The *Weekly Standard* and *National Review* agree on the immigration bill:
> We are conservatives who have differed in the past on immigration reform, with Kristol favorably disposed toward it and Lowry skeptical. But the Gang of Eight has brought us into full agreement: Their bill, passed out of the Senate, is a comprehensive mistake. House Republicans should kill it without reservation.
If both of those publications agree, there is no reason that the bill should pass the Senate.
> First, facing the January 1, 2014, deadline, they see disaster in imposing the employer mandate in an election year. The White House is not politically stupid. While government actuaries predicted a modest dumping of workers out of job-based coverage, independent analysts predicted major disruptions in employer-based coverage. That, by the way, may happen anyway. If the taxpayers must subsidize health costs for millions in the exchanges in 2014, what’s to stop employers from offloading their workers and their costs?
I hope that Democrats do not get a “free pass” on Obamacare during the 2014 election because of this move. I have a feeling that the law is so horrible, however, that people are going to feel the effects regardless.
> Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism — even if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from them.
As always, VDH hit the proverbial nail on the head.
> You’re still spouting this nonsense about being fiscally conservative while insisting that the GOP is the problem. You buy into the media’s anti-Republican hysteria no matter what the facts are. Heck, you even believe it when Obama suggests he’s like an Eisenhower Republican.
> Well, let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
> Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling). Now, the debt is bigger than our GDP. Gross Domestic Product is barely $15 trillion. The national debt is over $16 trillion and climbing — fast. The country isn’t going broke, Bob, it is broke.
I completely agree with Mr. Goldberg. I hear the “fiscal conservative, but the party has left me” argument all the time. In my opinion, it’s a sign that the media onslaught, and the rest of the left’s messaging war, has succeeded in making people think that if they believe in small government concepts, they’ll be branded as racists and bigots. If the Republican Party wants to start making up the ground it lost in the last election, this messaging problem has to be the first thing it fixes.
The editors of *National Review:*
> Conservatives have every reason to be dismayed by [the current economic] picture, and to seek to change it. It would be a mistake, however, to regard the fiscal-cliff deal that has just passed Congress as an important cause of these destructive trends. The deal actually makes federal budget policy slightly less disastrous.
> …
> Conservatives have every reason to be dismayed by this picture, and to seek to change it. It would be a mistake, however, to regard the fiscal-cliff deal that has just passed Congress as an important cause of these destructive trends. The deal actually makes federal budget policy slightly less disastrous.
It is difficult to analyze the deal without simply thinking “America lost.” I hope the *National Review* editors are right and this is not as bad a deal as it seems at the outset.
As you’d expect, it’s an excellent read. I find Adam Schaeffer’s take about recruiting young social scientists to be particularly interesting.
> The Democrats cling to the ridiculous claim that the bailout of GM and its now-Italian competitor, Chrysler, saved 1.5 million U.S. jobs. This preposterous figure is based on the assumption that if GM and Chrysler had gone into normal bankruptcy proceedings, the entire enterprise of automobile manufacturing in the United States would have collapsed — not only at GM and Chrysler but at Ford and foreign transplants such as Toyota and Honda.
“Fact checkers” were too busy checking Paul Ryan’s marathon times to point this one out. Besides, it’s not like “GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011” or anything.
The National Review editors:
> Better for Romney to acknowledge that we have had some long-building problems in addition to ones of more recent creation, and to pledge to fix them. Our dysfunctional health, tax, and immigration systems long predate Obama even if he has made them worse. All need conservative reforms if they are to serve the country’s interests. So do our entitlement programs. Romney need not (and should not) repudiate Bush. He needs instead to make a case that transcends the Obama-vs.-Bush debate that the president is obviously desperate to have.
I agree with that strategy. It is similar to [what Laura Ingraham](http://www.LauraIngraham.com/b/Romney-is-not-winning.–Heres-how-he-can./612990269443758992.html) outlined earlier today. I know there are some out there that suggests Governor Romney can just run against how bad things are under President Obama without proposing plans to fix it. I prefer the idea of giving the American people plans of how we are going to get out of this mess. I think that is a path that is much more likely to lead to victory in Novemeber.