In yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, pollsters Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell had an editorial that urged President Obama to do the honorable thing and withdraw from the Presidential campaign in the manner of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Although interesting in its own right, it was another remark of theirs that caught my eye. “[Hillary Clinton] is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy[,]” they wrote.
To have a bipartisan government, though, there must be fundamental agreement on the nature of American values and on the role of government in protecting those values.
To have a bipartisan government within the present framework of partisans, modern Conservatives—Americans—must accept into their governing principles elements of the empirically demonstrated destructiveness of Progressives’ ever-rising taxes and Keynesian spending. Americans must accept the legitimacy of the destruction wrought by the Progressives’ 2009 Stimulus Bill. Americans must accept as legitimate that government need not be responsive to its American employers, as it was unresponsive with the passage of Obamacare. Americans must accept the Progressive attacks on business, large and small, of Dodd-Frank and its wholly unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the latter with an unlimited budget. Americans must accept the legitimacy of the Progressives’ Stimulus Light, which masquerades as a jobs bill. Americans must accept the blowup of the Supercommittee from the Progressives’ demand for a $1 trillion tax hike, coupled with their refusal to cut spending or reform entitlement programs in any way, or there can be no agreement—more of that rising taxes and profligate spending.
To have a bipartisan government within the present framework of the partisans, modern Conservatives—Americans—must accept into their governing principles elements of the empirically demonstrated destructiveness of a foreign policy of apology and retreat. Americans must accept the premise that there’s nothing special, nothing exceptional, about the United States or our values, and we must apologize for our having touted them in the past. Americans must accept the legitimacy of the Progressive insistence that we have no right to defend ourselves, and so we must forego a missile defense system—because Russian feelings might be hurt. Americans must accept the Progressive view that Russia and China must have veto authority over our foreign policy and so, given Russian and Chinese objections, we do nothing serious to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons.
In short, to have a bipartisan government Americans must accept into their governing principles elements of an ever-expanding and intrusive central government, abandonment of the primacy of individual liberty and of Federalism, and a retreat from our global responsibilities to our friends and allies. How can there be compromise, how can there be bipartisanship, when one of the partisans so plainly does not share the values of limited Federal government and individual responsibility, or does not see the importance of American global leadership?
How is such “bipartisanship” possible, and the United States to survive as an independent political entity in today’s world of an active, militarily strengthening and increasingly aggressive People’s Republic of China that does not at all have the interests of a strong America at its heart? How is such “bipartisanship” possible, and the United States to survive as an independent political entity in today’s world of an active, soon-to-be-nuclear armed Iran, whose sole purpose in obtaining nuclear weapons is to obliterate Israel and to give nuclear warheads to terrorists so the latter can use them in American cities—and European cities?
No. The destructive policies of the Progressives, however heartfelt or well-intended, have led our nation to the brink of oblivion. These policies must be utterly, completely repudiated; only then can we begin to repair the horrendous damage done by them. Indeed, I wrote earlier how our President had made himself a laughingstock on the world’s stage. After three years, he’s made our entire nation a laughingstock on the world’s stage.
