As a wave of new Republican lawmakers enters the legislative experience, we look back on a decade of important but misguided legislation. Hopefully these newly elected delegates will avoid some of the missteps made mostly by their conservative predecessors.

1. Iraq Resolution. The war in Iraq has been, in the eyes of most, a huge debacle for the United States. Not only were no weapons of mass destruction found, thus invalidating the government’s rationale for invasion, but thousands of American lives were lost and billions upon billions of tax dollars spent. In a recent interview with Dateline NBC, Bush defended his decision to Matt Lauer. He says that he trusted the intelligence reports that claimed Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction and believed his first obligation was to protect the U.S. But good intentions are no excuse for what was ultimately very bad decision-making.

2. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, “USA Patriot Act.” Signed into legislation in October 2001, only a month after the Sep. 11 attacks, by President Bush, the Patriot Act gave the government the authority to wiretap phone lines, delve into financial and medical records, and violate privacy rites in numerous other ways. The bill has been heavily criticized for violation of civil rights, but is nevertheless still in effect as President Obama extended parts of the bill in 2010.

3. Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. In a decidedly un-Republican move, President Bush extended the Medicare program to include prescription drugs as an entitlement benefit. The bill was highly contested in the House, where some controversy arose over Republican leadership coercing dissenting party members into changing their votes and supporting the legislation. The voting records in both the House and Senate are also surprising in that the vast majority of the bill’s supporters were Republicans (204-25 for House Republicans vs. 16-189 for their House Democrats). Considering that, in just the first 10 years of administration, the changes will cost taxpayers an additional $500 billion, shouldn’t Republicans have voted in a manner that better befits their fiscally conservative roots?

4. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The health care bill, more often known as the “universal health care” initiative, represents the government’s intrusion into the private health care. The eventual consequences of the legislation are still unknown, but it radically restructures the insurance business and will ultimately require everyone to purchase insurance. The bill can have an especially large impact on young adults, the demographic group with the highest uninsured rate . Young adults often choose to not buy health insurance because they have relatively few health concerns, but will be forced to either obtain insurance or pay a hefty tax under the new policy.

5. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While No Child Left Behind received widespread, bi-partisan support when President Bush first introduced it, the legislation is now often viewed as an ineffective policy that detracts from education rather than adds to it. No Child Left Behind was supposed to raise education standards as well as school accountability by administering tests towards the end of each academic year. The intent of the bill is good, but realistically, the standardized testing has caused numerous problems: from teachers teaching to the test, to time wasted preparing for the tests instead of actually learning, to the reduction of arts and music programs.

Trivia: Ron Paul voted against all five of these bills.

Edit: As of 12/18/2010, both the House and the Senate have officially voted to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Congratulations to the LGBT community on this resounding victory!

The U.S. military’s longstanding ban on gay servicemen (and women) is over — for the moment. On Sep. 9, U.S. District Court Justice Virginia Phillips called for a “permanent injunction” barring the enforcement of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy.[i]

DADT, crafted by the Clinton Administration in 1993, is the most lenient treatment of homosexuality in the military to date. The law provides that a servicemember will be discharged if he/she has “engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts.” Additionally, discharge is required if the person has “stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual, or words to that effect,” or if the person has married or attempted to marry a person “known to be of the same biological sex.” The policy has been coined “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because it protects gay servicemembers from discharge, provided they are not open about their homosexuality.[ii]

In her ruling in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, a case originally filed in 2004, Justice Phillips called for an end to the policy on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. She argued, in the memorandum opinion, that “the Act’s restrictions on speech are broader than reasonably necessary to protect the Government’s interest,” demanding that First Amendment rights take precedence.[iii] Following the trial proceedings and the filed testimony of numerous servicemembers and experts, including General Colin Powell, the court ruled that allowing gay people to openly serve in the military would neither undermine “unit cohesion” nor “military readiness.”[iv] Thus, because no overwhelming state interest in maintaining DADT can be determined, the plaintiffs’ First and Fifth Amendment rights must take priority.

This case is the latest and most potent iteration in a decade of promising reform on behalf of LGBTQ. Begun in 2003 by the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled that state laws prohibiting sodomy are unconstitutional, the last 10 years have gone a long way towards ending discrimination against homosexuals. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a District Court case decided in August of 2010, similarly ruled that California Proposition 8, a law prohibiting same-sex marriage, was unconstitutional.

The legal argumentation at work in each case is strikingly similar. All U.S. citizens are entitled to “Due Process” of law, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Due Process means, essentially, that to take away your rights, the government has to have a good reason. The more “fundamental” the right, the harsher “scrutiny” with which the courts will inspect any policy that curtails it. In order to withstand scrutiny, any law restricting rights must serve a compelling “government interest,” otherwise it is unconstitutionally restrictive. In deciding that anti-sodomy laws, laws banning same-sex marriage, and the military’s DADT policy were all unconstitutional, the courts have simultaneously ruled that there is no government interest in continuing to support those policies.

In other words, the legal conclusion is: gay rights don’t hurt anyone. The government, as a purveyor of rights, does more harm than good by discriminating against LGBTQ. But legal reform is only half of the battle. Even though Brown v. Board of Education outlawed the “Separate but equal” doctrine in 1954, de facto segregation continued undiminished well into the 1960s and following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

The issue in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States is not simply a question of whether gay rights are violated by open homosexuality meriting military discharge. DADT is a constitutional issue because many servicemembers were quietly persecuted for their sexual orientation, but were afraid to report the abuse to their commanding officers for fear of discharge under the policy.

One particularly compelling story cited in the memorandum opinion comes from Naval Officer Joseph Rocha. While serving in the Middle East, Rocha’s sexuality came to light when he refused to copulate with a prostitute. Labeling him gay, his commanding officer “ordered all of the other men in the unit to beat Rocha on the latter’s nineteenth birthday…had Rocha leashed like a dog…tied to a chair, force-fed dog food, and left in a dog kennel covered with feces.”[v] Rocha’s human rights were repeatedly violated during his time in office and he never reported the mistreatment, because to do so would result in his discharge from the Navy under DADT.

His story is only one of many, but as Justice Phillips points out, Rocha was not an anonymous serviceman: he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Navy Expert Rifleman Medal during his time in office. DADT, in addition to simply curtailing the rights of LGBTQ, commits them to experience discrimination in silence. But will that discrimination vanish along with the policy? And if the government has no compelling interest in subjugating gay Americans, does it not have an interest in protecting their rights?

Evidently not. President Obama, with midterm elections on the horizon, requested that Justice Phillips halt her injunction against DADT, on the basis of military readiness. On Oct. 20, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to suspend the injunction against DADT until further notice.[vi] The court’s decision that DADT does nothing to help military readiness, after extensive review of the available military documentation, didn’t faze the current administration or the federal appeals court.

Despite the fact that the repeal of DADT was one of Obama’s campaign points, he has insisted that the reform take place in Congress, and not through the courts. Democrats tried to repeal DADT legislatively in September 2010, only to be denied by a Republican filibuster. If they couldn’t get the job done in September, how does Obama plan to repeal DADT in November, with a Republican majority in the House?

Ironically, this situation pits the GOP group as the champion of gay rights against the first liberal president of the twenty-first century. The Log Cabin Republicans, founded in 1978, is the nation’s only Republican gay rights group. President Obama, on the other hand, was elected on a campaign platform demanding the “implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation.”[vii] The same President Obama who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to strengthen, among other things, “cooperation between peoples.”[viii]

Admittedly, legal reform is not tantamount to comprehensive social change. Much to the chagrin of those who elected Obama in 2008, change takes time. But Brown v. Board was an important step in the right direction. Roe v. Wade was a crucial decision for women’s rights. And Log Cabin Republicans v. US should be celebrated as the current pinnacle of LGBTQ legal reform, rather than bemoaned for being ahead of its time. Sometimes, social power requires juridical power. Instead of condemning Justice Phillips for doing Congress’s job for them, Log Cabin Republicans v. US should be lauded as the most concrete evidence to date that all people are equal under the law.

References

[i] Log Cabin Republicans v. United States (2010). http://online.logcabin.org/assets/pdf/log-cabin-order.pdf.

[ii] LCR v. U.S.

[iii] LCR v. U.S.

[iv] LCR v. U.S.

[v] LCR v. U.S.

[vi] Tiron, Roxana. “Gates issues stricter rules for discharges of gay, lesbian troops.” The Hill. http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/125339-gates-issues-stricter-rules-for-discharges-of-gay-troops.

[vii] Obama Campaign Holds Policy Briefing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Advocate. http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Election/Obama_Campaign_Holds_Policy_Briefing_on_DADT/.

[viii] The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 :Barack Obama. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/.

For freedom-loving Americans, there is cause for optimism in November. The popular tide has turned against the collectivist record of the Democrat party. There are telling signs that a more conservative majority will govern Congress next year.

Given the wide margin of Barack Obama’s victory two years ago, his compatriots’ fall from grace has been surprisingly precipitous. Those on the Left explain their slide in the polls as misplaced blame for a sour economy bequeathed by Bush. On the other side, the Right claims that the last twenty months efficiently exposed a Democrat anti-capitalist agenda that has exacerbated rather than reversed the recession. The Republicans are presently winning the rhetorical battle, but they will still eventually have to articulate the specifics of a free-market plan for the country that will foster growth and employment. What exactly should the Republicans do if they gain control of Congress this November? Here are four recommendations:

Repeal ObamaCare. The debacle that has masqueraded as health care “reform” must be relegated to the dustbin of history with the rest of socialism’s worst laid plans. The hard economic reality is that demand for health care is unlimited; humans want infinite health. But the supply of health care is limited, as only the best and talented students have the intellect and skill to become physicians. With unlimited demand and limited supply, health care is rationed either by price in a free market or by politicians in a government mandated system.

Free markets reduce prices by rewarding treatments and practitioners who produce successful outcomes for the lowest costs, and free markets reward responsible customer behavior like performing well in school, working hard, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and buying insurance for catastrophic illness.
On the other hand, government run health care degrades quality to the lowest common denominator by only guaranteeing minimum standards and funding services irrespective of outcome or price, ultimately controlling costs by price fixing. Such a system does not reward healthy customer behavior, but instead shields patients from the consequences of poor choices.

Americans know that in the end, such a government system destroys incentives for excellence and innovation and ensures that the best and brightest will choose a field other than health care as a career. Americans also know that appropriating bureaucrats the power to choose who will and who won’t receive care is a very bad idea. That is why an overwhelming majority of Americans is against ObamaCare and why the first vote cast by a Republican majority should be to repeal it.

Balance the budget. The Brookings Institution forecasts that the federal government will collect $2.567 billion in taxes next year. Federal outlays in the year 2005 were $2.472 billion. A Republican majority should pass a budget approaching 2005 expenditures and stop the unsustainable fiscal bleeding that has defined the Obama presidency. In less than two years, the current administration has overseen $3 trillion in deficit spending, equivalent to the annual deficits of the previous fourteen years combined, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting an additional $1.2 trillion deficit next year. As a percentage of gross domestic product, only Greece has managed to maintain a straight face while amassing similar deficits, and the nations’ unvarnished profligacy threatens to bring the entire European Union to its knees. Americans know intuitively that a family spending more than it makes is headed for ruin, and Republicans should echo that good sense by getting the federal house in order straightway.

Fuel growth by taxing consumption, not profit. Incentives matter, and for a nation in desperate need of growth, Republicans should shift federal funding away from disincentives on profit. By taxing consumption instead of profit, the United States would unleash an unprecedented wave of innovation and productivity that would fuel growth and employment while at the same time funding federal services in a much more cost effective manner. There are several models for a consumption tax, the Fair Tax chief among them, that incorporate safeguards so that the poor pay no taxes on the items they consume. But, whichever plan Republicans choose, trashing the IRS and installing a new, efficient consumption tax would not only right a sinking ship but also endear the party to the hearts of hundreds of millions of Americans who every year battle the undecipherable ocean of laws, regulations, and court opinions that make up the current tax code.

Stop illegal immigration. Estimates vary widely regarding the number of immigrants who enter the United States illegally every year. Some reports put the figure at 500,000 and others as high as one million illegal aliens per year. Whatever the figure, law abiding Americans see the influx as unacceptable and a failure of the federal government to perform one of its most fundamental functions. Republicans should put an end to illegal entry into the country. Few voters believe that the challenge is insurmountable given the wonders of contemporary technology. Most regard the problem as a lack of Congressional will. Republicans should separate the debate of what to do with the illegal immigrants who are already here from the decision of how to protect the borders, and should focus on protecting the country’s borders.

These are only four of the many issues a new Republican majority should face head on in January. Of course, without super majorities in both houses, most if not all of these measures would be met by a presidential veto. But the point is not whether they will happen but whether they should. What the country needs is a reason to support a Republican majority and reward it with a Republican president in 2012. By showing the people what Republican power means to a future recovery, voters will likely turn out in force to ensure that the measures become law. Otherwise, all the rhetoric becomes nothing more than campaign puff and broken promises.

Opinion editors like to blame “uncertainty” for the current economic malaise infecting the private sector, leading company executives to horde company cash and not hire or expand their operations. They are wrong. It is not uncertainty at fault, but certainty—certainty that the current trend of collectivism government is unsustainable, certainty that $3 trillion deficits are catastrophic, and certainty that if Democrats continue to govern, this country will quickly resemble Greece. Republicans have the opportunity to turn that certainty back toward the shining city on the hill that the Founders fought for and died to preserve. Surely, standing on the shoulders of these brave men and women, Republicans will muster the courage to act.

This just in:

BJ Lawson has won the Republican Party’s nomination for NC’s fourth congressional district, earning  46 percent of the 23,000 votes cast (2010 North Carolina Primary Election Results, WRAL.com (link)).

Lawson, who also won the 2008 GOP nomination, won tonight’s primary election running on a platform of limited government and fiscal responsibility. The Lawson campaign especially highlighted the importance of constitutional government and opposed the Federal Reserve.

“I think the primary message of the campaign has been about getting our economic freedom back, the freedom to create our own jobs and our own businesses and get the economy going again at the grass roots,” Lawson said in a post-election phone interview.

As the Republican candidate for the fourth district, Lawson will represent all of the constituents of Durham and Orange counties, as well as many residents of Wake and Chatham Counties. He will represent the Republican party against incumbent David Price (D) this November.

In addition to permanent residents of the fourth district, Duke students who registered to vote locally participated in tonight’s primary election. Chelsea Goldstein, current DSG Vice President for Academic Affairs, proudly voted in today’s Republican primary. She laments that “it’s a shame that so many people didn’t vote in such an important primary,” a competitive election for both the Republican House and Democratic Senate races. “I think going at noon and having less than 20 people having already voted at the polling place where all the Duke students should be voting was sad,” Goldstein says.

Nonetheless, “More than 7,000 Wake County people voted early, compared to 700 in 2006, the most recent off-year election without a presidential or gubernatorial race” (Turnout steady, slow for Tuesday primaries, WRAL.com (link)). However, 2006 was the lowest voter turnout in recent history at 12 percent, while “the 2008 presidential primary recorded the highest turnout at 37 percent” (Vote 2010: Trickle Of Voters Decide Key Races, WSOCTV.com (link)).

The Gothic Guardian also extends its congratulations to first-time candidate and runner-up Frank Roche, who won 41% percent of the vote, as well as candidates David Burnett and George Hutchins (9% and 5%, respectively) (WRAL.com (link)).

Read The Gothic Guardian‘s profile on BJ Lawson here.

By Vikram Srinivasan

Just as tents can collapse from being too small, they can also fall apart from being too big.

That’s a lesson the GOP should remember as it confronts the issue of what role moderates should play in rebuilding a “big tent” party. Answering that question will depend heavilys on what we mean by “moderate.”

As a conservative, I’m of the view that there should be a large role in the party for moderates. But only for one variety: the principled kind.

When a political party has shrunken to the small size the GOP has now in Congress, it can be tempting to rebuild the ranks with whatever candidates can be found. But, by rebuilding on the shoulders of unprincipled “moderates” the party risks diluting its message and undermining its own sell at a time when its core asset is its ability to offer a distinct vision from the Obama administration.

To be sure, the story of the GOP’s decline over the last decade is a tale with many subplots. But prominent among them is a narrative of failed and ineffective candidate recruitment. Oftentimes, it seems like the only criteria national political heavyweights consider in encouraging Congressional candidates are the size of their pocketbook, their name recognition, and their electability.

Certainly, all three are important. But they are not the only criteria that matter. Candidate recruitment at the local level cannot be divorced from a national strategy that controls the party’s image and message.

This failure of a comprehensive approach is very much evident in the tarnishing of the Republican brand. The significant growth in non-discretionary spending under the last Bush administration, unchecked by a supposedly conservative Republican Congress, reflects a complete departure from core conservative philosophy. This story of failed congressional oversight can be explained as a classic case of parochial local interests overriding any core philosophical principles of elected officials.

Perhaps it is too idealistic to hope that the local instinct, the tendency for members of Congress to support initiatives that benefit their own district at the expense of underlying philosophical principles, will ever be diminished. But that does not mean the party would not be able to assert at least some minimal control and provide some structure to otherwise potentially incoherent strands of conservatism within its ranks.

Some might very well have no issue with such ideological divergence. But the problem with being politically “moderate” is that too often it doesn’t mean anything other than a lack of philosophical mooring—a sort of ideological cherry-picking that is all too often wholly inconsistent with itself. For our public officials being “moderate” melds all too comfortably with political opportunism. Ideological inconsistencies and support for pet projects can be too easily be rationalized on the basis of appealing to moderate voters.

The bottom line, however, is that voters seldom support candidates purely on the basis of ideology—in fact, the appearance of being moderate or reasonable may be more important than what the facts say.

President Barack Obama is a prominent case in point. Obama was the most liberal member of the entire U. S. Senate according to the 2007 vote ranking of the non-partisan National Journal.  Yet, Obama ran a campaign that stressed his post-partisan appeal—a sell sharply at odds with his own voting record and complete lack of bipartisan cooperation, either in Illinois or in the U.S. Senate.

In trying to rebuild a party on core conservative principles, Republicans should certainly shun shrill, divisive rhetoric that makes the party seem reactionary and parochial. Nonetheless, electing moderates for moderates’ sake is a deeply flawed strategy. Instead, the operating principle in candidate recruitment should be to elect the most conservative, thoughtful candidate electable for every seat.

This is not to say that the party should not court independent voters. Rather, it is to suggest that the best way to court such voters is to make a persuasive sell on the basis of presenting a clear contrast to the Obama administration and a coherent message and vision of its own.

A big part of the problem for Republicans in this past election was that they did not stand for anything, or at least anything worth voting for among broad sectors of the politically independent public. Republicans had deeply and seriously undercut themselves over the past several years and had no credibility to make a serious case for fiscal responsibility or conservative economic policy. Moreover, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had so many serious departures from conservative ideology and was utterly unable to articulate a conservative policy worldview, from economic issues to any other area of policy.

The fact that the hyper-liberal Senator from Illinois was able to craft such a broad-based political campaign against a truly centrist candidate should sharply rebuke those who would suggest that only by “returning to the center” can the party reclaim its majorities. In fact, the party already was “in the center” when it lost in 2006 and 2008. Winning again will require reasserting conservative principles as underlying the core of the GOP.

On campus, that means encouraging the truism that being a Republican can mean many things to many people. But at the same time, we must remember that for it to mean anything at all, there really can be little compromising on core philosophy regarding the role of government. At end of the day, liberalism and conservatism are philosophies on the role of government, aligning with the Democratic and Republican parties respectively. For Republicans, that means being fundamentally skeptical of government action in any and every arena where private actors and individuals could suffice.

A strategy for rebuilding the party that emphasizes recruiting moderates to run in races where more conservative candidates could be successful is a failure to learn the lessons of recent history and a recipe for the big tent’s eventual collapse. The GOP must return to core conservative principles and provide a clear alternative to Democratic policies if it is to ever indulge the hope of regaining a lasting majority.

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