Category Archives: Conservatism

Articles about the philosophy and application of Conservatism.

Rudymentary

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Christie’s Real Weight Problem – the punditry’s baggage of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 bid

Does Chris Christie have a Rudy Giuliani-sized lump on his body politic?

While the fat jokes about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie started long before he was elected (recall Jon Corzine’s much-maligned ad from 2009), Christie’s political weight has been the only thing in the governor’s mansion packing on the pounds in recent months.  Thanks in multiple parts to a weak Democrat challenger, a compliant press corps, and a Democrat-leaning special election held weeks earlier, Chris Christie’s 22% margin of victory in ultramarine blue New Jersey has vaunted him to the top of the incredibly-too-early-to-reasonably-speculate GOP sweepstakes.

Christie’s critics suggest his numerous derivations from conservative orthodoxy and penchant for picking fights with his own party spell his early primary doom – presumably because they’ve never met Mitt Romney or John McCain.  But the early line of attack that does seem to be gaining some traction with the only segment of the electorate who cares this early – the punditry – is that Christie is too east coast, too combative.  Too Rudy Giulianiesque: Continue reading →

Narrative, Interrupted

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The Tea Party are extremists that the American people refudiate.

Right?

Well, not so fast (emphasis added):

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% of Likely U.S. Voters think the president’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country. But just as many (42%) say their views come closest to those of the average Tea Party member instead. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This marks a small setback for the Tea Party from April 2010 when 48% felt closest to the average Tea Party member, while 44% said they had more in common with the president

On the other hand, it’s right after the full-fledged media narrative-attack over the “shutdown”.

Thirty-four percent (34%) now believe their personal views are closest to those of the average member of Congress when it comes to the major issues of the day. But slightly more (36%) say their views are closest to those of the average member of the Tea Party. A sizable 30%, however, are not sure.

Opposition by Tea Party Republicans to the president’s national health care law has been blamed for the recent government shutdown, and just 30% of voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. That’s back to the level seen in January and down from a high of 44% in May after it was disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Many of the “unfavorables” are likely never voting conservative under any circumstances.

The GOP has to present an alternative to the Democrats.

Doakes Sunday: Tell Them No

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember Aesop’s fable about the country mouse and the city mouse?  I felt that way when I moved to Saint Paul.  Not because the buildings were strangely tall but because the residents were strangely liberal.

Years ago, I attended an out-state Republican Precinct Caucus in Senate District 16A represented by Republican Joe Niehaus, who came to the caucus and asked for our votes.  He promised that if we re-elected him, he’d go to St. Paul and vote NO.  If they ask to raise taxes, he’d vote NO.  If they ask for unilateral disarmament, he’d vote NO.  If they . . . by the time he finished, the whole crowd was yelling NO at every punch line and they meant every word of it.  Whatever it was, he was against it, and so were all of us.  Joe Niehaus was my kind of conservative because he understood that things which have stood the test of time should continue, government should do only what’s absolutely necessary and then at the lowest organizational level, and when you maximize personal responsibility, you maximize personal freedom to boot.

Years later, I attended a St. Paul Republican Precinct Caucus and sat between two people who would have been branded Commies had they been out-state.  The resolutions passed up to the county level were just as leftist as anything the out-state Democrats would have wanted.  I felt completely out of place at that meeting.  I was the only Joe Niehaus conservative there.

I’m getting that feeling again, watching senior Republican members of Congress congratulate themselves for caving in to Democrats.  They didn’t have to cave in, they didn’t have to do anything at all.  Just sit quietly until the default date appeared, call the President’s bluff, and wait for him to come to the bargaining table. How hard is that?  Just do . . . nothing.

I miss Joe Niehaus.  I wish he were a candidate in 2014 so we could send him to Washington solely to vote NO.  Now that’s a campaign I would donate to.

Joe Doakes

Sometimes “No” is the only answer you need.

I’m Going To Pull This Car Over

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All of you “The GOP Let Us Down, Why Should We Ever Support Them Again?” types:   To quote LTCDR Montgomery Scott, “you can’t change the laws of physics”.  Or the Constitution, in this case.  The Republicans – RINOs, Tea Partiers, Cruzes and Boehners alike – control one chamber of the Congress.  The Dems have the other one, and the Presidency.  No law is going to be changed while we are the minority.  The best we can hope for is to stall some of the Dems’ plans until, hopefully, somehow, someday, we get majorities in both chambers and the Presidency.  Someday.

All of you “What has Ted Cruz gotten us?” folks:  Hopefully, a sense from the base that there are some people on Capitol Hill who aren’t cowed by the system, and among independents that someone is publicly bucking against the insurance plan that’s jacking their rates up through the ceiling.

Remember the 2012 election?  When the GOP base and not a whole lot else came out to vote, tepidly, for Mitt Romney and the guy who should have been the candidate?  That’s what going along and being polite and playing the Beltway’s game the beltway’s way gets us.

To Both Of You:  Not a single concession?  After all that?  Are you kidding me?

More Monday.

The “Shutdown” Cage Match

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On the one hand, Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo points out 15 signs shutdown fans have “drunk the koolaid“:

There has been, to put it mildly, some mass self-delusion going on in right-wing circles. Here’s how to tell if you are suffering from the ill-effects of the echo chamber.

On the other hand?  Steven Hayward atPower Lineis a convert:

First of all, like the sequester, have the majority of Americans noticed its effects beyond what the media has been screaming about?  The bullying tactics of forcibly shutting off public spaces like the World War II memorial on the mall has surely inflicted damage on Obama that, had he behaved with minimal restraint, he might have been spared.

Beyond this, have there been riots or even public demonstrations against the shutdown?  The political-financial crises in Europe and elsewhere in recent years have seen mass protests and street riots (Spain, Brazil, Greece, Bulgaria, etc).  Where is Occupy Wall Street when Obama needs them?  To the contrary, much more of the political energy appears to be on the Tea Party side right now.  Pretty clearly the shutdown terrifies liberals and journalists—and that’s about it.

Of course, it might be pointed out that this is a faux-shutdown: 80 percent of the government is up and running.  This is analogous to TSA airport security: it is shutdown theater rather than the real thing.  Stop sending Social Security checks and see what happens.

A fair point, but this leads to the next big question: which party most needs the government to be up and running?  Ask yourself which party is the party of government and you’ll know the answer.  With 90 percent of the EPA furloughed, what’s the downside here for Republicans?

More seriously, to the extent that shutdown and “government dysfunction” in Washington causes the public to hold Washington in even greater disgust than usual, who does this hurt the most?  Democrats need the public to have some degree of confidence in government for their expansive schemes to succeed.  Which brings me to the latest soundings on public opinion that Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg have put together and displayed in the charts below. 

Bottom line: public confidence in Washington D.C. is at lows not seen since the 1970s.  (And we know what happened at the end of that decade.)

The takeaway?  I think a competent GOP leadership could make this into a net win in 2014 for the GOP.

Which means we’re screwed.

But for the Tea Party, anyway.

The Lightning Rod

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Rod Grams has passed away after a long battle with cancer. 

Son of a dairy farmer from Princeton, MN, Grams came up through broadcasting, working his way from small radio stations into the anchorman’s seat at Channel 9 by the mid-eighties. 

From there, he went into politics – defeating Gerry Sikorski, who was hobbled by a capitol banking scandal that showed the door to not a few Congresspeople that year. 

And in 1994, at the crest of the “Contract with America”, he took over Dave Durenberger’s Senate seat, after beating Ann Wynia by  squeaker in a race that showed both the nascent power of conservatives in the exceedingly moderate Minnesota Independent Republican party, and the rising power of the state’s Second Amendment lobby. 

His term in the Senate also was a barometer for the slide of the Twin Cities media into outright partisanship; the Twin Cities media lavished coverage on the twists and turns in Grams’ personal life, and breathless wall to wall scrutiny on the travails of Grams’ son Morgan – of whom Grams’ ex-wife had had full custody – in a way that they never quite managed to for DFLers. 

But it is an objective fact that Grams accomplished more in his six years in DC than the celebrated Paul Wellstone did in 12, or than Amy Klobuchar likely will in her entire career. 

After being defeated for re-election by future “Worst Senator in America” Mark Dayton in 2000, Grams went back to his first love, broadcasting; he owned a cluster of radio stations in Central Minnesota.  

I had the pleasure of interviewing Senator Grams two or three times on the NARN.  He had a broadcaster’s knack for being a great interview subject. 

I urge you to direct your prayers – or whatever your worldview calls for – to his family.

A Little Knowledge

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my various liberal lawyer friends, it’s this; when I see news of the filing of an absurd lawsuit demanding a bizarre amount of money for an insane claim, take a step back and a deep breath.  A filing does not equal a judgment; while the occasional batspittle-crazy judgment happens, the vast majority of bizarre lawsuits end in a dismissal on summary judgment; a judge determines that no actual matters of law are involved, so there’s no need for a trial. 

And the bizarre cases that appeared in a splash of laughter and anger disappear, unlamented and

Over the weekend, the word got out among the usual circles about a Swiss proposal to give every single citizen a $2,600 monthly government-paid income. 

There were two reactions from among Americans I’d broadly call “conservative”; mockery, and a little bit of head-scratching.

We’ll look into the head-scratching first. 

The Big Fix: In his classic book Parliament of Whores, P.J. O’Rourke noted that if we just gave the money we currently spend on social welfare to people whose income is below the poverty line, we could bring every person in the United States up to the poverty line, and save money.  We’d do something that eighty years of “progressive” social policy has “tried” and failed to do; eradicate poverty, at least in a literal, personal-financial sense. 

The Swiss “plan” – assuming it also involved eliminating other poverty entitlement programs – might be a huge step toward simplifying poverty entitlements and, perversely, saving money…

The Swiss Reality- …if there were the slightest chance of it becoming law.

The Swiss federal system allows the National Assembly – the Swiss parliament – to refer bills dealing with major government issues – taxes, spending and big policy issues – to a national vote, very, very easily. 

Switzerland, like Minnesota, is starkly divided along what we’d call “red/blue” lines; the big cities, Zürich and Basel and Geneva, are every bit as clogged with socialist bobbleheads as Minneapolis or Duluth.  But the cantons (states) of greater Switzerland tend to be very conservative. The largest party in the National Assembly is the “Swiss People’s Party” (Scheweizerische Volkspartei, or SVP in German), a center-right party that, unlike many European “conservative” parties, could be recognized as “conservative” by an American Tea Partier. The SVP leads a coalition of center and right-leaning parties that don’t quite have a majority of the Parliament – 94 out of 200 seats in the lower house – but would require absolute unity among their opposition to effectively beat. 

But this isn’t even a parliamentary referendum.  Swiss law allows citizen petitions with 100,000 signatures – out of a population of 8 million citizens, or roughly 2% of the voting population - to force a referendum.

Andthatis how this proposal got on the ballot. 

On the one hand, it allows well-organized grass-roots groups to make a big electoral splash by getting the darnedest hare-brained ideas onto the national ballot. 

On the other?  They almost always get beaten.  A “grassroots” group of Swiss got an initiative to abolish the Swiss military onto the ballot in 2011.  It got a slew of headlines.

And it lost by about a 3:1 margin. 

The election of Jesse Ventura shows that if times are good enough, you can get up to 37% of any population to suspend their good judgement on a lark, when they don’t think it matters that much.

But here, we’re talking money.

This initiative is going to generate a lot of headlines, and a fair amount of mockery from American, left and right, who don’t get how Swiss democracy works…

…and, soon, a 2:1 electoral defeat.

Mission Fail

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Despite four years of demonization, the public largely doesn’t see the Tea Party as demons:

Considering the multi-year war on the Tea Party by Democrats, many Republicans, and the media, it is astounding that the Tea Party continues to stay more or less even in its support over the past two years.  A 2% drop is hardly meaningful, and could just be variations within the margin of error in the poll, which was +/- 3%.

So what we’re saying is there’s a chance.

Can’t Start A Fire Without A Spark

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Last week – voters toss a carbon-taxing, border-opening, “War on Womyn”-pimping government in Australia, ushering in a conservative government. 

And in Norway – yes, Norway – a center-right coalition toppled the socialists. 

I know – “conservative” is relative around the world.  There was a time when the conventional wisdom was that European “conservatives” were like American Democrats. 

That was before American Democrats became the extremist party, of course.

They’re Going To Need A New Chanting Point

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Two months ago, Wisconsin (along with, ahem, North Dakota) came in 49th out of 50 states in a Philadephia Fed report on economic growth.

Liberals chortled with glee, declaring Scott Walker a dead issue. 

Then last month the Philly Fed uprated Sconnie to 20th.

And now?

And with new numbers out today for June, Wisconsin is now ranked 5th in new rankings among states on their six month economic outlook. For those keeping track, that’s 40th, to 20th, to 5th in just a couple months.

 

And in another leading economic indicator, the coincidence index, Wisconsin ranks 2nd.

These numbers are not the be-all and end-all of economic reporting.  I’m  not presenting them as such.

But some people sure did. Two months ago, anyway.

Pol Position – The Race to Summit (Ave)

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We broke down the GOP race for US Senate here.  We now take a similar look at the Governor’s contest.

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To listen to the polling establishment that gave us Govs. Mike Hatch, Skip Humphrey and the ’02 version of Sen. Walter Mondale, Republicans should just give up any notion that Mark Dayton could be defeated in 2014.  Dayton posts a 57% approval rating, up from 43% just this past February.  Of course, Tim Pawlenty was sporting a 54% approval rating around this time in his first-term, in what turned out to a nail-bitter of an election decided by Mike Hatch’s failure to attend his anger management class.  And Dayton’s polling numbers, like most politicians, seem to go up when the legislature is out of session and thus his name is off the front pages.

Unlike with the Senate race, GOP interest in the gubernatorial nomination is high and has attracted among the best Republican office-holders still standing after 2012.  The highest profile Republicans may have passed on running (Pawlenty, Coleman, Kline, Paulsen), but if the current crop of candidates represents the GOP “B Team,” they’re certainly stronger than the 2010 field.  And unlike 2010, they probably are more aware of what advertising deluge awaits the winner from the Alliance for a Better More Expensive Minnesota.

Continue reading →

Pol Position – Frankensense

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Back in March, we broke down the various Republican contenders and pretenders looking to make a statewide bid in 2014.  Since then, there’s been a bevy of candidates and plenty of armchair analysis that’s been backlogged.

We start by breaking down the emerging GOP race for US Senate.  We take a similar look at the Governor’s race here.

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On the surface, Minnesota Republicans should have 312 reasons to want a strong challenger to Sen. Al Franken.

But with a party mired in debt and warring factions, and following a nearly one million vote margin of defeat against Sen. Amy Klobuchar, there have been ample reasons why Franken has been off the GOP radar as a potential target.  Running for Senate is an extremely expensive proposition, with a price-tag likely around $10-15 million minimum (Franken raised $22.5 million in 2008) – a tall order for anyone, especially candidates with limited name ID.

Still, Franken remains the candidate who won in a bitterly contested race and whom even Democrats had doubts about, hence the last-minute primary candidacy of Priscilla Lord Faris in 2008.  Franken leads potential rivals right now by margins around 15-16%, a testament in part to the incumbent’s name ID.  Keep in mind, Norm Coleman lead Franken by 15% as late as July of 2008 (an admitted outlier of a poll, to be sure), reminding activists of all stripes of the “tempest in a tea pot” nature of all polling data.

Continue reading →

Two People Separated By A Language

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Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

Question: Can you conceive of any set of circumstances under which you would take up arms against your own government?

Your answer determines your stance on the Second Amendment.

If you answer “Yes,” then logically you should insist on being able to possess weapons at least as good as the police and military will be using to suppress your rebellion, including ugly rifles and standard-capacity magazines, else your resistance is doomed before it begins and you might as well change your answer to “No.”

Because if you answer “No” – if you would never rebel against your own government but instead are willing to put up with any intrusion, any oppression, confiscation of property and beatings and rape rooms and even death squads – then you have no need of the Second Amendment. Nor of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth . . . you’re a willing slave to whomever holds power at the moment, no different from the lowest peon in any Third World Country.

May 29th is Patrick Henry’s birthday. How many Americans today would echo his most famous line? Or even recall what it was?

The relationship between people and government is one of the big gulfs between liberals and conservatives.

Conservatives believe government is, like the people that run it, imperfect and not fundamentally good. It, like they, need to be kept on a short leash. The Second Amendment is the choker chain in that philosophy.

Liberals believe people are fundamentally good. Government, they believe, is people. QED, government is good; attacking government is bad, since its not only people, it’s the Will of The People. In their world, that Will can never get so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it.

And conservatives believe that if it never becomes so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it, you can thank the Second Amendment, along with the First and Tenth.

Food For Conservative Thought

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There are times when “Republican” just isn’t good enough.  We need conservative Republicans.

I thought I’d drop in this Erick Erickson piece from RedState below the jump as a mental apertif.

The conclusion?  It’s a Ben Domenech quote:

The Republican Party needs to understand that shrinking its policy aims to more modest solutions is not going to be rewarded by the electorate. Yes, they need to tailor their message better and find policy wedges which peel off chunks of the Democratic base (winning political strategy is built on an understanding that every drama needs a hero, a martyr, and a villain). But what’s truly essential is that the party leadership rid themselves of the notion that politeness, great hair, and reform for efficiency’s sake is a ballot box winner, and understand instead that politicians who can connect with the people and deliver on their limited government promises – not ones who back away from them under pressure – represent the path forward.

Especially worth remembering as the media tries its damnedest to pound the GOP back into the “great hair/nice suit/benign reformer” box…

…they jammed us into from 1976-2002.

Read the rest of it below the fold.
Continue reading →

Not For Turning

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Joe Doakes got to writing before I did this morning:

A research chemist turned lawyer who became a elected representative of the people of Finchley, Margaret Thatcher changed the world.

Margaret Thatcher

As Great Britain’s longest-serving (and only female) Prime Minister, “The Iron Lady” fought Liberalism and championed Conservative policies that won a war, rejuvenated the national economy and defeated the Soviets.

Margaret Thatcher passed away today, April 8, 2013. She was one of my heroes.

And mine, too.  Although it took a while.

Continue reading →

March Madness Speculation

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Because it’s never too early to start the campaign season.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s announcement last week that he would forgo a challenge to incumbent Gov. Mark Dayton may be remembered in hindsight as the starting gun for the 2014 election cycle in Minnesota.  With Democrats holding all the offices of note, the only real interest among political junkies is which Republicans will make bids for statewide office.  Having only won two cycles in the past decade (2002 & 2010), the GOP cupboard is sparse, with many of the party’s once rising stars now out of office.

So who’s left to run for governor in 2014?  In the spirit of the upcoming NCAA Tournament, we’ve made our brackets (sort of) and started the ball rolling towards months of endless chatter on who should or could lead the MN GOP out of the statewide office wilderness: Continue reading →

Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part X: The Local Cops Rip This Holy Night

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I’m gonna give you a two-fer here.  We’ll cover two of Andrew Sullivan’s definitions of what makes  a conservative in one article, since they’re both just a tad thin.

The first of the two – “Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism“?  Gotta confess, that one’s pretty thin throughout the history of rock and roll.  I’ll cop to it; other than “meeting beneath that giant Exxon sign”, or driving out to Greasy Lake, or meeting at Mary’s Place, it doesn’t pop up much.

We’ll let that one slide for now.

The other – “the Conservative recognizes the need for prudent restraint on power and passion?”

Well, there’s always “Roulette”, the often-bootlegged anti-nuke anthem:

Which isn’t really close, but it’s such a cool recording I don’t care much.

More seriously?

We’ll be back with the final parts of this series later in the week.

Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part IX: I Built The Challenger By Myself

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One of the fundamental tenets of the “classical liberalism” that is the basis of modern conservatism is the idea first recorded by John Locke – that men form governments to protect life, liberty and private property; that private property was in fact a cornerstone of real liberty, and that protecting it against the depredations of government and of other people is a key justification for having a government.  To put it in Andrew Sullivan’s words – because it’s his definitions of “classical conservative” that I’m using as the basis for this exercise – “Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked”.

If we have no property rights, then we have no rights.

Now, John Locke isn’t a common theme in the history of rock and roll.  And private property has had a mixed history in popular music; it’s been a metaphor for rites of passage (Jan and Dean’s “409″), or the high life (“Baubles, Bangles and Beads” by everyone from Eartha Kitt to Frank Sinatra) and a yardstick for swagger (“Beamer, Benz or Bentley” by gangster-rapper Lloyd Banks), but also for evil (“I’d Love To Change The World” by Ten Years’ After’s called us to “Tax the rich, feed the poor, ’til there ain’t no rich no more”).

And you can look in vain for references to Locke or Payne or Franklin – in Springsteen’s catalog, and can find plenty on his later albums and his real life as re politics that contradicts them all.

But this series isn’t about proving Springsteen is, personally, a conservative (faith-based blogger Dog Gone’s endless repetitions notwithstanding); it’s about explaining why his music resonates with conservatives.

Continue reading →

Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part VIII: Just A Meanness In This World

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SIDE NOTE:  It’s amazing how life can derail a guy’s plans.  While – as is my wont with these long series – much of the rough material was put together in October and November, I held off on actually putting it into a written form, thinking it’d give me something to do during the two-month stretch between the election and the opening of the state legislature, when I’m usually too burned out on politics to care much.

Of course, this past eight weeks of battling for the Second Amendment has derailed a bit of that plan.

But while the battle against Barack Rex carries on, it’s time to make time for the fun stuff.

Or what is for me the fun stuff, anyway.

———-

This is a quick one, though.

Continue reading →

Question For Carver County Republicans

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A little bird sent me a copy of the proposed agenda.  It’s a copy of a meeting agenda for a meeting last night.  I’ve added emphasis to the bit that concerns me:

CARVER COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY

AGENDA

Full committee meeting

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Chanhassen American Legion Club

290 Lake Drive East, Chanhassen, MN

Call to order 7:00 p.m.

Pledge of allegiance and invocation

Recognition and welcome to first time attendees

Secretary’s report Vince Beaudette

Treasurer’s report John Kunitz

Annual Convention details and other updates Steve Nielsen

Comments by Rachel Horn, Political Director for Congresswoman Michelle Bachman

Comments by Keith Downey, Candidate for Chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota

Update on early happenings in St Paul by Representative Ernie Leidiger

Consideration of Resolutions

  • Abolish the Met Council
  • Reject the National Party Rules change that requires delegates be bound by straw vote results on the first ballot for President
  • Ask Republican Legislators to rescind their “no new taxes” pledge and enter into a compromise solution in an effort to resolve the national debt crisis

Adjourn and socialize

A couple, of questions, Carver Party People:

  1. Did the emphasized resolution pass?
  2. Could whomever it is who’s putting this resolution forth kindly tell me if, when you’re buying a car, you start with the price that you’re willing to pay and then move up, normally?

Parts of the MNGOP seem to be stuck on stupid.  It’s dismaying that one of those parts is in bright-red Carver County.

Meanwhile, From The Laboratories Of Democracy…

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News flash:  States that govern according to conservative precepts – especially cutting taxes to spur growth – are doing better than “progressive” states.  Much, much better.  And yep, even government revenues benefit.

In the meantime, “closing the deficit” with taxes rather than growth is dragging “progressive” states down. And that’s presuming the tax hikes actually close the deficit, which is a dodgy proposition, given how tax hikes crush economic growth.

Question:  Which example do you suppose the MN DFL is emulating as they cackle madly over their word-processors today, cranking out bills by the pound?

You’ve Got To Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em

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Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

  • I’m in from 1-3.  It’ll be my pleasure to welcome Kevin Williamson of the National Review to the broadcast.  Also Senators Dave Thompson and Dave Osmek.
  • Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

  • AM1280 in the Metro
  • Streaming at AM1280’s Website,
  • On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
  • Check out our new UStream video and chat .
  • Send us an SMS text message - 651-243-0390
  • Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
  • Podcasts are now available on the AM1280 page!  (Saturday show is #2 – Sunday is #3).
  • And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

When Out And About Tomorrow

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I’m going to give you all a little bit of homework.

Read this piece – “Risk, Relativism And Resources“, by Kevin Williamson, from National Review.   It’s a brilliant piece – and a beefy chunk of reading – on how risk-tolerance and risk-aversion affects peoples’ political choices.

Then tune in tomorrow, when I’ll be talking with Mr. Williamson on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, mostly (but certainly not entirely) about this piece.

And then think: how can we conservatives apply this to the task ahead of us – saving the country?

And I’ll also have David and David on the show:

No, not that David and David, although that’d be cool too.  No, I’ll have Senators Dave Thompson and Dave Osmek on the show as well!

Hope to see you then!

Risk

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Kevin Williamson brilliantly sums up why people vote as they do, and what conservatism needs to do to have conservatism reach people.

To sum it up absurdly briefly: different ethnic, gender and social groups have different tolerances for risk; people with higher risk tolerances tend to vote conservative; ironically, “progressivism” is riskier in the long term.  Convincing them is the hard part.  What do you have better to do?

At various points in reading it – it’s 6,000 words – I thought about doing a couple of pull-quotes a day for two weeks.  I may do that still.  It is that good – and by “good”, I mean “very, very thought-provoking about what motivates people to vote conservative or “progressive”".

Read the whole thing when you get some time to spare.

UPDATE:  Mr. Williamson will be joining me on the Northern Alliance Radio Network on January 12.  Hope you can tune in.  This oughtta be good.