Comeback or Japans Aggressive Legalism

Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again

Author: David Frum

With a new Afterword on the results of the 2008 presidential race, an intensely controversial book that the Wall Street Journal says “should be required reading for all GOP candidates.”

David Frum was one of the first Republican insiders to warn the GOP of danger ahead in 2008. In this passionate, urgently readable book, Frum analyzes the conservative crisis—and offers new hope for conservatives in the years to come. On issues from healthcare to terrorism, the environment to abortion, the challenge of China and the problem of childhood obesity, Frum offers exciting new ideas to rejuvenate conservative politics.

Frum’s work has been hailed by Newt Gingrich and denounced by Rush Limbaugh. His ideas have been debated from the pages of The New Yorker to the conference table of the Republican Senate Policy Committee—and they will continue to shape the conservative debate in the long years to come.

Publishers Weekly

In his new book, Frum (The Right Man), former speechwriter to President Bush, offers a conservative blueprint for accommodating challenges central to the next half-century of American life. Drawing on his expert knowledge of domestic politics and foreign policy, Frum argues that Republicans need to evolve with the times in order to win American hearts, minds and elections. After staking out viably conservative positions on the country's most salient political battles such as health care, education, the economy, foreign policy, embryonic stem cell research, taxation and the like, Frum proposes a grand taxation strategy. In lieu of taxes that stifle investment and free enterprise, Frum's platform relies on consumption taxation. His approach aims to accommodate domestic spending obligations such as social security while remaining pro-growth. By aiming taxes at upper-class consumers, Frum takes a provocative, politically challenging stance. The book rebukes the president Frum once called the right man and sets a challenging new course of action for the GOP. (Dec. 31)

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Kirkus Reviews

The primary reason for the Republican Party's recent election failures, argues a former Bush speechwriter, is that it has neglected to respond to changing demands. When voters began abandoning the GOP for the Democrats (who now outnumber Republicans three to two), writes Frum (The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, 2003, etc.), conservatives responded by retreating to "obsolete politics," engaging in pointless debates about "issues that are in fact settled." Instead of arguing with voters, he suggests, Republicans should figure out new ways to appeal to the married, middle-class, white, churchgoing Americans who are their natural base. Unfortunately, readers looking for such new ideas will be disappointed. Most of Frum's proposals have long been part of the Republican Party platform he accuses of alienating middle-class Americans: expansion of Bush's unpopular No Child Left Behind Act; abolition of all affirmative-action programs; drastic cuts in immigration; privatization of Social Security; elimination of all taxes on wealth and corporations, including capital-gains and estate taxes on the very wealthy. However, the book does feature one truly innovative proposal: a $50-per-ton carbon tax on those forms of energy that create the greatest environmental harm. Frum makes this proposal not because he respects environmentalists-at one point, he suggests that ecologically concerned voters are among the most "ignorant" in the country-but because he believes America's dependence on oil, including oil produced in America, threatens the nation's economic security. Environmentalist or not, the proposal is sure to cause a stir among Republicans, as much for its underlying premisethat dirty energy sources should be taxed in order to subsidize more-expensive clean energy as for its acknowledgment that concern for the environment is an issue Republicans can't afford to ignore. Lively writing and one intriguingly contrarian proposal salvage an otherwise standard-issue conservative polemic.

Interesting textbook: Teoria Financeira Intermediária

Japan's Aggressive Legalism: Law and Foreign Trade Politics Beyond the WTO

Author: Saadia M Pekkanen

The ways in which law has interacted with concrete interests to reshape Japan's foreign trade politics at the start of the twenty-first century can best be characterized as aggressive legalism. Central to this transformation have been the beneficiaries of this ever more aggressive legalism—Japan's trade-dominant industries with visible stakes in the international economic system. Today, thanks to painstaking and concerted efforts, Japan's aggressive legalism has shifted well beyond its origins in the WTO, and is now not confined to any one multilateral, regional, or bilateral forum. Nor is its thrust limited only to the issues covered in this book, namely, antidumping, safeguards, intellectual property, or investment concerns in FTA diplomacy. Its target is not only the United States, but also rapidly rising new Asian competitors like China; not only foreign governments, but also foreign sectors—even down to specific companies. In the shifting landscape of global and regional realities, aggressive legalism has emerged as the single most cohesive and unquestionably legitimate attempt by Japanese actors to structure favorable outcomes in international trade.