[EL] Jeb's Non-Campaign "Honesty Problem" is not a Problem. It is not Dishonest

[Steve Hoersting]

Adam Smith asks this question: "Does anyone actually believe Jeb Bush has
not decided he is running for President?"

The answer is a resounding Yes: I believe, and many others should "actually
believe," Jeb Bush had not -- at the time he founded the Right to Rise
Leadership PAC and perhaps still has not -- decided he is running for
President.

Someone once said the most interesting battle in Washington remains the
battle between the Republican Establishment and the Republican Grassroots.
The debate is foundational. It is not tonal, tactical or aesthetic. And Jeb
Bush finds himself at its crossroads; caught in the very middle -- and Jeb
must know it.

(Sen. Mike Lee is another caught in the middle. Lee has just rewritten
Randy Barnett's *Restoring the Lost Constitution*, yet co-authored a
"reform conservative" tax package with Marco Rubio, chock-full of tax
credits. Tax credits, as opposed to an equal quantity of tax cuts, allow
the administrative state to direct where the money will go. And
Washington's role in directing where resources will go is a pivotal
question in the battle between the Grassroots and the Establishment).

Consider what Jeb must know as he weighs his decison.

There are those lining up against Jeb because they believe Jeb would mark a
"third term" for G.W. Bush. They include Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Glenn
Beck, Breitbart News, Red State, The Right Scoop, Reason, Heritage, and
others.

Here are those who prefer Marco Rubio to Jeb Bush because, ironically
enough, Jeb Bush is not considered G.W. Bush-enough for them --
specifically, that he is not neoconservative enough for them: Bloomberg
View (Ramesh Ponnuru); New York Times (Ross Douthat & David Brooks);
two-thirds of National Review (including Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg,
Rahem Salam and Yuval Levin); The Weekly Standard (top to bottom): a
majority of the Fox "All Stars;" half of the Washington Post opinion page;
the American Enterprise Institute; the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

*

I think the most interesting vehicle created in the run-up to the 2016 race
is the new Leadership PAC. This vehicle is obviously built on the
hybrid-PAC case, *Carey v. FEC. *And what has Jeb Bush done with it? Well,
he has done exactly what is to be done with a PAC. He has traveled the
country: to events, to meet-and-greets, to meetings with officeholders, to
meetings with donors, and most importantly, I suggest to you, to meetings
with opinion makers and think tank directors.

My points are these:

* Many are operating under the assumption that "Establishment" equals
"Bush." It never has. Since at least 1998, Establishment means
Neoconservative; these days, "Reform Conservative."

* Jeb Bush is not dishonest, not by a long shot. He is perhaps the most
honest aspirant in the 2016 field.

* And, you bet your life, there is a real chance they won't want Jeb
(something I wrote about 8 weeks ago, see below).

Regrettably for the battle between the Establishment and Grassroots, and
despite Adam's assertion to the contrary, there is a chance Jeb Bush "has
not decided he is running for President."

Why They Won’t Want Jeb


*Politics is a contest of philosophies—and ‘reform conservatives’ are the
only team on the field.*


By STEPHEN M. HOERSTING


Did you spot it? Last week's outpouring of headlines for presidential
hopeful Marco Rubio? Seth Mendel in *Commentary*
<https://www.commentarymagazine.com/topic/marco-rubio/>; Stephen Hayes in
the *Weekly Standard*
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rubio-shines-koch-forum_824428.html>;
Charles Krauthammer on *Special Report with Bret Baier,* crowning Senator
Rubio a “dark horse” with the best chance to win the 2016 Republican
nomination?


Zogby Analytics offered
<http://www.zogbyanalytics.com/news/549-zogby-analytics-gop-poll-mitt-leads-but-rubio-rises>
some numbers to go with the speculation. The sample was a spare 223
respondents, with a margin of error of nearly 7%—and Rubio polled three
points behind Mitt Romney (now out of the running) and tied with former
Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Still, Zogby’s headline and summary proclaimed a
promising Rubio future.


All the above headlines, but Zogby’s, came from the camp
<http://news.yahoo.com/brain-trusts-behind-2016-gop-185300373.html;_ylt=AwrSyCNa.URTkEsALo3_wgt.>
that long ago took Senator Rubio under its collective wing: “Reform
conservatives,” a loose coalition of some of the brightest pundits and
academics in America today. They include Yuval Levin of the Ethics and
Public Policy Center, Arthur Brooks and many of his team at the American
Enterprise Institute, scholars at the Manhattan Institute and editorial
writers at the nation’s largest newspapers. Make no mistake: They are the
Yankees, a franchise built on a Great Books
<http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/great_books.html> tradition, in a
league of their own.

But they are wrong about the role of government because they are wrong
about an eternal debate. And I’m convinced the Mud Hens could take ‘em if
the Hens would only take the field.


Reform Conservatism in Broad Strokes


Reform conservatives push policies from the moderate middle. They coexist
comfortably with a redistributionist state when it redistributes for a good
reason. And the reason informing all reform-conservative policies is the
noble purpose of rebuilding the middle class. “Safety net” programs should
be consolidated to yield efficiencies, but not scaled-back. Obamacare is to
be replaced before repealed, on a model like “the Medicare Part D program,”
because healthcare is a “right.”
<http://www.omaha.com/opinion/editorials/michael-gerson-right-to-health-care-has-long-existed/article_86343f3d-b370-5323-8708-8ce068ab8d02.html>
Gas
taxes are to be increased—not to raise revenue, nor because climate threats
are established science
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-myth-of-settled-science/2014/02/20/c1f8d994-9a75-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html>—but
on moral grounds; to deter individuals from choosing “land yachts.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-raise-the-gas-tax-a-lot/2015/01/08/5b4b407c-976f-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html>
Privatization
is a policy scarcely seen.


Reformers don’t just offer policies, they offer political advice. Their
most talented analyst may be Henry Olsen, also of the EPPC, whose
presentations to the Cato Institute
<http://www.cato.org/events/republican-partys-civil-war-will-freedom-win?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=686e7af9c0-events&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-686e7af9c0-141591434&mc_cid=686e7af9c0&mc_eid=61dada0cb7>,
AEI or writings on “Jeb’s Prospects” in *National Review*
<https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/395967/jebs-prospects> are
nearly always the same. Olsen culls the latest polling data, finds in it a
new American preference for transfer payments over market opportunity, and
closes by concluding that any Republican presidential hopeful had better
craft a platform that maintains the payments or increases them.


But the policies only give the reader a flavor. Any can be jettisoned, here
or there, to secure a larger vision; “a conservative governing vision,” one
outlined by reform conservatives in a thoughtful tract called *Room to Grow*
<http://ygnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Room-To-Grow.pdf>*.*


The reform “conservative approach to public policy,” writes Yuval Levin,
“points toward putting in place programs that enable a kind of bottom-up,
incremental, continuous learning process rather than imposing wholesale
solutions from above.” The wary reader will say that leaves open the
possibility of imposing solutions from above, just not “wholesale.” And the
reader is not far off. Reformers want the federal government to foster
civil society, “that space between the individual and the state,” skipping
over any objection that the space between individuals and the state is the
province of individuals.


Levin’s “approach to problem-solving … involves three steps,” each
beginning with the letter E:


experimentation (allowing service providers to try different ways of
solving a problem), evaluation (enabling recipients or consumers of those
services to decide which approaches work for them and which do not), and
evolution (keeping those that work and dumping those that fail).



The reformers’ vision is of an administrative state ready to synthesize a
society Alexis de Toqueville knew as organic. *New York Times* columnist
David Brooks offers an alarming emanation of this three-E approach—one
Yuval Levin himself might publicly disavow—in a piece called The Big Debate
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/opinion/brooks-the-big-debate.html?_r=0>.
Get it and read between the lines.


Enter Jeb


Where does former Florida Governor and presidential aspirant Jeb Bush fit
into this governing vision?


Well, he co-authored a book on immigration reform and has pledged support
for Common Core. But the immigration book is co-authored by
liberty-litigator Clint Bolick. Privatization, not reform, was the
watchword of his successful tenure as Florida governor. And, although CNN
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/politics/jeb-bush-2016-detroit/> pre-billed
Jeb’s Wednesday speech to the Detroit Economic Club
<http://www.c-span.org/video/?324174-1/former-florida-governor-jeb-bush-r-address-detroit>
as a nod to reform conservatism, Bush told the Club that “standing against
dynamism is a losing battle”— a theme that echoes his speech to thousands
of attendees on January 23rd at the National Auto Dealers Association.


There Jeb said, “Millions of Americans want to move forward in their
lives—they want to rise—but they are losing hope.” Poor management isn’t
the problem; it is the scope of the regulatory reach. “Far from spreading
opportunity, our government gets in the way each and every day: another
law, another tax, another fee or another regulation.” Washington has
“created a complicated society on top of people’s aspirations. And today,
in America, fewer and fewer people are rising up.”


*Rising up…* Jeb borrowed the theme from Congressman Paul Ryan—“the Right
to Rise”—and used it as the title for an op-ed in the *Wall Street Journal*
more than a year ago and as the name for his leadership PAC. But the theme
has been reviewed by reform conservatives and found wanting.


What’s my evidence? The communications arc of Paul Ryan himself. In 2009,
Paul Ryan said <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmW19uoyuO8>, “Ayn Rand,
more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of defending the morality of
capitalism; the morality of individualism.” In his bid for the vice
presidency, Ryan said, “Our rights come from God, not government.” Later in
the campaign, Ryan began showing signs of pressure: Okay, okay, I “totally
reject” Rand’s defense of capitalism, he said, before adopting a
communications strategy in the form of an innocuous question coined by
Speaker Boehner: “Where are the jobs, Mr. President?” These days, Paul Ryan
communicates far differently from his message in 2009. His latest book, *The
Way Forward,* comes right out and says so: I am a reform conservative.


What didn’t meet with reformers’ taste in Paul Ryan’s campaign will not woo
them to Jeb’s. “*Assisted* to rise” may be a theme more to their liking,
but a “*right* to rise,” it seems, they cannot abide.


Erasing Aristotle’s Cultural Avatar


And if smoke means fire, dropping the moral defender of individual rights
from Republican talking points is a task worthy of follow-through: Paul
Ryan hasn’t been the only Republican official invited to disparage Ayn
Rand. Utah Sen. Mike Lee told
<http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/12/hey-randians-theres-more-to-life-than-economics/>
The Heritage Foundation that America is modeled more upon Norman Rockwell
paintings than any character in *The Fountainhead*. Senate Leader Mitch
McConnell journeyed to AEI to deliver a message
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mitch-mcconnell-populist-pitch> of his own two
days after defeating Matt Bevin in the Kentucky Senate primary: Average
Republican voters aren’t exactly do-it-yourselfers, like John Galt.


That’s a lot of criticism—by authoritative voices, in prepared statements,
from an awfully high perch—being paid the late author of a non-genre
backlist whose last novel was published three generations ago. Why aren’t
congressional leaders invited to distance themselves from Hemingway’s
drinking, Nabakov’s pedophilia or Stephen King’s gore? Perhaps for reasons
that might trouble good men like McConnell, Ryan and Lee, if true, and
fully understood.


Perhaps it is that none of the other novelists based their works on
Aristotle’s epistemology
<http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second-ebook/dp/B002OSXD8C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422545653&sr=1-1&keywords=introduction+to+objectivist+epistemology&pebp=1422545657274&peasin=B002OSXD8C>.
None has strong ties to St. Thomas Aquinas’s rediscovery of Aristotle; a
rediscovery that lifted humanity out of a Dark Age ruled by Plato’s
philosopher kings. No popular novelists but Rand (and Umberto Eco
<http://www.amazon.com/Name-Rose-Blu-ray-Sean-Connery/dp/B004YCKJ74/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_twi_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1422561428&sr=1-1&keywords=the+name+of+the+rose+dvd>)
spend much time explaining how a rediscovered Aristotle led Isaac Newton to
a scientific method that birthed The Age of Enlightenment—1750 to 1850—the
century that bookends such achievements as occurred in 1776 (the
Declaration), 1789 (the Constitution) and 1791 (the Bill of Rights).


Indeed, in their book *Neoconservatism*—which no practitioner of politics
can afford to ignore—Clemson University Professor C. Bradley Thompson and
Yaron Brook have a chapter titled, “The Long Trek Back to Plato.” And “
[n]ever
<https://books.google.com/books?id=Apj1tT3emAIC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=Karl+Popper+was+a+man+more+in+earnest+in+his+hostility+to+the+individual&source=bl&ots=PAxp_oULBg&sig=jLifcuBX8WTrbts6eCUWNdgRmk0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XZHKVJbqIcW-ggTCgIP4Cg&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Karl%20Popper%20was%20a%20man%20more%20in%20earnest%20in%20his%20hostility%20to%20the%20individual&f=false>…was
a man more in earnest in his hostility to the individual” than Plato, at
least according to Karl Popper, who wrote *The Open Society and Its
Enemies* after
escaping Europe during World War II.


Neoconservatism isn’t merely a foreign policy persuasion and it didn’t go
out with the G. W. Bush Administration; it fits comfortably within that
brand of conservatism championed by reformers. As recently as January
26, *Weekly
Standard* editor William Kristol—who has been talking down
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3142245/posts> a Bush-Clinton
presidential race—praised
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/men-chests_823828.html> the
late scholars Walter Berns and Harry Jaffa for their appreciation of “the
problem identified by Leo Strauss in *Natural Right and History*” and of
“the weaknesses of the modern accounts of freedom.” Kristol’s piece is
brisk, moving, and commands agreement; written as it is against the
backdrop of President Obama’s and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s
failure to turn the tide of radical Islamic terrorism. But if you’re
nonetheless wondering what the “weaknesses” are in “accounts of freedom,”
or why Professor Strauss used the singular *Natural Right* in his title and
not the plural Natural Rights, as Locke and Jefferson were accustomed to
using, get Professor Thompson’s book
<http://www.amazon.com/Neoconservatism-Obituary-C-Bradley-Thompson/dp/1594518319/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422704740&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=thompson+neoconservativism+obituary>
and read it.


Competing Statements …


Senator Ted Cruz uttered two remarkable sentences in a speech
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWR2MeQMmM8> sponsored by Heritage Action
early this year. His first sentence proffers a working hypothesis: “This
town is fundamentally corrupt.” The hypothesis is that donors, lobbyists,
consultants and cronies are driving the agenda and presidential primary
process in Washington D.C.


Careful: Talk like that may resuscitate the campaign laws that had kept
grassroots conservatives in the wilderness pre-*SpeechNow*. And Cruz should
consider this: If congressional leadership on the right and left are now
convinced it is morally proper to manage the economic incentives of
middle-class Americans from Washington—whether “wholesale” or by the three
Es—then widespread adoption of his corruption hypothesis can result in only
one policy outcome: sacrificing the businessman’s right to defend himself;
sacrificing the First Amendment right to petition the government.


But Cruz’s hypothesis misses a more important factor. What donors think is
driven mostly by pundits and editorials. Reformer Ross Douthat crippled
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-mitt-the-insurgent.html>
Mitt Romney’s third attempt as much any fight for donors. Governor Mike
Huckabee is poised to dilute the grassroots vote while writers Hayes and
Krauthammer are disposed to slowing Jeb’s rise with silence or faint
praise. And here is the point: If such moves are successful, a major shift
in the primary running will have occurred. Yet no one foresees donors,
consultants and lobbyists holding-things-up. They will line-up comfortably
behind Marco Rubio: Consultants and lobbyists, the old saying goes, “will
be for what will be.”


That is why Cruz’s second statement is far more interesting: “There are
some people in this town who will intone in gravelly voices, ‘We need to
get things done.’” Getting things done, of course, is the Establishment’s
euphemism for Republicans “governing”
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/15/the-real-obamacare-fight-is-between-establishment-republicans-and-the-tea-party/>
from Capitol Hill rather than checking President Obama. The gravelly voice
Cruz hears is the ubiquitous echo of Leo Strauss, echoing through the wise,
late Irving Kristol, who dedicated his life to a brand of Republican
politics now coming into its own with reform conservatism. It is the
gravelly voice of the leading All Stars on the Fox News Channel since its
inception, and the gravelly voice of reform conservative scholars
counseling “moderation” and “prudence” to Republican congressmen and
women—the only coequal officers empowered to slow a galloping Executive
overreach. “The courts,” for their part, writes reformer Ramesh Ponnuru,
“rightly treat the balance of power between the legislative and executive
branches … as political questions.”


… And Competing Revolutions, differing on an Eternal Debate


What’s more, Cruz’s second statement raises the $64,000 conundrum: Is the
gulf between the Establishment and Grassroots a matter of tactics or
philosophy?


Michael Needham, who hosted Senator Cruz that day at Heritage Action, took
recently to the pages of *National Affairs*
<http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/building-a-real-reform-mandate>,
a quarterly journal edited by Yuval Levin. Needham’s piece takes in good
faith the Establishment’s excuse for inertia—tactics, not substance—and
argues effectively to his cautious brethren why the Grassroots’ tactics are
sound: the state is growing and time is short. But Needham will come to see
that the differences between the two coalitions are substantive, or more
precisely, philosophical. Needham’s objective is to resuscitate the
American Revolution of 1776—at least to slow the train; to return at least
to such days as Speaker Gingrich effectively checking the Clinton
Administration—when budgets were balanced and the economy roaring. Needham
well understands that liberty, like an archway, is strengthened by the
pushback of coequal and opposite forces.


The reformers’ objective, however, is to cement the Judicial Revolution of
1937: “Reform conservatism,” writes Yuval Levin in *Room to Grow*,


*involves* *not a return to some fabled past, but a modernization of our*
antiquated, lumbering, *bureaucratic, mid-twentieth century governing
institutions* that enables a leaner and more responsive
twenty-first-century government to help a complex and diverse twenty-first
century society solves its problems.

(Emphasis added). And that means the administrative state.


But the two revolutions cannot be reconciled, as Professor John Marini
teaches in *Imprimis*
<http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/file/archives/pdf/2013_10_Imprimis.pdf>*, *and
daily operations of the Obama Administration confirm. Either planners will
be ridden-down by the rule of law—which entails engagement by coequals—or “Law
[will] be replaced by Plan.”
<http://www.amazon.com/Cave-Light-Aristotle-Struggle-Civilization-ebook/dp/B003EY7JG2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422704277&sr=1-1&keywords=the+cave+and+the+light&pebp=1422704279820&peasin=B003EY7JG2>

Senator Cruz should focus less on donors and consider a more likely
hypothesis: *Today’s Republican leaders repeatedly vote Moderate because
their philosophical backers are truly hard core.* Philosophy, far more than
funding, moves the world.


Philosophy shapes competing visions of regulatory structure because it
derives from an eternal debate on the fundamental functioning of the human
mind—a debate between St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, Locke and
Hobbes, through Jefferson and Hamilton, Goldwater and Rockefeller, and
these days raging between Will and Krauthammer, and ex-administration
officials Levin
<http://www.amazon.com/Ameritopia-Unmaking-Mark-R-Levin-ebook/dp/B005O2YWVC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422703316&sr=8-1&keywords=levin+ameritopia&pebp=1422703322149&peasin=B005O2YWVC>
and Levin: Is a man to have his liberty respected because, in the
overwhelming majority of circumstances, he can govern his day-to-day
affairs? Or is he entitled to an officious compassion because he can’t?


It’s Time to Pivot


In *Sons of Wichita*, Daniel Schulman credits philanthropist Charles Koch
(and Koch’s political advisors) with this saying (though the words are
Schulman’s): “Politicians are merely vessels for the ideas you fill them
with[;] stage actors working off a script produced by the nation’s
intellectual class.” Reform conservatives understand this maxim better than
any coalition battling under the Republican banner, and have moved
assiduously to provide Republican leaders with a “governing vision.” All
the other coalitions are pushing piecemeal policy prescriptions to
politicians uncertain of what the overall objective is or why they’re there.


But as Rush Limbaugh warned the CPAC conference in 2009, in the long run an
integrated philosophy defeats even the best public policy proposals. Daily
we are seeing evidence of Limbaugh’s warning. Yet the counterargument is
always put to the officeholders, never to their backers in the punditry or
intellectual class.


Competing coalitions need to pivot; to dissect reform conservatism and
repeatedly make plain its friction with the Founding; to rekindle the
eternal debate. Do that and Republican leaders will return to them in time.


Caring Won’t Suffice


By all available evidence, Jeb Bush cares deeply about the unemployed, the
underemployed and the unemployable. And, on matters of political
philosophy, he’s no empty vessel, but his own man—with his ‘best foot’
anchored in Enlightenment individualism. Upon reflection, he has made a
choice in the eternal debate. His solution for an ailing America is to
re-embrace The Right to Rise for able-bodied individuals; to scale back the
administrative state and set free civil society—not to benevolently usurp
the latter by prudently managing the former.


This will be his undoing, as far as reform conservatives are concerned, as
long as Marco Rubio remains a viable presidential contender (though other
reasons will be given). For reform conservatives, too, have chosen sides in
the eternal debate and are betting Marco Rubio’s political philosophy is a
vessel with substantial space to fill. Or, putting it into words they might
prefer the public to hear, reform conservatives see Rubio’s philosophy as
the one with “room to grow.”


And, to their eternal way of thinking, where better to grow than in office?


Heads up, Marco Rubio. They’re “looking at you.”
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-problem-with-reform-conservatism/>


*Stephen M. Hoersting is former general counsel to the National Republican
Senatorial Committee and of counsel to the Republican National Committee in
*McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
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