With so many likely and possible candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, it’s hard for any of them to stand out from the crowd. That puts a premium on having good ideas that make sense for the country and appeal strongly to GOP primary voters. Just this week, two aspiring Republican nominees — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer — came up with ideas that fit the bill, while a third aspirant — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — offered a really bad one. Examiner Columnist and talk radio host Hugh Hewitt describes Romney’s proposal in his column on Page 24 of today’s edition: “He will issue waivers from Obamacare’s mandates and rules to all 50 states. This death by a thousand waivers will work immediately as formal repeal wends its way through the Congress.” Hewitt further notes that “Democrats will not be able to object as President Obama invented the waiver-as-favor policy.” We agree with Hewitt that all of the GOP presidential nomination seekers should make the same promise.
Roemer’s idea comes hard on the heels of Obama’s attempt in his Saturday address to gain some credibility on gas prices. The president promises faster approvals of offshore drilling permit applications as a means of bolstering U.S. oil production. Roemer calls Obama’s bluff by proposing a tariff on oil produced by OPEC nations (which currently supply more than half of U.S. oil needs) while forming a North American energy partnership among this country, Canada and Mexico. America has more total energy resources than any other country, and Canada and Mexico are also rich in energy assets.
Creating an energy free-trade zone would boost production and lower prices in all three countries, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and generate long-term economic growth. Roemer predicts his plan will get the U.S. to energy independence within a decade. What’s not to love about that?
As for Gingrich’s bad idea, it is especially surprising coming from a man who is one of the country’s most knowledgeable politicians, as well as a history professor. Speaking at the Georgia GOP state convention, Gingrich said: “But maybe we should also have a voting standard that says to vote, as a native-born American, you should have to learn American history. You realize how many of our high school graduates, because of the decay of the educational system, couldn’t pass a citizenship test?” Gingrich surely knows the sad truth about how literacy requirements for voting were used for many decades to prevent Southern blacks from voting. And he must also know that most states’ high school graduation requirements now include at least minimal knowledge of U.S. history.
The problem is that what is taught too often conforms to the “presentism” of liberal educators. They judge the past not by contemporaneous standards but by their own politically correct notions, dismissing as inconsequential or even primitive many of the nation’s leading figures and their debates over fundamental principles. Conflating voting requirements and the failure of schools to teach American history is just the kind of shot-from-the-hip remark for which Gingrich is famous and that could easily derail his candidacy.
