R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 33

Friday, August 9, 2024

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Thursday, August 8, 2024

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Britain’s Conservative catastrophe: Lessons from the U.K. election—and a warning to conservatives everywhere

Britain’s national election was held, ironically enough, on July 4. Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had adopted the risky strategy of calling for a quick national election months ahead of schedule. Sunak was desperate for a political play that might change, avoid, or at least mitigate the catastrophe his Conservative Party faced when an election was held. His strategy was a total failure. Britain’s Conservative Party, one of the most successful and powerful political parties in history, now faces legitimate questions about its political survival.

How could this have happened? Sunak is now a former prime minister and the new prime minister is Keir Starmer, the decidedly bland leader of Britain’s Labour Party. The conservatives had held power for 14 years and had long been considered the nation’s “party of government.” The Conservatives, sometimes referred to as “Tories,” are the party of Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher. They have been the unquestioned political establishment for the nation and its parliamentary system. That establishment is now broken. The party has been broken. In reality, it broke itself.

When the election results came in, Labour had won 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons—a landslide of epic proportions. The Conservatives lost 244 seats won in the previous election and held onto only 121. It was a wipeout from which the party may not survive. Britain’s party of government has lost its reputation for competence, and voters were ready to see them go. Starmer’s Labour Party ran on a very fuzzy set of policies and proposals, but this was not an election about big ideas. It was an election over basic competence and voter frustration. The Conservatives’ 14-year hold on power was through five prime ministers. The party had exchanged the political and moral clarity of the Thatcher years for a mess of incoherent policies and ruinous scandals.

Historians may well argue that it was the 2016 Brexit vote that broke the party. Prime Minister David Cameron, faced with a challenge to his Tory establishment (Eton and Oxford) pro-European worldview, stunned the political class by putting Brexit to a vote. He was sure it would lose. It won. Britain voted to exit the European Union. Cameron was destroyed in terms of political credibility and accordingly resigned. He was followed by no less than four Conservative Party prime ministers. First came Theresa May, who then gave way to the populist (and near cartoonish) Boris Johnson. He would eventually go down in a crisis over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that he had thrown a party in violation of the policies he enforced on the British people. Johnson was followed by a true conservative, Liz Truss, who went on to make history as the prime minister with the shortest term in British history: 49 days. Truss was followed by Sunak, a technocratic politician of enormous personal wealth (and his wife is even wealthier), whose tumultuous term in office saw a general breakdown of the British welfare state (certainly in terms of wait times and competence), rising inflation, and massive citizen unrest. Not a good look for a wealthy prime minister with a country estate in the U.K. and an expensive house in California. Oddly enough, it also turned out that Sunak held a coveted green card from the United States. Again, not a good look for a British head of government.

Sunak announced his party’s bid for another term in office with his call for a quick and unexpected national election. His announcement was in itself a massive political disaster. The prime minister was determined to open his campaign with a major speech outside of No. 10 Downing St., the iconic residence of British prime ministers. He continued giving his address in what became a heavy rain. By the time he finished (which no one remembers for its content), he was standing in a soaking suit looking like a man experiencing a tidal wave. That’s exactly what Sunak and his party were facing.

There will be many in the United States who will point to the Conservative Party’s defeat in Britain as a failure of conservatism. In this case, that is nonsense. The Conservative Party had abandoned conservative principles and, in one of the weird ironies of the situation, the formerly socialist Labour Party seemed more conservative in personality if nothing else.

This disastrous run of supposedly conservative prime ministers began with Cameron, who in 2012 infamously came out in favor of same-sex marriage with these astounding words: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.” In other words, he has no earthly idea what conservative means.

Britain faces interesting days ahead. The new Labour government made a lot of promises it can’t possibly keep, and all the economic challenges that faced the Sunak government, and more, will face Starmer. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party is going to have to figure out if it intends to be conservative, or even a party at this point. The Republican Party in the United States would do well to look at the catastrophe of the Conservative Party in Britain and learn the lesson fast. If any conservative party forgets conservative principles, it will deserve to be out of power with its leaders soaking wet.

This article originally appeared at World Opinions on July 8, 2024.

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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

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Tuesday, August 6, 2024

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Monday, August 5, 2024

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Friday, August 2, 2024

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Thursday, August 1, 2024

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Abraham Lincoln: God’s Providence, Natural Law, Liberal Democracy — A Conversation with Historian Allen Guelzo

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Debate debacle in Atlanta: President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance has created a massive political crisis

Last night, Americans sat down to watch the first 2024 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump knowing that presidential debates can change history. The 1960 debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy changed history when Kennedy and Nixon effectively tied on the issues but Kennedy appeared youthful and Nixon sweated profusely under the television lights. In 1976, President Gerald Ford debated Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter and declared there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” He never recovered from the fallout. The debate in Atlanta last night will go down in history for one reason alone: President Biden turned the debate into a disaster, a debacle, and effectively a meltdown.

Former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan declared the event “the most important presidential debate ever.” Mincing no words, she wrote, “It was in fact as consequential as any presidential debate in history, and the worst night for an incumbent in history.” If anything, that was an understatement.

Headlines ranged from “Biden Stumbles” and “A Fumbling Performance, and a Panicking Party” at The New York Times to “Democrats Panic” at The Washington Post and “Biden Crashes” at The Wall Street Journal. On the major news networks, the mild-mannered John King of CNN came out with an honest assessment that President Biden had basically tanked his campaign for reelection. A panel of commentators agreed. On MSNBC, the hosts did their best to carry the official Democratic Party line, but their faces told the story. On Fox News, the president’s debate performance was described as a “train wreck.” It certainly was.

At the human level, the sight was just profoundly sad. Joe Biden demanded this moment, but it was a face-plant from which it is difficult to imagine recovery. The Democratic Party let this happen, and now it may reap the whirlwind.

Presidential debates are now part of the media age, and in a digital world, a mistake can quickly become an international meme. Biden’s performance last night provided an endless supply of facial expressions, garbled speech, broken sentences, and slurred words. In a strange twist, the optics were even worse than the audio feed. It was a human tragedy, and one that will live on as a political parable. The politicians and political managers who had assured us of Biden’s basic competence were exposed as liars. He is clearly an elderly man who has no place in the Oval Office.

The Democratic Party is clearly scrambling in the aftermath of the event. Party insiders had been acknowledging for weeks that they needed an early test of Biden’s ability and readiness for the campaign. They got it. But what will the Democrats do now? The party’s rules make it impractical if not impossible to deny Biden the nomination at this point. If he is somehow convinced to leave the race, the party will have to debate and fight over how he can be replaced. If Vice President Kamala Harris is chosen as the nominee, the Democrats expect to lose. But if she is passed over, the party would be insulting and sidelining a vice president who could legitimately claim a right to the nomination and run as the first black woman to be a major party nominee. Denying her that role would expose the Democrats as liars and posers when it comes to inclusion and representation. They run incessantly on identity politics and clearly run the risk of being seen as major league hypocrites.

In the debate, Donald Trump for the most part ran true to form. He was more restrained that in some previous debates and scored major points against Biden on inflation, uncontrolled illegal immigration, and America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden went directly against Trump on character questions, and Trump threw the character question back at Biden. The CNN moderators were in control of the event and the new rules removed some of the problems in previous debates. The entire debate, however, revealed the coarsening of American political life, right down to the language, especially from Biden.

Both candidates failed on the issue of abortion, but they did not fail equally. Biden was partly incoherent and partly dishonest. When Trump accused him of supporting late-term abortions, Biden denied the charge and blustered about legislating Roe v. Wade. The dishonest part is when Biden got away without saying that he would not sign a bill supported by congressional Democrats that would indeed allow for late-term abortions (perhaps right up to birth). He would surely sign such a bill, and he knows full well that all the talk about legislating Roe, as horrible as that would be, is patently dishonest.

For his part, Trump wavered on abortion, insisting again that the issue should be left to the states and asserting that Republicans simply have to get elected. He cited President Ronald Reagan in affirming “exceptions” that would allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. It was a disappointing performance, but Trump did take credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and would reject the legislation Biden would sign. There is still a lot of distance between Trump and Biden on the abortion issue, but pro-lifers clearly have a huge challenge ahead of us.

The debate last night made history, and the days immediately ahead are going to be dominated by headlines and arguments, overwhelmingly about the future of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. The Biden crash is going to be followed by seismic reverberations. But remember that the Supreme Court is likely to hand down decisions of massive importance today. Any way you look at it, this is going to be a week to remember.

This article originally appeared at World Opinions on June 28, 2024.

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