Saturday, July 05, 2008

Further thoughts on the Aubrey Immelman GOP candidacy.

Besides a fresh face and new blood infused among a stagnant and unappealing twosome, lobbyist and laughingstock, Tinklenberg and Bachmann, Aubrey Immelman offers Bachmann a chance to get out on the campaign trail in earnest, to define herself this election cycle, and to present a clear case on how she differs from Immelman.

Of course, there is the reverse opportunity for Immelman to explain why he offers voters a real choice. First, Immelman has until three days after the filing deadline, Feb. 15, to reevaluate his position and drop out. Viewing that as unlikely, he needs to complete a message to people of who he is and why he takes the trouble to be a candidate in opposition to Michele Bachmann's GOP incumbancy.

Given the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and with a GOP incumbent, Immelman must feel something is "broke" and in need of fixing. Immelman has a website that for now is almost completely blank, but with this header:


The purpose in showing that is to emphasize what Immelman emphasizes, the banner note, "Restoring Traditional Conservative Values".

For now it is a headline, a banner that is open to interpretation, with Immelman to define what he means by it and how he feels the incumbent, Michele Bachmann, has strayed or differed from "Traditional Conservative Values."




Clearly Immelman must speak for himself in this, but in this post I will mention "The Speech" and Reagan and Goldwater, as a start to where I would hope the GOP debate in the Sixth District might focus - what are traditional conservative values and how in coming days Bachmann and Immelman may, for voters, define their differing and overlapping views on that question. That is how we must expect them to define themselves in comaprason to each other. If there's no real difference, one or both are simply on an ego trip, and if there is a difference, then it matters to know what they believe it to be.

Bachmann first, who she now is, and allowing that people can grow and change in office and that is not a bad thing, yet in the past, in particular in an October 18, 2006 Strib report no longer freely accessible online, there was her clear quote, "Nobody's ever accused me of being a moderate ... I'm an unabashed conservative."

That was in the context of also having then recently appeared at Mac Hammond's Living Word Christian Center and connected inextricably a somewhat rigid and contorted religion driven worldview and a view of her personal divinely-inspired destiny to her views of what "conservatism" is or should be. In part that Strib item by Kevin Diaz and Rob Hotakainen, from the last election cycle, reported:

Bachmann said Wednesday she didn't know that her talk [at Hammond's LWCC] was on video but stood by her remarks.

"I am not ashamed of my faith," she said. "I'm happy to talk about my faith in front of church groups."

Bachmann, a born-again Christian, was recorded over the weekend by Minneapolis graphic artist Ken Avidor, a contributor to an anti-Bachmann blog called Dump Michele Bachmann. The clip, recorded from a church webcast, quickly spread on the Internet.

"It went viral very quickly," Avidor [Ken Avidor, who posted edited excerpts of the almost theatratical Bachmann LWCC appearance that still can be seen on the web] said. "The important thing for me is I want voters in the Sixth District to see Michele Bachmann as I have seen her. She's quite a bit different than the image you see in her ads, where she's a moderate."

In an interview on Wednesday, Bachmann denied that she's a moderate. "I think that's funny," she said. "Nobody's ever accused me of being a moderate ... I'm an unabashed conservative."

Bachmann said God led her to law school. Then her husband suggested she get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.

"Tax law? I hate taxes," she said. "Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says: 'Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' "

She said God also called on her to run for the state Senate and then for Congress.

No harm done, GOP says

Liberal bloggers have been in a twitter all week, but her Republican backers see no harm done in what to them was essentially a personal testimony, not a political speech.

"Michele Bachmann's strong Christian faith is not a secret," said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

"It would seem like they're trying to stifle the Christian vote," said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, a nationwide Christian organization that promotes traditional families.


So, Bachmann held or at least expressed a "Chosen One" view of herself as a destined GOP candidate, and there was a lengthy report by G.R. Anderson (then with City Pages); see also, City Pages, here. The City Pages item documented and in part analyzed Michele Bachmann and her candidacy in the context of tightly linking Christian evangelical Protestant faith and politics, and calling it "conservatism." Indeed, it is interesting that Bachmann's WELS faith, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, still holds the Papacy to be the "antiChrist," while Immelman is a faculty member at St. Johns, but it must fairly be said that Bachmann has tried to reasonably distance herself from that particular tenet of her faith which the Synod still holds as doctrine, against the older church.

We should expect, or at least hope, that the task of defining an appealing "conservatism" for the electrorate will not degenerate into an exigesis on comparative religion. We should expect more from each, Bachmann and Immelman. We should look for more on whether there is flexible or inflexible allegiance to tax policy favoring the wealthy, with Bachmann having advocated a flat tax and ending taxing of estates, no matter how great the wealth being handed down, and with Immelman's views yet to be clarified for an electorate generally stressed by the present economy of the last eight years of Bush-Cheney rule, and not being at all in the leagues of wealth, in the Sixth District, where but for a very, very few, millionaires, the present estate tax would not ever reach. So tax policy may well be a defining difference. Also, Bachmann has a voting record, Immelman does not, so the two GOP candidates will be running on her record. Because Tinklenberg's been a revolving door lobbyist-carere politician, he has no clean slate position in things as Immelman has. So, the GOP side of the contest should at least in part be defining "traditional conservatism" in terms of the Bachmann and Tinklenberg records, and how Immelman represents a differing way, if indeed, he does.

Presumably Bachmann presently has no greatly changed definition from who she was in the past, and is not going to make herself open to a "makeover" charge of the kind that haunted Mark Kennedy's senate run; while Immelman presumably will articulate a wholly differing definition of "traditional conservatism," or at least a view different enough to motivate a primary contest.

Now, Reagan, "The Speech," and the Goldwater GOP conservatism legacy. I am not trying to hang these remarks on Immelman, that must be clear. He must make his own distinctions. However, I am showing a "conservatism" of the GOP past that was more secular, and less individualistically exploitative in its worldview - e.g., Barry Goldwater did provide medical coverage for his business employees, Michele and Macus Bachmann have not.

First, "The Speech" remains online, here, and you must go there and read it entirely, or as much as you choose. I recommend it be studied, because I feel it should have a place in any debate over what "traditional" conservative values are. And for younger readers, it is the nominating speech given by then California Governor Ronald Reagan, as his introduction to the national public as well as his introduction of Barry Goldwater, as the GOP candidate in the 1964 national election, running against incumbent Lyndon Johnson, who took office upon the assination death of John Kennedy. In campaign advertising during that election Goldwater was characterized by Johnson supporters as a warmonger, while it was Johnson who was to win and expand greatly the Vietnam involvement, and while Goldwater in fact had a less comprehensive view of US manifest destiny, or the nation's place in policing or trying to run the world. He was more an isolationist than Johnson, and more isolationist and voice of restraint, as an Air Force reserves general, than the present executive leadership, most of whom never served. Bachmann has embraced the neocon view, and the Isreal lobby, and apparently has while in office had no Iraq War view other than, "Do precisely as George Bush and Dick Cheney say, even if that has been a changing policy thing, over time."

I believe it fair to say Goldwater represented a secular conservatism, not an evangelical Christian end-times distortion of policy and foreign relations, so without quoting "The Speech" I will close with another largely-lost Strib item from late in the last election cycle, a kind of "Hijackers, give me back my party, letter":

Letter of the day: Conservatives should emulate Goldwater
Published: October 17, 2006


According to the media, a conservative -- or a Republican, for that matter -- has to be someone who is a white Evangelical Christian who cannot stand the "immorality" of the left, and is a champion of government advocating spirituality and "values."

I am a conservative, and I am a Republican. Yet I am none of the above. I am a Barry Goldwater conservative. I value limited government. I don't care whether you are gay and want to get married because I value a limited government. I do not care what name you call God and how often you go to church, because I value a limited government.

Goldwater had it right when he said that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell need "a swift kick in the ass."

I value the free market and the entrepreneur. Lower taxes are the way to achieve this. Low taxes are the essence of the limited government that I value.

I also value a strong national defense. I value an engaged foreign policy in a post-9/11 world. We cannot sit idle while others think of ways to attack.

These are my core Republican "values." I want my party back.

GARRICK KAY, SPRING LAKE PARK



Because it has been said that Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District is decidedly "conservative" and the DFL district leadership even stooped to running the likes of Elwyn Tinklenberg in belief a "conservative" DFL candidate [Blue Dog endorsed, IP endorsed] was needed to defeat a GOP incumbent, even one as weak as Michele Bachmann; because of those factors, the residents of the district now are most fortunate in having three "conservative" candidates to choose from where the three can now each define what "conservative" means or should mean to voters.

And unlike the other two, the new "conservative" does not have the baggage of being a career politician and little else. He teaches, and his psychological profiling efforts have directly helped military effort, something neither of the other two can say of themselves, each being either a passive supporter or passive critic of military actions.





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Goldwater pics from Google Images, Immelman item from the Immelman website. And there has to be this disclaimer, I am not and have never been a political conservative, but I believe that does not disqualify me from an opinion of what the term "conservatism," properly used, means or in a historical context should mean. Discussion can go all the way back to Edmund Burke, and to John Locke, whose notions of property influnced the Declaration and Constitution and the federalism debate leading to the Constitution. As opposed to views of greater social control of resources, centralization of economic management, and wealth distribution, Locke in my view was a conservative. While history has its place, for anticipating what Immelman might have to say for himself before he has spoken, going back to Goldwater should help but not be too presumptive, when Immelman must define himself free of any prejudged hopes or manipulations.