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

Wed Apr 22 13:26:35 PDT 2015

Bollocks.  There is a huge gulf between a 10 year old saying I wanna be president and a former governor traveling around the country headlining events to raise money for a supposedly uncoordinated superpac.   It's not thought police.  It is dishonest, And it's a pretty good set of facts to show that the process by which money flows  into supposedly non-coordinated independent committees has a far greater potential for corruption than direct contributions since the money is far greater but the song and dance by the candidate is the same.  

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 22, 2015, at 1:05 AM, "David A. Holtzman" <David at HoltzmanLaw.com> wrote:
> 
> This “testing the waters” stuff sounds crazy.  I skimmed the CLC material.  The “waters” are becoming quicksand.
> 
> When a girl or boy tells a school assembly, “When I grow up I want to be President of the United States”, apparently that is of concern under federal law.  And if the kid grows up and pays for undisclosed private therapy costing >$5,000+ every 4 years, always asking, “Should I run?” (Should I “become a candidate”?), the kid becomes a lawbreaker upon reaching presidential age, and possibly before.
> 
> Must the kid really disclose the therapy? 
> Or does the Constitution require a zone of privacy somewhere?  
> [As David Brooks wrote recently, “Privacy is important for communities because there has to be a space where people with common affiliations can develop bonds of affection and trust. There has to be a boundary between us and them. Within that boundary, you look out for each other; you rally to support each other; you cut each other some slack; you share fierce common loyalties.”]
> 
> Can the government really invade the confidentiality of private political polling by requiring disclosure of payments to polling firms?  I doubt it could do that for market research in the business realm, especially if the subject matter of the research would be revealed.  In both cases, there would be some shame involved in taking actions that suggest a consultant came up with unfavorable results.  Pride could push improvident candidacies and marginal business ventures.  It sounds perverse, but such rules would make people want to know the answer before they ask the question.
> 
> 
> The whole regulatory scheme here smacks of lurking Thought Police.  (“Come with us, we know you are doing illegal research.”)  Maybe it’s constitutional (as prior restraint of appearance of corruption?).  But when a real prosecutor presents the case, how does something a politician said out loud, out of court, even on TV, count as admissible evidence, not inadmissible hearsay (is there a hearsay rule exception here)?
> 
> Regulating pre-candidacies seems absurd; an instance of government overreach; a burden on political association; a tax benefiting a peculiar compliance industry; a scheme to dissuade newcomers.
> 
> If you’re really so worried about people paying big bucks at fundraisers to get a pre-candidate’s ear, just move up the deadline for becoming a candidate. 
> 
>   - dah
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On 4/21/2015 4:31 AM, Tyler Creighton wrote:
>> Jeb does his best thinking at $100k/plate fundraisers and Republican leadership summits in New Hampshire. He's headlined 47 fundraisers for his super PAC since January.
>> 
>> Tyler Creighton | tyler at rethinkmedia.org  |  Media Associate
>> ReThink Media | (925) 548-2189 mobile 
>> @ReThinkDemocrcy | @ReThink_Media | @TylerCreighton
>> 
>>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 3:32 PM, Trevor Potter <tpotter at capdale.com> wrote:
>>> Brad is of course right about " merely thinking" of running--it is the spending of funds for the hiring of staff and advisers, or polling, or travel to early primary/ caucus states, or other spending to explore whether to become a candidate, that triggers the " testing " regulations.
>>> Trevor Potter
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>> On Apr 17, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu<mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> That's not really correct. Merely thinking about running doesn't require you to form a "testing the waters" committee. Otherwise, we'd have hundreds of the things.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Bradley A. Smith
>>> 
>>> Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
>>> 
>>> Professor of Law
>>> 
>>> Capital University Law School
>>> 
>>> 303 E. Broad St.
>>> 
>>> Columbus, OH 43215
>>> 
>>> 614.236.6317
>>> 
>>> http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx
>>> 
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] on behalf of Tyler Creighton [tyler at rethinkmedia.org<mailto:tyler at rethinkmedia.org>]
>>> Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2015 11:18 AM
>>> To: Steve Hoersting
>>> Cc: law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: [EL] Jeb's Non-Campaign "Honesty Problem" is not a Problem. It is not Dishonest
>>> 
>>> He may not have decided yet, but as your post assumes he is in the process of "deciding" which comes with its own fundraising limits and campaign rules. That is where he is being dishonest and breaking the law, as the CLC explains               here<http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/Testing_the_Waters_and_the_Big_Lie_2.19.15.pdf> and here<http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/news/press-releases/fec-complaints-against-presidential-hopefuls-show-widespread-violations-total>.
>>> 
>>> Tyler Creighton | tyler at rethinkmedia.org<mailto:tyler at rethinkmedia.org> | Media Associate
>>> ReThink Media<http://rethinkmedia.org> | (925) 548-2189 mobile
>>> @ReThinkDemocrcy<https://twitter.com/rethinkdemocrcy> | @ReThink_Media<https://twitter.com/rethink_media> | @TylerCreighton<http://www.twitter.com/tylercreighton>
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com<mailto:hoersting at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 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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> David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
> david at holtzmanlaw.com
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