Did Glenn Beck 'Tear the Country Part'? Did Anybody?

Today on NRO CHARLES C. W. COOKE: Piers Morgan joins a former British footballer in a campaign to involve authorities in Twitter disputes. Piers Morgan's Speech Rules. THE EDITORS: What counts most for upward mobility: family. Leading Economic Indicator. ANDREW STILES: Wendy Davis's gaffes don't get the attention accorded other politicians' missteps. The Media's Wendy Davis Bias. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Robert Gates's insider memoir is the latest in a dishonorable genre. Duty and the Taint of the Tell-All. DANIEL ALLOTT: In Erie, Pa., an organization pays women who are considering abortion to choose life. The Pro-Life Pay-Off. SLIDESHOW: March for Life. Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty January 23, 2014 Did Glenn Beck 'Tear the Country Part'? Did Anybody? You won't believe who's accusing Glenn Beck, formerly of Fox News and currently running The Blaze, of "helping tear the country apart"! Well, maybe you will believe, but I'm not sure you'll agree: Later in the segment, [Megyn] Kelly asked Beck to reflect on his time as a TV host at Fox News. His answer may surprise some people. Though he remembers the job being a lot of fun, Beck also revealed that he has some regrets about the way he handled himself on the air. "I remember it as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes, and I wish I could go back and be more uniting in my language," he said. "I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart." First, has the country been "torn apart"? I think you can set the bar for "torn apart" pretty high, considering how we've had an actual civil war in this country. We've had unsuccessful secession movements pretty regularly. Mansfield University geography professor Andrew Shears built a map to depict what the country would look like, if every local secession movement had succeeded, a country of 124 states: If Beck really means America is deeply politically divided, indeed, it is, but I'm not so sure our divisions would look that much better or different if Glenn Beck had remained a wacky "Morning Zoo" radio DJ his entire life. I'm glad Beck developed his interest and passion for politics, and developed The Blaze; he and his folks have been kind enough to have me on several times, including on Election Night 2012. Beck articulated a viewpoint, and built a devoted following, but he didn't create the division in this country, he just reflected it. We're a divided country because we have 317 million people, and at least two major strands of thought and philosophy about the role of the government. It's a broad generalization, but we have red states and blue states. Ideally, we would have let each part of the country live the way they want, as long as its laws didn't violate the Constitution. You want high taxes and generous public benefits? Go ahead and have them; we'll see if your voters vote with their feet. Let Illinois be Illinois, and let South Carolina be South Carolina. Last fall I took a trip to Seattle, Washington, and the surrounding area. It seemed like every menu, store display, and sign emphasized that the offered products were entirely organic, biodegradable, free range, pesticide-free, fair trade, cruelty-free, and every other environmentally-conscious label you can imagine. (The television show Portlandia did a pretty funny sketch about the ever-increasing, ever-more-specific variety of recycling bins, with separate bins for the coffee cup, the coffee-cup lid, the coffee-cup sleeve, and the coffee-cup stirrer; there's a separate bin if the lid has lipstick on it.) Maybe it's just a natural consequence that when you have Mount Ranier and Puget Sound outside your window, you become a crunchy tree-hugging environmentalist. If that's the way they want to live up there, that's fine. The food was mostly excellent. Let the Seattle-ites elect a Socialist to their city council. Let Sea-Tac try a $15/hour minimum wage and see if the airport Starbucks starts charging twenty bucks for a small latte. As long as other parts of the country are allowed to pursue their own paths, that's fine. But a big part of the problem is that we have an administration in Washington that is determined to stomp out the state policies it doesn't like. The president doesn't want there to be any right-to-work states. His Department of Justice is doing everything possible to obstruct Louisiana's school choice laws. They're fighting state voter ID laws in court, insisting that it violates the Constitution, even though the Supreme Court ruled, 6 to 3, that requiring the showing of an ID does not represent an undue burden on voters. This you-must-comply attitude can be found in the states as well, of course. Hell, in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to drive pro-lifers, Second Amendment supporters, and what he labels "anti-gay" out of his state. Mayors decree that they won't allow Chick-Fil-A in their cities because of the opinions of the owners. In Oregon, state officials decreed that a baker must make a wedding cake for a gay wedding; the state decrees you are not permitted to turn down a work request that you believe violates your conscience or religious beliefs. The country would be "torn apart" less if we were allowed to address more of our public-policy problems on a local or state basis. But anti-federalism is in the cellular structure of liberalism. All of their solutions are "universal," "comprehensive," or "sweeping." Everything must be changed at once, for everyone, with no exceptions. Perhaps it's a good approach for some other species, but not human beings. That's not Glenn Beck's fault. Great Scott! . . . Or at Least Pretty Good Scott! So this poll result, from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, sounds pretty ominous for Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, showing him trailing 41 percent to former governor Charlie Crist's 43 percent . . . until you recall the last PPP poll: What was a 12 point lead for Charlie Crist over incumbent Rick Scott in September at 50/38 is now just a 2 point advantage at 43/41. The movement since the fall has come largely as a result of Republican voters rallying around Scott and continuing to decline in their affection for Crist. Scott now leads by 66 points with the GOP base at 80/14, compared to only a 44 point advantage on previous poll at 65/21. That shift with Republicans accounts for almost the entire 10 point movement in Scott's direction over the last few months. Perhaps the late September was a bit of an outlier; that was the eve of the government shutdown that dragged down Republican polls across the country. (Ask Ken Cuccinelli if you doubt that a Washington shutdown can influence voter opinions about a governor's race.) So is this a genuine comeback for Scott, or is the race settling in to what it was always likely to be -- a close race between two flawed candidates? It's easy to understand a Floridian not loving Rick Scott. He initially supported the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, but the GOP-dominated state legislature strongly opposed the proposal, and now he's kind of quiet about the idea. Sure, he's not exactly a whirling dervish of raw political charisma. Sure, everybody says he looks like he should be cast as Lex Luthor in the Superman movie. But these past four years haven't been that bad for Florida. By some indicators, they've been pretty darn good. When Scott took office in January 2011, the unemployment rate was 12.4 percent; today it's 6.4 percent . The state has gone from more than a million unemployed to just under 600,000. Several tort-reform bills are now signed into law. The growth in state spending has slowed dramatically, now in line with the rate of inflation and population growth. State government employees now kick in more for their pension costs, and the state government workforce has been reduced by more than 7 percent, almost 10,000 positions. Scott signed several school-choice bills into law. There are governors who would shut down a bridge-access lane for a record like that, or hock a Rolex. But I can't quite understand why any voter in Florida would be in love with Charlie Crist -- partially because you'll never love Charlie Crist the way Charlie Crist does. And I really can't understand why any Florida Democrats would be itching to elect the guy who they tried to beat in statewide races in 2000, 2002, 2006, and in his "independent" bid for Senate in 2010. Is the 'D' after a candidate's name really magic? Can it make you forget everything you couldn't stand about the guy for the past decade? Betsy Woodruff read Crist's autobiography/campaign memoir so you wouldn't have to: A great anecdote in the middle of the book recounts his attendance at a Q&A session between governors and the president. After watching Obama get grilled by other Republican governors, Crist comes to the president's defense: "I've listened to my colleagues give you a bunch of garbage" — I kind of spat that word out — "about the stimulus. . . . It is not the way we ought to be treating you. We ought to be treating each other as we're told in the Bible — 'do unto others.'" The scene in its entirety is much lengthier, but you get the idea. Charlie Crist is the guy at the panel who raises his hand to ask a question and then blabs into the mic for five minutes instead. And Valerie Jarrett, who listens to the exchange, is deeply moved: "That's exactly what he needed to hear," she said. "That's exactly what we all need to hear." As Valerie spoke, I could see tears were running down her cheeks. "Thank you for saying that," she said. Yeah. I'm sure that's exactly how it happened. Charlie Crist does have a passionate, uncompromising belief and a deep-rooted principle. The problem is that his passionate, uncompromising belief is the deep-rooted principle that he should be governor. Everything else is negotiable. This Particular Penn Is Not Mightier than the Sword Actor Kal Penn, touting Obamacare for Organizing for Action: The old health insurance system was not awesome. The new one, as we've all heard, has faced its share of hurdles and surprises getting up and running, but it's thankfully on track to be much better than the old system. Young people have started enrolling. So far, about 30% of all the people choosing a plan are under the age of 35, and that number is expected to climb, as young Americans often sign up for things closer to deadlines rather than slowly over time (yes, I'm calling you out on the all-nighter you pulled before your last paper was due… similar concept). First, "the old system" did not require you to buy its products or face the penalty of a special tax if you didn't. Second, the number of enrollees between the ages of 18 and 35 is 24 percent, which isn't quite "about 30 percent." You only reach 30 percent if you include those 0 to 18 years old -- the kids included on their parents' plans. Sure, procrastination is a reason young people haven't signed up for Obamacare, but I doubt it's the primary reason. The administration insists most uninsured young people will be able to buy plans for less than $50 per month. Sounds great, right? The GAO offered statistics that show the catch. A non-smoking woman, age 30, buying the plan with the lowest possible premium in the state of Virginia would pay $564 per year, or $47 per month. Affordable! . . . Until you realize the deductible is $7,500. That's how much she has to pay out of pocket before her insurance pays anything. Maybe in a terrible year, full of ailments, she'll hit it in autumn. Lots of young people, beginning their careers in this oh-so-swell economy, just don't have a lot of extra income lying around. That's what's really holding them back. As I noted on Greta last night, if you buy an insurance plan based on what Harold and Kumar tell you, you deserve every bit of misfortune that will befall you. ADDENDUM: One of MSNBC's hosts is romantically involved with the president's personal chef. Well, we always said the network and the administration were in bed together.  To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Follow Tweet Listen Send National Review, Inc. Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. This email was sent by: National Review, Inc. 215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10016