Is there currently any sane, intellectual leadership in the Republican party? If so, who?

Great Debates
121

I was going to drop by and ask whether the OP defined sanity well enough, but actually Dio did a reasonably good job. But his question is narrower than I thought (Curtis seemed to share my misconception). Dio is not discussing policy in the this thread, he’s wondering where are the Republicans who are persuasively appealing for calm. So we don’t need a list of the most leftish Republicans: what we require are examples of high profile and convincing appeals for calm.

GWBush was a good example. After a Chinese plane collided with a US spyplane, the US took an initially hard line, but then engaged normal diplomatic channels after they figured that the crisis had gone on long enough. On the left, when eco-terrorist Kozinski was caught sending bombs in the mail to scientists… well nobody really defended the guy did they? Democratic politicians were unanimous: this lunatic needs to be locked up.

Schwartzneiger doesn’t have national leadership among Republicans, and he hasn’t gone barnstorming on a pro-sanity platform. Bohner and Cantor have disgraced themselves. Palin fans the flames. The only real candidate for “Voice of reason” is McCain – but unfortunately he is currently harvesting the nutjob vote in a tough Republican primary.

New York Times columnist David Brooks might be a plausible candidate, except he doesn’t appeal for reason so much as engage in armchair sociology, calling the Tea Partiers, Wal-Mart Hippies.

Anyway, the Atlantic has a helpful roundup: What’s Behind The Wave of Right-Wing Health Care Violence?. I can’t find any persuasive conservative voices of reason there. I daresay that the Bob Dole of the 1980s wouldn’t have put up with this cr-p. But the Republican Party was different then: at the time there was a solid constituency that embraced reason: today the GOP has gone emo.

122

So which conservatives are distancing themselves from calls to violence?

Among the sane majority, terrorism is always unpopular, vilified even. So one would think that calmness and “resolve” would be virtues that at least a minority of Republicans would be eager to display, or at least provide a facsimile of.

Meanwhile, over in loony-land lots of Tea Partiers are appealing for calm. The corporate-funded lobby Freedom Works leads the charge: “Political violence is both immoral and ineffective, and will only set the movement back.” The national coordinator of tea party patriots complains that they can’t police all their members. “It’s like herding cats. It’s impossible.” Hmmm. How about crafting a joint statement? Or would that be too substantive?

123

There is no chance the Republicans will get the House back this year. They might get a few seats, but not enough to take control.

By 2012, this will be a dead issue. Repealing heathcare a transient fundraising hook and nothing more. Promising repeal isn’t even really a campaign issue in the sense that it’s going to win any new votes. It’s just a pitch to get teabaggers to give up cash. I’m all for the teabaggers wasting their money, though, so I have no objection to the tactic.

124

I disagree. Off-year elections tend to favor the party out of power: losses average about 24 seats. Weak economies intensify this effect. Democratic losses in the House are a given: the question is how many seats they will lose.

Nate Silver, a political statistician thinks a loss of 19 seats is a best case scenario: he puts the likely range at 20-60. A forty seat loss implies that the House changes hands. Over Intrade, they place the odds of a Republican takeover at about 40%. Those believing the odds to be less than 10% can pick up a few bucks there – if they are correct. (I assume that minors can’t trade there, so Curtis is off the hook.)

The Senate is another story: the odds of a Republican takeover in the Senate are de minimus this year.

125

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is articulate, and he’s wonkish enough to get the numbers and intricacies (he fairly schooled Obama on the finer points of Demo-Care and forced a retraction from Obama during the summit meeting).

At a time when the left was endlessly drumming the meme that Republicans have no ideas (much like their current, easy-to-see-through, “OMG! It’s a hate crime epidemic!” meme), Ryan presented common-sense ideas on health carethat are much more in line with the approach a majority of Americans wanted taken.
And Ryan’s been highly effective in eviscerating the biggest Democratic lie of all with their health care reform, that it reduces costs and bends the cost-curve down over the long haul, which is done with smoke, mirrors and most egregiously by double-counting Medicare savings.

126

Based on the number-free pamphlet their leadership was touting as the official “proposal”, yes, of course. That’s no meme, that’s fact.

Maybe he should have presented them to his own party leadership first then, hmm?

127

This is a hijack, as Milo pointed to no examples of Ryan calling for calm in the face of violent tea party protesters. With that in mind:

  1. Ryan’s budget got a lot of buzz, but his numbers were phony. He instructed the CBO to score his spending but not his tax changes. Ryan himself provided numbers for the latter. The result was highly misleading: when the numbers were run through standard analysis, it was found that Ryan had raised taxes on 90% of Americans, lowered taxes on the top 10%, and nonetheless increased the budget deficit. That takes skill, but not of the helpful sort. Cite.

  2. The CBO has also scored the Affordable Choice Act. It cuts the budget deficit over 10 years. And unlike certain Bush era proposals, it doesn’t do so by playing games with the figures in the end of the horizon: it also cuts the budget in the 10-20 year era. Furthermore, here’s a chart of the revenues and costs for the 2010-13 era and the 2014-19 period. There’s no phoniness: taxes and savings are higher than the costs of coverage expansion in both periods, and the pair are small during the 2010-13 rev-up.

The accounting critiques of the Affordable Choice Act are nothing more than modern conservative wishful thinking.

  1. As for common-sense ideas, I’ll note that all Republican Senators except 2 voted for the Vitter Amendment, which tried to appeal the entire health care proposal. That means Republican Senators are on record as wanting to strike down mild rises in the taxes of generous insurance plans, strengthened enforcement against Medicare fraud and abuse, incentives on physicians to focus on preventative and chronic care, and curbs on underwriting costs and enhanced comparative shopping through the formation of insurance exchanges. Except for 2 abstainers, Republican Senators voted down the most serious medical cost-containment package in US history. True deficit hawks have no business supporting the GOP.
128

If you want to pretend the problem was Republican leadership rejecting the ideas, instead of Obama, Pelosi and Reid systematicallyshutting Republicans out of the process, knock yourself out.

129

Was Ryan’s “plan” the official Republican proposal or wasn’t it? If not, what was?

Hint: All the necessary information is right in front of you. Take all the time you need.

130

The 38 Republican Senators voted down large parts of Ryan’s proposal, via the Vitter Amendment. Put in another way, Ryan culled the less controversial parts of the Democratic plan when assembling his fact sheet (and really, that’s all it is).

As far as I can tell the Ryan plan doesn’t do anything serious about insurance companies that cherry-pick patients based on pre-existing conditions, other than toss some tax credits on companies that do the practice less, whatever that means. And there’s nothing about rescission: if you get sick, the insurance company can still deny benefits if there are a couple of errors in your medical records. The seriousness of a health care plan is measured by the extent to which it addresses cherry-picking by insurance companies (or adverse selection in the technical parlance). If Ryan can point to a study suggesting that his idea might work, I would look upon it with interest. Based upon his budget work though, I’m inclined to believe that his proposals aren’t especially serious.

131

:rolleyes: Please. They (foolishly) went out of their way to try to include the Republicans.

132

Got the years rather mixed up.

That’s probably due to JD Hayworth

133

We could have had a much better bill, much sooner, and dealt with a few other problems the Bush years left us, if it weren’t for all that time wasted trying to reach a compromise with people whose only proposal in return was that they go fuck themselves.

134

Verily, preach the truth and testify, brother.

The party of “hell, no” is now whining about not being included. That’s like a 5-year-old child taking his marbles and going home and then crying because nobody is trying to play marbles with him.

135

A Republican leader will appear in due time. They’re all keeping their heads low right now, waiting to see which way the wind blows. This is the way it always works for the ‘out party’ at about this point in the election cycle.

After the mid-term elections, the campaign season for the Republican nomination will start up. The election itself will tell Republicans what the party faithful are looking for.

Right now, these are the people that have to be considered the most likely candidates:

Sarah Palin
Her prime advantage is that she can raise more money than any of them. She’s hugely popular with the tea party movement (or at least, with about half of it). But she’s got huge liabilities - leaving the governorship damaged her chance to build real credibility, and she’s a polarizing figure and doesn’t do well in interviews. I suspect her role for the next election will be more as kingmaker - using her popularity and PAC money to help people get elected. She may be looking for a cabinet position in a Republican administration, with the intent to revisit a presidential run in 2016 or 2020. But you never know with her.

Mitt Romney
I think he was hurt by his association with Massachusetts health care, but Romney still has to be considered a front-runner - especially if the economy is still in the tank and the fiscal situation is exploding. At that point, people will want someone with executive experience and a proven ability to work in a crisis, and Romney’s got that. I still think he’ll be a serious contender.

Mike Huckabee
I think he wants to run again, but I think he’s part of the wrong side of the Republican party, and that will damage him. He doesn’t like the tea party much, and they don’t like him much. He’s more of a George Bush ‘compassionate conservative’ with religious-right leanings, and that’s just not where the new conservative movement is.

Newt Gingrich
Always an enigma. Newt is smart, and always has lots of interesting ideas, but he’s got a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease. Still, I think he’ll be a player. If not a candidate, he’ll be in the fight, promoting his ideas. His biggest problem may be fundraising. I have no idea who his real constituency is.

David Petraeus
He looked like a good candidate in 2008. Whether he still looks like a good candidate in 2012 is going to depend on how the war on terror is going and what his political positions are. We don’t know if he’s a moderate or a conservative, a libertarian or a social conservative. And we don’t even know if he wants to run. But he’s a serious figure and you have to keep your eye on him.
**
Bobby Jindal**
He’s been touted as the best of the new generation of Republicans, but he did real damage to his cause with that lackluster speech he gave a couple of years ago, which made him look either like a kid or a deer in the headlights. Still, he’s very smart, fairly young, and could still be a player.
**
Jeb Bush**
The smart Bush. The one his entire family thought would be president one day. The conventional wisdom is that his career aspirations were seriously damaged by ‘Bush fatigue’, and that the last thing the country wants is another Bush. But time has a way of changing things, and he shouldn’t be counted out.

But my bet is on none of the above. I think you’ll see someone come out of the woodwork this time - perhaps some heavy hitter from the business sector like Fred Smith, Jack Welch, TJ Rogers, or perhaps one of the new breed of internet entrepreneurs with a billion dollars in cash to spend.

There are no doubt a number of people in the House and Senate who will be thinking about a run - maybe someone like Eric Cantor or Paul Ryan, or an up-and-coming hotshot like Marco Rubio (who’s still too young - but watch out for 2016 if Obama is elected again). Perhaps one of the heavy-hitters in the right-wing blogosphere or punditry will give it a shot - someone like Victor Davis Hanson. Or maybe we’ll see someone from Hollywood take a shot at it - more and more people in Hollywood are coming out as conservatives.

Then there are the female candidates besides Palin. Michelle Bachmann is popular with some, but says too many crazy things to survive a presidential campaign. But Liz Cheney is very smart, very conservative, and she more than holds her own on the various round table discussions and panels. She’ll be 46 years old in 2012 - a little young, but within the electability band. She’s a lawyer, she worked in the State Department as an assistant Secretary of State, and she’s been involved in political campaigns her entire life. She’d also have a very powerful father working for her behind the scenes.

So my dark horse pick at this point would be Liz Cheney. But my most likely pick is none of the above.

136

Exactly. Certainly, it’s a good idea to reach consensus and compromise - with people who share your basic goals, are rational, and who are willing to compromise themselves. The Republicans are none of those things; they are the implacable enemies of the Democrats and dominated by loonies, to boot.

137

Oh, we know. We know.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iK1VfKyne2EjX1sqVuKo_7jqUbOAD9EAM0N80

138

Come on David. Tell us how you really feel.

139

I would say it’s nearly inconceivable that Petraeus would run against a President he served under. If he did, that would deeply damage future relationships between Presidents and their generals. He could be a very strong candidate in 2016 though. Looking at that list from Sam Stone, I don’t think Obama has too much to worry about. Mitt Romney was probably the most serious challenger and he will be damaged by the healthcare issue. It looks like the Tea Party set are making healthcare repeal pretty much a litmus test and it will probably be a big issue in 2012. Romney has been desperately trying to pretend his plan is radically different from Obama’s but they are really quite similar. He will be constantly on the defensive in the primaries. His best hope is that the GOP makes health care repeal its main plank in this year’s election, performs relatively poorly and decides to move away from the issue.

140

Wasn’t Hillary Clinton saying pretty much exactly the same thing 'round about 2006 or so?