The Moderate Republican: Selective Transparency

What the Moderate Republican Stands For

Republicans came to power as the party of big ideas, and without returning to that model they could be looking at a long winter. Additionally, those big ideas need to focus on Middle America. Three issues that could work are conservation, reform and localism.

Conservation- a return to the Teddy Roosevelt model of conservation. One doesn’t necessarily have to buy into global warming to appreciate the need to protect the natural resources we have.

Reform- the federal government is bigger than ever, and won’t be getting any smaller over the next four years. Republicans need to fashion themselves as national reformers. Much of Middle America wants the government as safety net, but bloated bureaucracies breed corruption that needs to be dealt with.

Localism- this is the lynchpin that brings it all together. If we bought our food locally, shopped locally, governed locally, many of the issue we now have to deal with would go away, or at the least become manageable.

Below is a collection of writers who speak about the things that matter. Some are Right, some Left and some Center, but all intelligent and rational voices.

Is President Obama playing politics with the intelligence gathering agencies of the nation? It is a question worth asking as he has chosen to officially release CIA memos. Ronald Kessler makes the point here.

Aides to President Obama explained his decision to release Bush-era memos about CIA coercive interrogation methods as an effort to promote “transparency.”
If Obama were really interested in promoting transparency, he would have released CIA reports detailing the valuable leads obtained through the very same coercive interrogation techniques, which potentially saved the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.
If Obama were genuinely interested in transparency, he also would have released the minutes of Bush White House meetings briefing Nancy Pelosi and other leaders of the House and Senate on the interrogation techniques as they were being implemented.
Instead, Obama referred to the interrogations as a “dark and painful chapter in our history....”
...As former CIA Director Michael Hayden said in an April 17 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, the effect of the release “will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.”

The Moderate Republican

What the Moderate Republican Stands For

The American Conservative » Rod Dreher

Via Meadia

Front Porch Republic

David Brooks

The Soap Box

Selective Transparency

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