Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, and Hypocrisy

In 2012, during a primary debate, Mitt Romney offered Rick Perry a $10,000 bet regarding Romney’s former support of an individual mandate for health insurance. Romney was promptly lambasted by many Republican primary voters favoring another candidate, who felt the comment underscored his reputation as an out-of-touch millionaire, who had nothing in common with ordinary Americans. Nominating him would only underscore the contrast many Democrats were seeking, of a greedy businessman versus a humble defender of ordinary people.

Fast forward to 2016. Many of the same people who wasted no time in criticizing Romney for his $10,000 bet spent much of this primary season defending Donald Trump for saying he had a “small loan” from his father of one million dollars, and for attempting to use state power of eminent domain to tear down a widow’s house and build a limousine parking lot in its place. Many of the same people who were concerned about the electability argument when it came to Mitt Romney, and how it would look for the GOP to nominate a millionaire for president, have decided to nominate a billionaire instead.

Many who endlessly fretted about Mitt Romney’s wealth and electability now support Donald Trump. Many who ridiculed the fevered cult of personality around Barack Obama now openly worship at the Altar of Trump. The hypocrisy of the Trump true believers knows no bounds.

Why Gridlock is Good

It has become fashionable in today’s society to argue that many things we were taught to think are bad, are actually good, and that what is good is actually bad. One major party nominee for president is applauded in certain circles for acting like a ten-year-old brat, another major party nominee is applauded in other circles for habitually lying and breaking federal law, selfishness and sin are good, and everything is turned upside down in the name of progress.

But Congressional gridlock is always bad, say those who celebrate incest. Gridlock is the ultimate evil, in a world where there is supposed to be no absolute good or evil. Gridlock means the death of children, say those who embrace abortion, because it prevents gun control legislation that would supposedly stop all mass shootings. If not for Congressional gridlock, we could have bipartisan tax reform, affordable health care and college tuition, and a thousand other wonderful proposals blocked only by Republican obstructionism. Gridlock makes a mockery of our system of constitutional government.

Gridlock, or more accurately a reasonable, federal system of checks and balances, is exactly how our government is supposed to function. The Founders may not have anticipated the rise of political parties, or the current deep ideological divide, when they drafted the Constitution, but they understood better than most how strong personalities and individuals could collide on important issues. And that, if a bad proposal was to be stopped from becoming law, there would need to be mechanisms for its prevention.

That was why so many obstacles were put up to a bill becoming law, either in the Constitution itself or in the rules and traditions that grew up in the early years of the republic. For a bill to make it through committee in the House or Senate, then through debate and final passage in a full meeting of that particular chamber, then through debate in the opposite chamber, and finally signed by the President, it would need the support of a significant number of people, and endured some compromises along the way.

Conversely, if a bill wasn’t able to make its way through this multistep process, it was likely a poor bill that needed either compromise, substantial reworking, or entirely new ideas and input to be successful. To be sure, good bills can also be caught up in this process, but in a system of limited government, preventing the passage of bad ideas into law is a goal worthy enough to make the process as a whole more difficult. The bulk of activity affecting Americans’ individual lives, the thinking went, should be taking place at the state and local level in any case.

Of course, acknowledging this would require acknowledging both the goal of a more decentralized federal government, and the fact that many of the proposed bills currently being held up by gridlock are simply bad policy. Far more advantageous, from the standpoint of ratings and fundraising, to simply heap blame on gridlock and Republican obstructionism.

Policy Spotlight: Minimum Wage

This will be the first of a semi-regular feature here at The Conservatory. Every so often, I’ll post “Policy Spotlights” focusing on a particular issue currently in the news (such as gun control, immigration, or the minimum wage), and discuss and defend my own views on that issue.

The question of raising the minimum wage has long been seen by Democrats as one of their most effective wedge issues, peeling away working class votes from Republicans while solidifying their base of poor, urban, and primarily minority voters. But like so many other liberal policies, raising the minimum wage—though it purports to help the poor and working class—in reality hurts them the most, leading to a one-two punch of lost jobs on the production side, and higher prices for goods and services on the consumer side.

The minimum wage is perhaps one of the prime examples of how government intervention and interference in a free market economy stifles economic growth and productivity. As the government, whether federal or state, raises the minimum wage, companies are forced to spend more and more money to pay their existing workers. Any thoughts of expansion or of hiring new workers are quickly discarded, and soon, merely to break even, companies are forced to let people go.

And the first workers to leave are the lower skilled, disproportionately poor and minority workers, whose jobs are by definition the easiest to be performed by a smaller number of people. Lower-skilled, entry-level jobs—those most likely to earn minimum wage and therefore most likely to be affected by any mandated wage increase—are consolidated, under the basic principle that either some of the lowest skilled jobs are cut, and a few people lose their jobs; or else the company keeps every such job, paying an increased salary, and face negative profit earnings—and with it, the potential that the entire company will fail, causing everyone to lose their jobs.

So, many poor, working-class, and minority workers become unemployed through the increase in the minimum wage. But this won't be the end of their hardship, because they still have to buy goods and services, as consumers, and participate in the marketplace from the other side as well. And here is where the other angle of a minimum wage increase becomes apparent, because even after cutting some jobs, many companies will still face an increased drain in resources.

To attempt to make up for this, and avoid having the entire company fold or become unprofitable, they will be forced to raise prices on goods and services, with any additional revenue going directly to those increased wages. This will hurt all consumers, of course, but the ones hit hardest will be the recently unemployed, those who may have had a difficult time paying for an increase in product prices even had they not lost their jobs to the effects of a minimum wage increase.

And still, even with all these measures, many small businesses will likely still be forced to close at some point after sustaining unacceptable losses. The number of businesses that would close, along with the number of jobs lost and the amount of price increases, would of course depend on the exact amount the minimum wage was raised. Hillary Clinton’s proposed $15 per hour minimum would hurt businesses, workers, and consumers alike, but this would pale before Elizabeth Warren's onetime proposal of an increase to $22 an hour.

Of course, a government mandate of a variety of additional worker benefits such as paid family leave, which would in effect act as a second minimum wage increase, would make the effects even worse. There's a reason that in Los Angeles, and many other places where workers have succeeded in lobbying for an increase in the minimum wage, businesses that initially supported the movement are regretting their actions, and unions are lobbying for their members to be exempt.

Meanwhile Donald Trump has predictably attempted to take both sides of the issue, from categorically opposing a minimum wage increase during the primary to championing higher wages for workers and seeming to support minimum wage legislation at the state level, while leaving his official stance ambiguous on a federal raise.

While this relentless flip-flopping is by now Trump’s expected position on virtually every issue, conservatives should embrace the minimum wage issue. Boldly making the case that raising the minimum wage hurts, rather than helps, the economy and low-income workers will finally begin to counter the simplistic liberal narrative on the minimum wage with real facts, rather than the more common incoherent rambling—good from both a political and policy standpoint.

Who God Is to Me

I want to try something a little different today. Over the past month I’ve focused almost exclusively on politics, with some pop culture thrown in, and I’ll continue to do so in the future. For a blog only one month old, with no name recognition on the part of either the site or the writer, the growth in readership has been impressive, and I want to thank everyone who takes time out of their day to read my latest thoughts.

But today I want to take a short break from both politics and culture, and tackle religion. I should note at the outset that I have no special qualifications in religious studies, no Doctorate of Divinity or past experience as a preacher, or anything apart from the same qualification as every other person on the planet—being made in the image and likeness of God.

Which really is all the expertise one needs to understand God (at least as much as any mortal possibly can). My understanding is intensely personal, because God speaks to each and every one of us on an individual level. Going to church and receiving communion is important, to be sure, but just as important is the way each person lives their individual lives they are in communion with God and His teachings on a daily basis.

My central understanding is that, ultimately, God is the only one who can grant admittance into Heaven, or can truly the actions of a particular person, and the reasons behind those actions. There are absolute right and wrong actions, and motivations, but at the same time God also offers absolute forgiveness. Only He can see into a person’s soul, judge both actions and motivations, and offer true forgiveness. That forgiveness is something He offers freely to those who want it, but each person truly has to seek forgiveness, through sorrow, in order to receive it.

This supports the broader concept, supported by Jesus throughout his ministry, and later by the apostles, that God seeks to have a closer, more personal connection with each of us. In the Old Testament, God could be a distant figure, a lawgiver and king remote from His people and only speaking to a select few. In the New Testament, however, He shows a softer side, becoming a father figure closer to His children, with Jesus actively seeking out all members of society, rich and poor alike.

This leads directly to another point—the common argument that Jesus’ teachings, by virtue of their focus on the poor, and on the wealthy who must give up their possessions in order to follow Him, demand some form of socialist-style, enforced-equality government. This deliberately misconstrues Jesus’ teachings, in which he specifically discusses individual, private action, rather than that mandated by government, as the key to entering into heaven. In fact, government-mandated generosity in the form of wealth redistribution directly contradicts His lessons, which rely on free will and the conscience choice to serve the less fortunate.

In general, however, I think it’s a mistake to attempt to use Biblical teachings to support any sort of economic system, whether capitalism or socialism, or most policy positions. A very few of the latter, such as abortion, are clearly against God’s will. But as long as we conduct ourselves and our affairs morally, and are fully aware of the dignity of every human life, He isn’t too concerned with the details of tax or immigration policy. The Kingdom of God isn’t any form of government as mortals would recognize it.

God is intimately acquainted with and involved in the details of each of our lives, and by no means is he aloof from the concerns of the world. We are all His children. Yet He endowed us with free will for a reason, and gives us the autonomy to make our own decisions. Choosing the moral path and taking care of our fellow man is what, in my mind, truly pleases God.

Will Ted Cruz Endorse Donald Trump?

Ted Cruz has a big decision to make. As the last major candidate to stand against Trump in the primaries (apart from Kasich, who mainly just acted as a spoiler), there will be increasing pressure on him, even more than others, to support the nominee against Hillary Clinton. By this point, two months after he suspended his presidential campaign, it’s clear Cruz is not just taking a break from electoral politics in general. He’s been active in endorsing and campaigning with other candidates across the country, most recently throwing his support behind Darryl Glenn in Colorado and Marco Rubio’s reelection in Florida. But the silence on endorsing Trump is becoming increasingly significant.

It speaks to Cruz’s character and strength of his principles to hold out even this long. There are a few fellow GOP senators who are avowedly #NeverTrump, but they are neither former primary opponents of the likely nominee, nor actively pursuing another presidential run in the near future. As the current rumblings point toward another Cruz run for the White House in 2020, following his 2018 Senate reelection bid, the pressure will be on from the RNC, Republican leadership in Congress, and many GOP voters to get behind the nominee this cycle if he wants any future in national elected office.

I think the best path forward for Cruz, with regard to Trump, is to continue to hold out on an endorsement until the convention. There is still the possibility, however remote, that the delegates will choose someone else as the nominee—maybe even Cruz himself, as many of those same delegates are personally loyal to him. Either way, the fact that there won’t be an official nominee until the middle of July gives Cruz some breathing room politically, and an effective cover in interviews in which the subject of a Trump endorsement is sure to come up.

After the convention, assuming Trump is the nominee, the pressure to support him will grow far more intense. Everything he said about Cruz, from the Lyin’ Ted smears to the attacks on his father and wife, will be ignored by party leadership and voters alike who merely want to present a united front against the Democrats for the general election. The need to win will for many people outweigh both principle and loyalty to one’s family, and Cruz will have to walk an increasingly fine line.

At some point after the convention, Cruz will likely need to offer some kind of pro forma endorsement of Trump. This, I think, is the best way of balancing his integrity and political future: By giving Trump his formal support, however half-hearted, Cruz neutralizes much of the later attacks he would otherwise endure from leadership and ordinary voters alike, who would at least partly blame his refusal to support the nominee for his eventual loss, and hence for the Clinton presidency that followed.

At the same time, by waiting until after the convention, and only giving a tepid, formal endorsement without much actual campaign assistance, Cruz reserves the loyalty of the many #NeverTrumpers he won over during the primary, and whose support he will need as much as that of Trump voters for a future presidential run.

Obviously, there are dangers of alienating members of both sides in walking such a thin line. I personally supported Cruz throughout the primary, and would love to see him take a bold stand against Trump, electoral future be damned. But Ted Cruz is not a man we can afford to lose, and if a pro forma endorsement of Trump is the price we have to pay for a future Cruz White House, then it’s a disappointment I would be happy to endure. After all, we already know what he really thinks of Donald Trump.

Why This Year is Different With Regard to Voting Third Party

As so many people have stated since Donald Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee for president, he is not a typical nominee, and this is not a typical year. Voting for a third-party candidate and abandoning the Republican nominee in the general election, once unthinkable to many conservatives, has become the final possible course of action to stop Trump from winning the Presidency (assuming he officially wins the Republican nomination in Cleveland).

If he is the nominee, it remains to be seen to what extent he will reshape the party. If he wins, I think it likely that he will have a significant long-term, possibly permanent effect on the party platform, and what overarching philosophies become acceptable for future nominees to federal and state offices. If, on the other hand, Trump loses to Hillary Clinton, presumably in dramatic fashion, I think it equally likely that his nomination will have a negligible long-term impact with regard to the platforms of the party and of future candidates. The party as a whole would remain that of limited government and free markets. Of course, it will take years for the Trump effect to be clear either way.

But until it does become clear, it would be a mistake for conservatives to see the 2016 election as the new normal in terms of abandoning a Republican nominee who isn’t sufficiently conservative. The fact remains that there will never be a candidate, or indeed any person, with whom we agree 100%. Compromises will have to be made in terms of deciding which candidates we will support in the general election, in order to prevent an even worse candidate from being elected.

The fundamental difference between this presidential election and all the other times—at both the national and state level—the GOP has nominated a less-than-conservative candidate is that this is one of those rare instances in which there is truly no difference between the two major party nominees. In 2008, John McCain was no conservative (nor is he today), and was opposed fervently by many conservatives in the primaries. But there was also no doubt that he was both more conservative and possessing of better personal character than Barack Obama. The same is true of Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, or indeed any other Republican nominee for president over the past few decades.

The same cannot be said today. There is literally no difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, from policy positions and governing philosophy to moral character, and so the normal arguments for supporting a moderate nominee must be tossed aside. Trump is not merely a moderate in the McCain mold; he is a liberal in the mold of both Barack Obama and the very woman he is running against.

For good or ill—and there are strong arguments to be made for both sides—the political party system in America is, for the time being, an inherently two-party system. As long as one of those parties remains a conservative one in both name and substance, with hundreds of honorable candidates for federal and state offices across the country, working within the system will yield far more effective short- and long-term gains then attempting to work outside it.

Dump Trump at the Convention

Ritual mass suicide, a collective murder-suicide pact with the country, the Titanic meets the Hindenburg… Call it what you will, but the nomination of Donald Trump in Cleveland later this month could well be the most devastating thing to ever happen to the Republican Party, from both an ideological and electoral standpoint. Any Republican candidate for president who looks to be in danger of losing Utah and Kansas, is beginning to trail by double digits both nationally and in swing states such as Florida, and is outraised by his Democratic opponent 40-to-1—and yet still blindly discusses the possibility of winning in Maryland and California—is actively pursuing electoral suicide.

The only question is whether the party will sacrifice itself, along with dozens of strong candidates across the country, in an attempt to satisfy the roughly 11% of registered voters who supported Trump in the primary.

Trump may have eagerly claimed the mantle of “presumptive nominee”, but the fact remains that he will not be the official nominee of the Republican Party until the 2,472 delegates vote on the floor of the national convention. And until then, the delegates that will be gathering in Cleveland have an opportunity to avert disaster for both party and country, salvage the House and Senate majorities, and possibly keep alive the possibility of denying the White House to Hillary Clinton.

But it all depends on a little bravery on the part of those delegates, and the nomination of someone other than Donald Trump to be the standard-bearer of the Republican Party.

All the delegates have to do is pass a rule allowing each of them to vote their conscience when the time comes to nominate a candidate for President. Many of the roughly 1,500 delegates bound to Trump under the current rules would leap at the opportunity to back another candidate, one possessing both principles and electoral viability.

It hardly matters at this point who the alternative nominee might be. Much of the early primary season, when it was most possible to stop Trump before the convention, was wasted in debating which of the possible alternatives was the most acceptable. Scott Walker or Ted Cruz, both of whom have been discussed as possible draftees by the convention, would be excellent choices, but we are to the point where almost any alternative would be better than Trump. If John Kasich is the only other candidate to enjoy the support of a majority of delegates, then so be it. If Jeb Bush or Jim Gilmore see a surge in support at the convention, then I’d wholeheartedly endorse either one, remembering that the alternative of Donald Trump would be a thousand times worse than nearly any other possible nominee.

Trump and his allies believe they have the nomination sewn up. Delegates to the convention should remind them that it ain’t over till it’s over, and show that the GOP won’t be taken over by a liberal, repulsive con artist without a fight.