Freedom Line Blog

In a remarkable editorial six weeks ago, The NYT attacked new U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), arguing the Republican Party “should marginalize lawmakers like Mr. Cruz.” Last week, the hyper-mercurial (to put it kindly) John McCain included Cruz among the group of younger lawmakers he labeled as “wackos.” Very nice. Those are both the sorts of non-endorsements that should make Cruz a hero among all correct-thinking Americans.

With last week’s strong questioning of AG Eric Holder, then on the Senate floor supporting Rand Paul’s filibuster as the second longest speaker (about two hours), and now with his amendment to defund Obamacare, which is rallying conservatives and gaining support from Senate Republicans (so far Lee, Paul, Rubio, and Inhofe, plus supportive comments from Mitch McConnell), Sen. Cruz — along with his friends Rand Paul and Mike Lee — is emerging as a smart, proactive force on policy and message. And, despite the howls from the likes of McCain and Chris Matthews (again, birds of a feather), there is not a thing that Cruz has done or said that, in any reasonable context, have been remotely objectionable (as National Review noted here, saying Cruz had “ably and aggressively executed his duty as a United States senator).

Cruz also has put together a staff of rising conservative superstars (who I won’t list here because good staffers usually are loathe to draw attention away from their boss), more than a few of whom I know personally to be among the savviest and most principled of public servants.

All of which is to say that this new senator continues to bear watching, and applauding.

In a very thoughtful but eminently necessary takedown, Jennifer Rubin takes John McCain to task, quite effectively, for his recent conniption fit against Rand Paul. (Actually, Rubin was comparatively gentle on McCain: She could have blasted the bejeebers out of him for his ongoing rants against Paul, Ted Cruz, and others on the right. McCain really does need to take a chill pill — or maybe about a dozen chill pills, while listening to soothing music, and return to public discourse only after a few Lenten confessions about his ill disposition.)

Here’s a key passage from Rubin’s blog post:

It is a mistake for conservative hawks is to view any limitation (constitutional, fiscal, real world) as a threat to their well-meaning effort to maintain U.S. influence in the world. In fact, it is only with respect for some limits on the executive, understanding of fiscal restraints and, most important, an appreciation for whom we are dealing with (friend or foe) that an internationalist foreign policy can be sustained.

At some point McCain begins to hurt more than help that endeavor.

Do read the whole post. I do take issue with one thing, however. In the course of making a larger point, she wrote:  ”If you want to promote pro-life views you better not nominate Richard Mourdock….”  It is time to set the record straight on Mourdock, who disastrously lost the Senate seat in Indiana that Richard Lugar had held for 36 years. It is true that Mourdock proved to be an inept (or less than fully, uh, ept) general election candidate, struggling mightily in what should have been an easy race even before he stumbled in a discussion of rape and abortion. But, unlike in some other cases that shall here go nameless, there was every reason to believe that Mourdock would be a solid candidate. Elected statewide as Treasurer of Indiana, he had shown political skills beyond a narrow constituency; he had a good record in office; his main claims to fame were fiscal/economic rather than social-issue hard-liner issues; and he ran a primary campaign based on broad themes rather than narrow appeals. Then, when he did stumble on rape, the reality is that what he said, in context, was almost perfectly acceptable. It only sounded awful when taken out of context — and then, mostly because it occurred in an atmosphere poisoned by Todd Akin’s truly idiotic rape/abortion statements in Missouri. After Akin’s screw-up, of course, Mourdock should have been prepared to avoid even wandering into the thicket he wandered into — but he shouldn’t be lumped in with Akin as having said something obnoxious, or of not being, on paper, a thoroughly acceptable candidate.

But that’s an aside — just something I had to say, because those who backed Mourdock in the primary had every reason to think they were getting a very solid candidate.

Back to the main point. As Rubin wrote, in criticizing McCain:

Whatever the reason, he is making an serious error of the type that recently has plagued many conservatives in a variety of policy arenas. A policy with no limits is not sustainable. And an approach to foreign or domestic policy that shuns prudence, balance and recent experience isn’t conservative.

This is a lesson all of us should take to heart. Politics is the art of the possible. And temper tantrums, like McCain’s, often make fewer good things possible than they otherwise would have been.

Votes continue to trickle in. But as of now. Mitt Romney has received 59,995, 405 votes. Four years ago, in a poor effort, John McCain received 59,948,323. So, by 47,000 votes, Romney at least has surpassed McCain. Of course, this is hardly a great accomplishment: McCain ran under much more difficult conditions. The real comparison should have been to GW Bush’s 62 million votes in 2004, when there were 19 million fewer Americans. Bush’s total should have been a floor for Romney, not a ceiling. So Romney terribly underperformed. But at least critics can no longer say he didn’t match McCain’s raw vote total.

Yesterday’s United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a welcome victory for free speech and the First Amendment.

By overturning byzantine prohibitions against the very type of fundamental electioneering speech most valued by our Founding Fathers when they drafted the First Amendment itself, the Court reclaimed enormous territory in freedom’s war against incumbent-protecting censorship.

While welcome, however, the decision also carries political implications about which conservatives must remain alert.  Liberals, predictably, hysterically focus upon the sinister prospect of free speech for those big, bad, evil corporations that actually employ people and produce things.  For instance, resident MSNBC village idiot Keith Olbermann rendered himself not only the world’s worst person, but also the most idiotic, when he suggested the decision was even worse than the infamous Dred Scott slavery decision of 1857.

But apart from the Olbermann crowd’s inanity, one negative prospect is Big Labor’s new ability to engage in direct electioneering communications.

Don’t get us wrong – union bosses should be just as free as other groups to exercise their free speech rights, so long as the dollars used to fund that speech aren’t forcibly wrenched from reluctant members’ wages.  As long as Big Labor isn’t afforded particularized protected status, fair is fair.

Nevertheless, expect new union efforts to not only flood the airwaves, but also to increase the amount of members’ dues used to fund those efforts, as well as even more pressure to enact legislative agenda items.  In particular, we can anticipate all new efforts to enact card-check, which would literally eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, and empower federal bureaucrats to dictate wages and working conditions via mandatory arbitration. In 2008 alone, two unions (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the infamous Service Employees International Union) spent $58 million of their hard-working members’ wages on political campaigns.

They’ll only scheme to increase that amount now.

Card-check legislation appeared all but dead, but this device to increase Big Labor’s membership rolls, and consequently the amount of money it can spend electing liberals across the country, will receive even more push now.

We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision, but we conservatives must remain wary of Big Labor’s upcoming campaign.