Please update your bookmarks.  Authors please e-mail the Web Tsar for new passwords.

We are at the beginning of an election campaign like you’ve never seen before!

We are challenged to answer again the momentous questions our Founders raised when they launched mankind’s noblest experiment in human freedom. They made a fundamental choice and changed history for the better. Now it’s our high calling to make that choice: between managed scarcity, or solid growth … between living in dependency on government handouts, or taking responsibility for our lives … between confiscating the earnings of some and spreading them around, or securing everyone’s right to the rewards of their work … between bureaucratic central government, or self-government … between the European social welfare state or the American idea of free market democracy.

What kind of nation do we wish to be? What kind of society will we hand down to our children and future generations? In the coming watershed election, the nature of this unique and exceptional land is at stake. We will choose one of two different paths. And once we make that choice, there’s no going back.

Paul Ryan:  “Should America Bid Farewell to Exceptional Freedom?”

Bonus (still think I’m crazy?):

The Democratic leaders of Congress and in the White House hold a view they call “Progressivism.” Progressivism began in Wisconsin, where I come from. It came into our schools from European universities under the spell of intellectuals such as Hegel and Weber, and the German leader Bismarck. The best known Wisconsin Progressive was actually a Republican, Robert LaFollette.

Progressivism was a powerful strain in both political parties for many years. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, and Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, both brought the Progressive movement to Washington.

Early Progressives wanted to empower and engage the people. They fought for populist reforms like initiative and referendum, recalls, judicial elections, the breakup of monopoly corporations, and the elimination of vote buying and urban patronage. But Progressivism turned away from popular control toward central government planning. It lost most Americans and consumed itself in paternalism, arrogance, and snobbish condescension. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson would have scorned the self-proclaimed “Progressives” of our day for handing out bailout checks to giant corporations, corrupting the Congress to purchase votes for government controlled health care, and funneling billions in Jobs Stimulus money to local politicians to pay for make-work patronage. That’s not “Progressivism,” that’s what real Progressives fought against!

Easeover is the Easter/Passover/Spring holiday that syncreticist mischlings like myself celebrate around this time of year.  Seems like a good time to attempt a Zombie Contentions resurrection, too.

The plan is to move this site to a new location, and a new web host, this Sunday.  I hope that after the move we’ll experience fewer slow-downs and service interruptions, and there are other potential advantages to new digs, but that’s mostly tech stuff – and you don’t have to bother your pretty little heads with such things.

I’ve been experimenting with new formats and other changes, but, for now, the new site will look darn near identical to this site, though you may have to re-adjust your browsers if you’ve previously customized ZC viewing options  for bleary, undead eyes.  (I’d bet that a few of you aren’t even aware that you can do that… click on View/Zoom or try Ctrl+ in Firefox or Internet Explorer.)  In future months, when you click on http://ckmac.com/thewholething/, in addition to finding a prominent link to http://zombiecontentions.com, you’ll also likely find the evidence of ongoing experimentation.  Feedback will be welcome, as always, and may be expressly solicited from time to time.

Now, about the Wall:  It’s nearing 5,000 comments, and moving them all over would present a particular challenge.  I’m thinking instead of creating a “Best of the Wall” page, collecting some of the best items from its ca. 6 months in existence, and starting off fresh at the New ZC.  If someone else wants to go through the 100 pages of Wall comments and pick out the best exchanges, images, videos, and links – lemme know and I’ll tell you how to do it relatively easily.

Authors:  I’ll be e-mailing you on the need to create new passwords for your accounts and on minor issues, but don’t worry your purty little rotting undead heads about that one either.  All of your work, including drafts, revisions, and images, will remain available at the current location indefinitely.  By the way, if anyone wants a file containing his or her posts, it’s easy to generate one, and it can quite possibly be imported into your own blog, comments and all.

Thanks to those who donated during that brief Winter fund drive, who made this move possible/justifiable.  For the rest of you, or for those of you who’d like to re-express your support for this (incredibly time-consuming and distracting, though quite rewarding, I hasten to add, in ways more meaningful than moolah) enterprise, you can click on down in the depths of the sidebar, and follow the instructions (or contact me directly if you don’t like these newfangled web-based money-sucking identity-stealing contraptions…).

What makes 1938 unique on such a list is our own absence from the critical scenes.  The effect in Giles MacDonogh’s month by month, sometimes day by day and hour by hour, chronicle of the year, is a portrait of American leadership traced out as though in a photographic negative.

The cloudy, black and gray surface reveals the following:  A world without American leadership is a world that can fall prey to the “gambles” of upstart second-raters and maniacs. A world without American leadership is a world in which secretive, shifting alliances, immoral deals, territorial larceny, and brute force lead, step by step, to chaos and conflagration. It’s a world in which everyone can choose to look the other way when a monster and his brood are appeased, and appeased again, at the expense of races, religions, and nations. It’s also a world in which anyone can get in on the action while the getting seems good, not daring to think that he might be next.

In other words, 1938 marks the last historical moment up to the present day during which other nations could pretend to solve matters of great importance without significant American involvement.  For nearly three more years, the U.S. avoided formal entry into the developing conflict, but the last pretense that the world could take care of itself on its own ended a few months into 1939.  Soon, the argument for acting “while dangers gather,” instead of waiting for whatever day of infamy, would have 60 – 100 million direct casualties and a rubble of nations weighing on its side.

That cataclysm is the other “negative subject” of this chronicle, which, like many histories focusing on Nazi Germany, makes for fascinating yet agonizing reading.  At the beginning of the year, Adolf Hitler was Chancellor in a rightwing coalition government.  The country and the National Socialist order spent the year on the verge of bankruptcy and economic chaos. German borders were still defined by the Versailles Treaty, and Germany’s range of action was constrained by, supposedly, firm commitments of the “Great Powers.” The military establishment, still dominated by aristocrats and a special target of the Nazi power structure, spent much of the year planning and preparing a coup.  According to much evidence, and for good reason, the German masses were uncertain and fearful, and still capable of resistance.

By the end of the year, following a series of successful, highly improvisational acts of acrobatic brinksmanship on the world stage, Hitler was the unchallenged leader of an empire at dawn set for further expansion, the nation having already absorbed and to some extent exhausted its newly acquired financial, material, and human resources.  The internal opposition had been silenced and humiliated. The officers around General Ludwig Beck put plans for rebellion, which at times had been mere days from irrevocable execution, on indefinite hold (many of the same conspirators would be involved in the Valkyrie plot six years later).

In the meantime – and this story takes up a large portion of 1938 - the oppression of the Jews and the suppression of dissent escalated. For the first time, a policy that foisted second-class status on law-abiding citizens took on a literally mass murderous shape, and in a widening transnational orbit, thanks to the collaboration of allies and opportunists.  Someone should have been able to do the math: Millions of Jews to be forcibly dispossessed, under orders of expulsion from a continent increasingly under Nazi domination… minus  thousands of spots grudgingly made available for immigration around the world. The final solution of this simple equation was something that either no one was willing to imagine or, a much darker thought, very many people, not just German-speaking people, were happy to write off on their own personal balance sheets.

Another piece of inexorable math might have been less obvious, but was critical to all that followed. The fascist economic system, contrary to the PR, was a total failure. Without larceny and enslavement on an international scale, it couldn’t survive. Combine economic compulsion with a culture of self-superiority and an ideology that celebrated the remorseless use of force, and war was inevitable.

These equations also expose certain schools of historical revisionism for the dreary obscenities they are.  By 1938 there was already ample moral and legal justification to act against Hitler’s Germany.  There was also opportunity:  The regime was vulnerable to the point of desperation.  Nothing succeeds like success, however, and the world, by cooperation and by omission, gave the Nazis one triumph and rescue after another.   By the end of the year, the message sent and received was “barbarism works” and “no one can stop it.”

For 70 years, we’ve been committed to sending the opposite messages, and have mostly succeeded, but are we still doing the math?

h/t:  Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: NRSC hails Obama the Promise Keeper!

So, yeah, MC’s right – Palin endorsing McCain does “stink” – but only if you were hoping that she would lend her charisma exclusively to the cause of rigorously pure conservatism.

NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON POLICY

MC and I are not far apart on the most politically relevant points, even though this agreement leads us to different conclusions.  Before anyone reads the wrong things into these differences, however, there are some policy questions that need to be cleared up.

MC concedes that there’s little daylight between McCain and Palin on foreign policy, and he’s happy to set aside possible post-Campaign ’08 hard feelings (“her business”).  It’s on domestic policy that differences seem to arise, but I think MC partly mischaracterizes them, and otherwise exaggerates their importance:

1. Immigration: MC links to a recent FoxNews interview in which Palin unambiguously states her support for McCain’s current “position on immigration.”  Though inveterate McCain skeptics may be unwilling to credit a shift in his approach that’s as old as the ’08 campaign, we should be clear that what Palin is supporting is a “border security first” approach.  MC calls determining what Palin really means a “tough call.”  I disagree:  She says she supports McCain’s position.  If he diverges, he’ll presumably have to “answer to Sarah,” and, if she fails to call him out, it will harm her credibility.  That’s implied in any endorsement.
2. Global warming/Energy:  I believe MC misstates the differences between Palin and McCain on GW issues.  When MC claims that “McCain and Obama get along swimmingly” on Cap and Trade, he ignores the fact that McCain has been a fierce critic of Obama’s program from the day it was introduced.  McCain may, for instance, have been the first to dub it “Cap and Tax.”  MC also forgets the softer/squishier pre-ClimateGate remarks that Palin made over the course of years on Global Warming-based policy, clearly intended to make it easier for AGW believers to support her. Post-ClimateGate, she’s become much more vocal in her skepticism.  As for ANWR, differences on the subject are very old news.  They didn’t prevent Palin from running with McCain, and haven’t prevented her from recycling lines like “all of the above approach” and “drill, baby, drill” from her and McCain’s joint campaign ’08 platform.
3. Gay marriage:  McCain and Palin are both opponents.  They may differ on the wisdom of passing a “Defense of Marriage” amendment now, but even McCain, who opposed a constitutional amendment in 2004, has for years been saying that he would support it if the Defense of Marriage Act were overturned.  Does anyone see this secondary/tactical difference as likely to determine many elections this year – even a primary election on the GOP side?
4. Evolution:  In what election anywhere in America other than for school board are the particulars of beliefs on this issue of importance? McCain apparently believes in evolution + God.  Palin seems to believe in God + evolution.  MC:  “Some may say it’s a minor issue, but it’s seemed important to Sarah Palin.” She’s responded when others have brought the topic up, and she discussed her beliefs in her book.  Has anyone heard her bring it up on her own in any political context?

…and that’s about it from MC on policy, though at other points both he and other commenters have brought up other issues, especially (5)  Campaign Finance Reform (CFR).  I don’t recall and couldn’t find a detailed statement of Palin’s on McCain-Feingold, though I believe that, like Fred Thompson (who co-sponsored it in the Senate), she expressed support for the good intention of cleaning up politics (since the 19th Century a typical progressive focus, incidentally).  Palin had her own personal experience of campaigning for and helping to implement progressive-style political reforms – the Alaska ethics laws – that, despite good intentions, seemed to backfire on her. She may sympathize with McCain.  Anyway, with the Supreme Court having gutted McCain-Feingold legally, and with the Obama ’08 campaign having blown apart many of its presumptions, it’s hard to imagine a deader letter, or any reason why it should influence Palin’s decision-making on McCain vs Hayworth.

In sum, Palin and McCain are very close in one major area – foreign policy – and easily close enough for government work on the other issues MC points to.  Most important, they’re together on the major unifying conservative issues of the 2010 campaigns – debt, deficits, ObamaCare, DC elitism/corruption – issues on which McCain has been and remains a leading spokesperson.

Moreover, like Mitt Romney and others who have endorsed McCain, Palin wouldn’t need a personal bond, debt of gratitude, or perfect agreement to conclude that putting the Arizona Senate seat at risk, losing a” lion of the Senate,” creating or widening rifts within the party, and opening the Republicans to a “they’ve gone crazy with ideology” narrative would interfere with job #1:  Defeating Obamacrats.

Some have focused on JD Hayworth’s flaws as a candidate, but, in trying to justify Palin’s endorsement, you don’t need to destroy Hayworth unless you despise McCain.  Palin focused almost entirely on McCain’s positives in her endorsement statement, with only a glancing, implicit reference to Hayworth in her conclusion:

In 2008, I firmly believed that John McCain was the right man for America. Today, I know he’s the right man for Arizona. Your state deserves more than rhetoric; you deserve a leader with a real record of accomplishment. That’s why, on behalf of Sen. McCain, I’m asking for your vote. For the good of our entire country and the future of your state, please send John McCain back to the United States Senate.

Not to take her at her word requires you to deny the evidence that she actually is closer to McCain than anti-McCain conservatives want to acknowledge.

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATISM vs PURE CONSERVATISM

I therefore both disagree and agree with MC’s conclusions.  I don’t think he’s justified his description of McCain and Palin as “at odds all over the place,” but I think he’s right to question whether Sarah Palin is a “strong conservative,” if by that he means a committed ideologue.  She clearly possesses many strongly conservative impulses and core beliefs, but her approach to politics is at least as pragmatic as it is ideological.  In that way, she’s an authentic conservative in an American mode, putting concrete results above any idle search for absolute political right and wrong.  Since I consider the combination of the two political impulses, under whatever names, to be both desirable and inevitable, I applaud SP’s having offered support and encouragement across the conservative spectrum, from Scott Brown to Doug Hoffman and maybe even Rand Paul.  It’s good for her and good for us.

In disagreeing with me strongly on this conclusion, MadisonConservative is far from alone on the right.  He’s probably closer to the majority view at HotAir (at least among those highly interested in immigration policy).  I welcome the continuing debate with him and those who agree with him.  As for those who don’t welcome the discussion, I wonder what they think HotAir is for – endless recitation of “true conservative” principles, all dissenters shamed and silenced?

Far as I can tell, it ain’t that kind of place, never has been, from the top down and the bottom up, and I’m happy with that, too.

(your links should be added immediately – though you won’t see them until your next refresh)

Overall, my point is this: is Sarah Palin a strong conservative? If she is, why is she endorsing McCain? They disagree on a number of relevant domestic issues. She and Hayworth share more common views. If it’s personal, so be it. If Sarah Palin is a moderate, then very well. Let’s get that out into the open, and stop presenting her as a conservative icon, because there are few left who would consider McCain as such. Some have suggested that she is just being loyal to the man who chose her as his running mate for the presidency. Ultimately, the argument that Sarah Palin supports McCain because of his politics is frail. They’re at odds all over the place. It’s not “hatred” to point this out. Deal with it.

Other than to say that, contrary to a few commenters at HA, I find such debates enjoyable and useful, and entirely consistent with truth, justice, and the American way – I’m refraining from and direct response for now.

Some McCain-haters – and there’s really no better word than “hate” for the attitude of many HotAirians regarding McCain – think Palin’s made a “mistake.” Others who like and support Palin, but who remain hostile and suspicious toward McCain and what they believe he represents, believe she’s just “doing what she has to” in demonstrating loyalty to the man who “made her” a multi-millionaire and national political player, and are willing to give her “a mulligan.” Here’s one typical exchange:

I don’t know how many endorsements like these Palin can survive.

DFCtomm on March 29, 2010 at 1:29 PM

HondaV65 on March 29, 2010 at 1:30 PM

ONE. And only ONE.

Many such observers have persuaded themselves that Palin is trying to improve her political prospects and expand her power base. At some unspecified later date, they expect, she’ll be able to call in the chit. It squares with the view of your average Fox News All-Star always happy to attribute any conduct by any politician to cynicism.

What a load of, ahem, bullcrap! No one has yet explained why this straight-talking, “if I die, I die” conservative heroine has suddenly turned crafty pol or hypocrite, and yet still could remain a worthy Tea Party leader.

How about this explanation:

Palin supports McCain!

I hope no one finds that too complicated.

In the race with JD Hayworth, I doubt it’s even a close call for her.

Gov Palin agrees with Senator McCain close to 100% on foreign policy. She respects and likes him personally. She doesn’t blame him for the actions of some of his operatives during and after Campaign ’08, and never believed it was his responsibility to play the role of political Dad and discipline the other kids for her. She was and is quite capable of defending herself and charting her own course, and would have found it condescending and presumptuous for him to play protector.

She has no problem with the main thrust of his domestic views or his overall approach to politics. If she cares much about immigration politics – I’ve seen little evidence of it, though it’s clearly still a big deal to many grassroots conservatives – she’s happy with McCain’s post-”Shamnesty” positioning. I suspect that she cares enough about the Republican Party’s long-term prospects to want to see the issue handled soberly and positively.

Though post-’08 she’s been driven into a conservative cul-de-sac – in part by political circumstances in the US of A ca. 2010, in part by a learning experience that has included attacks on her from the left and from Brooks-Frum moderate/elitist conservatives – her political profile and her actual political conduct when in office, was moderate, bi- and non-partisan, and altogether maverick-y.

It was classically progressive: reform-oriented, anti-machine politics, woman-empowering, etc. – including not just a willingness but a determination to use government in aid of “social justice” – as in care for the vulnerable (special needs children, indigenous peoples), fair and equitable stewardship and profit-sharing in the exploitation of natural resources, safeguards against self-dealing by powerful economic and political players.

No one is in a position to take an objective measurement, but Palin looks to me to be about as much a McCain conservative as a Tea Party conservative. With the help of, as the governor likes to say, “people of both parties and of no party at all,” that overall political direction represents a potential governing majority.

I personally have no trouble taking the governor at her word on this and most other issues. It’s one of the things I like best about her. My advice is that you stop looking for secret calculations, obscure motives, and stop insulting Palin with the notion that she’s acting on some other basis than her best political and moral judgment. She prefers McCain to Hayworth, probably by a lot. Deal with it.

cross-posted at the HotAir Greenroom

[T]his bill’s purported goal of providing affordable health insurance to every American is seen by Obama and his backers as not only just but also inevitable, much the same way they think of the “New Deal” legislation passed by Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” They are convinced that [...]ObamaCare will soon be seen not as a massive expansion of government power but as yet another chapter in America’s inexorable journey to social justice…

Tobin goes on to argue that the real job for conservatives must go beyond a critique of ObamaCare, to an “attack on the liberal narrative.”  In the process he employs a bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu:

Rather than a progressive innovation, ObamaCare is a retrograde move that seeks to drag American politics and the economy back to the mistaken emphasis on government power of the mid-20th century. Like so much of the welfare economics and failed liberal policies of that era, ObamaCare has the potential to do far more harm than good.

This mode of analysis, which should be familiar to some readers here, defines our political moment as progressivism in self-eclipse, the moment when further progress along the path of leftwing statism requires retreat on every other, and when everything else that political progressivism originally stood for – cleaner politics, responsiveness to the popular will, efficient and up-to-date public administration, simple fairness – must be sought elsewhere.  It could be a moment of profound opportunity to re-shape American politics, but only if conservatives are prepared to seize it.

Today, Republicans are proposing to make “repeal and reform” – repeal of ObamaCare, reform of health care insurance – a centerpiece of their political and electoral strategy, but the former aim is something that some vocal conservatives have been declaring impossible for months.  Without accepting that claim, which will now mostly be advanced by Democrats, we can recognize that repeal will be far from easy.

As for the second aim, in addition to being desirable on its own merits, reform/replace reduces the political burden in one respect – providing a “give” to go with the “take” of repeal – but conservative credibility on reform remains suspect.  When Democrats claimed throughout the Obamacare debate that their opponents had no alternatives, Republicans reacted as though unfairly attacked, the victims of a political-media conspiracy, but in concrete terms they were more guilty than innocent.  The Republicans had had two presidential terms and an extended period of control of Congress without ever making health care overhaul a priority, even in the form of an incremental process of major reform.  In 2008, John McCain did offer an excellent set of proposals, but it was offered defensively, at best, never in a concerted effort to lead on the issue.  Merely pointing to some number of hopeless bills and invisible amendments, as in the recent congressional debate, is not the same thing as having proved your commitment, and this applies to other issues as well.  As the first President Bush learned when campaigning unsuccessfully for re-election in 1992, if you have to plead with people to believe you’re engaged – reading “Message:  I care” off a cue card – then it’s too late.

The ever ready conservative fallbacks – “Don’t spend so much money!” and “Don’t make a bad situation worse!” – may be wise words, but they’re not motivational ones.  Some recent comments by Ross Douthat on Bart Stupak, the pro-life “Blue Dog” who may have put Obamacare over the top, discussed this problem with a view to socially conservative swing voters – potentially the most critical swing constituency in any national election:

[T]here are still pro-life Democrats for a reason: Because many abortion opponents can’t reconcile their views on social justice with the harder-edged, “any redistribution equals socialism” tendencies in the Republican Party. Some of these pro-lifers are older Catholic Democrats like Stupak; some of them are younger Americans who are hostile to abortion but don’t vote on the issue because they can’t imagine themselves being represented by the party of Limbaugh and Beck. A successful pro-life politics desperately needs these constituencies to find representation — and if there’s no place for anti-abortion sentiment among the Democrats, then pro-lifers need the Republican Party to feel hospitable to voters whose impulses on social policy tend in a more communitarian direction.

Douthat might have added certain non-white and immigrant constituencies to the groups that ought to be in play, and he might have noted parallel “impulses” animating many less religious voters.  For our purposes, however, the key point may be the following:

There are conservative and market-oriented proposals on health care reform that are consonant, I think, with Catholic teaching on a just society. But the Republican Party’s leadership wasn’t interested in talking about them, and conservative pro-lifers didn’t seem particularly concerned about this lacuna in the debate.

That these observations will remain difficult for some conservatives to absorb tends to support Douthat’s point, though if you think about someone whom you know, someone who ought to fit within the religious right – Catholic, evangelical, Jewish, or other – but who voted for Obama in 2008, it may be easier for you to understand.  Attacking “social justice” – “Message:  We don’t care” – is as likely to repel these voters as to shake sense into them.  They feel commanded by faith to care for the unborn, but they also feel commanded to care for the poor and vulnerable, to build a community whose commitments reflect their values.  At a time when there are “conservative and market-oriented proposals” that promise better results especially from the perspective of social justice than anything in the discredited “New Deal”/”Great Society”/”New Foundation” playbook, to act afraid of a moral reckoning is self-destructive.

As on other issues historically identified with the left, a reflexive rejection of progressive premises tends to impair any simultaneous argument for alternative solutions.  This contradiction underlies tension between “Reformlicans” and “Repealicans” that will likely worsen over time. Most of us realize that “Repeal + Reform” is a much larger coalition than Repeal or Reform separately, but concessions that seem obviously rational to some, as validating aspects of the just-passed bill initially seemed to Senator John Cornyn, may leave others nonplussed.  Conversely, forms of direct opposition – such as unstinting criticism of Stupak, support for constitutional challenges, disputing the concept of health care as a “right” – carry some risk of re-casting Republicans as “enemies of health care.”  Even the persuasive argument that ObamaCare will overwhelm the system with new demand implies that millions of Americans are presently under-served on a matter of life and death, and calls into question the critic’s commitment to their welfare.

The logic goes like this:  “Enemies of health care insurance reform” -> “Enemies of health care insurance” -> “Enemies of health care” -> “Enemies of health” -> “Enemies.”  Any attack on O-care that overemphasizes “repeal,” and under-emphasizes “replace,” will therefore reinforce counterattacks like this one, from the President on Thursday in Iowa City:

If these Congressmen in Washington want to come here to Iowa and tell small business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest. If they want to look Lauren Gallagher in the eye and tell her they plan to take away her father’s health insurance, that’s their right. If they want to make Darlyne Neff pay more money for her check-ups and her mammograms, they can run on that platform. If they want to have that fight, I welcome that fight.

If it seems these days that all eyes are turning to Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, it’s in part because he is one Republican whose interest in and commitment to matters that affect Lauren, Darlyne, and the other cast members in the moving Democrat reality show, are undoubted, but Ryanism will also be attacked as hostile to programs and commitments beloved by potential new members of the Republican coalition. Consolidating the latter group’s support amidst a Democrat onslaught will require more than a link to a web-site and Ryan’s personal appearances in the mass media:  It will take an earnest, collective labor of years.

Even under today’s unhappy but politically promising circumstances, a conservatism that aims for more than a temporary right-center electoral coalition must demand, and seek, full accountability.  In this regard, a successful assault on the liberal narrative may not be the primary task after all.  Conservatives believe that Obama-Pelosi-Reid-care is as abominably ill-conceived as it was oversold (Yuval Levin’s cover story in the current Weekly Standard provides a comprehensive critical framework).  As external fiscal pressures and internal irrationality pull the contraption apart, the counter-narrative should write itself in broken promises, spiraling costs, bureaucratic chaos, and general economic underperformance – or worse.

The resultant spectacle may virtually by itself lead to electoral victories that in turn restore some balance to national policy-making, but formally or effectively repealing ObamaCare would be something much more ambitious.  “Repeal and reform” recognizes that a sensible, coherent, and conservative replacement program will be critical in that effort, and provides for another major task.  Finally, embracing both objectives implies – indeed, it presumes – the establishment of a new narrative that can withstand fierce opposition and broad skepticism, answer the people’s expectations and demands, and re-align American politics.  Nothing else will do.