Some Thoughts on Conservatism

Jennifer Rubin has some.  For instance,

The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism—not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

And

The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them.

There is nothing at all temporal about conservative values.  Nor is there need to “rethink modern conservatism—” which is simply a figment of her imagination—or to find “new issues to defend.”  Conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and government spending, and personal freedom and responsibility, which are the principles Reagan espoused (they were not “Reagan’s solutions” are timeless.  Rubin managed to pack two false premises into those remarks.

Then there’s this:

Even after Obama’s reelection, Reagan-era conservatives have scorned any challenge to the party’s status quo, conducting search-and-destroy missions against ideological deviations from the Reagan playbook.

And

After the top sliver of the Bush-era tax cuts expired, tax increases could not be part of a budget because, as we know, Republicans are opposed to taxes.  Same-sex marriage must be opposed, because Republicans defend “traditional marriage.”  And despite Reagan’s spearheading of immigration reform in 1986, Republicans have to oppose that, too, because theirs is the party of law and order.

These are Rubin’s straw men; it’s her responsibility to defend them, no one else’s.  Except the no more tax increases part: limited government—which demands shrinking the one we have—is, as noted above, a rather timeless Conservative principle.

…principles that voters had rejected in two national elections.

Really?  Voters voted them up in the last two elections in which I participated.  Conservatives made serious gains in Congress and in state legislatures and governor’s houses in both, and they lost fewer Congressional seats than normal in a Presidential election in the last one.  I’d say Conservatives are continuing to gain ground—on our timeless principles.

The rest of Rubin’s piece is just more of this.

Conservative principles of small, limited government, low taxes and tax rates, limited Federal spending, and an emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility—with that limited government as a last resort, not a first—are as valid today as they were in 1790.

Rubin is arguing from straw men and false premises.  As long as she insists on doing this, she isn’t just wrong, she’s irrelevant.

The Convenience of Government

President Barack Obama has decided to appeal last fall’s ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that invalidated his “recess” appointments of three people to the NLRB.  The Court ruled that since the Senate wasn’t in recess, the appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid.

Obama’s grounds for appeal would be laughable if the matter weren’t so serious.  He

urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval.

This from a Lecturer in Constitutional law.  Presidents have the authority to “make certain appointments” that the Constitution gives them, and not a particle more.

He, through his Solicitor General Donald Verrilli,

defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court’s conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate.

Sorry, Ace, “in recess” means in recess, not on lunch break, and not any period a president finds convenient.  What part of the DC Circuit’s writing on this is unclear to you?  After all, it was written in plain language with simple words:

…the inescapable conclusion that the Framers intended something specific by the term “the Recess,” and that it was something different than a generic break in proceedings [an adjournment].

The natural interpretation of the [Recess Appointments] Clause is that the Constitution is noting a difference between “the Recess” and the “Session.”  Either the Senate is in session, or it is in the recess.  If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in “the Recess.”

Then ObamaVerilli included in his brief this gem:

If the appeals court ruling was left to stand, it would “dramatically curtail” the president’s authority[.]

Well, yeah.  That’s sort of the point, given how far you’ve overstepped your authority.

Finally, this laugher:

The ruling “threatens a significant disruption of the federal government’s operations[.]”

You just don’t seem to get it, Ace.  The convenience of government does not take precedence over the Constitution.