Time for a Message

Comes now one of the notorious Whitman Republicans – you know, those "fiscally responsible and socially tolerant" types who turn out to be fiscally irresponsible to an astonishing degree and "tolerant" only of the Left – proclaiming, in The New York Times, that the GOP "needs to be more moderate if it is going to win." Pointing to Bret Schundler’s 14 point loss, Pete McDonough, former spokesman for the only former Governor less popular than Jim McGreevey, purports to tell us that if only the GOP were more "moderate" (than Doug Forrester?), we might have a chance of winning.

Right.

To paraphrase Andy Rooney, didya ever notice that, to these folks, there’s no such thing as a "liberal"? There are only "ultraconservatives" and "moderates".

But, returning to the theme of the last two posts: let’s assume that McDonough is right, that only "moderates" can win statewide. If such is the case, let’s disband the GOP and move to PA. What’s the point of contesting elections when, if the "Republican" is elected, she governs exactly the same as does the Democrat?

Christie borrowed up a storm, spent like a drunken sailor, proposed a massive gas tax increase (which we horrible, benighted conservatives stopped dead in its tracks), and appointed Deb Poritz -- a worse Chief Justice than Wilentz -- to the Supreme Court. Whitman took essentially no action to reform property taxes and McGreevey’s auto insurance record was infinitely superior. Her administration totally lacked focus and wanted for vision; she meandered from crisis to crisis, wearing those sappy, inane "many faces, one family" buttons.

And, most galling of all, presented with huge legislative majorities, Whitman did precisely nothing to fundamentally reform government in a REPUBLICAN image. Not for nothing is the New Jersey Governor the most powerful in the nation. Had she been even slightly inclined to curtail the power of the public employee unions, render tax increases difficult, place real caps on spending, and remove the Courts from policy decisions, she could have.

She utterly failed.

NOT, mind you, that she didn’t profess to believe at least some of this; Whitman held a press conference in which she announced her support for constitutional change to require legislative super majorities to increase taxes. But that press conference represented that extent of her interest, and the initiative rapidly died.

Most of the electorate stayed home this year. But about one thing, you can be certain: ALL the tax eaters voted. All the public employee union members, all the urban machine voters. Suburbanites and conservatives had ... what incentive to vote?

The lesson we need to learn, as a Party, is that in politics, as in poker, something beats nothing every time. The Dems KNOW their core constituencies well. Their message could not be simpler: if you – urban voters, public employee union members – elect us, we will take large sums of money and give it to you. Republicans offer ... what? Where was the realistic plan? No one in the state believed that super-complicated, thought-up-by-a-committee, least-common-denominator thirty in three would actually work.

Faced with no real choice, the voters stayed home in droves.

Elections are zero sum games, and winning them means offending people. If the Dems mute their message a bit for polite company, or play to different segments of the population differently, they are least HAVE a message: big government, higher taxes, massive redistribution. That, at least, is something. The Republicans utterly refuse to play to their base, socially or fiscally.

I don’t share the view that moving the Party collectively to the right will (necessarily) result in winning elections. But, pace Mr. McDonough, if you want to go on losing by 10-11 points every election, keep doing what you’re doing. It seems to me that we should adopt the Mulshine platform: let the Dems pander to their urban base; the GOP should unabashedly embrace the suburbs.

The real key is what happens when you WIN. Neither Kean nor Whitman deserves much credit for victory. In each case, the Dems so annoyed the populace – unusually tax-happy Governors Byrne and Florio– that ANY Republican would have won. The problem is that when you elect a Republican, presumably, you want change. In neither case did the electorate get the change it presumable voted Republican to effect.

The point is, that winning for its own sake matters little. I defy anyone to point to some measure of the state which was substantially better for Whitman having defeated Florio. Sure, her (very reluctantly embraced) income tax cuts were nice, but, at first opportunity, the Dems reversed them, with interest. Whitman’s legacy is one of debt and missed opportunities. Had Jim Florio been reelected, and followed Whitman’s program to the letter, every Republican Legislator would have missed no opportunity to roundly condemn him as profligate and irresponsible. And they would have been correct.

We cannot outpander the Dems. We need to rely upon their tendency to overreach. When that happens, and the GOP wins – and, eventually, it will – the victorious candidate needs to be someone dedicated to crippling the Dems’ power base: defanging the public employees’ unions and the other tax eaters who see politics as a means to enrich themselves at others’ expense.

And you simply don’t get that sort of vision with a "moderate".

The Tax Eaters

Continuing the reflection of the previous post, it occurs to me that a fair case can be made that the media has it wrong: the people DON’T want property tax reform. Or any kind of reform. Not if it means troubling oneself to vote, anyway.

Consider:

In Colorado, a combination of various spending interests coalesces around a measure to suspend a tax-and-spend limitation provisions, permitting the government to spend billions more than would otherwise have been permissible. It receives 52% of the vote.

In California, four ballot measures go down to lopsided defeats, each one of which was not only eminently reasonable, but essential if true reform is to be effected. One made getting tenure slightly more difficult. One limited public employee union muscle. Another capped state spending. The last would effectively prevent incumbent-protection-legislative-district gerrymandering.

Public employee unions and the Democrats who run Sacramento worked together to spend tens of millions to defeat each measure. One can be certain of one thing: every single teacher, cop, firefighter, and bureaucrat voted. The machine pols ensured that their people went to the polls to preserve their ability to draw districts, maintain power, and dole out the taxpayer boodle.

And the people yawned.

Consider further: voters in New Jersey overwhelming elected an avowed enemy of the taxpayers, Jon Corzine. They increased, albeit marginally, the Democratic legislative majority, which has made tax increases a priority, ignored calls for property tax relief, and turned pork barrel spending into an art form. Unless one believes the voters to be total ignoramuses, one must assume that they know precisely what they’re doing, and that they WANT more of the same. Which, of course, is precisely what they’re going to get.

It’s risky to make predictions; words taste better coming out than being choked back down. But if Jon Corzine’s Senate record is any indication, and if the election is seen – as it quite reasonably can be – as a referendum on the past four years, the next four will feature a further explosion of taxes, spending, and borrowing. To the extent that anything whatsoever is done about property tax reform, it will be coupled with a reciprocal increase in other taxes; spending will be off the table. The net result: government will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. At best, the burden of paying for it will shift a bit, driving ever more upper middle class folks and businesses to the friendly confines of Pennsylvania and Delaware.

This suits the tax eaters just fine. A coalition of those who benefit from high taxes and spending – urban residents and public employee unions, primarily – want nothing more than to keep the boodle flowing. They will continue to feed at public expense, demanding (and receiving) ever more generous wages, benefits, and subsidies. They might offer tax relief to some segments of society, using that measure to purchase enough votes to keep the game going. But if one makes over $40,000 or so from any employer other than government – and, most assuredly, if one makes more than $100,000 – one is very much in the cross hairs.

A fair percentage of the people don’t even care enough to vote. As with most governmental programs, those benefitting from them are infinitely more motivated to keep the spigot flowing than are the taxpayers to shut it off. The populace may seethe a bit, but provided that they’re not motivated by a Florio-like animus, the tax-eaters will continue to rule in Trenton.

Which, finally, brings us to the necessity of nominating conservatives. As noted previously, Republicans almost never win in New Jersey, mostly because Jim Florio isn’t running. Twice in the past 25 years, the Democrats overreached, ticking off enough voters to give the GOP an opportunity. Both times, the Republicans nominated "moderates" – mediaspeak for liberals – who claimed to be fiscal conservatives, but governed every bit as poorly as did their Democratic predecessors and successors. Kean doubled the size of state spending; Whitman spent only slightly less, and borrowed astonishingly irresponsibly. Neither worked to ensure the fundamental changes which were – and remain – necessary to prevent the problem from repeating itself, such as evicting the Courts from policy matters, curtailing the power of public employee unions, and effecting constitutional change to make tax increases more difficult. Neither made the slightest effort to address property tax inequity, driven primarily by unreasonable urban spending. Neither made the slightest effort to prevent future pork.

Because neither had a vision of how government ought to work which differed in any fundamental way from that of the Democrats.

Nominate a conservative and one can be absolutely certain of one thing: an endless barrage of media stories about whether a pro-lifer who isn’t terrified of firearms can possibly win. And, when such a conservative loses, his loss will be attributed to New Jersey’s "blue state" animus for conservatives. But given the almost unbroken string of "moderate" losses, including yet another shellacking this year, if we’re going to lose, it might as well be with a candidate who actually offers the people a choice rather than with yet another pale echo of the Democratic candidate. That is, winning an election ought to result in a change in policy. Why would the electorate believe that the GOP represents a different perspective when our candidates, once elected, behave just as irresponsibly as the Democrats?

To the extent that the populace cares, that is. Given the results in New Jersey, California, and Colorado, the public – if it wants reform at all – clearly brings less passion to supporting it than do the tax-eaters bring to opposing it. When the next opportunity arises to make changes – when the tax-eaters push the envelope too far, as they inevitably will – it behooves the GOP to strike quickly and decisively to slay the beast, once and for all, forever precluding the spending interests from voting themselves money at the expense of all-too-often lethargic populace.

Post Mortem

Another somewhat bittersweet electoral retrospective. Bitter in that the Republican gubernatorial candidate, yet again, failed to persuade a majority of the State’s electorate to support him. Sweet in that Morris County remains an island of sanity.

Republicans and Democrats face reciprocal electoral difficulties, statewide and locally. While social issues play a part, most politics is less principled, more crass, and comes down to money. Republicans lose statewide for the same reason we win locally: we’re fiscally responsible.

To the Democratic base, “fiscal responsibility” is fightin’ words. The last thing unions -- especially public employee unions -- and urban bosses want is lean, small, efficient government.

Public employee unions feed at the public trough. Their mission is to maximize the economic benefits their members receive. They spend huge sums electing friendly legislators precisely to ensure that taxes and spending – from which their members massively benefit – are not cut.

Urban areas, too, staunchly oppose spending cuts or tax reform, because they pay few taxes and receive huge subsidies, at the expense of other folks, primarily those residing in Morris County.

Democrats are the party of Big Government and high taxes; the unions and urban voters – not being stupid – cast their electoral lot accordingly.

Hence, any Republican seeking statewide office enters with a huge disadvantage, electorally and politically. People benefitting from spending are massively more motivated to maintain it than are the taxpayers to pare it. They donate huge sums to preserve the status quo, and they always vote.

Forrester’s huge loss should – but probably won’t – put to rest the absurd assertion that only “moderate” Republicans can win in New Jersey. The list of “moderate” Republican losers in statewide campaigns is long and distinguished: Norcross, Fenwick, Forrester (twice), Dawkins, Mochary, Whitman (against Bradley), Courter, Franks; maybe even Haytaian. True, two Republican “moderates” – Whitman and Kean – prevailed. But in each case, they ran like conservatives in the campaign (both ran on anti-tax platforms, made nice with the right to lifers, and, in Whitman’s case, noted that she was an NRA member) and both had the inestimable privilege of running against Jim Florio. Ideology was essentially irrelevant. In each case, the voters decided between the Democrat and a generic Republican “somebody else”. When the Democrats ran a bad candidate in tough times, the generic Republican – “somebody else” – won.

Simply put, Republicans can’t win in New Jersey; Democrats have to lose. And for that to happen, it requires a poor Democratic candidate, preferably in tough times, and a Republican candidate with united base and a message sufficiently attractive to “Reagan Democrats” to prevail.

Democrats face a reciprocal challenge in Morris County. Only damaged Republican candidates lose, and the Dem victors never last. Big Government, high taxes, and big spending are tough sells in Morris County. Democrats are not credible as fiscally responsible candidates. Given that there are relatively few people feeding at the public trough in Morris County, the Democrats can’t buy elections with taxpayer dollars. Hence, they almost always lose.

Our county seat provides an abject example. Simply compare the tax rate in Morristown – traditionally controlled by the Democrats – with Morris Township – traditionally controlled by the Republicans. Indeed, in any survey of the 50 worst run towns in the state, probably 48 would be run by Democrats. It might even be unanimous.

Statewide, where the number of people feeding off the taxpayers’ wallet is relatively large, the Democrats – the Party of Government – tend to win. Locally, where that number is small, they consistently lose.

Social issues do matter. Some people in New Jersey actually read The New York Times editorial page for other than comic relief, and consider the Daily Record conservative. The GOP being a conservative party – it’s officially pro-life, frowns upon governmental subsidies for gay relationships, and doesn’t break out in hives at the thought of voluntary prayer in public places – it quite naturally repels the Angry Left, Times/MoveOn crowd. And New Jersey contains a disproportionate number of them. But it also contains a large number of Catholics – often Democrats – who might be reached with precisely these issues.

Clearly, a candidate’s status as a “moderate” – whatever that is – on these issues offers Republican candidates little advantage. The record of electoral failure cannot be disputed. At best, they might, in a typical year, lose a little bit closer than would a “conservative”, and even that’s not self evidently true.

And, once elected, they lack the motivation – or the inclination – to effect the basic reform we so clearly require: to defang the spending interests, fundamentally change the system of taxation, and rein in a judiciary run amok. Indeed, in both recent examples, the “fiscally responsible” “moderate” Republicans turned out to be fiscal disasters. Kean massively increased taxes and doubled the size of state government. Whitman recklessly – and illegally – borrowed, spent outrageously, and foolishly suspended contributions to the pension system.

(This, of course, opens up an entirely new possibility: perhaps – based upon the record of our previous “moderate” Republican Governors – voters seeking fiscal responsibility distrust the fiscal bona fides of “moderate” GOP candidates, and simply don’t vote. Maybe, potential voters to whom fiscal responsibility was important worried precisely that Forrester might emulate Kean and Whitman, and sat the election out.)

But, generally, Republicans statewide and Democrats locally face the same problem, albeit from different perspectives: because we’re fiscally responsible, we can’t win statewide; because they’re not, they can’t win locally.