Clinton-Obama axis

This article from the New York Magazine pretty much lays out the venality of Democrat politicians.  Here we have the specter of Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, who don't trust or like each other, finding ways to use one another to each's benefit.  Truly, the deserve each other.  Clinton was a disgracefully amoral and low brow President.  He brought great disgrace to the WH and country with all his philandering and crass political machinations.  What saved his reputation was the Peace Dividend from the end of the Cold War, and the Newt Gingrich led Contract with America.  In the former case, the winding down of the Cold War eliminated the need for huge military budgets, and in the latter the huge mid-term win by Republicans prevented Clinton from enacting all the Progressive (Socialist) plans and programs democrats always want to put in place.  Obama, as we know, was successful in ramming through several of his socialist programs (Obamacare at the top of the list) before the Tea Party revolution put the brakes on his ambitions.  Now they appear to be teaming up to bring four more years of socialism to the country in order to serve their personal and political party's interest.  Hopefully Romney can bring an end to nightmare or four more or even more of the destructive politics these prototypical democrat politicians bring to our nation.  Enough isn surely enough.

Debunk the lies

Thomas Sowell has a knack for cutting to the chase.  In this column he channels many Republicans' view that Democrats are allowed to get away with lying with impunity simply because they are not challenged by articulate arguments from Republicans.  He gives several examples.  Sowell raises a very good point.  In the absence of debunking these lies by Democrats the impression given is that Republicans believe them as well and therefore they must be received wisdom.  Sowell is saying is every lie should be challenged and debunked on the spot, immediately.  Now granted unlike their opposition Republicans do not have the benefit of media access, nevertheless there are ways now to get around this problem: the internet, talk radio and Fox News are three such ways.  Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie are two articulate Republicans who don't shy away from confronting the lies of the Democrats.  Unfortunately Romney seems reluctant to take them on.

The original fraud

Bill Clinton struts around the world making speeches and raking in millions for his efforts never saying or doing anything remotely helpful to anyone other than his own accountant. And yet he is the darling of all Democrats wowing them all at the recent party convention.  Personal acquaintances and friends who have met Clinton have been charmed by his personality and erudition.  In the country today he is probably the most popular ex-president alive and would probably be considered one of the all time great presidents by most historians.

In truth Clinton is a cad, a fraud, a phony, and probably one of the five worst presidents ever. What's more, he was elected on a fluke.  Democrats love to nominate smooth talking professional politicians who have perfected the art of winning the vote of the millions of gullible people looking for a savior.  In Clinton's case his background of serial mistreatment of women and questionable real estate machinations while Governor of Arkansas was covered up by his campaign staff and his wife, making him at least acceptable to middle America.  He got his party's nomination because the Democrat Party poobahs would nominate Saddam Hussein if they thought he could win a general election.  Clinton won the general because Ross Perot carved out 20%  of mostly Republican votes from H.W. Bush enabling Clinton to eke out a victory with less than a majority.  Mid term voters in his first term rejected his standard socialist policies -- Hillarycare, et al. -- causing him to pivot to the right by passing the welfare and balanced budget reforms of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and the Republican House of Representatives. This opportunistic move in turn saved his presidency and assured him a second term.  In foreign affairs Clinton benefited from the Reagan-Bush ending of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union.  He did, however, managed to make a major contribution to the tragedy of 9/11 by failing to take out Bin Laden when he had a golden opportunity to out of concern for the "collateral damage" of some of the people in Osama's proximity.  A failure of will analogous to Neville Chamberlain failing to take out Hitler in 1939 for fear of hurting some of the "innocent" staff members in his proximity.

Perhaps Clinton's most devastating contribution to our present economic circumstances was his appointment and support for Andrew Cuomo as head of HUD.  It was Clinton's policy of making home ownership affordable for lower income Americans that led inevitably to the housing boom and bust and  implosion of the financial sector.  Thomas Sowell, an historian and an economists, opines on this major Clinton policy mistake here.  Books and books and books have been written about the cause of this implosion but in the end it comes down to the government policies that pressured banks to make home loans to families who could not afford the monthly payments.  This whole sordid mess we find ourselves in now was caused by the Democrat Party's attempt to control and direct the private sector's allocation of resources.  Bill Clinton's fingerprints are all over the tragedy of the 23 million unemployed in our country today and yet he is extolled by many as one of our greatest presidents.  Sowell's column should be required reading for all Americans.

ADDED:  This from Bretbart today.

It seems only fair, then, to remind the American public that not only does Obama skip most of his daily intelligence briefings, but also that the Clinton administration bears some of the blame for allowing 9/11 to happen. The 9/11 commission identified several Clinton failures, including four missed chances to kill Osama bin Laden, and a failure to adopt “a more aggressive counterterrorism posture” after Al Qaeda’s initial attacks.

The Clinton administration sent a signal to Al Qaeda that terrorism would succeed in pushing the United States out of the Middle East when, in response to the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. pulled back its diplomatic presence in the region. Clinton answered with an ineffectual cruise missile attack on Afghanistan and Sudan; Al Qaeda followed up with its deadly attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000.

That is not the only failure of the Clinton administration that the media has chosen to forget. Clinton is campaigning against his own record of economic liberalization, telling delegates at the Democratic National Convention that Mitt Romney would “get rid of those pesky financial regulations” and recording an ad in which he attacks Republicans for wanting to “go back to deregulation. That’s what got us in trouble in the first place.”

So, effectively, Clinton is blaming himself for our economic “trouble.” And so he ought to--because he also re-authorized the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that pushed banks to offer housing loans to people who could not afford them, leading directly to the subprime mortgage crisis that nearly imploded the global financial system in 2008, and which helped kick off the recession that Obama’s statist policies has failed to undo.

President Obama complains a great deal about the “mess” he inherited from Bush, but Clinton also bequeathed his successor an economic muddle, and you didn’t hear Bush complaining much. In fact, Clinton’s last year in office was marked by the bursting of the dot-com bubble--an event from which the high-tech industry has never fully recovered, but which has been airbrushed out of the media’s rosy recollections of the Clinton era.

The reason Clinton presided over a long period of job creation, economic growth and budget surpluses was because he embraced the same free-market, small-government policies that Romney is running on today--and stood up to the labor unions and the far-left of the Democratic Party, where a young Obama chose to plant his flag. Just weeks ago, he was opposing Obama’s taxes and praising Romney’s “sterling” business career.

Suddenly, with his wife’s 2016 ambitions in mind, Clinton has changed his tune. In 2000, when Hillary first ran for office, Clinton was persona non grata to Al Gore’s presidential campaign. The stain of the Lewinsky scandal, and the subsequent impeachment, were simply too much for voters to bear. Over a decade later, Clinton is hailed as a savior by his party and the media. But we are still living with his legacy--and not the better parts.

ADDED:  John Stossel does a mostly complete and accurate account of Clinton's actual record of accomplishments while he was president.  Not only did Clinton take credit for accomplishments for which his predecessors were responsible, but those "accomplishments" for which he was responsible turned out to be disastrous for the economy.

Visiting Washington D.C. after 20 years

The last time I visited Washington was shortly after Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993 as an attendee to the annual convention of representatives of the NFIB  (National Federation of Independent Business).  A partner and I had just started a new magazine for the NFIB, a powerful lobbying voice for small businesses of mostly 20 and fewer employees.  We called the magazine "Independent Business", later shortened to "IB" Magazine.     Larger small businesses and large corporation are represented by the US Chamber of Commerce which has far fewer members than the NFIB's 600,000, but more political clout generally speaking.  One of the meet and greet sessions on that visit was with the newly minted President Clinton, who did his usual sweet talking routine trying to convince this generally hostile group that, although a democrat,  he was not anti business.  A tough sell since this group is probably somewhat right of the NRA in its political proclivities.  Another more congenial visit was with Newt Gingrich, destined to become Speaker of the House and a great stumbling block to Clinton's left wing agenda of the first two years of his administration.

Bearing in mind this meeting was two years before Gingrich's ascendency to Speaker, he was very clear about his agenda to roll back the tide of big government at the federal level.  He went so far as to suggest there was no compromising with the democrats because almost all of them were socialists.  To the extent the federal budget was balanced for six years of the Clinton administration, that welfare programs were reformed and that Hillary care was resoundingly defeated, much of the credit goes to Gingrich and his "Contract with America", as the Republican reform program came to be called. Gingrich was a transformational figure during the Clinton years, forcing the Clinton presidency to move to the center and stopping the mad democrat led rush to socialism now resumed in spades under Obama.

Newt's not the guy

that The "insider" complaint about Gingrich as the nominee for the Republican Party is his undoing.  Since his ignominious removal as Speaker of the House in 1999, Gingrich has enriched himself as a consultant for various corporations and GSEs including Freddie Mac.  His defense of his activities is that he never lobbied any government agency on behalf of his clients.  This is, at best, a highly dubious claim.  Can anyone with a straight face suggest that one with Gingrich's background and history would be hired for any other purpose than to influence some government entity on behalf of his client?  And influence peddling is the operative definition of lobbying, no matter any of the so-called nuanced explanations being floated in Gingrich's defense.   Since the Tea Party, big government, and anti Obama sentiment prevalent today are all predicated on distrust and disgust with Washington and cronyism, it's hard to see how Gingrich can avoid this backlash.  Romney will likely win the nomination as the last guy standing and because he has the least amount of big government/Washington taint.  This outcome is probably for the best for conservatives and Republicans since of the two leading  candidates Romney is the steadier, more rational and has more appeal among swing voters.  Buckley's dictum of choosing the most conservative candidate who can be elected, is just about right in this case.

Forbes on the warpath

There is do doubt that the Republican "establishment" is anti Gingrich.  To the extent Forbes Magazine represents the Republican establishment, this article is highly pro Romney and anti Gingrich, with a great deal of justification in the view of this blogger.  There is no disagreement anywhere that Gingrich is THE consummate Washington insider.  His entire career, until he was thrown out by his own party in 1999 on ethical grounds, has been spent in Washington where he attained the status of Speaker of the House, perhaps the second most powerful job in the federal government.  Gingrich is bright, and his is a lifelong conservative.  He has wobbled on some favorite conservative positions in healthcare and social issue involving abortions, however his core beliefs are substantially conservative.  Where many in the Republican camp part company with him is on matters of character (three wives, history of philandering, revolving door history, etc) while in and out of public life.  He's simply too erratic and personally suspect for true blue conservatives.  Forbes attacks him on his lack of meaningful private sector business experience, and on his exclusively insider political experience.  This critique is surely merited and will be hard for him to overcome.

Huntsman?

George Will is a Reagan conservative who to some, me among them, comes across as stilted and often pedantic.  However that may be, in this opinion article he articulates the very real problem many conservatives (me among them) have with the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination.  Romney is a Dewey-like candidate (actually he seems more like Hoover) who is not very likeable, and whose platform seems to be to merely micro-manage every aspect of existing government programs and bureaucracies -- a kind of big time efficiency expert. Gingrich is a loose canon,  a "bull in a china shop who carries his china shop around with him" with a propensity to find macro solutions for some problems that may not even exist, when in real time a little less government would do the trick.  What caused many conservatives to have severe reservations about Romney was his interview with Bret Baer of Fox News last week.  When questioned about his changes of policy prescriptions over the years Romney lashed out at Baer using the regal "we" when referring to Baer in his answers revealing a condescending attitude that is most disturbing.  In effect Romney was telling Baer that answering difficult questions about his changing positions on matters in the past is not important, that what is important is his prescriptions for problems facing the nation going forward.  He seems not to understand that conservatives want to know why he changed his positions in order to determine whether he's a garden variety malleable politician or a Reagan-like leader with real, understandable convictions and principles, like theirs.  Recalling the history of the '20's and the beginning of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was a putative conservative who in the end turned out to be the architect of the New Deal.  Since conservatives believe the growth of government during and since the New Deal is at the heart of our current problems, another Hoover is not their answer. If  Romney can't reasonably articulate the changes in his positions over the years, the fear in this quarter is he may be just another Hoover.

Why Gingrich?

It's pretty obvious that Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, have grave reservations about Mitt Romney, otherwise he would be well ahead of the pack at this time.  After all, Romney has been campaigning for this nomination for almost four years at this point, considering his run against McCain and his nonstop campaigning since?  Truth is many Republicans simply are not impressed with his record or his presentations of his qualifications. What's more they have doubts that he would hew to the conservative principles and is, in reality, a Big Government Republican in the mold of Rockefeller, McCain, Dole, Ford and all the other centrists of the past.  The grass roots Tea Party rebellion against the Obama Administration's huge overreach in healthcare and most other matters demonstrated how seriously these mainstream, largely Republican voters are about Big Government and its intrusion into individuals' lives.   Because of his actions as Governor of Massachusetts, these voters have great reservations about Romney's commitment to their Small Government philosophy.  In addition they seem also to be unsure of his oratorical skills  going up against those of Obama.  Gingrich, on the other hand, has a well documented conservative record in House -- 90% ACU voting record -- and is thought to be capable of burying Obama in the presidential debates.  His most serious negatives are a tendency to be somewhat unfocused and perhaps have too many solutions to all our many problems.  But, as things stand as of this moment,  Gingrich's strengths seem to be carrying the day an he is now the front runner.

OWS (Occupy Wall Street)

The movement called OWS (Occupy Wall Street) is a collection of unemployed (unemployable?) losers who are steadily gaining momentum in other parts of the country.  The way to measure the seriousness of this "movement" is to see what happens when the weather turns and the malcontents become uncomfortable.  In the meantime one has to speculate on why all of the sudden this "movement" sprung up.  Newt Gingrich is on record as suggesting this is the result of Obama's beating up on Wall Street since his poll numbers started cratering about a year ago.  This particular explanation makes sense at least from an historical standpoint.  Usually when unrest and discontent starts to get out of hand in totalitarian regimes, the dictator finds a bogey man to occupy the thoughts of the masses and deflect their anger against him.  Gingrich is right about this.  Obama approved the bailout of Wall Street and he willingly accepted (and accepts) big contributions from this quarter.  But he clearly decided that they make the most defenseless target to attack since they were bailed out, still pay themselves outsized bonuses, plus the work force is not unionized and lives infinitely better than the democrats core constituency. Easy envy target.  James Taranto here in the WSJ captures some of the essence of this strategy.  The biggest danger is that the "movement" spirals out of control and violence erupts, which of course the radical left would like and will probably do everything they can to abet.

ADDED:  This Surber post indicates the so-called demonstration has taken another turn, this time much for the worse.  Some investigations have turned up the information that this is the work of the swame WTO crowd who trashed Seattle a few years back, as well as a union connection and even a possible al-Qaeda one based on  intel provided by Andrew Breibert's website.  This is getting interesting since there are also links to the WH via the union activities.  Typically radicals either orchestrate and or take-over "movements" and turn them in the direction they want, so that "Protests" can evolve into opportunity to take down the existing government.  Those radicals are at work here.  Democrats supporting this stuff are definitely playing with fire that may in the end consume them if these various ties of this OWS crowd to known radicals prove to be the case.  Time will tell.

Newt Gingrich is toast

Gingrich's faux pas of dismissing Paul Ryan's healthcare reform plan has backfired and will cost him the opportunity of pursuing his presidential aspirations.  In some ways this is too bad because Gingrich does have many ideas, some good, some not so good, that deserve a hearing in the campaign, and he is a very good presenter and debater.  However here's another case of a career politician who has become enamored with the stage itself. In the end it appears Gingrich really wants to exercise power more than anything else and his attempt to undermine Ryan growing strength in the Republican Party by characterizing his budget plan as "radical" shows us this this reality.  What follows is a quote from a commenter to Jonah Goldberg's reprise of Gingrich's faux pas that seems to reflect the new reality expressed in the Tea Party movement.  The author of this comment, BTW,  appropriately signs in as Dagny Taggart:

"I used to be a huge Newt fan - years ago. But something has happened that has changed everything.

Two years ago, Americans recoiled in horror as extremely partisan Democrat majorities in the House and Senate rammed through multiple smelly, unwanted and unneeded bills that threw trillions down a rat-hole and imposed incredibly obnoxious laws on citizens and our free markets. And they did it while flipping the figurative bird to any Americans who questioned them. Never in the history of America has one party of Congress treated this country with such utter contempt.

Republicans think differently now. They will no longer tolerate trianguating RINOS "reaching across the aisle" to make bad policy with these people.

I am not sure if Newt understands this."