Sara(h) Smiles, Part 11: Common-Sense Conservatism for Dummies

In the course of walking from door to door, encouraging my neighbors to help elect Sarah our next president, I am often asked exactly what we common-sense conservatives believe. I think the core belief that separates us from others is in what I’ll call the no-brainer, the simple truth that “hides” in plain sight, but is actually right there for all to see if we don’t allow ourselves to be misled by a lot of fancy rhetoric of the sort in which B. Hussein Obama specializes.

Let’s take our crippling national debt, for instance. Ask a liberal what we can do to keep from saddling our grandchildren with it, and they’ll sneak a peek at their teleprompter, sip their vitamin water to buy time, clear their throats, furrow their eyebrows, fiddle with their cufflinks, have another sip of water, and intone a catchphrase like “cap-and-trade” or “global warming.” But a common-sense conservative will cut right to the chase:

Spend less.

Duh! Does somebody really have to have a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard to tell you that? Alternatively, drill, baby, drill, and sell the oil we don’t use to the Chinese — at an inflated price! Double-duh!

A lot of the people I talk to want to discuss the whole unemployment thing, and I by no means shy away from doing so. We common-sense conservatives recognize that the obvious solution isn’t for the government to hire a lot of undocumented aliens to build bridges to nowhere, for instance, but to lower taxes on the very rich. When Uncle Sam overtaxes the American CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and what have you of big multinational corporations, they, not surprisingly, become disgruntled, and a disgruntled C-whatever-O is rarely as productive as a gruntled one. The corporation’s profits dwindle, and people have to be laid off. This is so hard to follow?

When you actually reduce that same C-whatever-O’s taxes, though, everyone comes out ahead. The C-whatever-O himself works harder and more creatively, meaning, in many cases, that more people need to be hired, rather than fired. When he or she goes home from the office, the C-whatever-O is likely to feel that he or she can hire more domestics or gardeners, and how are these dark-skinned people going to get out to Greenwich or Scarsdale or Bel-Air or Presidio Heights or what have you if not on public transportation? So now more bus drivers are hired to drive more buses, which need servicing by more mechanics, who can afford to get their hair cut more often, so now you’ve got a lot of barbers who suddenly have disposable income with which to take the missus out to dinner, where they leave bigger tips than they might have previously, which means a lot of waitresses can now afford airfare to go visit their grandkids over the holidays, and buy more and bigger presents for them, so now teens who might otherwise be roaming the streets getting each other pregnant or selling crack are being hired as wrappers. Maybe that puts a couple of probation officers or cops out of work, and it’s always sad to see any American stripped of every last shred of self-respect, but the society as a whole come out far, far ahead, and that's what common-sense conservatism is all about! Hello?

Much is made by liberal nay-sayers about American students scoring far lower on math and science tests than their Asian counterparts. I suppose it takes a common-sense conservative to explain that the difference owes to American kids being a lot more well-rounded, and unwilling to spend 18 hours in the library.

We common-sense conservatives believe that the rich are rich for a reason — that they’re smarter than the poor, or harder workers, or just loved more by God. We believe that they deserve our deference and even veneration. We have no problem whatever with their getting to keep a higher percentage of their incomes than you or I, because their doing so guarantees that we continue to have any income at all.

Join us, fellow American. Drill, baby, drill!