The GOP trainwreck

Today I grieve for Amer­i­can politics.

I’ve been watch­ing my friends on var­i­ous social net­works as they react­ed to the results of last night’s elec­tion, and it has struck me odd to see how hap­py so many peo­ple are that Barack Oba­ma won. It’s alien to me not because I don’t under­stand — and to some extent approve of — the rea­sons he won. I do. I pre­dict­ed months ago that Oba­ma had the elec­tion pret­ty much sewn up. Mitt Rom­ney was a lack­lus­ter can­di­date at best, and ran one of the most incom­pe­tent cam­paigns of any can­di­date I’ve seen run for Pres­i­dent. Mitt lost because he could­n’t con­vince his own par­ty that he was any more than the least bad choice. His own par­ty did­n’t believe it, so the swing vot­ers weren’t con­vinced and he cer­tain­ly did­n’t win over any Democrats.

Last night as it became clear that Oba­ma had won I found myself pro­found­ly dis­ap­point­ed. I did­n’t under­stand why until I real­ized that I would have been just as (if not more) dis­ap­point­ed if the elec­tion had gone the oth­er way. Some­where along the line I have lost hope in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process, and it’s not because Oba­ma won. It’s because I don’t know how we can suc­ceed while con­vinc­ing our­selves that the less­er of two repug­nant options is a mandate.

Am I more relieved that Rom­ney lost than I would have been if Oba­ma lost? I don’t know. I’m cer­tain­ly relieved in dif­fer­ent ways. I despair for a nation whose best hope is pick­ing a can­di­date who fails to rep­re­sent our val­ues slight­ly less than the oth­er guy.

To be sure, our nation would have sur­vived four years of Rom­ney and will sur­vive four more years of Oba­ma. A recent arti­cle in Rea­son Mag­a­zine com­pared the US Con­sti­tu­tion to a well-designed air­plane: it’ll still fly if three out of the four engines fail. The anal­o­gy is dead on. The Con­sti­tu­tion still pro­tects us despite the assaults on it from the left and right alike. But for how much longer can we con­tin­ue knock­ing engines off our wings? Can our nation sur­vive anoth­er forty years of putting the sec­ond-worst can­di­dates in posi­tions of great power?

Deci­sions between right and wrong are easy. The dif­fi­cult choic­es are between two things that are right. The two major polit­i­cal par­ties in Amer­i­ca present us a false choice: that we can have fis­cal and eco­nom­ic san­i­ty or social and civ­il lib­er­ties, but not both.

##How the polit­i­cal par­ties see one another##

It is dif­fi­cult to believe that lib­er­als in Amer­i­ca think that we ought to indis­crim­i­nate­ly spend more mon­ey, but it is cer­tain that they believe pas­sion­ate­ly in social issues: free­dom to mar­ry, a wom­an’s right to choose whether to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy, access to med­ical ser­vices, the polit­i­cal pow­er wield­ed by cor­po­rate enti­ties, and whether chil­dren in pub­lic schools ought to be indoc­tri­nat­ed with Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. It would be naïve to ignore the fact that some of these aims are expen­sive to address and like­wise naïve to believe that these issues can be ade­quate­ly addressed by gov­ern­ment even with great expense. Nonethe­less it is this set of issues which pri­mar­i­ly dri­ve those who lean to the lib­er­al side in Amer­i­ca. Repub­li­cans are scary to these peo­ple because even in today’s rel­a­tive­ly dis­mal eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment, we enjoy tremen­dous pros­per­i­ty. Tax­es creep incre­men­tal­ly and come in the form of tax «cuts» that actu­al­ly make the tax code more com­plex and make tax­es high­er for most peo­ple. If you’re not think­ing slip­pery slope, tax­es aren’t a huge issue for many peo­ple. Per­haps they should be, but in that light bal­anc­ing some­what high­er tax­es against the threat of back-alley abor­tions and their gay friends (or selves) being treat­ed as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens, yes of course the Repub­li­cans are scary.

Sim­i­lar­ly it is hard to believe that the major­i­ty of vot­ers who lean to the right care so strong­ly about the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­men­t’s man­date to inves­ti­gate med­ical pro­ce­dures, or prayer in schools that they are will­ing to dri­ve the nation into bank­rupt­cy over it. The right cares about reduc­ing the fed­er­al debt and sus­tain­able (if not bal­anced) bud­gets and are cor­rect­ly skep­ti­cal of gov­ern­men­t’s abil­i­ty to solve the prob­lems soci­ety faces even if we do spend tril­lions of dol­lars in the attempt. Democ­rats are scary to these peo­ple because the way that gov­ern­ment spends tax­pay­er mon­ey is not sus­tain­able and there is no scant his­tor­i­cal prece­dent¹ for the idea that we will stop spend­ing beyond our means as soon as things «get bet­ter.» In that light, yes of course Democ­rats are scary.

If we vote only based on our fears, we will con­tin­ue sink­ing. It’s like falling into quick­sand. If we keep try­ing to pull our feet out, we will get sucked far­ther in. But if we calm down we can keep our head aloft and work our way out of the morass.

Here, how­ev­er, the blame must fall on the Repub­li­cans, because they are both more cor­rect and more wrong. They are cor­rect in that the slip­pery slope of tax­ing and spend­ing isn’t get­ting any less slip­pery and isn’t get­ting us more results. This is not absolute; there are things that gov­ern­ment does suc­cess­ful­ly. But we ought to be tak­ing a very hard look at what gov­ern­ment is doing poor­ly and charg­ing us a lot for.

Where they are wrong is on social issues. Even if they aren’t wrong about social issues, they are wrong to place a high­er impor­tance on those issues than on the eco­nom­ic health of the nation. Because the Repub­li­cans at least sort of have the right idea eco­nom­i­cal­ly, it is uncon­scionable that they won’t com­pro­mise on social and civ­il issues. And by «com­pro­mise,» I’m not talk­ing about sit­ting politi­cians mak­ing deals with oth­er politi­cians. I’m talk­ing about what kinds of can­di­dates they keep offering.

Let’s take three hot-but­ton Repub­li­can issues; those issues no Repub­li­can can be nom­i­nat­ed with­out toe­ing the par­ty line on: free­dom to mar­ry, abor­tion, and school prayer.

##Free­dom to marry##

First the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage. We’re argu­ing over the def­i­n­i­tion of a word and a few tax breaks. The tax breaks are neg­li­gi­ble and words in lan­guage are con­stant­ly chang­ing. If you don’t believe that, I call your atten­tion to the word «gay.»

Sec­ond point about def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage: is it even an issue that ought to be decid­ed by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment? If you’re a Demo­c­rat it’s under­stand­able that you think the answer is yes, but if you’re a Repub­li­can, you’re sup­posed to believe in the Tenth Amend­ment and the lim­i­ta­tion of Fed­er­al pow­er. So even if you believe that ced­ing ground on the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage is dan­ger­ous, ought­n’t the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment stay out of the way so that same-sex cou­ples in Iowa can have the free­dom to mar­ry while they don’t in Texas?

Third point about the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, and fair warn­ing that it is a point I will repeat: even assum­ing you dis­agree with me on the above two points, there are sub­stan­tial num­bers of vot­ers out there that would love to vote for eco­nom­ic san­i­ty if it did­n’t mean vot­ing for a can­di­date that oppos­es the free­dom to mar­ry. Is it worth alien­at­ing those voters?

To clar­i­fy: it isn’t that the issue isn’t impor­tant. It is impor­tant to Democ­rats. It’s a deal-break­ing issue for Democ­rats. It’s dif­fi­cult to fath­om why Repub­li­cans think it’s more impor­tant than hav­ing a sol­vent nation. In case that was­n’t clear: any­one who believes that call­ing it a «civ­il union» instead of a «mar­riage» is more impor­tant than repeal­ing Oba­macare is not a Repub­li­can. Said per­son is an idiot.

##Abor­tion##

Here, I can see why the pro-life fac­tion places so much impor­tance on the issue. If you believe that human life begins at con­cep­tion, ter­mi­nat­ing human life is killing. And killing with­out life-threat­en­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is mur­der. I even under­stand why one would­n’t want excep­tions for rape and incest. In the case of rape we ought to pun­ish the rapist, not pun­ish a Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-pro­tect­ed Unit­ed States Cit­i­zen who did noth­ing wrong. I don’t agree that a zygote should enjoy all the Con­sti­tu­tion­al and legal pro­tec­tions that a human being who can sur­vive out­side of the womb can, but if I did, I’d prob­a­bly agree with all the rest.

How­ev­er, even if I did agree about that the life of the moth­er is a very impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. It’s self-defense. If you have to kill some­one to pro­tect your­self it isn’t con­sid­ered mur­der. There are dif­fer­ent stan­dards in dif­fer­ent states, but the con­cept is con­sis­tent. If the pres­ence of the unborn child — even a Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-pro­tect­ed cit­i­zen — threat­ens the life of the moth­er, the moth­er has the absolute right to defend her­self against that threat to her life.

This gets tricky in a few ways: first because it’s unclear how severe the threat to life needs to be in order for an abor­tion to be «med­ical­ly nec­es­sary». Is a 90% chance that the moth­er will die «med­ical­ly nec­es­sary»? How about a 50% chance? Heck, if I were in a sit­u­a­tion where there was even a 1 in 1000 chance I’d die I’d want to do what­ev­er was nec­es­sary not to be that 1 in 1000.

But it is worse than that: med­ical sit­u­a­tions — espe­cial­ly life-threat­en­ing ones — are time-sen­si­tive. Once some­one’s dead that’s it. There has to be lee­way for med­ical deci­sions that seemed to be the right and nec­es­sary thing to do at the time, even if on reflec­tion or pro­vid­ed with lat­er evi­dence it proved not to be nec­es­sary. Med­ical deci­sions don’t come with a book­ie’s point spread and fore­sight is rarely 20/20.

But it’s even stick­i­er than that. Who gets to make the deter­mi­na­tion whether an abor­tion was med­ical­ly nec­es­sary, jus­ti­fi­able self-defense, or homi­cide? A fed­er­al bureau­crat? A sher­if­f’s deputy with­out advanced med­ical train­ing? A doc­tor oth­er than the patien­t’s own doc­tor? Some­one with­out access to the patien­t’s med­ical records and his­to­ry? Well, maybe. But then you’d need to get the patien­t’s med­ical records and his­to­ry and tes­ti­mo­ny as to the specifics of the med­ical sit­u­a­tion. Med­ical records are priv­i­leged infor­ma­tion that in most cas­es can­not be released to a pros­e­cu­tor with­out a sub­poe­na. So is any infor­ma­tion that doc­tors and patients pro­vide one anoth­er. More­over, if you are pros­e­cut­ing a crime, the Fifth Amend­ment pro­vides near-absolute pro­tec­tion against the patient or the doc­tor pro­vid­ing any tes­ti­mo­ny against themselves.

So what am I say­ing here? Just that even if I agreed with the pro-life fac­tion on the prin­ci­ple, I can’t see any way to enforce any anti-abor­tion laws with­out repeal­ing a sub­stan­tial part of the Bill of Rights. And that is some­thing to which I am cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly opposed.

Even ignor­ing this, how can any Repub­li­can jus­ti­fy sup­port­ing a fed­er­al ban on abor­tions? At the state lev­el OK, but fed­er­al bans? Every piece of pro­posed fed­er­al antiabor­tion leg­is­la­tion has explic­it­ly claimed stand­ing under the Con­sti­tu­tion’s Inter­state Com­merce Clause.² So let me get this straight: you can claim to be a Repub­li­can and at the same time advo­cate expand­ing the scope of what the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment can do using the Inter­state Com­merce Clause as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion? With a straight face? Sor­ry, but I’m fil­ing that one under Not In Line with Repub­li­can Val­ues. Besides, unless the patient pays for the pro­ce­dure in one state and then the doc­tor per­forms the pro­ce­dure in anoth­er state, how can an abor­tion pos­si­bly be relat­ed to inter­state commerce?

By requir­ing that a can­di­date for fed­er­al elect­ed office be vocal­ly in favor of pro-life leg­is­la­tion, the Repub­li­cans alien­ate vot­ers who would be on the side of fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty except for the fear of the FBI inves­ti­gat­ing mis­car­riages. That’s a lot of rea­son­able peo­ple who would love to vote Repub­li­can except for this deal-break­er of an issue. I under­stand that it’s a deal-break­er for Repub­li­cans as well, but Repub­li­cans will have to let go of that. Why? Because any vic­to­ries Repub­li­cans will have on this issue will be out of line with Repub­li­can val­ues and will be entire­ly pyrrhic — at best sym­bol­ic — ones.

##School prayer##

Once again, Democ­rats fear gov­ern­ment endorse­ment or pro­mo­tion of reli­gion. Even if they are being over­ly cau­tious or over­ly sen­si­tive, it’s still a pret­ty impor­tant part of this nation’s found­ing prin­ci­ples. What do Repub­li­cans lose if they let go of this issue? Their kids might have less time in school where they have to sit qui­et­ly and do nothing.

Sor­ry, this too is not worth throw­ing away our coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty over. You send your kids to school so that they can work hard and learn infor­ma­tion, not to sit qui­et­ly doing noth­ing. Per­son­al­ly, I’m a big fan of sit­ting qui­et­ly doing noth­ing, but that does­n’t mean it ought to be part of a pub­lic school’s cur­ricu­lum. If you want your child to pray before start­ing the day, should­n’t you be doing some­thing about that at home, before your child leaves the house and goes off to school?

Besides, I’m pret­ty sure that Jesus had some­thing to say about pray­ing in pub­lic.³

##What am I ask­ing for?##

Repub­li­cans have no one to blame but them­selves for hand­ing Oba­ma the elec­tion. Repub­li­cans thought that putting a Repub­li­can who was fis­cal­ly mod­er­ate on the tick­et would get them the votes of inde­pen­dent and swing vot­ers. By doing so they mis­judged the impor­tance of their own mes­sage. So long as Repub­li­cans keep scar­ing off social­ly pro­gres­sive and fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers, Repub­li­cans will keep los­ing elec­tions. Amer­i­cans are hun­gry for eco­nom­ic reform, but increas­ing­ly Amer­i­cans are turned off by the planks in the Repub­li­can plat­form con­cern­ing social issues. That trend is only like­ly to increase. Regard­less, those are the issues that don’t even mat­ter very much to most Repub­li­cans with the excep­tion of abor­tion, and that’s an issue where Repub­li­cans can at best hope for a feel-good mea­sure that does­n’t change anything.

I’m not ask­ing that Repub­li­cans com­pro­mise Repub­li­can val­ues. I’m demand­ing that Repub­li­cans return to Repub­li­can val­ues, and get their pri­or­i­ties straight. You can com­plain about Oba­ma run­ning the coun­try into the poor­house all you like, but Repub­li­cans are the ones who chose Mitt Rom­ney, a can­di­date doomed to fail­ure because he com­pro­mised on the impor­tant issues and stood firm on the mean­ing­less ones.

What is dis­tress­ing is that the GOP shows no signs of learn­ing from that mistake.