Tag: politics

The unconservative candidate

It used to be that Republican “moderates” would portray themselves as socially moderate, but fiscally conservative. Now, however, they’re not even fiscally conservative anymore:

The tax plan proposed by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich would add $1.3 trillion to the U.S. budget deficit in 2015 alone, a new analysis shows, complicating his goal of balancing the government’s books.

The analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center compares the federal government’s take under Gingrich’s proposal with projected U.S. revenue if current tax law ran its course and existing income tax cuts expired as scheduled after 2012.

One interesting aspect of this presidential campaign is that it has revealed the Republican candidates to be every bit as unwilling to cut government programs as the Democrats. As numerous observers have pointed out, the Republicans elected to the House in 2010 were elected to do one thing: reign in federal spending. And they have manifestly failed to do that.

Tax cuts are definitely desirable, but they are less desirable and less necessary than spending cuts. And tax cuts without spending cuts means even more debt.

This is why a second Obama term would be vastly preferable to either a Romney or Gingrich presidency. Obama is actually more constrained on spending by a Republican House than either of the two Republicans would be. It’s almost beside the point to describe any of the three as being Democrats or Republicans, though. They all belong to the Bank Party.

Mailvox: A new GOP foreign policy

A VP reader who writes at Policymic recommends the GOP adopt Ron Paul’s foreign policy:

Republicans love to wax poetic about America’s founding documents. Read anything by popular conservative pundits to get up to speed on how our precious Constitution has been shredded by liberals and why America desperately needs to return to the principles contained therein.

The major Republican presidential contenders all share that view as well. Newt Gingrich’s website, for example, tells readers that religious liberty and life are unalienable rights “contained in the Declaration of Independence.” Mitt Romney has similarly ripped on “advocates of “secularism” for taking the idea of separation of church and state “…well beyond its original meaning.”

The problem, however, is that Republicans don’t endorse their own back to basics argument when it comes to foreign policy. Conservatives, historically speaking, don’t a endorse the idea that America is the world’s police force, and for the sake of consistency and the good of the country, today’s Republicans need to abandoned this interventionist mindset.

This may sound like a strange argument if you don’t know your history, so let’s briefly put it context. The idea that America should cross the globe solving every nation’s problems is a progressive one. And it makes sense when you think about it. The left generally accepts that the government ought to have a very active role in society, alleviating poverty, ensuring a level playing field or the little guy, and so on. So why wouldn’t the same be true of foreign policy as well?

It’s all quite true. Unfortunately, it’s all quite irrelevant. The observable fact of the matter is that most Republicans, including many who call themselves conservatives, are now progressives on the foreign policy front. There is literally nothing conservative about the Republican Party’s mainstream anymore, and they are at their most left-wing and pro-government intervention with regards to foreign policy.

What they should do and what they can reasonably be expected to do are two completely different things. Which is why they are so often called, quite correctly, the Stupid Party.

WND column

The Madness of Newt Romney

The argument for nominating Newt Romney as the Republican candidate for president is pretty straightforward. Newt Romney is not Barack Obama. Newt Romney is believed capable of defeating Barack Obama due to its generally moderate position approximately half way between Barack Obama and Republican Party conservatives and a strong Republican electoral tailwind. Since Newt Romney is believed to be less unattractive than Barack Obama and capable of winning the general election, Republicans should, therefore, look past its flaws and nominate it as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

Unelectable redefined

Many people are under the impression that “unelectable” means “insufficiently popular with the electorate. That clearly isn’t true:

[I]n that campaign discussion on Twitter, one candidate has fared better than anyone else. Congressman Ron Paul has enjoyed the most favorable tone on Twitter of all candidates examined. From May through November, fully 55% of the assertions about the Texas Republican on Twitter have been positive-the highest of any candidate-while 15% have been negative-the lowest percentage of any candidate. That is a differential for Paul of 40 points on the positive side.

Paul is also the most favorably discussed candidate in blogs. While he trails significantly in the polls, and has received less coverage than every Republican candidate except Rick Santorum from news outlets, Paul seems to have struck a chord with some cohort in social media.

This treatment of Paul stands in contrast to that of most of the GOP field, for whom Twitter has been a tough neighborhood. Five of Paul’s seven GOP rivals have had negative opinions on Twitter outstrip positive ones by roughly 2-1 or more.

What “unelectable” actually means is “insufficiently popular with the mainstream media”. Or more precisely, “insufficiently subservient to the banking industry”.

Choosing collapse

This is a rather timely poll, following as it does my recent column on the subject. It makes it very clear that there is no point looking to the Republicans to save the nation. John Hawkins polls the nominal right-wing blogosphere about the Republican primary:

If you had to pick a 2012 GOP contender today, which of the following candidates would you select?

7) Jon Huntsman: 2.5% (2 votes)
6) Rick Santorum: 5.1% (4 votes)
5) Michele Bachmann: 6.3% (5 votes)
4) Ron Paul: 7.6% (6 votes)
3) Mitt Romney: 12.7% (10 votes)
2) Rick Perry: 26.6% (21 votes)
1) Newt Gingrich: 39.2% (31 votes)

Which candidate would you LEAST like to see as the GOP nominee in 2012?

7) Rick Santorum: 1.3% (1 votes)
6) Rick Perry: 1.3% (1 votes)
5) Newt Gingrich: 3.8% (3 votes)
4) Jon Huntsman: 9% (7 votes)
3) Michele Bachmann: 11.5% (9 votes)
2) Mitt Romney: 25.6% (20 votes)
1) Ron Paul: 47.4% (37 votes)

If your top choice couldn’t get the nomination, which candidate would be your second choice?

7) Ron Paul: 3.8% (3 votes)
6) Jon Huntsman: 6.4% (5 votes)
5) Michele Bachmann: 10.3% (8 votes)
4) Mitt Romney: 14.1% (11 votes)
3) Rick Santorum: 15.4% (12 votes)
2) Newt Gingrich: 19.2% (15 votes)
1) Rick Perry: 30.8% (24 votes)

This is why I have absolutely no sympathy for Americans whatsoever, especially not Republicans who claim to be so distraught over what “the Democrats” are supposedly doing to the country. They are revealing themselves to be EVERY BIT as stupid and clueless as the “Hope and Change” Obama Democrats. They are an integral part of the problem, not the potential solution they imagine themselves to be.

I find it particularly telling that Ron Paul is the Republican for whom they harbor the most distaste. No one likes the man who tells you that you aren’t a beautiful snowflake whose every action is justified, much less the one who tells you that the good times are not going to continue rolling and happy days are not here again.

WND column

Choosing Collapse

Another flavor of the month has passed its sell-by date. To no one’s surprise, except perhaps those Republicans in desperate search of a get-out-of-racism-free card, the Magic Negro, Part II: Republican edition has “suspended” his campaign, thus marking the latest collapse of a nominal frontrunner. If we are to take the polls seriously, this leaves Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney as the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination, which is arguably the least attractive leadership pair on offer since the Polish people were divided between Hitler and Stalin.

An upset in Iowa?

Ron Paul is coming on strong:

A brand-new Iowa Poll, just published by the Des Moines Register, reports the often-dismissed 76-year-old Paul has surged past one-time front-runner Mitt Romney and moved into second place, with his sights set on the current front-runner Newt Gingrich.

According to the new poll results, Gingrich leads the pack at 25% of likely caucus-goers with less than a month until they’re held. Paul is second with 18% and Romney now trails with 16%.

It would certainly be interesting to see how far the media is willing to go in pretending Ron Paul doesn’t exist if he were to win Iowa. It would certainly be hard to maintain the unelectable theme. I imagine the big story would be the “unexpected” strength of Mitt Romney’s third-place showing.

Exit the Harassinator

You know, it really doesn’t bother me in the slightest to say “I told you so“.

Herman Cain, the insurgent populist whose candidacy has been ensnared by allegations of sexual impropriety, said Saturday that he is leaving the race for the Republican presidential nomination, saying that the allegations have cast a “cloud of doubt over me and this campaign.”

“As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign,” he said at an event in Atlanta. “I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt . . . on me, on my family, not because we are not fighters, not because I am not a fighter.”

Herman Cain’s campaign was always a joke. He was never a serious candidate in the eyes of anyone with more than half a brain who bothered paying attention to what came out of his mouth after swirling around in his head.

I shall now commence to gargle with the sweet, saline goodness of Fred Backer’s tears

The inevitable result of the “Arab Spring”

Perhaps, my dear anklebiters, you may recall when you said I had no idea what I was talking about when I scoffed at the idea that the “Arab Spring” would lead to that vision of shiny secular democracy that is dying in the West and will never exist in the Middle East. After all, weren’t there STUDENT LEADERS speaking ENGLISH to CNN reporters? Surely the ability of two or three twenty-somethings to appear presentable on camera must have been a reliable indicator of their political power in Egypt! And I’m sure you haven’t forgotten all your pooh-poohing of the idea that democracy would lead directly to rule by religious fundamentalist parties:

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

Quelle surprise! The entire point of establishing the various kings and military dictatorships at the end of the European colonial era was to avoid popular governments and thereby prevent the revival of violent Islamic expansion. And I have no sympathy for the neocons, particularly the Jewish ones who loudly advocated democratic revolution in the Arab world and will soon be shrieking about how their precious Israel is now increasingly threatened by the democratic governments they helped establish.

The neocons have clearly already made geo-politics much more unstable with their unrestrained interventionist strategery. I suggest they all shut the hell up and simply watch as the Arabs, Israelis, and Americans go about pursuing their national interests without the “benefit” of advice from the idiot interventionist lobby.

Democracy is not, and has never been, an intrinsic good in and of itself. It is not freedom. It is not liberty. And very often, it is a very good way of ensuring that human freedom and liberty are repressed.

Be grateful for President Obama

It could have been a lot worse… John McCain might have won:

Buried in the annual defense appropriations bill is a provision that would give the President the power to use the military to intern anyone – including American citizens – indefinitely, and hold them without charges or trial, anywhere in the world, including on American soil. The provision essentially repeals the longstanding Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from engaging in law enforcement on US territory – the greatest fear of the Founders. Approved by a Senate subcommittee in secret hearings, the provisions open the road to a military dictatorship in this country – and for that we can thank Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who introduced the measure. Both the FBI and the Pentagon came out against the Levin-McCain monstrosity, and Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) introduced an amendment striking the provision: the amendment was defeated in the Senate, 37-61.

The mind reels.

Given how spectacularly awful McCain has been as a senator, it still boggles the mind that he managed to win the Republican nomination. Any Republican Those who are arguing for supporting Mitt Romney based on the idea that he can defeat Obama in 2012 are forgetting the obvious problem: given his political record and the principle of counter-push, there is absolutely no guarantee that Romney won’t actually turn out to be even worse than Obama.

There can be little question at this point that McCain would have been. The one good thing about Obama is that he is far too passive and lazy to want to be a dictator, because then he would actually have to stop voting present.

On second thought, perhaps Obama might be as bad as McCain after all. Or at least someone in his administration is.

“The initial bill reported by the committee included language expressly precluding ‘the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.’ The Administration asked that this language be removed from the bill.”

Well, at least we’ll have a bipartisan military dictatorship. And bipartisan is always good, right?