Red-State Utah Offers an Object Lesson on Immigration

ST. GEORGE, Utah — This state is about as conservative as there is, yet it has some of the most sensible immigration laws in the country. Its record is a challenge to Republicans in Congress — and to the Obama administration, which isn’t letting the state go as far as it would like.

Remember all the 2008 Democratic-primary fuss about whether undocumented (or illegal) immigrants should be able to get driver’s licenses? Utah solved the problem by granting them Driver Privilege Cards, which can’t be used as identification at airports but do entitle holders to be able to buy auto insurance. Full story

GOP Needs to Say ‘Yes’ More (Part II)

In part 1 of this post, I argued that the biggest question facing the GOP is what should it be for? Republicans have been relegated to the role of Scrooge while Democrats have been playing Santa when it comes to taxes and economic growth.

So, can the GOP find a way to play Santa again? It’s hard to do on the tax side because Obama has kept rates low for everybody but the top 1 percent and the GOP, fighting fiercely for the 1 percent, only magnifies its Scroogish image.

Actually, some bright conservative writers have proposed good ideas recently. Rich Lowry of National Review, writing in Politico last week, suggested that, in the politically entrepreneurial spirit of Kemp, the party come up with 10 ideas for promoting work in America, advancing welfare reform, replacing (not just obliterating) “Obamacare” and making college affordable.

AEI’s Ramesh Ponnuru, in The New York Times, suggested reducing payroll taxes on ordinary workers, expanding the child care tax credit and lowering health care costs by altering the tax break for health insurance by letting people pocket the money they save buying cheaper plans. Full story

GOP Must Transform From Scrooge to Santa (Part I)

George W. Bush played Santa on two fronts, cutting taxes and increasing spending. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Among the Republican Party’s many problems, perhaps the biggest is: what should it be for? Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush correctly pegged the issue in his Conservative Political Action Conference speech — “stop being the anti-everything party” — but didn’t have much to offer as an alternative.

The party has confronted this problem before and met it. It was encapsulated in 1976 by the brilliant, erratic journalist-activist Jude Wanniski in an essay, “Taxes and a Two-Santa Theory,” published in the long-defunct Dow Jones newspaper, National Observer, but available here thanks to historian-economist Bruce Bartlett.

Wanniski argued that Republicans had embraced the role of Scrooge while Democrats had the pleasure (and political benefit) of playing Santa Claus, using government to dispense goodies and redistribute income. Republicans, fixated on balanced budgets, either constantly just said “no” or, in those days, insisted on raising taxes to pay for the Democrats’ spending. In a battle between Santa Claus and Scrooge, Santa wins, he wrote. Full story

Reagan’s Long-Lost Message for Today’s CPAC

Likely as not, you could get rich collecting a dollar each time a speaker at this year’s (or any year’s) Conservative Political Action Conference invokes the name of Ronald Reagan.

But I was struck by some of the contents of his 1977 pre-presidential speech at that venue — words current attendees might well heed if they want the movement and the Republican party to prosper in the future, not fall off the right edge of the earth.

The speech was delivered with the GOP at one of its lowest points ever — with the presidency just lost and Democrats holding 60 Senate seats and a two-thirds majority in the House. Typically for Reagan, it was an upbeat declaration that there was really a conservative majority in the country and that a “New Republican Party” could consolidate it and win elections. Which, of course, happened just three years later with Reagan’s landslide victory, bringing in a Republican majority in the Senate.

Contemporary conservatives will have their hearts warmed anew by much of the speech — an eloquent ode to limited government, low taxes and family-oriented social conservatism. But Reagan also called for outreach and inclusion of a type that most tea party/Club for Growth/Jim DeMint conservatives — even Mitt Romney — now don’t accept, to the party’s long-term political peril.

As for Romney’s belief that the GOP couldn’t reach 47 percent of Americans — the “takers” — Reagan said: Full story

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

It’s four years, two months and millions of rancorous words too late, but could President Barack Obama’s outreach to congressional Republicans be the start of something big?

By big, of course, I mean serious efforts to reach a grand bargain on the national debt — followed, maybe, by further bargains on immigration and steps needed to get the economy working for people besides big bankers and investors in the stock market. Full story

State of American Politics: A Pessimist’s Lament

Longtime readers of my CQ Roll Call column, Pennsylvania Avenue, probably won’t be surprised by what follows — a lament about the state of politics in America from my moderate/centrist perspective. It’s adapted from a speech I gave in January at the Hillsboro Club in Florida. Welcome to the blog!

As any of you who ever watched “The McLaughlin Group” or Fox News will understand, I’m not only glad to be here, but to be anywhere where I can finish a sentence without getting interrupted.  Or shouted at, in the case of McLaughlin. Little did I know when I started on that show at its launch in 1982 that I was present at the beginning of the end of civil discourse in America … if not the beginning of the end of Western civilization.

By comparison, Fox News was mentally healthy — and, of course, fair and balanced. Full story