Presidential Candidates So Far...[UPDATED]

We are 18 months away and the list of candidates for President of United States keeps getting longer and longer. So to keep up, here is the list of declared and potentially declaring candidates as of today.

REPUBLICANS -
Publicly Declared -
Ben Carson
Ted Cruz
Carly Fiorina
Lindsey Graham
Mike Huckabee
George Pataki
Rand Paul
Rick Perry - [Just declared this AM]
Marco Rubio
Rick Santorum
Scott Walker

Undeclared Maybe:
Jeb Bush - [Will formally declare 6/11]
Chris Christie
Bobby Jindal
John Kasich
Donald Trump

2016.republican candidates.org website
More from GOP website who may have declared, but I have never heard about:
Skip Andrews
Michael Bickmeyer
Kerry Bowers
Dale Christensen
John Dummett, Jr.
Mark Everson
Chris Hill
Dennis Michael Lynch
Michael Petyo
Brian Russell

DEMOCRATS:
Publicly Declared-
Hillary Clinton
Lincoln Chaffee (Republican/Independant/Democrat)
Martin O'Malley
Bernie Sanders


Undeclared Maybe:
Joe Biden
Michael Bloomberg (Democrat/Republican/Independant)
Elizabeth Warren - suspended
Jim Webb

I realize that most of these people will drop off as the months progress, but we might as well learn about them while we can.

For some help, here is list from The Atlantic with some basic profiles for some of the more prominent candidates...

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No More Hillary!

Please let it end. Just let it end. Hillary announced this weekend that she’s running for the position of the first woman to make Obama look good, and frankly, I don’t care. I have Hillary fatigue. Ok, one more time...

Designated statistic oracle Nate Silver of the New York Something says that Hillary has a 50% of winning the presidency. I don’t buy it. I don’t think Hillary survives the primary. Why? Oh, let me count the ways:

(1) She’s fricken dull... and ugly. She is as exciting as getting a sweater for Christmas. She’s got no motivation to be president either. She seems tired.

(2) She’s awash in scandals, particularly scandals that resulted in her and Bill getting loaded with cash from corporate and foreign sources. This just won’t play well with the anti-rich crowd who staff the Democratic primary.

(3) She’s gaffe prone... and pissy... and a liar. Her people are incompetent too. When she launched this weekend, her website was apparently a mess of mistakes. Her book tour was a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth in public, she inserts her foot.

(4) She’s a corporate shill. Her leftist credentials are faked and the left has finally realized this. SNL keeps mocking the crap out of her. Leftist blogs are screaming to be rid of her in favor of a true believer.

(5) Her lack of friends is becoming acute, especially with so many of them publicly avoiding helping her now. Obama and John Kerry both refused to speak well of her this week, as did Mayor de Blasio of NYC. All those people are ready to jump ship to O’Malley at the first safe chance. Even her feminist friends in the publishing industry have stopped protecting her. Just this week, they let a book be published in which White House non-political staff gave their stories about their decades of service. Hillary was horribly presented as nearly psychotic, paranoid and just not a decent human being.

(6) Her record is nonexistent despite holding a number of jobs. And what little she is known for is things like being squeezed out of her duties at the State Department as Obama told jokes about her drunk texting him... or lying about her mistakes.

(7) The liberal MSM is starting to get a giant liberal woody for O’Malley. Once they start writing fantasy articles about him being the new JFK, Hillary is done... and they started that last month.

(8) Clinton fatigue. More people have it than chicken pox. Good God, there isn’t another political figure who bores me more at this point. Obama is fricken Batman and Darth Vader combined by comparison. I would rather read a book on the growth of mold colonies than listen to her speak. This isn’t even political (because I have no idea what her views really are... assuming she has any), she just doesn’t have enough personality to make me even the slightest bit interested in seeing her. All I know is that she’s like the promise of another Adam Sandler film... or a two day standardized test.

So can we please be done with her? Hillary, please spare us. Just go away.

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Cruz'n For a Bruiz'n

Ted Cruz has announced that he intends to seek the GOP nomination for President. Forget it. He’s finished. Here are my thoughts...

● What Does He Really Want?: It’s obvious to anyone who is the least bit impartial that Cruz cannot win the nomination or the general election. So why is he running? What does Cruz want?

In most instances, the answer to why a fringer runs for President is simple: they want attention. Some, like Tom Tancredo or “B-1” Bob Dornan, want their one issue discussed. Others, like Ralph Reed, are looking for name recognition, which they can then parlay into a fundraising empire which will make them rich. Others, like Fred Thompson run because their wives push them. So which is Cruz?

Well, as odd as this sounds, I think Cruz actually sees himself as President. I have no proof to back this up, but here is what I’ve seen. Cruz has run a classic presidential campaign since arriving in Washington:

● First, he has the classic insider background – Harvard grad, worked in Washington, worked on campaigns.

● Secondly, like Obama and others before him, he has scrupulously avoided creating a legislative agenda which can be used against him. If he were truly the partisan he claims, he would be lobbing legislative bombs like Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders.

● Third, he has followed the classic strategy of shoring up his flank first by pandering to the far-right fruitcakes who decide elections in the South. But even more importantly...

● Fourth, Cruz has played his followers for fools by very carefully caveating every... single... thing... he’s... said... over the past two years. Remember when he opposed immigration reform? Actually, he didn’t. He opposed the particular bill, but made it clear he supported reform. Ditto on every other issue. In doing this, he thinks he’s left himself room to now move to the center with the media being unable to prove that he has changed positions. This is a standard tactic.

What this tells me is that Cruz has been cynically building a record (and avoiding a record) so he can shape his own campaign as needed, while simultaneously shoring up the mouth breathers long before he has to pander to the center. This is not the strategy of a partisan, it is the strategy of a chameleon who genuinely thinks he can make it all the way to the White House. Essentially, he is the mirror image of Obama in a ten gallon hat. But he has problems...

● Cruz Has Miscalculated The “Base”: Despite Cruz apparently following the classic modern campaign plan for winning the election, Cruz has several problems. His first, is that he has miscalculated when it comes to “the base.”

Cruz’s strategy involves winning the self-described base before the primaries begin so he is free to run as a moderate on the national stage. This is something the Democrats excel at. What Cruz doesn’t understand, however, is how mentally ill the far right has become. What he doesn’t get is that they have become so obsessed with purity that they need constant reinforcement that their leader is just as obsessed as they are. That means that the minute he stops spewing the same nonsense they spew, they will begin to suspect something is wrong with him. And the moment he tries to sell himself as a moderate, they will turn on him as a betrayer. Cruz thinks they will accept a wink and nod and stay quiet as he tricks the public at large, but that is not who these people are. They want their leader to unapologetically foam at the mouth.

● Cruz Has Also Miscalculated The Public: Despite Cruz caveating everything, which he thinks will give him the ability to sell himself as a moderate, Cruz seems to have misunderstood his own reputation with the public. Cruz’s battles with the GOP, which the public already views as too extreme, have painted him as an extremist among extremists. And once the public has an image of you, it is virtually impossible to change that image.

This is true of GOP primary voters too. For a couple years now, polls have shown that only 40% of GOP voters have held a positive view of Cruz, even as other candidates have scored well into the 60% range. He can’t really undo that. That means he can't win the public to win the general election and he can't win enough primary voters to win the primaries... even assuming the base doesn't turn on him.

Worsening his problem, his supporters are clustered in the evangelical states. Apart from the South and Iowa, Cruz is likely to find that he has negligible support. That means that all Bush needs to do is hang on for the Northeast and the West Coast and he will crush Cruz with insurmountable numbers.

● Cruz Faces Money Problems: Finally, Cruz has so turned off the GOP money men that he will never get the funding he needs to organize and run a genuine campaign. This will hurt him after the first couple primaries.

As I see it, I actually do think Cruz thinks he can win this. He thinks he owns “the base” at this point and that he can now tack left to win the public. He will run as an outsider with Washington experience, but common sense. And he thinks this will let him hold the base while winning over enough moderates to cruise (pun intended) to the White House. I think he’s wrong on all counts though.

Am I right? Thoughts?

BTW, the media has written their first article calling O’Malley “the new JFK.” Put a fork in Hillary, she’s done.

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SNL Torpedoes Hillary

I’ve said several times before that Hillary Clinton is in trouble. I honestly do believe she will implode before her coronation and someone on the left will sneak in to grab the nomination. In fact, this email scandal is starting to look like it might have sunk her boat, especially after the torpedoing Saturday Night Live gave her. What’s more, the left may have found their replacement.

By now you know the email scandal we’re talking about. We’ve discussed it before here==> LINK. At the time, I pointed out that there is a very damning aspect to this scandal, but that no one is talking about it yet. And I suggested that the rest of the scandal wasn’t strong enough to bring down Hillary unless the left wanted to use this to bring her down. That seems to be happening slowly. Indeed, here are some points to consider:

● The scandal has been reported upon by everyone in the MSM and it remains front page news today... and they're using ugly photos of her (the cartoon above is from Politico, not Breitbart). Ergo, it has legs. Even Democrats are calling on her to release all of these emails. Note what Diane Feinstein said, for example: "I think she needs to step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is. From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her."

● Clinton’s attempts to blame Bush were actually deflected by the media, as were her claims that this didn’t violate any law or policy.

● More damaging than either above, the MSM has been reporting continuously on the lack of Democrats coming forward to defend Clinton. Not only does this keep the story alive, but it implies wrongdoing of a degree that Clinton’s friends have abandoned her.

● There seems to be a renewed focus on Bill’s scandals suddenly, which gives Hillary the air of corruption.

● The number of articles from the left suggesting that Hillary should not be their choice has spiked.

All of these things are bad for Hillary, but they are survivable... at least, they should be in normal circumstances, but Hillary faces two specific problems: (1) this scandal seems to be morphing into some sort of personal dislike for Hillary and (2) they seem to have found a replacement.

The personal dislike aspect really hit hard this weekend with Saturday Night Live. They opened by attacking Hillary for the email scandal. Only the attack wasn’t so much about the emails as it was about her personality. Indeed, the skit opened with Hillary failing immediately in her attempt to appear to be relatable: “I’m speaking to you... as a relatable woman on a couch.” It then presents her as power mad, having wanted to be the President since she was born: “I was born 67 years ago and I have been planning on being president ever since.”

“Hillary” then delves into the topics of the emails to show us that she isn’t “hiding scandalous or incriminating emails.” For example, a friend in one email asks if she wants to see the new Bradley Cooper movie. “Hillary” then reads her response, which was: “I want to see myself as President of the United States of America.” She then devastatingly says to the audience, “See? Just fun woman talk.”

Why is this devastating? Because it tells the audience that Hillary is WAY out of touch with real people. This is the same kind of personality attack that finally made people see Al Gore as a robot, Sarah Palin as an idiot, and Gerald Ford as a klutz. This is the kind of thing that becomes fact and cements people’s view of you as stiff, obsessed, and something they do not like. And it only gets worse.

“Hillary” decides to share a “sexy email” she sent to Bill Clinton on their anniversary. Check this out:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Congratulations on your continued marital success. I would like to schedule a sit-down at your earliest convenience.

Regards,
The Office of Hillary Clinton

D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G!!! Anyone who saw this, and that will be millions of middle of the road voters, will now see Hillary as a sexless, power-mad robot who only wants to be president and has no social life whatsoever. That’s a horrible personality profile to be saddled with. In films, that makes you the pathetic middle manager, the out-of-touch principal, or the rotten bureaucrat. None of those are personalities people will ever vote to put into power. But this is how the left is now portraying Hillary. That is horrible for her, and it’s likely only going to gain steam.

None of this would matter though, if it weren’t for the fact the left may have found a replacement. After spending years being frustrated trying to woo Elisabeth “Fake Indian” Warren to no avail, they have found their hero: Martin O’Malley, Governor of Maryland.

O’Malley has recently let it be known that he’s running, and the response has been tremendous. Unlike Hillary, who never really earned anything she’s gotten politically, O’Malley got elected Governor of Maryland in 2006 and has held the job since. Before that, he was the Mayor of Baltimore, a black city, from 1999 to 2007 and a member of its city council since 1991. As governor, in 2011, he signed a bill making illegal aliens eligible for in-state college tuition. In 2012, he legalized gay marriage in Maryland, a law which was later upheld by voter referendum. In 2013, he repealed capital punishment in Maryland. These are hard-left stances Hillary has only paid lip service to. But they aren’t crazy enough that he comes across as a whacko. He also has the “professional looking white male” thing which the Democrats rely on to attract white trash voters.

Hillary, by comparison, is an elitist, sexless, sour old woman who reeks of corruption and has a long history as a tool of Big Business. She has never taken a controversial stance until it was no longer controversial, and even then she hedges half a dozen ways. She has no charisma, is gaffe prone, isn't telegenic or energetic... or particularly competent.

This is bad for Hillary.

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Could This New Scandal Kill Hillary 2016?

Another day, another Clinton scandal. No, not the shadow of the blue dress in Billy Boy's official portrait. This time it's Hillary, and the scandal is that she admitted using a commercial e-mail service for all of her e-mails when she served as Obama's Secretary of State. This is actually an important issue, but we'll see if it sticks. Let's discuss.

The scandal at issue is simple. Federal law requires that federal employees use federal e-mail services when they are on the job. Hillary did not. She used a commercial service.

Why does this matter? Well, Federal law requires this to allow the government to control the content of all e-mails these employees send. In other words, the government wants to be able to monitor their communications and take the appropriate action in the event of some violation of personnel policy. Moreover, the government wants to be able to archive these communications so they can be produced in response to things like FIOA requests or Congressional subpoenas. Hillary's use of a private e-mail even for official communications and communications with other employees violated this law and frustrated these purposes. In fact, it now turns out that she destroyed a great many e-mails that should have been available for Congressional investigation and would have been if she had followed the law.

At this point, that is the only issue people are discussing regarding this scandal. Unfortunately, this makes the issue seem technical and nitpicky, meaning the scandal should have no legs.

But there is a more important reason the federal government requires employees to use government systems, and that reason actually does make this a genuine scandal... if anyone figures it out: security. Every single e-mail Hillary sent over the commercial site she used was likely monitored in some form by the provider, e.g. Google, and could very, very easily have been hacked by anyone from terrorists to enemy governments to journalists. Think about that!

Hillary has admitted that she used this commercial account exclusively and that she used it for any and all internal discussions with State Department and Obama Administration people. That means that e-mails about the movement of ambassadors, changes in security policies, the sending in of military units to defend embassies, the identities of intelligence personnel, and even things like Hillary's opinions on military actions all likely went through this easily hacked, commercially-monitored site.

Still don't see the scandal? Imagine if a group of special ops guys got killed because ISIS read about the upcoming attack in Hillary's hacked e-mail, or if Google shared some data on trade negotiations with Japan to buy a few favors from China for their operations in China. See the problem now?

What I find interesting about this scandal is that the MSM seems interested in pounding Hillary on the first issue, but won't mention the second issue at all. It's like they want to wound her, but not destroy her. Generally, scandals have no legs unless they are very visceral for the public or the powers that be have decided to eliminate the person and then use the scandal as their weapon. The first part of this alone should have no legs. Yet, the MSM seems to be jumping all over that. The second part would be visceral if it got out, but the MSM has completely refused to discuss it. I'm wondering if the plan isn't to encourage her to drop out now with the threat of finally starting to take her down for her propensity to engage in scandalous behavior, but not actually wounder her... just in case. Not sure.

Thoughts?

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Mike Huckabee And the Gay Shrimp

For those who missed it, Mike Huckabee has been busy lately trying to get his name back in the news for a 2016 run. He seems to have decided that the one issue that might help him pull this off is gay marriage. For the most part, his comments are the usual stuff. Today, however, he said something interesting. Indeed, buried among a dozen or so comments about gay marriage bring about the end of the world, Huckabee said that forcing Christians to accept gay marriage is the same thing as “forcing Jews to eat shrimp.” Really?

This quote more than any other exposes Huckabee’s view of Christianity and it’s an aggressive view I really can’t support. Indeed, let's consider if these really are comparable things. By forcing a Jew to eat a shrimp, you are actively forcing that individual to engage in an activity that violates the dictates of their religion. Huckabee believes that imposing gay marriage into the law would be the exact same thing to Christians. But would it?

Well, no.

In Huckabee’s example, the Jewish individual is forced to engage in conduct they believe violates their religion. Nothing similar happens with gay marriage, however because no one is forced to marry someone of the same sex against their will. Indeed, no one is forced to engage in any conduct that violates their beliefs. The closest you can come is that the Christian individual will be forced to tolerate their neighbors engaging in behavior they consider to violate their religion. But that is truly, fundamentally different from being forced to actively engage in conduct violating your beliefs.... unless you (like Mike apparently) believe that Christianity requires one to control the behavior of others. That’s simply false, however. If you read the words of Jesus, as Mike apparently hasn’t, his teaching are packed with example after example where Jesus admonishes Christians to worry about themselves, and not their brothers or neighbors. There are even admonitions against politicking, though I’ll save that for another day.

Now, you could argue, I suppose, that the shrimp comparison works for those who are required to provide services to these gay people. But again, that seems an aggressive view of the reach of Christianity. Indeed, once again, the Christian isn’t forced to engage in the activity, they are simply prevented from discriminating in the providing of services to the public between people the Christian views as complaint with their views and others who are not. But this is just another form of the first point, and is no more valid.

The closest I can come to finding merit in Huckabee’s comparison is if you assume that by letting the government endorse gay marriage, the Christian is forced in some manner to support the practice through their tax dollars. I have more sympathy for this argument, except there still is lacking some direct link. The government spends so much on so many disagreeable things and the taxpayer pays so little toward this vast budget that the idea of “contributing” to any particular government spending is basically theoretical at best. In other words, my dollar will be spread over so many expensive causes that my contribution to any one thing is negligible. Moreover, Jesus dispelled this argument very quickly with his “render unto Caesar” quote, which makes it clear that Christians must obey the law and cannot be held morally responsible for acts done by the government in their name because they have no power to shape such acts.

Obviously, this whole issue gets into hair splitting. But what fascinated me about the quote was the sense I got from Huckabee that, in his world, Christians have a right to impose their will on others and being denied that right is the same as being forced to engage in the activity itself. If I’m reading Huckabee correctly here, then his view of Christianity is troublesome.

Thoughts?

P.S. Up yours Tom Brady.

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My Thoughts On Romney's "Run"

For a few weeks now, the conventional wisdom has been that Mitt Romney is running for the 2016 nomination. Not surprisingly, that raises a huge number of thoughts in my mind. Here goes...

● He’s Not Actually Running: My first thought upon hearing the news was that he’s not actually running. His wife seemed surprised by the idea and made it clear she won’t agree to another run; and I don’t see her changing her mind, not after the very firm stance she took. Romney will not ruin his marriage over this fool’s errand.

Moreover, Romney hasn’t done any of the intense effort it takes to be a viable candidate, e.g. fundraising, speeches, creating an agenda, door to door greetings, assembling of local, statewide and national teams, etc. With his prior Boy-Scout-like preparation efforts, this screams out that he’s not running.

“Ah hah! But don’t you see, Andrew?!!” scream the ideologues. “That’s the clever part! This is his shot at vengeance... he doesn’t care if he wins so long as he stops the Bush family from running again.”

//shakes head.

Look, I know the conventional wisdom storyline (Fox presented it all weekend): obsessively hating the Bush family, Romney decides to jump into the race to throw the election to someone other than Bush! Huzza! And with everyone knowing that Romney is obsessed and only cares about stopping Bush, the theory continues that we can dismiss things like his lack of a legitimate organization. Indeed, to the twisted contrary, his lack of preparation becomes self-serving proof of his obsession and his plan to run.

But that’s garbage.

First, this doesn’t fit his personality. Romney is not a guy who acts emotionally, and he lacks the Machiavellian instincts that would let him try to harm another person. Nor has there ever been any indication of any sort of obsession in his personality.

Secondly, to make even a fake run will require something like $100 million. There is no evidence anywhere that Romney would be willing to spend that kind of money just to tweak the son of someone he dislikes.

Third, even a fake run requires basic campaigning, which means subjecting Romney and his family to a death-march level of travel, appearances, meetings, speeches, dinners, etc. This could destroy his family. Would he do that just to tweak some guy?

Forget it. The onlyTHE ONLY reason Romney would run would be that he honestly thinks he can win, and he knows that’s not happening. Why? Read on.

● America Hates Losers: With America’s obsession with winners, Romney has no chance. Basically, when you fight in some sort of head to head competition, America judges you on the outcome. Win and you can do no wrong so long as you keep winning. But lose and you are shunned and pushed aside for the next best thing. Indeed, ask the Super Bowl losers, each of whom are forgotten, having been dismissed as the biggest loser of the year, even if they dominated the league until a last second dramatic loss in the Super Bowl itself. This is no different.

When politicians lose the big one, they are finished. They aren’t given a second shot at the nomination. They may get a cushy job on Crossfire or they may become respected elder statesmen and are slowly ushered off to pasture, but no one on their side wants to fight the powerful American impulse to write them off as losers. Why pick a candidate who faces such an uphill struggle before even saying a word? That’s just not smart.

● Why Else Would Romney “Run”: So if Romney isn’t running, what is he doing? He could just be trying to raise his status again now that the election is upon us. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all followed by a surprise book. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he’s just messing with the media.

● Finally, Would I Support Romney?: Absolutely, but there are caveats here. Despite my initial misgivings about Romney, it soon struck me that he could very possibly be the genuine Reagan II. His lose was a true lose to the country and the cause of conservatism. So I would wholeheartedly support getting him into the White House. That said, however, being a prior loser is just such a huge burden to overcome that I simply don’t think he can win. So, to me, it makes no sense to back him.

Thoughts?

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Bush Will Win The Nomination

In 2008, John McCain won the Republican nomination handily. I was shocked. How could this be? “The base” hates McCain because he opposes everything they stand for and he’s disloyal; indeed, he’s one of the few to whom the label RINO actually applies. Even worse, he’s unstable. Yet, he won. How? Well, I spent a good deal of time trying to figure that out. What I learned was shocking, and it tells me that Bush has already won our nomination.

Let’s start with McCain. How did he do it? Well, there were many “conventional wisdom” possibilities. Chief among these was the idea that the party simply prefers old guys “whose turn it is.” But conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. It tends to mistake correlation for causation. In fact, even worse, what it often tags as THE “cause” is more typically actually caused by the truth the conventional wisdom has missed.

This is like the misleading “running yards” indicator in the NFL. It has been observed that teams that run for more yards win more games in the NFL. Hence conventional wisdom says that having a solid running game causes teams to win. The reality, however, is that the teams with the most running yards tend to get those running yards in the fourth quarter at a point where they are way ahead and simply want to eat up the clock. Thus, in reality, being a winning team causes teams to run more, which gives them higher running averages. Ergo, the conventional wisdom is entirely backwards: winning causes teams to get more running yards, running yards do not cause wins.

This was the case with the “next old guy in line” theory. These guys (McCain, Dole, etc.) didn’t win because the party felt they were owed the nomination because of their seniority, they won because their experience taught them what they needed to do to win, something the young guys hadn’t learned yet. Thus, the conventional wisdom took a correlation (their seniority) and wrongly called it the “cause” of their victory, even though the real cause was something completely different but which correlated to their experience.

So how did McCain win? McCain won the nomination in 2005 and 2006. He did it by going to every single state in the union and campaigning for every Republican he could find at the local, state and national levels. He gave money and advice. He gave endorsements. He held fundraisers. He even donated to guys who were unopposed. And in so doing, he won the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the most important, most connected, and most respected Republicans in every single state.

When the primaries began, these people returned the favor. They endorsed him... much to the shock of conservatives everywhere: “Why are these real conservatives endorsing HIM?!!” Many also helped organize his campaign in their states or even ran the campaign for him. This meant they used their own networks/contacts to help him. They even fundraised for him. The result was that his campaign became a juggernaut in state after state. And while talk radio toyed in 2007 and 2008 with choosing which “real” conservative they would back, they totally failed to notice what McCain had done and that he was jumping to insurmountable leads everywhere. They didn’t realize the race was over before it even began, it was just a matter of waiting for the votes to confirm it.

There was one more key aspect to his victory too, which I never realized until the recent talk radio civil war: the “base” that hates McCain and which make it “impossible” for guys like him to win are only about 20% of the party. Another 20% could be considered swing conservatives, who vacillate between wanting to win and making ideological statements. And the other 60% of GOP voters are much more moderate and prefer competence and a strong resume to ideological purity. That means the idea that the base will reject moderates as talk radio claims is simply wrong.

Enter Jeb Bush. For the record, I hate dynasties (it’s un-American) and I loath the idea of voting for another Bush. His family has all but destroyed conservatism twice now. G.W. stopped the Reagan revolution cold by ceding the moral high ground to the left by repeatedly characterizing Reaganism as something cold, uncaring, harsh, destructive and in need of being replaced by something kinder and gentler. He also never once defended Reagan against a campaign of slanders from the left. Moreover, he blurred Reagan’s common sense, middle class-ism with the New World Order of international governance, and he called that conservatism. The end result was the total halting of the Reagan revolution and the handing to the Democrats of a chance to become the permanent majority party. Only Hillarycare saved our butts.

W was a million times worse. He was sold to us as “don’t worry, he’s not like his old man... conservatives have nothing to fear... he’s one of you!” But right away, his administration reeked of corruption and robber baronism, which he falsely claimed was “pro-business conservatism.” His economic policy was disastrous Keynesian crap, which he falsely claimed was “free market conservatism.” He did stunningly liberal things, like create new Medicare benefits, which he called conservatism with a heart... again suggesting that conservatism is somehow immoral, cold and harsh. He totally embraced nation building, got caught lying to get us into a war with Iraq -- which let the left equate conservatism with war mongering. Add to that torture and his attempt to strip the Gitmo detainees of guaranteed human rights. He won the war itself (at first) but proved utterly incompetent in managing the peace, which resulted in thousands of lives and trillions of dollars lost. Katrina incompetence. The financial crisis. Wall Street bailout. Etc.

Each of these things destroyed Bush’s reputation with the public, especially as he never fought back, no matter how bad the political damage. Even worse, because he hid behind conservatism like a cloak or shield, conservatism became tarred with his sins even though he never once acted like a conservative. Consequently, by the time he limped away from office, conservatism was all but dead in America. The only thing that saved conservatism was Obamacare. Without Obama’s horrible presidency, the US would have become center-left akin to Germany or modern Britain.

So along comes Jeb. Jeb was an OK governor of Florida, though he proved not to be very conservative. Since leaving office, he has continuously criticized the GOP and conservatism. Yet, we are told not to worry because this Bush isn’t like the prior two. All I can think is, “Fool me twice, shame on me... fool me three times, WTF is my problem?”

In any event though, none of that matters. The race is over and Bush has won. Consider this...

The right is disorganized. Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson and a number of lesser figures all want to be the talk radio champion. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, and a few others are trying to win both the talk radio right and the more moderate mainstream right. This means that fringe 20% and the swing 20% are scattered among many potential candidates. The moderates are not.

Running against this collection of dwarves was Chris Christie. Unlike the others, Christie positioned himself as a moderate who could attract moderate and even Democratic votes. This makes him appeal to the 60% of moderates and some of the 20% of swing conservatives. Only, Christie is too bombastic, and has too many flaws. Bush does not. By entering the race, Bush automatically wipes out Christie and takes that 60%-80% support.

Further, so far, the dwarves have only played around with the idea of running. They’ve given speeches at various gatherings. They’ve tried to stake out some issue(s) that they think will set them apart, and they’ve pandered to the talk radio hosts. A few have sought out donors, but nothing on a grand scale. In fact, there seems to be this idea that they should do nothing until after the 2014 mid-term elections. Only Rick Perry and Rand Paul seem to be doing more.

Bush, by comparison, has spent the past few years following McCain’s lead. He has quietly helped leading Republicans everywhere he could. He spent his time distancing himself from the nasty conduct of the fringe right in recent years, and he’s sold himself to party insiders as Christie without the flaws. He’s also built a massive donor base – something Rush ignorantly pooh-poohed the other day. In fact, Rush bizarrely warped these people into the enemy of conservatism by describing Bush’s appeal to them as being his ability to “win the party nomination without owing anything to the tea party. Their wildest dream is to render the tea party conservatives an irrelevant factor.”

The result of this is that Bush has essentially sealed up the “moderate” vote which Romney proved was around 60% of GOP primary voters. He’s also got enough promises of endorsements and the such to make sure this support remains firm throughout. He’s collected enough money and promises of money to be able to stay in the race until the end no matter how things start – this means he can survive the early primaries, which are geared toward the fringe, until he can sweep states like New York and California. And he’s done all of this without talk radio realizing what he’s done, which means they will be fighting the wrong battle, i.e. they think the battle has yet to begin when in reality the end game is playing out now.

Thoughts?

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Idiocy Repeated Is Still Idiocy

Stop me if you heard this before, but Hillary just said, “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses [sic] create jobs.” I guess she got a hold of Obama’s “you didn’t make that” playbook. Morons.

Before we take Hillary’s idiocy apart, consider the following facts: there are 140 million jobs in the US. Of those, 120 million were created by private sector firms. The other 20 million are government jobs, which only exist because of funding obtained from taxing the other 120 million employees and the businesses that employ them.

Businesses in the United States invented almost everything you touch or use every single day. Sometimes, the government got the ball rolling, like with the internet, but their invention languished until the public got involved when private firms realized they could make a buck improving the internet. Even things the government “built,” like the nation’s highways, were actually built by private contractors. Heck, there were more private contractors making sure the military could function in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were soldiers.

So at best, Hillary’s statement is backwards: “Don’t let anyone tell you the government is capable of creating jobs.” But she didn’t say that because she’s an idiot. Instead, she said the same moronic thing Obama did. She said that the only people who can create jobs are the ones who actually create jobs without the help/aid of the private sector. She forgot (or ignored the fact) that the private sector is the group that responds to consumers, which is the primary reason for jobs to exist. She forgot (or ignored the fact) that without being able to skim private sector money, there would be no government. Even the communists depended on taxes taken from capitalists to keep their sclerotic system running.

Hillary went further too. First, she wrongly equated business with “trickle-down economics.” The two are not the same. Moreover, she said of “trick-down economics” that “That has been tried and failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.” Again, she’s ignorant at best. Reagan’s economy was the best the US has had in a hundred years. Her own husband presided over a second great economic period which also was based on the same trickle-down economics she now claims “failed rather spectacularly.” In fact, all of our best economic periods have involved the principles of “trickle-down economics,” and our worst have been the result of liberal economic meddling away from these so-called trickle-down principles. Obama and Carter are the worst for a reason: their passion for big government... LBJ didn’t send us into a generational economic malaise by accident, it was his passion for big government. FDR never did manage to dig us out of depression without all of our competitors literally being put to ruins; his efforts to force the economy out of depression with big government failed year after year.

Hillary either doesn't know this or is intentionally ignoring it. Either way, she's an idiot.

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The S.S. Hillary Takes On More Water

I’ve always had my doubts about Hillary Clinton. Time after time, whenever she grabbed some power for herself, she ended up falling flat on her face. From Hillarycare handing the Republicans the House, to the public exposure of her farce of a marriage, to her campaign’s utter collapse in 2008, to her incredibly shrinking stature as Secretary of State, she’s failed at everything she’s ever done. Now she has a book and is planning to run in 2016, but things are going poorly already. Consider this...

● Not So Inevitable: Hillary has long been considered the inevitable nominee for the Democrats, but I pointed out back in May, the left has been pushing back against Hillary being “inevitable.” The result is that a nasty groundswell of opposition to her is arising on the left... an opposition she is not equipped to handle.

● Foot In Mouth Disease: Hillary has major foot in mouth disease. Last Friday, she was giving an interview in which she said that she’s “totally done” curbing her speech for political reasons and finds her new perspective “liberating.” Actually, she was more wishy-washy about it. She said, “Maybe I’m trying to model that, I don’t know, but that’s how it feels to me, and it feels a little bit liberating, to be honest.”

This is not a smart quote. First, it makes it sound like she hasn’t been telling the truth in the past for political reasons. In other words, if she’s only feeling free to speak her mind honestly now, and she has only stopped curbing her speech now, then clearly she’s been withholding anything that doesn’t play well politically. Should we trust her?

Further, she had really bad timing in saying this as the news of the last week is her getting snippy with reporters who tried to question her about her “evolving” views on gay marriage, i.e. she's still being squirrely for political reasons. Indeed, when she was being interviewed by NPR Radio, the host (Terry Gross) asked her why she changed her position on supporting gay marriage. Hillary tried to evade the question at first, but he asked again. For seven minutes, Hillary couldn't provide a clear answer. Finally, she threw a fit and accused Gross of trying to make her look bad. This exposed Hillary as (1) not someone who is capable of dealing with an unfriendly audience, (2) someone who is uncomfortable explaining her prior "wrong" views, and (3) a liar.

But this is hardly the first instance of foot in mouth disease of late. Just as bad, in her book, Hillary claims that she and Bill left the White House “dead broke” and that they “struggled” to gather enough money to afford a mortgage and to pay for Chelsea’s college. She said this to justify the obscene fees Bill was getting for speaking engagements and otherwise selling his influence. But this is obviously false and the MSM quickly called Hillary on it, attacking her for insulting people who really are broke or live paycheck to paycheck. Hillary immediately backtracked but sputtered in finding a decent escape. Not only did she look out of touch with the common man, but she looked like someone who wanted to present herself as a victim when it was obvious she was not.

All of this has coincided with her poll numbers crashing.

● Tainted Legacy: Now we have the Iraq issue. Iraq has always been a major problem for Hillary. To prove she had balls, she was all gung-ho for the war. When the left started whining about it, however, she claimed to have been an opponent, something that didn’t work for her. After Obama took over, Hillary took over as Secretary of State and became somewhat responsible for anything foreign policy related. That led to Benghazi, which continues to hang around her neck as far as wonks are concerned (the public doesn’t care). Now the entire Obama team looks bad for recommending a pull out of Iraq and chest thumping that something like what is going on could never happen. This includes Hillary.

Rather than avoid this debate, as she should have, Hillary chose Sunday to try to lay the blame for all of this on President Maliki, who may yet be needed as an ally if Obama chooses to do anything. In essence, she got out ahead of Obama’s foreign policy in an effort to shift the blame away from her decisions. I suspect this will blowback on her when Obama starts looking for others to blame. He is, after all, no friend of Hillary’s. Moreover, I’m already seeing articles suggesting that Joe Biden was the only one in the administration who grasped the danger. Again, that’s not good for Hillary.

● Rape Rape Ha ha ha!: Now there's a video someone has found of an interview Hillary gave in the 1970s in which she discusses defending a man accused of raping a 12 year old girl. That's bad enough, but it gets worse. During the interview, Hillary suggests that she knew the man was guilty, but she found a technical mistake in the prosecution's case and got the guy a great deal (one year... reduced to two months). Even worse, she laughs when she suggests that she knew he was guilty, but that she still had him pass a polygraph. This doesn't play well for someone claiming to be a champion of women and children and her laughing about this could be a campaign killing commercial.

● WTH? Finally, we have this. This is what Chelsea wore to a public event the other day:

Yikes. Frankly, this MUST reflect poorly on her mother. Drag a $10 bill through a trailer park indeed.

Obviously, none of this is fatal and it will most likely only be seen by ideologues. The problem here really is what this suggests. It suggests a Hillary with a very poor track record she needs to run away from, but that she simultaneously lacks the skill to do any running. Instead, she gets pissy and complains about being ambushed by friendly journalists. It also suggests that the left is likely to put up a strong fight to stop her. None of that is good for her.

Thoughts?

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Analyzing A Drudge Poll

The Drudge Report is an interesting site. Drudge picks and chooses his headlines carefully to feed an alarmist worldview. He loves to blow up isolated incidents into themes. His headlines are often inaccurate, sometimes to the point of being exactly backwards of reality. And yet, he’s become the trusted source of news for a good many conservatives and fringers. Indeed, he’s pretty much become the sole research tool for most talk radio hosts. Anyway, he just did a poll and it had some interesting results.

The poll in question asked his readers to pick their current Republican candidate for 2016. Here are the results in order:

RAND PAUL ... 30.75% ... (67,958 votes)
TED CRUZ ... 28.52% ... (63,030 votes)
Other ... 6.91% ... (15,271 votes)
JEB BUSH ... 6.3% ... (13,922 votes)
SARAH PALIN ... 5.21% ... (11,507 votes)
CHRIS CHRISTIE ... 4.84% ... (10,706 votes)
RICK PERRY ... 4.4% ... (9,715 votes)
MIKE HUCKABEE ... 3.74% ... (8,254 votes)
PAUL RYAN ... 3.61% ... (7,974 votes)
BOBBY JINDAL ... 2.96% ... (6,538 votes)
DONALD TRUMP ... 1.86% ... (4,106 votes)
RICK SANTORUM ... 0.9% ... (1,995 votes)

There is much to consider here.

First, this poll reminds us that Drudge is about ratings, not serious politics. We can see this in the choices he offers. Notice that he’s excluded Marco Rubio, who keeps coming up as the front-runner in more scientific polls. He’s also excluded Scott Walker, who has a growing network of supporters. What this suggests is that Drudge, like the rest of the fringe, sees Rubio as finished because he offended them with “Amnesty.” The fact that more than 60% of Republicans support it, has never appeared on Drudge’s pages and doesn't seem to enter his thinking. His dismissal of Scott Walker is more curious, but is likely because Walker doesn’t make Drudge headlines. So Drudge excludes two top tier candidates, yet he includes professional clown Donald Trump and Reality TV queen Sarah Palin. What does that say about Drudge’s worldview? That he’s not serious.

Secondly, this tells us that Drudge’s audience is what people suspect – rather far right. Current Tea Party favorites Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin together took 65% of the vote. Establishment candidates Bush and Christie totaled only 12%. By comparison, the Drudge Wing of the party represents less than 20% of the Republican Party in other polls. So Drudge's audience is the inverse of reality.

Third, Rick Santorum is toast. The Republicans have an annoying tradition of handing the nomination to the second place runner in the prior primary season, but clearly that won’t be happening here. Santorum ran second last time, but can’t even get half of Trump’s score and doesn’t even score within the margin of error. In fact, Drudge’s audience is overwhelming made up of the people who voted for Santorum in the 2012 primary and yet they are showing him no love now.

Fourth, Rick Perry’s efforts are not paying off at this time. For many months now, Perry has been doing his best to court conservatives. Yet, he can’t even muster 5% among the very people who would form his base.

Fifth, the bloom is fading on the Cruz rose. I’ve actually seen this coming for a while now. Cruz lost support when he pushed the shutdown and then admitted he had no plan to turn that into a victory. That was when non-fringe conservatives started to abandon him. When they turned on him, he started getting ugly press. Then he made the mistake of hypocritically disavowing the shutdown, of launching random criticism, of engaging in an obsessive war against Mitch McConnell and of flip flopping on John Cornyn. All of this has actually caused some supporters of his that I know to call him “a nut job.” His loss of strength is reflected in this poll as well as he’s down to 29% support among an audience that should be his base. Six months ago, he was closer to 40% support.

Sixth, the slight preference for Bush over Christie is interesting. This fits something I’m sensing, but don’t have real evidence for yet. Right now, Christie seems to be the establishment candidate, and by extension, the nominee. But Bush’s name keeps popping up as a better choice for the establishment as a means of maximizing conservative support without choosing a conservative candidate. If I had to put money on it right now, I would bet that our ticket will be Jeb Bush for President and Rand Paul for Vice President... and I will become a terrorist. I guess we’ll see.

Thoughts?

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Ted Cruz's Demise Part Deux

So he is a RINO traitor after all! LOL! Grab some popcorn and enjoy this interesting twisty little story of the slow-motion demise of Ted Cruz.

On Sunday, Chris Wallace of FOX mentioned that the Republicans are upset at Ted Cruz. Specifically, he told Karl Rove that as soon as he announced that Ted Cruz would be a guest on his show this week, he received unsolicited “opposition research” against Cruz from certain un-named Republicans.

Naturally, the immediate assumption was that it had to be the evil RINO Republican Leadership who can’t stand a gen-you-ine conservative finally fighting back after the Republicans caved in to Obama on everything he ever wanted!!!! Indeed, the Daily Caller guessed that this must be the result of anger at Cruz “because Cruz and fellow Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee decided to devise a strategy to defund Obamacare without consulting Republican leadership.” And clearly, those RINO leaders don’t like the gen-you-ine Ted Cruz exposing their cozy relationship with Obama, right? Sarah Boo Boo Palin even demanded that Wallace disclose his sources so we can rid ourselves of their evil.

As an aside, Glenn Beck is calling for the “impeachment” of Boehner, McConnell, McCain and Lindsay Graham... oh, and Obama. Maybe we can add this to the list of charges?

Well, not so fast.

See, it turns out that the anger at Cruz isn’t coming from the Republican Leadership, aka the fringe right’s greatest boogeyman. No, it’s coming from, well, the fringe right.

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy said Friday that the conservative House Republicans are angry and frustrated with Ted Cruz who has “abused” House conservatives. Apparently, he dun whipped them into a fightin' mood... made them go full retard... and then he refused “to get in the ring” when the time came.

Duffy notes that House conservatives were furious at Cruz all summer “as we were the punching bag and bullied by some of these Senate conservatives” with ads and fundraisers accusing the House of failing to defund Obamacare. This hurt them with their own followers who began to doubt their qualifications as fringers conservatives. Then, when they returned from the summer break and voted to defund Obamacare...

“[Cruz] sent out a press release while we were on the floor voting saying that, ‘Ah, we can’t really hold the Senate, we’re not going to filibuster, we’re not going to fight, and the House has to hold.’”

Hm. And how did that sit with House conservatives? Said Duffy:

“I have to tell you what, you should have been on the floor or back in the cloak room. There was so much anger and frustration because, again, we’ve been abused by these guys for so long.”

Tisk tisk, Sen. RINOCruz! Duffy thinks it’s time to “call them out” on their “hypocrisy” as “these big tough conservatives who know how to fight but will never get in the ring.”

I’m not surprised. From what I’ve seen, Cruz is an insider trying to trick the fringe into supporting him. He talks tough and attacks all the fringe’s enemies: the Apostate Rubio, Boehner, McCain, Graham, McConnell, the generic “establishment,” Mexicans, and sometimes Obama, and he panders to the fringe verbally (though he always throws in caveats the fringe overlooks). What he doesn’t do, however, is ever follow up his words with deeds.

That strategy worked for Obama – pander to the morons but don’t do anything that can be traced back to you specifically, and then run as a moderate in the general election. But it won’t work here. The fringe right is much more cannibalistic than the fringe left ever was and if you don’t lead every suicide charge, they will denounce you as a traitor. And that is what is happening now.

In fact, it looks to me like Cruz is in trouble. First, he gets accused of starting the “defund Obamacare” pointlessness to distract people so the RINO leadership can sneak through AMNESTY Ahhhhhh!! They’re under my bed! Now he’s being attacked openly for never going full retard with the rest. And more ominously, someone (probably a gen-you-ine conservative) is passing out “opposition research” against him.

Unfortunately for Cruz, I don’t think there’s a way to turn this around. The conservative fringe and the public are polar opposites and you can’t win a general election by being seen as pandering to the conservatives fringe. But Cruz has embraced them too closely to escape the association as all the other Republican presidential candidates have. So Cruz may soon find himself a man without support.

It will be interesting to see what his next couple moves will be.

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Feminism: Hillary-ous

Camille Paglia is the favorite feminist of conservatives, though she’s not a conservative. The reason they like her is that she periodically takes aim at sacred liberal cows and slaughters them with abandon. She’s done that again in a wide ranging interview, which is interesting for several points, including her depants(suit)ing of Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the headline grabber from the interview is Paglia taking down Hillary: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance.” She notes in particular that Hillary has no qualifications whatsoever and a history that doesn’t really inspire:

“She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished – beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband?”

She also slams Hillary for failing in the one instance where she actually had some authority, i.e. Benghazi, though her criticism does strike me as a little off in this regard – she says Hillary should have resigned, which seems politically unrealistic. In any event, it’s interesting to see a liberal point out that the Empress has no pantsuit.

Anyway, more interesting was what Paglia said about feminism. Paglia is a feminist, but isn’t a traditional feminist. She’s part of a different group of feminists who really don’t like the people we normally think of as feminists. In fact, when she first appeared on the radar screen, it was in her struggles against the feminists, who were at the peak of their power in the 1990s. And what she notes now is something we’ve pointed out before here: feminism is dead.

“Oh, feminism is still alive? Thanks for the tip! It sure is invisible, except for the random whine from some maleducated product of the elite schools who’s found a plush berth in glossy magazines.”

That is exactly right. The feminism Rush called “Femi-nazis,” which was born in the 1960s and peaked when it dominated academia, Hollywood and the nation’s universities in the 1990s is dead except for a couple random whiners, and the ideology it constructed has been abandoned. I love this quote in particular: “They keep dusting Steinem off and trotting her out to pin awards on her, but she’s the walking dead.”

It’s interesting to have a real insider confirm this and put a reason to it (one of which actually matches my Fifty Shades argument as you’ll see in a moment). So what reason does she give for feminism being dead? Partisanship is the big reason, and puritanicalism.

According to Paglia, feminism got crushed because “[t]heir shameless partisanship eventually doomed those Stalinist feminists.” In other words, they became so aligned with the Democratic Party that they became just another interest group and lost the respect of the public at large. Unions made this mistake too. Both unions and feminists decided they could get what they wanted through the Democratic Party rather than trying to win the public. Thus, they stopped pressuring everyone but Democrats. This destroyed their “moral authority” because they came to be seen as partisan rather than principled. In other words, rather than their cause being about equality for women, people came to see the cause of feminism as being the election of Democrats. So whether or not they were right as a matter of principle no longer mattered.

Indeed, Paglia notes that this is a continuing problem today:

“While it’s a big relief not to have feminist bullies sermonizing from every news show anymore, the leadership vacuum is alarming. It’s very distressing, for example, that the atrocities against women in India — the shocking series of gang rapes, which seem never to end — have not been aggressively condemned in a sustained way by feminist organizations in the U.S. . . The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World.”

Paglia doesn’t specifically connect this dot to partisanship, but that is the logical cause of what she notes. Since feminists have aligned themselves with the Democratic Party and since the Democratic Party has aligned itself with “people of color” against white males, Christians, and the West, it goes against party politics to criticize things like Muslim atrocities or to point out that the rest of the world is a racist, sexist sh*thole. Hence, feminists have remained deafeningly silent about various atrocities as they instead focused their energies on things like getting healthplans to pay for condoms for rich girls. Because of this, feminists have squandered their credibility because it’s clear they are no longer about “women,” they are about “Democrats,” just like unions are no longer about workers, they are about Democrats.

In addition to the above, Paglia adds the following. First, she notes that old-school feminists were puritanical. Indeed, they worked hand in hand with the Religious Right in the 1990s to try to stop pornography. And in the process, they alienated the vast, vast, vast majority of women because women aren’t actually opposed to sex like those feminists thought they were. To the contrary, most kind of like it. Of this, Paglia says that these “Stalinist feminists. . . were trampled by the pro-sex feminist stampede of the early ‘90s.” This is my Fifty Shades point. Feminism imploded because it tried to impose a condition that ran counter to what women wanted, so they rebelled.

So what are the takeaways? Well, feminism is dead, at least in the form it took until the 1990s. It died because it lost the public through partisanship and it lost women through being puritanical, and those womyn are relegated to history and a few pointless academic posts at this point. It also explains why modern feminists won’t speak out for women today, not in any serious context, and why they are unlikely to regain any influence with the public any time soon. Finally, Paglia confirms that even liberals recognize that Hillary is an empty pantsuit.

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Why I Don't Like Chris Christie

I’ve made the point repeatedly that conservatism is headed in the wrong direction. No agenda, anger, obsession with purity... none of these things help. So, should we turn to someone who doesn’t go in for any of this: Chris Christie? NO! He’s an even bigger problem.

Here’s the thing, when I talk about the problems of conservatism, I’m doing so for a purpose. Conservatism is losing elections regularly. It is starting to lose them by greater and greater margins. It has lost whole races, genders and generations of people. What I am trying to point out is why this is happening and why we need to change our ways. I am also doing my best to point out policies we can implement, policies which align with conservative principles, which will win these people back.

In other words, my goal is to wake people up to the self-inflicted wound that conservatism is causing itself and provide ways to fix it that don’t conflict with our fundamental beliefs. That should not be confused with endorsing "moderates," however. All I’m suggesting is a return to actual conservatism away from the radicalism talk radio is preaching.

That’s not Chris Christie though. He wants to claim the mantle of moderate, and that’s where the problem begins.

There is nothing moderate about Christie. Chris Christie is Glenn Beck, only he uses fake-moderatism whereas Beck uses fake-conservatism. He yells, he screams, he demonizes, and he lives on platitudes rather than ideas. I can’t name a single idea Christie has ever advanced. To the contrary, his “ideas” are to attack both parties for lacking ideas... the pot calling the kettles black with self-righteous indignation. Essentially, he uses the two parties as strawmen that he can attack to make himself sound moderate and practical without actually being either.

From what I’ve been able to piece together of his record in New Jersey, he basically points fingers at everyone and accuses them all of being rotten. Then he spits out a few diversionary platitudes to make it sound like he's offering some "common sense" idea, even though everything he's saying is meaningless: "By God, it's time we worked hard to make things better! Harrumph. And we need to stop those who want to make it worse!" Then he signs whatever law makes it across his desk while he continues to rail against evil partisanship. It's nonsense.

Now he’s picking fights with national candidates, like Rand Paul, because he wants to join the national stage, but he's doing the exact same thing. He's offering nothing in the way of ideas except that we should adopt his nonpartisan ideas... whatever they are. And to prove that he's nonpartisan, he's attacking conservatives by calling them vague insults like "dangerous" without any justification or explanation and without offering a single solution. If he ordered pizza he would blast them for demanding a specific order, tell them to send him "what works," take whatever they give him and then rail against the deliver boy for being partisan about his order. I say again, it's nonsense.

Christie is not the answer. Essentially, he’s an angry fraud whose behavior cannot be predicted and whose words are as harmful to conservatism as are the idiots screaming for purity. He's Glenn Beck in a fat(ter) suit.

We do not need Christie. We do need an agenda. We need to start thinking about how conservatism can appeal to the American people again. Therein lies the answer, not in attacking... well, anyone. Get positive, stay positive. Coke doesn’t sell itself by attacking Pepsi, it sells itself by telling you why you need to drink it. Sell conservatism, don't try to unsell liberalism. And don't fall for the idiots who offer nothing, be they self-described "genuine conservatives" or self-described "moderates."

Rediscover conservatism.

** By the way, I still need reviews on my book! I want to send this book out to certain politicians, but it needs a lot more reviews first. I’m going to make it free today and tomorrow for those who haven’t gotten it yet. Please get the book and leave a review. (LINK)

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Bobby Jindal Reads Commentarama

Bobby Jindal has long been a favorite of this site, though many other “conservative” sites hate him because. . . well, he’s a governor, so he tries to govern rather than burn the state to the ground in the name of some futile attempt to demonstrate his purity. My biggest concern with Jindal has been that he’s struck me as more technocratic than political. But in the past couple weeks, he’s shown that he gets it. . . or he reads Commentarama! :)

In the past two weeks, various contenders for 2016 have been making news. Newt is being his typical a-hole self, attacking Romney and everyone else with bombastic and unconstructive verbal jabs meant make people think Newt be smarts. Chris Christie has been trying to explain why embracing Obama the day before the election wasn’t a problem. Paul Ryan is trying to fight Obama for the good of the country, which I can respect but is not my preferred strategy at the moment. Marco Rubio went to Iowa and assured us he does love rap.

Meanwhile, Bobby Jindal has been giving interviews all over the place and gave a solid speech as the incoming Chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association. What has impressed me with Jindal is that he seems to get it.

Jindal called on the party to “stop being the stupid party” and to make an effort to attract a broad swath of voters. As he put it, we need to “campaign for every single vote.” Absolutely. Unfortunately, that is something many conservatives don’t understand as they continue to talk about us losing because we didn’t get out the vote. A party that wants to represent America must actually represent America, not just one shrinking part of it.

And in that regard, Jindal noted that we need to come to terms with liking the people we are seeking to attract. And the first step in that is to stop insulting them: “You don't start to like people by insulting them and saying their votes were bought. . . We also don't need to be saying stupid things.” His second comment there was a direct reference to Indiana and Missouri, but it applies much more broadly too. It applies to all the things we talked about the other day which come across as hateful, racist, sexist and religiously exclusive. It applies to what Jindal called “dumbed-down conservatism” and “simplistic” and “bizarre comments” which “insult the intelligence of voters.”

But even more importantly, Jindal beat the same drum I’ve been beating for a long time: “Simply being the anti-Obama party didn’t work. You can’t beat something with nothing.”

Hallelujah! I’ve been making this point for a long time and I am deeply frustrated that the party doesn’t get this. Romney had a platform, though he didn’t sell it well. But beyond him, the party really doesn’t stand for anything people want. Yes, it produced an official “platform” – the one which whines about abortion and censoring the internet to save the children, but beyond that the party has produced no ideas since the age of Jack Kemp and his enterprise zones. Seriously, if you think about it, tell me what you think the Republican Party is offering other than the status quo and opposition to the Democrats. Are you satisfied with the state of the country? Doubt it. So why do you think a platform of “we’ll make sure nothing changes” will resonate with anyone?

We need to put forward a bold, yet simple to understand and easy to personalize, series of policies that promise to improve: (1) the jobs market, (2) the small business environment, (3) individual economic security, (4) the housing market, (5) retirement, (6) health care, (7) education, (8) national security, and (9) the environment. We need to tell people how our policies will make their lives better!

And as we think about this, we need to focus on the people who really do matter to this country: the middle class. Our policies need to tell the poor how they will become middle class, tell the middle class how we will protect what they have earned, and tell the aspirational class how we’ve cleared the way for them to benefit from the risks they take. Indeed, we need to tell the artists, the inventors, and the entrepreneurs that the government will stop punishing them, stop trying to stop them, and stop taking the benefits of their efforts. The one thing we do NOT need to do is to promise to protect the rich and powerful. Again, Bobby Jindal put this well:

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything. We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

This is exactly the point. But sadly, right now we have it backwards. Right now, the Republicans have become the party of Wall Street, of the rich, and of Big Oil. Those are the only groups that are guaranteed to get a blank-check defense from Republicans and that needs to stop.

I’m liking Jindal’s new approach a lot. There is much wisdom here and we need to see if he can transform his ideas into policies. Let’s hope he succeeds.


As a final aside, Rick “the socialist” Santorum wrote an editorial this week as well. In it, he blames Romney while saying we shouldn’t blame Romney. Then he endorses the get-out-the-vote argument as the reason we lost. He shoots down the idea of Hispanic outreach as “analyses coming largely from the academic and pundit crowd.” And he suggests that what we really need to do if we’re going to win is to promote policies that “encourage family stability.” Retard.

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