I.
http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/tea-party-at-the-crossroads.htmlThird parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the Tea Party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties.
More important, the Tea Party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried Utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined or just plain sold out by professional politicians.
What the Tea Party was attempting was conservative, but it was also insurgent — if not radical — in the sense of opposing the root assumptions behind the dominant political trends of our times. Since those trends have included the erosion, if not the dismantling, of the Constitutional safeguards of American freedom, what the Tea Party was attempting was long overdue.
ObamaCare epitomized those trends, since its fundamental premise was that the federal government had the right to order individual Americans to buy what the government wanted them to buy, whether they wanted to or not, based on the assumption that Washington elites know what is good for us better than we know ourselves.
The Tea Party's principles were clear. But their tactics can only be judged by the consequences.
Since the Tea Party sees itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party, its supporters might want to consider what was said by an iconic conservative figure of the past, Edmund Burke: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavours."
Fundamentally, "rational" means the ability to make a ratio — that is, to weigh one thing against another. Burke makes a key distinction between believing in a principle and weighing the likely consequences of taking a particular action to advance that principle.
There is no question that the principles of anyone who believes in the freedom of American citizens from arbitrary government dictates like ObamaCare — unauthorized by anything in the Constitution and forbidden by the 10th Amendment — must oppose this quantum leap forward in the expansion of the power of government.
There is nothing ambiguous about the principle. The only question is about the tactics, the Tea Party's attempt to defund ObamaCare. The principle would justify repealing ObamaCare. So the only reason for the Tea Partyers' limiting themselves to trying to defund this year was a recognition that repealing it was not within their power.
The only question then is: was defunding ObamaCare within their power? Most people outside the Tea Party recognized that defunding ObamaCare was also beyond their power — and events confirmed that.
It was virtually inconceivable from the outset that the Tea Party could force the Democrats who controlled the Senate to pass the defunding bill, even if the Tea Party had the complete support of all Republican Senators — much less pass it with a majority large enough to override President Obama's certain veto.
Therefore was the Tea Party-led attempt to defund ObamaCare something that met Burke's standard of a "rational endeavour"?
With the chances of making a dent in ObamaCare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party's chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public's backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.
However difficult it might be to repeal ObamaCare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds.
If the Tea Party made a tactical mistake, that is not necessarily fatal in politics. People can even learn from their mistakes — but only if they admit to themselves that they were mistaken. Whether the Tea Party can do that may determine not only its fate but the fate of an America that still needs the principles that brought Tea Party members together in the first place.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is
www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
II.
http://www.creators.com/print/conservative/thomas-sowell/tea-party-at-the-crossroads-part-ii.htmlIn opposing ObamaCare, the Tea Party took a position that increasing numbers of Americans agree with, now that ObamaCare's potential for disaster is becoming clearer by the day. But in trying to defund ObamaCare without the Congressional votes to do so, the Tea Party made a major tactical mistake.
Polls show that this mistake has already hurt the Republican Party, the only party that has any chance of repealing ObamaCare. To have any realistic prospect of repealing ObamaCare may require the Republicans to win both the 2014 and 2016 elections.
The Tea Party's failed and foredoomed defunding effort predictably got the Republicans blamed for shutting down the government. The fact that the Democrats also went down in the polls means nothing. Politics is a zero-sum game. If it hurts the Republicans more, that helps the Democrats.
Some defend the futile attempt to defund ObamaCare on grounds that it is much harder to repeal a law after it has gone into operation. That may often be true — but not always.
Prohibition was repealed — and it was a Constitutional Amendment, not just a piece of legislation. Prohibition could not be repealed by Congress alone, but required state legislatures to vote for repeal as well. Like ObamaCare, Prohibition sounded good to a lot of people before it went into effect. Only after they saw what a disaster it was in practice did people change their minds.
We are already seeing people changing their minds about ObamaCare, after they experienced the multiple disasters that are just starting to emerge. That includes Congressional Democrats who had voted for it.
If mistakes were always fatal, the human race would have become extinct long ago. So the fact that the Tea Party made a tactical misjudgment is not the end of the world. Everything depends on whether you learn from your mistake or refuse to admit that it was a mistake, even to yourself — which is often the biggest mistake of all.
Barack Obama is currently giving a free demonstration of how refusing to admit your mistake can cost you public support, and even undermine your support within your own party.
The Tea Party does not need to repeat the same mistake that Obama has made — especially since their principles are the opposite of his. The Tea Party is for protecting individual freedom from the ever growing, and ever more intrusive, power of government.
Friend and foe alike see the Tea Party as not just a bunch of politicians trying to stay in office, but people with a purpose beyond going along to get along. The left's desperate — and dishonest — efforts to discredit the Tea Party show that they understand its threat to their expanding government agenda.
The question is whether the Tea Party itself still has its eye on the ball — the goals it was formed to serve — or is letting itself get preoccupied with its battle against other Republicans.
Heaven knows there are Republicans who deserve criticism. But neither fervor nor ego can justify wholesale challenges to Republican incumbents in next year's primary elections. The end result of such a self-indulgence is likely to be getting more Democrats elected, making repeal of ObamaCare virtually impossible. We can only hope that this is not what the Tea Party has in mind, not only for their sake, but for the sake of the country.
A haunting example from history was the doctrinaire wing of the abolitionists, who ran their own presidential candidate in the 1860 elections, even though he had no chance of winning, and simply split the anti-slavery vote, so that Abraham Lincoln got just 40 percent of the popular vote when he won in a crowded field.
The doctrinaires were willing to risk a pro-slavery candidate being elected President of the United States at a critical juncture in history, which would have condemned millions of human beings to more decades, or perhaps generations, in slavery.
Whatever your principles, you have to weigh human consequences from whatever you do in the name of those principles.
There are millions of Americans today who are losing their insurance and their doctor — and who may also lose everything financially to identity thieves, if ObamaCare is as careless with their private information as early reports indicate. These Americans are infinitely more important than internal battles among Republicans.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is
www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
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