Getting the Full Story on the Gas Tax Rally

24 01 2012

Over the last few days I see there’s been a minor dust-up in the conservative Maryland blogosphere stemming from a Washington Post article about a pro-gas tax rally in Annapolis last week. Specifically, the controversy has been over this bit:

Former Maryland Republican Party chairwoman Audrey Scott also attended, agreeing with other supporters that infrastructure is the key to economic growth and jobs. Scott also accentuated the need to safeguard transportation money, which too often has been tapped by governors from several administrations to plug other budget holes.

This has been interpreted by Michael Swartz, Richard Cross, and others as Audrey supporting an increase in the gas tax, and as such, a strong mark against her in her campaign for the MDGOP National Committeewoman spot.

If it’s true, then I’d have to agree that it’s pretty damning. But on the other hand, I know Audrey and I’ve seen the way she operated as MDGOP Chairman and it certainly didn’t seem in keeping with her, so I reached out to her for more clarification. This is what she had to say:

I wasn’t there to support a hike in the gas tax. I was there for one reason and one reason only – to speak out against Gov. O’Malley’s repeated raiding of the Transportation Trust Fund and to insist upon stronger protections for it so he and other tax and spend liberals can’t continue to do so.

When I agreed to attend the event, I was never told that calling for a gas tax increase would be any part of it and to be frank, I thought it was shameful to see others subverting what the rally should have been about – putting an end to wasteful spending and fiscal irresponsibility. Marylanders can’t afford a gas tax increase and I find it abhorrent that anyone could even consider imposing one.

Infrastructure is important to Maryland’s economic well-being, but the answer to fixing it isn’t raising taxes, it’s restraining spending and ensuring that the Transportation Trust Fund can’t be raided to fund O’Malley’s pet projects.

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It’s the right policy stance and it’s much more in keeping with all the things Chairman Scott has said and done in the past.

Plus, this is the Washington Post we’re talking about, an openly liberal paper that imports huge left-wingers like Obamacare cheerleader Ezra Klein – of course they’d take any opportunity to make it look like Republicans are getting behind a gas tax increase, even if the facts don’t back it up.

I don’t know if the others writing about the article bothered to talk to Audrey or not, but they ought to be ashamed of themselves if they didn’t. The GOP has enough problems of our own without parroting left-wing hit pieces from rags like WaPo.


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Categories : Maryland, MDGOP

My Appearance on The Broadside

11 01 2012

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Broadside, one of the shows featured on the Red Maryland Network.

I discussed my recent series on PlanMaryland with the hosts Andrew Langer and Mark Newgent; besides that Del. Kelly Schulz was on to discuss the upcoming MD legislative session and Mark, Andrew, and I discussed the MDGOP and the race to fill the national committeewoman seat now that the current holder, Joyce Terhes has announced she will not be running for reelection.

Special thanks also to Marie Bernadette for the chatroom interaction during the show!

Be sure to check it out, you can listen to the audio or watch the Ustream video of the episode, both can be found here.


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Categories : Big Government, Central Planning, Maryland, MDGOP, PlanMaryland, Politics, Zoning

Mistaken on Marriage

19 01 2011

Is traditional marriage an institution so vital to the maintenance of a free and prosperous society that no tinkering with it can be allowed?

That’s the case that Greg Kline is making at RedMaryland and it’s a legitimate argument, certainly better than just shouting “SODOM AND GOMORRAH” like some social cons. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good argument.

Now, I happen to be sympathetic to arguments from tradition, indeed it’s one of the arguments I use to support easing the immigration process. But arguing for tradition doesn’t and shouldn’t mean simply arguing for the static preservation of the current status quo, the status quo of the 1950′s, or any other period for that matter.

  • First, not all traditions are created equal.

To suppose that the sum total of all our traditions at any given point are absolutely vital to the functioning of society and an absence or change in any of them will bring about negative effects is to defend both just and proper institutions and unjust and horrible ones as well. Slavery, arranged marriages, prevention of women from owning property, anti-miscegenation laws, all of these were long-held traditions, but I suspect few of the defenders of tradition would say we are the worse off today for getting rid of them.

  • Second, culture isn’t a static thing that always has been.

It’s a fluid and dynamic, a marketplace of ideas. And that’s a big part of why culture needs to be determined organically by the people instead of being codified into law. Even when they don’t violate principles of justice, a society’s traditions may not always meet the needs of another society or even that same society at a different point in time.

Ancient Egypt, Medieval Europe, and Colonial America all featured traditions and mores that worked for their society but that certainly would be problematic for our society today. That’s why government needs to remain out of the sphere of culture and tradition as much as possible, so that the spontaneous orders that shaped our society can continue to do so as we move into the future.

  • Third, even within a traditionalist framework, there’s nothing wrong with tweaking traditions and experimenting with new approaches.

There is simply a strong, and usually reasonable caution against sweeping, radical changes. But neither Kittleman’s bill, which sparked the whole debate on RedMaryland, nor gay marriage in general are this kind of change. It’s not a wholesale redefinition of marriage, the way something like Robert Heinlein’s imagined limited-duration marriages (I Will Fear No Evil), polygamous line marriages (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), or communal marriage communities (Stranger in a Strange Land) are.

All gay marriage does is tweak the institution slightly by expanding its franchise while keeping all the other particulars intact. This is exactly how social change is supposed to happen according to traditionalists, so it is quite odd that Kline is opposed to it.

  • Finally, in making his case for tradition, Kline veers directly into what traditionalists argue against – central planning.

I think this may be the most serious flaw in Kline’s argument. By presuming to hold the knowledge necessary to absolutely define, by force of law, what marriage is and what marriage is not, Kline is making the same mistake as the French revolutionaries Burke derided and the socialist planners Hayek was refuting – he is assuming that society can be planned.

By only allowing legal recognition of heterosexual unions Kline would be given preference in the marketplace of ideas to a particular conception of marriage rather than allowing the spontaneous orders he speaks so well of continue to operate. On the other hand, making government a neutral arbiter in the process of marriage will better allow society to continue to grow and shift as a creation of human action but not of human design.

As I said at the beginning, I’m quite sympathetic to arguments from tradition. But an argument from tradition isn’t supposed to be an argument for a static preservation of the status quo, it’s an anti-planning argument for slow, gradual change – and that’s what gay marriage in general, and Kittleman’s bill in particular are.


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Categories : Marriage, Maryland, MDGOP, Philosophy, Politics

Libertarians and the MDGOP

7 01 2011

After the selection of former State Senator Alex Mooney as Chairman of the MDGOP RedMaryland’s Mark Newgent rightly noted:

His social conservatism may put off more libertarian minded members of the party, who would [be] allies on the fiscal front.

I’ll admit, I’m among those libertarians who have concerns about Alex’s social conservatism. But I’m staying with the MDGOP. Here’s one of the reasons why:

Senate Republican Leader Allan Kittleman said Wednesday he will introduce legislation establishing civil unions between both heterosexual and same-sex partners.

“I’ve always felt that we should have equal rights for same-sex couples,” Kittleman said in an interview. “I also think it’s important we protect marriage as an institution.”

The Republican who represents part of Howard and Carroll counties said he was introducing the legislation on his own behalf, and not as caucus leader, though he had phoned the other 11 members of the GOP caucus to inform them. He emphasized this is “not a Republican leadership position.”

…

This is the first time that Kittleman, who has strong libertarian tendencies, has weighed in on the contentious issue.

Kittleman, a lawyer, said his preference actually would have been to remove references to marriage in Maryland law, and simply have civil unions for all consenting adults, with marriage existing only as a religious institution.

But he found he was pre-empted by the federal Defense of Marriage Act, that denies benefits to even opposite sex couples.

“I think we have a good chance to do this this year,” Kittleman said of his civil union bill, which is being drafted. He called this approach “something that hopefully can be a consensus.”

The existence of Republicans like Kittleman, people who understand that freedom doesn’t come in pieces, do a great deal towards making it worth being a Republican libertarian.

And fellow libertarians in MD, think about this – Democrats, the ones who are supposed to stand up for civil liberties, have controlled Maryland for decades but we still don’t have gay marriage or marijuana legalization but we do have speed cameras and mass arrests without cause.

At least our Republican legislators are, more or less, good on taxes and spending. And with Kittleman it’s pretty much the full package. Just need to get a few more like him.

P.S. Mark’s also written up a good response piece to Kittleman’s bill and it’s generating some interesting debate.


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Categories : Liberty, Maryland, MDGOP

Why I Did Not Sign the Chambers Compact

4 12 2010

For those unfamiliar with it, a document called the Chambers Compact was drafted by a group of Republican/conservative activists and signed by additional such persons. It describes their vision of the MDGOP and what they hope for from its next Chairman (the text of the Compact can be found here).

I was among those asked to sign it. I refused, for several reasons. Since I was asked to sign both as a central committee member and as a blogger, I’d like to share those reasons here.

  • While the Compact calls, properly in my opinion, for a Chairman who understands and can communicate the first principles that guide the Republican Party, it never clarifies just what those principles are.

This is a recipe for disaster. As anyone at all familiar with the party can tell you, during the Pelura years there were sharp disagreements over just what the Republican Party’s first principles are.

Without language clarifying which first principles are to be defended I think a call to have a Chairman defending and articulating them will be ineffective at best, and in a worst case scenario, seriously counterproductive as differing factions of the MDGOP fight each other over what exactly it is Republicans believe.

  • It’s also a good thing to call for better engagement in Democratic strongholds we’ve traditionally left alone, but I think the Compact comes dangerously close the kind of magical thinking I’ve warned against before, the idea that if we would just run “Real Conservatives™ ” as candidates then Democrats would suddenly and spontaneously vote for them.

Now I don’t think the authors of the Chambers Compact actually think this kind of silliness, and the Compact does acknowledge it takes a lot more than running candidates that can articulate the difference between them and their opponents and that the process of turning Democrat voters will be hard and take a while before it bears fruit.

But it’s a point made too subtly and I think many will read it and miss the nuance and just see “Stop putting up RINO candidates.” And if that happens it’s a problem because it will only exacerbate tensions between the party and newly arrived activists who may have passion but lack in experience and campaign knowledge.

  • Going back to the previous two points, my final point of concern is that the Compact says a great deal about what the MDGOP needs to be saying, but little to nothing about how it should be said.

It’s not exactly a controversial point that the GOP, and conservatives and libertarians in general, tend to speak in ways derived from and appealing to the experiences and concerns of a suburban, middle-class audience.

It won’t be enough to go into Baltimore City or the like and use the same sort of language, we need to work on ways of figuring out how to explain our first principles in ways that speak to the audience’s reality without compromising the values. It’s an important enough issue that I think something to that effect really needed to be in the Compact.

Obviously the Compact isn’t a place for specific examples, but school choice is a good one. Virtually every proponent of school choice I’ve heard speak talks about it in terms of enabling parents to make sure that their children learn in accordance with the family’s values. Seldom though do proponents frame it in terms that would actually matter to an inner-city audience, where school choice’s real value is that it lets kids escape the geographic districting that traps them in dangerous and failing schools. That’s just one example.

Those are my reasons for not signing the Chambers Compact. I’d be interested to hear from you all, both people who are signing it and those who like me are refraining from doing so.


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Categories : Chambers Compact, Maryland, MDGOP

Of Politicians and Parties

23 11 2010

There are certain things that simply do not go together. Oil and water. Alcohol and driving. Brown pants and black belts.

Well here’s one more to add to that list: Politicians and Parties.

And I’m not referring to cocktail parties or private one-on-one parties with interns. I’m talking about political parties.

This may seem a bit counter-intuitive, so please let me explain.

It’s basic economics that people respond to incentives. It’s also not exactly controversial to state that different people in different positions have different incentives to which they’re responding.

And that is why politicians and parties should be kept as far apart as possible.

Politicians have one incentive that overrides all others: getting re-elected. It’s an incentive politicians respond to reliably; based off of the moods of the electorate they shift their positions and vote as needed to keep their core base and enough swing votes happy enough to keep voting them back into office. It’s simply the logical response to an electorate with a short attention span and strong incentives not to be terribly informed when it comes to politics.

The incentive for a political party on the other hand is radically different. A political party has to look beyond the interests of any one person – it’s focus must be on maintaining the party brand. That means holding a firm line of long-term continuity. Even though politicians do it, a party shouldn’t be say, reversing a decades long held position on Medicare just because it’s politically expedient at the moment. That just dirties the good name of the party and weakens the long-term election chances of everyone who runs as part of it in the future.

So think about what happens when you take someone who’s been embedded in the former and transplant them into the latter. Is there any reason at all to think that they’d be able to shift their mindset from the short-term incentives of the perpetual re-election campaign to the long-term vision needed by party officials? Or does it seem more likely that a politician, particularly one who was just ejected from their role as such, will continue to think short-term and will just focus on doing whatever it takes to get back into office?

Appearances to the contrary, it’s hard to be stupid and be a politician, so why should we think any of the politicians voted out in 2010 won’t, as former delegate and longtime political activist Don Murphy puts it, recognize that their “future in politics depends on access to the bully pulpit which the Chairmanship (or any of the positions) provides – particularly when so many candidates for MDGOP are obviously looking ahead to future offices they plan to hold.”

It’s something I plan to keep in mind when I vote for MDGOP Chairman and the 3 Vice-Chairs come December. I can only hope the rest of the central committee members do the same.


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Categories : Maryland, MDGOP, Politics

An Overdue Election Piece, Part 3

18 11 2010

In Part 2 of my 2010 MD Election Response I explained why it’s not accurate to say the conservative wave missed Maryland. In this piece I’ll explain why:

It’s foolish to claim that all we need to do is nominate “Real Conservatives™ ” in order to get candidates elected.

This is nothing but magical thinking. You can’t close your eyes and pretend that things like demographics, incumbency, and effective campaigning don’t exist and don’t impact elections. But it’s exactly what far too many people seem to think.

Consider the case of Charles Lollar.

Charles was one of the people running in Maryland that had undeniable conservative credentials and could define the difference between liberals and conservatives. On top of that he is fantastically charismatic, has an amazing record as both a veteran and a businessman, and ran a very active campaign. And he still got hammered by his opponent, Steny Hoyer.

Why? Because Steny is a powerful incumbent legislator and the district he represents has a population of Democrats that vastly outweighs the number of Republicans. Just look at the numbers.

MD-05 has 262,322 registered Democrats and 116,528 registered Republicans. In the election Charles Lollar received 83,490 votes and Steny Hoyer got 154,866. Think for a second about what that means. In order to have won Charles would have needed to not just turn out the entire Republican vote, he also would have had to get 38,339 Democrat votes. You could run Ronald Reagan in that district and he would still lose, that’s too big a voter gap, particularly when you consider that the Democrats can easily step up their GOTV efforts and drive up Democrat voter turnout if need be.

Compare that to Andy Harris’s victory in MD-01. The district has 197,402 registered Democrats and 193,492 registered Republicans. In 2010 Andy Harris received 154,997 votes while Frank Kratovil only received 120,260 votes. Andy could have received only 65% of the Republican vote in MD-01 (I think he probably got plenty more) and still had enough to beat Frank’s vote total!

That’s the real reason Andy Harris won. It wasn’t because he was a genuine conservative (although it did help in a conservative district), he won because the demographics enabled him to not need to worry about flipping Democrats to voting for him and he was up against a vulnerable freshman Congressman, not a powerful incumbent. Put Andy Harris in MD-05 and you’d see the same kind of result that Charles Lollar got.

Simple fact is that magical thinking doesn’t win elections. Firing up the base helps, but when you’re in a deep, deep blue state like Maryland it’s only going to get you so far. Throwing a tantrum because Maryland can’t elect Republicans to statewide office when states that lean Republican or are toss-up did is childish. The MDGOP can eventually turn Maryland (at least a bit purpler anyway), but it’s going to take time and it’s not going to happen if we just elect “Real Conservatives™ ” and ignore all the other factors that decide elections.


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Categories : Maryland, MDGOP, Politics

An Overdue Election Piece, Part 2

18 11 2010
In my previous post on the 2010 election in Maryland I said that I think a lot of Republican and conservative activists are misreading the MD election results. Now I’m going to explain the first reason why:
It’s not at all accurate to say that the Republican wave missed Maryland or that the MDGOP failed.

Yes, we didn’t win back the governor’s seat, we didn’t win the U.S. Senate race, and Andy Harris was the only Congressional seat to flip to our favor. But that ignores many wins farther down the ticket by Republican candidates.

At the local level, many jurisdictions flipped to Republican control. In Queen Anne’s County, where I live, local government not only flipped from from having 1 Republican out of 5 County Commissioners to an all Republican board, but only 3 Democrats won (Doug Gansler, Lance Richardson, and Winsie Cannon), and the first two were unopposed while the Republican candidate didn’t really campaign much against Winsie.

Besides Queen Anne’s Allegany, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Caroline, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, St. Mary’s, Talbot, Washington, Wicomico and Worcester Counties all also came out of the 2010 elections with Republican controlled governments. Several of those, such as Talbot haven’t had Republican controlled county government in years. And that’s only looking at the top of local government races. Besides County Commissioners/Council Members/etc. there were also numerous other races for positions like Sherriff, Register of Wills, State’s Attorney, and so on that were won by Republican candidates across the state.

And that is fantastic news. A strongly charismatic figure and/or someone with a well-oiled campaign machine can win at the top of the ticket, even in a state counter to their views. But they’re only going to be around for a couple of terms and after that things will go back to being the way they are.

On the other hand, by picking up lots of local government seats we laid the groundwork for a stable and long-term conservative resurgence in Maryland. It is only by having a strong and widespread realization of governance according to the principles of limited government and individual liberty that we will help turn around Maryland at the state level. This is a long-term project and it would be foolish to expect such a thing to occur overnight.


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Categories : Maryland, MDGOP, Politics

An Overdue Election Piece, Part 1

18 11 2010

I really should have done this back right after the election, but better late than never I suppose.

In the wake of every election, the politically aware inevitably, and properly I should think, ask themselves “What does it all mean?”.

According to some in Maryland politics the election meant that the Republican Party failed in Maryland, that for some reason we missed the conservative wave that swept through so much of the country. For example, here’s Mike Swartz, writer of Monoblogue:

The Maryland Republican Party had few victories to celebrate after this year’s election, with the only gains being one Congressional seat (Andy Harris) and a half-dozen seats in the House of Delegates. Yet Bob Ehrlich was blown out by 13 points and we lost 2 of our scant 14 seats in the Maryland Senate.

This is the mindset that seems to pervade many Republican and conservative activists here in Maryland. And based off of it, the lesson they’ve taken from it is that the only reason the MDGOP did poorly is because Bob Ehrlich, a moderate Republican was at the top of the ticket, and if we put “Real Conservatives™ ” up then we’ll do just fine. From Potomac Tea Party Report:

Polls show that the majority of Americans consider themselves conservative already. Marylanders are no exception, but the MDGOP never sought them out!  Ehrlich shut them out himself when he dissed Sarah Palin and her endorsement of Brian Murphy.  Then after winning the primary, Ehrlich never apologized to the Tea Party.*

New leadership better emerge and real soon, or there will be a movement for a conservative party or a real formalized Tea Party party in Maryland.

Then Newgent [http://redmaryland.blogspot.com/2010/11/sometimes-great-notion.html] says it will take four years or more!

…

It shouldn’t take four years, if the MDGOP can’t get it together long before 2012, some new party will!   There is a MDGOP convention in December and this writer will be there to see, and report on, the installation of new leadership that will set firm “conservative” principles and start selling those “timeless” principles before the year is out because who in their right mind is going to organize and fight for the ill-defined and squishy middle!

Well, with all due respect, this kind of thinking is foolish and for several reasons, which I will explain in subsequent posts rather than cluttering this one up any further.


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Categories : Maryland, MDGOP, Politics


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