If there is anything more offensive in public discourse than arrogance, it is unwarranted arrogance, and at the very apogee of unwarranted arrogance are pseudo-scientific studies purporting to show that political conservatives are stupider than liberals. That is exhibited hilariously in a new study from Brock University in Ontario. If you share socially conservative views you are likely to be an ignoramus. Got it?

These studies say nothing about their purported subjects, but volumes about the way public and foundation funds are wasted these days on bogus "science". They also call attention to the low standards of science journals that cover them, the very ones that refuse to cover genuinely scientific studies whose philosophical or cultural implications they oppose.

One trait the Brock study claims correlates with stupidity is prejudice. Hmmmm. Maybe you guys should look in a mirror.

"The Old Guard" in the Republican Party has it in for Newt Gingrich, according to the New York Times, and Newt himself.

Please pass me the smelling salts. I am faint from the very idea of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker, denouncing people now in office as "The Old Guard" or "the Establishment."

The original Old Guard referred to Napoleon's most trusted troops. It was used in 1952 in the Republican Party nominating process to refer to the Middle Western conservatives and their southern (unelected) GOP allies. Eisenhower's overcame this Old Guard.

But then Eisenhower's crowd--inheritors of the New York Republican organization, and its national allies, that was put together by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. By the 60s they were being described by the Goldwater conservatives as the "establishment". That establishment, with media supporters such as The New York Herald Tribune and Henry Luce's Time and Life, lost. Geoffrey Kabaservice tells the story in the new book, Rule and Ruin.

However, the term "establishment" was first borrowed from the English, who used it in the 50s and 60s to denote the leaders of historic institutions in England that held power by right of inheritance and "old school ties" (who you know). Included were aristocrats, landed gentry and "old boys" from Oxford and Cambridge prominent in the private clubs where wealthy people relaxed.

Richard Rovere in The New Yorker used the term in the 60s to describe the entrenched bi-partisan East Coast elites--also old school, inherited money, products of the old boy network in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and groups like the Council on Foreign Relations. That was before Bill Buckley and Goldwaterites dusted it off for use in a Republican context.

In reality, what the terms "Old Guard" and "Establishment" mean in a Republican context today is mainly that my opponent has more support from people who actually hold office and lead organizations than I do.

President Obama thinks that the salient issue of our time is the supposed failure of "the rich" to pay "their fair share" of federal income taxes. Mr. Obama must know that the practical revenue potential of his proposal is relatively trivial in terms of meeting budget deficits--and quite probably would lead to a decrease in revenue in the end because it will discourage investment.

But stop arguing with the President about this in the media and go straight to the floors of Congress.

The Republicans should call Mr. Obama's bluff by putting his idea up for a vote, and as soon as possible. It probably would not come to a floor vote in the Senate because the Democrats themselves won't allow it. But the House leadership could cause a vote there. Make it a straightforward vote and see how many Democrats actually will vote for the tax increase the President wants. Many know it's a bad idea and will vote no as a matter of conscience. Others know that they will get little credit from the electorate by voting yes, but meanwhile would irritate liberals with investment income. Since a large share of the rich people in America today are liberals, the political risks for a yes vote would be high.

Republicans, meanwhile, could use the vote as a teach-in on economics to explain to the public just how much a distraction the class warfare is. The vote also would show how divisive the President's proposal is, even among Democrats.

Be daring; call the bluff.

Mitt Romney is having a hard time defending his record at Bain Capital and, simultaneously, the way private equity and venture capital work to create new jobs and lead the economy forward. His case is better than he is making it and the issues are more important for the economy than we are hearing.

Tom Alberg, co-founder of Madrona Venture Capital in Seattle (and a founding chairman of Discovery Institute's Board) explains the difference between private equity and venture capital.

"Most voters and the press, unfortunately, will never understand the positive role that private equity plays in our capitalist system. Private equity usually invests in old line companies that have become stagnant for various reasons, such as poor management (often family heirs) or failure to adopt new technologies.

"These companies usually face declining revenues, earnings and employment and often end up in bankruptcy if left to their existing management and investors. Private equity searches for this type of companies and invests for a controlling interest with the intent of providing better management, investing in technology, etc. Sometimes there are layoffs, but their goal is to build big successful companies which will incidentally employ many more people. Some of the companies do not succeed and go bankrupt but corporate bankruptcy is an essential consequence of risk taking. There are some abuses by some private equity firms but generally PE is important for our economic growth.

"Venture capital plays a much different role in that it mostly invests in new companies with high growth potential, usually involving technology in a deep way. Some of these companies also go bankrupt, but overall venture capital creates a lot of jobs. Both private equity and venture capital are important.

"Interestingly, Bain makes both private equity and venture investments. From an investor standpoint they have done quite well. It's hard to tell whether Romney was any better than their other partners and leaders, but it appears that he was at a minimum a very competent leader for Bain.

"It is too bad for Republicans that the combat for the Presidential nomination results in candidates distorting the facts and fundamental economic principles."

Meryl Streep is a great actress, except sometimes when she plays herself, as she did two nights ago at the Golden Globes Awards banquet. There she launched into vulgarities and unbecoming humor. The one thing she apparently felt obliged to demonstrate--as she was named "best actress" for her role as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady--was that she is not at all like Lady Thatcher. Let it be said in Ms. Streep's defense that her Golden Globes award speech was not a persuasive act. She's better than that.

Elsewhere Streep has acknowledged that getting into the character of Margaret Thatcher made her much more sympathetic to Prime Minister Thatcher the human being. It's hard to imagine it being otherwise. Thatcher was refined gold in the bourse of politics, a "conviction politician," to use Mrs. T's own expression.

Right now the voting public in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe could do worse than see The Iron Lady. Yes, it probably exaggerates the dementia of Mrs. Thatcher today, just as her indignant family asserts. And it skimps on Mrs. Thatcher's role with Ronald Reagan and John Paull II in winning the Cold War. But it does abundantly show something greatly wanting in our own time, the life and career of a courageous truth-teller, a leader who successfully called on her countrymen to own up to their government's wastefulness and to show the patience required to reap in time the reward of renewed prosperity and national pride.

Continue reading "Thatcherites in Hollywood?" »

A special meeting of big names among social conservatives this weekend ended with a "consensus" vote of support for presidential candidate Rick Santorum. But what goes unmentioned in any of the news accounts so far is the irony that Santorum, a Catholic, has won such enthusiastic backing from evangelicals, even though his competition includes Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, an evangelical. Far back in second place, was Newt Gingrich, also a Catholic.

Sen. Santorum definitely needs overwhelming evangelical voting support in South Carolina if he is to move ahead. Some 60 percent of GOP primary voters in 2008 considered themselves evangelicals. Catholics, on th other hand, can't help him much. Only two percent of the South Carolina population is Catholic, the smallest percent in any of the 50 states.

Santorum is a consistent and energetic social conservative and as such always has appealed to evangelicals. That's taken for granted. Think, however, how different things are now than when John Kennedy ran for President in 1960. Then the Catholic Church was a big problem, now it hardly is mentioned. Conservative Catholics and evangelicals--and a number of conservative Jews--are close allies on issues and public policy strategy.

For a variety of reasons, including a hostile left wing secularism that targets all serious believers and is skeptical of Israel, conservatives of various faiths have found increased sympathy and support from one another. It only took a few hundred years since the relgious wars of the 16th century, but real comity seems to have arrived.

The big name evangelical endorsers who met in Texas this weekend obviously hope to have influence in the South Carolina primary coming up next Saturday. The appeal of such leaders as Tony Perkins and Dr. James Dobson and Gary Bauer probably will make the biggest difference for Santorum in fundraising, the candidate's single biggest weakness in the present competition.

A reform-minded Russian blogger, Alexei Novalny, was the target of a photoshopping scam that tried to link him to the discredited plutocrat Boris Bereshovsky. It looks like something the old KGB might have done, so fingers pointed to the Kremlin where Novalny's blog have been unwelcome lately. To retaliate against whoever smeared him, Mr. Navalny ran the real picture, which showed him standing with presumptive Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, a likely rival for Vladimir Putin in the March 4 elections. Then Novalny photoshopped a hilarious procession of other figures--from Stalin and Napoleon to Putin himself, then to a Space Alien. . And posted them on his blog.

The message: in the age of the Internet you can't photoshop as in days of old. Come clean!

It was a shocking blow to learn that Tony Blankley, my old comrade from the Reagan years, died suddenly this past weekend at 63. He and a friend, John Roberts, were in their early 30s when they left the Education Department, where they were critics of liberal looseness in curriculum and testing, and joined me at the White House Office of Planning and Evaluation. Tony was fine company, a gentle wit, very Californian, yet droll and sage. Even without his English accent (he was 10 when his parents immigrated to the U.S.) he was a palpably authentic scholar of his hero, Winston Churchill. He was a sartorial sophisticate and a crisp literary stylist.

Tony, however, longed for direct action and was attracted by the "Conservative Opportunity Society" that House GOP leader Newt Gingrich was promoting in the mid-80s. Knowing that Newt was aiming to be the first Republican House Speaker in six decades, Tony left for the Hill, becoming in time press secretary to the new Speaker, and, later, a columnist and witty commentator on television programs. For five years he was the bouncy editorial page editor of The Washington Times, shaping news as well as observing it.

I asked him in an email three weeks ago how he assessed Newt Gingrich's run for President. The core of his characteristically jaunty reply:

"...Great question, is there a new, more disciplined Newt? I
think for all of us --me, Nixon, you, Newt, anyone-- we are pretty
fully formed as a personality by our 20's. After that we may grow
wiser or more foolish, we may learn to manage the externalitites of
our personalities better (or worse)--but the fundamentals exist at the
core. In the aggressiveness , confidence, creativity and quicksilver
essence of Newt's mind , he will always be capable of explosive
comments. That is both good and bad. You can't have champagne without
the effervescence. But you will not get the sparkle and thrill of
champagne from a flat wine. Newt is incapable of sustained boringness..."

Tony himself had a "quicksilver essense" and a smart personality with the "effervescence" of champagne. He lent it to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and all he knew and all whose lives he touched.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Todd Gaziano make a solid case today in The Washington Post that the recent "recess" appointments of President Obama are unconstitutional for the simple reason that there is no recess.

They propose various ways that the Congress (this means the GOP House, presumably) can resist these incursions. The trouble is, if they do not the President is sure to grow ever bolder, thereby erasing the whole concept of "advise and consent."

Our old friend Richard Rahn, a senior fellow at CATO and a columnist at Newsmax, nails one of the main reasons for the current economic slump: the "reform" legislation passed by the Democratic Congress (especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd), Presidential badgering and the regulatory excesses that followed. Today, the US has fallen behind China--a nominally Communist country--in in IPOs ( Initial Public Offerings of stock). Another old friend, Peter J. Wallison, at AEI, also has been clear on the history of the housing bubble.

If only the Presidential candidates and the talking heads on TV could be as clear as Rahn and Wallison!