What about a Real Conservative for President?

Michael Walsh articulates  here the frustration many true blue conservatives feel for the Republican Party.  Although he's a bit unfair in his criticism of RR, he does have it mostly right.  For far too long the Repubs have run candidates who are a part of the Political Class, think Jerry Ford, Bob Dole, John McCain.  These guys are all careerists, unwilling to rock the boat that brought them all their prominence.  The Bushes were not quite as much a part of the clan as the rest of them but they were, nevertheless, still squishy on many conservative principles.  How would we do with a firebrand, real libertarian/conservative like Cruz or Paul or even Perry?  While the election of one of these guys would not solve all the problems, it would at least highlight the differences between the liberal and conservative governing philosophies. That would be a good thing because in the past with the exception of RR, all the Repub conservative candidates have been less than great salesmen.

‘Hello, Suckers!’

The most depressing thing about having the GOP be, by default, the political party that ostensibly represents conservatives is its utter inability to actually do anything. For decades, conservatives have been working for and voting for candidates who promise to cut back the size of government, stand up to the Left, reform the Ponzi Scheme known as Social Security, simplify the tax code, etc., and yet how many of these things actually have been accomplished? Correct if you answered zero. True, he did reform the tax code (an improvement quickly undone by Clinton) but not even the sainted Ronnie himself made good on his promises to get rid of the departments of Energy and Education, or of checking and reversing the growth of the Leviathan state. As the von Mises Institute notednear the end of the Reagan years: 

The budget for the Department of Education, which candidate Reagan promised to abolish along with the Department of Energy, has more than doubled to $22.7 billion, Social Security spending has risen from $179 billion in 1981 to $269 billion in 1986. The price of farm programs went from $21.4 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987, a 140% increase. And this doesn’t count the recently signed $4 billion “drought-relief” measure. Medicare spending in 1981 was $43.5 billion; in 1987 it hit $80 billion. Federal entitlements cost $197.1 billion in 1981—and $477 billion in 1987.
Foreign aid has also risen, from $10 billion to $22 billion. Every year, Reagan asked for more foreign-aid money than the Congress was willing to spend. He also pushed through Congress an $8.4 billion increase in the U.S. “contribution” to the International Monetary Fund.
His budget cuts were actually cuts in projected spending, not absolute cuts in current spending levels. As Reagan put it, “We’re not attempting to cut either spending or taxing levels below that which we presently have.”
The result has been unprecedented government debt. 

Ah, the good old days, when a billion was still a lot of money.

In short, the Republicans are mostly bark, and very little bite; even when they get the chance to do something, they don’t — blocked by their own political ineptitude, or by members of their own party, who owe more allegiance to their fellow club members in the House and, especially, the Senate than they do to the people who elected them in the first place. As Texas Guinan used to say to visitors to the speakeasy nightclubs she fronted for the great Irish-American gangster, Owney Madden: ”Hello, suckers!”

And speaking of suckers, now we have the scandal-ridden administration of Barack Obama, whose many outrages my colleague Victor Davis Hanson has noted here, in one handy clip-and-save piece for reference. They include using the IRS to go after its political opponents; intimidating the AP and Fox News by going after their phone records; the NSA’s domestic spying program, for going after the American people; the ongoing impeachable disgrace of Benghazi; and the compromised election of 2012, which has rightfully earned Obama the name “President Asterisk” from James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal.

Any one of these would be enough to bring down a Republican president, but as I noted here, the Praetorian Guard known as the legacy media is adamant in its refusal to add them all up. As far as Democratic malfeasance is concerned, theNew York Times (zillionaire Carlos Slim, second largest investor), the Washington Post (new plaything of billionaire Jeff Bezos), the Boston Globe (part of billionaire John Henry’s Red Sox empire — do you see a pattern here?), et al. adamantly remain stuck in Dog World, with each new revelation existing sui generis and in any case entirely unrelated to the man in the White House: 

In other words, Obama and the Democrat-Media Complex exist in the Context of No Context. This allows the president to stay on the campaign trail (the only thing he really knows how to do; it’s certainly not basketball or golf) and, in effect, to run against himself. The media allows him to hold one position — say, opposition to gay marriage — for years and then suddenly switch sides after “evolving,” without ever mentioning again his former opposition. (That’s because, in their hearts of hearts, they knew he was lying all along.) To bring it up again would not only be bad form, it would be indulging in “analysis” in the sacrosanct “news columns,” which as we all know are completely free of spin, attitude or snark unless some Republican or conservative deserves it.

(A quick aside re the Globe: a newspaper that used to be justly celebrated for its outstanding sports section, especially its baseball coverage — the fons et origo of the great Peter Gammons – now reports directly to the man who owns the ball club the beat writers are covering. Good luck with that! As I said when Warner Communications, and later AOL, took over Time Inc., “synergy” is what we used to call “conflict of interest.”) 

And speaking of conflict of interest, where is the pushback from the other side? For years, conservatives have been watching stick figures like Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah huff and puff over various indignities and then drop the issue in order to reach across the aisle yet again; when it comes to follow-through, the Establishment GOP is just as bad as the Democrat-Media Complex. Better to be a toothless watchdog than to lose your sinecure and actually have to work for a living. 

That’s why senators like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are catching on with the conservative grass roots. Pace Jennifer Rubin, whose work I admire, I think both of them have a real shot at the nomination in 2016, and for some of the very reasons Rubin cites as strikes against them, lumping them in with the faded Rick Santorum, whose social conservatism simply will never play with the wider electorate: 

1. We’ve had a president long on rhetoric and short on executive expertise. Enough already.
2. Hot-button rhetoric may play well on talk radio, but under the glare of national media and in a race where the most critical job in government is at stake, the act wears thin. (Santorum’s folly on the Devil, contraception, etc. is a prime example.)
3. They personify the strident, angry Republican whom voters in general elections disdain; GOP voters hungry for the White House know this.
4. None of them have demonstrated the ability to work well with others or field an expert team of advisers.
5. Paul and Cruz are too new to the scene; Santorum’s been around too long.
6. They appeal to the tea party, but not the vast swath of mainstream Republicans. In GOP primaries, the winner is almost invariably not the most radical candidate. Barry Goldwater is the exception and the warning for 2016.
7. Quite simply, none of them is as impressive as any of the seven candidates (Gov. Chris Christie, Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, John Bolton and Gov. Rick Perry) I’ve discussed this week. I mean what have these characters actually done?

Okay, stop laughing, Christie and Rubio have already self-detonated, Ryan hasgone wobbly on immigration, and Jeb Bush is named “Bush.” Of this list, only Walker, the hero of the Battle of Wisconsin, and Rick “Oops” Perry have any appeal to the Republican base. As for the question, what have they done, Paul staged his epic filibuster while Cruz has been elevated to lefty Public Enemy No. 1 faster than you can say “Sarah Palin.” In short, they appear — appear — to be the kind of leaders conservatives have been awaiting a long time: unapologetic and unafraid of what both the Democrats and their own colleagues think of them. Bonus: They don’t care what the national media think, either. As Newt Gingrich discovered last year, punching the “national media” in the face is a surefire crowd-pleaser.

As a great American famously said, “Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser.” In words that ought to resonate with anybody with a pulse and a sense of patriotism for our country as it was founded (and not as Obama is trying to “transform” it), he also said in The Speech:

I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding a goddamned thing. . . . Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We’re going to go through the enemy like crap through a goose. 

Or words to that effect. Republicans have been holding their position and tolerating losers long enough. Why not try something different? Hey, it worked for Patton. 

UPDATE: Mark Levin writes to clarify the Reagan years:

Yes, Reagan promised, and but for Congress he would have delivered.  His proposal to abolish the Dept of Ed was killed in the Republican Senate by Howard Baker.  Budget after budget was killed too; he vetoed congressional spending repeatedly, shutdown the federal government half a dozen times.  The libertarians are fond of pointing to the supposed Reagan failures, and we can admit up front that he was not perfect, being of flesh and blood, but he put up one hell of a fight.  People forget. 

Significance of Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case

it could very well be that the Martin-Zimmerman case and trial marks a watershed moment in race relations in this country.  There's much evidence now, including that offered in this post, that this entire case was essentially planned and executed by the BGI (Black Grievance Industry) in order to enflame racists sentiments among blacks in this country to serve its financial interests.  While this may sound cynical, the evidence presented at trial and in the post trial reporting, reveals all manner of suppression of evidence, biased reporting in the major liberal media outlets, as well as manipulation of public attitudes on race relations by this very same media and the usual race hustlers Jackson, Al Sharpton and others.  Even Obama and Holder played their cynical roles as well.  This is all very sad and perhaps even unnecessary however in the end the entire plot will backfire on the racists by revealing their motives and modus operandi to a heretofore sympathetic, or at least passive, general public.  Once and for all the pathology in the black community that has destroyed the family unit (70% of blacks now born out of wedlock) and created a rootless crime infested society of young black males, is put on public display for all to see and judge.  It seems unlikely that the liberal media can continue to paper over the reality of what has happened to the black race over the last 50 years. Ironically and tragically, while we have a federal government headed by a black president, and staffed by blacks in influential posts, race relations have reached a nadir in the country.  Where this all leads is hard to say, however the problems and issues surrounding race are front and center at this point in time.

Pushing back against corruption

The indispensable Powerline blog has produced a post while on board a cruise that gets to the heart of the IRS scandal and indirectly at all the other scandals coming to light.  The woman in this clip, Cleta Mitchell, is a Washington based attorney who represents conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status under the various statutes that allow this.  There is a follow up article in The National Review online that provides background information about how the case involving the Englebrecht family came to Mitchell's attention, and by the way, why it should now go viral and come to the attention of all Americans.  One cannot imagine how even liberals, as far gone most of them appear to have gone, would want to see the kind of abuses now being wrought on innocent American citizens by instrumentalities of the federal government.  The corruption now rampant throughout politics, think Pigford I&II among many more examples.  In this Englebreht example an hones public spirited minded citizen, who happened to be a conservative, is harassed beyondthepale, by not one but several Federal agencies after applying for 401(c) status to allow her fledgling organization, True the Vote, to acquire tax exempt status in an effort to train citizens in volunteer work at the polls during voting to ensure that voter fraud is minimized and that each vote is a legal vote.  If there could be a more benign and public spirited cause than this one, show me.  And yet the Englebrecht family business and personal lives were turned upside down by government agencies harassment.  Regrettably it always seems to come down to  indifference on the part of Americans, often for good cause such as earning an living, but in the end we are now, with the advent of a totally unscrupulous administration, all vulnerable.  There must be push back otherwise the corruption gets worse and the consequences more dire.  A good way to start pushing back might be to join True the Vote.

The spiked punchbowl

It looks as though debt will be the overriding concern and problem for individuals, local governments, states and national as well reference generations to come.  Of particular interest in this article is the reference to the huge debt load wracked up during the "boom" decade of the '20's, which of course was the predicate cause of the bust of the '30's and the Great Depression.  Here we are 90 years later wracking up state, local and national debt at at least a comparable rate to the '20's and our good buddies at the FSR keep us funded by buying in all the debt the feral government keeps incurring.  Why isn't this a cause for concern?  It perhaps is in some circles but since there are so many governments involved in the debt creation business, all pumping out new debt at record levels, no one wants to contemplate the consequences,  It's the old spiked punchbowl metaphor -- the party's going full blast, everyone's having such good fun, no one wants to take the punchbowl away.

The corrupt Democrat Party and its Republican Party enabler

Democrat Party CORRUPTION has been going on since FDR perfected it in the 1930's.  FDR enlarged and grew the role of government astronomically and to to deleterious effect. He also bribed and corrupted local bosses, illegally used the IRS to to scare, threaten and prosecute his political enemies.  Professor Burton Folsom's classic, "New Deal or Raw Deal" catalogues all this chapter and verse.  And still Roosevelt remains an iconic and revered figure to the left, proving it cares only about winning, no matter how.  Regrettably Republicans have gone along with all this by putting up candidates like McCain, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, who choose to play by Marquess of Queensberry  rules that keep giving us acknowledged socialists leaders like Obama.

Data collection and mining for political purposes.

Here and here are two articles to read in order to begin to understand the significance of data collection by the government and its consequences to citizens.

There appear to be at least two major schools of thoughts on this subject.  The first is the government is essentially benign and although there is some loss of privacy on our part in going along with allowing all this data collection, in the end it is necessary so long as there are evildoers (i.e., Muslim terrorists) who want to take us all out anyway they can.  The second is that privacy is the cornerstone of freedom and that if we compromise on this issue anywhere at any time, we are setting ourselves up for slavery.

It is pretty obvious from the both of these two articles that the Obama campaign and then administration has mastered the data mining technology.  It has been reported that Google employees helped them in this effort.  It is also well chronicled that the Obama administration is willing to go to any lengths to win elections. In short it should come as no surprise that Democrats play WWE style hardball since this approach won elections for FDR and many others in that party over the years.  While Republicans are not saints, they have never been willing to cross legality lines in order to win elections like Democrats.

Since it's obvious by what's going on in Utah, and the IRS scandal that information gathered perhaps legally by the government can and will be used illegally by the government if it is to its advantage and if it can get away with it.  The only answer to this conundrum is to isolate the data collection program, as well as the IRS and any other government agency, from any involvement in the use of the data whatsoever.  Can this be done is the question.

Sowell on minimum wage laws and black youth unemployment

Thomas Sowell is one of America's very best practical economists and historians.  He doesn't get into his private life often, but in this article shares his experience as a black youth finding his way in New York City in 1949.  It is a remarkable story and points out how destructive liberals are meddling in the economy and in people's private lives all in the guise of "helping".  Sowell should be required reading K-graduate school.

The Mindset of the Left: Part IV

Editor's note: This is Part IV in a series. Part I can be found here. Part II can be foundhere. Part III can be found here.

At the heart of the left's vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves.

That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare.

One of the many international crusades by busybodies on the left is the drive to limit the hours of work by people in other countries -- especially poorer countries -- in businesses operated by multinational corporations. One international monitoring group has taken on the task of making sure that people in China do not work more than the legally prescribed 49 hours per week.

Why international monitoring groups, led by affluent Americans or Europeans, would imagine that they know what is best for people who are far poorer than they are, and with far fewer options, is one of the many mysteries of the busybody elite.

As someone who left home at the age of 17, with no high school diploma, no job experience and no skills, I spent several years learning the hard way what poverty is like. One of the happier times during those years was a brief period when I worked 60 hours a week -- 40 hours delivering telegrams during the day and 20 hours working part-time in a machine shop at night.

Why was I happy? Because, before finding these jobs, I had spent weeks desperately looking for any job, while my meager savings dwindled down to literally my last dollar, before finally finding the part-time job at night in a machine shop.

I had to walk several miles from the rooming house where I lived in Harlem to the machine shop located just below the Brooklyn Bridge, in order to save that last dollar to buy bread until I got a payday.

When I then found a full-time job delivering telegrams during the day, the money from the two jobs combined was more than I had ever made before. I could pay the back rent I owed on my room and both eat and ride the subways back and forth to work.

I could even put aside some money for a rainy day. It was the closest thing to nirvana for me.

Thank heaven there were no busybodies to prevent me from working more hours than they thought I should.

There was a minimum wage law, but this was 1949 and the wages set by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had been rendered meaningless by years of inflation. In the absence of an effective minimum wage law, unemployment among black teenagers in the recession year of 1949 was a fraction of what it would be in even the most prosperous years of the 1960s and beyond.

As the morally anointed busybodies raised the minimum wage rate, beginning in the 1950s, black teenage unemployment skyrocketed. We have now become so used to tragically high rates of unemployment among this group that many people have no idea that things were not always like that, much less that policies of the busybody left had such catastrophic consequences.

I don't know what I would have done if such busybody policies had been in effect back in 1949, and prevented me from finding a job before my last dollar ran out.

My personal experience is just one small example of what it is like when your options are very limited. The prosperous busybodies of the left are constantly promoting policies which reduce the existing options of poor people even more.

It would never occur to the busybodies that multinational corporations are expanding the options of the poor in third world countries, while busybody policies are contracting their options.

Wages paid by multinational corporations in poor countries are typically much higher than wages paid by local employers. Moreover, the experience that employees get working in modern companies make them more valuable workers and have led in China, for example, to wages rising by double-digit percentages annually.

Nothing is easier for people with degrees to imagine that they know better than the poor and uneducated. But, as someone once said, "A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him."