Gauging 2016 GOP Contenders

Chris Christie, following on the heels of Bobby Jindal, becomes the latest big time GOP player to disqualify himself for the 2016 nomination.  If there is a silver lining to the Mitt Romney debacle it may be that it will provide the bait to lure out Republicans who are not truly committed to conservative principles.  Those Republicans who believe the lie that they must water down their views in order to win.

In the wake of Romney’s loss the left, with the help of the media, were all too quick to offer up free advice for Republicans.  If you want to win, just drop this silly opposition to gay marriage, it is going to happen anyway.  Do you have to be such sticklers on abortion?  Why don’t you quit fighting over these silly social issues and then maybe the American people will listen to your fiscal message.

The folly of that (as all 5 regular readers of this blog know) is that our social ills are directly linked to our fiscal ills.  You can’t fix one without fixing the other.  You cannot have massive increases in the disability rolls, food stamps (now rebranded “SNAP” – all the public assistance with half the guilt) rolls and somehow expect that tax revenues (based on taking money from working Americans) will increase to pay for it.  It is insanity.  Those are opposing forces.  Paying out more in benefits reduces the incentive to work or need to work.  That reduces tax revenues.

But you have a scared GOP and 2016 contenders who apparently think that social issues are just primary issues and something to be left behind in the general election.  Bobby Jindal came out literally weeks after the election ready to find a compromise on the issue of insurance requiring contraception.   

Now Chris Christie is out as okay with gay marriage and looking for gun control.  It seems odd, until you read that he is cozying up with Mark Zuckerberg.  Christie is running the McCain-Romney playbook (ironic since we have had neither a President McCain nor a President Romney).  The Romney plan is trying to raise enough money you can plow your way to the nomination without really saying anything conservative, thus allowing you to run as a liberal Republican in the general election and win.

It sounds great in theory, but as I have documented, Romney’s road to the nomination was much longer and brutal than it needed to be as a result of this bizarre strategy.  Then, when Obama hit him hard out of the gate, he lacked the resources to hit back and define himself.  He spent most of the summer, not in the battleground states that would determine the election, but in places like Beverly Hills and the Hamptons trying to raise money.   He also lost, very clearly, because he provided no response on social issues.   

The McCain playbook is to challenge fellow Republicans (as Christie has on gun control) to become a media darling.  Sounds good, right?  The problem with that is at the end of the day a liberal Republican is only ever going to be an insurance policy for the left.  They will never prefer a liberal Republican to an out and out left wing Socialist like Barack Obama.  So when push comes to shove, you will lose your new media friends and be like grade school kid in the cafeteria without a table to sit at for lunch.

Contrast this with the approach Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Rick Santorum are taking.  Rubio is leading the charge for significant immigration reform, a move that will help the country and the GOP.  In a very unusual step for him, Jeb Bush took a very public position in support of common sense immigration reform.

Rick Santorum spoke at the March for Life event in Washington.  To my knowledge, he was the only big name GOP figure to speak there.  That is a pro-life event that has grown to 500,000 participants in just a few short years (it is consistently referenced as “a few thousand” in the secular press).  

The next Republican President is going to have to intelligently and passionately present the conservative case on social issues if for no other reason than in a vacuum, the Democrats message of death will carry the day.  There has to be a voice that challenges the American people to think about life from conception to natural death, to think about pregnancy as the start of a family and not a disease.  To say that marriage is something special between a man and a woman, the start of a new family and that families are the foundation of our society.

There shouldn’t be this irrational fear that this will somehow come at the expense of an economic message.  The two work together.  Never before has it been easier to make the case that the fate of the family and the economy are directly intertwined.  Our economy is struggling to grow because we are producing fewer new consumers, entrepreneurs, citizens.  Industries like food manufacturing, utilities, are struggling to find growth in a world with only 1% population growth and a gray existing population.

The answer isn’t more government, we cannot afford the government we have in a shrinking world.  The answer is not more entitlements it is less, we cannot afford it.  But rather than simply cutting, Republicans have to offer a credible vision for restoration.  That restoration is to bring in policies that cut taxes for the middle class, that provide school choice, that give married couples, parents, hope for a future that they will want to bring more children into.  Those are policies that only Republicans will sell and the only policies that will save America.

The GOP stands at a crossroads.  They can either capitulate to the forces of the left, become watered down Republicans, moderate Democrats, and go with the flow in the hopes of maintaining any relevance as the country slips into oblivion.  

Or, they can make the decision that they will selling the truth, the right vision for the future and keep doing so until the country comes around because they know if they don’t, there won’t be a country.  That is real leadership.  As move towards 2016, Republicans need to hold any potential Presidential contender up against that rubric.  If they see anybody trying to fill the shoes of McCain or Romney, they should run the other way immediately. 

NBC's Horrible Treatment of Abortion

I realize I am late to the party on this one, my wife and I don’t really watch live TV and it took a couple weeks for this episode of NBC’s “Parenthood” to come off of our DVR.  But for a show that for 4 seasons now has dealt realistically, even painfully realistically at times, with the issues families and parents cope with chose to deal incredibly unrealistically with the very serious subject of abortion.  It was worth reserving judgment because now in having seen the follow-up episode, it is even more incredible how the show chose to treat the topic.  

What seems most plausible is that Planned Parenthood wrote Comcast (NBC’s parent) in exchange for product placement.  Something you typically see done with cars or soft drinks, not murder.  The two teenage characters on the show had been having sexual relations for several months.  When discovered by his single mother’s fiancé (a 30-ish teacher at his school), the teenage boy was only offered the bad advice of modern society – use a condom (note that among those couples who say they use condoms as their primary means of birth control they are only 67% successful in avoiding pregnancy – it seems condoms are only 99% effective if worn every single time you have sex).

So given that, it was incredibly plausible that his teenage girlfriend would get pregnant.  I don’t know that we have ever been told the age of the girl, but she is a high school senior and most likely under 18.  It is irrelevant in a legal sense because California does not have parental notification which means a girl of any age can walk (or be taken by someone) into a clinic and get an abortion.  So, on TV, we were treated to a scared teenage girl visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic.  This is where any realistic portrayal of the situation ended.

At the clean, sanitary Planned Parenthood clinic, the couple was treated to a straight forward, factual presentation of their “options”.  This was very interesting given that pregnant teens have better odds of winning the lottery than walking out of a Planned Parenthood clinic without getting an abortion.  Of course it omitted any notion of what those familiar with the ministry Rachel’s Vineyard know, and that is an abortion can have a traumatic impact on all involved.  

The interesting thing is that while Planned Parenthood execs clearly must have thought the portrayal helped their cause, it was only at a very surface level.   Beneath the surface the scene was rather dark, a realistic look at the liberal vision for America.  Here you had two teenagers, burned by the bad sex education of the left, sitting there without the only people in the world who might possibly have their long-term best interests at heart (their parents), being talked to in a cold and clinical manner by a complete stranger.   The ludicrousness of the notion that two teenagers would be equipped to make a life changing (and ending) decision was on full display.

After that appointment at the clinic, Drew (the boyfriend), makes a dramatic plea to keep the baby, find some way to raise it, etc.  Adoption, an option that saves the life of the child, was never discussed.  The teenage girl coldly dismisses the idea of keeping the baby with a look that says, “we aren’t in this together, this is happening to me”.  That is of course the classic feminist line, but if we acknowledge that is true, then doesn’t it lead to the idea that women have more to lose in engaging in intercourse?  And if that is true, then can women and men ever pursue casual sex to the same degree?  If the answer is no, then feminism collapses of course as an illogical paradox – promising something that is not possible.

But I digress.  So our teenage lovers (or rather the girl) have made the decision to get an abortion without telling her parents.   It is interesting that Planned Parenthood would choose to see such a scenario presented, it almost reeks of, dare I say, marketing?  What better advertisement than, “hey kids come get an abortion and your parents will never know”.  Of course it goes without saying that no respectable organization would ever want to be in the position of usurping parental authority.  There is something very unseemly about an outfit that would make a business out of recruiting underage girls, without their parents’ knowledge, for abortions.

But on the other hand, if you look at the statistics around the average age of the father in the case of a teenage pregnancy, you find the vast majority are over 18 (or age is not reported if legal action is feared) and not even close.  We aren’t talking about a 19 year-old college kid who got his 17 year-old girlfriend pregnant.  Statistically speaking, it is more likely to be a man in his 30s, 40s, even 50s.  

Throughout the episode, only the boyfriend is racked with indecision and guilt.  The girl calmly proceeds to the clinic, has the procedure, and goes home prepared to never tell her parents what happened.   It is obvious she will break up with the boyfriend and attempt (unsuccessfully of course) to bury the trauma.  But there is an interesting twist at the end of the episode.  

The boyfriend, unable to deal with the situation, finally goes tearfully to his mom in the closing montage.  Music is playing so there is no dialogue, but the implication is that he tells his mother what happened.  Logical next step for any parent would be to call the parents of the girl and let them know their daughter had an abortion.  How any parent could keep that knowledge from another parent would be beyond comprehension.  

Yet, as we get into the next episode (this week’s), there is no further discussion of the incident.  The storylines have picked up and moved on, leaving that as a bizarre, Planned Parenthood sponsored one-off.  In other words, apparently the girls’ parents were never notified their daughter had an abortion and she will attempt to go on baring the scars of this trauma herself.

It was really unbelievable and shallow treatment of the subject.  No discussion of how the kids wound up in this situation (liberal sex ed), nor how unprepared they were to try and make this decision (Planned Parenthood is treating scared kids like adults apparently), and then finally, no real acknowledgment of the incredible trauma this girl will now deal with for the rest of her life.  

The only positive to be taken away from it is that apparently Planned Parenthood feels their image has taken such a hit, that they were willing to write a check large enough to get Comcast execs to set their consciences aside.  Maybe pro-life groups should raise a similar amount so that a future episode can include the girl attending a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat?