President Dinkins and the Real Election of 2012
Which is why the real fight lies elsewhere. For conservatives are engaged in a two-front war, one against the Democrats and the other against the sad, wan, spineless things known as mainstream Republicans. Alas, some of these creatures hold actual positions of authority in both the party and the government, in effect acting as facilitators for the other side. Such as this guy:
A spine is a terrible thing to waste
By now it’s clear that the “Republican leadership” in Congress — which keeps reminding us that they’re only one half of one third of the zzzzzzzzzz…. sorry — it’s clear that Boehner & Co. are going to offer no meaningful opposition to Obama’s increasingly lawless rule by executive fiat when Congress fails to move quickly enough for the Emperor Hussein’s taste or, mirabile dictu, actually frustrates one of his objectives. Win or lose in November, the GOP “leadership” needs a thorough house-cleaning. In the Senate, that means the McCain/Graham “moderates” need to be stripped of power and influence before finally losing their seats, while in the House, an assault on the seniority system by the Young Turks is long overdue, to speed Weepy John’s return to back-bencher status and install a speaker who understands the true nature of the opposition.
Because, as much as the GOP establishment doesn’t want to admit it, the rules have changed. Obama is Alinsky’s true disciple, a hand-me-down animus boiling inside him; behind the Bobby Bonilla smile, he is animated by rage, and if re-elected will turn its full force on the productive class in order to achieve the implicit goal of every Democratic president and party platform since FDR: to turn Americans into wards of the state, gratefully voting to sustain their misery in perpetuity.
The 2012 election will bring the Dems as close to this nomenklatura nirvana as they have ever been, and the only thing standing between them and the Permanent Underclass Ruling Majority is Willard Mitt Romney. If ever there was a man unsuited to the moment it seems to be Mitt. But maybe he’ll yet surprise us. And even then, our real work will only just have begun.
As Bismarck observed, “God protects fools, drunks and the United States of America.” Let’s hope His patience is not yet exhausted.
I’m sorry, I just have to ask this niggling little question: why are we supposed to be resigned to the tyranny of the regulatory agencies (“beetling minions”)? I understand we can’t fire the judges, but what’s with the lamentations over the rise of the EPA and the decline of NASA? Don’t they exist at the pleasure of . . . someone?
indeed they do …they are often referred to as marxists or progressives (for the faint at heart)
Civil Service will protect those who have worked their way into it.Bush failed to clean house of political appointees, who then got their revenge on Ted Stevens even though their tactics were illegal. Somebody needs to clean house this time and uses a steel broom, with thorns on it.
I do hope that there is some group in the Romney machine identifying every position in the fed.gov that serves at the pleasure of the President with the purpose of handing every one of them their walking papers Day One, effective on receipt. One of my biggest beefs with Bush the Younger was that he allowed the Clintonistas to remain employed in his administration. Y’know what? if you can’t find anyone qualified to fill position X, then leave it unfilled until you do. There will be net less damage done that way.
And if POTUS can create executive branch agencies at the stroke of a pen, he can make them go away just as rapidly. Make it so. The media are going to hate and revile Mittster and all he stands for, regardless. Make the fight worthwhile.
Short of obvious illegal conduct (and too often, not even then), the only way to get rid of these “beetling minions” is a legislative two-step: 1) reduce the scope of the regulation they’re supposed to do (on the justification that the original problem they were created to solve has been adequately solved, already), and 2) reduce the budget that keeps their regulatory empires alive. Both require more than usual political will from legislators.
I strongly disagree — there is another way, just no one to do it.
According to the Constitution, the Executive Branch is separate from and equal to the Legislative Branch. Congress has no Constitutional authority to create, destroy, regulate or supervise Executive Branch agencies; to tell the President who he may hire and fire; or what he must pay them.
That we have allowed this to go on for far too long is no reason it must continue. I believe that if a President had the nerve to clean house the American people would support him.
I agree completely. There is also a case to be made that any regulation that is punishable by fine, or imprisonement is a law. Only the house has the authority to write, and pass laws. Make all regulations go through he house; that will slow it down dramatically.
As it is, I believe the house conceded its authority to the FDA-FCC-etc.. That may be unconstitutional.
You are mistaken. The Executive Branch executes the laws; that’s where the “execut..” part comes from. Any action that produces any law, rule or regulation – anything in other words, with the force and effect of a law – must be passed by the Congress (both houses) and signed by the President. Only the Legislative branch – Congress – may make laws. Over the years, Congress has pretended that it’s okay to hand over some “rule-making authority” and “regulation-writing authority” over to bureaucrats in the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court, on those rare occasions when their opinion has been asked, have said, “Oh, yeah, that’s okay.” If you still disagree with me after thinking about it, please re-read the Constitution where it says (in part), “The Legislative power of the United States shall reside in a Congress….”.
Ike has it right.Its all on Boehner, and he is worthless. Whether bought, extorted or both, he is an obvious puppet. Remember the 60 billion he “demanded”; then settled for 35 million? Remember that he had the votes to defeat Obamacare and didn’t force it? remember that he had the votes to beat the the NDAA perversion and instead supported that flagrantly unconstitutional law? That whole stinking bunch we call Congress needs to be sent home. If we chose legislators by chance; by lot, we couldn’t do worse.
How dare you use the word ‘niggling’.
That’s a dog whistle if I ever heard one.
Yuh. And since some of my ancestors hailed from Scotland, I should be outraged–make that OUTRAGED–when the media reports on some deal being SCOTCHED! Don’t be stupid. Otherwise words such as neglect, negligent, renege and so forth will have to be excised from the language by the language police. After that it will be the thought police.
Put away the dog whistle already.
All it takes is courage – and probably at least two successive Republican Presidents serving two terms.
NO Republican President or governor will ever be able to successfully run a government that has been in the hands of Democrats for a term or more unless s/he fires every single employee of that government that s/he has an arguable legal right to fire at the pleasure and does so as the air is still moving from removing his/her hand from The Bible.
There will be a paroxym of rage from the left! The media will bleat and wail about the partisan and mean-spirited “economic capital punishment” of the selfless public servants. There will be mommies dying of cancer because they lost their government health insurance and babies starving because mommy lost her job, and they’ll be on the 6PM news already dying and starving on the day you do it. The only thing most of them can do is rage against the dying of the light and unless the executive buckles to the wailing and moaning, they stay fired. Some of them will argue – and some will be right – that they were improperly exempted from merit system protection. Dealing with that will give some of the government’s civil service lawyers something to do for a couple of years. If the new executive also has a legislative majority one of the first things to do is statutorily eliminate merit system lawyers; they should ALL serve at the pleasure. There will be screams about the disruption that dismissing all the political appointees will cause but actually the only thing that it will really disrupt is the contact lists of lobbyists and reporters – and a few call girls. You could in fact run any government with NO political appointees indefinitely and only lobbyists, reporters, and call girls would miss them. Government runs in spite of political level management, not because of it.
The federal government was designed and built by Democrats to be run by Democrats and to employ the maximum number of Democrat apparatchiks and clients. Most state governments essentially replicate the federal structure and for the same reasons. NO Republican President or governor could staff all the political appointments in the federal or a state government with loyal competent Republicans if his/her life depended on it; Republicans generally don’t want to be government employees when they grow up and many Republican leaders and activists are small business people who simply cannot leave the business to take a government appointment. A Republican is better off putting loyal Republicans in the top positions and in those lower level positions where an immediate change or direction is needed and leaving the rest of the government in the hands of the merit system supervisors. They know that it is easier to keep it running than to fix it, so they’ll keep it running. A few at this level, more than a few in the federal government, are actually Democrat apparatchiks who are hidden in the merit system. Any that act up can be disciplined or dismissed for their bad acts – yes, you really can do it – and the rest will get the message. Even those that don’t misbehave need to be eliminated but you have to do that the slower way using the budget and the org chart.
Then you need to reorganize and restructure the government so it can actually be run by a Republican. It can be done but it is complicated, controversial, and time consuming. That said, if somebody wants to do it, I have a plan and a price.
Art, if anyone can clean up this mess, it would be you (or someone guided by you if you are not available.) Assuming Romney wins the election, I hope his team hires you to do that massive cleanup of government.
I’m not holding my breath though given Romney’s RINO instincts.
Thank you for the kind words! You might find this interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Blue-Establishing-Republican-ebook/dp/B005M784HW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344368219&sr=8-1&keywords=Red+on+Blue%3A+Establishing+Republican+Governance
If you substitute Chicago North Side Democrats for Republicans and Downstate/DuPage County RINOS for Democrats, you have a feel for what good hair boy Rod Blagoyevich did in his first few weeks as governor in 2003. His dad and brother did work for a time on the pipeline, so you had some strange admirers up there.
I learned it from Democrats, having been on their transition hit lists a few times. Democrats, who do actually know how to run a government, unlike most Republicans, come in and fire everybody down to clerks and janitors if they’ve ever had a Republican thought or gotten crossthreaded with any Democrat constituency. Civil service/merit system protections only apply against Republican executives.
Or, just let it collapse into bankruptcy under its own weight. THAT is the only way government will ever be downsized, my friends. No politician is ever going to succeed in beating the bureaucrats at their own game. The parasites have to kill their host.
Umm….dude…WE’RE the host
Couldn’t have stated it any better!
Yes, we have ‘jelly spine’ leadership; it needs to change.I wish we had Gingrich or Allen West, if nothing else Tom Delay.
If anything consigns Barack Hussein Obama to the trash heap of history it will be the realization – for those still on the fence – of the Radical-in-Chief’s deconstruction/transformation plans, contained within its base permutations.
To add to the conversation, my commentary today at http://www.adinakutnicki.com , revolves around said issue – ‘Barack Hussein Obama’s Deconstruction Plans…Green-wise Via The Economy…Disarming The Citizens Via Gun Control’.
The problem with those “on the fence” is that they HAVE no spine of their own.
The posts and pickets of popular opinion and their general “I want to be liked-ness” supporting their soft and pathetic posture.
One party (and their media machine) taps into their weakness and guilt much better than the other taps into their Patriotism and Pride.
They will for the most part, abandon The Principals of the Republic for some cheap praise by celebrities they obsessed with.
If they had a clue, or any convictions, they wouldnt BE “on the fence”, would they?
In fairness, two kinds of people find themselves “on the fence”: Those with no convictions, and those who can’t find a politician who’ll honestly support the convictions they have.
not to excuse anyone…
….but there are many people who can not spend an hour a day surfing the web and trying to separate the truth from the fiction.
since the established media is spinning the obama agenda there s little available for the average citizen to get educated.
that is why the “you didn’t build it” gaffe is hurting the clown administration so much. most people do identify as conservative and the know the context of obama’s statement.
the people do see the truth when it gets put in front of them. and most people do want to own a house and a car and a picket fence. that makes them conservatives.
People really have to realize that Obama wants an America that is completely different from what we have ever been. He wants Americans to depend more on the government and less on capitalism. In my view he is a socialist. I don’t think the average voter understands that. We are in serious trouble.
I think we need Michele Bachmann for Speaker
sorry, but Allen West is not the spine you seek; he carried Boehner’s term last year if you recall. That he is black makes him appealing but there is thing called a voting record and, in his case, it does not match his Fox talking record. For that matter, neither does Rubio’s while in Florida which may explain the Romney camp’s consideration of other VP nominees.
There are some folks who have spine; but they got as much heat from wimpy Repubs as from Dems. At least from Dems, I expect it. Leaving in place the rot on the nominal right only means the pace of authoritarian central control slows; it surely does not stop. They had the first six years to curb teh scope of govt. How did that work out?
Alex, West may be as you say but I would be surprised. There are two points about West that you miss. West is a freshman back bencher. It’s jousting at windmills for him to call out the soft squishy leadership at this point.
And…the D’Rats sure Think he is critically important. Look at the $$ millions they are putting into defeating ONE Congressman. Aren’t Soro’s brown shirts on the job too?
Well said, but the majority of the GOP, including Romeney, isn’t up to the task.
“As Bismarck observed, “God protects fools, drunks and the United States of America.” Let’s hope His patience is not yet exhausted.”
That would depend on us. Always liked that quote though.
Romney is the wrong man at the right time.
If not him, who? If not now, when?
He is the only competent person in sight.
Social conservatives? Stuff it, get your acts together first. Unborn babies will be killed no matter who is the president. One man-one woman marriage? They haven’t stayed marrying for long. Gay marriage? Wait till the marriage tax catches up with them.
Romney is the right man at the right time.
As a consultant, Romney excelled at deconstructing businesses to make them more streamlined and efficient. That is why he was given Bain Capital, where he also showed his prowess at making businesses efficient producers of value. Being able to lay off thousands of people is a feature, not a bug for a Romney presidency.
Romney rooted out the corruption in the Salt Lake City Olympics, and they are one of the few Olympic venues that turned a profit.
As Governor, he showed that he can work across the aisle. Sorry for the purists, but this is an essential legislative skill. Legislation is sausage making. Reagan knew it and could do it.
Unlike Obama, Romney doesn’t have Daddy issues, since his father loved him and did not abandon him. He does not have Mommy issues either, unlike Obama, whose mother also virtually abandoned him. Obama’s psyche was seriously damaged due to his orphaned childhood, and further damaged due to his attraction to the collectivist thought of his Marxist friends and professors.
Romney has core values of hard work, honesty, entrepreneurialism, and a belief in America.
I have not been a Romney fan, but the more I look at him and hear from him, the more I am convinced that he is indeed the right man for the times.
Remember that Reagan was once a Democrat, supported abortion in California, and signed a bill allowing amnesty for illegal aliens. No president is perfect. Those who seek the perfect over the good may realize neither.
The kind of asinine mindset that spews such absolute idiocy as “Its time we had a black man for mayor” as justification for electing the most repugnant political figures of our time has to be defeated and relegated to the ash heap of history if this country is ever to breathe free again. The irony is that such a thing is certainly in doubt, given the sort of people that Americans have become today that they could even entertain such asinine notions.
“I have a dream that someday a man will be judged for the content of his character and not the color of his skin.” When is that day going to arrive? Or have I missed what King meant by character?
On the issue of regulatory agencies determined to break the American people and an economy with any free market orientation, please add the federal DoED and the regional accreditation bodies shaking down K-12 districts, private schools, and higher ed to impose John Dewey’s Marxist dream on the minds of America’s young people, Obama is perfectly aware that this “Best Practices” vision he funded in its initial stages when he headed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is the implementation and operating vision for his Common Core.
“Unfit for rational thought” and “manipulated emotions, values, and attitudes” are a terrible thing to insist on as the focus of American education. But then again he has an economy and society based on outcomes equity and distributive justice and spatial equity and destroying the so-called myth of individualism to address more fully in any second term.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/distributive-justice-is-not-enough-we-must-break-the-illusion-of-the-unitary-self/
The dangers parked in education and regional land planning will require all of us to pay attention at the state and local levels too. The Regional Equity Movement has been based on cultivating local and state officials. Plus we have ICLEI and Agenda 21 determined to create the UN’s view of eco-equity in our own backyards. If they still exist.
The influence of the regional accreditors in a 2nd term can be seen in the importance of the Quality Assurance process internationally to obtaining the UN’s Education For All and Millenium Devt Goals by the scheduled 2015. In addition, one of the primary reasons for the feds taking over the student loan program was to use it as leverage against any colleges and university wanting to make academic content rather than refashioning the student’s attitudes and values the focus of the curriculum. Called the DQP, the Diploma Qualifications Profile, the White House has called on the accreditors to be the enforcers for this vision of desirable “attributes.”
Education and culture are tremendous problems for us, and many conservatives have given up fighting in those areas, which is a mistake. Roger Scruton has a good article related to this, and summarizes the problem this way:
“…the expansion of the state into every area of our lives and the steady contraction of the sphere of personal responsibility have produced a new order of things — one that makes it very difficult for us conservatives to communicate with those whom we hope to influence. So many of our arguments and insights depend upon the old order of virtue, on the old moral assumptions, and on the old conception of the human being as a free and responsible agent. Yet those old things have gone, and we look foolish if we do not recognize the fact.”
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/06/waving-not-drowning
We need to fight the economic battles, but we also need to fight the cultural and philosophical battles too.
“…we also need to fight the cultural and philosophical battles too.”
In the face of the very well-entrenched entitlement mentality (even Tea Party supporters scream “Hands off my Medicare!”), we’re gonna need a lot of luck with that.
“…we’re gonna need a lot of luck with that.”
You’re right, bobbcat, but I think its a battle we have to fight and win, or else the entitlement culture will overwhelm us. We might be able to survive in little self-reliant pockets for a while, but not for long in the face of such an onslaught. The California which Victor Davis Hanson so eloquently describes is our future otherwise.
I’ll quote Roger Scruton again:
“An excerpt:
“…we can encourage [younger people] to see the point of how we lived, and to recognize that freedom without responsibility is, in the end, an empty asset. We can tell them stories of the old virtues, and enlarge their sympathies toward a world in which suffering and sacrifice were not the purely negative things that they are represented to be by the consumer culture but an immovable part of any lasting happiness. Our task, in other words, is now less political than cultural — an education of the sympathies, which requires from us virtues (such as imagination, creativity, and a respect for high culture) that have a diminishing place in the world of politics.”
I love the Otto von Bismarck quote! But isn’t it actually stated, “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.” Another Bismarck quote: “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war and before an election.”
I always enjoy reading your writings. Thank you.
It’s time for those “unfireable, beetling minions in the judiciary” to have term limits.
Judges should be appointed for 10 years, not life, with no second term. I understand the counterargument that judges will be susceptible to influence from the private legal sector (where they will seek employment once their 10 years is over), but the damage they are inflicting with judicial activism is worse.
I’m all for term limiting judges, when can we start? And, while we’re at it, how about term limiting federal employment? Is there any reason we should suffer under brainless bureaucrats who stay entrenched in their jobs for 30 years? How about a 12-15 year lifetime limit on all federal employment except the military (yes, that includes federal law enforcement), and remove all limits on IRAs and 401(k)s and eliminate all federal pensions.
Have to disagree here, at least with SCOTUS. The court is a powerful check against populist ideas by having lifetime tenure. A movement that can change half the legislative branch every 2 years combined with a president riding the same wave of sentiment can be all pretty firmly entrenched when and if a time comes that the people regret having installed them. Any single President being able to appoint potentially 4/5 of the court (2 term pres, with your 10-year proposed judicial tenure) could be a disaster. At that point it could very well be too late to stop. The Supreme Court is all we have guarding us against this since the ratification of the 17th amendment.
The Senate was also supposed to be both a check against the mob (so to speak) and the states’ only check against the federal government. Its no accident that since the 17th amendment we have seen the monolithic federal government explode its budget and roll over individual states at will.
Yes, the RINOs need to be back benched if they aren’t finally kicked out by their constituents. Boehner has been a gross disappointment. A little spine from him and the other RINOs might have kept things from getting this bad.
Obama’s czars were created with the stroke of a pen and they can be ended in exactly the same way. Heads of the EPA and other bureaucracies can also be removed. Get enough rational Congressmen together and the EPA can either be eliminated or sharply reined in. After all, Congress is supposed to have oversight of these agencies but they can’t be bothered to exercise it.
Obamacare would only be tough to kill because so many Democrats have their hearts set on the free stuff it promises. That would mean facing riots in the streets and such.
As for the judges, some are vulnerable to recall. Aside from that, the public might now be receptive to term limits for federal judges. The Founders likely did not expect people to live as long as they do now, which is why they didn’t consider lifetime appointments and issue. Putting a 12 to 16 year limit should be adequate, staggered so the whole court would be replaced by one President. That would take a Constitutional Amendment though.
“Putting a 12 to 16 year limit should be adequate, staggered so the whole court would be replaced by one President. That would take a Constitutional Amendment though.”
If ever there was a double-edged sword, this is it. If you’re assuming someone like Reagan was president when the various terms expired, fine, I’m with you. But what if someone like Obama was president when all the Supreme Court positions expired? That would surely be a calamity to anyone who wasn’t a convinced hard Leftist.
Agreed. Neither Dem nor Rep will roll back anything including the needling payroll tax hike. They are not fools. Change will only come when the wheels fall off and change is forced down our throats. That is when we will need a POTUS who is not Obama.
One can see a clear parallel between Dinkin’s NYC term and Obama’s US term. The former bankrupted NYC, the latter bankrupts the USA. NYC citizens saw the light and threw Dinkins out – will the US citizens do the same to Obama??
I do find it troubling that Washington is hyper-ventilating about “The Bush Tax Cuts” which we all know as the current tax rates. Why don’t we hear anything about “The Boehner Tax Cuts” or “The McConnell Tax Cuts”? Why doesn’t our illustrious GOP leadership actually propose something that will stimulate the economy, like a 50% cut in taxes and 75% cut in spending, instead of a 0.00001% reduction in spending 35 years from now? Why do we just hear about the stimulative value of not raising taxes until the next call to raise taxes instead of something that will actually work to stimulate the economy? We all know the reason – Washington is doing fine thank you very much, now shut-up and let us get back to stealing the country. It’s really no wonder that the GOP despises the TEA Party.
Obama is Dinkins v2.0 (or Dinkins was Obama beta v0.9) — Dave ran on the “Gorgeous Mosaic” theme of creating a heaven-on-earth via the election of the city’s first African-American mayor, while Obama’s version of course was 2008′s “Hope and Change”. And like Obama, Dinkins was a cypher before winning office, because, like Obama, if he had told the public what his politics were going to be once in office, the voting public would have just seen a thinner version of Al Sharpton and run away screaming, even during the primary season (Democrats back to Ed Koch in ’89, and to Hillary! four years ago).
And of course they’ve governed in the same passive-aggressive style — Dinkins’ equivalent to Obama’s golf outings and White House parties was spending late August and early September shutting down flights out of LaGuardia so they wouldn’t interfere with he and John McEnroe’s enjoyment of the U.S. Open. But in 1993, and in the 1980 presidential race, the big thing was that Rudy Giuliani and Ronald Reagan gave voters a definite choice, by letting them know that there would be real changes if the incumbent was thrown out. We don’t know that with Romney yet. We can assume he’ll do better, and that he’d appoint better Supreme Court justices, but Mitt still hasn’t made the case that he’ll take the fight to the entrenched Democratic-leaning bureaucracy and not just nibble at the edges and give up on the hard stuff.
Reagan did have the ‘advantage’ of surviving an assassination attempt, which people forget made Tip O’Neil back off from playing hardball against Reagan’s tax plan, when the Dems could have killed it in the House in the spring of 1981. But it still took until the fall of ’82 for the results to kick in, and turning around Obama’s economy won’t be an overnight job either. Romney still has to make people believe not only he knows how to fix the economy, but like Reagan he’s willing to stay the course if things don’t instantaneously improve in today’s immediate gratification society.
One of the things that Romney was known for at Bain was being able to go into a failing company and fixing it. He did this by bringing it back to the company’s original mission and systematically, department by department or store by store, making the departments conform to an organizational system based on the company’s core mission.
If he can do that (or really just make a good start at doing that) for the Federal Government it would be wonderful. It may be the singular talent that Gov. Romney may bring to the table that, frankly, no one else that has run for President has ever had. The Federal Government is exactly like a failing company that has over extended itself. It has tried new products and new sales techniques. It has tried to expand itself to make itself too big to fail. It has gotten involved in markets it had no business being involved in and it is going bankrupt. It is exactly the kind of situation that, if the government was a company, people like Bain Capital would be called in to try to save. The reason Bain was successful where other venture capital firms weren’t was that they didn’t just throw money at the companies that they invested in, they went in and systematically fixed it. I know it is only a theory, but it may be the only talent that Romney has and it may be just what we need at this time. He may a horrible politian, a stiff and not forceful enough for some. He may not be Conservative enough for some but, if he can do this one thing, reduce the size and scope of government he will have done something exceptional that will have long lasting influence.
The Dems and their media allies regularly use loud “drumbeat” messages to persuade the more simple-minded and ignorant voters. And like it or not, we have millions of Americans who are much less well-informed than the typical PJMedia reader, and who are very susceptible to those drum beats. Therefore, the Romney campaign should be constantly beating a loud drum that he’s a Mr. Fixit, who has been very successful before and who knows how to fix things now. He’s got the credentials to back that up, and the country needs to hear it more.
So far I’ve been fairly impressed by Romney as a candidate. I hope that his campaign gets this message out there.
A spine is a terrible thing to waste
Two days in a row on the spine. Mitt looks like his very political product is designed around the substitution of triangulation in lieu of spine, which is better called principle, as in lawfulness.
… “it’s time for a black mayor.
As it was years later for BHO. Trouble is, with Obama it was a fraud, given that he’s a mulato, not a black. Racism then, racism now. But good racism, which is unconstitutional.
… Mitt can start making the case by ceasing to pretend that the president is “a nice guy who’s just in over his head.”
But doing that would require Mitt to campaign on the central issue facing the nation: socialism vs. free markets. Mitt has declined to take on that truth, I saw him do it rat there on Greta when confronted with the question.
It was undeniable that Barack is a socialist, indeed a globo-socialist, in 2007 when he launched his literally incredible campaign. Despite ample evidence and warnings, he’s proven that point since.
Mitt is barely fit for the job of restoring freedom and the rule of law to the nation. Like Barack, he’s proven his own unfitness time and again, too. He’s bought into the fiction of global warming, and signed a law to govern based on that as governor.
Faced with a bad choice between two evils, Mitt is the lesser of the two evils by a big margin. That’s on one hand. On the other, after decades of incremental encroachment, the tide can’t be reversed with immoderation to fix policies harking back to the 1960s. If you doubt this, carefully define the political noun moderate.
If Mitt is elected, thank God for that. But keep a keen eye on whether he’ll repeal Obamacare (which was never even legally enacted), on what he’ll do as a global warmist on Cap & Trade, and, above all, what, if anything he’ll do on immigration “reform.” Hint: the urgently needed reform is to enforce the damn law; I predict he won’t do that, but instead will repeat Reagan’s mistake to avoid being called racist.
I get so tired of the girly-man whining about Romney. The reason we don’t always get what we want politically is because too many “tough guys” can’t stay focused long enough to get the job done. Instead they like to run around squealing “Game over man! Game over!”
I get so tired of the girly-man whining about Romney.
Fair enough. Except how is it whining to demand the rule of law? The RINOs, including Mitt, are disastrously weak on the rule of law. Read the Constitution, which is the law, look at an org chart of the federal gubmint, listen to what Mitt doesn’t say, and then come to realize that the real whining is from those who attempt to drown out others on the queer notion that we must accept illegal, and therefore arbitrary, governance.
It is not the fatuous pursuit of perfection that drives criticism of Mitt and most Republicans. It’s the desire and the demand that we get our government back from the elites, who are now proved as incompetents, even the moderate ones called RINOs.
Here’s a fatuous whine: will somebody please give me a concise definition of the term moderate as used in the context of politics?
A “moderate” is one who does not toe the Party line, as established by the far-Left and far-Right base of the Parties. An example would be a pro-Life, pro-gun Democrat.
Of course, Democratic moderates rarely have the courage of their convictions. They end up toeing the line with their votes, in the end. Sen. Mary Landrieu of LA is a good example of that. She is considered to be to the Right of many Repubs, but she went along with much, if not all, of the Dem agenda. She dragged her feet, but she ended up with her toes on that line.
O/T note the spelling of “toeing”. It is correct. Toe-ing. It comes from the old military call of putting your toes on the line on the barracks floor, so you are perfectly aligned. Made it easy to see at a glance if anyone was missing or slacking. Please do not spell it “towing”. It shows ignorance, thus devaluing your post.
She is considered to be to the Right of many Repubs, but she went along with much, if not all, of the Dem agenda.
In other words, a moderate is a total fake, but one with ideals and feelings. But my query was rhetorical, for moderate is meant by those who speak it to be somebody who complies with whatever wisdom is prevailing during the time. For example, to oppose abortion, the right to which which was never legislated, somehow became a radical thing to do.
Another general linguistic framework that begs scrutiny are the terms right and left which, taken together, puts policies and those who promote themselves somewhere in the frame’s geometry. People need language to cogitate, yes, but it seems to me the left/right choice leaves a choice between JFK and Adolph Hitler, this even though Hitler was a socialist.
We need to get our language back to regain control over our fate. Here’s an old fashioned idea, let’s delineate on the basis of legal versus illegal. Doing this would be tough, but at least there’d be legislative texts for use in determining what’s right, or even possible. The renaming process would be especially tough on the socialists, who would then be faced with a titanic constitutional convention to achieve their goal of transforming the republic, having to perform the surgery in the open, with all able to see and smell.
If a “moderate republican” is someone who, for example, has a record of pro-abortion, firearms regulation and pro-health care, is a “moderate democrat” someone who is pro second amendment, anti-abortion, and anti-health care? There are no moderate dems, and the rise of conservative republicans will be where the action is in the congress.
No matter what you did, that rotten guy just wasn’t interested, right?
“For conservatives are engaged in a two-front war, one against the Democrats and the other against the sad, wan, spineless things known as mainstream Republicans. Alas, some of these creatures hold actual positions of authority in both the party and the government, in effect acting as facilitators for the other side.”
Something the Tea Party is Accutely aware of.
Can you say Mourdock, Cruz, Fischer?
That’s why the Establishment Squish RINOs hate the Tea Party.
What we are discovering about the counterproductive mechanisms of big bog government during The Great Recession should be lessons of great reform. The rot from D.C. is long listed. To name a few future targets in need of cleansing: Cronyism, Porkulus, the 8% approval rating of congress relative to spinelessness, executive orders contrary to legislation, gov. stimulus leading to nationalization of industries, the lateral governance of the federal reserve and the 4th column media, entitlements, ad nauseum . . .
There are many lesson to be learned from the failed economic and political policies of the last 3.5 and 30 years.
I concur.
almost four years and people still don’t want to admit that the marxist rule the roost.
stop discussing and start acting. the “spine is a terrible thing to waste” is a perfect analogy of the GOP leadership. there may be a handful of GOP congressman that are worth re-electing. as for the rest of them and the entire senate …please vote them out. if not don’t expect things to get better until the next cycle ….by then it will be like the old Russia or East Germany or so failed that it will resemble Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
Obama is mostly symptom and a little cause. The true malaise of this nation goes back to Wilson and FDR. Reagan was a brief respite mostly erased by Bush Senior and now a dim memory.
Until we open up every mine, drill for all our oil ( including alaska and the coasts ), harvest and maintain our forests instead of letting them burn, be willing to pay more for our own gadgets manufactured by Americans, require 20% down payments for buying a house, cut the fed and its red tape in half and imprison crooked government officials and white collar pirates … we will continue on the path toward Third World Status.
Probably pretty much none of these things is going to happen. We are an empire that has chosen suicide. We have rejected God and he has removed his protection. What is happening to us is just the natural course of mankind. We got used to thinking we were different but we aren’t. At least not any more.
Great “to-do” list. A few other ideas:
1. Change U.S. voting age back to 21 to reduce the number of impressionable kids voting for “cool” lefties.
2. Reform the public schools to break union power and roll back “progressive” curricula insinuated by the likes of Ayres, Zinn, teachers’ colleges, etc.
3. Re-instate federalism as a main principle of American government. If the lefties want to create their peoples’ republics in places like NYC, SF and LA, fine; but there’s no need to spread these “progressive principles” and “entitlements” all across the republic. And when their little utopias collapse, let THEM pay.
Speaking of education, I trusted my kids to the public system and now have good reasons to regret it. A word to the wise for parents: Don’t trust. If you can, educate them yourself or closely supervise/intervene when necessary.
You were doing well until you elected to drag God into the picture.
Do you really think that your supposedly loving God has removed his protection because we made the mistake of electing an idiot president?
When you start preaching about how we are doomed because we don’t conform to your notion of obedience to some supreme being, you denigrate the rest of your otherwise rational argument. I respect your religious beliefs but please don’t try slinging that kind of BS in a political forum. Our problems are our own and we need to solve them ourselves without the help or interference of your God or anyone else’s.
Spoken like a true libertinian. You’re all for freedom and all, except freedom of religion. Imagine yourself demeaning Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or almost any of the founding fathers for their beliefs regarding The Christian God and His protection of this land they founded. The Creator watched over us as we took His Light, His Truth to the world but now we are a nation of abortion and perversion and rampant adultery. Stand by and receive His wrath. It is coming soon.
I’m not optimistic, and it’s not because of obama.
It’s because of the republicans.
I remember what a disaster Dinkins was. And yes you can make the same connection to Obama and his failed policies.
Dinkins & son became wealthy from illegal (TV) cable activities for which they were never prosecuted. They, like Obama, were protected by the Feds and the MSM.
They, like Obama, were elected because of ‘Political Correctness’.
‘Political Correctness’, like other tired worn-out socialist ideas from the ’30s, will be the death of the West.
“Political Correctness’, like other tired worn-out socialist ideas from the ’30s, will be the death of the West.”
Yes! Too many people on our side think that PC is just some annoyance that we have to endure, but its much more than that. It kills individuals, such as at Fort Hood, and it is killing what is good about the West.
So, the weak kneed Rino’s in office is the problem. Probably so. Or should I say, rightly so. HOWEVER!! Who are the ones that put these Rino’s in office? They obviosuly did NOT elect themselves. I honestly believe, if we want to see the REAL problem in this country, we need to take a strong look in the mirror!! I would venture a good guess, because of friends of mine I’ve spoken with, those posting here probably in all likelyhood voted for Obama in 08′. No, not all but a good number of them. Yet, they’ll never admit it.
What was the ole’ saying? WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY AND THE ENEMY IS US!!
… if we want to see the REAL problem in this country, we need to take a strong look in the mirror!!
So true.
Just make sure that the reflection includes the television set in the background, for that is the source of the programmed opinions that persistently leads to self-defeating votes.
The only question is whether the Romney campaign is smart enough to realize that it’s going to be on defense for the next not-quite 100 days unless it gets its act together and starts using the Left’s own tactics against it, this time for keeps. Obama’s unfitness for office must be the sole issue of this campaign, and Mitt can start making the case by ceasing to pretend that the president is “a nice guy who’s just in over his head.”
Let Mitt be Mitt. He’s a nice guy with a nice smile.
The broadsides should come from our PACS and pols, Newt, Rove, et al. That will allow the coveted undecided voters (cursed as they should be) to select a guy they like and will not fear.
Obama’s unfitness for office must be the sole issue of this campaign.
An even better, and more accurate, strategy would be to proclaim Barack as totally fit for the office as he defines it, which is to close on the conversion of America to the creed of globo-socialism. Then the Mitt of our wishful fantasies could go on to define his definition of the office, and thereby open to door to issues about the rule of law, immigration, free enterprise and national security as laid down in the law, which, again, is stated forthrightly in the U.S. Constitution.
Naw, ain’t gonna happen. Mitt will continue to triangulate his way through ever-leftward political discourse geometries.
If we all agree that this election is gonna be a close one, then we must acknowledged that voter fraud is the ace in the hole for the socialists.
Say, can somebody tell me again what it was Barack Hussein did for ACORN back when he was a private citizen?
You’re scaring me, Mr. Walsh. Every so often I think we just might be able to pull this thing out before the USA recapitulates the “populist” collapse of Argentina under Peron… and then someone like you shows the sheer magnitude of the task. G-d, I miss Andrew Breitbart.
Nice to dream that it will happen this way, but the GOP don’t want to change the rules. They want to wield power under them the same way the Demos do.
Why would they want to stop the president from issuing executive orders that say “I’m not going to enforce this law”? Because they want the same power.
Why would they want to stop ruling by regulatory fiat? Because they want the same levers when they’re in power.
The revolving door for lobbyists in the White House? Because they need the money to drive their campaigns as well.
If you want the change you want, you need to put in the candidates you need. Then, you need to change the campaign cycle and compress the campaign calendar so that elections take three months instead of a year. Hold the primaries in a month and campaign nationally for two, and you’ve cut expenditures by millions. That helps reduce the need for fundraising.
But right now, you’re just trading one set of self-interested clowns for another.
If “they” (the GOP) want to do what Obama has done, then why didn’t “they” do it during Bush I and Bush II? History falsifies your argument.
Well you may not be able to fire a civil service employee but you can make their life miserable. Eisenhower did it by reassigning people to the hinterlands were they could do no harm when we were getting to many illegals from Mexico during his administration. I suggest the EPA offices be moved to Death Valley.
So why don’t you run for office instead of just running your mouth off preaching to the choir?
By the way, I’ve been thinking about Dinkins one term but would add another issue to the mix. I expect crime to be a sleeper issue this fall. It was rampant crime that got Giuliani elected. I suspect the decline in enthusiasm for Obama among urban voters is related not only to the economy but also to the horrendous and mostly under reported crime wave that has hit cities in blue states.
There is a serious flaw in the reasoning here about “the regulatory state.” Regulators in present form work to protect the interests of the 1% and major global corporations. We do not apply any of our rules about wages, working conditions, employment discrimination, or pollution to “things in commerce” but to “places.” What that means in simplified terms: under US law it is illegal to build a factory that pollutes in the US, but it is not illegal to sell a product (like a television) that is manufactured in a factory that pollutes (as long as that factory is not in the US). Likewise in the US it is illegal to pay less than the minimum wage, but it is not illegal to sell a television that was manufactured for less than minimum wage (so long as the underpaid worker was not working in the US). What Mitt Romeny will not do (if elected) is change any regulatory rules so that they apply to all goods in commerce. Instead, he will talk about rolling back (meaning changing) some regulations so that you can pollute more and pay less in America. When President Obama is re-elected, he too will not apply regulation to goods in commerce. Instead, he will try to ease the pain caused by current regulations by distributing government earmarks to folks disadvantaged by economic circumstance. The true innovative change would be to apply all US wage, health, safety, and pollution laws to all goods and services placed in the stream of commerce. No matter who wins in November, that will not happen.
Well stated.
To me, what you’re talking about is replacing fake free trade with fair free trade. You’ll never get that by the editors at the WSJ. Believe me, I read that paper every day and they would go into paroxysms of group conniption at this idea.
The fashionable left will be all for that until they have to pay $1000 for an iPad.
what do you mean by “many donks”?? 4 or 5? This is another false narrative. There are no serious numbers of Democrats who oppose Obama. You are dumb.
You might want to click on the link at the words “start looking.”
OK……… that article talks about 2008 Obama supporters, NOT Democrats only. There are no big numbers of Dems voting Romney or anti-Obama. You are dumb.
Lonnie, Lonnie,
You’ve wandered out of you milieu (um, that is your usual environment under a rock). Truth be told, you’re not up to the debate. Sorry. You are intellectually, um wanting. I respectfully suggest that you return to your roots, the OWS people, and perhaps take a dump on a patrol car to soothe yourself. Maybe Roseanne will give you a big fat wet kiss; or Bill Maher. You are not welcome here.
nice – Know you are but what am I? Grow up – I’m way up to the debate, and my being welcome here or not is completely irrelevant – or are you neo-confederates trying to exist in an ideologically pure echo chamber? Tell ya what, I’ll jump in the sandbox with you and state ‘you are not up for the debate’.
Giuliani’s other major contribution to improving the quality of life in NYC was getting the dogshit off the street. Getting the dogshit out of Washington will be a Herculean task.
“Getting the dogshit out of Washington will be a Herculean task.”
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We’d be off to a very good start if we got the dogshit out of the White House. Of course I’m referring to BO.
Republicans play by the polite rules, when they can get away from starting and building businesses. They do care about what the New York Times writes about them. They do not and have not understood that this is WAR. And they are losing. November 6, 2012, is possibly the final battle of this SECOND CIVIL WAR for the United States of America. But this time it is not about slavery of blacks, it is about the slavery of all Americans.
(If you don’t believe it, check out what happens when you disagree with their beliefs: Chick-Fil-a.)
I have been espousing this for four years. WAR, Republicans, WAR. You fight to win or you continue to lose as you have for 70 years.
GET MAD, MITT!
What I remember from Dinkins’ re-election campaign is the song: ‘General David Dinkins Where Are You. It was set to the tune of ‘Car 54 Where Are You.’ Shame, it’s not on youTube. We could use it’s analog now with President Obama.
Given the doubts about Romney, the theme for 2012 should have been “0-60-300″ with 60 meaning 60 republican senators and 300 republican house members I’d hate to see Obama on what would be a four-year vacation, but most of us that have been employed in unfortunate departments of major corporation have lived through worse.
And before anyone says it couldnt be done because of gerrymandering in blue states, look at Illinois. I doubt the Dems will dethrone any of Joe Walsh, Bobby Schilling, Judy Biggert, or Randy Hultgren, (Manzullo was the only net loss). In fact, the East Saint Louis Ghetto/Mob district may flip to the Rs this year as well.
it is not only obama that must be removed from office …those who control him are the evil ones. obama is just the face of evil.
…we are finally getting to see who/what it is that is in charge.
it is the banksters and their FED.
One comes round to sympathy for the French revolution. Prior to the last couple decades I thought them barbaric but living under the fist of such tyranny as we find ourselves these days …. I understand.
Hey, what was the NYC murder rate in 2001? 2,606 people died in the Twin Towers plus 960 in the reported murder rate. Hmmm…
1. Mitt Romney embodies the one single characteristic that is the most important of all: Respect for the Rule of Law and the Will of the People. You can expect us to return to a normal sane world in which the President acts like a Chief Executive Officer and not the King.
2. Mitt Romney understands how commerce and the economy work. He knows what business owners want and need.
3. As I keep saying When Mitt wins election we are at the End of the Beginning. It took liberals eighty years to get things this screwed up. It will take more than one election cycle to undo their mess.
Boehner got in weeping at the joy of it, and We the People have been crying out loud ever since. What a spineless, useless POS. You are so right – he has helped Obama more than the Demos…
**Obama’s unfitness for office must be the sole issue of this campaign, and Mitt can start making the case by ceasing to pretend that the president is “a nice guy who’s just in over his head.”**
Since when are “unfit for office” and “a nice guy who’s just in over his head” mutually exclusive terms?
In the universe I live in, if you’re continually in over your head, then by definition, you’re unfit for the position you’re occupying.
‘Nuff said.
The 2012 election will bring the Dems as close to this nomenklatura nirvana as they have ever been
True enough, and so it will be until the wheels come off irreparably. One way or the other, the money simply isn’t there.
Statism is on its way out. The only question is: do we do this hard, or do we do this easy?
Wow. Another call for a purity test in the Republican party. Way to create a permanent minority! AuH2O!!! Goldwater for President in 2012, yeah.
“it’s time for a black mayor.”
Race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or any other non-leadership aspect you care to name, are not reasons for giving control of great executive power to someone who seeks it.
In every election I have ever voted in, I alway ended up voting for the candidate who I thought least likely to do a bad job.
If Zombies were real, Barry Goldwater would rise up from his grave, walk up to John McCain and beat him with his own arm. McCain has turned into the most progressive, snivelling of Republicans along with Boehner. THis is not hte Republican party my mother and father campaigned for back in the 60′s. THis iis not the Republican Party I remember growing up and my loathing for ineptitude in our leadership was cemented watching Carter’s one giant screw up of a presidency. Too bad Ron Paul is stepping down after this election cycle (if not nominated – probably won’t be unfortunately) and the MSM is marginalizing ROn Paul and Gary Johnson. Obi-Wan once said “That boy is our last hope,” which aptly applies to ROn Paul. Yoda replied, “No, there is another…” aptly referring to Gary Johnson.
But the GOP gave Gary Johnson such a cold sholder, they nearly left a bootprint on his backside. At least Gary Johnson left and landed in the Libertarian Party which may be the rise of the next great political party since the GOP is proving to be so inept and Rand Paul sold his soul to the Emperor/Palpatine, um, I mean Romney.
Beware of overeaching though, and wholesale torpedoing of our own parties leadership is one way to do it. We should definitely make sure that all of the damaging changes obama has done are completely rolled back including obamacare, his new regulations, and all the hard leftist political appointments he put in. But beyond that, move too fast and you risk leaving the middle of the country behind, and letting the dems win again, just like dem overeaching by Obama has allowed us to win. I am not that down on either Romney or Boehner, they are both realistic, and respectful of tea party values, but also know what actually can be done, vs what we would like to be done.