| Morning Jolt – November 27, 2012 By Jim Geraghty Just What Kind of a Republican Should We Run in West Virginia in 2014? News broke Monday that Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, is preparing to run for Senate in 2014; within a few hours, the Club for Growth issued a statement that more or less told her to get lost. So will Club for Growth actively oppose Capito? That remains to be seen: The group played a large role in both Cruz and Flake's primaries, to boost their preferred candidates, and could again get involved in primaries this cycle. But Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller wouldn't say whether the group planned to mount a primary challenge against Capito.
"We have no idea if there will even be any other candidates in this race, and that is not the point. Our point is simply that the formula of party bosses picking big-government Republican nominees has not proved successful," Keller said in an email to The Hill. The good news is that at this point, the discussion is entirely theoretical, because at this extremely early date we don't know if Capito will be one of two options, several options, or perhaps the only Republican to run for this office. And perhaps somewhere in the West Virginia state legislature or somewhere in private industry is the next Marco Rubio or Pat Toomey. Sometimes, you get a Ron Johnson coming out of nowhere. But the Club for Growth statement is sticking in my craw a bit, because it implies the "Republican establishment" can be blamed for this year's miserable results: This year, the Republican establishment cheered the U.S. Senate candidacies of Congressmen Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg and former Congresswoman Heather Wilson. All three had the 'right' resumes, and all three had no 'divisive' primaries. Yet all three lost in races that were thought to be winnable. Yes, and three other guys who lost races who were thought to be winnable -- Connie Mack in Florida, Josh Mandel in Ohio, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana -- were all the picks of the Club for Growth. The Club is engaging in the colossally unproductive, "the problem is your wing of the party" talk after a year when every wing of the party saw its preferred candidates lose winnable races. Secondly, the Club for Growth -- full of fine folks whom I respect a great deal -- are ignoring a (no pun intended) elephant in the room, in that some states are going to be more receptive to a free-market conservative message than others. The Club for Growth summarizes its agenda as: - Permanently extend the reduced income tax rates set to expire at the end of 2012.
- Lower or eliminate the dividend tax rate.
- Lower or eliminate the individual capital gains tax rate.
- Lower or eliminate the corporate income tax rate.
- Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment with a supermajority vote requirement to raise taxes.
Now, let's take a look at West Virginia, culturally and politically: "Of the 50 states, West Virginia has the fifth highest share of gun owners, the third oldest median age and one of the least diverse and least educated populations — all variables associated with Republican Party affiliation. After decades of Democratic dominance, West Virginia voted for the Republican candidate in the last three presidential elections." The five largest private employers are Walmart, the West Virginia United Health System, Charleston Area Medical Center, Kroger, and Consolidation Coal Company. Does that seem like an electorate eager to vote for candidates based upon their positions on dividend tax rates, the capital-gains tax rate, and the corporate-income tax rate? If we demand a nominee who will toe the line on fighting earmarks (one of the reasons the Club cites for the defeats of Wilson, Rehberg, and Berg), can we at least recognize the difficulty of electing a senator with this stance in the state that, roughly 400 times, reelected Robert Byrd, the fossilized personal embodiment of pork-barrel spending? It would be nice if a full-spectrum conservative were electable in every state and district. Unfortunately, oftentimes some part of the big-government Leviathan — perhaps best characterized as the government-industrial complex — becomes so intertwined with a region's economy that calling for cuts to that program is de facto political suicide. So a Kansas Republican can campaign on eliminating farm subsidies . . . but he's going to find himself swimming upstream against a strong current. Ditto for Florida Republicans and the space program, or Michigan Republicans and the auto bailout, or Virginia Republicans and defense spending, or conservatives in any other corner of the country where the local economy is heavily dependent upon federal spending in a particular program. We can bewail that fact or we can recognize it and act accordingly. So maybe we don't elect a free-market, investment-minded conservative in West Virginia. Maybe we elect a more populist Republican there, who isn't so hot on touting the benefits of cutting taxes on investment but who kicks tush on runaway EPA regulations strangling the rising energy sector just as it gets going. Maybe we get a pro-gun, pro-life Republican who sees the Obama administration as a cesspool of corruption and who's eager to shine a light on Benghazi and the rest of the messes. Ultimately, this is in the hands of West Virginia Republicans; surely they know what issues matter most of their fellow citizens and what stances a candidate must hold to win there. Speaking of Fodder for a Populist GOP Theme in 2014 . . . Glenn Reynolds says we're headed in the direction of the Hunger Games series. This is where I would usually insert some pop-culture quip, but I haven't read the books and am not likely to catch the movie. You know the story: While the provinces starve, the Capital City lives it up, its wheeler-dealer bigshots growing fat on the tribute extracted from the rest of the country. We don't live in The Hunger Games yet, but I'm not the first to notice that Washington, D.C., is doing a lot better than the rest of the country. Even in upscale parts of L.A. or New York, you see boarded up storefronts and other signs that the economy isn't what it used to be. But not so much in the Washington area, where housing prices are going up, fancy restaurants advertise $92 Wagyu steaks, and the Tyson's Corner mall outshines -- as I can attest from firsthand experience -- even Beverly Hills' famed Rodeo Drive. Meanwhile, elsewhere, the contrast is even starker. As Adam Davidson recently wrote in The New York Times, riding the Amtrak between New York and D.C. exposes stark contrasts between the "haves" of the capital and the have-nots outside the Beltway. And he correctly assigns this to the importance of power. Washington is rich not because it makes valuable things, but because it is powerful. With virtually everything subject to regulation, it pays to spend money influencing the regulators. As P.J. O'Rourke famously observed: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." But it's not just bags-of-cash style corruption. Most of the D.C. boom is from lobbyists and PR people, and others who are retained to influence what the government does. It's a cold calculation: You're likely to get a much better return from an investment of $1 million on lobbying than on a similar investment in, say, a new factory or better worker training. So, if we must raise taxes . . . how about a tax on lobbying expenses? After all, when you tax something, you get less of it. The 'Balanced Approach' Never Seems to Balance, Does It? Nick Gillespie on the fiscal cliff: Republican legislators such House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) has already nudge-nudge-wink-winked and Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Az.), and Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) are now signaling that, like President Obama, they are willing to adopt a "balanced approach" to fiscal responsibility. That means that more and more of them are willing to talk about hiking government revenues in the short term for promises of cutting government expenditures in the long run. Here's a quick question for the folks earnestly in favor of such a trade-off: How many times between 1980 (when Ronald Reagan was elected) and 2011 (last year for which full data are in) have inflation-adjusted, year-over-year government expenditures declined? That strikes me as a decent indicator of just how serious the federal government can be about restraining spending in recent years. The answer, using constant 2005 dollars and relying on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tables (see table 1.3)? Four times, in 1987, 1993, 2007, and 2010. At least two of those four years warrant asterisks, too: In 2007, spending was almost exactly flat, and the decline in 2010 mostly had to do with the inability of the federal government to get its [stuff] together and pass a budget. So why exactly would anyone expect Congress to really cut spending down the road if it has shown essentially no ability to rein in spending in the near term? This is like a variation on the old joke about losing money on every unit sold but making it up in volume. Except it's not like that at all. Or funny. ADDENDUM: Frank J. summarizes the Left's current philosophy on the economy: "We need even more taxes and punishing regulations. We need to treat these people like the scum they are, and if they don't want to watch their companies burn, they'll yield and finally expand their businesses and create more jobs — and not make any more profit or get richer when they do that, because we find that highly annoying. We've had enough of your sickening greed, business owners, so give us everything we want, and give it to us now." To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75% . . . Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. 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