Why I'm A Conservative Republican

Not even Rush can say it any better. If there is anyone left in the Republican Party with any brains or a desire to win elections, start grooming this guy for office.

Pass The Class Hatred, Comrade

Speaking of anti-bourgeoisie manifestos, did anyone catch some of the Pullman League of Women Voter's ballyhooed "non-partisanship" on display in Lenna Harding's colmnn in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News today?

What kind of people can be happy with failure to address some of our country's most basic problems? It is this smug head-in-the-sand satisfaction with the status quo that the author of that message shares with our current leadership that has got us deeper into the morass that I have described. Things are just peachy with them. They have their flashy gas-guzzling SUVs or sports cars along with speedy boats and ATVs that tear up our pristine wilderness. They have enough money to buy corn-fed beef and the latest electronic gadget when it hits the market.

These same head-in-the-sand types often are the same folks who equate pledging allegiance, flag-waving, wearing flag lapel pins with patriotism, and who decry those who don't follow protocol or criticize our leaders as unpatriotic. Like the flowers that bloom in the spring - tra la - these have nothing to do with the case.

Aren't you glad that so-called "progressives" are not bigoted, don't question others patriotism, don't play to stereotypes, don't practice the politics of division, and don't encourage class warfare?

Let me skewer the myth of the wealthy, selfish conservative one more time. A recent study by Arthur C. Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University, found that on average, liberal families annually earn 6 percent more than conservative families. Furthermore, conservative households give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal households.

Welcome Cav!

Please welcome Cav, who just made his first thought-provoking post below. I think it is imperative that we as conservatives start thinking about how we can rebuild the Reagan Coalition.

As a child of the 70s, I see many parallels between now and then: an energy crisis, high gas prices, national disaffection following a long and frustrating war, fears of impending environmenal catastrophe, bad music, etc. Remember, it took Jimmy Carter to get us Ronald Reagan. And it will take Obama (or McCain to a lesser extent) to get us a new conservative leader like Reagan, be it Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, or whoever. In the meantime, our conservative values will have to be stored with care, and love, for better times.

Cav is a former Central Washington University College Republicans president and still lives in Ellensburg, which in many ways is Pullman's sister city. I am very glad to get some more Eastern Washington voices on the blog (and yes, I'm including you over there in Walla Walla, Paul.)

MoveRed.org

MoveRed.org is the youth coalition (ages 16-28) of the King County Republican Party. Their purpose is "to promote increased Republican activism among a younger segment of the population that is often left out of the political process." Above is their latest YouTube video.

I'd love to see a group like this started up in Whitman County. In Pullman, at least, the conservative youth voice is often suppressed/squelched/ignored by liberal teachers and professors.

"Young Republicans a proud minority"

Speaking of the College Republicans, here's a tribute to all you Young Republicans everywhere. Stay strong. You are doing the right thing at an early age and will have no regrets later when your point-of-view is vindicated.

From an AP story in yesterday's Seattle-PI:

CHICAGO -- Ladarius Beal is a rarity on the South Side of Chicago.

He is a young Republican, a suit-and-tie-wearing island of conservatism in a sea of Democrats, many of them supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama, who lives nearby.

The 17-year-old's top political issues have their roots in his evangelical Christian faith: he adamantly opposes abortion and believes in marriage as a union between only "one man and one woman." And one day, he hopes to vote for Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor who dropped out of the presidential race when John McCain secured the GOP nomination, but vowed to build upon his conservative voting base.

"He does not let anybody make him feel ashamed about what he believes. And that's how I am," says Beal, a junior at Chicago's Julian High School, where he's known as the "preacher" for regularly riling up fellow students with his views.

He is a young black man living amid the "Obama-mania" that has overtaken not just his predominantly black high school, but college campuses across the country. He is among the up-and-coming Republicans who stand proudly against the tide, even if they are in a distinct minority.

An AP analysis also found that a notable number of young Republicans, like Beal, have conservative leanings. The analysis of exit poll data from 2008 presidential primaries found that Republican voters younger than age 30 tended to be more conservative than their elders:

- A third of those young Republicans oppose abortion in all circumstances, compared with 23 percent of Republicans age 30 and older.

- They also were 10 percentage points more likely to say the top quality in a candidate is that he or she "shares my values." Older Republicans were more likely to cite experience.

- And young Republicans were nine percentage points more likely than older Republicans to vote for Huckabee.

Overall, the analysis found that those in the 18- to 24-year old Republican bracket were the most conservative young voters.

Tarah Goulding, a 20-year-old senior at the University of Texas, is among them. She won't say which candidate she voted for in the Texas Republican primary, but says she's found things to like about Huckabee, Ron Paul and McCain.

"As a young person who wants to admire a president as a moral leader, I respect that Senator McCain doesn't just tell people what they want to hear," says Goulding, who's been an active Republican since age 14 and is now a precinct leader in her county.

That attitude makes her unusual among her college peers, says political science professor Michael McDonald, who thinks McCain's support of the Iraq war will make it difficult for him to appeal to young people's trademark sense of idealism.

"Talking about finishing the job - these sorts of things are not going to sit well with young people," McDonald says, noting the strong anti-war sentiment on campuses, including his own George Mason University.

In general, he and others say it is a difficult time for Republicans to try to reach out to young voters - so some wonder how much McCain will try.

Since the early 1990s, researchers at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press have found that Republican ranks - young people included - are declining. Of 18- to 29-year-old registered voters who took part in Pew polls, about a third identified as Republican in 1992, compared with about a quarter in recent years.

Meanwhile, the percentage of young people in that bracket who identified as Democrats has risen from 29 percent to 34 percent in that same time frame.

Researchers at Harvard's Institute of Politics say they saw a slight increase in young people who identified as Republican after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but also have seen that support dissipate.

Many young Republicans don't dispute their minority status.

"The stories you hear about how college students are Obama maniacs are absolutely accurate," says Ellen Dargie, a 19-year-old sophomore who heads a Republican student group at Georgetown University. "But I think people really underestimate Republican youth."

She also thinks some young Democrats will switch allegiance after college - "as people grow older and see where their money is going and they start living with some of these policies."

"I think it's just a matter of time," she says.

That's what happened to Mike Murphy, a 27-year-old information technology technician in suburban Chicago. He leaned Democratic in high school, but is now a conservative Republican.

"It really made me mad that the government felt the need to take so much of my hard-earned money," Murphy says. Besides a wish for lower taxes, he counts national security and a tough immigration policy among his biggest priorities.

"I am not like any of these Hollywood Michael Moore-types from the Democratic party," he says.

Still others believe hope for luring young Republican recruits will come with more inclusiveness.

"Republicans can often be stereotyped as rich, white, old men. But that is not the Republican party of today," says Brendan Kownacki, a 22-year-old Republican who is a media strategist and consultant in Washington, D.C.

"There can be pro-choice Republicans, pro-environment Republicans, fiscal moderates, fiscal conservatives, or even gay Republicans."

Allen Otto, a 20-year-old Republican who is gay, agrees. He supports same-sex marriage, but isn't too fussed about his party's stance against it.

"There are many, many more issues in the political arena that mean a lot more to this country than gay marriage," says Otto, a student at Trinity University in San Antonio. A self-described conservative, he's supporting McCain.

Back in Chicago, however, Beal says he's just as glad he won't be old enough to vote in November. He'd rather have a chance to vote for Huckabee in 2012.

Though young black people are very unlikely to identify as Republican, according to the AP analysis, Beal seems almost inspired by his loner status, sharing his views with his Democratic peers - whether they want to hear them or not.

"Believe me," says social studies teacher Gwen Dunbar, "everywhere Ladarius goes, he's remembered."

"Socio-Cultural Characteristics of the Palouse Basin"

You're really going to enjoy this particular piece of professorial fluffery. It demonstrates considerable academic laziness, liberal bias, greatly oversimplified generalizations, and a general surrender to popular stereotypes. It's from the Palouse Basin Community Water Resource Information System, part of the Water Resources Program at the University of Idaho which provides a "platform for cross-disciplinary analyses of water resources sustainability within the eastern Palouse Basin watershed of western Latah County, Idaho, and eastern Whitman County, Washington."

I have highlighted what I consider the biased parts below:

A large proportion of rural residents in the area, especially those living outside of its population centers, were born in the Basin. Their customs and lifestyles are typical of those found in rural areas of the West, in that they tend to have resource-based and land-production occupations, and are comparatively more conservative in their values and perspectives. One crude indicator of this social characteristic is the number of campaign contributions made by residents of Colfax, WA, in the 2004 election: all but one were made to the Republican Party or its candidates – in a state where a minority (46%) of voters voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

However, in the Idaho portion of the basin’s rural areas, an exception is that some proportion of rural landowners either are faculty of the two universities or professionals attracted to the university-town of Moscow, and thus comparatively more liberal and affluent than their neighbors -- or they are even more liberal residents who have been attracted to the area as part of the back-to-the-land movement that began in the 1970's. One indicator of this social characteristic is the proportion of voters in Latah County that voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election – 50% -- in contrast to a state in which a majority voted for Bush (69%).

It might also be noted that a major segment of the Moscow and rural Latah County population, given a more liberal political orientation and the fact that they have come from other more populated, congested and poorly planned areas of the country, are more concerned than other residents with growth management and the use of government and public policy to advance economic and community development in a way that they see as being progressive and well-planned. Some are opposed to certain kinds of economic activity (e.g., "big-box" retail stores) and have been labeled by others as "anti-growth."

In contrast, some residents of the Basin, especially in rural Whitman County, are more conservative in their beliefs and preferences, and some (including many farmers in the region) are among the region’s most conservative, especially in comparison to their fellow citizens on the "west-side" of the state of Washington and in Latah County. These individuals tend to believe that the less government involvement in citizens’ lives, the better, and they espouse principles of free-market economics, despite the subsidies that some receive from the federal government. Of particular relevance for water resource management, they are generally in favor of community development through increased economic activity (i.e., "pro-growth"), and would like to see their communities grow in terms of the basic industries and retail outlets available for local services, consumer choices and purchasing options, and general local prosperity, through the jobs, income and economic expansion generated.

So, I guess we can interpret from that we conservatives are in favor of "poor planning" and "wasting water?"

And while there is some truth to this assessment, categorizing people as "anti-growth" and "pro-growth" by who voted for Bush and who voted for Kerry is embarassingly simplistic, insulting, and just plain wrong.

I know MANY Democrats who are in favor of Wal-Mart in Pullman. Pullman is around 55% Democrat, and yet Judy Krueger of PARD lost overwhelmingly in the 2005 city council race. I'm sure many of those folks who voted against Krueger voted for Kerry the year before.

Moscow is also strongly Democratic, yet the city council members who opposed big boxes were thrown out en masse last November. The same council that approved the Hawkins water deal went on a few weeks later to uphold a controversial measure granting health benefits to "domestic partners" of city workers, including those of the same sex, in violation of Idaho law. "Conservative?" You tell me.

On the flip side, I know of many conservatives who strongly oppose big-box stores in both Pullman and Moscow. And Whitman County is not underdeveloped because the Democrats have been in control all these years. Whitman County government has largely been a Democrat-free zone for a long time. No, it is in large part due to those farmers mentioned above who fear suburban development intruding into rural areas. In Pullman, it was business owners that chased away the Palouse Mall.

Until recently, Democratic Latah County had been the center of retail and housing development on the Palouse. Republican Whitman County had developed the anti-growth reputation. The opposition to big boxes is a coalition that spans political parties, the unholy alliance of liberal fascists and NIMBYists. The common thread with each group is that they want the government to decide what other people can do with their land. The NIMBYists just tend to be a little more quiet about it.

As an information system for those making decision about water, this seems to be a very poor resource. You would think they could do their homework and conduct some meaningful surveys on political attitudes about growth on the Palouse. They probably wouldn't like what they found.