To borrow from Tocqueville, Republicans are great when Republicans are good. It’s not enough to win elections, or “have a seat at the table”. They must stand for something; and not just anything, but those core values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; of an overarching national identity; of equal opportunity for all; and of a God-given freedom and human dignity for every person which cannot be compromised or legislated away. These are conservatism, and these are the values which make us who we are.

When Republicans have abandoned these things, they’ve descended into utter irrelevancy. When they have stood strongly upon them, at home and abroad, they have won the greatest triumphs of our time.

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This Week: Rod D. Martin on “The GOP at 150″; plus: Frist calls a new Death Tax vote, Jack Wheeler on Democrat Hell Week, Marvin Olasky on Christian CEOs in China, and Jack Kemp’s White Guilt.

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A friend writes:

Sadly, a lot of consumer-oriented folks are loving this, as it is suppressing fuel prices to some extent, and a collapse would bring us back to $1.00-1.50 gasoline. Unfortunately, people wouldn’t have jobs anymore, so the savings benefit from cheaper fuel would be a joke.

I’d like to see the economy cool (but not stop growing all together) without a recession. Blabbing to the news media every five minutes to show off a fed chairman’s new-found stardom is hardly the way to do it. Ben is screwing up badly.

The economy does not need to “cool”: that’s a Keynesian myth. The Fed needs to quit fighting a phantom inflation which has nothing to do with the value or stability of the dollar. To say that rising gas prices are “inflationary” is just about as sensible as saying that dropping computer prices are deflationary: neither has anything to do with inflation or deflation at all. If both of those products were constants — constant in demand, supply, quality, etc. — than sure. And if both existed completely within a U.S. market context, then sure. But neither is true. Falling computer prices reflect advancing technology and increasing supply in a global market; rising gas prices reflect contracting actual supply after Katrina and contracting relative supply due to rapidly expanding global (chiefly Asian) demand.

What they don’t reflect is inflation, which would mean that the increase in price is entirely the result of more dollars chasing the same (relative) amount of gas.

Prices move. Economies grow. This is exactly what can, should and does happen in any dynamic system; and trying to engineer a false “price stability” when the market price of a particular product should be rising or falling is the surest way to destroy all of the ecconomy’s healthy sectors (which is just another way of saying “put families out of work and ruin people’s lives”).

Keynesian foolishness has always tried to freeze the economy in place, not just in this way but on a conceptual level as well (hence the warning given to FDR in 1944 that as soon as everyone had a small house and one family car, the economy would shut down, because everyone would have “everything anyone could want” and would therefore stop working). It believes there is no future, no growth, no possibility of tremendous breakthroughs (much less the seemingly constant tremendous breakthroughs we see today): it is best expressed in the “reduced expectations” and “limits to growth” language of the Carter stagflation era. So it tries to manage what it sees as a finite pie, by balancing inflation and unemployment against one another as the “inevitable” trade-off of monetary policy; and if that were it’s only pernicious effect, the 1970s would have been a radically better time.

But what if you’re economy is booming, growing rapidly in real terms, and starts requiring more workers than the domestic market can provide?

The liberal economic model can’t account for this. So it starts trying to shut things down.

That’s what Ben Bernanke is doing right now, that and trying to prove he’s a big man who will be strong like his predecessor. And this is all a serious disappointment, because the whole idea of picking him was that he would be smarter than Greenspan, not a whole heck of a lot dumber.

I suspect the President is kicking himself, wishing he’d gone with Glenn Hubbard after all (see here: http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/everybreath/ )

But what he should have done was name Art Laffer. Reagan should have too.

This was one of the more politically significant weeks in recent history. A recap of the winners and losers. Continue reading….

Thank you to everyone who fought for permanent repeal of the Death Tax. Though today’s vote did not turn out as we hoped, we learned who our friends are, we outed some key enemies, and we saw clearly what a Democrat-led Senate would mean. There’s more to this story than meets the eye. Continue reading….

Today, President Bush announced his support for the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would stop radical homosexuals and abusive left-wing courts from redefining marriage throughout the United States.

This is a switch for the President, in a sense. He (and his brother Jeb) have so far opposed amending the U.S. and Florida constitutions, on grounds that current law was sufficient without the vast (and it is vast) expense and tremendous (and it is tremendous) difficulty involved in passing a constitutional amendment on either level.

But it isn’t a switch in this sense: this represents no change at all in the President’s (or Jeb’s) beliefs. These guys are solid on the issues that count most, period.

And now, with the MPA vote reaching the Senate floor this Wednesday, in rides the President — like the cavalry — to give it that crucial push necessary (we hope) to get it over the top.

This is also another direct hit for TheVanguard.Org and for my column.

The column, “Republicans at the Crossroads, Part Two: Next Week’s Chance for Redemption May Be Their Last”, specifically cited the MPA vote as key to securing the Republican coalition sufficiently for the Congressional majority’s survival this November.

President Bush coming out strong at just the right moment is a crucial step in this direction too. And we pushed for it, in print, in private, and through our association with The Arlington Group.

When you back TheVanguard.Org, you make a difference, and you make a better America. We get results. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what counts?

Two key votes next week — on permanent Death Tax repeal and the federal Marriage Protection Amendment give Republicans a chance at redemption. But though the GOP’s record is far better than anyone remembers, a White House that can’t communicate its way out of a paper bag surely can’t lead, and a Senate which forgets who elected it and why should expect to be sent home.

This is just reality. And the witching hour has come.

Read the column here.

Liberals have been proclaiming the any-minute end of oil every few years since 1874. But in fact, the only thing obstructing plentiful supply and lower prices are those very liberals themselves.

Read the column here.