There seems to be a growing chasm within the GOP as to what ‘conservatism’ really means. The critics of Ron Paul have derided his emphasis on individual rights, preferring a softer version of ‘compassionate conservatism.” Now, Rick Santorum has let the cat out of the bag with a full throated assault on ‘llibertarianism’ itself. Well, who better to set the record straight than the Gipper himself. You decide.

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.” — Ronald Reagan, interview with Reason Magazine, July 1975

Leave it to Al Gore to inspire a really bad idea.

As you may recall, the petulant presidential candidate lost the 2000 election, only to narrowly win the popular vote. That quirk (it had happened three times before) was all the popular-vote movement needed to get going. Nine states with 132 electoral votes have now signed on to a controversial compact that would automatically award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national tally, regardless of how their particular states voted.

Though spearheaded by liberal Democratic fortunes, the National Popular Vote movement has attracted well-meaning, if misguided, bipartisan support. Proponents say the NPV reform plan would lessen the importance of swing states and steer candidates to less-traveled places — say, California, New York or North Dakota, where contests are all but settled in a winner-take-all system (Maine and Nebraska allocate their Electoral College votes based on congressional districts, a practice that, if adopted nationwide, would of course have the greatest impact on large states).

But deciding the presidential race by pure democratic rule would be a winner-take-all system on steroids — reducing the importance of winning the election within every state in favor of trying to grab the highest percentage possible in the most populous states. Indeed, the Electoral College actually encourages candidates to campaign in more regions of the country. Campaign resources are finite, and in a popular-vote scenario, less populated states would remain fly-over country as candidates flocked to the most populated urban centers.

As it stands now, and thanks to the “undemocratic” awarding of two senators (originally chosen by state legislatures) to every state, regardless of size, our Electoral College system is weighted ever so slightly in favor of smaller states. So swing states such as Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire — representing 16 electoral votes up for grabs — are more likely to see President Obama and the GOP nominee duking it out.

This is as it should be. A republic does not rest on pure majority (mob?) rule. It incorporates various checks and balances to filter the majority and protect the minority. The Senate, for example, accomplishes this through unlimited debate, and unless a supermajority can break the filibuster, why, slim majorities do not prevail. National policy requires a broad consensus, hence the complaint that one small state can bottle things up misses the point entirely.

States have disparate local interests they wish to protect, yet imagine if Minnesota decides to go predictably blue in this year’s presidential contest but the country has had enough of Obamanomics and votes Republican. Under the NPV plan — should Minnesota join the compact — our state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the GOP nominee regardless of a direct popular election within our borders. This is important, because we ought to be, at least to a degree, masters of our own universe.

As always, there is little doubt that the matter will be decided in the courts. While Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution properly gives the states the power to individually determine how their electoral votes are apportioned, Article I, Section 10 is equally as clear: “No state shall, without the consent of Congress … enter into any agreement or compact with another state …”

Nevertheless, the NPV juggernaut is rolling on, already halfway to its goal. Once enough states sign on — enough, that is, to deliver a 270-electoral-vote majority — the game is up. And that means a free-for-all every four years, in which the more candidates who enter the presidential sweepstakes, the easier it would be for one to get a simple plurality and become a truly minority president with little governing power.

Which brings us back to the 2000 election. The only way that contested race could have been more divisive is if every vote in every state, not just Florida, had to be recounted. Which is what may happen under a national popular vote.

Published in the StarTribune, February 4, 2012

March 2-3: Civitas Conservative Leadership Conference, Raleigh, NC
Click here for details about this event.

April 26: GOP Lincoln Day Dinner, South Bend, IN, Location to be announced.

August 23-25: Ghost Tree Invitational Celebrity Golf, Bend, OR
Ghost Tree Invitational Website

August 27-30: Radio Row, Republican National Convention, Tampa, FL

September 3-6: Radio Row, Democratic National Convention, Charlotte, NC

Fifty one years after a young president from Massachusetts delivered a stirring inaugural address on a frigid day in the nation’s capital, contemporary politicians still aspire to the Kennedy mystique.

It’s easy to see why. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was first in a dawning media age to make a profession dominated by an old guard of aging men … well, cool.

The adoration for JFK was not a matter of being drawn to an ideological soulmate (Kennedy’s convictions were always elusive — he once told a journalist he didn’t read a story about Barry Goldwater because he wasn’t concerned with challengers “who say they would rather be right than be president”) nor was it the homespun attraction to an elderly father figure. Kennedy had the enigma of star quality, with just a touch of danger.

So it’s not surprising that as the years have passed since the tragedy in Dallas, both ends of the political spectrum have claimed the martyred 35th president as their own.

The right likes to point to the tax-cutting anticommunist as a model for the mainstream Democrat before the 1960s got a hold of the party. But Kennedy, of course, was the ’60s.

Though Byron (Whizzer) White was indeed mainstream, JFK’s appointment of Arthur Goldberg helped put the Supreme Court on a collision course with traditional precedent, especially in the arena of newfound “privacy rights” and abortion.

Even his much touted supply-side tax cut (passed posthumously) for the rich was, in the mind of its architect, Keynesianism in drag. After the president’s famous speech to the conservative Economic Club of New York, Kennedy told an aide, “I gave them straight Keynes and Heller, and they loved it.” What the administration loved about it was its deficit spending, not the beneficial effects of cutting taxes on the margin.

Kennedy had long championed higher federal spending, especially on health care, and his 1962 executive order establishing collective bargaining “rights” for federal employees was pure political pandering and has as much to do with today’s bloated bureaucracy as anything.

Yet it’s also true that JFK was far less than the “liberal lion” that his younger brother, Ted, would turn out to be. He enjoyed the company of conservatives, including Goldwater, and had great admiration for his freshman colleague in the House from California, Richard Nixon.

As Chris Matthews points out in his new book “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” JFK thought Nixon “brilliant” and the smartest member of the incoming class. In fact, the young Democratic congressman would later hand-deliver a $1,000 check from his father for Nixon’s 1950 Senate run.

As president, Kennedy also rejected quotas and, according to critics, demurred on civil rights. And despite the conspiracy theorists, JFK was not assassinated for an incipient plan to remove all American forces from southeast Asia.

In September 1963, he told Walter Cronkite that while the war in Vietnam must be won by the South Vietnamese, “I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake … a great mistake.”

Kennedy had run as a national security hawk, but his early missteps in the Bay of Pigs and perhaps more importantly at the Vienna Summit — where Nikita Khrushchev humiliated the young president — prompted the Soviet premier to challenge the United States by erecting the Berlin Wall and attempting to put missiles in Cuba. Ironically, a reluctance to use military power would wind up serving Kennedy well in both situations.

That’s something that Matthews’ book — one part hagiography, one part riveting history — makes abundantly clear. (For a grittier take on the 35th president, check out fellow liberal Richard Reeves’ “President Kennedy: Profile in Power.”) The president’s wartime experience in the South Pacific left him “loving courage, but hating war.”

Yet the kind of bravery Matthews describes goes beyond the PT-109 version (cynics still wonder why Lt. Kennedy’s boat was the only one in the war sliced in half by a Japanese destroyer, though his valor in the aftermath is unquestioned) to touch on a more pedestrian form of everyday courage that in Kennedy’s case required an unimaginable effort to overcome.

Despite the luxury of wealth and for all the frat-boy shenanigans, Kennedy lived a life that was grotesquely marred by a Hobbesian existence — short and brutish. That was a tragedy that would befall the entire family, but JFK was unique in how well he put up a brave front while simultaneously dealing with constant pain and the near-certainty of an early death due to his critically weakened body — a condition so cleverly contained by hs handlers.

Detractors say that JFK was compromised in office, and that may well be true, but beyond the charismatic deception of “vigor” and a less-than-stellar — if unfinished — tenure in office, there remains a sort of stoic dignity in Kennedy’s pursuit of public life while bearing the burden in silence. And bear it he did. It’s fair to say the severity of Kennedy’s ailments were only surpassed by their frequency. The man was a walking cadaver.

JFK was secretly hospitalized in dozens of instances, was given last rites three times and was essentially kept alive, according to Reeves, by “complicated daily combinations of pills and injections”.

There were massive amounts of cortisone injections to fight off Addison’s disease, a life-threatening ailment at the time; more steroids for a prewar back condition that resulted in spinal fusions and botched surgeries (he was wearing a back brace the day he died); a chronic stomach condition, most likely ulcerative colitis, that kept Kennedy in agony and battling debilitating bouts of diarrhea; painkillers, hormones, stimulants, sleeping pills, and a cholesterol count somewhere around 400.

Jaundiced and bedridden as a young man, Kennedy would suffer from frequent infections the rest of his life and, as Matthews reveals, the absence of a mother’s love. Jacqueline Kennedy, just months after the president’s death, told historian and confidante Arthur Schlesinger that when she once asked her husband if he could have one wish, what would it be, he ruefully responded, “I wish I had more good times.”

Here was the man who had everything but owned very little. And yet, by most accounts, he rarely complained, managed to govern and refused to be incapacitated. He persevered.

Published in the StarTribune, January 22, 2012

The Conference is designed to energize, train, and equip citizens and leaders in our state. North Carolina will be a battleground state like never before. We face battles in local elections, a constitutional amendment, and races for Governor, the NC General Assembly, and U.S. Congress.

This Conference will train, prepare, and motivate the citizens of North Carolina. We will have speakers and trainers from Heritage and Heritage Action, American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Civitas, and Texas Watchdog, along with radio personalities from the local and national level. We hope that you will join us at this exciting and important Conference.

Jason will be speaking at the Saturday lunch session.

About Civitas

The vision of the Civitas Institute is of a North Carolina whose citizens enjoy liberty and prosperity derived from limited government, personal responsibility and civic engagement. The mission of the Civitas Institute is to facilitate the implementation of conservative policy solutions to improve the lives of all North Carolinians. Towards that end, Civitas provides research, information and training to:

Empower citizens to become better civic leaders and more informed voters
Educate emerging public leaders, enabling them to be more effective in the democratic process
Inform elected officials about citizen-based, free-market solutions to problems facing North Carolinans

Click here to get more information and to register for this event.

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference is a biennial gathering of leaders of the Republican Party, industry, media, government, and issue groups, held in the winter or spring of election years. Members from the 14 states that make up the RNC Southern Region selected Charleston, South Carolina, to host the 2012 conference at their January 2011 meeting. Attendees include: Republican elected officials, donors, activists, and operatives; the Republican candidates running for president; national representatives from small businesses to large corporations, traditional and new media, as well as issue advocacy groups.

This year’s SRLC is expected to be one of the largest multistate events, outside of the national convention. SRLCs, also, have a tradition of providing opportunities for networking and relationship building among conference sponsors, attendees, and speakers. With over 2,000 attendees projected for the 2012 event, the conference has grown in size and influence and is considered a must attend Republican event focused on an array of national issues, interests, and candidates.

Republican presidential candidates have a long tradition of addressing, attending, and actively participating in this conference. Additionally, this year, CNN will partner with the SRLC in airing a presidential debate to be broadcast live. SRLC 2012 has an added twist, as it ends on the Saturday of South Carolina’s “First in the South” presidential primary. This year’s unique timing makes SRLC 2012 one last chance to reach Republicans across the South before they start to vote.

We hope you will join lots of old friends, and certainly new ones, at this historic event.

Click here for more information and to register for the event.

Ron Paul’s third-place finish in Iowa bought him a ticket to New Hampshire and beyond, but his real contribution to the 2012 presidential cycle is the challenge his campaign presents to the political establishment. Instead of following the polls, the Texas congressman is attempting to do what most politicians avoid like the plague: lead.

On three major issues, Paul has tapped into an emerging national sentiment that not only transcends party politics but speaks to a new generation of Americans fed up with the status quo and desperate for real change.

Monetary Policy

A topic that tends to make the eyes glaze over has finally caught the attention of college-age conservatives everywhere. Free from the shackles of Federal Reserve tradition, young people of the Austrian persuasion are actually debating the gold standard once again. They apparently understand that asset bubbles in tech stocks, housing and commodities have precipitated a boom-and-bust cycle that threatens long-term economic sustainability. Absent the discipline of a hard monetary rule, easy credit and artificially low interest rates continue unabated until balance sheets are so polluted the whole thing comes crashing down. Sooner or later, the debt must be paid back. Worse yet are calls for international “coordination” among central bankers. If the debacle known as the European Union has taught us anything, it’s that a country that gives up control of its currency gives up its sovereignty.

War on Drugs

After four decades and $1 trillion, America’s drug war has succeeded only in handing over the channels of distribution to violent cartels outside the United States. Until the exorbitant black-market profits are wrung from the trade, you can forget about controlling our southern border. In fact, the amounts of money are so large that the democratic institutions of government are routinely corrupted all throughout Mexico. The fact is that Mexico is imploding primarily due to the endless appetite for marijuana in the United States. And, let’s face it, young adults in this country look at pot like grandpa looked at speakeasies. The taboo associated with the most prevalent of illicit substances has long since vanished. But while the failure to eradicate cannabis has made it more available on the one hand, it has also made it less tempting on the other. Good public policy should be aimed at eliminating drug-related violence, not necessarily controlling what individuals choose to ingest.

Foreign Policy

Though simplistically labeled isolationist, Paul’s position of noninterventionism has long been an American (and GOP) tradition. Even on the eve of World War II, Sen. Robert Taft, son of President William Howard Taft, wrote to his wife, “I am very pessimistic about the future of the country — we are certainly being dragged towards war and bankruptcy and socialism all at once.” Defeating the Axis powers — like defeating the radical elements of Islam — was a surely good thing, but the war also gave us the Office of Price Administration, the War Production Board and the National War Labor Board — all precursors to today’s command-and-control economy. As Prof. John Willson of conservative Hillsdale College has pointed out, “what happened between 1941 and 1945 was an expansion of the national state so vast as to be irreversible.”

As the saying goes, war really is the health of the state — and it goes hand in hand with big government at home. Foreign aid, for example, is socialism writ large — and its liberal application has little in common with genuine conservatism.

• • •

Whether Ron Paul is the right messenger remains to be seen; as the GOP field winnows, polls show that he’s unlikely to be the second choice of Republican voters looking for a new candidate. But the message isn’t going away, and the two major parties ignore it at their own peril. As the Arab Spring demonstrated, cultural and political change usually begins with a select few, but those who are pushing the envelope today are often considered mainstream tomorrow.

Published in the StarTribune, January 8, 2012

Jason will be speaking at this event, as well as taking questions and signing his book, “Power Divided is Power Checked: The Argument for States Rights.
The Blue Fox Bar & Grill is located at 3833 Lexington Avenue North Arden Hills, MN 55126. Directions to The Blue Fox Bar & Grill can be found here.
Additional speakers for this event are Janet Beihoffer and Senator Ted Lillie.
There will be a $5 cover charge for this event at the door. Please arrive early as space is limited to 300 persons.

The program schedule:

• 5:30 – 6:15 pm Best time to arrive and enjoy the company and great food.
• 6:15 – 6:30 pm One Minute Moments
• 6:30 – 9:30 pm Program with Intermission and book signing

The North Metro Tea Party Patriots follow “3 core principles”: Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Constitutional Government, Free Markets, and invites those who share these principles to join their organization.

Read more: Radio Host Chats Close Iowa Caucus: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com