The political axiom is familiar today. Republicans nominate the next in line. So it's been from Richard Nixon to John McCain.
The next presidential cycle could prove otherwise. The GOP establishment no longer rides herd over today's elephants. Conservative activists are both exceptionally galvanized and autonomous. It's a unique mix unseen in decades. And critically, the establishment's early favorite has an Achilles heel.
This conservative milieu begs the question: is 2012 the year of the Republican dark horse?
Mitt Romney should be the next Republican nominee. No less than 81 percent of Republican "insiders" say that Romney is the "most likely" to challenge Barack Obama in 2012, according to a January National Journal poll.
"If you look at our tradition in the party, our frontrunner should be Mitt Romney," said Charlie Black, who has advised candidates from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush to McCain. "But I truly believe it's way too early to tell."
Romney's vulnerability is one reason it's too early to tell. Half of all Republicans are "angry" about the healthcare overhaul. Most other Republicans are "displeased," according to a late March CNN poll. And therein lies Romney's problem.
Romney signed a universal health care plan as the Massachusetts governor. It too mandated coverage (a central focal point of conservative anger today). Romney has managed flip-flops before. He nearly won the GOP nomination despite his past support for abortion and gay rights. But this is another matter. Romney took trailblazing action on the same issue that most-rallies today's conservative grassroots. In 2008, John McCain's primary campaign ran an ad that declared: "Mitt Romney's state health-care plan is a big-government mandate." GOP rivals will offer that message on steroids in 2012. Politico aptly compared Romney's problem to Hillary Clinton's 2002 Iraq war vote.
But if not Romney, then who? The survey of Beltway insiders offered one early picture. Tim Pawlenty placed a distant second (46%). Followed by John Thune (38%) and Haley Barbour (28%). Tied for fifth were Mitch Daniels and Sarah Palin (25%). Of the group, only Palin is widely known by the public. But Palin remains a long shot in 2012. The field is open. And many other Republican dark horses stir.
The senior man has, however, taken the GOP race since 1968. The "new Nixon" is remembered for his remarkable comeback. But Nixon commanded the field by election year. In spring, among Republicans, Gallup placed Nixon ahead of Nelson Rockefeller by more than a 2-to-1 margin. He was the former vice president and almost-was president. But Nixon's nomination also heralded the new emerging GOP establishment -- more southern, more western, less blue blooded and more blue collar.
Thereafter, the GOP establishment got their man. The seniority rule became more settled (perhaps ironically) with the advent of the first contested, and modern, GOP primary race in 1976. There were setbacks -- Reagan losing in Iowa or George W. Bush losing in New Hampshire. But from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush, as Harvard political scientist William Mayer tracked, the Republican who led the final Gallup national poll before the primaries won the nomination.
The rule dulled with McCain but endured. McCain followed the path of Reagan, H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. He was the once-thwarted candidate who earned his turn. And McCain worked for that turn. He was among Bush's most effective advocates during the 2004 campaign. Then he went from 2006 frontrunner to late-2007 long shot. Mike Huckabee narrowly led McCain in the final national polls before the Iowa caucuses. But McCain soon regained his frontrunner status and won despite the vocal opposition of conservative activists like Rush Limbaugh.
Romney attempted to follow this same game plan. He dropped out in 2008 and soon became a strong advocate for McCain. He is currently campaigning and raising money for 2010 Republican candidates.
The seniority system might still work out for Romney. The GOP establishment still reigns, despite its wounded authority. The Republican Party refused to seriously consider a conservative "purity test" early this year. The result would have excluded moderates from RNC support.
Many rising GOP stars are also establishment figures. There are the popular conservatives like New Jersey's Chris Christie or Wisconsin's Paul Ryan. There is Rob Portman's Senate bid in Ohio or Marco Rubio's Senate bid in Florida. All four have followed traditional GOP paths to power and could be considered dark horses. Both Portman and Rubio achieved their prominence with the assistance of the Bush family.
Nonetheless, Rubio's rapid rise captures what's different today. In 2008, Charlie Crist was a popular Florida governor, veep contender and leading Republican moderate. But Republican momentum is rightward. And Rubio quickly overtook Crist from that right. The conservative grassroots, including Tea Party activists, are the gasoline powering Rubio.
Goldwater's day was different. The establishment ran away from "grotesque burlesque of the conservative," to quote The Saturday Evening Post. Today's Republican establishment is running towards its conservative wing. In recent weeks Dick Cheney, Eric Cantor and Romney have all endorsed Rubio.
The establishment's move nearer to its grassroots has paid dividends within the party. Only 63 percent of Republicans favorably rated their party in spring 2009. That rating rose above 80 percent by autumn and has since steadied.
Yet rank and file Republicans remain disconnected from the institutional Republican Party. Three in four GOP voters continue to believe Republicans in Congress have in recent years "lost touch with Republican voters from throughout the nation," according to Rasmussen polling.
That disconnect is one explanation for the Republican National Committee's thin coffers. The RNC had more than $30 million in the bank at the close of 2001 and 2005. The RNC closed 2009 with less than $9 million. And this was before the latest RNC fundraising scandal.
The Tea Party is especially detached from their political leadership. They are largely traditional Republican voters. Gallup found that 83 percent of Tea Party supporters identify as or lean Republican. Seven in 10 identify as conservative. Politico surveyed activists who attended a Tea Party rally in Washington on April 15. It found that more than seven in 10 voted for both McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004. Only about one in 10 voted for Obama and John Kerry.
But when the CBS/New York Times poll asked them what living U.S. political figure they most admire, half of the Tea Party supporters declined to select any of the prominent Republicans listed. Only 5 percent said Romney. Newt Gingrich led the list at 10 percent. This is a conservative grassroots movement with little reverence for the Republican establishment.
The two Pauls illustrate the resonance of an antiestablishment-appeal on the right. Ron Paul versus Obama polls a dead heat, 41 to 42 percent respectively, according to Rasmussen. Twice as many conservatives view Paul as "representative of a new direction for the party" than view him as a "divisive force in the Republican party," Rasmussen finds. Paul's son, Rand Paul, is winning a contentious Kentucky GOP Senate primary -- despite the Republican establishment, like Cheney, backing his opponent. Rand flaunts one popular Tea Party conservative's endorsement, Palin. Both Pauls carry echoes of Goldwater-like libertarianism.
Today's activism does not approach the political significance of its 1960s counterpart (one reason: the modern GOP establishment is far nearer to Goldwater than the midcentury Republican old-guard). There is no great political realignment underway, as there was in Goldwater's time. But the force on the current political right is more bottom-up than top-down. And that has the potential to win the top.
Yet it's too early to say if someone could pull a Goldwater. And that question evokes other points. LBJ trounced Goldwater. But not all dark horses are such poor general election candidates.
Goldwater's earlier victory still shapes today's GOP. He defeated Nelson Rockefeller and with him the moderate-northeast GOP establishment. Reagan's groundwork was Goldwater. "In your heart you know he's right," read the Goldwater slogan. One could say conservative activists are still fighting, and winning, to prove Goldwater is right.
But Goldwater was never a foregone conclusion. Congressional Quarterly polled 1960 delegates and found they presumed Rockefeller would be the nominee, but they greatly preferred Goldwater. That era's dean of political pundits, Walter Lippman, declared that Republicans would nominate Rockefeller "barring miracles and accidents." Lippman also captured the establishment's view of Goldwater. "He appears to be totally without the essential conservative respect and concern for the social order," Lippman wrote, "He is a radical reactionary." Sounds like David Brooks' criticism of the Tea Party.
Goldwater's supporters began as early as 1961 to win precincts and win over conservative activists. The Tea Party is following a similar trail. But they work for a stricter conservative establishment, not a singular conservative challenging the moderate establishment. A Republican dark horse will likely only emerge if he or she can become that singular conservative.
Friday
Tuesday
SOCIALISM vs CORPORATISM
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges”. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.
Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.
To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President’s agenda.
When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term – corporatism - forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.
Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges”. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.
Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.
To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President’s agenda.
When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term – corporatism - forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.
Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.
Friday
AGAINST ANTI-CIVILIAN SANCTIONS
Before the US House of Representatives, April 22, 2010, Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act
Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.
We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.
We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.
We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.
Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.
Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.
This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.
Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.
We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.
We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.
We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.
Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.
Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.
This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.
Monday
END THE MANDATE
Last week I introduced a very important piece of legislation that I hope will gain as much or more support as my Audit the Fed bill. HR 4995, the End the Mandate Act will repeal provisions of the newly passed health insurance reform bill that give the government the power to force Americans to purchase government-approved health insurance.
The whole bill is rotten, but this provision especially is a blatant violation of the Constitution. Defenders claim the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate “interstate commerce” gives it the power to do this. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano and other distinguished legal scholars and commentators have pointed out, even the broadest definition of “regulating interstate commerce” cannot reasonably encompass forcing Americans to engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance. Not only is it unconstitutional; it is a violation of the basic freedom to make our own decisions regarding how best to meet the health care needs of ourselves and our families.
The new law requires Americans to have what is defined as “minimum essential coverage.” Some people may claim that the requirement to have “minimal essential coverage” does not impose an unreasonable burden on Americans. There are two problems with this claim. First, the very imposition of a health insurance mandate, no matter how “minimal,” violates the principles of individual liberty upon which this country was founded.
Second, the mandate is unlikely to remain “minimal” for long. The experience of states that allow their legislatures to mandate what benefits health insurance plans must cover has shown that politicizing health insurance inevitably makes it more expensive. As the cost of government-mandated health insurance rises, Congress will likely respond by increasing subsidies for more and more Americans, adding astronomically to our debt burden. An insurance mandate undermines the entire principle of what insurance is supposed to measure – risk.
Another likely response to rising costs is the imposition of price controls on medical treatments, and limits on what procedures and treatments mandatory insurance will have to reimburse. This is happening in other countries where government is intrinsically involved in these decisions and people suffer and die because of it.
This will only increase the bottom line of the very insurers the legislation was supposed to control. Meanwhile, alternate methods of healthcare delivery and financing, such as concierge doctors, alternative medicine, or physician owned hospitals will be greatly harmed, if not put out of business altogether, when the entire country is forced into the insurance model. It will be difficult for families to come up with extra money to pay for alternate healthcare of their choice when their budget has been squeezed by this mandate to buy insurance. This will in turn reduce competition for healthcare dollars. Health insurers, like many other corporations in other industries, have now used the legislative process anti-competitively to corner the healthcare market. Instead of calling this socialized medicine, we should call it corporatized medicine, since the reform is to force us all into being customers of these corporations, whether we like it or not.
Congress made a grave error by forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance. The mandate violates fundamental principles of individual liberty, and will lead to further government involvement in health care. It is time for legislation that fights back for the freedom of the people on this issue. It is time to End the Mandate.
The whole bill is rotten, but this provision especially is a blatant violation of the Constitution. Defenders claim the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate “interstate commerce” gives it the power to do this. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano and other distinguished legal scholars and commentators have pointed out, even the broadest definition of “regulating interstate commerce” cannot reasonably encompass forcing Americans to engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance. Not only is it unconstitutional; it is a violation of the basic freedom to make our own decisions regarding how best to meet the health care needs of ourselves and our families.
The new law requires Americans to have what is defined as “minimum essential coverage.” Some people may claim that the requirement to have “minimal essential coverage” does not impose an unreasonable burden on Americans. There are two problems with this claim. First, the very imposition of a health insurance mandate, no matter how “minimal,” violates the principles of individual liberty upon which this country was founded.
Second, the mandate is unlikely to remain “minimal” for long. The experience of states that allow their legislatures to mandate what benefits health insurance plans must cover has shown that politicizing health insurance inevitably makes it more expensive. As the cost of government-mandated health insurance rises, Congress will likely respond by increasing subsidies for more and more Americans, adding astronomically to our debt burden. An insurance mandate undermines the entire principle of what insurance is supposed to measure – risk.
Another likely response to rising costs is the imposition of price controls on medical treatments, and limits on what procedures and treatments mandatory insurance will have to reimburse. This is happening in other countries where government is intrinsically involved in these decisions and people suffer and die because of it.
This will only increase the bottom line of the very insurers the legislation was supposed to control. Meanwhile, alternate methods of healthcare delivery and financing, such as concierge doctors, alternative medicine, or physician owned hospitals will be greatly harmed, if not put out of business altogether, when the entire country is forced into the insurance model. It will be difficult for families to come up with extra money to pay for alternate healthcare of their choice when their budget has been squeezed by this mandate to buy insurance. This will in turn reduce competition for healthcare dollars. Health insurers, like many other corporations in other industries, have now used the legislative process anti-competitively to corner the healthcare market. Instead of calling this socialized medicine, we should call it corporatized medicine, since the reform is to force us all into being customers of these corporations, whether we like it or not.
Congress made a grave error by forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance. The mandate violates fundamental principles of individual liberty, and will lead to further government involvement in health care. It is time for legislation that fights back for the freedom of the people on this issue. It is time to End the Mandate.
Saturday
WHAT I THINK......JUSTIN RAIMONDO
The news that a Rasmussen poll has Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) running in a dead heat against President Barack Obama in a hypothetical Paul-Obama face-off for the White House has the pundits fuming. Ben Smith, over at Politico, can hardly contain his annoyance: the poll "is a useful reminder of how totally flaky early polling is," he rants, and "this is the Ron Paul who polled, literally, thousands of votes placing fifth in the Iowa caucuses," and then only breaking ten percent after everyone but McCain had bailed. This evaluation depends on a static model, however: back then, there was no bank bailout, no insurance industry takeover, no tea party movement, and Ron had no real public record to run on – the 2008 campaign, in short, was a way for the country to get to know Rep. Paul, and the Rasmussen poll is a clear indication they liked what they saw. Instead of invoking Paul’s showing in the Iowa caucus, it’s more useful to compare this poll to the results of another similar Rasmussen poll taken in 2008, in which, as the pollster reported, "For Ron Paul, 10% of all voters would definitely vote for him. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say it’s No, no matter what."
Voter sentiment is now completely reversed: today, he’s in a dead heat with a sitting President. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s an astonishing fact.
What Smith has to say about the perils of early polling would normally be accepted as beyond dispute: after all remember when Fred Thompson was the man to beat for the GOP nomination? However, we are not living in normal times, which I define as any period when Americans abandon their traditional attitude toward politics: i.e. indifference bordering on contempt. These days, the indifference has given way to not only awareness but also to active engagement, and the contempt for politicians has turned into a burning hatred, i.e. the very stuff and fuel of politics.
What makes it possible for Paul to ride this untamed mare is that he isn’t a politician at all: he is, in fact, the archetypal anti-politician, a professorial figure who lectures Republicans on the gravity of their fiscal and foreign policy sins, and is about as charismatic as plain oatmeal served without milk and sugar. What’s more, he tells the public what politicians have been loath to tell their constituents, and that is the necessity of deflation and the bearing of economic pain. In Paul’s view, the economic bubble generated by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies has led to the current downturn, and nothing less than gritting our teeth, cutting spending radically, and allowing the market to correct itself from government-induced distortions, is the cure.
His message, in short, is eat your spinach – not something any politician who hopes to keep his job (or get one) would normally say. But then again, as I said above, these are not normal times: far from it. The crisis of the American republic is acute, as we teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our overseas empire shows every sign of imploding, just like the old Soviet Union – and, what’s more, the American people know it.
As our corporatist masters feast on our tax dollars in Washington, out in the provinces voters faced with economic ruin are looking for some explanation, a conceptual framework that gets at the root of the problem and provides some solution. Paul’s rising popularity is due to the fact that he does indeed have a consistent philosophical approach, one that has propelled him from being a mere marginal figure – a "gadfly," as they said – to a very real contender. Yes, that’s right, I said a contender for the White House: it’s real, it’s possible, and here’s why.
Paul has consistently emphasized two themes that successfully capture the sentiments of the average American voter, and address the top two issues on their minds: 1) Fiscal sanity, and 2) A non-interventionist foreign policy. As regards the first point, Ron is the foremost opponent of government spending in Congress, and has earned the sobriquet "Dr. No" many times over. But of course practically all Republicans at least pay lip service to this ideal, although none that I know of lives up to it like Dr. Paul. However, it’s the second point – opposition to imperialism, and especially opposition to our crazed post-9/11 foreign policy of perpetual war – that is the key.
As Paul explained at the CPAC conference – where he won the presidential preference poll – and on many other occasions, we can’t have our old republic back unless and until we rid ourselves of the empire we’ve acquired along the way to bankruptcy. Lecturing them on the evils of Woodrow Wilson’s "progressivism," and the virtues of the Old Right’s Robert A. Taft, he received a standing ovation (as well as a few boos from the minuscule-but-loud David Frum Fan Club). A similar reception occurred at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he came within a single vote of winning the presidential poll (losing only because the SRLC officials closed registration early, betting correctly that Paul’s youthful supporters wouldn’t show up until it was time to address the convention).
What’s interesting about this, from the perspective of my readers – a majority of whom are not libertarians, I dare say, and are not generally sympathetic to my "anti-government" views – is that the more Ron talks about the one subject that is supposed to rile Republicans – his foreign policy views – the more popular he gets. It was the leitmotif of his CPAC speech, and a main theme of his SRLC speech: his opposition to what he calls "the Empire" inveigles its way into most of his public utterances: even if he’s asked a specific question about, say, the economy, he emphasizes the impossibility of ever getting out of the economic slough we’re in unless we throw off the burden of empire.
Paul’s candidacy is interesting to the antiwar movement, because he has managed to mainstream ideas that were long considered too radical for the ordinary American to even bear hearing about. To even raise the idea that the 9/11 attacks were "blowback" – in CIA parlance, an unintended consequence of US policies – was once considered a cardinal, self-marginalizing sin. Yet Paul took this view from the beginning: that the attacks were the boomeranging after-effects of playing "king of the hill" in the Middle Eastern sandbox and succoring the Afghan "freedom fighters" (as Ronald Reagan called them) who later morphed into al-Qaeda.
When Paul bravely brought this up at a Republican primary debate, the thuggish Rudy Giuliani said he’d "never heard" such an analysis, and demanded that Paul withdraw his statements. Paul refused, and cited the 9/11 Commission’s own words to back up his point, and yet the pundits in the peanut gallery crowed that Dr. No was finished, a "gadfly" who had been swatted by the thuggish Giuliani.
After spending millions in the GOP primaries, Giuliani was rewarded with exactly one delegate. Paul went to the GOP convention with a small but respectable platoon of elected delegates, and in spite of being thoroughly locked out the Paulians stayed in the party and worked at the precinct level, educating activists and recruiting lots of independents and conservatives previously disdainful of the GOP. The Paul movement was really the GOP’s lifeline to the emerging "tea party" movement, of which it was always an essential – and certainly a founding – element.
Again, what’s distinctive about the Paul movement within the tea party phenomenon is that they always bring their entire politics with them wherever they go: they raise the issue of the costs of war, and, as such, are currently the most active – and certainly the most successful – antiwar formation in this country. Here we have Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin offering to join in common cause with the tea partiers, and I think they should take her up on it. the Paulians are the logical mediators between what would, on the surface, appear to be oil and water.
As I said in a recent issue of The American Conservative, however, I don’t think the prospects for a left-right alliance on the issue of war and peace are all that bright, to begin with because what used to be the left has essentially been absorbed into the Obama cult, and co-opted by power. In the end, all liberals really care about is getting their "fair share" of the spoils, for themselves and their supposed constituencies. So what if the price they have to pay is going along with mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan? We all have to die sometime.
I harp on Ron Paul for all sorts of reasons, but the one of most interest to my readers is the fact that he is by far the most successful antiwar politician in recent American history. Derided as being one of those dreaded "isolationists," and attacked even by some alleged "libertarians" precisely for that – and because he appeals to the common man – he not only insists on raising this issue, for him it is central to his analysis of what he calls the "Welfare-Warfare State," a phrase coined by the late Murray Rothbard. Dr. Paul’s diagnosis of a nation fast exhausting itself in an orgy of spending and militaristic adventurism has the stark ring of truth about it – an alarm bell ringing in the night.
When Paul and others first sounded that alarm, back in the early formative years of the libertarian movement, very few were heeding the call. We were looked on as eccentrics, and, for example, the libertarian enthusiasm for gold was viewed as indicative of our archaic perspective, put down as an ideological curiosity and nothing more than a "crackpot" notion and a bad investment. Today, of course, those libertarian doomsayers who said the crisis was coming have been vindicated – and all that gold they bought way back in the 1970s, and kept buying in spite of the disdain of more worldly investors, today adds up to quite a bundle. Which is one way to get around to saying that a great deal of Paul’s newfound political authority and credibility comes out of his having predicted the current economic downturn. Virtually every speech made in Congress, and wherever he appeared, was dotted with references to the coming collapse if we didn’t mend our ways. Well, we didn’t, and it’s here.
That’s one factor the learned Ben Smith, and the rest of the "experts" and media know-it-alls fail to take into consideration. What fuels the tea party phenomenon and the vast anger animating the American public at the moment is the series of bailouts: the banks, the auto industry, the government workers, the Afghan government of our erstwhile ally, Hamid Karzai, not to mention the Israelis, the nation of Iceland, and maybe even the Greeks, for all we know.
As ordinary people see their homes foreclosed, their jobs evaporate, and their savings disappear, the rich get richer – not because of capitalism, or even "socialism," as the tea partiers describe the Obama administration’s philosophy, but due to corporatism, as Ron Paul recently explained. Corporatism is, in essence, socialism for the rich, that is, for the benefit of certain big corporations over other big corporations, and a raft of would-be smaller competitors. That would seem to be a precise definition of what’s going on in the country today, one that fits nicely in with the left-right synthesis the Paul movement represents, and for which the country yearns. Paul sweeps the independents in the Rasmussen poll, with an astonishing 47-28. Add to this Paul’s appeal to what a recent Pew poll characterized as rising "isolationist" sentiment, and what you have is a new American majority based on the proposition that the US government should start minding its own business, both at home and abroad.
So much, by the way, for those "libertarian" academics and ivory tower Deep Thinkers who pointedly snubbed Ron, and his supporters, just as they had been doing for years, constantly denigrating his chances of making a significant difference and echoing the orchestrated smear campaign launched by neoconservatives against Paul’s personal character and that of his supporters. Accurately tracing the Paulian strategy to a series of articles by Murray Rothbard written in the 1990s in favor of cultivating "right-wing populism" as a vehicle for the introduction of libertarian ideas into the national discourse, these self-styled ultra-sophisticates sneered at the "rednecks" and rubes the Rothbardian strategy would attract: and they specifically turned up their noses at Ron Paul.
Instead of following the Paulian star, as most other libertarians were doing outside of Washington, D.C., they sought to recruit their liberal friends and fellow cocktail party goers – or at least make themselves less unacceptable in the Washington social circuit, where the Obama cult reigns supreme. In a self-conscious rebuff to libertarians outside the Imperial City, these worthies – mostly subsidized by a certain eccentric billionaire, owner of the largest family-owned corporation in the United States – launched their own "liberal-tarian" movement, as they dubbed it, which, so far, consists of either three, or perhaps four, stalwart cadre, all of them employed by the same eccentric billionaire or one of his satellites.
To even compare the respective achievements of Ron Paul and these sub-political pygmies is to diminish Ron’s astonishing success: the latter don’t want to create a real movement. Their goal is to suck up to whoever’s in power, and somehow convince them to let us have a little more liberty, and a little less warfare, all the while ensuring their own career prospects and social status in the Washington pecking order.
They said it couldn’t be done: that the Paul movement would go nowhere, and that it would hurt the libertarian cause to have the Good Doctor become known as the fountainhead and symbol of the freedom movement in America. They gave money to his worst critics – and to his son’s opponent running in the GOP Senatorial primary in Kentucky – and used their mouthpieces to defame him. They did everything they could to destroy him – and now he’s running even with Obama in the polls.
These bare facts should tell libertarians everything they need to know about what kind of leadership they need, and who is going to provide it. At this crucial juncture – the libertarian moment – these losers will pardon our dust as the rest of us move confidently into a future when we can truly raise that old libertarian slogan, "Freedom in our time," and really believe it as if for the first time.
Voter sentiment is now completely reversed: today, he’s in a dead heat with a sitting President. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s an astonishing fact.
What Smith has to say about the perils of early polling would normally be accepted as beyond dispute: after all remember when Fred Thompson was the man to beat for the GOP nomination? However, we are not living in normal times, which I define as any period when Americans abandon their traditional attitude toward politics: i.e. indifference bordering on contempt. These days, the indifference has given way to not only awareness but also to active engagement, and the contempt for politicians has turned into a burning hatred, i.e. the very stuff and fuel of politics.
What makes it possible for Paul to ride this untamed mare is that he isn’t a politician at all: he is, in fact, the archetypal anti-politician, a professorial figure who lectures Republicans on the gravity of their fiscal and foreign policy sins, and is about as charismatic as plain oatmeal served without milk and sugar. What’s more, he tells the public what politicians have been loath to tell their constituents, and that is the necessity of deflation and the bearing of economic pain. In Paul’s view, the economic bubble generated by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies has led to the current downturn, and nothing less than gritting our teeth, cutting spending radically, and allowing the market to correct itself from government-induced distortions, is the cure.
His message, in short, is eat your spinach – not something any politician who hopes to keep his job (or get one) would normally say. But then again, as I said above, these are not normal times: far from it. The crisis of the American republic is acute, as we teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our overseas empire shows every sign of imploding, just like the old Soviet Union – and, what’s more, the American people know it.
As our corporatist masters feast on our tax dollars in Washington, out in the provinces voters faced with economic ruin are looking for some explanation, a conceptual framework that gets at the root of the problem and provides some solution. Paul’s rising popularity is due to the fact that he does indeed have a consistent philosophical approach, one that has propelled him from being a mere marginal figure – a "gadfly," as they said – to a very real contender. Yes, that’s right, I said a contender for the White House: it’s real, it’s possible, and here’s why.
Paul has consistently emphasized two themes that successfully capture the sentiments of the average American voter, and address the top two issues on their minds: 1) Fiscal sanity, and 2) A non-interventionist foreign policy. As regards the first point, Ron is the foremost opponent of government spending in Congress, and has earned the sobriquet "Dr. No" many times over. But of course practically all Republicans at least pay lip service to this ideal, although none that I know of lives up to it like Dr. Paul. However, it’s the second point – opposition to imperialism, and especially opposition to our crazed post-9/11 foreign policy of perpetual war – that is the key.
As Paul explained at the CPAC conference – where he won the presidential preference poll – and on many other occasions, we can’t have our old republic back unless and until we rid ourselves of the empire we’ve acquired along the way to bankruptcy. Lecturing them on the evils of Woodrow Wilson’s "progressivism," and the virtues of the Old Right’s Robert A. Taft, he received a standing ovation (as well as a few boos from the minuscule-but-loud David Frum Fan Club). A similar reception occurred at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he came within a single vote of winning the presidential poll (losing only because the SRLC officials closed registration early, betting correctly that Paul’s youthful supporters wouldn’t show up until it was time to address the convention).
What’s interesting about this, from the perspective of my readers – a majority of whom are not libertarians, I dare say, and are not generally sympathetic to my "anti-government" views – is that the more Ron talks about the one subject that is supposed to rile Republicans – his foreign policy views – the more popular he gets. It was the leitmotif of his CPAC speech, and a main theme of his SRLC speech: his opposition to what he calls "the Empire" inveigles its way into most of his public utterances: even if he’s asked a specific question about, say, the economy, he emphasizes the impossibility of ever getting out of the economic slough we’re in unless we throw off the burden of empire.
Paul’s candidacy is interesting to the antiwar movement, because he has managed to mainstream ideas that were long considered too radical for the ordinary American to even bear hearing about. To even raise the idea that the 9/11 attacks were "blowback" – in CIA parlance, an unintended consequence of US policies – was once considered a cardinal, self-marginalizing sin. Yet Paul took this view from the beginning: that the attacks were the boomeranging after-effects of playing "king of the hill" in the Middle Eastern sandbox and succoring the Afghan "freedom fighters" (as Ronald Reagan called them) who later morphed into al-Qaeda.
When Paul bravely brought this up at a Republican primary debate, the thuggish Rudy Giuliani said he’d "never heard" such an analysis, and demanded that Paul withdraw his statements. Paul refused, and cited the 9/11 Commission’s own words to back up his point, and yet the pundits in the peanut gallery crowed that Dr. No was finished, a "gadfly" who had been swatted by the thuggish Giuliani.
After spending millions in the GOP primaries, Giuliani was rewarded with exactly one delegate. Paul went to the GOP convention with a small but respectable platoon of elected delegates, and in spite of being thoroughly locked out the Paulians stayed in the party and worked at the precinct level, educating activists and recruiting lots of independents and conservatives previously disdainful of the GOP. The Paul movement was really the GOP’s lifeline to the emerging "tea party" movement, of which it was always an essential – and certainly a founding – element.
Again, what’s distinctive about the Paul movement within the tea party phenomenon is that they always bring their entire politics with them wherever they go: they raise the issue of the costs of war, and, as such, are currently the most active – and certainly the most successful – antiwar formation in this country. Here we have Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin offering to join in common cause with the tea partiers, and I think they should take her up on it. the Paulians are the logical mediators between what would, on the surface, appear to be oil and water.
As I said in a recent issue of The American Conservative, however, I don’t think the prospects for a left-right alliance on the issue of war and peace are all that bright, to begin with because what used to be the left has essentially been absorbed into the Obama cult, and co-opted by power. In the end, all liberals really care about is getting their "fair share" of the spoils, for themselves and their supposed constituencies. So what if the price they have to pay is going along with mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan? We all have to die sometime.
I harp on Ron Paul for all sorts of reasons, but the one of most interest to my readers is the fact that he is by far the most successful antiwar politician in recent American history. Derided as being one of those dreaded "isolationists," and attacked even by some alleged "libertarians" precisely for that – and because he appeals to the common man – he not only insists on raising this issue, for him it is central to his analysis of what he calls the "Welfare-Warfare State," a phrase coined by the late Murray Rothbard. Dr. Paul’s diagnosis of a nation fast exhausting itself in an orgy of spending and militaristic adventurism has the stark ring of truth about it – an alarm bell ringing in the night.
When Paul and others first sounded that alarm, back in the early formative years of the libertarian movement, very few were heeding the call. We were looked on as eccentrics, and, for example, the libertarian enthusiasm for gold was viewed as indicative of our archaic perspective, put down as an ideological curiosity and nothing more than a "crackpot" notion and a bad investment. Today, of course, those libertarian doomsayers who said the crisis was coming have been vindicated – and all that gold they bought way back in the 1970s, and kept buying in spite of the disdain of more worldly investors, today adds up to quite a bundle. Which is one way to get around to saying that a great deal of Paul’s newfound political authority and credibility comes out of his having predicted the current economic downturn. Virtually every speech made in Congress, and wherever he appeared, was dotted with references to the coming collapse if we didn’t mend our ways. Well, we didn’t, and it’s here.
That’s one factor the learned Ben Smith, and the rest of the "experts" and media know-it-alls fail to take into consideration. What fuels the tea party phenomenon and the vast anger animating the American public at the moment is the series of bailouts: the banks, the auto industry, the government workers, the Afghan government of our erstwhile ally, Hamid Karzai, not to mention the Israelis, the nation of Iceland, and maybe even the Greeks, for all we know.
As ordinary people see their homes foreclosed, their jobs evaporate, and their savings disappear, the rich get richer – not because of capitalism, or even "socialism," as the tea partiers describe the Obama administration’s philosophy, but due to corporatism, as Ron Paul recently explained. Corporatism is, in essence, socialism for the rich, that is, for the benefit of certain big corporations over other big corporations, and a raft of would-be smaller competitors. That would seem to be a precise definition of what’s going on in the country today, one that fits nicely in with the left-right synthesis the Paul movement represents, and for which the country yearns. Paul sweeps the independents in the Rasmussen poll, with an astonishing 47-28. Add to this Paul’s appeal to what a recent Pew poll characterized as rising "isolationist" sentiment, and what you have is a new American majority based on the proposition that the US government should start minding its own business, both at home and abroad.
So much, by the way, for those "libertarian" academics and ivory tower Deep Thinkers who pointedly snubbed Ron, and his supporters, just as they had been doing for years, constantly denigrating his chances of making a significant difference and echoing the orchestrated smear campaign launched by neoconservatives against Paul’s personal character and that of his supporters. Accurately tracing the Paulian strategy to a series of articles by Murray Rothbard written in the 1990s in favor of cultivating "right-wing populism" as a vehicle for the introduction of libertarian ideas into the national discourse, these self-styled ultra-sophisticates sneered at the "rednecks" and rubes the Rothbardian strategy would attract: and they specifically turned up their noses at Ron Paul.
Instead of following the Paulian star, as most other libertarians were doing outside of Washington, D.C., they sought to recruit their liberal friends and fellow cocktail party goers – or at least make themselves less unacceptable in the Washington social circuit, where the Obama cult reigns supreme. In a self-conscious rebuff to libertarians outside the Imperial City, these worthies – mostly subsidized by a certain eccentric billionaire, owner of the largest family-owned corporation in the United States – launched their own "liberal-tarian" movement, as they dubbed it, which, so far, consists of either three, or perhaps four, stalwart cadre, all of them employed by the same eccentric billionaire or one of his satellites.
To even compare the respective achievements of Ron Paul and these sub-political pygmies is to diminish Ron’s astonishing success: the latter don’t want to create a real movement. Their goal is to suck up to whoever’s in power, and somehow convince them to let us have a little more liberty, and a little less warfare, all the while ensuring their own career prospects and social status in the Washington pecking order.
They said it couldn’t be done: that the Paul movement would go nowhere, and that it would hurt the libertarian cause to have the Good Doctor become known as the fountainhead and symbol of the freedom movement in America. They gave money to his worst critics – and to his son’s opponent running in the GOP Senatorial primary in Kentucky – and used their mouthpieces to defame him. They did everything they could to destroy him – and now he’s running even with Obama in the polls.
These bare facts should tell libertarians everything they need to know about what kind of leadership they need, and who is going to provide it. At this crucial juncture – the libertarian moment – these losers will pardon our dust as the rest of us move confidently into a future when we can truly raise that old libertarian slogan, "Freedom in our time," and really believe it as if for the first time.
2012: BARACK OBAMA 42%, RON PAUL 41%
Pit maverick Republican Congressman Ron Paul against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up, and the race is – virtually dead even.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.
Ask the Political Class, though, and it’s a blowout. While 58% of Mainstream voters favor Paul, 95% of the Political Class vote for Obama.
But Republican voters also have decidedly mixed feelings about Paul, who has been an outspoken critic of the party establishment.
Obama earns 79% support from Democrats, but Paul gets just 66% of GOP votes. Voters not affiliated with either major party give Paul a 47% to 28% edge over the president.
Paul, a anti-big government libertarian who engenders unusually strong feelings among his supporters, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. But he continues to have a solid following, especially in the growing Tea Party movement.
Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters now consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, an eight-point increase from a month ago. Another 10% say they are not a part of the movement but have close friends or family members who are.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters have a favorable opinion of Paul, while 30% view him unfavorably. This includes 10% with a very favorable opinion and 12% with a very unfavorable one. But nearly one-out-of-three voters (32%) are not sure what they think of Paul.
Perhaps tellingly, just 42% of Republican voters have a favorable view of him, including eight percent (8%) with a very favorable opinion. By comparison, 42% of unaffiliated voters regard him favorably, with 15% very favorable toward him.
Twenty-six percent (26%) of GOP voters think Paul shares the values of most Republican voters throughout the nation, but 25% disagree. Forty-nine percent (49%) are not sure.
Similarly, 27% of Republicans see Paul as a divisive force in the party, while 30% view him as a new direction for the GOP. Forty-two percent (42%) aren’t sure.
Among all voters, 19% say Paul shares the values of most Republican voters, and 27% disagree. Fifty-four percent (54%) are undecided.
Twenty-one percent (21%) of voters nationwide regard Paul as a divisive force in the GOP. Thirty-four percent (34%) say he is representative of a new direction for the party. Forty-five percent (45%) are not sure.
But it’s important to note than 75% of Republicans voters believe Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters throughout the nation over the past several years.
Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, is another Republican who has been bucking the party’s traditional leadership and was the keynote speaker at the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republican voters say Palin shares the values of most GOP voters throughout the nation. Just 18% of Republicans see Palin as a divisive force within the GOP.
Rasmussen Reports released survey findings yesterday that take a closer look at the political views of those who say they’re part of the Tea Party movement. Among other things, 96% of those in the movement think America is overtaxed, and 94% trust the judgment of the American people more than that of America’s political leaders.
When it comes to major issues confronting the nation, 48% of voters now say the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than Obama is. Forty-four percent (44%) hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.
Fifty-two percent (52%) believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress. Thirty-five percent (35%) of voters now think Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that an entirely new political party is needed to represent the American people. Nearly half (47%) of voters disagree and say a new party is not needed
If the Tea Party was organized as a political party, 34% of voters would prefer a Democrat in a three-way congressional race. In that hypothetical match-up, the Republican gets 27% of the vote with the Tea Party hopeful in third at 21%. However, if only the Democrat or Republican had a real chance to win, most of the Tea Party supporters would vote for the Republican.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.
Ask the Political Class, though, and it’s a blowout. While 58% of Mainstream voters favor Paul, 95% of the Political Class vote for Obama.
But Republican voters also have decidedly mixed feelings about Paul, who has been an outspoken critic of the party establishment.
Obama earns 79% support from Democrats, but Paul gets just 66% of GOP votes. Voters not affiliated with either major party give Paul a 47% to 28% edge over the president.
Paul, a anti-big government libertarian who engenders unusually strong feelings among his supporters, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. But he continues to have a solid following, especially in the growing Tea Party movement.
Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters now consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, an eight-point increase from a month ago. Another 10% say they are not a part of the movement but have close friends or family members who are.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters have a favorable opinion of Paul, while 30% view him unfavorably. This includes 10% with a very favorable opinion and 12% with a very unfavorable one. But nearly one-out-of-three voters (32%) are not sure what they think of Paul.
Perhaps tellingly, just 42% of Republican voters have a favorable view of him, including eight percent (8%) with a very favorable opinion. By comparison, 42% of unaffiliated voters regard him favorably, with 15% very favorable toward him.
Twenty-six percent (26%) of GOP voters think Paul shares the values of most Republican voters throughout the nation, but 25% disagree. Forty-nine percent (49%) are not sure.
Similarly, 27% of Republicans see Paul as a divisive force in the party, while 30% view him as a new direction for the GOP. Forty-two percent (42%) aren’t sure.
Among all voters, 19% say Paul shares the values of most Republican voters, and 27% disagree. Fifty-four percent (54%) are undecided.
Twenty-one percent (21%) of voters nationwide regard Paul as a divisive force in the GOP. Thirty-four percent (34%) say he is representative of a new direction for the party. Forty-five percent (45%) are not sure.
But it’s important to note than 75% of Republicans voters believe Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters throughout the nation over the past several years.
Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, is another Republican who has been bucking the party’s traditional leadership and was the keynote speaker at the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republican voters say Palin shares the values of most GOP voters throughout the nation. Just 18% of Republicans see Palin as a divisive force within the GOP.
Rasmussen Reports released survey findings yesterday that take a closer look at the political views of those who say they’re part of the Tea Party movement. Among other things, 96% of those in the movement think America is overtaxed, and 94% trust the judgment of the American people more than that of America’s political leaders.
When it comes to major issues confronting the nation, 48% of voters now say the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than Obama is. Forty-four percent (44%) hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.
Fifty-two percent (52%) believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress. Thirty-five percent (35%) of voters now think Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that an entirely new political party is needed to represent the American people. Nearly half (47%) of voters disagree and say a new party is not needed
If the Tea Party was organized as a political party, 34% of voters would prefer a Democrat in a three-way congressional race. In that hypothetical match-up, the Republican gets 27% of the vote with the Tea Party hopeful in third at 21%. However, if only the Democrat or Republican had a real chance to win, most of the Tea Party supporters would vote for the Republican.
THE FCIC: PASSING THE BUCK
Last week the federal government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission held hearings as part of their continuing investigation into the causes of the acute economic meltdown which occurred in late summer 2008. This bipartisan commission, partly inspired by the Pecora Commission- which investigated the causes of the Great Depression- is expected to report back to Congress before the end of the year.
Things don’t seem to be going well. The individuals questioned by the commission mostly seem to be diverting blame for the whole fiasco to someone else. Nobody is offering any tangible insights into the causes of the financial crisis.
Predictably, the commission will avoid calling any witnesses who might unequivocally indict the federal government for its role in the crisis, or suggest solutions which take away government power. Government commissions have a remarkable tendency to recommend granting even more power to the same useless government agencies that so utterly fail to prevent crises in the first place. We saw this with the Pecora Commission, we saw it after 9-11, and we’re seeing it again today with regard to financial regulations. For example, this latest commission almost certainly will suggest granting more power to the SEC, when in fact the SEC should be abolished as an embarrassing farce. Rest assured that this recommendation will be made without apology or sense of irony.
The reality is that the Federal Reserve relentlessly expanded the money supply through artificially low interest rates for over two decades, and this expansion of easy money caused a wholly predictable bubble. To a myopic Keynesian regulator, the bubble may appear to be caused by greed, but in truth it is completely predictable that humans will act in their own perceived self interest. If the Fed wants to dole out artificially cheap money, people and businesses- including Wall Street businesses- will line up to take it. We can condemn this as greed, but the fundamental problem is Fed policy itself. There will always be demand for cheap money, but we should not allow the Fed to debase our currency and create bubbles of false prosperity to satisfy that demand.
What the commission really needs are experts who understand free market economics rather than big government Keynesian fantasies. The commission has none of these, and has called no true free market witnesses. That perspective would only distract from their predetermined goals.
The commission will bemoan the complexity and inscrutability of our economic problems, but the solution is simple: allow freedom to operate in our markets. Allow U.S. financial, labor, and housing markets to normalize without political interference. Though solution is simple, and rather obvious, it would not be easy or painless, but we’d be so much better off for it in the long run. It would require admitting fiat money is a tangled web of monetary deception prone to catastrophic failure. It would require allowing Americans to choose a system of sound money, where the money supply and interest rates are set by market forces rather than centralized economic planners. Unfortunately, fiat money is like a drug to a Congress hopelessly addicted to spending vastly more than the Treasury collects in revenues. Because of this, our problems can only get worse and more complex before they get better.
Things don’t seem to be going well. The individuals questioned by the commission mostly seem to be diverting blame for the whole fiasco to someone else. Nobody is offering any tangible insights into the causes of the financial crisis.
Predictably, the commission will avoid calling any witnesses who might unequivocally indict the federal government for its role in the crisis, or suggest solutions which take away government power. Government commissions have a remarkable tendency to recommend granting even more power to the same useless government agencies that so utterly fail to prevent crises in the first place. We saw this with the Pecora Commission, we saw it after 9-11, and we’re seeing it again today with regard to financial regulations. For example, this latest commission almost certainly will suggest granting more power to the SEC, when in fact the SEC should be abolished as an embarrassing farce. Rest assured that this recommendation will be made without apology or sense of irony.
The reality is that the Federal Reserve relentlessly expanded the money supply through artificially low interest rates for over two decades, and this expansion of easy money caused a wholly predictable bubble. To a myopic Keynesian regulator, the bubble may appear to be caused by greed, but in truth it is completely predictable that humans will act in their own perceived self interest. If the Fed wants to dole out artificially cheap money, people and businesses- including Wall Street businesses- will line up to take it. We can condemn this as greed, but the fundamental problem is Fed policy itself. There will always be demand for cheap money, but we should not allow the Fed to debase our currency and create bubbles of false prosperity to satisfy that demand.
What the commission really needs are experts who understand free market economics rather than big government Keynesian fantasies. The commission has none of these, and has called no true free market witnesses. That perspective would only distract from their predetermined goals.
The commission will bemoan the complexity and inscrutability of our economic problems, but the solution is simple: allow freedom to operate in our markets. Allow U.S. financial, labor, and housing markets to normalize without political interference. Though solution is simple, and rather obvious, it would not be easy or painless, but we’d be so much better off for it in the long run. It would require admitting fiat money is a tangled web of monetary deception prone to catastrophic failure. It would require allowing Americans to choose a system of sound money, where the money supply and interest rates are set by market forces rather than centralized economic planners. Unfortunately, fiat money is like a drug to a Congress hopelessly addicted to spending vastly more than the Treasury collects in revenues. Because of this, our problems can only get worse and more complex before they get better.
WHAT I THINK.....GARY NORTH
"If you are in the hip pocket of any political party, prepare to be sat on." ~ Gary North
Political victory in the United States is best defined as follows:
Getting your political agenda enacted into law, enforced by the Executive branch, and upheld by the courts.
A definition of political victory that ignores any of these criteria is part of a shell game: getting people elected for their careers' sake, not your agenda.
To achieve this three-part victory, you must be part of a voting bloc that has the power to impose sanctions: positive and negative.
Establishment politicians understand this. They respect it. They have learned to exploit it. They tell their constituents: "You can win through me if you supply the votes to enable me to win (positive sanction) at the expense of my opponent (negative sanction)." This is the politics of the shell game, what I call the Punch and Judy show.
The correct definition of the power to impose political sanctions is this:
Sufficient votes to deliberately keep your party's candidate from winning in November if he waffles, and sufficient votes to elect his replacement two years later.
There is a corollary:
The willingness to run a post-nomination independent candidate against an incumbent member of your party if he has waffled during his most recent term in office.
Any voting bloc that has this ability will not be in any party's hip pocket.
Conclusion: a fundamental strategy for political success is to get the rival wing of your party into the party's hip pocket.
In modern American history, we saw this strategy applied by the Eastern Republican Establishment's refusal to support Goldwater in 1964. They ran Governor Scranton as a last-ditch effort to keep Goldwater from getting the nomination. When that failed, they literally walked out of the convention.
Johnson won in 1964. He did not run in 1968. Nixon defeated Humphrey, and the Republican Establishment took over the White House in 1969. They were willing to go down to defeat in 1964 in order to ruin the Goldwater wing of the party. They were wise to do this.
Goldwater sold out the conservatives in 1968. The Rockefeller wing that had ruined his candidacy in 1964 got him to give his infamous "grow up, conservatives" speech at the 1968 convention. "Grow up" meant "vote for Nixon." He lived to regret this. He was on the side of the pro-impeachment Republicans in 1974. Too late.
Note: Ron Paul refused to support John McCain in 2008. That decision was crucial. It kept his supporters from sucking up to the Republican Establishment. They owe it nothing. This leads me to North's law of political suction:
"If you don't suck up, you avoid being sucked in and then sucked down."
THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Mainstream Republican politicians now face a major problem: the rise of the Tea Party movement. These furious voters are in no one's hip pocket. They are in a position to de-rail any Republican candidate who does not promise to roll back taxes and spending. They can run an independent candidate after the nomination of a squishy Republican. They can spoil his election night party.
The Tea Party movement is now the largest swing vote bloc in the Republican Party. It is going to get larger.
CBS News has an on-line poll for the Republican Presidential race. It's here.
On April 8, Ron Paul beat Sarah Palin, 41% to 22%. The two of them constituted almost two-thirds of the votes.
In 2007, who had heard of either of them?
Mitt Romney so far is an also-ran. If he announces, I think he will be the front-runner. But the fact that his results are in single digits surprises me. It is almost as if the voters have forgotten about him. How is this possible? This is not politics as usual. This indicates a true shift in the Republican voters' thinking. The poll is not scientific, but think through what it means. CBS is not the media outlet of choice among conservatives. The people who are most likely to visit this page are more likely to be mainstream Republicans.
In the article that introduces the poll, we read the following:
Paul, of course, is a libertarian-leaning Republican who could well duplicate his 2008 run, but he is seen as a candidate with passionate but limited appeal within the party. Paul won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, though critics were quick to point out that the respondents were not necessarily representative of the GOP as a whole.
When 28% of the conservatives at CPAC voted for him, what does it mean when he gets 40% of the CBS vote? How will the Republican Party's Establishment spinmeisters spin this?
This poll reveals something like an ideological revolution inside the party. If it doesn't reveal this, then it reveals something else, namely, that conservative users of the Web have the ability to skew results dramatically. Do the folks at CBS News want to tell their readers that they should ignore the results of this poll, because conservatives are the dominant force on the Web, including the CBS News site? Is that the image of CBS News that the folks at CBS News want to convey? That the Website is a plaything of conservatives? Oh, the agony of it all!
The Web has made this possible. The Establishment has no clue as to what to do about this. The networks are losing their grip on the choices people have available to them. The voters can – and do – bypass the MSM.
THE LONER WHO BYPASSED THE MSM
Ron Paul is still dismissed as a gadfly or kook by the mainstream media. He is not taken seriously. Yet he keeps scoring straw poll victories. This should not be happening, they believe.
When I was his research assistant in 1976, we knew that on some votes, the outcome would be 434 to 1. He would be the lone "no" vote. This has not changed. He is still the lone ranger in the House.
The problem for the Republican Establishment is that he represents a rising swing vote nationally. He and Palin together represent a growing threat to the Party's Punch and Judy show that Republican incumbents play with incumbent Democrats. The doctrine of representation matters in politics. These two represent disillusioned Republican voters who are in a position to inflict permanent losses on Republican candidates who operate in terms of politics as usual.
In 2010, Ron Paul remains the ultimate loner inside the Beltway. Outside the Beltway, he is not a loner. The Republican voter in the street knows who he is. There is no other person in Congress even close to his ability to gain votes at this stage.
This is causing consternation inside the Republican Establishment. Paul can raise tens of millions of dollars on the Web. They know that. He has a constant YouTube presence. They don't. He has a hard-core audience inside the Tea Party movement. Only Sarah Palin matches him, which gives the big-spending Republican Establishment no comfort. They hate her, too.
SPOILERS
The name of the political game in both parties is to ignore your sure voters, since they are sure. You offer a few platitudes. That satisfies them. They may grumble, but they will vote for the party's candidate. They constitute about 10% of the Party's total vote. You then appeal to the moderate 80%, which includes independents and wavering members of the rival party. You ignore the extreme wing of the party, offering them platitudes. You know they won't support you.
I offer two examples. First, Obama has opened up off-shore drilling to oil companies. The greens are outraged, but they are in the Democrats' hip pocket. Second, his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his refusal to bring troops home from Iraq. The peace wing has swallowed hard and has kept quiet. When you are part of a voting bloc that is in a party's hip pocket, you will be sat on.
In November, a Republican candidate will face a major problem with the old strategy. Tea Party voters are in no one's hip pocket. The hard-core Tea Party types will not support him unless he gets tough on taxes and spending. They may even run a rival candidate and siphon off his votes in the general election. He will probably lose if they do.
This is the big threat: rival candidates in the general election. No more falling in line behind the mush-mouth sell-out who is now trying to recruit the moderates.
The anti-tax Republican Right is growing like a brush fire in August. The Tea Party movement did not exist in late 2008. It is a major factor today. It constitutes the swing vote that Republican candidates need to win in November. It came out of nowhere. It is the loose cannon bouncing around on the political deck. Any Republican challenger who ignores it will lose.
The Republican candidates can see this now. The ones who cash in on it will be favored to get the nomination. Incumbents will be able to point to their opposition to Obama's health care. But if voters ask them if they will vote to repeal, they had better say yes.
When voters vote in terms of anger, they are dangerous to incumbents. They are also a threat to challengers who want to paper over this anger. Republicans who run on the basis of bipartisanship and "coming together" in November will not win.
The Tea Party people are spoilers. They are a real threat to the go-along-to-get-along Republicans who dominate the national party. They are in a position to upset the existing system by running an independent candidate or multiple candidates after the nomination goes to a mush-mouth.
They have the power of the veto in November. He who has this power and who uses it can get his way. If Tea Party voters demonstrate for two consecutive elections that they can keep a Republican moderate from being elected, Republican moderates will get religion or be replaced buy those who are not willing to compromise.
The great spoiler of this century was Ralph Nader. He ran a third-party campaign in 2000: Green Party. In New Hampshire, he got about 22,000 votes. Gore lost by 7,200. Most of Nader's votes would have gone for Gore. New Hampshire's four electoral votes would have given Gore the Presidency. Republican candidates in 2010 will have to factor the Tea Party voters into their campaigns. The public's anger will be even greater in 2012. It is spreading to the independents. Any political candidate who runs on a platform of "me, too, but slower" is going to lose the Republican Party's nomination in 2012.
Republican voters are fed up.
I see this as a tremendous opportunity for grass roots mobilization at the local level. People who are fed up with Washington have a shot at digging in locally.
CONCLUSION
The most important power in politics is the power to impose pain on politicians. Civil government is about imposing negative sanctions on law-breakers. So is politics.
Any time a politician begins to think you are in his hip pocket, make sure he knows you are a tack.
The Tea Party movement is growing. Rising taxes and rising deficits will guarantee that this will continue.
If the Tea Party bloc cannot get its candidates nominated, it should run third-party candidates every time. It should kill the chances of any Republican candidate unless he decides to pander to them.
The Establishment Republicans will wail in despair. "This is keeping the party from winning." Exactly! The goal is to do this for as long as the Republic Party does not publicly pursue the agenda of the Tea Party wing.
Two election cycles later, the wafflers will be gone. At that point, the Tea Party bloc will control the Republican Party's grass roots.
The political cancer today is big spending. Big spenders must be removed with surgical precision. Every candidate must know that he will lose in November if he waffles.
Politicians see the light only when they feel the heat. This is the doctrine of hell in politics. It is time to give politicians hell.
Political victory in the United States is best defined as follows:
Getting your political agenda enacted into law, enforced by the Executive branch, and upheld by the courts.
A definition of political victory that ignores any of these criteria is part of a shell game: getting people elected for their careers' sake, not your agenda.
To achieve this three-part victory, you must be part of a voting bloc that has the power to impose sanctions: positive and negative.
Establishment politicians understand this. They respect it. They have learned to exploit it. They tell their constituents: "You can win through me if you supply the votes to enable me to win (positive sanction) at the expense of my opponent (negative sanction)." This is the politics of the shell game, what I call the Punch and Judy show.
The correct definition of the power to impose political sanctions is this:
Sufficient votes to deliberately keep your party's candidate from winning in November if he waffles, and sufficient votes to elect his replacement two years later.
There is a corollary:
The willingness to run a post-nomination independent candidate against an incumbent member of your party if he has waffled during his most recent term in office.
Any voting bloc that has this ability will not be in any party's hip pocket.
Conclusion: a fundamental strategy for political success is to get the rival wing of your party into the party's hip pocket.
In modern American history, we saw this strategy applied by the Eastern Republican Establishment's refusal to support Goldwater in 1964. They ran Governor Scranton as a last-ditch effort to keep Goldwater from getting the nomination. When that failed, they literally walked out of the convention.
Johnson won in 1964. He did not run in 1968. Nixon defeated Humphrey, and the Republican Establishment took over the White House in 1969. They were willing to go down to defeat in 1964 in order to ruin the Goldwater wing of the party. They were wise to do this.
Goldwater sold out the conservatives in 1968. The Rockefeller wing that had ruined his candidacy in 1964 got him to give his infamous "grow up, conservatives" speech at the 1968 convention. "Grow up" meant "vote for Nixon." He lived to regret this. He was on the side of the pro-impeachment Republicans in 1974. Too late.
Note: Ron Paul refused to support John McCain in 2008. That decision was crucial. It kept his supporters from sucking up to the Republican Establishment. They owe it nothing. This leads me to North's law of political suction:
"If you don't suck up, you avoid being sucked in and then sucked down."
THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Mainstream Republican politicians now face a major problem: the rise of the Tea Party movement. These furious voters are in no one's hip pocket. They are in a position to de-rail any Republican candidate who does not promise to roll back taxes and spending. They can run an independent candidate after the nomination of a squishy Republican. They can spoil his election night party.
The Tea Party movement is now the largest swing vote bloc in the Republican Party. It is going to get larger.
CBS News has an on-line poll for the Republican Presidential race. It's here.
On April 8, Ron Paul beat Sarah Palin, 41% to 22%. The two of them constituted almost two-thirds of the votes.
In 2007, who had heard of either of them?
Mitt Romney so far is an also-ran. If he announces, I think he will be the front-runner. But the fact that his results are in single digits surprises me. It is almost as if the voters have forgotten about him. How is this possible? This is not politics as usual. This indicates a true shift in the Republican voters' thinking. The poll is not scientific, but think through what it means. CBS is not the media outlet of choice among conservatives. The people who are most likely to visit this page are more likely to be mainstream Republicans.
In the article that introduces the poll, we read the following:
Paul, of course, is a libertarian-leaning Republican who could well duplicate his 2008 run, but he is seen as a candidate with passionate but limited appeal within the party. Paul won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, though critics were quick to point out that the respondents were not necessarily representative of the GOP as a whole.
When 28% of the conservatives at CPAC voted for him, what does it mean when he gets 40% of the CBS vote? How will the Republican Party's Establishment spinmeisters spin this?
This poll reveals something like an ideological revolution inside the party. If it doesn't reveal this, then it reveals something else, namely, that conservative users of the Web have the ability to skew results dramatically. Do the folks at CBS News want to tell their readers that they should ignore the results of this poll, because conservatives are the dominant force on the Web, including the CBS News site? Is that the image of CBS News that the folks at CBS News want to convey? That the Website is a plaything of conservatives? Oh, the agony of it all!
The Web has made this possible. The Establishment has no clue as to what to do about this. The networks are losing their grip on the choices people have available to them. The voters can – and do – bypass the MSM.
THE LONER WHO BYPASSED THE MSM
Ron Paul is still dismissed as a gadfly or kook by the mainstream media. He is not taken seriously. Yet he keeps scoring straw poll victories. This should not be happening, they believe.
When I was his research assistant in 1976, we knew that on some votes, the outcome would be 434 to 1. He would be the lone "no" vote. This has not changed. He is still the lone ranger in the House.
The problem for the Republican Establishment is that he represents a rising swing vote nationally. He and Palin together represent a growing threat to the Party's Punch and Judy show that Republican incumbents play with incumbent Democrats. The doctrine of representation matters in politics. These two represent disillusioned Republican voters who are in a position to inflict permanent losses on Republican candidates who operate in terms of politics as usual.
In 2010, Ron Paul remains the ultimate loner inside the Beltway. Outside the Beltway, he is not a loner. The Republican voter in the street knows who he is. There is no other person in Congress even close to his ability to gain votes at this stage.
This is causing consternation inside the Republican Establishment. Paul can raise tens of millions of dollars on the Web. They know that. He has a constant YouTube presence. They don't. He has a hard-core audience inside the Tea Party movement. Only Sarah Palin matches him, which gives the big-spending Republican Establishment no comfort. They hate her, too.
SPOILERS
The name of the political game in both parties is to ignore your sure voters, since they are sure. You offer a few platitudes. That satisfies them. They may grumble, but they will vote for the party's candidate. They constitute about 10% of the Party's total vote. You then appeal to the moderate 80%, which includes independents and wavering members of the rival party. You ignore the extreme wing of the party, offering them platitudes. You know they won't support you.
I offer two examples. First, Obama has opened up off-shore drilling to oil companies. The greens are outraged, but they are in the Democrats' hip pocket. Second, his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his refusal to bring troops home from Iraq. The peace wing has swallowed hard and has kept quiet. When you are part of a voting bloc that is in a party's hip pocket, you will be sat on.
In November, a Republican candidate will face a major problem with the old strategy. Tea Party voters are in no one's hip pocket. The hard-core Tea Party types will not support him unless he gets tough on taxes and spending. They may even run a rival candidate and siphon off his votes in the general election. He will probably lose if they do.
This is the big threat: rival candidates in the general election. No more falling in line behind the mush-mouth sell-out who is now trying to recruit the moderates.
The anti-tax Republican Right is growing like a brush fire in August. The Tea Party movement did not exist in late 2008. It is a major factor today. It constitutes the swing vote that Republican candidates need to win in November. It came out of nowhere. It is the loose cannon bouncing around on the political deck. Any Republican challenger who ignores it will lose.
The Republican candidates can see this now. The ones who cash in on it will be favored to get the nomination. Incumbents will be able to point to their opposition to Obama's health care. But if voters ask them if they will vote to repeal, they had better say yes.
When voters vote in terms of anger, they are dangerous to incumbents. They are also a threat to challengers who want to paper over this anger. Republicans who run on the basis of bipartisanship and "coming together" in November will not win.
The Tea Party people are spoilers. They are a real threat to the go-along-to-get-along Republicans who dominate the national party. They are in a position to upset the existing system by running an independent candidate or multiple candidates after the nomination goes to a mush-mouth.
They have the power of the veto in November. He who has this power and who uses it can get his way. If Tea Party voters demonstrate for two consecutive elections that they can keep a Republican moderate from being elected, Republican moderates will get religion or be replaced buy those who are not willing to compromise.
The great spoiler of this century was Ralph Nader. He ran a third-party campaign in 2000: Green Party. In New Hampshire, he got about 22,000 votes. Gore lost by 7,200. Most of Nader's votes would have gone for Gore. New Hampshire's four electoral votes would have given Gore the Presidency. Republican candidates in 2010 will have to factor the Tea Party voters into their campaigns. The public's anger will be even greater in 2012. It is spreading to the independents. Any political candidate who runs on a platform of "me, too, but slower" is going to lose the Republican Party's nomination in 2012.
Republican voters are fed up.
I see this as a tremendous opportunity for grass roots mobilization at the local level. People who are fed up with Washington have a shot at digging in locally.
CONCLUSION
The most important power in politics is the power to impose pain on politicians. Civil government is about imposing negative sanctions on law-breakers. So is politics.
Any time a politician begins to think you are in his hip pocket, make sure he knows you are a tack.
The Tea Party movement is growing. Rising taxes and rising deficits will guarantee that this will continue.
If the Tea Party bloc cannot get its candidates nominated, it should run third-party candidates every time. It should kill the chances of any Republican candidate unless he decides to pander to them.
The Establishment Republicans will wail in despair. "This is keeping the party from winning." Exactly! The goal is to do this for as long as the Republic Party does not publicly pursue the agenda of the Tea Party wing.
Two election cycles later, the wafflers will be gone. At that point, the Tea Party bloc will control the Republican Party's grass roots.
The political cancer today is big spending. Big spenders must be removed with surgical precision. Every candidate must know that he will lose in November if he waffles.
Politicians see the light only when they feel the heat. This is the doctrine of hell in politics. It is time to give politicians hell.
Tuesday
GOVERNMENT AND GASOLINE
As we head into the summer driving season and gasoline prices are again creeping up, the administration has announced plans to explore opening up more off-shore areas for exploration and drilling. On the one hand this can be lauded as a positive step. On the other hand, it is too little, much too late to have any meaningful or long-term effect on what Americans pay at the pump any time soon, if at all.
Indeed, if increasing domestic energy production was really a priority, the administration would direct the EPA to remove its many roadblocks and barriers to energy production. In fact, abolishing the EPA altogether would do much to improve our country's economy. Instead of protecting the environment as they are supposed to do, most of what they do simply chills the economy. Polluters should be directly liable in court to any and all parties they harm, rather than bureaucrats at the EPA.
Of course, last week's announcement was couched in terms of removing barriers and red tape. However, the fact that we had these barriers in the first place is yet another reminder of how the energy market is hampered and controlled by bureaucrats and central planners in Washington, rather than the demands of the people and the decisions of private investors.
Consider how extremely negative our government's reaction has been to other governments around the world that have nationalized their oil and energy industries, such as Venezuela and Iran. We deposed a democratically elected leader in Iran in 1953 for this very reason. Yet the level of involvement of our government and bureaucrats in energy is nearly absolute. Of course, the only thing worse than our government dictating energy decisions to its own citizens is our government dictating energy decisions to the citizens of other countries.
Along with the waste of prohibitions that leave our own natural resources untapped is the waste our government perpetrates with subsidies to alternative fuel sources. There is certainly profit to be made in perfecting cheaper, cleaner fuel sources, but government subsidy programs interfere with finding realistic long-term solutions. Subsidies divert resources towards certain politically-favored fuel types while ignoring others. If the market were left alone, private investors would put their own capital into the most promising alternative fuels. Instead, due to government incentives, resources are concentrated into politically chosen endeavors that could very well end up being dead ends. Meanwhile, precious time and money is wasted.
The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are in my opinion, far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.
Indeed, if increasing domestic energy production was really a priority, the administration would direct the EPA to remove its many roadblocks and barriers to energy production. In fact, abolishing the EPA altogether would do much to improve our country's economy. Instead of protecting the environment as they are supposed to do, most of what they do simply chills the economy. Polluters should be directly liable in court to any and all parties they harm, rather than bureaucrats at the EPA.
Of course, last week's announcement was couched in terms of removing barriers and red tape. However, the fact that we had these barriers in the first place is yet another reminder of how the energy market is hampered and controlled by bureaucrats and central planners in Washington, rather than the demands of the people and the decisions of private investors.
Consider how extremely negative our government's reaction has been to other governments around the world that have nationalized their oil and energy industries, such as Venezuela and Iran. We deposed a democratically elected leader in Iran in 1953 for this very reason. Yet the level of involvement of our government and bureaucrats in energy is nearly absolute. Of course, the only thing worse than our government dictating energy decisions to its own citizens is our government dictating energy decisions to the citizens of other countries.
Along with the waste of prohibitions that leave our own natural resources untapped is the waste our government perpetrates with subsidies to alternative fuel sources. There is certainly profit to be made in perfecting cheaper, cleaner fuel sources, but government subsidy programs interfere with finding realistic long-term solutions. Subsidies divert resources towards certain politically-favored fuel types while ignoring others. If the market were left alone, private investors would put their own capital into the most promising alternative fuels. Instead, due to government incentives, resources are concentrated into politically chosen endeavors that could very well end up being dead ends. Meanwhile, precious time and money is wasted.
The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are in my opinion, far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.
Monday
WHAT I THINK......BUTLER SHAFFER
It’s known as "projection": the trait by which one attributes to others various "dark side" attitudes and motivations. The current practice of accusing the Iranian government of warlike intentions in order to rationalize one’s own desires to attack that country is one example. Another instance is found in the efforts of numerous Democratic party supporters to explain the opposition to Barack Obama’s policies as racist-driven. Such "liberal" commentators as Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Alan Colmes, Colbert King, and Frank Rich, along with former president Jimmy Carter, have strained and contorted their minds to suggest that "much" of the criticism of Obama programs – particularly that found in the "Tea Party" movement – arises from people who are uncomfortable with a black man as president.
How has race played into the Obama presidency? To begin with, we must identify the factors that led to this man being elected to that office: (a) he was the "not George Bush" candidate, and (b) for many, he was the opportunity for the United States to have its first non-white president. These considerations, alone, led to his victory in 2008. He offered no clearly-defined programs or policies: "change" and "hope" were about the only words to appear on his behalf on billboards and bumper-stickers. He did not campaign on promises to escalate American wars in the Middle East; to expand the American empire; to nationalize the banking, insurance, auto manufacturing, and health-care industries; or to circumvent the often dilatory processes of Congress by his appointment of "czars" to run the varied sectors of American society. "Hope" and "change" were sufficient bromides to persuade a thoroughly befuddled Boobus to stagger into voting booths to elect this man.
In these post-2008 years, I totally dismiss everything establishment Republicans and conservatives have to say about Obama’s shortcomings and their own "alternatives." It was the unprincipled mindlessness of this crowd – cheering on every utterance offered by the Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld contingent, as well as their neocon media flacks – that produced the immoral and destructive policies that got Obama elected; policies he now kicks into high-gear! Ron Paul was – and continues to be – the only Republican to condemn the GOP’s embrace of rampant statism. The dismal state of this party is seen in its contemptuous treatment of Ron.
If race is to be considered a major factor in the assessment of Obama, what is to be said of the support he received during the 2008 campaign? I saw a number of post-election polls indicating that, among black voters, Obama received some 95% of their support. Some 40% of white voters, on the other hand, selected Obama. While traditional party loyalties may explain some of this differential, that 40% of white voters favored Obama, while only 5% of blacks voted for McCain, may introduce a racial factor that "liberals" want to overlook. When, on election night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews announced "I’m going to do everything I can to make this thing work – this new presidency," to what "thing" was he referring? It certainly was not the success of any announced policies, as nothing of any substance had been promised. I received similar comments in e-mails from "liberal" friends, causing me to wonder if a black president’s programs were to be favored over those of a white president and, if so, why? Are those who try to convince you that race motivates many of Obama’s critics, projecting their own sense of uneasiness for allowing race to be the basis for their support?
One cannot understand modern political behavior without grasping a basic truth of which your high-school civics class teacher did not inform you: we have a one-party system consisting of two interconnected franchises, each under the complete control of the political establishment. If you would like to put Janus-like faces to this arrangement, think of that frequent media guest, David Gergen, a man who served as a bipartisan presidential advisor to Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. Or look upon the married couple, Mary Matalin and James Carville: she a valued GOP advisor to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; he a Democratic advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The political establishment loves the imagery of bipartisanship, a word reflecting satisfaction with either political party’s policies. If Boobus thought, for even a moment, of the necessary implications of "bipartisanship," he would quickly become aware of the racket being played at his expense by the entire system. But thinking, even for a moment, is something establishment forces cannot tolerate. This is why Ron Paul is persona non grata to both parties, the establishment’s media lapdogs, and other institutional interests intent on preserving their places at the beltway trough. Thinking – like information generally – is threatening to power interests dependent upon an unfocused group-think. Would the Iraqi/Afghan wars have been possible if Americans had used their heads for other than locations upon which to place their "U.S.S. Missouri" baseball caps?
And, so, Ron Paul and all others who insist on analyzing government policies on the basis of facts and focused reasoning, must be marginalized. Like the fable of the boy who saw the emperor’s nakedness, the political order will send out its reporters to impress upon Boobus the beauty of non-existent fabrics. In order to discourage questioning by others, establishment voices resort to the tactic upon which deceit is always dependent: name-calling. The power of intimidation is called into play: those who suspect there may be dishonest purposes underlying government policies, are accused of being "paranoid conspiracy theorists." Persons who condemn the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians are labeled "anti-Semites." (During the George W. Bush administration, we were told that criticism of "neocons" was really a cover for anti-Semitism.) Now we are told that men and women who disapprove of the increased collectivization of the economy; or of the crony-capitalism that shovels hundreds of billions of dollars into corporate coffers; or of the state’s increased control over their daily lives; or of government policies that enhance the economic collapse of America; are doing nothing more than indulging in racist bigotries!
Those who disapprove of government, itself, are accused – by those who use state power to feed on the energies of others – of promoting "violence." Herein lies another example of projection. What political science student does not recognize the basic definition of "government" as "an agency with a monopoly on the use of violence within a given geographic territory"? As distinct from the marketplace – which consists of a system of voluntary, contractual exchanges among individuals – all political systems are characterized by the lawful authority to use violent force to compel those subject to it to obey. Policemen are the coercive enforcers of state authority. When Randolph Bourne observed that "war is the health of the state," he was getting to its violent essence, a truth easily confirmed by the 200,000,000 deaths inflicted upon humanity through government wars and genocides during the 20th century. Are we really to believe that those who oppose such practices, and favor free and peaceful social systems, are advocates of violence? You will not hear questions of this sort discussed in the mainstream media. If Boobus is to be kept in harness, in service to his masters, his blinders must be kept in place.
Such queries will, however, continue to energize the growing number of minds who know that the political order – as well as the society victimized by political thinking – is in a state of disrepair. They know that if present practices remain unchallenged, their lives will suffer the adverse consequences. As they intensify both the depth and scope of their questioning, they will have to endure the intimidation and defamation of a statist regime desperate to keep its herd intact. Rather than seeking out the insights of those whose reasoned analyses strike at the heart of the vicious racket being played at the expense of humanity, they will be encouraged to turn to the comic relief, contradictions, and distractions provided by the Tea Party, and the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and John McCain.
How has race played into the Obama presidency? To begin with, we must identify the factors that led to this man being elected to that office: (a) he was the "not George Bush" candidate, and (b) for many, he was the opportunity for the United States to have its first non-white president. These considerations, alone, led to his victory in 2008. He offered no clearly-defined programs or policies: "change" and "hope" were about the only words to appear on his behalf on billboards and bumper-stickers. He did not campaign on promises to escalate American wars in the Middle East; to expand the American empire; to nationalize the banking, insurance, auto manufacturing, and health-care industries; or to circumvent the often dilatory processes of Congress by his appointment of "czars" to run the varied sectors of American society. "Hope" and "change" were sufficient bromides to persuade a thoroughly befuddled Boobus to stagger into voting booths to elect this man.
In these post-2008 years, I totally dismiss everything establishment Republicans and conservatives have to say about Obama’s shortcomings and their own "alternatives." It was the unprincipled mindlessness of this crowd – cheering on every utterance offered by the Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld contingent, as well as their neocon media flacks – that produced the immoral and destructive policies that got Obama elected; policies he now kicks into high-gear! Ron Paul was – and continues to be – the only Republican to condemn the GOP’s embrace of rampant statism. The dismal state of this party is seen in its contemptuous treatment of Ron.
If race is to be considered a major factor in the assessment of Obama, what is to be said of the support he received during the 2008 campaign? I saw a number of post-election polls indicating that, among black voters, Obama received some 95% of their support. Some 40% of white voters, on the other hand, selected Obama. While traditional party loyalties may explain some of this differential, that 40% of white voters favored Obama, while only 5% of blacks voted for McCain, may introduce a racial factor that "liberals" want to overlook. When, on election night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews announced "I’m going to do everything I can to make this thing work – this new presidency," to what "thing" was he referring? It certainly was not the success of any announced policies, as nothing of any substance had been promised. I received similar comments in e-mails from "liberal" friends, causing me to wonder if a black president’s programs were to be favored over those of a white president and, if so, why? Are those who try to convince you that race motivates many of Obama’s critics, projecting their own sense of uneasiness for allowing race to be the basis for their support?
One cannot understand modern political behavior without grasping a basic truth of which your high-school civics class teacher did not inform you: we have a one-party system consisting of two interconnected franchises, each under the complete control of the political establishment. If you would like to put Janus-like faces to this arrangement, think of that frequent media guest, David Gergen, a man who served as a bipartisan presidential advisor to Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. Or look upon the married couple, Mary Matalin and James Carville: she a valued GOP advisor to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; he a Democratic advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The political establishment loves the imagery of bipartisanship, a word reflecting satisfaction with either political party’s policies. If Boobus thought, for even a moment, of the necessary implications of "bipartisanship," he would quickly become aware of the racket being played at his expense by the entire system. But thinking, even for a moment, is something establishment forces cannot tolerate. This is why Ron Paul is persona non grata to both parties, the establishment’s media lapdogs, and other institutional interests intent on preserving their places at the beltway trough. Thinking – like information generally – is threatening to power interests dependent upon an unfocused group-think. Would the Iraqi/Afghan wars have been possible if Americans had used their heads for other than locations upon which to place their "U.S.S. Missouri" baseball caps?
And, so, Ron Paul and all others who insist on analyzing government policies on the basis of facts and focused reasoning, must be marginalized. Like the fable of the boy who saw the emperor’s nakedness, the political order will send out its reporters to impress upon Boobus the beauty of non-existent fabrics. In order to discourage questioning by others, establishment voices resort to the tactic upon which deceit is always dependent: name-calling. The power of intimidation is called into play: those who suspect there may be dishonest purposes underlying government policies, are accused of being "paranoid conspiracy theorists." Persons who condemn the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians are labeled "anti-Semites." (During the George W. Bush administration, we were told that criticism of "neocons" was really a cover for anti-Semitism.) Now we are told that men and women who disapprove of the increased collectivization of the economy; or of the crony-capitalism that shovels hundreds of billions of dollars into corporate coffers; or of the state’s increased control over their daily lives; or of government policies that enhance the economic collapse of America; are doing nothing more than indulging in racist bigotries!
Those who disapprove of government, itself, are accused – by those who use state power to feed on the energies of others – of promoting "violence." Herein lies another example of projection. What political science student does not recognize the basic definition of "government" as "an agency with a monopoly on the use of violence within a given geographic territory"? As distinct from the marketplace – which consists of a system of voluntary, contractual exchanges among individuals – all political systems are characterized by the lawful authority to use violent force to compel those subject to it to obey. Policemen are the coercive enforcers of state authority. When Randolph Bourne observed that "war is the health of the state," he was getting to its violent essence, a truth easily confirmed by the 200,000,000 deaths inflicted upon humanity through government wars and genocides during the 20th century. Are we really to believe that those who oppose such practices, and favor free and peaceful social systems, are advocates of violence? You will not hear questions of this sort discussed in the mainstream media. If Boobus is to be kept in harness, in service to his masters, his blinders must be kept in place.
Such queries will, however, continue to energize the growing number of minds who know that the political order – as well as the society victimized by political thinking – is in a state of disrepair. They know that if present practices remain unchallenged, their lives will suffer the adverse consequences. As they intensify both the depth and scope of their questioning, they will have to endure the intimidation and defamation of a statist regime desperate to keep its herd intact. Rather than seeking out the insights of those whose reasoned analyses strike at the heart of the vicious racket being played at the expense of humanity, they will be encouraged to turn to the comic relief, contradictions, and distractions provided by the Tea Party, and the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and John McCain.
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