed to authorize the detention of a citizen of the United States, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, or any other person who is apprehended in the United States.” Indefinite detention applies to foreign terrorists. It does not and never did apply to U.S. citizens.

“Impeachment.” Conservatives should also give up on impeachment. While most Americans seem to think that President Obama is a mediocre president with unsuccessful policies, his personal popularity remains high according to a new Associated Press/GfK poll reported by Examiner. Even if voters don’t want to send Democrats back to Washington, they don’t want to impeach Barack Obama. Pressing the impeachment issue may actually cost the GOP votes.

Even though the Obama Administration has been rocked by scandals and poor decisions, impeachment is unlikely. As previously noted by the Atlanta Conservative Examiner, the Republican House could impeach the president, but without the ability to remove him from office due to the Democratic-held Senate this would only amount to a censure and would be seen as a victory for the president.

“Social issues.” Likewise, Republicans should deemphasize social issues. Voters are split on issues like gay marriage and abortion, but they are much more united on the twin issues of the economy and Obamacare. Even though a majority of Americans support restrictions on abortion and a plurality now consider themselves pro-life according to Gallup, the country is closely split on the issue. Recent polling (again by Gallup) shows that a slight majority now supports the redefinition of marriage. It is a much better strategy to focus on issues where a clear majority agrees with the Republican position.

Only a third of voters approve of Obama’s handling of the economy according to Gallup. A similar number approves of the Affordable Care Act according to Real Clear Politics. Voters disapprove of Obamacare by margins that often exceed 20 points greater than those approving. This doesn’t mean that Republicans should abandon their principles. It does mean that they should address the issues that concern voters. Poll after poll, like this Fox News poll from last week, shows that jobs and the economy are what people care about.

“Amnesty.” In contrast to the economy, immigration is an issue where many Republicans are at odds with a strong majority of voters. The Fox News poll showed that 68 percent of voters favor allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country “and eventually qualify for U.S. citizenship, but only if they meet certain requirements like paying back taxes, learning English, and passing a background check.” Even 60 percent of Republicans support this sort of immigration reform.

Although many people doubt polling data, the strong public support for immigration reform is confirmed by exit polls from the 2012 presidential election. By more than a two-to-one margin (65-28 percent), voters believed that illegal immigrants working in the U.S. should be offered legal status. The issue may well have cost Romney the election after his “self-deportation” comment. It definitely cost him many votes from the Hispanic community.

In reality, there is no amnesty bill currently being considered by Congress. By definition, amnesty is a pardon or forgiveness. The immigration reform bill passed by the Senate is neither. Politico reported in July that it would take illegal immigrants ten years and thousands of dollars in fines and back taxes to obtain legal resident status.

When Republicans loudly decry “amnesty” at the mere mention of immigration reform, they are pitting themselves against the overwhelming majority of the American electorate. This is not a smart strategic move for a party that wants to gain a majority in Congress.

“RINO” and “establishment.” Republicans are a minority party. It is axiomatic that in order to become a majority party that the Republican Party must grow and attract new voters. Unfortunately, many Republicans seem to believe that the party can grow by dividing itself into factions and attacking successful Republican officeholders.

Polling shows that conservatives outnumber liberals in almost every state. A January 31, 2014 Gallup poll found that only three states, Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts (plus the District of Columbia) have a larger percentage of liberals than conservatives. In every swing state, conservatives outpoll liberals by double-digit margins. How then, did an ultraliberal candidate like Barack Obama win election twice?

The answer lies with moderates. In only one state, Wyoming, do conservatives hold a clear majority at 51.4 percent. In all other states, conservatives must appeal to moderates in order to win elections. The Democrats have been much more successful at that of late. According to Examiner’s analysis of exit polls, moderates made up nearly half of the electorate in 2008 and 2012. Obama won moderates by 60 and 56 percent respectively. If so-called “moderate” Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney can’t win moderates, what hope do self-styled “true conservatives” have?

It remains to be seen how and if Republicans can once again appeal to moderate voters, but a good start would be taking a moderate tone and trying to find common ground rather than demonizing each other over minor differences. Americans seldom vote for people who sound crazy or angry so Republicans would do well to present a positive vision in which, as Arthur Brooks wrote, they fight for people rather than against things. Conservatives cannot unite America without first uniting their own party.

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Did Obama issue order allowing “dictatorial” powers?

Over the weekend, a fury erupted over President Obama’s release of an Executive Order that, according to many pundits, gives the president the power to take control of the national economy. According to normally level-headed commentator Dick Morris, who wrote a column titled “Obama assumes dictatorial powers,” the order gives “him vast powers to control every aspect of the U.S. economy in the event of war or even during a peacetime ‘emergency.’”

The pundits usually link the Executive Order to the National Defense Authorization Act, which many claim gives the president the power to indefinitely detain American citizens on charges of terrorism. As this column pointed out, the NDAA actually contains a specific exemption for U.S. citizens and legal aliens. Even if the charges about the law were true, it would be a gross violation of the Constitution and the right to habeas corpus.

The claims about the new Executive Order are similarly overblown. The preamble to the Executive Order cites the Defense Production Act of 1950. Harry Truman, not Barack Obama, was president in 1950. Most Americans would agree that Harry Truman did not assume dictatorial powers.

Sourcewatch.org notes that the Defense Production Act was enacted to respond to economic difficulties caused by the Korean and Cold Wars and “authorized Governmental activities in various areas, including requisition of property for national defense, expansion of productive capacity and supply, wage and price stabilization, settlement of labor disputes, control of consumer and real estate credit, and establishment of contract priorities and materials allocation designed to aid the national defense.” The Act has been updated, amended and reauthorized several times since 1950. It was modernized and limited in the 1980s. President Bush updated in again in October 2001.

Critics of President Obama’s order point to the reference to U.S. “national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency” as an unprecedented statement that means that the president is claiming the authority to nationalize American industry in peacetime as well as war. However, Hotair.com’s Ed Morrissey notes that the language about “peacetime” matches an Executive Order issued by President Clinton in 1994. President Clinton was not accused of fomenting a dictatorship either.

Morrissey further notes that much of President Obama’s Executive Order matches President Clinton’s 1994 order in many other respects as well. He points out that the main differences in the Obama and Clinton orders is with the reorganization of the president’s cabinet. In 1994, the Department of Homeland Security did not exist.

President Obama’s order also includes the phrase “under both emergency and non-emergency conditions” in section 201 (b). When taken in context, however, the section instructs agency heads “to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures” that will “be used to promote the national defense.” Additionally, Clinton’s order did not limit applicability to emergency conditions.

Dick Morris bases much of his criticism on a Huffington Post article by Edwin Black. Black’s theory is that the order is a sign that President Obama is finally waking up to the probability of a Middle Eastern war involving Iran that would result in an interruption of oil supplies. Black claims that the order lays the groundwork for rationing of energy supplies. Black notes that the order mentions the “military use of civil transportation” and “stockpiles managed by the Department of Defense,” but neglects to mention that these are not new things. The DOD has contracted with civilian airlines to transport soldiers at least as far back as the Vietnam War when Braniff had military contracts to transport soldiers and cargo to the war zone. Likewise, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a national stockpile of oil, dates back to 1978.

In any case, Black fails to point to any “smoking gun” in the order that indicates that the government is planning to enact rationing. The article amounts to nothing more than speculation and fails to take into account the long history of similar executive orders. In fact, executive orders dealing with defense resources date back to a 1939 order issued by President Roosevelt. The policy has been updated by almost every president since then.

Nothing in the entire document gives the government the right to nationalize or assume control over the private economy. There are references to loan guarantees, subsidies, and purchases, but not the outright commandeering of private assets. The claims that President Obama intends to use his Executive Order as a basis for seizing control of the U.S. economy or launching an American dictatorship are baseless. The only way such a conclusion can be reached is by deliberately taking snippets of the order out of context.

There are many words that might be used to describe Barack Obama (arrogant, misguided, naïve, incompetent), but there is no evidence to support the notion that the president is an evil man bent on turning the United States into a dictatorship. Conservatives do real damage to their cause when they ignore Obama’s very real and abysmal record on the economy and foreign policy to engage in authoritarian fantasies. Outrageous claims against President Obama serve only to distract from the real issues and, to that end, help the president’s re-election campaign.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/obama-s-dictatorial-executive-order

Questions for Ron Paul

Last year, the Atlanta Conservative Examiner published an article that asked several questions of supporters of Barack Obama. While well-intentioned and honestly seeking the liberal perspective on a number of issues, the response was underwhelming. Perhaps this was because there are no good answers to the questions asked.

In a similar vein, here are several questions for Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul and his supporters. Judging from the large response that typically comes from any article mentioning Ron Paul (especially when it mentions him critically), the Paul supporters are likely to have more to say in his defense than the Obama supporters did.

First, Ron Paul makes a point of saying that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional on the grounds that the Constitution gives only Congress the power to “coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof….” (Article I Section 8). If this interpretation is correct, then why is it that Congress established the first private central bank, the Bank of the United States, within a few years of the ratification of the Constitution? At that point, many of the framers of the Constitution were still in Congress.

The Bank of the United States was a private company. The bill establishing it was signed into law in 1791 by none other than George Washington. After the bank’s charter expired in 1811, Congress created the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. This bank existed until 1841. At 99 years old, the Federal Reserve is the longest lasting central bank in U.S. history, but it was far from the first.

Also along economic lines, Ron Paul advocates a gold standard, which leads to another question. Paul blames fiat money and the Federal Reserve for the current economic unpleasantness, but even when the U.S. was on a gold standard the business cycle led to periods of economic depression. In fact the Federal Reserve and the gold standard coexisted for decades. The gold standard did not prevent the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in U.S. history.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and the United States stayed on the gold standard until 1973. In 1933, President Roosevelt made it illegal for Americans to own gold and required them to sell their gold to the Federal Reserve at a price set by the government, but technically the dollar was still linked to gold. Roosevelt’s executive order remained in effect until the 1960s and 1970s when it was repealed piecemeal.

In the past, linking the value of the dollar to the value of gold did not prevent the boom and bust cycle. A federal gold standard did not prevent the government from manipulating the value of the dollar. Why does Paul believe that a new gold standard would be any different? Further, U.S. production of gold is declining. Would a gold standard remove the influence of unelected bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve only to replace it with a dependency on gold miners, bankers, and bureaucrats in countries like China and Russia for economic growth?

A third question involves Paul’s assertions that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war (Article I Section 8), but stops short of requiring a declaration of war. The same section gives Congress the power to “define and punish… offences against the law of nations,” arguably the power to intervene on behalf of victims of crimes against humanity, and to “provide for the common defense,” a general term that could be construed to include pre-emptive war against a hostile nation believed to be developing WMDs.

As Max Boot notes in his book, “The Savage Wars of Peace,” declared wars have been the exception rather than the rule in American history. One of the first undeclared wars occurred during the administration of none other than Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates. This conflict is memorialized in the line of the Marine hymn that references the “shores of Tripoli.”

In the 20^th century, U.S. forces, almost always the Marines, essentially invaded and governed several Central American and Caribbean nations. For almost 20 years prior to WWII, the Marines ruled Haiti. Long undeclared interventions also occurred in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, not to mention Panama. After the U.S.S Greer, an American destroyer, was fired upon by a German U-boat, President Roosevelt essentially launched an undeclared war against the Germans in the Atlantic more than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did not begin with a formal declaration of war, President Bush did seek and receive the approval of Congress (President Obama’s intervention in Libya is another matter). How can Paul really consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan illegal when both interventions were approved by Congress with Paul himself having voted to approve military action in Afghanistan?

Finally, why does Ron Paul oppose the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)? Did Paul not read Section 1021 paragraph (e) which reads “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States?” Similarly, Section 1022 paragraph (b) (1) says, “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.”

Since the law plainly does not allow the indefinite detention of Americans but Paul opposes it anyway, does this mean that Paul opposes indefinite detention of foreign terrorists captured abroad? These are the people who the law allows the military to detain indefinitely. There are Americans who believe that these foreign-born, foreign-captured, non-U.S. citizens should be entitled to a day in American courts. Is Paul among this group?

If Paul thinks that foreign terrorists should have habeas corpus rights and access to U.S. courts, it would be the first time that prisoners of war (actually unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions) captured in combat outside the country have been granted access to the judicial system. Even German POWs housed in prison camps within the United States itself during WWII were not accorded constitutional rights due to American citizens. No one would have dreamed of allowing captured Nazis to challenge their detention in American courts.

Hopefully, Rep. Paul or his supporters will answer these questions and help to clear up some of the apparent inconsistencies in Ron Paul’s political platform.

This article was originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/questions-for-ron-paul