America: Divided and Loving It! Okay, Getting Used to It and Not Minding So Much

Today on NRO THE EDITORS: Americans should enjoy religious-liberty protections all the time. The ACA's Heavy Burden. JEFFREY H. ANDERSON:The GOP needs to embrace a true ACA alternative. Getting Serious about Obamacare Repeal. QUIN HILLYER: The Louisiana governor polishes his delivery, answers critics, and welcomes the spotlight. Jindal Takes the Stage. JOHN FUND: Why did the AG drop a case that exposed Democratic corruption? Philly DA Blows the Whistle on Pennsylvania's State AG. ROBERT A. WOODSON: Paul Ryan is willing to learn what works in fighting poverty. A More Serious Poverty Debate. TOM ROGAN: In Turkey, a Twitter ban, a downed Syrian jet, and ever more authoritarian diktats. The Trouble in Turkey. Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty March 24, 2014 America: Divided and Loving It! Okay, Getting Used to It and Not Minding So Much USA TODAY: A USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll taken this month, the fourth in a year-long series, shows no change in the overwhelming consensus that U.S. politics have become more divided in recent years. But sentiments have shifted significantly during the past year about whether the nation's unyielding political divide is a positive or a negative. In February 2013, Americans said by nearly 4-1 that the heightened division is a bad thing because it makes it harder to get things done. In the new poll, the percentage who describe the divide as bad has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points, to 55% from 74%. And the number who say it's a good thing — because it gives voters a real choice — has doubled to 40% from 20%. "Honestly, I feel like Congress is designed to be slow, so it could be frustrating but that's how they are designed to be," Gage Egurrola, 23, a salesman from Caldwell, Idaho, who was among those surveyed. "It helps stop bad policies." Why, it's almost as if the Founding Fathers wanted it to be tough to pass broad, sweeping laws that make dramatic changes without a broad consensus! A key goal of the framers was to create a Senate differently constituted from the House so it would be less subject to popular passions and impulses. "The use of the Senate," wrote James Madison in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, "is to consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch." An oft-quoted story about the "coolness" of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?" asked Washington. "To cool it," said Jefferson. "Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it." We would like our divisions even more if we had a more federalist approach! 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. To echo a thought or two when Glenn Beck said he feared he had divided the country… we have red states and blue states, with different cultures, voting patterns, and broadly-held philosophies about government. 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, Wash., 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 Rainier 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 those 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. Nate Silver: Republicans Are "Slight Favorites" to Win Control of the Senate The good news for Republicans: Nate Silver, the former New York Times, now ABC-affiliated statistics guru who a lot of lefties believe has near-divine attributes of clairvoyance, updated his assessment of the 2014 Senate races: "We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats' position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama's approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions." The caveat: Nate Silver also wrote that Duke had a 92.9 percent chance of beating Mercer in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Above: Nate Silver, hard at work in his laboratory. Silver notes, "Especially in recent years, Democrats have come to rely on groups such as racial minorities and young voters that turn out much more reliably in presidential years than for the midterms. In 2010, the Republican turnout advantage amounted to the equivalent of 6 percentage points, meaning a tie on the generic ballot among registered voters translated into a six-point Republican lead among likely voters. The GOP's edge hadn't been quite that large in past years. But if the 'enthusiasm gap' is as large this year as it was in 2010, Democrats will have a difficult time keeping the Senate." When I say that, I'm a wishful-thinking over-optimistic spinning partisan hack. When he says it, it's Science™! Anyway, here's his take on the most competitive Senate races: For what it's worth, the Democratic grassroots takes Nate Silver extremely seriously: For the last few months, FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver has been largely absent from the political forecasting scene he owned in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. But that hasn't stopped the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from sending at least 11 fundraising emails featuring Silver in the subject line over the past four months, even as Silver was building the foundation for his new website that's launching Monday and was not writing regularly. It's all part of a digital fundraising game that will increase in intensity as the election draws nearer, as candidates, political parties, and other groups bombard their email lists with messages designed to draw contributions. Silver's latest take could get Democrats fired up and determined, or it could leave them dispirited and panicked. Monday morning, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a memo declaring, "Nuh-uhhhh!" What The Hell Is Going on in the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office? Sunday night, our John Fund offered an eye-popping story from Philadelphia: Prosecutors almost never go to war against each other. But in Pennsylvania, Democratic attorney general Kathleen Kane is being brutally criticized by Seth Williams, Philadelphia's district attorney and a fellow Democrat. Williams is upset that last year one of Kane's first acts in office was to decline to prosecute four Philadelphia state legislators and other government officials. In a sting operation, all had been caught accepting cash or Tiffany jewelry in exchange for votes or favors. Kane, who is white, has defended herself, saying that the investigation was badly managed and tainted by racism. She claims the criticism comes from what she calls the "Good Ol' Boys Club." Williams, who is African American, has shot back: "I have seen racism. I know what it looks like. This isn't it." So, just to clarify, the white state attorney general is accusing the African-American district attorney of having a racist motivation for… exposing African-American state legislators for accepting cash or jewelry for votes or favors. The term "racist" is now just a synonym for "I don't like it," isn't it? Begun in 2010, the Philly probe was conducted under Kane's three immediate predecessors as attorney general, and it resulted in more than 400 hours of video and audio recordings. Tyron B. Ali, a lobbyist originally from Trinidad, served as the undercover agent; after he was charged with fraud, he agreed to wear a wire in exchange for lenient treatment. Word of his cash offers eventually got around and prompted some elected officials to call him first. "Sources with knowledge of the sting said the investigation made financial pitches to both Republicans and Democrats, but only Democrats accepted the payments," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week. Attorney General Kane inherited the investigation when she took office in January 2013. She told the Inquirer that she stopped it without filing any charges because it was "poorly conceived, badly managed, and tainted by racism." She quoted Claude Thomas, the chief investigator in the case, as saying he had been ordered to target "only members of the General Assembly's Black Caucus" and to ignore "potentially illegal acts by white members." In response, Williams issued an angry statement and penned an op-ed in Sunday'sInquirer. "The notion that they would target anyone based on race is ridiculous," Williams said in a statement. "I am confident they are not racist, and it is regrettable that the attorney general would casually throw around such an explosive accusation." Thomas, who is also African American, now works for Williams and denies he ever made such a statement. What's more, it looks like the state attorney general doesn't know how to discourage press interest: "[Kane] met with Inquirer editors last Thursday, she brought her personal attorney and on his advice declined to answer any questions after the meeting. Her attorney says she may file a defamation suit against the paper, a ploy frequently used by public figures to intimidate journalists." When a politician threatens to sue reporters for writing about something, she might as well have a flashing neon sign saying "DEAR JOURNALISTS: THERE IS SOMETHING SCANDALOUS HERE." ADDENDA: A reminder for the Snowden-deserves-a-pardon crowd: "A top congressional intelligence official said on Sunday that American counterintelligence officials are virtually unanimous in believing that Edward J. Snowden is 'under the influence of Russian intelligence services.' That suggestion came from Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee." You may recall that Snowden leaked gobs and gobs and gobs of information that has nothing to do with the privacy rights of Americans. 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 NR Podcasts 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