What's a Republican? - I suggested on the Minnesota Politics mailing list (and repeat here), that since the era of the "big tent" party might be wheezing to a close, perhaps the GOP needs to focus on the "small tent" issues that truly separate it from the Democrats.

I suggested these issues were:

• Economic Growth - the freedom from confiscatory taxes, the freedom to start a business without government oppression, the right to keep what you earn (within the bounds of paying for a legitimate, limited government), and
• Personal Freedom - freedom from government prying into your wallet, bedroom, gun locker, kids' brains or whatever.
• Safety. Safe streets, safe world, safe homes. As in , safe from evildoers, not safe from ourselves.

A correspondent wrote me back, saying " If what you were proposing were reality, then I would be a Republican. But it's not, and never will be. That's why I'm IP [Minnesota's Ventura...er, Independence Party]".

Interesting concept. But the IP has historically aligned itself with "moderate" (meaning soft-liberal, albeit not blinkeredly-so) policies - coddling the teachers' union, belief in government fiscal activism (albeit not so profligate as in the DFL), and a general mushiness on social disintervention on the part of the state government.

There are times I wonder if any of Minnesota's parties know what they're about. The DFL is lock-step-left, at least as far as endorsed candidates - but they can't seem to get elected to the important posts, and get regularly trounced by unendorsed DFL and even GOP candidates. The GOP is in the midst of a serious identity crisis. And the Independence Party, despite the presence of thinkers like Tim Penny and Dan Barkley, pretty much revolves on Jesse Ventura's whims.

Which is why I think the GOP needs to focus on its money message - less government BS, more money in your pocket, safer streets.

And, I hate to say it, but the GOP needs to get tough on officials who don't support at least those three broad goals. Disagree on abortion, or on gay marriage - but for G-d's sake, close ranks on taxes.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/8/2002 04:28:34 PM

Clinton's Military - One of the right's campaign platforms was rebuilding a military that atrophied badly under the Clinton administration. The Army, which had 18 ground divisions during the Gulf War (and sent seven of them to the Gulf), has exactly ten now, and several of them are not capable of going into action. Friends of mine in the military - many of whom served under Carter, Reagan and Bush the First - were forthright and ferocious in their condemnation of the slide the military underwent on Clinton's watch.

Now, with the military's great performance, many on the left are claiming that the conflict in Afghanistan is a referendum on the Clinton Military, and it has passed with flying colors.

Not so fast.

While the conflict in Afghanistan is important, it involves a relatively tiny number of our troops - and they are our best troops. Special Forces, Rangers, Deltas, a battalion of Marines, and a few Air Force squadrons; aircraft numbering in the dozens to low hundreds (a Rapid Deployment Wing, basically, plus a wad of transports). They - our "elite forces" - were among the few units that maintained their budgets to train, actively, for this sort of mission during the previous administration. All of these troops have been painstakingly trained and equipped to do exactly what they did - fly or sail around the world on short notice and carry out mayhem on an enemy. This, they've done.

Now - if Saddam Hussein opted to invade Saudi Arabia again, how would we react? Of the seven Army divisions that retook Kuwait, three no longer exist (the 24th Infantry and 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions), and two are scattered about the globe on peacekeeping missions. If we had to react in serious force to a real military threat somewhere, we could not.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said yesterday that we have more troops on scene at the Olympics in Utah than we have in Afghanistan. He's being modest. We also have more troops in the former Yugoslavia. The British sent more men to the Falklands in 1982 than we've sent to Afghanistan.

In other words; claiming that Afghanistan is a positive report on the "Clinton Military" is like claiming my grilled-cheese sandwich makes me a gourmet chef. It might be a dang fine sandwich, but it's not a real test of cheffery (?).

And Afghanistan is not a true test of a whole military.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/8/2002 10:19:06 AM