Rand Paul and Sarah

“You saw the Tea Party group basically in action twice in the last two or three years. One was for the anti- immigration-reform thing . . .

The second was after the nomination of Sarah Palin, this enormous surge to McCain, huge crowds coming out when he couldn't get a couple of hundred people before . . .

Now . . . Ron Paul, will do better. He's not going to be nominated, but he will do better than he did before if he runs again because he'll get some of those folks. But right now, quite frankly, the one candidate who can get them better than anybody else is Ms. Sarah Palin.”

- Patrick J. Buchanan, January 15, 2010 on “McLaughlin Group”

After weeks of speculation, on Monday, February 1, 2010, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin endorsed Kentucky Republican Rand Paul for the U.S. Senate. Palin, whose political baggage is too bulky to mention here, may prove to be a kingmaker.

Already, Rand Paul is pulling ahead in the polls in a race that was supposed to go easily to Secretary of State Trey Grayson. The Palin endorsement was welcomed by the Paul campaign and comes just two days after Rand’s father Ron Paul came to Louisville to campaign for his son and two days after the secretary of state smeared the father and son as “a career politician and pro-choice marijuana advocate,” respectively although not respectfully.

The Palin endorsement is intriguing. Hardly anyone in American politics, save perhaps President Obama, elicits such knee-jerk love or hate. In fact, I feel like an oddball in that I neither love nor hate the former governor. What’s wrong with me?

Some might also ask what’s wrong with Palin herself. Why would she endorse Rand Paul, the son of one of the most famous American libertarians when she has also endorsed pols such as her old running mate John McCain and Texas governor Rick Perry. It’s hard to imagine those three endorsees (a libertarian Republican, a progressive Republican, and George W. Bush’s lieutenant governor) getting along for five minutes. Maybe Sarah Palin is confused about her political philosophy. Maybe she is endorsing three people she just happens to like. Maybe she is just an old-fashioned politician held captive by the moment.

What to make of the endorsement? The Paul campaign welcomed it but some of the grassroots supporters of both are a little uneasy about it while others are simply distraught.

But in the words of Barry Goldwater, after conservatives threatened to abandon the party when Richard Nixon started pandering to the party’s liberals, “Let’s grow up, conservatives.” Or in this case, let’s grow up, Ron Paul Republicans.

Sarah Palin does have some political problems. She touts the bellicose foreign policy of John McCain both on their campaign trail and in her book. She held her hand out to receive stimulus money while she was still governor. She doesn’t really show much knowledge of the issues beyond the talking points. But both Sarah Palin and Rand Paul claim Tea Party support and like Pat Buchanan said, “The one candidate who can get [people] better than anybody else is Ms. Sarah Palin.”

Some grassroots libertarians are upset at the acceptance of the endorsement because Palin’s policy positions are far from perfect, and in some cases, are far from Rand Paul’s. But both claim Tea Party credentials and both campaign as the outsider to the establishment. And in a year where a Republican can win in Massachusetts, the endorsement is a good thing.

Why? 3 main reasons:

1. The endorsement might just produce, at the very least, a primary win. But to even get that far, alliances must be made and coalitions built, which by nature means teaming up with people who do not share complete confessional solidarity. A coalition is not a religious creed, where all points must be agreed upon to signify a true believer. Accepting Sarah Palin’s endorsement is not an abandonment of principles. It is good political sense.

2. Like it or not, she brings in people. And in a state that went 57-41 for McCain-Palin, Republican opponents like Trey Grayson will have more trouble marginalizing Rand Paul when one of the party’s biggest stars comes out for the latter. Will he continue trying to convince voters that Rand Paul is “pro-choice” when one of the country’s most prominent pro-life figures endorses him? Is Trey capable of walking the tightrope of vilifying Rand Paul without implying that Sarah Palin is also kooky, nutty, and anti-Semitic?

3. If Sarah Palin does get gutted for supporting Rand Paul, it only confirms that the GOP is the War Party and only the War Party. Federal encroachment, borrowing and spending, bailouts, and amnesty are all tolerable as long as you support torture and imperialism.

Welcome to the Kentucky race, Sarah. I hope you get a chance to listen to Dr. Paul.

*

Update: Regarding point #3 that the GOP may prove itself to be the War Party, see here for Jeanette Pryor's take at David Horowitz's Israel First Newsreal Blog. Ms. Pryor proves that point very plainly:

"The logical conclusion of this endorsement is that Palin considers America’s global defense of freedom, national defense, the War on Terror, the defeat of Radical Islam, and the support of Israel and our allies, to be less important than 'some' domestic policy issues."

She Did What?

Well, she does play by her own set of rules. Unlike Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin seems to have relinquished presidential aspirations voluntarily.

Like many Americans who were actually paying attention to news on the Friday before the Fourth, I was dumbfounded to learn that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was resigning, effective July 26.

Such a decision was out of the blue. The spat with David Letterman had subsided and she defeated another ethics charge, so why would Sarah Palin suddenly resign? As Mark Sanford’s political star has all but certainly been sucked into a black hole, Mrs. Palin had every reason to believe that she would be a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. Either way, she had more charisma and a wider national appeal than the now-shamed South Carolina governor.

As soon as the news hit, I thought to myself, Mitt Romney is probably having one hell of a party at his mansion tonight, with his family and yuppie guests probably being waited on by an army of illegal immigrants, no less.

There have been a few theories peddled over why she would resign at this time. Could she no longer take the heat of being a public person? If so, why now? She readily bore her claws like a mama bear when her children once again were deemed newsworthy, so it’s doubtful she suddenly can’t take the heat. Anyone who believes Palin has a weak constitution is only watching the parodied Palin and not Sarah Barracuda.

Is she stepping down, as she said, to relieve the taxpayers of Alaska of having to pay the burden of her constant legal fees which have now reached over half a million dollars? I’m willing to believe that and if it’s true, then it’s the most fiscally sane move by a Republican since Mark Sanford decided to wait to see his mistress until he was on state business in South America.

But the most prevalent explanation is that she is resigning in order to stage a run for the presidency in 2012. If that is true, she is undoubtedly wasting her time. Resigning before her term is up, absent a scandal of Watergate or blue dress proportions, labels Palin, unfairly I believe, as a quitter, by critics on both the Right and the Left.

The most common refrain, predictably, is that she is unqualified for the job of president. Examining the U.S. Constitution, Article II states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Let’s see: born in Idaho in 1964 and living at least 14 years in the United States. Check. Sarah Palin is officially qualified to hold the position of president of the United States.

But, if one looks at the massive (and utterly unconstitutional) bureaucracy that pervades Washington D.C. and considers how involved the American president is expected to be not just in American life but in events around the world, no one is “qualified” for the job. Therefore, if Sarah Palin is fundamentally “unqualified” for the job, it has more to do with today’s federal government than Governor Palin’s "inexperience."

Of course, her critics assume that she is resigning in order to run for the presidency, perhaps in a strangely lustful desire to continue pummeling a favorite target. It’s difficult to see how even the governor can consider running for president. If she does, Mitt Romney’s line of attack will be that at least he finished a term as governor of his state before ever embarking on a presidential campaign. Personally, I am altogether untroubled that she is resigning. I am unaware of any law that states that once elected, a politician is barred from leaving office, even if they are without scandal.

But the media reaction to her resignation has actually been quite comical from both sides, even reminding me of the hysteria cooked up while Mark Sanford was on his final trip to Argentina. With Sanford it was, Where is he?! We demand to know where our elected officials are at all times because if things don’t go kablooey while they’re away, then people might start to think that they don’t need government in charge of everything after all! Whereas with Sarah Palin it’s, How dare she quit before her term is up! I know she’s an idiot and I hate her, but I demand that she stay in office! How dare she abandon her people! How, oh, how, will the people of Alaska be able to put food on the table if they can’t be sure of who their governor is?!

Or as Tucker Carlson said on the July 6, 2009 episode of Sean Hannity’s television program, “People who think Sarah Palin is dumb and/or insane seem mad that she’s not governing the state of Alaska.”

The point of this little anti-government tirade is to show that states and people actually have the ability to operate without minute surveillance and babysitting from our overlords. It is also to highlight what I found to be the most revealing statement in Governor Palin’s otherwise rambling resignation speech:

“Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government.”

What a libertarian and non-presidential thing to say.

Readers of this blog (it’s up to four of you now) should know that I am not a Palin-aholic, have been critical of some of her policies, but that I have a mild admiration for her.

Sarah Palin has a nice story, worked hard, defeated an incumbent Republican and almost became vice president of the United States. She espouses pro-life views and walks the walk. I question whether a real conservative would really join the ticket alongside John McCain. I was troubled that such a stalwart conservative would adopt the reckless foreign policy rhetoric of McCain and that she would parrot the it’s-amnesty-but-we’re-not-calling-it-amnesty illegal immigrant policy of the Arizona senior panderer. Despite these troubling issues, I felt like battling for Sarah Palin just because of the ruthless attacks on her from an elitist media. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I was also disappointed earlier this year when she initially held her hand out for stimulus money when she had promoted herself as a fiscal conservative. She did, however, pull her hand back a little and returned some of the money while all the faux fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party cheered.

But I do not consider Sarah Palin’s actions to be those of a quitter. Saying she is a quitter to her state is to hold quite a dim view of Alaskans, as if they won’t know what to do with themselves unless they have Sarah Palin as their governor.

But back to the line highlighted earlier: “Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government.”

That is perhaps the most likely long-term reason for her early departure from office. Her political action committee, SarahPAC, is doing even better now that their namesake has resigned.

Similarly, the message of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign did not end when the Texas congressman ended his campaign last summer. The Campaign for Liberty, the unofficial extension of Dr. Paul’s campaign currently has over 170,000 members who are dedicated to educating people in their communities about a message of freedom from government and the advocating of sound money -- all this from a presidential candidate who was routinely ignored or mocked by the media and party elites for over a year. Just imagine how many people a similar Sarah Palin (who has garnered exceedingly more attention than Ron Paul) group might attract around a message of energy independence and the preservation of unborn life.

So maybe, just maybe, she does want to enact change in the country or just the state of Alaska by an avenue other than government imposition – education.

Good for Sarah.

100 Days In

Before handing out awards to congratulate President Obama for being the first black president to host an Easter Egg Roll or the first black president to struggle with his teleprompter, let us look at his real accomplishments thus far, good (yes, some) and bad (plenty).

President Barack Obama has endured a mountain of criticism for his cabinet nominees and members. A number (Geithner, Daschle, Sebelius) have been rightly deemed tax cheats and have embarrassed the president and the ones in charge of vetting candidates. Americans generally have a low tolerance for politicians who get away with something that would land normal folks in heap big trouble. The president’s claim of a "new era of responsibility" gets questioned when an unusual number of his nominees have tax troubles, especially when many Americans themselves are struggling, as well as when the president promises “change” by digging up Clinton-era partisan hacks. However, a compliant media has done much to keep the new president rather unscathed.

Upon the assumption of his office, Barack Obama was faced with an economic crisis not of his doing, but of which he took complete ownership. His method of alleviation was ramming through an economic stimulus bill in the same manner and through the same rhetoric of his much-detested predecessor: this emergency is too catastrophic to wait any longer; if we wait any longer, we will be doomed. The bill is too important to read. Pass it or we will all die. Sound anything like the Patriot Act?

After campaigning against 8 years of Republican corruption and proliferate spending, the president embarked on the aforementioned stimulus bill and the pork-laden omnibus bill, bringing the Obama budget soaring somewhere around $4,000,000,000,000 for fiscal year 2010. While the spending done by the Republicans during George W. Bush’s reign was beyond reprehensible and also worth protesting, the monumental debt already created under President Obama sends the message that Bush-era spending was only the beginning.

In the whole financial debacle, the president insisted that spending would get us out of the recession. That assertion assumes that since a lot of spending and bailouts got us into this mess, lots more spending and bailouts will get us out. It is an assertion that many Republicans share when they are in power that no matter how much short-term success it might generate, the value of the dollar continues to plummet and making the another recession inevitable. It is the same old solution only wrapped in a much bigger box.

One of the most defining aspects of the Bush administration was its "Global War on Terrorism," designed to quash tyranny abroad so that liberty in American can be preserved. Actions such as the Patriot Act and the excesses permitted to agencies like the TSA and others have certainly undermined American liberty at home. An incident at Lambert Airport in St. Louis, MO has already been chronicled here before, but another incident in the Southwest suggests that unarmed and unsuspicious Americans are still harassed by their government, even under the supposed civil liberty-minded President Obama (begin video at 8:01, then here, and here).

On the foreign policy front, President Obama promised change but so far has not delivered much. He quickly announced that American troops would be leaving Iraq by August of next year, that is, excepting the 50,000 "residual" forces that are scheduled to remain until at least 2011. However, as news trickles in that Sunni insurgents don’t play nice when the bribe money starts to dry up and civil war resumes, there will be added pressure on the president to keep troops there to pacify the latest uprising and make John McCain’s suggestion that troops stay there for 100 years sound like it came out of Barack Obama’s mouth.

Farther east, as the president promised, Obama has already escalated matters in the increasingly lawless Afghanistan. With poor supply lines, a disintegrating Pakistan quickly succumbing to the Taliban and more Afghans looking to the Taliban for help, American troops will be either relegated to being person bodyguards for President Karzai in Kabul or left to wander in the desert until they get picked off.

Why? There is nothing to be won in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is nowhere to be found. The Taliban is taking over again and the Afghans, notoriously xenophobic, are not resisting local thugs in favor of foreign armies. So the question must be asked again, why does the president want to wander in this graveyard of empires?

The recent and much-publicized Latin American trip drew a lot of attention, particularly from the president's critics on his right. He was called weak for merely sitting and listening to Nicaraguan Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega delivery an anti-American screed. President Obama was denounced for shaking the hand of Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez at the same summit. Rather than turning tables over in disgust over the president’s inclination to grin and bear it, perhaps he was acting like a new head of state should act: quietly. None of these Latin American clowns, who have wrecked their countries almost without exception, pose any threat to the United States. Are we supposed to shoot down any foreign head of state that has the audacity to question the God-given right of the American government to do whatever it wants around the world? The American Conservative columnist Daniel Larison rightly points out that there is nothing to fear from these goons: they thrive (or even survive) based on anti-American rhetoric. The president was right to either let them do their schtick or outright ignore them. It was an episode of calm disposition, something sorely lacking under President Bush.

The president’s dealings with the Somali pirates and hostage situation were swift and effective. The situation was rather quickly defused as the abducted captain was rescued and all of his captors were killed or surrendered. He dealt with stateless warriors in the only way that was manageable and despite calls from all corners to confront the stateless Somalia, (bombing them) he has rightfully deflected all pleas thusfar to enter into another tribal fiasco.

It has only been 100 days, but it looks like things are remaining very much the same. The new regime has only repackaged the same old disasters and called it "change." Some things have been good, as those that have been covered here, but the future is not very bright. Debt soars higher than sky-high and the foreign wars look here to stay, even under a Democratic president. As the old saying goes, people get the government they deserve.

Distractions All Around

*Much to my chagrin, I provided some inaccurate information. This post originally reported that the AIG bailout was $85 billion. The cost to date is approximately $192 billion. $85 billion was the original bailout last September. I have also been habitually reporting that the stimulus bill was for $787 billion and it was actually $789 billion. I did not mean to charge President Obama with $2 billion less in wastefulness than he really got. I have corrected my errors and apologize for them.



First it was the earmarks in the famed $410 billion omnibus bill and then it was the bonuses the government-owned AIG executives paid to each other. Both are relatively small issues placed under the microscope and both are issues which require little courage to oppose.

Let’s begin with earmarks. Earmarks are simply money that’s provided in the budget, for projects in the home districts of congressmen. Most sound sensible enough: clean up water supplies, revitalizing a public park, or money for foster programs but we usually only hear about the most absurd of them. Money for experiments on the mating patterns of whales, research on pine trees, or the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”

It does not take much for a politician to grandstand about the perceived wastefulness of earmarks. Earmarks, which account for less than 1% of the federal budget, are easy for politicians to use to delude the public into believing that it’s all the other politicians who are wasting their money. They can pick out an absurd earmark like the bridge to nowhere and convince enough people that they are fiscally responsible bureaucrats.

Take Missouri Democratic senator Claire McCaskill. Ms. McCaskill, who voted for President Obama’s $789 billion stimulus, railed about the earmarks that showed up in the recent omnibus bill, and carved for herself an image of a fiscal conservative in the Democratic Party. She’s okay with $789 billion that’s either coming from China or being printed out of thin air, but $24,000 for an abstinence program in Pennsylvania is unacceptable? It’s the same reason John McCain can convince people he’s fiscally dependable by opposing earmarks, while being the biggest supporter of the biggest chunk of the federal budget: defense spending.

The president and his cronies lectured to the nation that the $789 billion stimulus had to be rushed through before the earth opened and swallowed us all whole. Then the omnibus comes up and suddenly $20,000 here and $40,000 there are scandals that rival the treason of Benedict Arnold. There is a problem in there somewhere.

How about scrutinizing stimulus and omnibus bills with the fervor the paltry earmarks receive?

Now for the other orchestrated crisis: those damnable AIG bonuses. This is yet another example of the lack of courage required to make a grand political stand.

Last fall, the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-fallible federal government, determining that AIG, the insurance giant, was “too big to fail,” became its 80% owner via a $192 billion bailout. Then, as if out of nowhere, this week it was revealed that AIG was issuing $165 million in bonuses to its executives, an agreement decided upon in 2008, and presumably known by then-New York Federal Reserve president and current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Like earmarks, anger over executive bonuses is easy to orchestrate. When the American public learns that the executives of a failing company award themselves with $165 million, they’re tempted to grab the nearest pitchfork.

But compared to the government’s purchase of the failing institution, the bonuses are but table scraps. Both the bailout and the bonuses are odious moves, but bonuses stir more rage than the bailout. Nobody can truly comprehend $192 billion or $165 million, but most can comprehend bonuses fairly well and they know that failures don’t deserve them. So, AIG executives become the new object of all ire, earmarks being soooo last week.

Like earmarks, it does not take much courage for politicians to criticize the bonuses (that they implicitly condoned when they bailed them out last year), suggesting odious new legislation that would tax the bonuses at 90%, or propose that the government forcibly take it all away.

When Old Right essayist Frank Chodorov opined that taxation was robbery, he probably did not have insurance execs in mind, but his sentiments are not far off when the government commandeers money they technically okay-ed last year.

As repulsive as these bonuses and earmarks are, what they really amount to is a big plate of nothing.

In a world of billion dollar stimuli and billion dollar wars, earmarks and executive bonuses are nothing more than distractions from the disasters the government is creating by bailing out (socializing, nationalizing) every company or trying to police every corner of the world.

The federal government has taken on far too much for either realistic or constitutional expectations.

Instead of confronting the realities of the bloated government, the solution seems to be to spend more, rather than cutting back, reducing all around, and saving. And instead of doing that, they repeatedly point to others and blame the problems on those who have remarkably little to do with the current situation: earmarks and disastrous executives.

As more money filters in from China, further indebting us to the Orient, and as the Federal Reserve leviathan prints increasingly worthless paper, is the problem really a park in Kansas or an executive getting another $300,000, only to be taxed away?

What, pray tell, will happen if the economy further tanks after the bonuses are taxed away? To adapt from Richard Nixon, you won’t have AIG execs to kick around anymore.

And when the dollar becomes as worthless as a Weimar Mark, shall we hang executives who accepted hand-outs most of us would accept for ourselves, or shall we hang the criminals who gave us the fiat dollar, instigated by egregiously wasteful spending that is giving us the socialistic paradise that is modern America?

There is more at stake than an earmark.

The War Drums Beat On

President Barack Obama was elected last November to bring change to America’s governing establishment and end our senseless foreign wars.

However, Clinton administration retreads populate the Obama administration through and through. There has been no scaling back of the intrusive and controversial government measures the Bush administration enacted such as the Patriot Act or FISA, no less spending, and no less transparency in government. Altogether, the scope of the Obama administration looks remarkably similar to the Bush administration.

The one area where it was suggested that there might be a change is the one area where we see the most consistency: foreign policy.

Despite all the best efforts of the Republican Party hacks and talk radio bobbleheads in 2008, Barack Obama is not an isolationist, not willing to “surrender” in the “War on Terror” and perfectly willing to use the American military with the same aloofness as his predecessor.

Take, for example, President Obama’s pledge to remove American combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. That pledge comes with a caveat: 50,000 are staying. This is not the same as American generals staying in Saigon until the Communists were breaking down the door. This is no residual force.

If as many as 50,000 American troops are staying in Iraq to train the local army and police forces, then they will inevitably be called upon to continue fighting all of the warring elements in Iraq. If post-2010 Iraq descends into rampant violence again, what is to stop President Obama from sending more American troops back to Iraq? By keeping one foot in the door, he leaves open the probability that he will have to bring the other one back in as well. It is not as though American troops are leaving the region.

And what exactly is the withdrawal plan for this “residual force” of 50,000 troops? If the plan is for the end of 2011, why keep such a large force there? If I was a cynical guy, I would say that just keeping them there re-opens the possibility that we could be in Iraq for 100 years. What then, would be the difference between President Obama’s plan with these 50,000 troops and John McCain’s plan that would keep some form of military presence in Iraq for 100 years if that’s what it took?

Now let us look at President Obama’s Afghanistan plan. In what could have been as many as 30,000 additional troops, the president settled on sending 17,000 to the graveyard of empires beginning sometime this month.

This plan calls for 17,000 troops, many of whom have already served in Iraq or were trained for duty in Iraq, only to shift them to a completely different theater. Afghanistan, a place probably worse than Iraq, is isolated and highly tribal, whereas Iraq was fairly centralized and comparably united. The military has already acknowledged that Iraq tactics which these soldiers were already trained for will be obsolete in Afghanistan due to the latter's hazardous terrain. Do we have time, in a war about to enter its 8th year, to wage a war by trial-and-error? What will be the reaction of the American people when hundreds of Americans are photographed in flag-draped coffins this year?

And how will the American people react when embattled Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who faces a difficult election this year, might be tempted to cut a deal with a rejuvenated Taliban that controls at least as much of Afghanistan as he does, in order to consolidate power? What will President Obama do then? How will they react when hundreds of young Americans lose their lives for a nation that no longer houses Osama bin Laden but are instead stuck in another inescapable nation-building venture?

If Secretary of War Robert Gates is correct and there is "no military solution for Afghanistan," then why is our military still in Afghanistan?

This does not even cover the drums that are beating for war with Iran. Everyday there is another "new revelation" about Iran’s capability to build the bomb. Everyday there is a new scare tactic employed by the government and the media to convince the American people that there is a nuclear bomb being secretly built in Iran with their name on it. Everyday we are told that our way of life could end in any instant, at the hands of a figurehead in Iran who has no control and barely any support in his own bankrupt country.

Couple all of that with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who as a presidential candidate threatened war on Iran over the security of Israel, is now saying that diplomacy is not likely to work on Iran. What does it mean when the nation’s top diplomat says diplomacy is not expected to work? It’s not that diplomacy might not work on Iran, it’s that it is not even being considered.

Did we really learn nothing from the Iraq debacle? How many "news reports" were we subjected to that Saddam Hussein was behind the anthrax attacks, the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the next nuclear attack?

Hussein at least had weapons of mass destruction in the past, which made the pre-war claims plausible. Ahmadinejad has no weapons, no military, and losing support in his own country. A mountain has been made that they have the capability to launch a satellite. And after all that happened in Iraq, shouldn’t at least an ounce of skepticism be permitted before marching off to war on the drop of a hat?

We have wars that won’t end in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have a war being prepared for in us in Iran, we are firing missiles into Pakistan supposedly intended for Osama bin Laden that kill as many civilians as suspected terrorists.

Considering all the military quagmires, all the negative capital around the world generated from our escapades, the military budget that contributes to the bankrupting of this country, and the fact that bin Laden is still at large, tell me this, what have our military excursions actually done for America?

And what of any of this makes President Obama antiwar?

They Never Learn

Since 2006, when neoconservatism and the Republican Party of the George W. Bush years were thoroughly discredited, I began to realize that the GOP is like the Bourbons, the royal family deposed during the French Revolution, and fully restored after Napoleon’s final defeat. When Charles X became King of France in 1824, he ignored the liberals (not liberals in the current sense) and remained loyal to the royalist factions. Talleyrand, the distinguished diplomat, said that the “Bourbons had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” So it would also seem with the Republicans and especially the neoconservatives.

George W. Bush squeaked his way to reelection in 2004 but the victory was short-lived. His second inaugural address was skeptically received due to its unfounded and ahistorical vision about “eliminating tyranny from the earth.” As if Afghanistan and the only-beginning to burn Iraq were not enough, the president seemed to think that America had the might and mandate to eliminate tyranny from the world and turn every other country into another America - at the point of a gun, that is.

In 2005, violence ratcheted up in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina hit, and the president was quickly becoming an abandoned man. The shabby response to the hurricane signaled a failure of government, or at least the bloated bureaucracy. The president was painted as a man who did not care about the plight of the New Orleanians displaced by the storm. It has been said that that was the beginning of the end for a positive Bush legacy.

Iraq descended into civil war in 2006 and every Republican faced an uphill battle in the midterm elections that year because almost all Republicans had steadfastly and unconditionally supported the president on his war that the country was souring on. When those election results returned, Democrats, who promised they would end U.S. involvement in Iraq, gained 31 House seats and the majority.

So how have the Bush Republicans and neoconservatives learned nothing and forgotten nothing? Even though they have been abandoning the president in droves, many of the neocons are only abandoning the man and none of the ideas that led to the failure of his presidency.

When presidential nominees began announcing their intentions in early 2007, the automatic frontrunners for the Republicans were Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Both were fervent supporters of a war the American people had already decided they were tired of. No one in the entire Republican field, except Ron Paul, would admit that going to Iraq was a mistake. They only had differences with the way President Bush handled the war.

What is more, nobody would ever actually mention President Bush’s name because he had become such a pariah. But nobody would ever actually depart from the philosophy that led to Bush’s ruin: neoconservatism. There was no discussion about whether Iraq was the right course or not, only how it could have been done better, or whether we have any business beginning to bomb Iran, as if engaging that country militarily would prove any better for our country than engaging Iraq or Afghanistan have been.

The philosophy has not changed and the Republicans seem ready to continue losing elections and influence in the country.

This past Tuesday President-elect Barack Obama had his now-famous dinner at the home of George Will, who was hosting, among others, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, one of the main theorists for American intervention in the Middle East. The meeting has been called, “Obama breaking bread with conservatives.” However, there is nothing particularly conservative about any of the people the new president dined with (besides Kristol, there was Rich Lowry of the formery conservative National Review, New York Times "conservative" David Brooks, and The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, another main theorist of American interventionism around the globe.

What is odd about this is that Mr. Obama spent his entire presidential campaign complaining about the path George W. Bush led us down and how we can’t afford any more of it.

So why was he meeting with several of the people who either planned or vociferously defended this disastrous presidency? As I have commented before, it is not as though the president-elect met with those on the Right such as Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, or Joe Sobran, who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, as Mr. Obama claims he had done. Is it possible that the "Change" president isn't going to change much of anything at all?

Despite his occasional antiwar rhetoric about the Iraqi quagmire, he seems intent on escalating the quagmire in Afghanistan. Escalating any war is sure to make any neoconservative or anyone pro-war on the Right delirious, so they are naturally gravitating toward him.

Even though this ideology of perpetual war for perpetual peace has crashed and burned during the Bush years, many of these people are still intent on preserving it for some time in the future.

A word of confession is required here: I was an Iraq war supporter from around 2003-late 2004. I didn’t understand too much of the war or the region, but supported it because I wanted to support my country and my president. But as I expanded my reading and my reasoning matured, I discovered that perhaps this war was not in the nation’s best strategic interest and may actually hurt us. I admit that I was wrong and have changed my mind. I maintain that it is not a flip-flop; I do maintain that I have gotten smarter than I was when I was 19/20 years old. Not to blow my own horn, but I believe it’s a shame others are still blinded by their own ideology of imperialism that they rationalize that it fails not because it is a fallen, sinful world where no ideology can work the way it does in one’s mind, but because the current executive was too incompetent to make it work right.

This policy of imperialism will fail with Barack Obama, too, but it doesn't look like he, nor anyone around him, will learn that before it is too late.

The Opportunists

Readers of this blog have surely noticed that some of the recurring characters are collectively known as the neoconservatives, or “neocons.”

Without going into too much detail, “neoconservative” is the term used to describe members of the Democratic party who left after George McGovern’s nomination in 1972 because they disagreed with the South Dakotan’s “Come Home, America,” pledge.

So, the neoconservatives are liberals who left for the Republican Party because they needed a political home for their doctrines of limitless war and intervention around the world. This found resonance in a GOP that, especially by the 1980’s and Ronald Reagan’s presidency, was determined to win the Cold War. In short, the neoconservatives are always looking for a war in which to plunge their country.

Many of these people have ample access to the nation’s print and television media. Bill Kristol is a fixture on Fox News, so is Charles Krauthammer, and John Bolton gets a favorable amount of time there as well. Bill Bennett gets regular time on CNN while Norman Podhoretz, his son John Podhoretz, and David Horowitz makes rounds on all the networks. Kristol writes a column for The New York Times, as does David Brooks, and Krauthammer’s op-eds come out of The Washington Post, two of the nation’s most influential, but hardly right-wing newspapers. Former President Bush speechwriter David Frum is on everywhere from the radio to The Daily Show. In short, there is no shortage of neoconservative opinion in the news world.

Most of these people are liberal on any of a variety of political issues. Bill Kristol occasionally calls himself pro-life, but the son of neocon founding father Irving Kristol was trumpeting Joe Lieberman for John McCain’s running mate this year and believed that Mr. Lieberman would be accepted by the Social Right if he was “introduced in the right way.” David Frum, who castigates anyone who deviates from the GOP’s current foreign policy, loves to remind people that he is not a social conservative or a conservative concerned with stopping illegal immigration.

These people support an open borders immigration policy that originated in the Democratic Party, the ever-growing federal government, disavowal of the Constitution and its limits, and they treat abortion with indifference. But the overriding issue for neoconservatives is foreign policy and a muscular, aggressive foreign policy at that. And any opposition to intervention anywhere for any reason is tantamount to “isolationism,” “appeasement,” and “surrender,” - just read Clifford May anytime.

These people obtained influence during President Reagan’s terms but gained prominence and agenda-setting status during the terms of the second President Bush. Neocons, holding important positions in the administration, pressured President Bush to confront Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and forcibly remove him if necessary. In a time after the attacks of September 11, 2001, with fear and shock still resonating, their scheme worked.

Now after more than five years in Iraq, and seven in Afghanistan, many Americans have grown weary of the all-war-all-the-time message of the Republicans and the neoconservatives. No bigger reason than frustration over the war in Iraq led to the election of a Democratic congress in 2006. And the war in Iraq was perhaps the biggest factor motivating people to vote for Barack Obama for president in 2008. The freshman senator from Illinois won his party’s nomination because he painted himself as an antiwar candidate who had opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. Once he became a general election candidate, he had to talk tougher on foreign policy to avoid criticism of being weak. That led him to making the war in Afghanistan his defining foreign policy issue, a issue that may well prove his ruin. But getting “tough” on the Afghan theater is what is making the supposedly antiwar candidate appealing to the neoconservatives.

This much is evident by the way the neocons are abandoning their president of the last eight years. The person never seen, but always mentioned during the campaign was the president who launched the war in Iraq. The neocons have been shy to defend the unpopular president many people believed they helped to ruin, mainly because they are flocking to the new president-elect, another person they want to manipulate and mold.

President-elect Obama has made Afghanistan an issue again and the neoconservatives are swarming him, heaping all their praise on him and every cabinet selection from the retention of Robert Gates at Defense to the selection of Hillary Clinton at State. These people need to stay in power and need to have influence on American policies. That they are so quickly singing the praises of President-elect Obama’s burgeoning cabinet, promises that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue.

This is far from a comprehensive look at the neocons (I have omitted references to their Trotskyite intellectual forebears, something a more detailed essay on the neocons would require) but a very brief introduction to the people that wrecked the American image and one American presidency. They have been lumped in the GOP for the last several years but look like they are trying to gain influence among a golden Democratic president.

People who so strongly supported (and crafted) the Bush foreign policy, so strangely abandoned the man but not the policies, and raced to kiss the ring of the new emperor are nothing more than shameless opportunists. It is time they are called what they are.

Burning Christians at the Stake

*I have been on hiatus for awhile due to my wedding. This post was composed several weeks ago because a hot topic was the scapegoating of the Social Right by the GOP establishment. Still try to enjoy it.


In the aftermath of the dismal 2008 election results, the Republicans are certainly scratching their heads trying to figure out just what went wrong. But more than just scratching their heads, the powers that be in the party are pointing fingers. And not surprisingly, none of the fingers are directed at themselves.

Yet the narrative being constructed from such establishment luminaries as David Frum, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker tell their readers that the Republican disaster of 2008 was the fault of conservatives, both from movement types but mostly the varying components of the Christian Right.

Yes, you read that correctly: the reason the Republicans are losing is because of their base, the only remaining part of the coalition is the reason the Republicans are losing. It can’t be endless wars, the revolting amount of pork spent by the “fiscally responsible party”, the shameless bailouts, the incalculable national debt, the horrific mishandling of the economy, rampant corruption within the party, bad trade policies, a reprehensible open borders immigration policy, or just plain old incompetence. You‘re right, David Frum, it’s the fault of voters who care about abortion and gay marriage.

Even some talking heads on the Left like Mort Kondracke are placing the Republican loss squarely on the shoulders of conservatives. Mr. Kondracke asserted on Fox News that conservative (rather, Republican) talk radio was the reason because talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were too polarizing and setting policy.

This is laughable itself because rather than manufacturing any of the policies that have led to Republican repudiations in 2006 and 2008, the talk radio parrots merely supported them, as they usually end up supporting whatever the party decrees anyway.

How can talk radio be destroying the party when it is one of the party’s biggest assets? While the hosts might criticize the party at certain times, they do have a near monopoly on the radio air waves, which is an avenue to bash the other party all day long. They always come back to defend the party line, and always support their dismal candidate, even when that candidate is John McCain.

What this whole episode reveals is the real animosity felt by the Republican Party toward any and all conservatives. The GOP is not concerned about any of the issues conservatives care about (even beyond the social ones). Their only goals are to win elections and increase their power, not what is best for their country.

But isn’t it ironic that these liberals-in-conservatives’ clothes (Frum, Brooks, Parker, and throw in Jonah Goldberg) habitually infuse into their writings that these social issues are “lost” while every time those issues actually make it to the ballot, the results leave the values voters victorious? If these issues still resonate with a majority of the voting public, why show such ugly contempt for them and the voters that support them?

Yet all this outrage should provoke some sort of reaction among the conservative base of the party. It was becoming clear to me, and I hope it will for millions of others, that the Republican Party only views the Christian Right and values voters with contempt. They are pawns for the establishment, nothing more and nothing less.

The Republican Party has screwed itself up, there is no doubt about that. But why are they lashing out at the only people who faithfully support the party? These are the people who still came out in droves to vote for John McCain, the scourge of conservatives, when this was the man who was supposed to attract independents and moderates?

The party and the neocons (FYI: The people who actually set the agenda) are sore that they lost yet again and need to find a way to blame someone else. These people are wailing that Sarah Palin lost the moderates and independents for them. But could it also be that maybe, just maybe, John McCain lost them himself?

It has been said before that being a neocon means never having to admit you were wrong. Fortunately for them, they found a group to blame their failures on.

The More Things Change . . .

. . . the more they stay the same. Or so goes today’s cliché. That sums up the early prognosis of Barack Obama’s first advisors and potential cabinet appointments. The first name to filter out was Rahm Emanuel to be the Mulatto Messiah’s Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is a Clinton administration veteran who, like the aforementioned messiah, is another product of Chicago politics. This is the man whose trademark threat is to mail dead fish to political enemies. So much for change.

The big news over the past weekend was that Hillary Clinton was rumored to be the next Secretary of State. That’s big news indeed. The freshman senator from Illinois was largely nominated by his party because he was the supposedly antiwar candidate. Hillary Clinton’s millstone, even more than her husband, was that she voted for the invasion of Iraq. Obama has the character to lead because he had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war before it began, we were told incessantly. After all, during the primaries and the endless debates that preceded them, Hillary’s biggest piece of political baggage was her vote for war and her shameless triangulating to an ambiguous antiwar position. All the while promising to extend a nuclear shield over Israel should Iran start the shooting. Now the supposedly antiwar president-elect, seems ready to appoint a notoriously pro-war advocate to arguably the most important cabinet post. So much for change.

On Tuesday of this week, it was revealed that the man expected to become the next attorney general is Eric Holder, the deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton who oversaw the Elian Gonzalez “catch-and-release” debacle as well as Bubba’s hundreds of midnight pardons, including the infamous tax evader, Marc Rich. Does anyone believe that the #2 henchman in those disasters is qualified to hold the top legal position in the country? So much for change.

The discovery of these new and potential appointments should not be too surprising. Barack Obama was the product of the Chicago political machine, a notorious black hole whose corruption is on a par with New Orleans. Yet, Mr. Obama campaigned on an image of one who was above politics, above rank partisanship, and one who possessed the character to lead. But he appears to be nominating only Chicago thugs and Clinton administration also-rans.

Justin Raimondo, the astute editor of antiwar.com, identifies the Mulatto Messiah as a veritable blank slate for a disgruntled populace. Since Mr. Obama was so vague on so many issues during his two-year campaign, people were free to assign any label to him that they wanted. If people were angry about the war in Iraq, they could make Obama their antiwar candidate just because he sounded good, not because he provided any reasonable opposition to the invasion. If people were upset because they thought the Bush administration unfairly favored big business, they could listen to Mr. Obama’s rhetoric and think that he would be a president who would be on the side of the taxpayers. Consider this: the freshman senator from Illinois voted for the bailout, loaded with pork, that saved the backside of Wall Street. Some populist.

The fake indignation of liberals over the past 8 years falls on my deaf ears. They are still crying about how President Bush lied or misled the country into war. If either of those accusations were true, they would unquestionably disqualify Democrats from ruling: If President Bush lied, the Democrats were the ones who helped finance the war from the beginning, despite their claim of his dishonesty. If the president merely misled, then how can the Democrats claim to have the competency to lead, when they willingly admit that they were duped by a C student who is constantly ridiculed for being an idiot?

Now for the harsh truth of what these potential appointments mean: very few Americans actually desire real change in their federal government. If they did, both Barack Obama and John McCain would have received 3rd party levels of votes. The majority, or rather supermajority, of the two major parties play the voters for fools, drowning them with empty rhetoric about change and leadership, but who ultimately do little different from their predecessors, even when they are from different parties. I do not expect a President Obama to differ very much from President Bill Clinton or either of the last two Republican presidents. But people will respond to his message because they like the packaging or continue to feel good about themselves because they showed to themselves to “not be racist” because they voted for a “black” man for president.

Something about this “change” smells familiar.

The Blame Game

That more Republicans were routed was expected and sadly, Lindsey Graham was not among them. The damage could have been worse but it was done nonetheless. In the days since the historic election of our country’s first mulatto president, the GOP has been scrambling to figure out why the results were so catastrophic. They have been playing every loser’s favorite pastime: the blame game.

As I have previously conjectured, the biggest problem for the Republican presidential ticket was its nominee, John McCain. However, that is not the news that has been wafting out of what is the remainder of the McCain Camp. Not 24 hours after Mr. McCain’s concession speech did anonymous sources from the McCain campaign begin leaking to the press about how scatter-brained, unprepared, and bitchy vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin turned out to be. This after John McCain himself defended her time and again in the past two months and insisted that he really knew her well.

One of the popular reasons given for John McCain’s loss was the dismal selection of this running mate. From spring through the last weeks of summer, the McCain campaign was spinning its wheels. The freshman senator from Illinois was the toast of the liberal media. He made an even bigger splash by selecting Joe “Big Mouth” Biden, a veteran Washington bureaucrat if there ever was one. Mr. Obama was praised for acknowledging his deficiencies in foreign affairs and picked a supposed expert to help guide him. It smacked of the selection of one Richard Cheney.

So, with the media continuing to drool all over the Great Purveyor of White Guilt, John McCain, trailing in every poll, struggling with a despondent party base, had to do something bold and drastic, and did. The selection of the Alaska governor energized the reluctant conservatives who have never been comfortable with Mr. McCain. They wanted to hear the Democrats’ favorite Republican talk about abortion, gay marriage, and traditional values, Mac’s least favorite talking points. Sarah Palin became the voice to pacify those dissidents and she ended up bringing almost all of them into the Republican fold. She was the greatest gift possible for John McCain’s campaign.

But after a few dismal interviews with the elite liberal media and after her attack dog shtick got old, there were grumblings, even from Republicans, that the good lady had to go. And thus were the first signs that if the Republican ticket lost, the blame would fall on the VP.

And so it has. Never mind that John McCain’s margin of loss was probably smaller, yes smaller, than it would have been had he not selected Mrs. Palin. Had Joe “Partial-Birth” Lieberman or Tom “Terror Level” Ridge been selected, none of the conservatives would have gone with the GOP this year. While Mr. Obama ended up with a hefty electoral vote total, the electoral map was far more red than blue. A McCain-Lieberman or McCain-Ridge ticket would have resulted in a McGovern-like loss and political marginalization for the Republicans. The Religious Right, and its sympathizers like myself, are the most reliable voters the party has. Remove abortion from the platform and the Reagan Democrats will return to their otherwise natural home.

The second scapegoat of the GOP loss arises out of the first one. The charge there is that the religious and values voters of the party are preventing the party from having a bigger tent. The folks over at takimag.com jumped on David “Axis of Evil” Frum’s recent suggestion that an overhaul to the party platform is needed from “abortion to the environment.” He would have been less obvious in his Christian-bashing if he had just demanded the values voters to “get out and stay out!” What is ironic is that this suggestion comes from a chief neoconservative theorist. Mr. Frum blames the values voters for keeping the GOP a small party. But this is the same man who exiled antiwar conservatives in 2003 who dared to question the party’s decision to uproot Iraqi society. He complains the tent is too small but he’s responsible for kicking out a contingent of intellectuals who did not fit into his narrow ideology. Even if conditions appear marginally better in Iraq today than in 2006, that does not change the fact that it is still an unpopular war that most in this country do not believe should have been launched in the first place. Based on this, is the GOP a small tent party because of those stupid and ignorant Christian voters, or because the party adopted a utopian ideology: wars for democracy. Are Christians shrinking the party or was it the policies that David Frum himself promoted and then fed through the president during his tenure as President Bush’s speechwriter?

Surely a change is needed for the Republican Party. However, kowtowing to Democratic talking points is not the solution. Republicans imitated Democrats in their spending habits for the first six years of the Bush administration and were perceived as corrupt as the Democrats of the early 1990s. For it, they were almost unanimously repudiated. For all the fuss made by the moderates and neoconservatives in the party about expanding beyond the base, they are the principal reason the party is in grave danger of losing the base itself.

Have Republicans not noticed that playing like Democrats does not win elections for Republicans? The country has not moved from Center-Right to Center-Left just because democratic socialist Barack Obama thumped donkey-in-elephant’s clothes John McCain. If it was Center-Left, would the gay marriage ban have been passed in California? The country has gotten tired of the Bush years and, rightly or wrongly, John McCain was painted as more of that.

Ron Paul and his message electrified the GOP before and during the primaries in ways no other candidate did. He wanted to bring the troops home, cut the budget, eliminate superfluous departments, replace government intervention with more personal freedom, protect one’s right to life, and return to the Constitution. It was a campaign that put Americans and America first, not corporations and false ideologies. Returning to these bedrock conservative principles should be a good place for the party to start if they wish to return to political relevance.

That is, now that the Republicans have time to sit back and reflect.

The Palin Destruction

Many were shocked when John McCain selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin while others were excited. I was perked up by the selection and even spent half an hour considering voting for Mac after all. That dissipated after I threw a bucket of cold water on my face: Sarah Palin might be a real conservative, but she has been condemned to the McCain agenda, and there lies her own destruction.

Much attention has been heaped on Mrs. Palin’s dismal showings in national interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric. The national media’s apoplectic hatred of the governor is the reason the interviews received so much attention in the first place. If she had been quick and articulate, no one would have ever heard of the interviews. Instead, the muddy answers had to be put on a loop because otherwise, only about a dozen senior citizens would have known about it. That doesn’t excuse the governor’s ambiguous responses, but it is something one should expect when a literal outsider gets dropped into a national campaign and is expected to shine. Providing vague answers does not mean someone is clueless but is still becoming acquainted with the agenda. It is an indicator that the McCain platform of eternal war and unlimited government was not in her DNA.

Critics wailed that she was not qualified for the office of vice president, especially since the man at the top of the ticket was hooked up to a breathing machine and feeding tube. But that brings up an interesting question: just who is qualified to be president? What job in either the public or private sector actually qualifies someone for the current job description of president, especially with all the powers which are not delegated to them in the constitution? Being a community organizer? Being a politician in Alaska? Flying missions over North Vietnam 40 years ago? I don’t think so.

Despite all that, there were soon catcalls for Mrs. Palin to be dumped, obviously from the Left, but even from the Right. Writing at Bush administration organ National Review Online, Kathleen Parker suggested that she be thrown overboard, and one can only assume it is because the governor was not parroting the Bush-McCain forever war message clearly enough, since that is the issue which most concerns them. It’s not about social issues, cutting spending, or doing anything about obtaining energy independence - it’s about the war, stupid. John McCain’s main issue is the war and she doesn’t do it well enough for them.

What really condemns the McCain-Palin ticket is the McCain message itself. This cacophony about the terrible candidacy of Sarah Palin is a ruse. This election was never really about the issues. If it was, then both Barack Obama and John McCain would have been defeated long ago. Mr. McCain won the nomination because he was a war hero. Mr. Obama won his nomination because the voters thought they wanted change but mostly wanted to elect a black man out of white guilt.

The problem is that Sarah Palin IS a conservative. Despite public denials, she probably was a Buchanan Brigader, she cut wasteful spending, lives out her pro-life views, and actually addressed the pro-secessionist Alaska First Independence Party. Imagine any southern politician addressing a League of the South or Sons of the Confederacy gathering. While pro-secessionist tendencies and admiration for the old American South were common among conservatives, the southern cause is not appreciated by the neoconservatives who turned conservatism into something diametrically opposed, but I digress.

The problem is not that Sarah Palin has some political deficiency. The problem is that she is a conservative who is running on a liberal’s ticket and thus has to defend a liberal’s record. That she struggles and stumbles should give authentic conservatives some hope. It means that when she is giving the McCain campaign stock answer, she is probably racking her brain to make sure she doesn’t let her conservatism slip out. After all, Mrs. Palin expressed support for Mitt Romney and admiration for Ron Paul. One acted like a conservative while the other is the closest there is to an outsider who is actually in Washington. A McCain or Establishment Republican she is not.

Contrary to popular regurgitation, Sarah Palin is not a hindrance to the McCain campaign. She did not tell her running mate to say, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” She did not force Mr. McCain to suspend his campaign, feign interest in the financial debacle, and then vote for the bailout. The McCain campaign is self-destructing but Sarah Palin is not the culprit, John McCain is. The only remaining enthusiasm for the failing campaign is because of Mrs. Palin. John McCain has never been a big crowd-grabber. Now he cannot be seen without her. She is the one drawing crowds for the Republican ticket, not the donkey in elephant’s clothing. After months of struggling to get the religious vote, John McCain finally secured it with the selection of Sarah Palin. His support in the election is stronger because of his running mate, not weaker. If the McCain campaign is weaker now than it was in mid-August, it is because of McCain himself.

This fuss over Sarah Palin and her conservatism is noteworthy because many traditional conservatives have sold their souls during the Bush administration. They latched on to the Bush administration like it was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. When President Bush became discredited, the conservatives who attached themselves to him became discredited as well. When people see conservatives defend someone who expanded the welfare state as well as the warfare state, they are apt to think that conservatives stand for all those things too.

Conservatives who bellowed against President Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo have defended the Iraq war to the bitter end of the Bush years. Conservatives screamed in defiance of Bill Clinton’s spending but looked the other way when George W. Bush and the Republican congress spent in ways that made Mr. Clinton look like the conservative. And once the presidential race became a contest between John McCain and Barack Obama, most of these same conservatives on the radio and in print, threw their lot in with Mr. McCain, a worthless and liberal candidate. Better a Republican than a Democrat, even if both are liberal.

Let us hope, even if it is just for her sake, that the Republican ticket loses. So perhaps one conservative can keep her soul.

Chuck Baldwin for President

In a year of endless presidential endorsements for John McCain (Jon Voight, Chuck Norris, Tom Selleck) and Barack Obama (the rest of Hollywood and all other narcissists), I don’t suppose another endorsement could possibly cause any more damage.

Perhaps this is not an official endorsement. Endorsements typically come from celebrities who don’t feel they get enough attention. On this issue I tend to agree with, of all people, Kid Rock. One of the only remaining singer-songwriters honestly admits that he does not understand much about politics and cares little for celebrities who endorse candidates. He says that celebrities don’t understand politics and now they tell us how we should vote. It’s just another chance to force their views on the American people, the rocker tells us. This is especially true when most celebrities’ reason to vote for someone like Barack Obama is that he "represents change" and "has the ability (i.e. race) to unite like FDR, Kennedy, and Reagan." Blah Blah Blah. Love Me. Blah Blah Blah. Celebrity babble.

So, please think of this as my explanation for voting for Dr. Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party.

As the two major candidates continually prove that neither major party has the fortitude to lead, 2008 would seem like the perfect year for a 3rd party to break through and shake things up. Republican Ron Paul would have been an obvious choice to disrupt the balance of the two-party system but Dr. No was content to remain in his congressional seat. Fair enough.

Bob Barr, former representative from Georgia, threw his hat in the Libertarian race and generated some enthusiasm. Mr. Barr wrested the nomination on the sixth ballot and is running with self-promoter Wayne Allyn Root. Enthusiasm for the Barr-Root ticket faded as more people realized that Mr. Barr is really just a Republican posing as a libertarian in order to cash in on Ron Paul’s popularity. When antiwar sentiment drew a million voters to Dr. Paul in the Republican primaries, it made sense that a consistently antiwar candidate would pick up that block of the vote. But while he was still in Congress, Mr. Barr voted for the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act. Today, he still says he would have supported the war, but would have executed it in a different way. In a nutshell, Bob Barr has the same Iraq position as John McCain. Likewise, Mr. Barr’s running mate says the invasion of Iraq was a disaster, that it should not have happened in the first place, and that the situation is such that he would not leave. The folks at lewrockwell.com are correct in attributing “neocon” status to the 2008 libertarian ticket.

That was the case against Bob Barr. The case for Chuck Baldwin is that he is a genuinely antiwar conservative. The host of the “Chuck Baldwin Live” radio program is a Baptist minister (W. James Antle III dubbed him "Reverend Right"), a syndicated columnist, and was the vice presidential nominee of the Constitution Party in 2004 when he ran behind Michael Peroutka. His website, http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/, is a repository of Dr. Baldwin’s writings, dating back to 2001. If anyone wishes to inquire about any of Dr. Baldwin’s positions, they are easily accessible. Also found are articles written by an assortment of journalists and other writers on topics ranging from foreign policy and immigration to trade and economic policies. To my knowledge, he is the only candidate in this year’s race who actively spoke out against the nation’s banking problem.

Dr. Baldwin repeatedly invokes Dr. Ron Paul in his writings. He particularly supports the good doctor’s “Sanctity of Human Life” amendment, which Dr. Paul brings up annually in Congress, only to have it voted down or killed in committee. One of Dr. Baldwin’s hammering points is that Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for six years and did nothing to alleviate the abomination of abortion. Many values voters keep voting for the GOP because they have been duped by the party on the issue of judges. The logic goes that if enough conservative judges are appointed to the Supreme Court, then they can overturn Roe v. Wade. Republicans are more conservative, so they are the best bet to get abortion outlawed. But Sandra Day O’Connor, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter, foes to values voters both past and present, were all appointees of Republican presidents. And if the Republican establishment knows they will always have the antiabortion vote, then what incentive do they have for nominating justices who actually would outlaw abortion? And Dr. Baldwin knows that if abortion would be overturned in the country, it has to be through an act of Congress, in whose authority the issue lies.

But perhaps Chuck Baldwin’s chief issue in the 2008 election surrounds America’s national sovereignty. He, like myself, is disturbed at the immigration mess that is literally turning the American southwest into “Mexamerica,” a region that is neither America nor Mexico in any definable way. He opposes the proposed NAFTA superhighway, which would connect the trade of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, as if the three supposedly sovereign nations had no border whatsoever. Dr. Baldwin insists that as national sovereignty fades away, so too will the remaining liberties of our nation. As a conservative Christian, Chuck Baldwin understands the value of religious liberty, for all religions, and how the de facto merging of the three North American nations could not guarantee religious liberty for anyone.

Now for a brief note on character. This summer there was a demonstration dubbed the “Ron Paul March on Washington,” an event orchestrated to oppose the continued war in Iraq and the federal government’s perpetual encroachment into the lives of its citizens. There, Dr. Baldwin was scheduled to speak for a substantial amount of time, but voluntarily withdrew some of his allotted time out of respect for Dr. Paul‘s schedule. In an election where all third party candidates were yearning for a Ron Paul endorsement and any connection to the man, Chuck Baldwin resisted and humbly declined to lobby for the physician’s vote of confidence. He repeatedly says that if Dr. Paul was currently in the race, he would not be running himself. He insists that the message of liberty is stronger than any one candidate and that he is not necessarily the best person to be its spokesman, but accepts it as the candidate of the Constitution Party. The resistance to lead is the most qualifying characteristic for a good leader. While Chuck Baldwin might have that characteristic, George Washington definitely had it, which made him the great leader he was.

I will not sit here and tell anyone that they must vote for Chuck Baldwin because I am or because I say so. I am voting for Dr. Baldwin because he has well-articulated opinions and positions with which I agree. I cannot agree with him on everything (a look at Martin Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms should be in good order), but his positives far outweigh his negatives. He is not running on name recognition or riding on someone’s coattails. In a country whose federal government causes more problems than it solves, I am voting for someone who preaches limited government, a message found in neither the Republican nor the Democratic party.

*I am not picking on Mr. Hanks by posting his video but it is merely one example.

Screwed coming and going

The events of the last two weeks, ie. the recent Wall Street crisis and impending $700 billion bailout, clearly demonstrates why each of the nominees and their parties are unfit to lead. John McCain suspended his presidential campaign to return to Washington last week in order to address the fiscal crisis that will result in the nationalization of our country’s banking system. After doing nothing and coming off as brutish in the debate, Mr. McCain proved himself inept. Continuing to shirk his senatorial responsibilities, the only contribution to the situation from the freshman senator of Illinois was an aloof, “Call me if you need me.” Now tell me, do you have the Messiah on speed-dial?

As last Friday’s debate approached, observers believed it was going to be exclusively about foreign policy. Not that I looked forward to 90 minutes of Senator McCain’s saber-rattling, but about half of it was dedicated to the financial mess and what each bonehead would do. It told us precisely why neither candidate should win. John McCain used the time to take a few new positions on the bailout, while it was the opportunity for Mr. Obama to tell the country that there isn’t a federal regulation he doesn’t like. (Lending institutions are bankrupt? Let the government take care of it! Public schools don’t teach enough sex ed? Let the government take care of it! Can‘t say anything nice about Barack Obama? Well, the government can take care of that - and you - too) One candidate promises intervention into the economy of our country while one candidate promises military intervention into other countries. Is there anyone still alive who remembers when the United States was a free country?

Regarding the financial debacle, Republicans point at Democrats while Democrats blame the Bush economic policies that (in their minds) forced banks to lend out money they didn’t have. It would be comical if not so tragic that the most irrelevant House speaker of all time, Nancy Pelosi, continually asserts that Democrats bear no blame for the bad money policies that are biting the country on the back side. As bad as the Republicans were, especially during the first six years of the Bush administration, it was the Democrats who promised in 2006 that they would end Mr. Bush’s atrocious war in Iraq and end Washington’s “culture of corruption.” Little did anyone know that it was only the corruptive majority party that would change. As for the economy, the Democrats blame the upcoming depression on the president “because it happened on his watch.”

That would seem a pretty damning charge, but Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who each head committees on banking, have each received generous amounts of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Despite receiving warnings, the two corrupt politicians continually claimed that the institutions were stable and intact. Considering what we know now, then we should probably assume that because the Democrats were the controlling party of the whole legislative branch, then they are also responsible. They were the ones truly just watching as the economy collapsed. The absurd $700 billion bailout serves only to save their own butts and the butts of their partners in crime. If knowingly lending out unsupported money to unsuspecting people is not a crime, then I guess neither is waging an aggressive, undeclared war against a country that never attacked us. Just a little something for Democrats to chew on.

Barack Obama can probably coast to the White House now. Before the primaries, John McCain infamously said that he did not understand much about the economy. He spent the past week proving it (somewhere Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and probably sobbing). Barack Obama demonstrates more competence in talking about economics, regardless of whether the content he knows will be useful for taxpayers. People will be more willing to trust him to handle money matters.

Even after eight relatively good years, the American masses tend to tire of the incumbent party. While Ronald Reagan was not quite as spectacularly loved during the 1980s and Republicans gloat, his general popularity did not immediately benefit Vice President George H. W. Bush. And despite Bill Clinton’s little impeachment problem, his enormous popularity did little to help Al Gore. In 2000, George W. Bush and the Republicans tied Mr. Gore to Mr. Clinton, despite the latter’s popularity. Even though George W. Bush’s popularity probably does not need to be reiterated here, it helps to show how the GOP nominee, whoever it would be, was in for an uphill struggle. The incumbent party is always bound to face trouble after eight years in the White House. Incompetence and corruption would only compound the situation, paving the way for the opposition party.

So, what to do? My unsolicited opinion is to reject all faith in the two governing parties. This not-so-unexpected calamity regarding the nation’s economy, readily pointed out by Ron Paul, tells this writer everything necessary to decide that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have the will nor desire to actually fix anything. Both parties stood by and watched as their mess came to fruition. John McCain’s ignorance and incompetence disqualify him from serving as president, with his age being the least of his problems. Barack Obama, who only intends to inject more fake money into the economy, somehow fund universal health care, raise taxes, and refuse to end a war that will soon be in its sixth unpopular year, will probably make taxpayers yearn for the good olds of George W. Bush.

Maybe the Alaska Independence Party in on to something.

Soon: Palin. What Happened?