Stick to the Code, Sen. McCain

Republicans in the branches of Congress and throughout the Washington establishment are hiking enthusiasts, we can only conclude. How can we not? In the three and a half years that have elapsed since the election of 2004 we have demonstrated an incorrigible determination to delve deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the political wilderness. We were punished for this avant garde tendency in ‘06, decisively losing our governing majorities in Congress that we so uselessly squandered. A lesson was to be gleaned from this punishment, a lesson which has apparently fallen upon inattentive ears.

The establishment GOP for too long has been far too tolerant of corruption within its midst. Residing within government simply to gorge upon its trough is antithetical to every principle which defines the party, yet too few within the party’s apparatus are willing to undertake the dirty work of preserving the integrity of those principles and of the party in general. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

Pork-barrel spending—the nectar and sustenance, nay the seed of corruption—also flies antagonistic to our party’s principles, yet in the years since we have controlled Congress until this day it has grown exponentially among the caucuses in the House and Senate, even after our ass-whipping in November ‘06. A recent proposition by House Minority Leader John Boehner that House Republicans adhere to a moratorium on pork was easily defeated. What is more, some of the caucuses’ most disreputable appropriators maintain their positions of leadership within the caucus and on committees. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

Though many good, credible conservative solutions there be, Republicans in Congress still provide no compelling agenda to address the country’s problems and the concerns of the American people, such as health care, energy, the economy, Iran, North Korea, etc. Democrats have their own (big government, terrible) ideas, we appear to have none. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

The upshot is that Republicans face losses this year every bit as significant as those in ‘06, losses which will strengthen the Democrats’ grasp on the levers of power in Washington and their ability to inflict real harm through their disastrous prescriptions. It does not help Republicans that their own malfeasances have coincided with Democrats’ long-awaited realization that to win Congressional seats within generally conservative America you have to run candidates who are themselves conservative, specifically on social issues, immigration, spending, etc. Witness Travis Childers’ recent victory in a House special election in heretofore Republican Mississippi.

Without reformation, complacent Republicans will only watch their seats dwindle further and further year after year. This leaves Sen. McCain in the position of having to enforce the Pirate’s Code: Whoever falls behind, is left behind. He has to press ahead with his reform agenda, touching upon those issues of concern to the American voter that Congressional Republicans at least appear to be ignoring. Be prepared to go it alone; if Republicans in Congress want to follow great, they’ll be doing all of us a favor. If they do not, press forward regardless. I wouldn’t wait for them to return from their furlough into the wilderness.

It's Been Decided For Awhile, Folks

The political commentariat is now operating under the assumption that Sen. Obama has at long last clinched the Democratic nomination by his landslide victory in the North Carolina primary and his near upset of Sen. Clinton in Indiana. This is wrong from the standpoint that Sen. Obama was effectively assured of the nomination following his string of victories following Super Tuesday, long before this past Tuesday. Indiana and North Carolina did not change anything except convince many of what was already, for all intents and purposes, inevitable.

Sen. Clinton intends to carry on, of course, because she is Sen. Clinton. As David Kahane writes, “She’s not going to quit because she has nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do. She lives for this, and without it, she has no life. In fact, without it, she doesn’t exist at all.” Since her husband raised his right hand in ‘93 she has been preparing for the day that she could raise hers. Until Sen. Obama’s nomination is official, she is not going to let that go.

Though it is all but inevitable at this point, it is only all but inevitable. That is how she will view the situation at least. She will look forward to large victories in the upcoming Kentucky and West Virginia primaries, hoping significant margins there will stoke further discussion of Sen. Obama’s inability to win over white, blue-collar voters and give Democratic super-delegates further pause as they size up the strength of Sen. Obama as a general election candidate. She will also continue to push for the seating of Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates at the convention (she sent a letter to Sen. Obama today laughably urging him to support that effort), arguing–not without some semblance of a point–that to deny those delegates seats would be to disenfranchise Democratic voters in those respective states and harm Democrats politically in what will be two pivotal battlegrounds in the fall.

Ultimately, these efforts will fail and Sen. Obama, warts and all, will accept the nomination in Denver this August. All that is really left to be decided is whether Sen. Clinton can and even wants to muscle herself onto the ticket and how exactly such a ticket would play in the fall. The race for the Democratic nomination is essentially decided and has been decided for sometime, but the saga and theater shall continue hence.

Sen. McCain & the Judiciary

Second only to the role of commander-in-chief, a President’s most solemn and consequential function is to appoint judges to the federal judiciary. Once appointed these jurists serve for life, kept accountable only by the substance of their own jurisprudence and the dictates of their conscience. From behind their august bench it is entirely within their power to willfully manipulate the laws and the Constitution of the United States in all manner of ways which their textual import does not bear.

If privileged to serve as our 44th President, Sens. Clinton and Obama have made it all too clear that this is exactly the type of judge they will appoint to the bench and the Supreme Court. Assuming awesome powers they do not rightfully possess, these judges would continue the federal judiciary’s steady trespass into the provinces and functions of the elected branches of the federal, state, and municipal governments that has been problematic for the past half-century. These are judges who will interpret the Constitution as entirely malleable to the dictates, caprices, and “evolving standards of decency” of themselves and their colleagues.

This is not acceptable. The province of the federal judiciary is to interpret and apply the text of the laws and Constitution of the United States in accordance with the import they carried when they were originally adopted, not to refashion them in a manner they deem appropriate, which is always inappropriate. In a regime based upon popular consent, judicial adventures into the realm of the political branches are intolerable and an absolute anathema to democracy. As President Lincoln so ably put it in his first inaugural, “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In his speech on the federal judiciary today Sen. McCain recognized this, pledging to

"look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint. I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist — jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference. My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power. They will be men and women of experience and wisdom, and the humility that comes with both. They will do their work with impartiality, honor, and humanity, with an alert conscience, immune to flattery and fashionable theory, and faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States."

Let this sentiment not be once uttered in today’s speech and never again in the campaign. I would urge the senator return to it again and again, creating a clear distinction and choice for the voter between his opponent and himself. He ought to reiterate that whether you are conservative or liberal, those issues of the greatest significance to the republic must be decided the correct way through the legal and Constitutional political processes that have served us as a people throughout our history, whether you agree with the ultimate results or not. The federal judiciary has its place in our Constitutional republic, it should remain within that. This is only achieved by appointing the right type of judges to the bench, the type of judges Sen. McCain now promises to appoint as President.

Sen. Obama's New Outrage

Sen. Obama has finally found himself in the position where anything less than an open and unconditional condemnation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright is politically untenable. This is primarily because his and other’s assertions that the multiple comments of the reverend that have surfaced before the public over previous weeks were taken out of context has been belied by Rev. Wright’s reiteration and extension of those viewpoints in his various public appearances this week.

In consequence, Sen. Obama has finally asserted his outrage publicly, which of course only raises the question, why now? It would strain credulity to accept that he was never aware of Rev. Wright’s deranged views for the past twenty years he sustained a close relationship with him, so then why is it now—only now—that Sen. Obama has become outraged? Why never in the two previous decades when he was sitting in the pews listening to this bile? You and I can be forgiven if we suspect that the answer to this question is very plain: he is now running for President of the United States and his prospects of being elected as such are being jeopardized by his intimate association with Rev. Wright.

As we go forward from this, Sen. Obama’s problem will be that Americans hold this suspicion too and that, beyond this, they begin think Sen. Obama’s only real objection to Rev. Wright’s views is their political inexpedience to his campaign, not their actual content and substance. This would be fatal, and Sen. Obama must now train his focus on doing all he can to prevent this suspicion from permeating the consciousness of the American voter. Doing this is all the more pressing because he is hemorrhaging in his race against Sen. Clinton. Good luck, Senator.