First, let me thank Nachama Soloveichik for penning a thoughtful response to my piece about Bobby Jindal from earlier today. I appreciate the work CfG does promoting and donating to conservative candidates and their contribution to conservative discussion in general is valuable.
My disagreements with Ms. Soloveichik are mainly quibbles, and may be disposed of with relative ease. First, my post was clearly directed to Jeff Crouere's Human Events piece, which I found to be clearly and absurdly over the top. I did reference and link to another post on The Next Right that was critical of CfG's coverage of the Veepstakes, but that was certainly not the point of my post. Insofar as I mentioned the CfG at all, it was to disapprove of this post from Andrew Roth (another guy I'm a fan of) that I found to be particularly ridiculous. So much so that I expect that Mr. Roth penned it at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek (although you never know, the internet is a poor communications medium in many respects). But it all goes to my larger point that we ought to show a little more perspective when dealing with possible national stars. Executives especially have a more difficult time maintaining ideological purity, and my sense is that Jindal and Palin are two of the better ones we have (although time will ultimately tell).
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As far as the other points made in Ms. Soloveichik's response: I am convinced that Governor Jindal was reticent on the tax cut. This does not address the other questions that I had with respect to this tax cut; namely, that I question the proposition that all tax cuts are ipso facto good and must automatically be supported, and any reticence regarding them must be regarded as conservative heresy. With respect to the rest, I noted in my original piece that I do *not* support Jindal for VP right now because I agree with Ms. Soloveichik that he needs time to season before we will really know how good at governing Bobby Jindal is; and I suspect that by the time that 2016 rolls around, we will have a much more complete and accurate picture of what Bobby Jindal is all about, and then we can all decide.
The most serious contention I have with Ms. Soloveichik's response (as you might have guessed) is with her characterization of Donald Carcieri's "competence," especially founded on the premise that the economy in Rhode Island is currently very poor. You see, I come from the school of thought that the chief executive of a given region is not given a magic wand which controls the local economy, making it good or bad by his/her fiat. This sort of thinking, in fact, gave us the New Deal and the Great Society, and I think I know where CfG stands on those programs. It is true that executive incompetence can sometimes worsen the economy, but Ms. Soloveichik does not offer evidence of this on Governor Carcieri's part, but merely posits that because the economy is bad and government revenues are bad, Governor Carcieri is therefore incompetent. Is there something in particular he should have done to avoid either of these outcomes? We are only left to guess. Was it undesirable for Gov. Carcieri to have dumped over 1,000 workers from the government's payroll in order to cut the budget deficit? Seems in line with CfG thinking to me - is there a "pro-growth" explanation for why this was a bad decision? What about the budget battle recently fought by Carcieri which ended with balanced budget? Does this count for naught?
I, too, like Governor Sanford, and favor him above Crist, Pawlenty, or (this time around) Jindal. But it simply is not the case that Sanford is the only acceptable choice for VP this or the next time around.