So it looks like the indications are that Rick Perry, former front-runner, last place finisher in the 2011 Republican Debate Tournament, is not hanging up his brush jacket yet. Despite his very melancholy nigh-concession last night, the Texas governor seems to be headed to South Carolina instead of back home to Austin.

The question is: Why?

Ostensibly, Perry got into the race because of two things, 1. he felt that the President needed to be replaced with a conservative and 2. Mitt Romney, a Bay State ex-progressive, is insufficiently conservative.

Yesterday on CNN, John King brought up the spectre of Fred Thompson. In 2008, after disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Thompson maintained a strong enough position among conservatives to prevent Mike Huckabee from winning South Carolina. As a result, the more moderate McCain won the primary.

The thing is, Fred Thompson knew what he was doing. Thompson liked McCain (he endorsed him in 2000). Thompson knew he himself could not win, but he knew that he could take enough of the conservative vote to hand South Carolina to his mavericky friend.

In contrast, Perry pretty clearly views Romney as a aristrocratic upstart and a phony. If Perry stays in South Carolina, all he does is eat away at votes for Gingrich and Santorum. All this does in strengthen Mitt Romney.

So either Perry knows something that we don’t, or some political consultants are making a nice profit out of lying to the Texas governor. The Anybody-but-Mitt crowd probably should pick up the phone and holler at the Perryites that it’s time for the man to go back home.

Perry’s chances of winning the Republican nomination depend entirely on his ability to sell himself as a Teastablishment candidate. Perry has a ten-year record in Texas that shows an interest in governance, and he has way with sharp rhetoric (“treason”) that sends thrills up the leg of your average Tea Partier.

He’s a base-hugging right-winger that the GOP Brooks Brothers set can feel more comfortable supporting than, say, Michele “Libya Not In Africa” Bachmann or the gay-bashing, protectionist-sympathizer Rick Santorum.

After a series of increasingly bad debates, Perry’s “Tea” half of the portmanteau fled to Herman Cain, whose plain-spoken style and business acumen seemed like a good substitute for Perry’s barbs and Texas job stats. Cain’s promise of throwing out the tax code and replacing it with three 9 percent taxes on income and consumption is exactly the sort of pitchfork wielding plan that appeals to Tea Partiers.

Unfortunately, Cain’s plan is also one of the worst ideas ever pitched in a campaign. The Tax Policy Center estimates that it will raise taxes on more than 80 percent of Americans. You can probably guess the income brackets of those 80 percent. In fact, those making between $10,000 and $20,000 would see their taxes hiked by 950 percent. So now, Cain supporters are checking out who else is still at the bar (you may have noticed the increasing drumbeat of “Newt Gingrich ain’t dead” stories).

This week, Perry turned in a not-awful debate performance and seems to have stopped his free-fall. Now he’s making a naked appeal for Cain’s 9-9-9 base by proposing a flat tax that will likely come with a healthy standard deduction to shield the poor and middle class from being destroyed. Perry’s pitch in the next debate: “Herman, brother, the answer to 9-9-9 is 17 and zero. 17 percent on everything over $36,000. Zero on everything below. You say three numbers is simple, well, I have two.”

The Rick Perry comeback begins today.

Last night’s free-wheeling, barely moderated debate was a joy to watch. We learned that Michele Bachmann thinks Libya is not in Africa. We learned that Herman Cain might have another set of numbers besides 9-9-9: 171-for-1…the number of Gitmo detainees that he might be willing to swap for a single U.S. soldier held abroad by violent Islamists.

And we learned, yet again, that Mitt Romney is the most likely candidate to clean the President’s clock in next autumn’s debates. Lost in all the excitement, it was easy to miss a critical distinction between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry on one hand, and Herman Cain on another. The debate made clear that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have a better grasp of the problems with illegal immigration.

Perry and Romney both touted employer sanctions. Meanwhile, Herman Cain has proposed a (possibly electric) fence, enforcing the laws on the books, promoting legal immigration and abdicating the Federal government’s constitutional responsibility to set immigration policy to the states. That’s not enough.

Before 1986 there was no law on the books which made illegal to hire an illegal alien, and unsurprisingly, many employers took advantage of this tacit “go ahead and hire” policy. After the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli-Reagan amnesty, we had the law on the books, but the fines were mere pittances and largely went unenforced.

Ten years later, Congress passed a new overhaul of the immigration laws. The new law emerged out of a virulent debate where Republicans had taken a hard line on denying public benefits for illegal aliens and been very successful. (See: Wilson, Pete; political resurrection of). As a result, in the run up to the 1996 election, Senator Bob Dole suggested that unauthorized alien children should be denied any and all public education. In this decidedly pre-compassionate conservatism environment, Congress imposed stiff penalties on illegals caught inside the United States and built a triple-fence on part of the border near San Diego. (Clinton, triangulating and appealing to the polls as ever, signed the law in September 1996, won California by 13 points, and came within 5 points in Texas.)

Unfortunately, the new law but did not focus on the employers who provide jobs for low wages, underbid legal labor, and create a vast market for illegal labor. In fact, by imposing strong penalties on the illegal workers themselves (aliens caught illegally in the United States were barred from re-entry for three or ten years, depending on how long they had been in the country without authorization), the 1996 law created some perverse incentives. As Princeton University Professor Douglas Massey has noted, the law “created an incentive for people who are here unlawfully to remain here unlawfully rather than to be able to go home and apply for immigrant visas.” And the border fence diverted foot traffic through an even more inhospitable path across the border, ultimately causing the deaths of thousands of migrants.

Meanwhile, without serious employer sanctions, the unauthorized population skyrocketed in the 2000s, peaking at 12 million in 2007.

Whether you favor earned legalization or attrition-through-enforcement as a solution to our illegal immigration crisis (I support the former, which is less likely to further destabilize the failing state of Mexico, where most illegal immigrants come from, by forcing hordes of newly minted unemployed and presumably dissatisfied citizens home), the country must slap serious sanctions on employers who violate the law.

The federal government must impose a serious penalty, essentially a big tax, on hiring unauthorized aliens (again, preferably concurrently with passage of some form of earned legalization). David Frum has proposed a fine big enough to deter businesses from acting out: $25,000 per illegal alien hired per day worked. Congress should pass just such a penalty, and give ICE the funds to enforce it. After that, a couple of eight-figure fine busts will do more to deter illegal immigration than any “danged fence” ever will.

That’s not to say that the problem will be solved overnight (we probably need a national ID card, for one thing), but it’s good enough for now. Hopefully, Governors Perry and Romney will convince Mr. Cain that business needs to pay their fair share for illegal immigration.

It’s well established that the Republican Party of 2011 is a far cry from the party of the George W. Bush years. Nowhere is this clearer than the fact that the conservative choice of 2008, Mitt Romney, is now widely perceived as a moderate.

This got me thinking, what would the 2012 GOP debates look like if the Twenty-Second Amendment was repealed and former President Bush left the Bush Center and his Dallas home to hit the hustings for a third term?

Obviously, I’m not privy to the former President’s thoughts on the issues (I’ve never met the man, and I was only a very low-ranking member of the administration), so what follows is just conjecture.

When I use direct quotes from Bush, I link to the source wherever possible. In any event, take your grain of salt and throw it back.

Done? Good.

—

With two Republican debates behind us since the entrance of Governor Rick Perry, the Teastablishment candidate, and former President George W. Bush into the race, now’s the time to take stock of where things are.

As a supporter of the Bush restoration, I’d like to lead off with what I believe was the former President’s finest moment. After some members of the Tampa Tea Party audience cheered their approval for the death of a young coma victim without health insurance, the former President raised his hand and asked Wolf Blitzer if he could interject:

“If I may, Wolf. Now, I understand moral hazard, but let’s not cheer the death of an innocent. When people are hurting, the government’s gotta move.”

The former chief executive then segued (in a clunky way, granted) to a stirring defense of the PEPFAR program, which has saved millions of lives in Africa. PEPFAR is a great Republican achievement, and I’m surprised it’s not celebrated as a great example of ‘soft power’, especially since Bush’s approval numbers in Africa are around the 80’s and 90’s.

—

The former President was also asked his role in leading the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, a crisis most Americans believe his policies precipitated. “If anyone thinks I really loved TARP,” Bush said, “You’re wrong. But the whole economy [was] on the line. I wished there was some way to hold individual firms to account while sparing the rest of the country. But every economist I trusted told me that was impossible. The well-being of Main Street was directly linked to the fate of Wall Street.”

It was a strong reminder of the responsibility of governing, and served as a strong rebuke to Congresswoman Bachmann’s reckless opposition to raising the debt ceiling and the Wall Street rescue.

He also could have pointed out that we the people even made a profit off of TARP. It worked!

—

The Tampa audience also wasn’t very fond of Bush’s answer on immigration. Weighing in after Governor Perry’s tepid response supporting Texas’ pseudo-Dream Act, the former President first gave a small elbow to Obama, who voted in favor of a poison pill amendment to the 2007 go-around on comprehensive immigration reform. The crowd (oddly) applauded that, but boos were all around after the former President continued:

“I believe it’s in our interest when we find a system that is broken to fix it. And the immigration system today is broken.

I’ve laid out a five-point plan to reform the immigration system. The first component is a major new investment in border security. The second part is the temporary worker program, which would include a tamper-proof identification card. The third is stricter enforcement at businesses, which [will] reduce exploitation and help slow demand for illegal workers. Fourth, is to promote assimilation by requiring immigrants to learn English. Finally, the thorniest question: What to do with the approximately eleven million illegal immigrants in the country?

Those who have worked in America for many years and put down roots as responsible members of the community. I propose that they be allowed to apply for citizenship after meeting a stringent set of criteria, including paying a fine, making good on back taxes, learning English, and waiting in line behind those who follow the law.”

And of course, right after this, Governor Romney took a big swing at both Bush and Perry…

—

The other thing that was fairly surprising was to see only Bush and Santorum really defending the Freedom Agenda. When John Harris of Politico asked Bachmann “To be clear, are you advocating a shift away from the George W. Bush freedom agenda with its emphasis on removing dictators from power and promoting human rights?”, the Congresswoman diverted into an attack on President Obama, but didn’t answer the question.

Bush pounced:

“After 9/11, I developed a strategy to protect the country that came to be known as the Bush Doctrine. Part of that strategy means we should advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy’s ideology of repression and fear. In some places, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, we had a unique opportunity to give the people we liberated a chance to build free societies. But these examples [are] the exception not the rule.

We also advance freedom by supporting fledgling democracies and by encouraging dissidents and democratic reformers suffering under repressive regimes in Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela. And we can advocate for freedom while maintaining strategic relationships with nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China.”

The entire time, of course, Governor Huntsman was shaking his head…

—

Bush’s answer to a question on balancing state’s rights with No Child Left Behind was his constant refrain that “No Child Left Behind is a piece of civil rights legislation.” (Perry looked pretty hurt.) He also defended (alone), his appointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed.

It’s certainly going to be an interesting campaign season!

—

The truth is that the Republican Party has not had a conversation about the Bush years and what they mean in 2012.

Like it or not: our party was once led by a self-styled compassionate conservative who spent federal dollars to save people with HIV/AIDS in Africa, bailed out Wall Street, assailed nativism, protectionism, and isolationism, and rightfully said after Saddam Hussein was overthrown “everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.”

So I propose this question for the next Republican debate: “Candidates, what do you think is the legacy of the last Republican to work in the Oval Office, George W. Bush?”

In an editorial in USA Today, Governor Rick Perry doubled down on his message that we need to reform Social Security to insure the security of future retirees.

Although I agree that the more pressing crisis is obviously jobs, I am also aware that the Social Security shortfall means it’s highly, highly unlikely that I will retire after a lifetime of either 1. paying the same payroll tax rate I have been for the past few years (even before the Obama payroll tax cut), 2. receiving the same benefits, structured the same way (hell, it’s possible I won’t get them at all!).

It’s a funny thing when my generation is being crushed by both the short-term crisis (which has exploded unemployment among the 18-29 cohort) and the long-term crisis (which will leave us with greatly reduced social insurance 40 years down the road).

So the more plans on the table with entitlements, whether it’s the Chilean Model, changing the way we index benefits from wage growth to inflation, or even raising the payroll tax cap; color me as Ross Perot: all ears. Frankly, I look forward to Governor Perry’s actual plan (as opposed to him just noticing that the math doesn’t add up).

However, what irked me a bit in Perry’s post was the suggestion that his rhetoric about Social Security was something new and innovative. Specifically, he said that “[f]or too long, politicians have been afraid to speak honestly about Social Security. We must have the guts to talk about its financial condition if we are to fix Social Security and make it financially viable for generations to come.”

Of course, there was this other Texan, fellow was actually President of the United States not that long ago, who also talked about Social Security reform. He boldly declared, in his 2005 State of the Union address that “I know that none of these reforms would be easy. But we have to move ahead with courage and honesty, because our children’s retirement security is more important than partisan politics.”

I’m all for political honesty. A little intellectual honesty wouldn’t hurt either.

PS: A message for the Governor. The reason everybody is ganging up on you now has a lot to do with what happened politically to that other Texan after he started talking Social Security. Just a heads up.

As fellow members of the Colbert Nation are doubtless aware, the latest way for college kids to get their name on television is to donate cash to Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Super PAC. If you do so, your name will scroll at the bottom of the screen as one of the Super PAC’s “Heroes”.

It’s a nice way for a 19-year old GW student to get a new Facebook picture, and everybody who is giving is in on the gag. (D.B. Cooper also apparently gave.) This is all well and good.

Of course, Colbert could have done more than just scroll the names of the Super PAC’s donors. He could have hunted the FEC database for those who gave more than $200 to candidates other than “Rick Parry” (with an A for America) and posted their names, addresses, employers and job titles on his website or scrolled the information on his show. Not so funny anymore.

The purpose of our disclosure laws is ostensibly to prevent corruption. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, yadda yadda yadda. We know the drill. But is it really preventing any corruption for the Federal government to mandate blasting to the world the name and home address of a dentist from Peoria who gave $300 to Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul, candidates who rake in millions in contributions?

Our current disclosure regime has eroded the right to discreet association, a right that the Supreme Court upheld in the seminal cases of NAACP v. Alabama and Bates v. City of Little Rock. In today’s modern world, where the Internet enables us to look at the political contributions of people with names similar to those who email us (not a joke), our disclosure laws are chilling the speech of those who simply wish to express additional support for a candidate with some extra cash. Raising the disclosure threshold would be a “Disclose Act” actually worthy of support.

Originally posted at the Center for Competitive Politics.

Politico has a piece discussing the “big drags” on the Obama re-elect effort. Nothing too surprising: there is the lack of economic growth and the bad political map. The usual suspects. What caught my eye was this:

A top Democratic strategist who is close to the White House said that Obama’s first-term record “is going to be, on balance, probably a liability” for his reelection, partly “because of the failure to sell and explain the things that they were doing.”

“I believe history will judge what they did to be correct,” the strategist said. “But the failure to communicate why they were doing it has meant that there is such confusion…It’s ground he’s going to have to make up, rather than things he’s going to be able to run on.”

As a former George W. Bush administration appointee, and someone who believes that President Bush will be vindicated by history (for strategy, if not always for tactics); let me say that I’m familiar with that argument. I made iterations of it myself in 2007 and 2008. When the argument about your term is “history will vindicate us, and we communicated poorly” then you have officially lost the present.

Have we ever had a lame duck president run for re-election?

Yesterday, the U.S. government formally announced what many of us have known for sometime: there is a direct connection between al-Qaeda and Iran.  The Treasury Department sanctioned “six members of a terrorist network based in Iran” for serving as “the core pipeline through which al-Qaeda moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia,” principally meaning Pakistan and Afghanistan. The leader of the group, Ezedin Abdul Aziz Khalil, is a Syrian who has been operating from Iran under an agreement signed in 2005.”

Currently, Iran shelters a “substantial al-Qaeda network on its soil”, and “extensive intelligence [exists] that Iran…support[ed] the Mesopotamian branch of al-Qaeda.”

Our current war against violent Islamism is predicated on the principle that terrorist networks cannot be permitted to obtain weapons of mass destruction.  Despite the recent spate of victories, the United States has struck against al-Qaeda, including the killing of Osama bin Laden, this remains a danger.

As David Frum has written, the U.S.-led efforts against terrorism since 9/11 have significantly reduced the capacity of al-Qaeda and like-minded organizations to plot coordinated and sophisticated mass casualty attacks.  Permitting an al-Qaeda ally like Iran to obtain nuclear weapons could change everything.

Simply put: Stuxnet cannot last forever.

Unfortunately, instead of talking about this, the House Republicans have chosen to spend the last week threatening to force the United States into a default – even though plenty of countries are still willing to lend to us.  Thanks guys.

The Republican Presidential field has a problem.  The top two candidates are Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann.

Romney’s issue is that he’s the same Mitt Romney who signed a health care law that the Tea Party considers a Bay State knock-off of President Obama’s “tyrannycare.”  Michele Bachmann’s issue is that she has a history of saying and believing fringe things (remember her flirtations with birtherism?) that render her less electable than a Marxist seeking the presidency of the F.A. Hayek Fan Club.

It’s pure Establishment versus pure Tea Party.  That’s not going to end well…

There’s a reason why Perry has quickly shot up in the polls, scoring second in the latest Fox and CNN national surveys.  He offers something tangible to both wings of the party.

If you’re angry at the Obama administration and value tough talk and tea party cred, Rick Perry has something for you.  If you’re interested in a candidate with governing experience and a record of substance, Rick Perry has something for you.

Throw in Perry’s good looks, fundraising prowess, and strength on the stump. Suddenly, you have a guy with a damn solid chance to be the Republican nominee.

RealClearPolitics reports:

‘[E]ven on a state level and a local level, mandates coming from a governing body, it’s tough for a lot of us to accept because we have great faith in the private sector and in our own families and in our businessmen and women in making decisions for ourselves,’ Palin said. ‘Not any level of government telling us what to do.’

And yet… even her home state of Alaska has a few mandates of its own:

Alaska requires that you must have a copy of your policy, certificate of self-insurance, or identification card in your immediate possession when you are driving a motor vehicle.

If you are involved in an accident that results in bodily injury, death, or property damage exceeding $501, you will be required to show proof of insurance.

You must carry limits of at least $50,000 per person, $100,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage.

Alaska law requires that all companies make a written offer of Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists Coverage.