The Message
There are the official topics, and there are the
issues, which show up more pervasively than the agenda suggests. At last year’s Conservative Leadership Conference, it was the need to do something about illegal immigration. From many of the featured speakers, this year’s theme would have been,
"Get over it and get to work."The unusual step of scheduling both Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele, former governor and lieutenant governor of Maryland, underscored this message. The two of them formed a Republican administration in a liberal state, and in spite of high approval ratings and significant and quantifiable policy success, were unable to secure re-election in the "wipe-out election" of 2006, as Ehrlich described it.
Like many other speakers, the former governor said it is not enough to simply be conservative or even to carry out conservative policies; we have to give the electorate an understanding of what that means.
"If these numbers are going to turn around, we have to be hyperactive to get this message out to the community," Ehrlich said.
"We’ve got to be relentless."However, exactly how conservatives do that may be a problem. Sessions featuring talk radio hosts and writers from the state’s major markets were sharply divided on what their roles in the conservative movement should be. Commentator and former congressional candidate Nathan Tabor urged the conservative media to unite around a common agenda, but Jeff Katz from WBT in Charlotte, shot back, "I couldn’t disagree more; our job is not to promote an agenda, but to attract and retain as many listeners as possible for our stations."
Others on the panel agreed with Katz, and several complained that conservative politicos aren’t effectively using the media because they are clueless about the news process.
And that doesn’t address the question of what the unified message should be. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave strong support to educational reform, but offered remedies more appropriate for the state than the federal level. Gubernatorial candidate Bob Orr delivered an excellent speech on the dangers of courting and providing business incentives, a favorite development strategy of lawmakers of all sorts, which some called "dry." Representative Walter Jones prompted a walkout during his brief speech.
I have to agree with the Maryland team’s call —
we conservatives need to rally around the basic principles we intend to stand for, and then stand for them, for crying out loud. Our first problem, though, is going to be defining just what those principles are going to be — the ones which are conservative first, but then secondly, those definitive conservative principles that we’re really willing to offer more than lip service. That is a topic for another conference.
Not Wild About Mitt
My review of Hugh Hewitt's
A Mormon In The White House? appeared in
Carolina Journal.
I'm unconvinced of Hewitt's belief that Mitt Romney is the best conservative hope for the 2008 election -- though I share his skepticism of the other front runners:
For Hewitt, national security is the main issue. He sees no candidate on the Democratic side that suggests firmness in the face of global terrorism, which he blames partly on the "incompetence, weakness, and blindness" of the last two Democratic presidents. On the other hand, he finds Giuliani highly questionable on social issues, and McCain questionable on everything but security.
Hewitt however has damaged my still-forming opinion of his analytical skills with this promotional effort. Although he tries to bring solid evangelicals into the discussion, including interviews or quotations from Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. Al Mohler, and Chuck Colson, Hewitt gets sucked into the vortex of his own advocacy. Principled objections to Romney are dismissed as "quixotic", those who hold them are called "bigots", and the Constitution is twisted all out of its frame to try and keep evangelicals in line for the Mormon candidate:
... [I]n his seeming fear that the religious right will embrace another candidate, Hewitt overreaches. For example, he explicitly applies the "no religious test" clause of the Constitution as if it were a moral commandment to individuals rather than a policy of government. Thus, a voter whose religious opinions might influence his vote is labeled "not merely un-American, but un-Christian."
The best thing that can be said about the book is that Hewitt correctly warns evangelicals against joining the liberal and secular parade of journalists and commentators for whom Romney's peculiar beliefs are just another form of preposterous religious claptrap. If we allow Romney to be sunk by malicious sarcasm over his church, we can expect the same to be redoubled to us at the next opportunity.
However, there is plenty of room to discuss Romney's political record, his apparent flip flops on key policy issues, and even, to be sure, our own discomfort with his philosophical underpinnings.
Theology matters, as Frank Pastore points out on Townhall.com.
Unfortunately for Hewitt -- I'll leave Romney to Providence -- this book doesn't do credit to the very interesting question it proports to address, and is more likely to harm both Hewitt and Romney rather than helping either. Meanwhile, I'll continue to look for the rightwardmost viable candidate; I just won't start here.
The Errand Bill
The crossover date has passed and we have the working list for the General Assembly's summer. Occasionally you run across a bill which leaves you wondering what, exactly, were the legislators thinking at the time. In particular, I'm wondering about
H1562, the "Unattended Child in Vehicle" act which I've dubbed "The Errand Bill".
I have many young children and I've lived in hotter climates than North Carolina, so I'm fully on board with cautions against leaving children in potentially dangerous situations. As so often is the case, I can give full credit to the lawmakers for good intentions with this bill.
However, like the law which now keeps third graders strapped in booster seats, this one may be more hassle than necessary for the desired effect.
It could be worse, and for a time it was. The original bill, as introduced by Representative Underhill, would have made it a class 2 misdemeanor for an eight-year-old child to be left alone in a vehicle "if conditions within or in the immediate vicinity ... present a risk to the child's health or safety". That sounds reasonable, but there is no recognition of even the most mundane of driving events -- a stop for gas. Under the original provisions of the bill, a parent who left the car to fill the tank, even if they paid at the pump and never left the vehicle's side, could have been liable for prosecution and up to thirty days in jail.
Thank goodness for committee work.
In the current edition, the test of a "reasonable person" is added -- though when it comes to children's health and safety, I find that "reasonable people" can be found to believe nearly anything. The penalties are ratcheted down a notch (a parent no longer faces six months in jail if they pump gas and then go to the ATM, i.e. "second or subsequent offense"). They even include a proviso for "line of sight" as adequate supervision.
However, the bill still indicates that you can't leave a 13-year-old to watch the sleeping baby while Mom steps inside to pick up a prescription or to put a package on the post office counter, or a third grader doing homework in the van while dad drops off the vestry keys at the church office.
I am certain our Solons were thinking about day care workers who forget the last child on the van, or parents who recklessly abandon their children while they tank up with a different sort of fire water. Absolutely, people should be held accountable for placing children's lives at risk. The days when a mother might park the baby and carriage outside the store while she selects a bag full of groceries are long, long, forever gone.
But I picture a mom like my wife, huddling next to the van pumping gas on a rainy winter morning, with a baby on her hip and two little ones shivering next to her. Which is endangering the children more, leaving them buckled into their seats while mom stands eighteen inches and a sheet of glass away? Or out of the car, on the pavement, in the rain, as the original bill seemed to expect?
Sometimes you wonder. And that's why the unintended consequences loom large whenever the legislature is in sesson -- good intentions notwithstanding.
It passed the second reading 108-4.
