Ashby 2008

Congratulations to John McCain, almost assuredly the Republican candidate for the general election. I have to say, this election has been like no other presidential election I can remember (1980, Carter v. Reagan, was the first for me). To the candidates’ credit, we have been presented with far more policy options from clearly differentiated candidates than I imagined possible, and it was refreshing. Yes, it was even good to have Tancredo up there, offering his thoughts for the marketplace of ideas.

I have to say, I thought if the Republicans went against type, it would have been to the gay-loving, baby-killing ex-mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, for the party to actually nominate an old-school, non-delusional traditional fiscal conservative, is, hopefully, proof that Republican voters are ready to move beyond the ideologically driven incompetence and profligacy that defined the party under Bush.

McCain is very much a traditional Republican, and, no matter what the economic fantasists of talk radio say, an actual fiscal conservative. The type of fiscal conservative that remembers that the U.S. government has a balance sheet like any other economic entity, and layering on trillions of dollars of debt is not good for the long-term health of the country. The type that actually knows the difference between a tax cut and a tax deferral. Back in the day, we didn’t have to talk about these variations of “fiscal conservative”, because every Republican believed in a balanced budget, (“What kind of a fool would think that borrowed money didn’t have to be repaid?”). Let’s hope McCain is taking the party back in that direction, and we can stop deluding ourselves that tax cuts pay for themselves and so don’t steal from our children. Supply Side, like that other famous economic fantasy, Socialism, needs to be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Surely, one of the best things about McCain being the nominee is that it takes the issue of Torture out of the election. We won’t be subjected to the moral blight of Romney bragging about the terrorists he’d torture, just to prove he’s tougher on terrorism than the Democrats. For this if nothing else, the Republican Party should be grateful – McCain will keep the Republican Party from sounding as if it is run by a bunch of eleven year-old boys trying to prove how cold-blooded they are.

Hope springs eternal, of course, but I am hoping McCain will actually campaign as an old-school, balanced budget conservative. There would be no surer proof of the Straight Talk Express than for him to eventually come out and say that we need to let the Bush tax cuts expire. For McCain to say that, yes, it will be a little painful, but it is much better for the long-term health of our country. For him to again affirm that the Republican Party believes deficit spending, along with all of its other problems, is morally wrong. Yes, I am hoping that McCain will just come out and say that the Supply Side experiment failed, and we need to go back to the boring old approach of actually paying for the government we use, when we use it. Our economy is strong enough to handle it. Our citizens are strong enough to handle it as well.

So Good Luck, Senator John McCain. I hope you do your values proud. I hope you do our country proud.

I have said that some portion of the Republican Party no longer believes in the equality of individuals, that they do not believe that all people do have the ability and right to choose the course of their own lives. The recent Indiana law increasing the identification requirements to vote is an example of this loss of faith in humanity. Explicit in the law is the thought that not all individuals have the right to help choose their own government, that there are some people that don’t have the level of integration into our society necessary to justify their participating in the electoral process. Even more so, the Indiana law passed by Republicans is a further example of the strange madness that has gripped the Republican Party and caused it to abandon every principle it had. The Indiana regulation solves a problem that doesn’t exist with a solution that wouldn’t work anyway, requires government to have a higher identification threshold than the private market, and shifts the cost of compliance with the regulation onto individuals. Think about it – the Republicans are pushing an unnecessary, ineffective, unfunded mandate onto private citizens. Newt Gingrich, where are you when we need you?

As background, the Republican Party has made a concerted effort at the state level over the last several years to change various voter registration and identification procedures to make it harder for some people to exercise their right to vote. Primarily people who might tend to vote for Democrats. This effort was part of Karl Rove’s push to show that the Republicans could be even better at gaming the system than the Democrats were. The effort has continued largely unchallenged because the Bush Administration has for all practical purposes shut down the part of the Justice Department that oversaw voting rights violations. A few of the state efforts have been outright silly, and were struck down by lower courts. Some of the efforts were less silly, and upheld by lower courts.

The Indiana case is an example – it was upheld by a judge in a lower court, actually by a very well respected, if conservative, judge. Indiana is now requiring a photo identification before a person is allowed to vote. Previously, people were able to bring two forms of non-photo ID. If someone now shows up at the voting station without a photo ID, they are allowed to vote provisionally, but must go to the local election commission within a period of time to prove who they are. The law was challenged on the basis that some portion of Indiana’s citizens do not have a photo ID, and thus the law infringes on their right to vote.

In the Indiana case, the lower court judge ruled that the law wasn’t unreasonable, because a photo ID is required for any number of private market activities. He noted, for instance, that it could be difficult to cash a check without a photo ID, or board an airplane. Essentially the judge was suggesting that a photo ID was already a requirement for participating in our modern economy, and thus not unreasonable for the state of Indiana to require this same level of documentation.

Except, of course, that a photo ID is not required to participate in the economy. The people who are the plaintiffs in the case, who lack photo IDs, have managed to live their lives just fine. They have managed to hold down jobs, get back and forth from those jobs and shop and live their lives, all without using a photo ID to prove to the private market that they were who they said they were. Unless I am mistaken, the state of Indiana does not require a photo ID to be presented before paying taxes. Yes, the state of Indiana will take a person’s money without a photo ID, but won’t let them vote without a photo ID. The state of Indiana is effectively requiring a higher level of documentation than the private market mandates. Who would have thought – the Republican Party deciding that the free market’s ID requirements were insufficient, and that the government needed to go beyond the free market to correct this insufficiency.

Republicans initially claimed that the laws were necessary because of voter impersonation fraud – one person pretending to be another person, and then using that person’s vote. They had to back off of this position because it is essentially a lie – to my knowledge there have not been any cases of voter impersonation filed in the state of Indiana. The fall-back position of the Republican’s has been that voter impersonation could happen, and the new law was a way of protecting against it before the fact. Yes, the Republicans are arguing that while it wasn’t a problem yet, it might be, and so government action was justified. Who would have thought - the Republican Party wanting government action to solve a problem that didn’t exist.

It’s worth noting that if the problem did exist, this law wouldn’t actually fix it. When Republicans viewed facts as allies, not enemies, they actually tried to imagine how laws would work in real world situations – they tried to compare their assumptions against reality. The Indiana law will certainly make it harder on the crackpot who forgot to register, and so decides at the last minute to try to vote under someone else’s name just so they can have their say in the system. However if a person or a group of people decides to actually steal an election through voter impersonation, it’s pretty safe to assume that they will go that little extra step of creating the fake IDs they need. It’s not that hard, and if someone is that committed to stealing the election, I’m betting that they won’t be deterred by the minimal effort it takes to use a laser printer and laminating machine to do the theft right.

If the Indiana Republican Party really did believe that voter impersonation was a material problem, then the logical solution would be for the state of Indiana to issue Photo ID voter identification cards to all residents, with some kind of built-in technology to protect against forged cards, and then put ID card verification systems at each voting station. However while effective, this solution would obviously cost the state government a fair amount of money. Instead, the state’s solution is to shift the compliance cost to individuals – to make each person have to pay a small sum of money to prove they are who they said they are. Not a large sum, mind you – I can’t imagine getting an Indiana official state identification card costs more than $10 or $20 dollars. Still, on principal, this is a Republican Administration passing a mandate and forcing the cost of the mandate to be paid by private citizens. Who would have thought – the Republican Party actively promoting unfunded mandates.

It is very possible that the Supreme Court will uphold the Indiana law. They might decide that it is nefarious, but not necessarily illegal, because the negative impact on people’s ability to vote can be remedied. The Democrats will have to work a little harder for a while – they will need to spend time before the elections making sure their supporters have a photo ID. The people who want to vote, with a bit more effort and forethought, will still be able to vote. However the case does shine a light on how far the Republican Party has strayed from its principles. There was a time Republicans viewed Democratic gaming of the system as something to be stopped, not topped. There was a time Republicans actually believed all people deserved the right to vote, and that taxation without representation was an affront to our belief in the equality of all men and women.

When I read about the CIA having destroyed video tapes of interrogations of a terrorist, my first thought was that I was glad.

I certainly don’t blame the CIA for wanting to protect itself. This is an administration that has proven time and again a willingness to duck responsibility for its actions and allow underlings to be punished for following orders. What the guards did at Abu Ghraib was terrible, but does anyone doubt that they weren’t following at least vague orders? Does anyone doubt that someone up the chain of command ordered the guards to figure out a way to dehumanize and scare the prisoners, as a way of softening them up for interrogation? Of course, the guards went to jail not the deciders.

To my understanding, what the CIA did on the tapes was allowed for under written presidential directive – the agents weren’t breaking the law as it was understood by them at the time. Nevertheless, looking at pictures or video of even mild torture is surely a visceral experience that churns the pit of your stomach and makes you want to insure that someone is punished. A person at the CIA rightly recognized that Cheney wasn’t going to stand up in court and take responsibility for the torture – it would have been a low-level CIA employee going to jail. The destruction of the tapes, in some way, is yet another example of the costs of an administration that lacks the moral character to take responsibility for its actions.

In addition, I have to say, from the standpoint of the United States I am also happy the tapes were destroyed. I didn’t want to feel the visceral feeling I had when I first saw the Abu Ghraib pictures. I certainly don’t want to feel the churning in my stomach that would have resulted from seeing fellow Americans torture people, even if it might have been just mild torture. I don’t need video to know that what was done was wrong, nor will our country need video to remember enough of this to insure that it never happens again. No President before has ever ordered torture, and no President after this President will ever order torture again – even Republicans have secretly come to the realization of just how bad in how many ways this Administration is. I cannot believe that Rudi Giuliani, if elected through some implosion of the Democratic Party, would continue the use of torture. Either quietly or loudly, the use of torture will be discontinued in January 2009.

I would like to let this blight on our country, like the Bush Administration, fade into history, remembering just enough to insure we never again entrust our country to someone of such weak moral character. Once Bush is out of office, we will again go back to being a country that believes that all men and women are endowed by their creators with certain inalienable rights, and that even mild torture is an affront to God. I ask again, wistfully, what happened to my Republican Party?