Palin - Bachmann! GOP 2012 Field

They're already talking GOP presidential field for 2012.  Here's my take...

Since any giddy follower can sing the praises of even the most failed politician (Look at how many still defend Obama), I thought I'd focus more on the negatives.  I'll start with unfinished business from the 2008 debacle...

FAILED CLASS OF 2008 - Don't go away mad, just go away

This failed class of 2008 has less than 5 minutes foreign policy experience between them, and their records are either thin or spotty.  What I wrote about this trio back in November 2008 still stands.

Palin entering the primaries will rend the party, because her loyalists cannot bear any criticism of her whatsoever.  And Huckabee and Romney are like matches and gunpowder.  The constant sniping, bitching and smearing their two camps engaged in produced John McCain and poisoned the waters.
  
Sarah Palin - She did great things in a sparsely populated state, but she needs to be a senator or cabinet member first.  The comparisons to Reagan are ill-informed.  Reagan was Screen Actor's Guild president for over 10 years, served two full terms as governor of America's largest state (and the world's 10th largest economy).  He had been studying, writing and speaking about serious issues from a conservative perspective for a full 20 years before he became president.

Mitt Romney - Romneycare.  If that's not enough, he's a political shape shifter (even more than most)

Mike Huckabee - Like Romney, a big government type.  He released a rapist-murderer who used this misplaced mercy to go rape and murder some more.  Huck needs to read Adam Smith, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."


The Short List - My Favorites
Here is a list of my favorites, each followed by a negative or knock against him.

Tim Pawlenty - Conservative governor from a blue state.  I like his style, but many hardcore types will call him a RINO because he made compromises

Mitch Daniels - He's short and balding.  He's also put Indiana on sound fiscal footing, has cabinet-level experience, and is a common sense conservative who lives his values.  Can substance overcome style?

Mike Pence - Mike Who?  A serious man for a serious time.  I think he's ready, but most of America doesn't know who he is.

Jim DeMint - He's a senator.  A conservative superstar, he has a lot of chips he could cash in on the way to winning the nomination.

Herman Cain - Herman who?  We've never had a president named Herman, but this man needs to be the first.  Former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and tea party hero, this is a no-nonsense, call it like it is conservative.

NOT YET
Marco Rubio - Our first Hispanic president*, but not in 2012.  If he runs now, he's just an Obama on the right.  He needs to get some foreign policy cred and show us what he's made of on the national scene.

Bobby Jindal - Our first Indian-American president*, but not in 2012.  He's brilliant, extremely accomplished, but he's too young and he need some foreign policy cred. 

Paul Ryan - Like Jindal, he's young, brilliant and knows how to break it down for us common folk

Chris Christie - He's only been governor two years, and the situation on the ground in New Jersey is still fluid.  He's a wonderful guy, doing great things, but we need to see if his efforts bear fruit.

David Petraeus - He's said he's not running and he'd have to leave the battlefield to do it.  I don't see it happening.

Jeb Bush - His name is Bush

* - Please excuse my very un-conservative descent into liberal identity politics!

NO WAY
Judd Gregg - Judd Who?  This is the Republican that almost joined Obama's cabinet.  Someone needs to tell Senator Gregg that East Coast country club republicanism is dead.  The Bushes drove the final nails in the coffin.

Gary Johnson - He smokes pot

Ron Paul - Too old.

Newt Gingrich - Poor old Newtie shows a little leg every four years, but nobody's buyin'.  He's yesterday's  news.  He flirted with the Clintons, he flirts with big government ideas, he adulterously flirted while his ex-wife was on her deathbed.  The left has permanently demonized him.  What has he done besides being Speaker of the House and doing a whole lotta talking?  I could go on, but you get the picture.   

John Bolton - He's intelligent, he's experienced, but he's too blunt and polarizing.  The left has demonized him.  Being a heroic UN-attacking rottweiler requires a different skill set than being president.

Bob McDonnell - Name recognition.  He's a conservative hero who contributed to rescuing Virginia from the blue column, but he just hasn't had the national exposure and I don't know what his foreign policy credentials are.

John Thune - He's a Senator.  What else has he done?

Rick Santorum - Great guy and conservative hero, but he couldn't even get reelected in his own state. 

Haley Barbour - He's a loquacious southerner.  They'll dig up some racist stuff on him and it'll be all over

Rick Perry - He's said he's not running, and he's also said he's hell-bent on riding with the governors in the states rights gunfight.

Jonah Goldberg is much better at this than I.  Go read his analysis, Sorting out the 2012 GOP Pack

Also check out Howard Kurtz's The GOP's 2012 Fantasies

Will the GOP Cover Freddie's Fannie?

Today the GOP Takes control of the House of Representatives, and Harry returns a shriveled man with a shrunken majority.  

Some conservatives have already begun attacking the GOP before they even get started.  Blogger buddy Andrew 33 over at Allied Liberty News, is preparing a boiling cauldron of tar and collecting burlap bags of feathers. 

I'm keeping my powder dry and I encourage others to give them some room.  Still, there are some disturbing rumblings...

Republicans are already backing off of earlier threats to dismantle Fannie and Freddie. These pie-in-the-sky programs that encourage irresponsible financial dealings have cost us $134 billion in the last two years alone.

Republicans cheered on Jeb Hensarling, Representative from Texas, as he crafted legislation last year to kill the ghastly twins:

"Of all the dumb regulation that caused our economic crisis, none was dumber than that which created the (Fannie and Freddie) monopolies," Mr. Hensarling said in March. (WSJ - GOP Shifts on Fannie, Freddie)

Alas, government largesse dies hard, and for some GOP statists, parting is such sweet sorrow…

A hasty end to the government's support of Fannie and Freddie would mean fewer Americans could get home loans, causing home sales and prices to drop even further and pushing taxpayers' cost for rescuing the mortgage giants even higher, said Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas), a former banker and housing developer who serves on the House Financial Services Committee.

"You'd cause Freddie and Fannie to have even larger losses than they'd already have," Mr. Neugebauer said.  (WSJ - GOP Shifts on Fannie, Freddie)

A Banker and a housing developer, eh? 
Don’t suppose that would have anything to do with how Rep. Neugebauer comes down on this, do you? He concedes that home prices are still too high, but he supports keeping them artificially propped up.  Spoken like a true crony crapitalist that is afraid of the free market.

He also reveals the truth that “fewer Americans would get home loans” as a result of ending this homebuyer-corporate welfare program. How is that bad? Too many people getting home loans is what got us into this mess. Stop Digging! Representative Neugebauer, Republican from Texas, is now officially part of the problem.

Next come the homebuilders, realtors, and mortgage lenders, hat in hand, begging a bankrupt government for special treatment...

"We don't believe that the private market — right now — is willing or able to provide the liquidity that's necessary to get us out of this," said Joe Stanton, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders. "To erode that support right now would be a disaster," said Vince Malta, a real estate agent in San Francisco and a vice president of the National Association of Realtors. (WSJ - GOP Shifts on Fannie, Freddie)

... So let’s keep the bubble inflated.

They are all wrong. 
If houses were being traded at market prices right now, and if only those who could establish financial credibility could buy them, the market would be on solid footing. It would be smaller and less active, but it would be financially sound. And that’s the problem for these crony crapitalists. The bankers, builders and realtors want turnover. Who cares if people can afford it or not? These industries that suckle at mama government’s ample teats won’t get stuck when irresponsible people get forclosed. Uncle Sam will pick up the tab! And they continue making their millions in transaction fees. This crap needs to stop now.

Like anything, Fannie and Freddie can be sold in the marketplace, maybe for a loss. At this point I don’t care. We stepped in dog doo and it’s time to scrape it off our shoe. Nothing will inject sanity back into the housing market like removing taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The First Cut is the Deepest

Ezra Klein criticizes the GOP's Pledge for America as being short on details, and it is.  But it's meant to be a manifesto more than a line-by-line laundry list.  Also, with the Democrats floundering, the GOP sure doesn't want to give them anything to grab on to.

Detroit News concludes that, yeah, there's nothing new in their message:  It's a much-needed back to basics.

"Oh yeah?  Wacha gonna cut?  Huh?  Huh?"  Shout the screaming lefties.  Obama, like all good liberal demagogues, slyly suggests that they want to kill old people and starve children.  It's lefty propaganda, but there is a grain of truth.

No Easy Cuts 
There are no easy cuts, so those of us who want to shrink government need to do some thinking.

The Left Way:  The Center for American Progress, a progressive organization, has taken their stab at balancing the budget.  The document, A Thousand Cuts, seems designed more to scare people off of the small government path, but at least it is a serious and sincere effort.

The Right Way:  Paul Ryans Roadmap.   It's a thing of beauty, and it's been scored by the CBO.  As a bonus, the website is attractive and easy to navigate.  Most important, the roadmap is not the end of the discussion.  Ryan himself portrays it as a starting point for a national dialogue, and Americans are ready for such as discussion.   

You can also go read the Pledge to America...  If you can find it.  Google it and every hare-brained commentary on it will show up ahead of the GOP's official site.  Then, when you finally find it, it's a damned pdf document that's 10 bajillion gigabytes and takes forever to load.   The Republicans, God bless 'em, are so inept and rolling stuff like this out.

Good RINO Hunting

Republicanism is not Conservatism
We all have our own ideologies.  When they broadly overlap with others we make common cause via a political movement or party.  Our two major political parties only imperfectly concord with ideology.  Rather, they are the two vessels, right and left, that carry candidates to victory or defeat.  They are the two big tents. 

Given this True or False question, the only right answer for a conservative is the GOP.

I think we criticize politicians too much for not matching our ideology perfectly, for not being pure.  Meanwhile, we fail to criticize them for their serial constitutional infidelities.

Scott Brown is a GOP hero for wrenching the "Ted Kennedy" seat from the liberals' grimy clutches, but he wouldn't play well in Texas.  The south has many fine conservative congressmen and senators who proudly put Christianity and family values first, but Christian credentials don't carry you too far here in the Mountain West. 

Congressmen and Senators Serve Their States
If you believe in federalism, where the federal government restricts itself to its constitutional duties and leaves the heavy lifting to state and local governments, you cannot argue that Meg Whitman is too liberal to be the GOP nominee for governor of California, or that Carly Fiorina is too liberal to be the GOP senate candidate from that same state.  Senators and congressmen serve their states, and their politics will reflect the sentiments of those who elect them. 

The ACU Ratings:  Who are the True Conservatives?
The American Conservative Union publishes the gold standard of conservative measurements, ranking every congressman and senator based upon how each voted. 

Barbra Boxer is a zero (in more ways than one), and constitutional conservative Jim DeMint is around 98%.  The much hated Lindsay Graham scored a perfect 100% in 2008.  I don't believe he should be banned from the club because he has strayed on the one issue of global warming.

RINO Safari
The lifetime scores of Senators Snow and Collins of Maine both hover around the low side of 50%, in a state where the two liberal Democrat congressmen score a 6% and 12%.  These good women are walking a political tightrope, but they're on our side (Dems have heavily courted them).  If they both were Democrats, Obama and Harry Reid would still have a a 61 vote supermajority in the Senate.   

It's time we cut fellow Republicans some slack
Yes, conservatives, you're Republicans.  Who else are you going to vote for?  Politics is about gaining power so you can implement your ideas.  You do that by winning elections, not by "making a statement" with your independent party that steals 8% of the vote and throws the election to the Democrat (Bill Clinton never got 50% of the vote thanks to third-partiers).

The primaries are the arena to fight it out.  Proof:  Marco Rubio is now beating squishy moderate Charlie Crist. 

We need to hold the feet to the fire of those we elect.  We must invade the GOP and insist it stand for constitutional conservatism.  We also need robust internal debate, but let's save our outraged cries of "RINO!" for the rare Scozzafava, and stop anathematizing each other. 

Do you want the power to make the changes our nation needs?  Or do you want the smug satisfaction of being a pure but powerless minority?

Politics is about Power and Money

Props to President Obama for going into the lions den

Congressional Republicans invited him to their confab, and instead of giving the perfunctory speech, he stayed and debated the entire Republican caucus.  The sincere conversation they had was fascinating and revealing.  I urge  you to go read the entire transcript.


Neither Side "Won"
I have seen some snippets and read the entire transcript.  It is far from the Obama triumph the yapping liberal lap dogs have portrayed it to be, but he is to be congratulated for standing in there and giving as good as he got.  His rhetoric is brilliant and he can think on his feet.  Get past they style, however, and there still is not much substance.  Regardless, I wish we had less Lardball Talking Point Ping Pong and more Roll Up Your Sleeves Free Wheeling Conversations like this.

Paul Ryan asks a pointed question about spending:

The spending bills that you've signed into law, the domestic discretionary spending has been increased by 84 percent. You now want to freeze spending at this elevated beginning next year. This means that total spending in your budget would grow at 3/100ths of 1 percent less than otherwise. I would simply submit that we could do more and start now.

The President Obfuscates by Shifting Blame:

I want to just push back a little bit on the underlying premise about us increasing spending by 84 percent.

The fact of the matter is, is that most of the increases in this year's budget, this past year's budget, were not as a consequence of policies that we initiated but instead were built in as a consequence of the automatic stabilizers that kick in because of this enormous recession.

Notice he doesn't take issue with the scarily large numbers; he implicitly accepts them.  He just denies it's his fault.  He went on to intone the standard Keynesian caution against cutting spending during a recession. 

What this is Really all About
Both parties use taxpayer funds to reward their constituencies.  The GOP generally does this in a ham handed way, viz. Bush Administration Treasury Chief Hank Paulson hands over hundreds of billions in rescue funds to Goldman Sachs and the company (AIG) whose collapse would have spelled Goldman's demise.  It is useful to note that Paulson was a Goldman Sachs man before he was a Bushman. 

Progressives take a more artful approach
By standing up whole governmental departments that are permanently infested with union types and liberal activists (Labor, Education, USDA, EPA), Democrats (modern-day progressives) have established a permanent money spigot from your wallet to their favored groups. Government unions, and anyone getting government funds, are a natural Democrat constituency, and that's the goal.  Those receiving government money are more inclined to view government budget cutters as stingy, sinful meanies. 

A Neat Trick:  Raise the Baseline
Obama and the democrats have built upon Bush's fiscal irresponsibility and ratcheted up the annual budget deficit baseline from around $500 billion to $1.4 trillion.  Remember when a newly-elected President Obama said it was time to come clean on the "real" budget deficit numbers? 

Both parties had been falsely keeping the numbers low by putting some spending "off budget."   This off-budget trick made things pretty on the outside and rotten on the inside, since this spending still added to the national debt.  Even I applauded this move by Obama.

But in the fog of budgetary war, Obama and congressional democrats yammered on about Bush's reckless spending, all the while cramming the budget full of goodies that reward liberal constituencies, creating a new baseline of $1.4 trillion.  Now, any future budget cutting talks start at that number, not the old one.  How crafty.

All government spending has a ratchet effect, meaning it never goes down.  So once you insert a spending line into the budget, you can't get rid of it or reduce it without a special dispensation from God Himself, and it automatically increases each year with everything else in the budget.

How Health Care Fits In
This is also why we keep hearing the uber libs shouting that Democrats should just ram this health care bill through and fix it later.  Issues like abortion, who gets free care and how it is paid for are all secondary. 

The main objective is to get the multi-hundred billion dollar bureaucratic superstructure in place, manned by 100,000 government union bureaucrats.  Once that is done and the money taps turned on, it would take a civil war to destroy this money wasting bureaucratic beast. 

And who better to sell it all than a post-racial, post-partisan smooth talker.  Clever, huh?

Go read the transcript