Conservatism v populism: Pence begins the discussion

Update 8/8/2024 (Finally I have been given a name to what has inspired me to write and be active in politics for the past 60 years. So, excuse my self-indulgence in putting this in a FB post. Thanks to Gov. Tim Walz, I now have a name to what I have been philosophically for the years I have been active in politics and business: I am a kitchen table populist..and, like Harris, earned my spurs in a prosecutor's office as director of the DA white collar crime and consumer affairs unit.. When some 40 years ago, I ran for mayor with a platform of combatting Denver's brown cloud, protecting neighborhood quality of life, and safe from being a commuter's freeway through them with alternative transportation and mass transit. I did not win, but came in 2nd in a field of 13, and still continued advocating for consumers and neighborhoods (taking a view protection case to the US Supreme Court,) a radio talk show host, and as Denver's Clerk and Recorder, part of duties as an election commissioner, expanding voter access to minority neighborhoods. Later, I was an executive with a non-profit debt counseling service. I was inspired by having married an immigrant with no command of English and had to take over the family's financial management.. It was a wake-up call to learn all I could to be competent. I wrote a book on the subject, The Colorado Consumer Handbook, which is now out of print.)

Mike Pence has begun an important discussion in his criticism of the current MAGA-dominated GOP, which he called "populist". Mike Pence warns Republicans against 'populism' threat | CNN Politics  Populism is not conservativism, he contends.   Others have struggled to tag this MAGA party as radical, fascist, extremist, right-wing, anti-democratic, autocratic, dictatorial, or tyrannical. and more. I will add "totalitiarnism" to the list. Whatever you call MAGA, the discussion is very important.

 I prefer calling MAGA"radical" because it is certainly not conservative, striving to radically depart from the kind of democracy I have lived under and supported my entire life. They have proposed throwing out or revising the Constitution with its checks and balances and protection of civil rights,  and in the meantime, they are defying, ignoring, abusing, subverting, and distorting it. That is not conserving democracy but ending it and making governance into something totally different.

In fact, MAGA does more closely resemble fascism than any conservative form of government in my lifetime. I have written about it as a major theme of the blog and columns since 2012. Calling someone a fascist evokes the ovens of Auschwitz and has become a term of insult used by both sides as inflammatory, but fascism can exist without a holocaust. Nonetheless, in 2012, my column published in the local Sky Hi News, I saw the changes to the GOP that made me wonder what my parents would be thinking about the political party and conservatism to which they were devoted. This was before the rise of Donald Trump, who rode his search for power on this radical streak to his domination today. In 2012, I perceived the beginning of the radical roots of  what became the MAGA movement, though I traced its origins to Newt Gingrich.. 

As a political science major, I remembered the various definitions of the political spectrum soon after I had returned from my junior year abroad in 1959, where I had viewed the Russians converting a fascist country, Germany, to their ideology. Fascism and Communism were off the opposing ends of the political philosophy spectrum, but both had in common " totalitarian" control of the mind, thought, and actions.of populations they, the rulers,  governed. Desantis' ant-woke revisionist history of slavery is a tiny example of a current attempt to shape minds regarding racism, but controlling education content has always been key to maintaining power of totalitarians.  Dissent was forbidden or suppressed by various tactics, including violence. So let me throw the 1950's term "totalitarianism"to the MAGA tags.  

What I also realized that my parents' Republicanism was closer to my more liberal views than either of the radical ends.  My parents and I were both devoted to democracy and the institutions of American democracy, national defense from the totalitarians, and that never has been truer than it is in 2023.  I cannot help but keep wondering for whom my parents would have voted if they were still here to cast a ballot.  In 2012, even  Mitt Romey would not have passed muster as a conservative, but now he in 2023, he is considered the outlier rock of an old-fashioned, traditional Republican. 

September 7, 2023 update:  Thirteen presidential libraries, including those associated with conservative Republicans issued a warning to the Republican party in fear democracy was in danger. Presidential centers from Hoover to Bush and Obama warn of fragile US democracy | AP News  "The bipartisan statement was signed by the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute, the Truman Library Institute, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the LBJ Foundation, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Carter Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the George & Barbara Bush Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the Obama Foundation."

My published thoughts in 2012:

My column in the Sky Hi News March 6, 2012
For a political junkie like me, this Republican contest for the presidential nomination has been like watching a hard fought game to determine who goes to the Super Bowl, yet the players do not resemble any team members I recognize. I wonder whatever happened to the GOP I used to know.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) concluded there is no middle road and has announced she will not run again. It appears the Senate has no room for a moderate Republican. Republicans are not my late father's party, either. There are new meanings attached to the GOP, the Grand Old Party's initials.

To my father, the Republican party was indeed Grand and that was his team. To him conservatism was looking at any extreme deviation from a policy he perceived had been successful, with skepticism and a “show me the policy will make things better” attitude. He supported the interests of private enterprise and promoted fiscal and self-responsibility, but not to the extent that he failed take into account societal and national needs. He voted for FDR twice and accepted Medicare as a necessity. He was solidly pro choice and he resented religion using the political process to advance theological missions.

Compromise was not a dirty word; it was what a rational democracy should do. Sen. Snowe and he would have been mostly on the same page.

The Grand Old Party is no longer constructively working with opponents to solve the nation's problems in the most economical and rational way. It has become the “Get Obama Party.” After all, the GOP opines, Obama alone is responsible for the size of the debt and he has failed to fix the worst crash since the Great Depression that George W Bush left him. The answer to all is to repeal Obama.

The reason they give is that the Obama future is causing the present woes. Their irrational position: We need to roll back the future to solve our current problems. They blame high unemployment and the faltering economy on Obama's health care plan, which will be implemented in 2014-2020, and Wall Street reform, which also not yet been implemented. The low tax structure carried over from the prior administration is not yet revamped and the Keystone pipeline (which Obama signals future approval) is years away. Funny: Somehow the jobs and GDP are mysteriously improving in spite of a president who the GOP claims is clearly a failure.

Mitt Romney, who sees himself as the Good Ol' boys Party standard bearer, just threw fiscal responsibility under the bus in his rush to dominate the Get Obama Party. His retooled tax plan is a tax cut chicken for every income bracket's pot. Unfortunately he failed the “show me” test of what government programs would be cut to pay for it, which loopholes would be closed, or how much revenue would be generated.

The rest of Romney's proposals are changes for the worse, not for the better. His panacea for 30 million unable to afford health care: Shove the responsibilities to states, which have not even the wherewithal to pay for traditional responsibilities of education, crime, or infrastructure. To deal with the excesses of Wall Street that led to the biggest financial sector failure since the Great Depression, Romney wants to gut the protections provided us in Obama's reform legislation and to return to the practices that caused the crash of 2008. Like gas prices now? He advocates aggression and intervention in Iran, jeopardizing the straits of Hormuz and most of the world's oil supply.

At least Romney is not trying to change the GOP into God's Own Party, as Rick Santorum wants, nor is he rocking the boat as Ron Paul proposes in his version of the GOP as Go On-Your-Own party with wacky economics, nor does he share the nihilism underlying mischiefmaking Gingrich's Ornery Party.

Nonetheless, I liked my father's version of the GOP better.

Candidates are summoning the ghosts of a racist past

My column in the Sky Hi News today:

We should be disturbed with the direction the presidential campaign is taking because ghosts of our country's racist past are haunting us again. The GOP and some of its candidates are the medium at the séance table. Racial tensions still lie beneath the surface of political correctness, but what this country does not need is leaders who exploit this dark side of Americana.

Perhaps part of this resurrection of racism is owed to the election of an African American President. There are those who neither accept it or believe that he should be there, or who think he was of, from, and for, non-Americans. Another element is resentment against the estimated 11 million illegals from south of the border and wanting those law breakers gone, ASAP, regardless of impacts on families or any positive contribution to our society. Anti- immigration sentiment has also, always permeated a segment of U.S. society since the latter 1800s influx of Chinese and Irish.

The immigration issue is delivered by many in the GOP with an acidic tone. Policies concerning Hispanics have become conservative litmus tests. They slap down Republicans who take a moderate position on immigration policies or amnesty or dare support the “Dream Act” that would allow children of illegals to get instate college tuition. Newt Gingrich is calling Spanish the language of the ghetto, unmasked his insensitivity to Latino culture. It is no wonder a recent national poll conducted by Hispanic Decisions revealed that 73 percent of Hispanic voters were either hostile to the GOP or believed Republicans “don't care too much” for them.

Immigration hard-liner Mitt Romney should not draw hope from the Florida primary. Florida Latinos are heavily Puerto Ricans and Cubans with unique legal immigration status. Immigration issues are much more important to those with Mexican and other Hispanic roots representing 20 percent of voters in Western swing states, including Colorado.

Obvious in the South Carolina GOP primary was, as some called it, Gingrich's “dog whistle”, using coded words with meanings familiar to Southerners to appeal to those who still hold the attitudes of the old South, a cynical southern strategy. Images of the welfare queen who bore children who lacked any work ethic, the subservient janitor, the food stamp abuser, the vote cheaters who voted as dead people have been summoned by the dog whistle. Yet, he stuck the dog whistle in his pocket when he had to appeal to more moderate Floridians.

Gingrich's calling the President “the food stamp president” is his way of linking Obama's race to welfare queens. He claims Obama has put more individuals on food stamps. Untrue, too. Per U.S.D.A. data, reported by USA Today, fewer individuals have received food stamps in the Obama administration than in the W Bush administration.

That minorities need to get a work ethic is another Gingrich reference to past racial stereotypes. Thanks to Gingrich's own efforts, welfare reform has succeeded to the extent that most families now have at least one member working. Gingrich wants to put those kids to work being janitors from a young age and suspend child labor laws to make it possible. The Obama approach is to give those kids a decent education, make it possible for them to go to college, and provide them a variety of role models with summer youth internships .

The GOP has also antagonized minorities by supporting a coordinated strategy to suppress participation by voting blocks favoring Democrats and dredging up memories of literacy tests and poll tax barriers to voting. GOP elected officials claim fraud is widespread when there is absolutely no supporting data. They have tried to make voting more difficult for elderly and minorities, many who do not have cars or drivers licenses, requiring them to produce a government issued photo ID. GOP elected officials also have tried to prevent mail ballots sent to less frequent voters, who are also elderly and minorities.

How candidates' first impressions count and how policy positions fortify them

My column in the Sky Hi News today..
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Copyright 2012 Sky-Hi Daily News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. January, 24 2012 3:01 pm

Felicia Muftic: This long trial by fire

Sky-Hi Daily News

The cost of modern presidential campaigns is staggering, and the money flowing into the process is corrupting.

The length of it is brain-numbing, but there is an offsetting value. This long trial by fire gives us greater insight into the candidates' character, perspectives, priorities, and background that soars beyond the issue of the moment.  We get a better initial impression of which direction his/her knee will jerk, and how that translates into policies that affect us.

Publicly stated Issue positions and platforms are still important because they support or contradict first impressions . A wealthy candidate may be “of and by” a certain background, but what that candidate is “for” could either contradict or validate first impressions. We have had many wealthy presidents who still advocated policies benefiting the less fortunate. Mitt Romney does not fit that mold.

Barack Obama in 2008 made some good initial impressions: In ringing rhetoric and quiet interviews he convinced Americans he understood them because his life story of coming from a white, struggling middle class family of loyal American grandparents. He was of, by and for policies that recognized the declining income of the middle class relative to the upper 20 percent that began years before the Bush crash of 2008.

That impression, fortified by supporting policies, trumped the attempt by the Republicans to paint him as an angry black, or a secret Muslim who would sell out America to the  jihadists.

Familiarity can also bring contempt. Documented character flaws could be Newt Gingrich's Achilles heel, but so far it has not stopped him. It is yet unknown how that would translate on the national stage when contrasted with Romney's or Obama's living the ethic of family values.

Romney is coming across as not being comfortable in his own skin. He seems to be a person who fears that if voters realize what a cold-hearted, privileged businessman he is, they would not believe he has their good interest at heart. His caginess about releasing his tax returns and discomfort with his 15 percent personal income tax indeed plays right into the hands of the Occupy Wall Street movement that  raised the awareness of the unfairness of income disparity.

An initial impression of Romney as a rich guy disconnected from the middle class is backed up by what policies he supports. They are not for the middle class. On public record is his throwing Romneycare under the bus, dumping it on the states with no requirement to make heath care affordable to many more than can pay for it now. On his website he promotes a tax structure that decreases taxes on the rich and increases taxes on some poor. Missing is how he will pay for increasing spending on the Pentagon, a more interventionist foreign policy, and reduction of the wealthy's income tax contributions to the Treasury. His priorities would leave little money for investment in education to enable the middle class to achieve their American dreams or to provide infrastructure job creation or to fund block grants to states to provide services, in spite of his lip service to those goals.

Romney has been a flip-flopping pig in a poke when it comes to Social Security and Medicare. He has changed views and now differs from the remaining GOP field by not yet subscribing to their “privatization” or “replacing it with savings accounts invested in Wall Street.” His disquieting solution: Let's sit down and talk.

However, for sure he wants to make employees pay entirely for their own unemployment insurance by investing it in a savings account. He proposes no safety net if those unemployment savings accounts run dry . He rests most solutions on his brand of job creation proposals, lax regulation of business and lower taxes for the well off, the very same policies that led to the middle class's income disparity and the economic disaster Obama inherited.

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Romney and the real pious baloney

Column in the Sky Hi News Jan. 18 2012
The world of politics should be forever grateful to Newt Gingrich for introducing to the English language “pious baloney,” or how to call an opponent a hypocrite without using words not suitable for primetime.  

I recall another primary that gave birth to an icon of political speech, “Where's the Beef.” Walter Mondale in 1984 fired away at Presidential nomination contender, Gary Hart, for sloganeering his “New Ideas” without explaining its substance. The phrase was a play on a hamburger business' ad that was dramatized by a feisty senior complaining about a competitor's miniscule patty in a big bun.

This year's icon is the 1 percent (or the 99 percent, depending how it is used in context). Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, it is shorthand for either class warfare or “fairness.” 

Most politicians are guilty of pious baloney, some to a greater degree, some to a lesser degree, shorting the beef, and appealing to a class or special interest. To paraphrase George Orwell's “Animal Farm,” “all politicians are equal; some are more equal than others,” and this year Mitt Romney qualifies for the “more equal” category.

Gingrich attacked Romney for trying to appear as something that he was not. Such posturing happens when a campaign consultant looks at the polls to see how best their candidate could position him/herself, and then attempts to cram the client into a costume that does not cover the body. In the game planning for 2012, a poll must have shown voters wanted a non-DC insider, probably because they were disgusted with the gridlock antics of politicians within the Beltway.

To use Bill Clinton's 1992 iconic phrase, the top concern of voters this year? “It's the economy, stupid,” so drawing on Romney's business background, his advisors saw a good match. A successful businessman, even a cold-hearted “vulture capitalist,” was a person who knew how to cure the slow recovery. Exclusively accenting his business background served more purposes, too, helping the GOP overlook some of his less than conservative record as a governor and his fatherhood of Obamacare. As Gingrich pointed out, Romney had been an aspiring candidate for office throughout much of his life, anyway, and was hardly the non-politician he portrayed himself.

Others in the Republican field are or were not as vulnerable. Rick Santorum is mostly “pious.” Ron Paul is true to an ideology of every person on his/her own and for his/her self regardless of wordly realities, fair or not. Rick Perry's less than intellectual astuteness could not have been invented by any campaign consultant.   Less said about Herman Cain the better, but his 999 flat tax proved to be unfair to the 99 percent. Former candidate Michele Bachmann's frequent gaffes that did not pass the fact checkers substituted some baloney for the beef. Ron Huntsman failed to qualify as a politician since his support was nearly none. 

Romney is not out of the woods, yet. In an era of populist anger at whatever is big (government, corporations) and with 50 percent of America poor or nearly poor,  he is an icon of the 1 percent, of, by and for Wall Street, while Obama is from a struggling middle-income family and genuinely gets the fairness factor. 

Last week Romney tried to convince us that “he is concerned about the middle class,” while at the same time condemning “class warfare” and defending his questionable job-creation record. More pious baloney. Romney's balm to middle class pain is to kill Obamacare that would make health insurance affordable in all 50 states for even those without employer insurance. He promises to kill Wall Street reform with its protection bureau empowered to save consumers from predatory credit practices. His tax proposal would increase average taxes on many poor and would decrease taxes on the rich, per an analysis in the current “Atlantic Monthly.” With friends like him, the middle class does not need enemies. 

Gingrich as Scrooge

My column in the Sky Hi News, Dec. 7, 2011

‘Tis the season of giving and charity, yet elements of our politically active citizenry have just not gotten into the spirit.

Arguments using terms of humaneness are ridiculed, while others want to put poor kids back into the dark ages of sanctioned child labor and orphanages. Others think the way to save the cost of Medicare is to cure the diseases inflicting seniors.

All of these approaches have their supporters, and many reside on the right end of the political spectrum. In fact, the chief advocate for these positions is one in the same: Newt Gingrich. Credit him with schizophrenia when it comes to matters of a warm heart.

Both Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry had the fortitude to address the problem of what to do with the 11-or-so million illegal immigrants in this country. Perry's campaign was buried in the landslide of GOP right that cheered electrifying the border fences and zapping offenders, and deporting everyone who was undocumented. Gingrich escaped lynching by appealing to the humanistic culture, but his rise was in spite of his position on “amnesty.” He is the last, best known un-Romney left standing at this point.

Gingrich brings with him years of recorded pronouncements, but he is still capable of surprising us. His most recent sound bite, claiming child labor laws were “truly stupid” and proposing to put poor kids to work as school janitors to instill a work ethic, will haunt him as he takes his campaign forward. Charles M. Blow, opining in the New York Times (Dec. 3, 2011) captioned his piece as “Newt's War on Poor Children.” Blow cited statistics that shames Gingrich's rationale that poor kids need to have someone to give them a work ethic early in life because they all come from welfare households. According to Blow, 75 percent of poor adults are working and most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed.

As a parent and grandparent of working kids, I appreciate they are protected by the stupid laws that keep them from working with knives and dangerous equipment, or exposing themselves to toxic chemicals or working long hours that prevent them from succeeding in school. What does Gingrich want to do? Subject all of our kids to  abuses for which those stupid laws were written? Or does he mean only poor kids should not have those protections?

This “war on poor children” is in character with Gingrich's past positions, too. Newt Gingrich will forever be identified with welfare reform proposals in the famous ‘90s “Contract with America”, of which he was the architect. While even Democrats embraced and enacted some of it, forgotten in the fine print was the proposal he made to take poor kids from dysfunctional families and put them in orphanages, later called children's homes, a political renaming because of the bad name orphanages had gotten. I thought conservatives have a thing about preserving parental rights. What were you thinking, Newt? Recently Gingrich has admitted he may have used the wrong terms, and what he meant was to call them “prep schools.” A rose is a rose is a rose.

What we ought to support instead is more of what cities are already doing: partnering with the private sector and nonprofits in summer work youth programs, mentoring, internships, and promoting their access to education or a GED. We not only need to give them income, we also need to give them tools to succeed. Tossing them in orphanages or making them janitors will neither not cut it nor warm many hearts.