'76 Blog

(Denver Post, Nov. 27) “Thanksgiving and Christmas 2011, now those were tough times. The House and Senate couldn’t agree on raising taxes.  Denver and Aurora couldn’t agree on the Stock Show. “Democrats couldn’t get excited about Obama.  Republicans couldn’t get excited about anyone. It was grim, I tell you.  Worse than 1933, with unemployment over 20%, Hitler and Stalin menacing Europe.  “Worse than 1942, with the world in flames, the Allies beset by Germany and Japan.  Worse than 1968, with assassinations, race riots, failed presidencies, antiwar marches.  “No, youngsters, none of those dark days compared with the year we lost Steve Jobs.  Elway was dissing Tebow.  Big Air was cancelled.  Black December, we called it.  Be grateful you weren’t born yet.”  Will Grandpa be narrating such melodrama by a Colorado fireside decades from now?  Hardly.  So why the long face?  We’ve survived worse than this.  Purpose and grit will get us through.  Coloradans have backbone.  Our best days are ahead, there’s no doubt of it. Yet four out of five Americans in a recent poll said the country is now in decline. Maybe we are beginning to see ourselves as a people that things happen to, rather than what we’ve historically been since Pilgrim times – a people who make things happen.  It’s a huge difference; and fortunately, it’s still our choice. Local reaction to failure of the congressional “supercommittee” to reach a deficit-reduction agreement, as reported last week by the Denver Post, portrayed Colorado as an almost helpless dependent of the federal budget.  The state will be a less desirable place to live in dozens of ways, one gathered, if spending growth slows down to keep America from a Greek-style fiscal collapse.  Woe is us.  The obvious rejoinder is twofold, it seems to me.  First, let’s have some perspective here.  Spending growth HAS to slow.  Barreling along on the current unsustainable path is not an option.  It would make all 50 of the states a worse place to live.  Second, since the budget binge is clearly ending, deal or no deal, let’s make a virtue of necessity and get busy positioning Colorado for greater economic self-sufficiency.  The time should come when we’re NOT a groveling client of the Beltway.  How about both parties in the legislature and the Hickenlooper administration vying to outdo each other on reforms toward that goal, come January? New Year’s confetti will hardly be swept up, of course, when presidential politics goes white-hot with caucuses and primaries, Colorado included.  Some say that movement on policy will then halt because of election-year posturing.  But considering our state’s particular leverage in the 2012 race, why do we have to accept that?  We’ll not only be a battleground state again as we were in 2008.  This time, Colorado could play the decisive role that Florida played in 2000.  Strategists on both sides have spun out scenarios in which our nine electoral votes tip the balance of 269 to elect the incumbent or the challenger.  (Lucky we stayed off the National Popular Vote bandwagon.) So we will have, to put it mildly, the respectful attention of both Obama and his opponent – Romney, Gingrich, or whoever – all the way to November.  As individual voters and especially through our organized groups, we should be thinking about what we want from them.  I don’t mean our selfish wants, but our agenda for the civic good, for America’s renewal. Our state is being paid yet another compliment, if you can call it that, as pundits left and right predict that the “fear and loathing” attack campaign Obama used to rescue Sen. Michael Bennet’s reelection here in 2010 will become his own national theme against the GOP in 2012.  If true, too bad.  Such scaremongering demeans our intelligence and our backbone.  Will Coloradans stand for it?  Stay tuned.

(Centennial Fellow) After suffering the only defeat of his long political career in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, election the young “Tip” O’Neill was flabbergasted to learn that his own barber had voted for his opponent.  When pressed for an explanation, the barber replied simply: “He asked for my vote, Tip.  You didn’t.” Never forgetting this experience of the very personal nature of politics, O’Neill in later years as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives would give voice to a timeless maxim: “All Politics Is Local.”As Democrats and Republicans alike spin the results of greatly differing elections and claim broad trends favoring their party in 2012, thoughtful observers would do better to heed the wisdom of O’Neil’s famous maxim.  It is impossible to find in this national election mosaic a coherent narrative predictive of 2012.  Each election is best understood in the context of the local conditions in which it was fought.No jurisdiction offered a better example of striking cross currents in voter sentiment than Ohio which simultaneously rejected the central element of Obamacare- the individual mandate- and overturned the sweeping restrictions on collective bargaining engineered by Republican Governor John Kasich.  Remarkably both results were by roughly 2 to 1 margins, meaning that fully a third of Buckeye state  voters chose to give both political parties a smack in the chops.Yet another example of contradiction was Mississippi which gave Republicans control of the governor’s office, and both legislative chambers for the first time since Reconstruction, but also strongly rejected a “Pro-Life” amendment to the state constitution.  Oddly the impetus for this amendment came from Colorado folks who had lost a similar effort in their own state.  That Mississippi, a bastion of Pro-Life sentiment, would handily defeat this amendment, was best explained by Pro-Life Republican  Governor Haley Barbour who described it as badly written and likely to have unforeseen negative consequences.An issue where a seeming contradiction might actually be good citizen judgment is voter registration.  While Maine overturned a Republican sponsored ban on Election Day registration, Mississippi became the latest state to require photo-IDs for registration.  Voters may well have made the shrewd judgment that how late you register is less important than being sure you’re eligible to register.Beyond its ill-starred meddling in Mississippi, Colorado gained attention by being the only place in the nation to have a statewide tax increase on the ballot.  On a recent visit to Sedona an ex-college roommate/ ex-Arizona legislator asked me “Whose bright idea was that?” His puzzlement proved apt when a few days  later Colorado voters walloped this initiative (Proposition 103) by a stunning 65 to 35 margin and for good measure turned down virtually every local tax raising measure as well.  With brilliant insight sheepish Democratic sponsors of Prop 103 opined that the weak economy “probably influenced voters”. Unquestionably the best example of electoral contradiction and confusion was provided by the Newark   Star-Ledger.  Based on the loss of just one Republican legislative seat, the paper’s banner front page headline read: “N.J. Dems Finally Give Christie a Black Eye”, while inside their lead editorial opined the opposite: “This result is meaningless.  Christie has lost nothing since his budget slashing success rests on his undisturbed alliance with powerful Democratic leaders who understand the insanity of the state’s fiscal condition”.Yet in Virginia a gain of just one seat did mean a lot since it gave Republicans who already own one chamber and the Governor’s office control of  the Senate and more importantly final control of the  redistricting process.What this kaleidoscope of “local politics” means for 2012 no one can say for certain.  The national economic crisis has given our politics a volatility that defies prediction.What we do know is that a large majority (73%)  of Americans believe the country is on the “wrong track”, and they are deeply unhappy that politicians in Washington have done nothing meaningful to provide remedies.  In this environment for either party to believe their spinmeisters is  a recipe for political suicide come next November.William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Human Events.  He is a Fellow of the Centennial Institute.

(Denver Post, Oct. 30) In a year and a week, we’ll know who Americans want for president.  Anybody who claims much certainty about it until then is howling at the moon.  I have no prescience about the race, other than to implore my fellow Republicans against over-confidence in the face of Obama’s potent incumbency and billion-dollar war chest. Unsure as I am about 2012, however, I’ve just been through an experience that encourages me for America’s prospects in this decade, the road to 2020.  Strange as it sounds amid our economic woes and the dire predictions of decline, there are signs of a strong rebound like that of the 1980s soon to come. What makes me say so?  The impressions gathered on a book tour.  Almost daily since August, when I brought out “Responsibility Reborn: A Citizen’s Guide to the Next American Century” from MT6 Media, they’ve had me talking about it across the country in radio interviews, TV appearances, and speeches.  It’s like campaigning again, only the exchange of ideas is far richer.   And my take-away is that Middle America’s “remnant” – as the unbowed faithful were called in ancient Israel – has not yet begun to fight.  The fiscal follies, the Great Recession, and the Occupy Wall Street tantrum haven’t deadened the core of character that makes us exceptional. The American spirit, though battered, remains resilient.  A hundred days on the author circuit have convinced me. Personal responsibility as the indispensable condition of freedom and the price of sustained success, a theme in my Denver Post column since 2007, is also the theme of my book.  The responsibility deficit as causative to our budgetary and educational and national security deficits – and as fatal to our country, if things don’t change – is my uncheerful warning to every audience.  What’s remarkable is that they get it. The talk shows that have me on, the groups I’m speaking to, are mostly political and conservative, Republican, and in many cases Christian.  If they bridled at being told the GOP is part of the responsibility deficit, an entitlement enabler, and that our urgent challenge now is more moral and cultural than partisan or political, I’d worry.  But because they own up, instead of pushing back, I am heartened.  Therein are the makings of a turnaround. America has seen this movie before, remember.  After the stormy 1960s gave way to the stagnant ‘70s, elite opinion clucked over the nation’s impending decline, the need for lowered expectations, the likelihood we’d seen our best days.  Elections weren’t what refuted that.  Rebirth of a responsibility ethic from the bottom up refuted it.  Reagan’s rise was a consequence, not a cause. This is why I’m bullish on USA 2020, regardless of the 2012 electoral outcome.  Win or lose next year, Barack Obama is indisputably Jimmy Carter redux – and having to endure another term of the man, with an opposition Congress restraining his leftward lurch, won’t ruin us. Do I want that? No. Nor do I expect it. But my confidence rests outside politics, with the already-dawning return of Element R, the responsible remnant. Politicians fade so fast. By the time we vote in 2020, whoever next wins the presidency will be done in Washington.  Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock will be done in my state, as will most of today's big names in your state.  Fixing on the 2020 horizon, and prioritizing a responsibility agenda that puts cultural renewal ahead of governmental goals, will best harness the Tea Party energy for lasting change. On tour, I have talked of ten steps for this decade.  The first five aren’t even political: families strengthened, learning honored, charities expanded, churches energized, multiculturalism outgrown.  Upon that foundation we then aim for citizenship revived, defenses rebuilt, government relimited, sovereignty reasserted, freedom of conscience upheld.  Personalities come and go.  Principles endure.  What are yours? 

(CCU Fellow) In the 1960s the discipline of political science was becoming distressed by what they perceived to be an imbalance in the political system. Their impression was that interest groups, what they often called "pressure" groups, were becoming much more influential than political parties. In their view groups and parties had offset the goals of the Madisonian system which includes the aggregation of public opinion through compromise. What pressure groups wanted to do was disaggregate the populace into groups which could then successfully lobby Congress. The point of parties was to aggregate society into broad groups in order to win elections. One analyst, Theodore J. Lowi, went so far as to claim that hyper-pluralism existed: all groups who made requests upon government were accommodated. This was a very prescient view that has only been exacerbated. However, this may be changing. One of the voices in favor of a stronger party system was E. E. Schattschneider, in The Semisovereign People. Schattschneider's argument was that people did not pay attention to politics at the national level; there were too many more important things going on in their daily lives and workplaces. For Schattschneider this meant there was little to no conflict between the parties. What the parties were aiming at were independents, the voters in the middle as opposed to the extremes. The idea was that strong or even weak Republicans would most likely if not always demonstrate their loyalty to their party by voting Republican and would not be dissuaded, except in the most extreme cases, by the other side. The same was true of strong and weak Democrats. Interestingly, there were what can be called extreme cases, e.g. Democrats for Reagan in 1984 or Republicans for Clinton in 1996. The fact remains that the majority of American elections hinge on the rather small percentage of independent votes in the middle of the spectrum. This strategy changed approximately in the 1990s with Bill Clinton trying to increase the turnout of strong and weak Democrats, now called the base. Being that most American politics are like the NFL, copycats just reacting to the other side and not coming up with new or original ideas, the Republicans tried to strengthen the turnout of their base. The result of this has been a polarization of the electorate, something Madison could not have foresee. The far right and left wings of the spectrum of American politics have become much more powerful and much more vocal. The problem for the politician is that he also must maintain his appeal to the middle. Thus, the current president looks like a ping-pong ball being smacked back and forth between far left and the moderate center. Is this good or bad? For Schattschneider it might be a good thing. For Schattschneider a good deal of the problem was that there was little to no conflict between the parties. His, and others, idea was to expand the scope of the conflict by making parties more distinct from each other, i.e. responsible parties. Responsible parties are those which are accountable to the people, have a mandate from the people and can exert party discipline on its members. This is not true of modern Airresponsible@ parties. Because of separation of powers, parties and politicians are not actually accountable to the voters. One can always have one=s own view of the truth. But if one objectively tries to sort out, e.g. the current economic collapse by giving proof of specific credit or blame to the present or former president, Congress, etc., we come to a fork in the road and as Yogi Berra once said, when you come to a fork in the road take it. Who or what is responsible for the bailouts? Obviously Bush started the TARP program. Wrong, obviously Obama he expanded bailouts way beyond our ability to pay. However, if you are a truly objective voter trying to assign credit and blame and cast a rational vote you cannot because economic issues do not occur neatly within administrations but over decades. Often times presidents in office place blame on the Congress, the opposition party, his own party, the bureaucracy, foreign affairs, ad infinitum. (The current president has a unique approach. He blames the American people themselves. Schattschneider is informative here making the argument that professors cannot flunk the people.) In fact this is true. If the essence of separation of powers is to bring about compromise then factually and objectively no president, Senate, House, congressional member, nor political party can actually take credit or get blame so that a rational voter can make a rational choice. Thus, there is no true accountability which is helpful to the voter. One of the first things politicians do upon winning election is claim a mandate, an authoritative command or an authorization to act given to a representative. This claim of a mandate, except in extreme examples, e.g. Reagan in 1984, are fallacious. Because of the way elections are run we often times do not know what a candidate truly stands for much less what he will actually do. Radio and television ads seldom inform us of the party the candidate is a member of. Again, this is the logic of appealing to the independents in the middle. The result is that politicians do not know why the voters have sent them into office! So they generally make it up themselves. This is legitimate in the Burkean sense of representation wherein uninformed voters entrust a person of character, reputation, etc. to represent the people=s interests as he sees fit. This may intellectually solve the problem but it is a better fit in a parliamentary system than the American system. The American system has evolved into a much more candidate centered politics in which we expect the candidate, irrespective of party, to follow our wishes. This is referred to as the delegate model of representation; politicians are there to follow the will of the people. The problem is, as outlined above, is there a will of the people? Here, the so-called crisis of rationality mitigates against the creation of a will of the people. The crisis of rationality states that rational party behavior leads to irrational voter behavior. The job of the rational party is to obfuscate the differences between the parties, appealing to independents in the middle. Voters then vote irrationally based on personal whim rather than casting a vote which influences the political system. Here, we vote for a candidate because he is good looking, she is black, he went to Harvard or the candidate just has beautiful children. These are irrational votes in the sense that they do not communicate a mandate to the candidate. Lastly, there has been no party discipline in American politics. All politicians in America, save the presidential candidates once they pass the nomination phase, raise their own money, form their own staff, campaign on their own with little help or influence from the party. Thus, the rational politician, upon entering Congress, makes a rational calculation on all actions: will this help or hurt me to get reelected since the party, if I go along, is not going to benefit me very much. This explains much of the Democrat party=s refusal to follow resident Obama=s lead. This leads to what might be the biggest campaign lie in all of American politics. The next time you hear any candidate say Aif elected I willYY@ they are either lying because with separation of powers they cannot guarantee anything, or they are ignorant of the theory of the American government. Thus, especially at the presidential level, the result is heightened expectations which can never be fulfilled, guaranteeing failure. The American people are only semisovereign because while our votes exhibit our sovereignty, in fact we have no control over the process or the system. AIf politics is not competitive the people are powerless.@ (Schattschneider, 137) Note the number of noncompetitive seats in the House of Representatives. On the bright side we might be unknowingly developing Aresponsible parties.@ Pres. Obama is easily the most liberal candidate from a major party America has ever had. Interestingly, Bill Clinton was the most conservative Democratic president of the last century. The House has a majority of Republicans and presents as a very conservative body. The Senate is less so. It is becoming a bit easier for the informed rational voter to hold one side or the other accountable for their actions. Certainly what has developed is, in Schattschneider=s terms, a contagion of conflict. The conflict between the two parties has become like a fight at the flagpole in grade school after class. Everyone runs out to watch. It is then, at least according to Schattschneider, human nature to take sides. The conflict in American politics might seem like a fifth-grade squabble, cf. the kerfuffle over raising the debt limit. But it got people to pay attention to the American government, often in spite of themselves. These voters are then taking sides and can hold politicians and parties accountable. To extend the theory, the next election cycle should have politicians running under the umbrella of their party, uniting under a set of principles be it conservative or liberal. The winner will have a mandate, in this case speaking generally, bigger or smaller government. If the party is elected on this mandate of bigger or smaller government, the politicians in the House and the Senate will also be elected by that same criteria. Thus, the ability to enforce party discipline will be greatly enhanced. We will have responsible parties, greatly reducing the influence of the pressure system. The downside. This theory assumes a certain type of democracy, ADemocracy is a competitive political system in which competing leaders and organization define the alternative of public policy in such a way that the public can participate in the decision‑‑making process.@ (Schattschneider, 137). What is the problem? As always, as James Madison knew well, in the American political system there is always the possibility of tyranny. Madison=s definition of tyranny was government taking sides, not being neutral as a result of compromise. Especially if we have one party government, which seems likely in the near future, we must maintain a rigorous adherence to separation of powers.  

It is in times like these that I wish I were a great mind, well versed in psychological theory.  But then again, I feel Freud himself would struggle to rationalize the behavior of most Occupy Wall Street members.  On a recent Saturday, eight CCU students went down to the State Capitol to volunteer for an event hosted by the Colorado Prayer Caucus.  Heading into Denver, we discussed the possibility of a few “Occupy” protestors – when we arrived we discovered a much larger and louder crowd than expected.  Following are a few phrases that were held up on the signs of protestors at the Denver Civic Center Park, directly across from the Capitol.  “Eat the Rich!” “The Order of the People” “Bankers killed more lives than the terrorists could ever dream” “Give me a job” The tone of this movement is bizarre.  I had heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement prior to my first hand experience of the Occupy Denver protestors, but I don’t think I had taken seriously how dysfunctional this movement is.  The campaign can not offer one unified goal or plan that they are advocating, yet all members ban together so closely – those sporting peace and yin-yang signs mingle joyfully with those carrying violent words such as, “eat the rich!” Equally odd is the fact that this extreme, rhetorically violent and vulgar movement is gaining support from established voices in politics.  Obama has showed warm feelings to the movement, Nancy Pelosi has conveyed support and, of course, Yoko Ono is a huge fan of these unhappy dissenters.  As off-putting it is to think that the best response to hardship these people can think of is to demand their debts be paid and time filled with unwarranted employment, it is even stranger to think that they, in large part, accept the support of these people; Obama who receives huge donations from Wall St., Pelosi, who carries her $35 million of wealth from her success as an investment banker, and Ono with her $500 million and family of bankers.   The hypocrisy and irrationality that abounds at these gatherings is astounding, and the thought these occupiers are already being vindicated by celebrities, politicians and media is truly maddening.  I only hope that those willing to embrace such a menacing movement will not be tethered to the abyss of falseness, envy and blame which seems to be their unifying force.

(Centennial Fellow) Here's what I want readers to do. Put your hands together with fingers interlaced and pointing downwards next to your palms and bring the heels of the palms together. Then stick your two index fingers and thumbs up until the next to last paragraph while I talk to you about corporations, Republican Mitt Romney and a widespread misconception. It's that corporations are reptiles. Recently, when presidential candidate Romney was confronted by Democratic demonstrators, he said taxing corporations is taxing people, that corporations are people. Though he happens to have made millions as a corporate whiz, many responded with derision, including a TV reporter who committed a gaffe by calling it a gaffe. Please. Someone or something has to own those corporations, run them and work in them. The only creatures we know of with enough brainpower are people, unless there is such a thing as corporate-caused Darwinian devolution, leaving these souls with rough, green skin, long tails, sharp teeth and barely more alertness than TV reporters. I don't think so. I do think I can identify two sources of the confusion. One is the legal fiction that a corporation is a person with an accountability of its own. While this device accomplishes vital purposes -- for instance, by making purchases of corporate shares more likely through non-liability for debts -- it's a fraction of the reality, like defining a marriage as only legal advantages instead of the uniting of two people. The bigger picture is that when corporations go broke and close down, lots of everyday Americans (aka, people) find themselves unemployed. Shareholders (aka, people) also lose. When the firms do well in a non-scary economy, they will often expand and hire more workers (aka, people) while stock values go up, giving succor among others to retired baby boomers (aka, people) relying on invested savings. People are absolutely affected by corporation taxes (including those known as consumers). It's also the case that people continue to be full-fledged citizens in an association. Many corporations are small, non-profit and sometimes organized as a means of people having their rightful say in public affairs. Even people in corporations out to make a buck -- thank God for them -- are similarly entitled to free speech and other liberties sometimes undermined by judges and politicians. That thought brings us to the next reason for saying corporations are not people -- the political objective of dehumanizing them, of making it seem that while government is by, of and for the people, corporations are sly, alien and against the people, commonly led by CEOs with marginal homo sapiens ratings. Let's concede some CEOs behave atrociously while adding that you can also find villains among legislators, TV reporters, columnists, you name it. I'll agree, too, that campaign donations can cause corrupt politicians to bow deeply. But you really don't understand American politics if you don't get it that pleasing voters is a more significant determinant of action, that the government delivers considerable pain to corporations and that the main reason for cronyism is intrusiveness. Control too much as an institution vastly more powerful than all corporations put together, and those who are controlled try to influence you back. Corporations are primarily friends, providing us with such desirables as food, clothing, shelter, the highest productivity of any nation in the world and wages (aka, money). Government coercively takes much of that money to spend wastefully. Fiscal recklessness now has us in one of the most threatening predicaments of recent times. Now, let's come back to those two hands of yours, saying first off that some may think of churches as just buildings. Not so. Recall the childhood rhyme, saying, "Here's the church, here's the steeple," and then turn your hands upside down with the fingers sticking in the air and conclude, "open the doors and see all the people." People -- good people, people you know, maybe you yourself, definitely the errant TV reporter -- also constitute corporations.     

(Denver Post, Aug. 28) I wish Tom Tancredo was Governor of Colorado.  I wish Scott McInnis was.  Heck, I wish the ill-starred Dan Maes was governor.  Any Republican, any conservative, rather than the limousine liberal Democrat we’re stuck with, John Hickenlooper. Whence these idle fantasies?  Not heat stroke from recent egg-frying temperatures.  Not oxygen deprivation from my annual 14er climb.  No, it started when I found myself seated between Tancredo and McInnis at a GOP luncheon on Aug. 10, the anniversary of Scott’s shocking loss to Maes in last year’s gubernatorial primary. Tancredo, you remember, was so sure neither man could beat Hickenlooper that he demanded both quit – then bolted and ran as the American Constitution Party nominee.  The final numbers in a campaign most of us would like to forget were Hick 51%, Tank 37%, and Maes 11%.  Ouch. Someone said this luncheon was the first time Scott and Tom, formerly congressional colleagues, had seen each other since then. Nothing untoward occurred, and the occasion went in the file drawer of funny coincidences.  But that awful August flashback got me wondering whether our party has learned enough from its debacle in 2010 to count on carrying Colorado in 2012. My daydream of reclaiming the governorship isn’t on tap next year – perhaps just as well, since the GOP has lost five straight contests since 2004 for that seat and for U.S. Senate. So coloring the state a Republican red again in 14 months would mean winning the Colorado House and Senate, keeping or improving our 4-3 edge in congressional seats, and above all, delivering nine electoral votes against President Barack Obama. Can the Grand Old Party do that?  Part of the answer will depend on organizational and fundraising efforts by young state chairman Ryan Call, elected last winter after veteran chairman Dick Wadhams stood down.[1]  Part will depend on conservatives and moderates (like the two dozen ex-legislators from both camps at the luncheon) transcending our differences to unify in defeating Democrats. On those fronts, prospects seem good.  On others, however, work is needed.  After Call’s luncheon speech, Tancredo queried him about efforts on the right to match CoDA, the Colorado Democracy Alliance of nonprofit groups outside formal party ranks that has given the left such an advantage here in every cycle from 2004 to 2010.  Nobody claims that one is solved yet. A few days later, in a column for World Net Daily, Tancredo asked another tough but fair question: Do Republicans here and elsewhere really want to be “the party of constitutional liberty – or merely the ‘other’ party, the party of slower drift into socialism instead of the passionate embrace of socialism offered by the Obama Democrats”?  The Colorado House under GOP control this year, Tom went on to say, missed its opportunities for “connecting state Democrats to Obama’s policies” by offering a “coherent alternative” that would “reverse course” on such issues as health care, regulation, and taxes.  Speaker Frank McNulty, nursing a 33-32 majority, would doubtless disagree.  But there’s a case to be made that voters will need to see more evidence of a rising red tide in policy under the Gold Dome next January if they are to move the state out of the blue column next November. Then there’s the Tea Party.  Dan Maes, hapless novice that he was, turned the best phrase of 2010 in pleading to “introduce the institution to the revolution” and thus cement a Colorado conservative majority.  Wrong messenger, right message.  Maes told me last week he sees Chairman Call and other Republicans making progress on allying with this potent new force for freedom and responsibility.  Will it work? “The jury is out,” said Dan.  On such an alliance, more than any other factor, the red-state hopes for 2012 will turn. [1] The column as published in the Denver Post erroneously stated that Call's candidacy "moved... Wadhams to retire." In fact, however, Wadhams dropped his bid for another term prior to Call's entering the chairman's race.  I regret the misstatement.

(Dateline: Boston) When Lord Cornwallis marched his defeated British Army out of Yorktown in 1781 after surrendering to George Washington he regarded this turn of events as so unthinkable that he ordered his regimental bands to play an old music hall tune entitled “The World Turned Upside Down”. Today, that 18th century ditty would be a perfectly apt theme song for Liberals in that hitherto unassailable fortress of Progressivism called New England where a series of absolutely unthinkable things have befallen them within the last year. The high water mark of Liberal dominance in New England came in the 2008 elections and was best symbolized by the Republicans losing every single U.S. House race in the entire six state region for the first time in 150   years.  The Boston Globe editorialized that in the “dawning Age of Obama” New England was leading the nation to a new world in which the Republican Party “might become extinct” as a “New American Majority” finally understood the “superiority of Progressive ideas and policies.” For a flavor of how dramatically things have changed since last November’s election consider the following items garnered during a pleasant southerly loop through five New England states: The spectacular beauty of Maine’s rocky Atlantic coast was complemented by the enduring afterglow of the most stunning political turnaround in any of the 50 states with long dominant Democrats losing control of the governor’s office and both legislative chambers.  In less than six months new GOP Governor Paul LePage has pushed through a reduction of state income tax, Maine’s first ever Charter School law, and reform of public sector pensions. One of the joys of any trip through New Hampshire is seeing all those auto license plates bearing the liberal infuriating state motto “Live Free Or Die” and reading the Manchester Union-Leader arguably the country’s most conservative newspaper. At 400 members the Granite State’s lower house is the fourth largest legislative body in the English speaking world topped only by the Indian and British parliaments and the U.S. House of Representatives.  Today 254 of those members are Republican and together with a GOP controlled Senate (16 to 8) they are riding roughshod over a Democratic Governor having compelled him to sign off on draconian budget cuts including major state pension reform while also approving a wildly popular reduction in the tax on alcohol.  Additionally if a handful of House Democrats sign on the legislature will have the votes to override the governor’s anticipated veto of a popular labor reform bill that would end the mandate on employers to collect union dues and make New Hampshire the nation’s 27th “Right to Work” state. In the southern tier of New England Democrats still hold the Governor’s offices and lop-sided legislative majorities,but the cumulative burdens of a lingering recession, growing debt, bloated pension obligations, unaffordable union contracts, and a constitutional requirement to balance their budgets have forced elected officials at every level to accept heretofore unthinkable degrees of fiscal retrenchment.  Politically the screams of pain from financially strapped cities and towns have drowned  out  howls of outrage from union bosses as they see their once untouchable contracts hammered by their Democratic “friends”. This cold shower of reality is reflected in the changing tone of flagship liberal organs like the Hartford Courant, Providence Journal, and Boston Globe where editorials are conceding – albeit grudgingly- that perhaps spending had been a bit excessive and union contracts a tad too generous. Don’t for a minute however think that all New England Democrats have suddenly got religion regarding fiscal realities.  Probably the poster child for the “They Still Don’t Get It” crowd would be Connecticut’s new Democratic Governor Dan Malloy who proudly described himself in a Wall Street Journal profile as the “Anti-Christie”.  In just six months in office Malloy has managed to increase no less than seventy-seven different taxes and fees.  Saddled with a deficit to budget ratio (18%) worse than California’s Malloy’s proposed budget featured $2.5 billion dollars in tax and fee increases and $1.6 billion in cuts.  After bragging about the wonderful deal he had cut with public union bosses to avoid any lay-offs Malloy was shocked when rank and file union members rejected the contract and the modest benefit reductions it included.  This instantly pitched Connecticut into a doozy of a summer budget crisis and compelled Malloy to immediately lay off 6,500 state workers. Thus we see New England pointing the way not to the nation’s future, but to the Democratic Party’s decline.  A Party that for three quarters of a century defined itself in terms of taxing and spending other people’s money suddenly confronts a world where the money has vanished, and they are clueless on what to do about it.The party’s new motto might well be Andrew Cuomo’s plaintive self-description: “I’m a Progressive who’s broke.  I need a new idea”. Centennial Institute Fellow William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today. Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun. Washington Post, Denver Post and Human Events.        

('76 Contributor) In the June 2011 issue of Natural History, Stanford University biology professor Deborah Gordon explains, “Ant colonies work without central control….  No ant gives instructions to another, or decides for another what needs to be done….  Without anyone in charge, colonies respond effectively to a changing world.  Stuff happens to an ant colony…and the colony reacts by adjusting….  An ant makes moment-to-moment decisions….” Ants achieve that level of self-actualization.  I think that we humans can manage quite well without government bureaucrats, “czars” and politicians making our decisions for us.  Don’t you? And do those who promote government control actually think we all are less competent than ants?  Or do they just crave power over us?  Either answer is bad news.

(Denver Post, June 26) “The best man in the cabinet.”  That’s how Golda Meir was described by her colleague, David Ben-Gurion.  She went on to lead Israel to victory in one of its darkest hours, the Yom Kippur War of 1973.  Meir once attended Denver’s North High School, and you can visit her girlhood home in Auraria. The little grandmother was revered as “the Iron Lady,” before Britons conferred the title on Margaret Thatcher.  The grocer’s daughter  was not one to shrink from the sound of the guns either.  She vanquished Argentina in the Falklands and helped stiffen George H. W. Bush’s spine (when they were together in Aspen, as it happened) after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. I thought of the Iron Ladies, with their Colorado connections and their heroic leadership of America’s closest allies, last week after Michele Bachmann electified the first Republican presidential debate.  Pundits were derisive, one scoffing that her rivalry with Sarah Palin is a "cat fight."  Unfair?  Yes. Surprising?  No. Palin and Bachmann know you don’t go on the playground unless you can take rough teasing, and both have survived worse.  This latest round merely reminds us it’s a liberal man’s world in which conservative women are fair game for putdowns and the non-sexist PC rules apparently don’t apply. It’s ironic, though -- because there’s evidence that each woman is no common kitty, but a lioness with mettle such as few American politicians of either sex have demonstrated in our times.  While Bachmann and Palin can’t yet be compared with Thatcher or Meir, both are on a career arc that could lead there in a decade. What two other women, after all, have ever vied for a major party’s presidential nomination? As for the evidence I’m referring to, Denver audiences wowed by the Minnesota congresswoman and the former Alaska governor could attest to their remarkable appeal.  Colorado Christian University, where I work, brought in Michele Bachmann last summer and Sarah Palin this spring.  Each lit up the room. Bachmann roused a crowd of 600 at Western Conservative Summit 2010 with her fiery yet precise argument for returning Congress and the White House to Republican hands.  Palin was equally impressive as she used a speech at CCU on May 2, the day after our forces killed Bin Laden, to spell out a statesmanlike doctrine for the use of U.S. military power. After some banter about basketball and bear hunting, the alleged airhead from Wasilla (perpetually underestimated, like a certain B-movie actor who won 49 states and took down the USSR) deftly zinged Pakistan’s double-dealing and Obama’s “ill-defined” Libyan folly.  Then with Reaganesque toughness she set forth five principles for the American way of war: (1) “Commit our forces only when clear and vital American interests are at stake.” (2) “If we have to fight, fight to win. Use overwhelming force.  Defeat the enemy as quickly as possible.  Nation-building is not the main purpose of our armed forces.” (3) “Have clearly defined goals and objectives before sending in troops.  If you can’t explain the mission to the American people clearly and concisely,” stay out. (4) “American soldiers must never be put under foreign command.” (5) “Sending our armed forces should be the last resort.  We don’t go looking for dragons to slay.” Neither of the Bushes, nor Clinton, nor Obama, ever put it so well.  America’s day will come, as Britain’s and Israel’s did, to be led by a lioness.  Not one but two are in view for 2012.  Lady Liberty could do a lot worse than Bachmann or Palin.