Romney's the One

Now that Rick Santorum has "suspended" his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney is the "presumptive" Republican Party presidential nominee.  Mitt's not what conservatives wished for in our dreams, but who gets to have their dreams?

Anyway, back in the middle of 1980 nobody thought that Ronald Reagan was the answer to our dreams.  Back then conservatives and Republicans were worrying about whether Reagan was too lightweight to win against Jimmy Carter.  Reagan wasn't very good at reeling off numbers about this program or that program.  Maybe he really was the lightweight, the B-movie actor that Democrats sneered about.

The situation is this, and it's all about Barack Obama.

1. Barack Obama is not a healer.  He is not the president to bring together red states and blue states as he promised.  He is not the post-racial president we thought he would be.  Instead he has reverted to his inner community organizer and is trying to divide the country along race and class lines.
2. Barack Obama has not fixed the economy.  Way back in 2009 I judged that Obama had made a strategic error in staying on his campaign promises rather than doing a Clinton and saying "oh gosh, fellas, things are a lot worse than I thought" and bagging the health care and environmental agenda till a second term.  The result is that business is on strike, sitting on trillions of dollars.  CEOs don't know what ObamaCare will do to them.  They don't know what Obama's green energy will do to them.  And they don't know what all the crazed regulation like Dodd-Frank will do to them.  So they are sitting on their hands.
3. Barack Obama really doesn't "get" America.  Maybe that's because he's lived in a liberal bubble all his life.  Maybe it's because he's never worked in the private sector, never run a business and understood at a gut level how you found and grow a business.  He regales audiences with the importance of investment in education, research, and health care--government investment.  But we have already spent way too much on education, scientific research and health care.  We could cut them all in half and not see a difference in outcome.  What's needed in today's economy is to lead the world in high-value products and services, things we can charge premium prices to balance the India/China advantage in cheap labor.  And that means business.

The election of 2012 is a strategic opportunity.  Instead of blurring the difference between the two parties and pretending that they are all in favor of business and growth, the Democrats are sailing under their true colors: tax, spend, and elect.  But most Americans instinctively understand that in a crony patronage system they will probably not be at the head of the line to collect the benefits.  So they know that that the way they can get ahead has to be through skills and hard work.  They think like Joe the Plumber.  They don't think about how to get ahead in establishment media, academia, or finance.  Those elite occupations are closed to people without the right connections and the right resume.  They think about how to buy a business and how to pay for it and how the tax system will affect their ability to grow that business.

Ever since Reagan the Democrats have been in a dither about whether to abandon their class/race/entitlement politics, or give it one last college try.  Bill Clinton ran as a New Democrat and won; he passed welfare reform and won again.  Al Gore ran fighting for the people against the powerful and lost.  Barack Obama ran as the healer and the uniter, and then turned into a partisan race and class warrior.  You can understand the liberal reluctance to abandon the bureaucratic big-government model.  It gave them all jobs and power.

The only question is whether Mitt Romney is the one to make the strategic breakthrough, utterly demolish the Democrats' race/class warfare politics, and send the them back to their kennels with their tails between their legs.  I'd say that a 55-45 presidential win, a 55-45 GOP Senate, and a continued Republican House would send a real doggie message to the Democrats.

Because, let us not forget, the GOP last had that kind of majority in Washington in the 1920s.  That is 90 years ago!

What You Are Not Allowed to Say

Humans are social animals.  We are usually careful to say the right things and do the right things.  We do that because we don't want to risk censure from the cultural invigilators.

John Derbyshire, late of National Review, always admitted that he didn't really care what people thought about him.  Last week he penned an article about race that got him canned.  The article was a satire on "The Talk" that black people give their teenaged children.  White parents should do the same, according to Derb.  Along the way, he wrote things that you are not allowed to write about race.  A liberal writer called for his firing, and National Review editor Rick Lowry fired him.  Reading Lowry's announcement, and a concurring piece from Commentary's John Podhoretz, you can see why.  National Review and Commentary are "respectable" publications that have to survive in liberal-occupied America, and cannot survive any ambush from the mainstream media.

Liberals are always calling for a dialog about race.  But when anyone shows up for a chat, he always gets sucker-punched.  The sucker punch is great fun for liberals but it sends a baleful message to whites.  Never mind about the notorious third rail of politics, Social Security.  Race is radio-active.

Over a century ago, America had a minority group that were considered just as backward, as criminal, as corrupt, as stupid as blacks are today.  This group was the Catholic Irish.  The Irish had to fight their way up in America from nothing, and they did it with leaders like Archbishop "Dagger John" Hughes of New York, who started out as a gardener in a seminary.  The Irish got no help on their way up, and the reform movement of the Progressive Era was, in part, an effort to clean up the wretchedly corrupt machine politics of Irish Boston and New York.  Eventually the Irish climbed their way into the middle class, elected an Irish Catholic president and started to vote Republican.

The African American story is remarkably similar to the Irish story except for one significant difference.  In the 19th century the goo-goo elite was disgusted by the Irish, and criticized their "shanty Irish" squalor and their tribal approach to politics.  But in America today the goo-goo liberal elite uses African Americans as a key part of its over-under political coalition.  Without African Americans as its rock-solid base and political patronage client the liberals would be journeying in the political wilderness.  An African American community that no longer feared a return of Jim Crow, that no longer had 70 percent of its children out of wedlock, that no longer headed the crime statistics, that was getting a decent education would be a placid middle class group that would only vote 60-40 for Democrats rather than 90-10.

One day that will happen, provided that liberal race politics doesn't embroil the US in a race war in the mean time.  It will happen because African Americans, like every immigrant group before them, ache to arrive in the Promised Land of middle-class respectability.

Meanwhile, as the immolation of John Derbyshire proves, you had better not say the wrong thing about race.  It could get you in a lot of trouble.  There is too much liberal power riding on the maintenance of the racial status quo.

Social Darwinism and Liberal Programs

President Obama last week criticized the Paul Ryan's House budget as "thinly veiled social Darwinism."  We are to imagine, apparently, that by reducing the rate of increase in government budgets the poor and helpless will suffer, and this is the social equivalent of the ruthless natural selection in the world of nature red in tooth and claw.

Of course, "social Darwinism" is merely a political catch phrase that Democrats deploy whenever Republicans propose to reduce the rate of increase in social programs.  But when liberals want to tie someone to social Darwinism, they grab Herbert Spencer, the self-taught 19th century social philosopher. Here is a lumpen-liberal description of Spencer's idea, from Susan Jacoby in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.

Spencer translated the biological theory of natural selection into what he called "social selection," opposing all state aid to the poor, public education, health laws, government tariffs, and even government-supported postal service.  Of the poor, he declared, "If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to lice, they die, and it is best that they should die."

That is from Spencer's Social Statics.  But here is Spencer from The Man Versus the State, arguing against the poor law, i.e., welfare.  He summarizes his argument thus:

1. That the burden of the poor law fall chiefly upon the industrious classes.
2. That the existence of commecial restrictions, is, therefore, no argument for retaining it.
3. That even assuming a poor law to be directly beneficial, it is directly injurious, inasmuch as it prolongs the causes of distress.
4. That established charity is open to many of the strongest objections that can be urged against established religion.
5. That a poor law discourages the exercise of real benevolence, and lowers the standard of national character.
6. That were there no poor law, the increase of voluntary charity, and the decrease of improvidence, would render one unnecessary.

You can see how prescient Spencer is.  For our modern liberal welfare state  does indeed "prolong the causes of distress" with multi-generational welfare.  It has become indeed a kind of established religion of charity, in which the nation carelessly invests its benevolence in a class of welfare priests without actually ever actively contributing in a benevolent way.  And yes, the welfare state "discourages the exercise of real benevolence." Liberals, who believe in the state church of welfare, are the ones that give the least, as Arthur Brooks has argued in Who Really Cares?  Conservatives, who believe in a moral responsibility to give, give more.  Oh, and guess which group gives the most to charity?  It is the religious working poor.


Walter Russell Mead, in his series of articles about the end of the "blue social model" has argued that it is past time for liberals to own up to the failure of their social model.

It is past time for liberals to stop attacking the straw man of social Darwinism, if for now other reason than this.  The "blue social model" is going to be coming up, one of these days, for nomination for the "Darwin Awards."

For the law of natural selection applies just as much to human institutions as to animal species.  If a human institution won't adapt, it will go the way of the dinosaurs.  Liberals have insisted for a century that the best of institutions is the one that provides tax-supported "state aid to the poor, public education, health laws, government tariffs, and even government-supported postal service."  But what if they are wrong?  What if the state runs out of money?  What if the voters just refuse to pay for it?  What if the state, over the years, does less and less with more and more tax money?  Well, then the welfare state dinosaurs will die out and be replaced by some scuttling rats.

That was what happened in business in the 19th century when a bunch of nobodies started businesses in mid-century that ended up by the end of the century as gigantic enterprises.  The reason for their success was that with a few random ideas they massively lowered the cost of things like oil, transportation, and steel.  Natural selection at work, you might say.  Once they had made their money, of course, they got interested in philanthropy.  One of their benefactions was the University of Chicago.  You'll recall that, Mr. President.

Cunning, Extreme, or Desperate?

The question is:  When President Obama slams the Supreme Court, calls Paul Ryan's budget "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and truckles to the race-baiters over the tragic Trayvon Martin death, what is he doing?

It's like the famous line attributed to French diplomat Talleyrand after the death of the Turkish ambassador: "what did he mean by that?"

Is President Obama's divisive rhetoric a exercise in political cunning?  Is he playing a deep game that we don't even understand?

Or maybe the president is precisely the extreme leftist that conservatives have made him out to be.  That's what leftists do, from Marx on down.  They make inflammatory accusations designed to rile up the masses.

OK.  Perhaps the president is desperate and he is flinging accusations around because he sees his presidency slipping away from him.

My guess is "all of the above."  I expect that the president's people think that he has to create a strong Us vs. Them dynamic to keep his base energized.  I think that the president and his people are all pretty committed liberals that approach politics from a strongly left-wing perspective.  And I think that they know that they have a pretty hard row to hoe if they are going to win in November.

But I think the biggest reason for the president's divisive rhetoric is the word from the air-crew trainers after the US Air Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River.  In an emergency, they said, air-crew do exactly what they are trained to do.   No big surprise there.  That's why the military is big on training: it wants its soldiers and sailors to hold together when the bullets start to fly.

And that's how to understand President Obama.  This reelection fight is the biggest thing that Barack Obama has ever faced.  The stress is unbelievable.  So he is reverting to his training as an Affirmative Action black wafted ever aloft, and as a community organizer and left-wing activist.

That's what left-wing organizers do for a living.  They rile people up and organize them into a movement.

The question is whether this approach will work for a majority of American voters.  Do they want to be organized into a left-wing movement?

For the answer to that you must stay tuned.  But win or lose, I predict that the 2012 election will be a watershed in American politics.

Your Philosophy is "On Your Own" Mr. President

The brilliant shallowness of President Obama is an opportunity for conservatives.  In past times, Democrats were smart enough to wrap their lefty dogma in pleasing rhetoric; it wasn't quite clear that beneath the velvet glove of compassion was the iron fist of government force.  But President Obama and his speechwriters don't seem to understand, as Rush Limbaugh reminds us, that liberals can't admit what they really believe, because people would never vote for them if they did.

So now we have two back-to-back speeches in which mild-mannered Clark Obama rips off his shirt and reveals superhero Captain Lefty, faster than a high-speed train, more effective than a $1 trillion stimulus, able to leap conventional energy with a single green bound.  That sort of thing.

The president as Captain Lefty argued on Friday that the philosophy of the Republican Party was "you're on your own".  You're on your own if you don't have a job, don't have health care, born in poverty.  That's what he said.

Then on Tuesday the president argued that the Ryan Budget was "thinly veiled social Darwinism". By "gutting" things like "education and training, research and development, our infrastructure -- it is a prescription for decline."

Thank you, Mr. President.  By drawing a bright line I think you do all of us a favor.  Because, you see, on your philosophy, people really are "on their own."  That was the argument of Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus a generation ago in To Empower People.

Berger and Neuhaus argued that the problem with big government is that is sweeps away all the "mediating structures" between government and the individual, thus leaving the individual powerless and alone before the mighty power of government.  It was the mediating structures--family, church, neighborhood associations--that really protected the individual by embedding him in these defenses-in-depth against overweening government power.

Berger and Neuhaus made an argument similar to Jane Jacobs and her Death and Life of American Cities.  She argued against the big skyscrapers and their wind-swept plazas bowled people around like sand on the shore.  What made cities livable were the little businesses and sidewalk life that provided texture and safety to the city and defenses against the megastructures.

What could be more social Darwinist than big government, Mr. President?  Under big government you had better have a powerful patron.  You had better make sure that you belong to the right race, or right age cohort, or right gender.  You had better make sure that you are a certified victim.  Otherwise government reckons it can leave you "on your own."

Here's what I mean by on your own.  It's a story by Lee Habeeb about the death of a young black kid, "Too Young to Die", in South Chicago, just south of your well-policed Hyde Park, Mr. President.  He was just helping out at a party for kids that needed a haven from violence.  But then a fight broke out and the kid got hit by a baseball bat.

“He was just trying to do something good for the ’hood because there’s nothing but violence around here,” Sunday Turman, 33, who hosted the party, told reporters. “Next thing you know, he hit the ground right in front of police.”

 Black folks in places like South Chicago are giving up on Democratic governments in the north.  They are heading back to the South.

Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 1,336,097 blacks moved to seven major southern cities alone, according to the Brookings Institute, which compiled the most recent data from the U.S. Census. Today, 57 percent of the country’s black population lives in the South, a 50-year high.

Here's what I reckon, Mr. President.  I reckon that black folks are giving up on life in the inner cities run by the liberals in the North.  Because they reckon they are "on their own," stuck in violent cities where nobody cares.  Nobody cares about the schools; nobody cares about the black kids getting mown down as "collateral damage" in the gang wars.  Nobody cares enough to get the crime down--except in liberal enclaves like Hyde Park--and nobody does anything about the social Darwinism of gang warfare that turns their life into a miserable struggle against overwhelming odds.

At least these black folks will have the shreds of their old community to fall back on when they get back to the South.  Then they can start to build their lives again.  And maybe they will reckon that community starts with me and my family and my neighbors, and not the preening politicians that just leave you "on your own" in an urban jungle where the powerful rule and the powerless get caught in the crossfire.

Prudence, Mr. President!

There is in Barack Obama a certain recklessness, both in word and deed.

Take ObamaCare.  The president and his party ran a straight partisan operation, forcing the 2,700 page bill through Congress.  It only passed by one vote in the Senate and only by a few votes in the House.  No Republicans voted for it and a number of Democrats from moderate districts in the House got to vote against it to assist in their reelection.  So it wasn't a consensus bill, it wasn't really debated, and it wasn't negotiated with the opposition.  I call that reckless.  I call it a jam-down.  I call that naked force.

And beyond the recklessness, I don't think that it is good politics.  In politics you want to avoid making the opposition so mad that they come out in their tens of millions to vote against you.

Now we have President Obama, before the Supreme Court has even ruled on ObamaCare, doing the "nice little Supreme Court you got there" number.  It is frank intimidation, no doubt directed at Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing member.  I call that reckless.

And beyond the recklessness, there is the unseemliness of dissing the Supreme Court, as the president already did in his 2010 State of the Union speech over the Citizens United case.

We can argue about the source of the president's recklessness.  You could say it comes from his being "wafted aloft" all his life, never having to dig out of a hole, and never really having to think about who he is pissing off.  Or you could say it comes from his left-wing beliefs.  Your properly trained community organizer is always trying to prompt ordinary citizens out onto the streets against their interest.  Very often, as in Zola's Germinal or in the real-life strikes of 19th century, the radical strike leaders caused in the ruin of the local strikers.  But the community organizer just headed out of town onto his next gig.

The statesman is not a community organizer.  He really needs to be prudent.  He is, with his day-to-day political power games, playing with peoples' lives.  You always got the feeling that President Bush was deeply affected by the responsibility of the office.  It is not clear just how President Obama feels about the office.  His image is so crafted that it is hard to know what he thinks about anything.  It does seem that he is piqued by the resistance to his agenda--beyond the normal Democratic party tactics of branding anyone opposed to big-government programs as mean-spirited and racist.

But the American people really expect the president to be prudent.  They expect him to be the president of all the people, and not be a cheap partisan.  With President Obama, you get the feeling that the cheap partisan shots are the man, and the "we're all in this together" rhetoric just an act.

Put in this way.  With President Bush you always felt that he was very careful in his partisan moments to keep the partisanship down to the minimum needed.  When he said that he was a uniter, not a divider, you felt that he meant it, and that he would try the keep the divisiveness that is necessary in any politics down to a low roar.  It was just the right thing to do.

But President Obama is a man of the left.  Ever since Marx the left has used over-the-top rhetoric to make its case, and the president seems to fit right in with the Marxian approach to politics.

It would be nice if the American people sent a message to Washington about the president's recklessness.  Because if you are one of the "little people" the one thing you don't want is recklessness. Reckless political failures fall hardest on the little people.

Beyond ObamaCare there is the recklessness of the current Fed inflation, the president's reckless budget, the recklessness of the green energy policies, and the recklessness of the huge tax increases scheduled for January 1, 2013.

We need a prudent president to guide the ship of state into the future.  We won't get it from the policies of President Obama.

Fear, HilllaryCare and ObamaCare

When Bill Clinton was selling HillaryCare in the House of Representatives back in the fall of 1993 he held up a credit card mockup in his right hand and said that HillaryCare was health care that could never be taken away.

That sounded like a winner, but the American people, persuaded by the TV personalities Harry and Louise, thought otherwise.  They reckoned that HillaryCare would raise the cost of their health insurance.  In other words, a take-away, as the labor union guys put it.

So you can understand that the Obamis went out of their way to tell the American people that ObamaCare would allow them to keep their current insurance and doctor and that it would reduce health costs.  And they bought off the insurance companies that had bankrolled the Harry and Louise ads.

And they passed ObamaCare without anyone knowing what was in it, and they gamed the costs so that the total cost as reported by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2009-10 would be under a trillion dollars over ten years.

But now that we are two years on from 2009-2010 the out-year costs of ObamaCare are appearing in the official CBO scoring.  Now the gross cost is up to $1.76 trillion over ten years.  And the American people have just experienced a couple of years of rapid increase in their health insurance premiums.

So we are back to the end game of HillaryCare, when Americans became firmly convinced that they would be paying for freeloaders, the fabled "uninsured."

There is another thing.  My friend Stephen reminded me of it.  A lot of Americans are afraid of what ObamaCare will mean for them.  In other words, a lot of American women are looking out at the future, and wondering if they will be able to afford the drugs and the care they need for their chronic health problems.

How right he is.  Fear is never far from the surface where health care is concerned.  The dreadful National Health Service in Britain is still celebrated because it took the fear out of health care.  You didn't have to worry about whether you could afford your doctor bills any more.  What a relief!

What slides under the radar is that government health care is not the best and, especially in Britain, it gets worse and worse as the nursing gets worse, and the rationing starts to bite, and old people get neglected.  Looking at it that way there is plenty to fear.

It's just like government education.  Government schools are so-so in the suburbs.  But then the middle class would get a so-so education whatever the government did.  But government education is lousy in the inner city, just where it is needed most.  Health care is OK for people with private insurance.  But Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, is a train wreck.

I imagine that, right now, the Romney campaign is thinking about how to play the "fear" angle on ObamaCare without seeming to be too blatant about it.  Because fear sells, especially with older women, and politics is a dance of our hope against their fear.