Tom McClintock

Mr. McClintock is an expert on matters of the State budget and fiscal discipline. He is a Senator in the California State Legislature and ran for Governor in the 2003 recall election. His valuable website is found at www.tommclintock.com [McClintock index]

the Shadow Governor
A Party of Freedom
A Lincoln Day speech to the Alaska Republican Party
[Tom McClintock] 3/12/04

I sincerely thank all of you for your invitation tonight and for welcoming me the way you have this evening.

I am not often invited to leave California (at least by people OUTSIDE of California) and I am very flattered and grateful for your hospitality.

This is a new world for me, and I have to admit that I am having a little trouble understanding Alaskan politics. Let me see if I understand this correctly – the biggest problem confronting your state is that you have a $28 billion SURPLUS in your permanent fund? Governor Murkowski, I think I can solve both our problems. If you would just send a contribution to the “California Deficit Recovery Fund, c/o Dept. of Finance, Sacramento, California 95814” then I think everyone will be happy.

I am also told that the biggest controversy in Alaska is that you have a governor who believes that a state should live within its means. Having just come through the recall of Governor Davis – I can tell you a bigger controversy – and that’s having a governor who DOESN’T believe a state should live within its means.

I know why you’ve asked me here. I’ve seen this before. You all have a morbid fascination with California politics. Here in Alaska you have strong and solid tradition of Republican governance – politically you are very much the mirror opposite of California. Here you have a well-run state that spends the public’s money as carefully and wisely as the families who earn it.

And then you look down the coast toward California, and it’s like driving by a really bad wreck on the highway – you know you shouldn’t look but just can’t help it.

So I’ll spend a few minutes indulging your morbid curiosity and take a slow drive past this wreck – but I want you all to understand that there’s a respectable purpose for doing so. When you see a wreck on the road, you say to your kids – “Now children, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention when you’re driving.” So tonight, when you go home you can say to your kids, "Children, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention when you’re voting.”

You want to know what kind of damage 34 years of Democratic majorities in a state legislature can cause – especially if you combine them with the last five years under a Democratic Governor? We have a 9.3 percent top income tax bracket that starts at $75,000 AND an 8 3⁄4 percent sales tax – and we still keep running out of money. We have the lowest credit rating of any state in the country – in fact, now 2 notches below the next lowest state and are poised to borrow $15 billion more. And we are watching the first domestic outmigration of population in our history.

In fact, according to the census data, the most popular destination for California expatriates is the middle of the Arizona and Nevada deserts. Now I want you to think about that for a second. Imagine turning your state into a less desirable place to live and work and raise your family than the middle of the Nevada and Arizona deserts.

There’s a reason why they tested nuclear weapons out in the southwestern desert of our nation. It’s the only place on the continent that can actually be IMPROVED with atomic bombs.

Now, I submit to you that no conceivable act of GOD could wreak such devastation on California. Only acts of Democrats could do that, and they have.

Despite all these problems, however, California does remain one of the best places in the nation to build a successful small business. You just need to start with a successful LARGE business.

A fellow just sent me a newspaper clipping from a California business journal. It’s a full-page ad by the state of Idaho, pointing out that for an Electronics Products Manufacturing operation with 200 employees, the cost of Workers Comp in Idaho is under $40,000 – while in California it’s over $440,000. Meanwhile, our state is within months of defaulting on $14 billion of loans -- but the big issue in our state Assembly last week – that consumed over an hour of impassioned debate -- was over what types of mascot names are appropriate for public schools.

You want a really good look at this wreck? The Democrats are pushing a measure through the legislature to require the State Building Code to incorporate the principles of feng shui. IN THE STATE BUILDING CODE! For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the latest New Age fads, “Feng shui” is defined as “the ancient Chinese art or practice of positioning objects based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects.” You see, it’s no longer enough that buildings stand up during an earthquake – In California it’s important for our buildings to feel good about themselves.

But it doesn’t stop with buildings. The Democrats have already made it illegal to sell un-weaned birds in pet shops (which opens the delicate question of…never mind). And they are about to impose severe penalties on any person who de-claws their cat. Our state may rank at the bottom of the nation in the quality of our schools, the condition of our roads, the efficiency of our water and electricity systems – but by God, our pets are going to have the highest self-esteem in the world!

Even though our kids routinely perform toward the bottom of the nation’s test scores, I’m happy to report that last year we got rid of every “low performing school” in the state. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. We just passed a law that requires a previously defined “Low performing school” henceforth must instead be called a “High Priority School.” Our kids still can’t read, but parents can now boast on bumper stickers that “My child attends a high priority school.” These same students, upon graduating from any of the state’s business schools will receive special recognition on diplomas they probably cannot read if they demonstrate a “commitment to socially responsible leadership.” Which, I presume means they’ve agreed not to make too much money. Given the lousy education they’re getting I don’t believe that will be a problem.

We do have one growth industry left in the state. It is government. Our latest addition now in the process of adoption is a new Commission. It is, of course, “The California Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Veteran’s Memorial Commission.”

Now here’s why I don’t like speaking to out-of-state audiences. I have just shared with you the fruit of our legislative labors – and you’ve done nothing but giggle.

That’s today’s lesson. That’s what the Democratic Party can do to a state when people don’t pay attention to how they’re voting. Is there anybody here who doubts why they’re a Republican?

If you take away any message from my sad, sad story it is this: It really does matter who you elect to public office. There really is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. And if you cram too many Democrats in a statehouse for too long, you, too, can turn your state into a wasteland less desirable than the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range.

But there’s good news in all of this. If you’re a little sick just listening to this litany of legislative lunacy, I can assure you that Californians have gotten sick of it too.

And that’s what the recall election was all about.

They say a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Ours is a state that has been mugged by the Democratic Party.

Californians finally saw their choice, and they took it.

And the result was the historic recall of a governor – in a record turnout election – with the eyes of the nation upon us – in the most liberal state in the country. In a state where Democrats controlled every state office and nearly 2/3 majorities in both legislative houses, the Republican candidates for governor received a combined 62 percent of the vote to the Democrats’ 31 percent – voters gave Republicans two votes for every vote they gave the Democrats.

You can’t call us the Left Coast any more. California – once again – is Reagan Country.

And that’s what I really want to talk about tonight. Tonight’s dinner is to celebrate the birth of our nation’s greatest President – Abraham Lincoln -- and our nation’s greatest living President – Ronald Reagan who is 93 years old today. May God bless him. It is no co-incidence that our nations’ greatest president and our nation’s greatest living president are both Republicans – and it is no coincidence that they are the leaders who stood squarely on the principles of this party and by so doing saw our nation through times of great crisis.

I believe the reason for their greatness was not their skills at leadership and communication. They were great because the principles upon which they stood were great – and those principles are the foundation of our nation and the foundation of our party.

Great parties are built upon great principles, and they are judged by their devotion to those principles.

And the great principle of the Republican party – once, now and forever – can be summed up in a single word.

It is FREEDOM.

Lincoln said something very profound during his last debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858. When I first read it, it struck me that this is the Alpha and Omega of all politics. And it is certainly what brings us all here – AS REPUBLICANS – to celebrate this Lincoln’s Day Dinner.

He said, “That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong – throughout the world. They are the same two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity. And the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever form it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and make bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter what shape it comes -- whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

Isn’t that what this fight is all about?

In every society – in every political debate – isn’t there always a large group of people who simply want to be left alone? Who want to live their lives according to their own best lights – to enjoy the fruit of their own labors, to raise their children according to their own values and standards, to associate with each other in peaceful commerce for their own mutual betterment.

And in every society – in every political debate – isn’t there always another group – smaller but more domineering – who believe that they’re so good at running their own lives that they’re now entitled to run everybody else’s.

Those are really the only two parties that have ever existed. They may go by different names in different lands and different times – but they are the same two parties locked in eternal political struggle – there is always a party of freedom. There is always a party of authoritarianism.

Those two parties were at Runnymeade and in Philadelphia. They hover over every political discussion taking place over coffee right now. They saturate the debates in capitols from Juneau to Sacramento to Washington D.C. – wherever political conflict exists you will find them. The party of freedom and the party of authoritarianism.

Nine years before he became Governor of California, Reagan put it this way during a commencement address to his alma mater. He said, “This is a simple struggle between those of us who believe that man has the dignity and sacred right and the ability to choose and shape his own destiny and those who do not so believe. This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.”

If that sounds too pat – let me share with you some of my experiences in California – I’m sure you have many parallels here in Alaska. A few years ago state coffers were bulging and the Democrats were embarking on the spending spree that has now brought our state to the brink of bankruptcy. An interviewer asked the Democratic speaker of the Assembly if the Democrats would return at least a small part of that windfall to taxpayers. He replied, “We do return money to the taxpayers when we spend it for them.” Another said, “A tax cut? People would just waste it on beer.” A few years before, another told our Senate, “What do you mean people’s taxes are too high? Look at how much we let them keep.”

In a celebrated debate on the Senate floor just two years ago, one of the Senate’s leading Democrats announced: “There is only one constitutional right in the United States which is absolute and that is your right to believe anything you want.”

Think about that remarkable insight into modern Democratic Party thought. And then ask yourself, What rights have a slave? There is only one: a slave can think anything he wants: as long as he doesn’t utter it or act on it – he may think what he wants.

Now, compare that to the Declaration of Independence that speaks of certain inalienable rights -- among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and that it is to preserve these absolute, inalienable rights that governments exist in the first place.

Yes, there is a difference. An irreconcilable difference.

Lincoln said that for political parties “there is always one central idea from which all its minor thoughts radiate.”

And when he made his historic journey from Springfield to Washington, D.C. he paused briefly to visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He told a crowd there: “…all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

The central idea from which all of our party’s minor thoughts radiate is, as Lincoln so eloquently said, exactly the self-evident truth of the Declaration of Independence: that there are certain rights that come directly from the laws of nature and of nature’s God – rights that we hold as individuals – and that the purpose of government is to protect those rights. It is that central idea that aligned our party as the force against slavery exactly 150 years ago and it is that central idea today that causes our party to stand at the side of every family in America struggling to raise their kids and make ends meet against the ever growing demands and encroachments of the state.

The central idea from which all of the Democratic party’s minor thoughts radiate is that rights come from government and that they serve the greater good – however the greater good might be defined by those in power.

In his City on a Hill speech in 1974, Ronald Reagan told the story of Captain Ingraham who 200 years ago was willing to engage the entire Austrian fleet with but a single warship to protect the individual rights of a single American. And then he said, “In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don’t hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts, “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived had justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority.”

Yes, there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats – a big difference. One believes in the “sanctity of individual freedom” (as Reagan put it) and “the common right of humanity” (as Lincoln put it) and the other believes in “the supremacy of the state” and “the divine right of kings.”

That is the gulf between the two major political parties of our nation, and I submit to you that it is irreducible and irreconcilable.

Lincoln and Reagan might have been the greatest communicators of their ages – but remember this: they weren’t communicating cookie recipes.

The natural condition of mankind is to crave freedom, to demand freedom, and ultimately to fight for freedom. The further we stray from those principles, the more freedom that we unwittingly surrender, the greater the pressure grows to take that freedom back.

And that is what is today happening in California. It is what you have seen happen in this nation whenever we have lost our way. And consider this, (especially those who consider themselves practical, pragmatic politicians). The closer we Republicans have adhered to this central idea – freedom – the more our party has united and the stronger we have been and the better we have done. And the closer the Democrats have adhered to THEIR central theme – authoritarianism (and the confiscatory taxes, reckless spending and borrowing, the burdensome regulations, and favoritism and corruption that always accompanies it)-- the more they have fragmented and ultimately failed.

Reagan knew that. Remember his slogan, “Stay the Course” that steered our party through the early 1980s – and that ultimately produced an end to the cold war, the defeat of communism, and the longest peacetime economic expansion in our nation’s history – and just a few years later enduring Republican majorities in the Congress.

And Lincoln knew it too. His famous “House Divided” speech was actually delivered to the Republican State Convention in Illinois. He ended it with these words, which I believe he meant for us as much as he meant it for the Republicans who cheered him that June evening in 1858:

"Two years ago, the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong.

"We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us.

"Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.

"Did we brave all then to falter now --- now --- when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?

"The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail --- if we stand firm, we shall not fail.

"Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come."

Alaska is blessed with leaders who have taken firm stands and have heeded wise counsels -- and by citizens who know the difference. Californians have now learned the difference – the hard way – but are also in the process of restoring the blessings of liberty as well.

We meet at this Lincoln’s Day Dinner because the cause that brought Lincoln to lead our party continues to this day. Within our lifetimes, we have known another great leader who tonight rests comfortably in the embrace of his family and the warm gratitude and esteem of his countrymen, on this, his 93rd birthday.

It has been a great pleasure to join you on such a special occasion to honor them – and more importantly to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work – the cause of freedom -- that “they have thus far so nobly advanced.” CRO

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