A Wealthier, Less Principled Mitt Romney

If there is one reason people are considering supporting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for president, it's because he's considered "electable," meaning he has a fair shot to defeat President Obama in 2012.

If there was one thing that hampered Romney's 2008 campaign it was the perception that he was a flip-flopper, a role which earned him the nickname "Multiple Choice Mitt."

While trying to present himself as a conservative, and even winning the endorsement of National Review, Romney was dogged by a very recent and probably very politically calculated switch from pro-choice on abortion to pro-life. This from a man who minced no words in assuring Massachusetts voters during a 2002 gubernatorial debate that he would "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose."

A more pressing issue for the 2012 presidential primaries is the national health care scheme passed by the last Congress. The plan that served as the model for Obamacare infamously bears the signature of Governor Mitt Romney.

Knowing that the Republican nominee in 2012 will have to campaign against Obama's landmark achievement, the president must be licking his lips knowing that a likely opponent of his will have to contort himself in an attempt to effectively campaign against himself. Voters would be sure to be reminded of another Massachusetts presidential candidate who also voted for something before he voted against it.

As of this writing, there is speculation that real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump is running for president. Considering that a reality TV star may be a presidential contender should tell us that the line between reality and fantasy is already blurred.

Like Romney, Trump had always been pro-choice until he thought about running for president. Now "The Donald," a philandering, casino-running, beauty pageant-owning egomaniac has gotten religion. Doing an interview for the Christian Broadcasting Network, one that looks more like The Onion than anything else, Trump is now telling us how much he loves the Bible, how much he loves sending people Bibles, and how great it is going to church.

So now it appears that Trump is doing what Romney has done for years, trying to convince us that he is not what he has always been: an empty suit who will say anything to advance himself.

Last week, a few reports surfaced on the Drudge Report where Trump, on separate occasions, labeled both George W. Bush and Obama has "the worst president ever."

Shortly after the 2008 presidential election, Trump called Bush "evil" and even though he supported John McCain, he felt comfortable with President-elect Obama because he would govern by "consensus" and not rush off to war in a bull-headed manner like Bush. On the one hand, this may only mean that Trump was one among millions snookered by the smooth rhetoric of candidate Obama. But on the other hand, one has to wonder, if Trump believed Bush was bull-headed and rash in going to war, what had he ever seen in McCain's character and temperament that led him to believe the Arizona Republican would have been any different?

Even though Trump has traditionally supported Democrats and before he supported McCain, he preferred Hillary Clinton, which might give us a clue about how "The Donald" feels about government-run health care.

Like much of the current appeal of a Romney candidacy, the reason conservatives seem to be giving for supporting Trump is that he has a chance to beat Obama.

But if Republicans choose Trump, what does that say?

It means that after a lifetime of supporting Democrats and Democratic causes, all a celebrity like Trump has to do is start saying a few of the right things and he suddenly has conservative bona fides.

Are Republicans and conservatives so eager to make a Faustian Bargain to regain control of the White House that anyone, regardless of all the evidence against them, will do so long as they read the right lines?

Time will tell.

A Serious Tea Party

Under discussion: The Tea Party Goes to Washington by Rand Paul with Jack Hunter, 272 pages, $21.99, Hardcover.

What is the Tea Party? Is it the refashioned conservative movement? Is it the reaction to a new liberal Democratic president? Or worst of all, is the Tea Party just a bunch of astroturfing-Fox News-watching-racist rednecks? In The Tea Party Goes to Washington, Kentucky senator Rand Paul begins to give us an answer.

The Tea Party, according to Senator Paul, is a reaction to the big spending of Washington and a desire to curtail the power of the federal government. The trouble, or virtue, of a movement without a central hierarchy is that there is no unified message or platform. There have been a few attempts to present an official Tea Party message but A Tea Party Manifesto and That’s No Angry Mob – That’s My Mom are mostly relegated to the bargain shelf at Borders.

If there is a difference between earlier attempts at a Tea Party synthesis and Rand Paul’s it's that the current volume is attached to the platform of a victorious candidate. Since winning, Marco Rubio has shunned the Tea Party label he rode to election, exposing himself as the Bush family agent that he always was, while Tea Party losers Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle are already largely forgotten. So without the competing versions, the Rand Paul incarnation of the Tea Party shines brighter. And considering the contents of The Tea Party Goes to Washington, it’s sure to ruffle the feathers of anyone who would like to see the Tea Party either go away or be co-opted by the Republican Party altogether.

A note is needed first on the aesthetics of the book. The cover art depicts the Capitol Dome being squeezed by a belt, indicative of the diet Washington needs. But what’s most intriguing about the cover is what’s not there: a picture of the author himself. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich – all presidential contenders – all adorn the covers of their books.

Nor is this unique to politicians. Talk show hosts Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews all have their mugs defacing the covers of their books. This is no coincidence. Most of the people hawking books are not actually interested in ideas but only in advancing themselves. Will someone tell me what would be the primary difference between a Huckabee candidacy and a Romney one? What’s in Sean Hannity’s book that’s not in Mark Levin’s? The difference is only in personality and style. The fact that Senator Paul is absent from the front cover (although not the back where he is pictured with his smiling wife) indicates that the book is more about his ideas than about himself personally.

The book itself is charming because it is part autobiography and part agenda. Facing the first page of every chapter is a photo, including pictures from the senator’s childhood as Ron Paul’s son and several with his own family from the campaign trail. While these images and stories from the campaign and his life are affectionate and reinforce the already-present human side of Rand Paul, the most lasting impression in the book is how radical it is. Radical not in the sense that the senator should fear being dragged before Peter King’s inquisition, but radical in how there are real ideas in the book and not shallow talking points.

This radicalism is evident even before the first page of the text. Rand Paul’s selection of a co-author is Jack Hunter, a so-far obscure South Carolina columnist and radio commentator known to many by his alias, The Southern Avenger. This choice of co-author is remarkable because Hunter, a veteran of both the Ron Paul Revolution and the Buchanan Brigades, proto-Tea Party movements, had, like Rand Paul, also never written a book. It is not for nothing that Rand Paul’s collaborator was not an accomplished ghost writer but an authentic voice of the grassroots Right.

The fingerprints of the co-author are everywhere to be found. Chapter 3, “Equal Parts Chastisement, Republicans and Democrats” is vintage Jack Hunter, including a brief introduction to the neoconservatives and treatment of Fred Barnes’ sycophantic 2003 Wall Street Journal article “Big Government Conservatism” where the Weekly Standard veteran condoned and justified George W. Bush’s growth of government. Rand Paul sees the disconnect among Republicans who took this sort of blind eye to the Republican Bush’s growth but are enraged by the Democrat Obama’s growth. “Consider this – what kind of person would talk about how badly the neighbors’ kids behave while ignoring the bad behavior of their own children?” (62) is a phrase Mr. Hunter’s listeners have heard a time or two.

Not to be outdone, Rand Paul reminds Democrats that they are just as guilty of looking the other way when their man does the same crime:

“Contrary to his supporters’ belief, Obama’s agenda has not been a reversal of Bush’s agenda but an extension of it, only more ambitious in scope and even more reckless in spending. Amazingly, and perhaps ironically, even on the issues that once animated the Left against the Republicans – prolonged war, civil liberties infringements, the further empowerment of the executive branch – Obama has basically maintained the same policies as his predecessor, and in some cases has expanded them.” (59)

And this was before Obama reinstituted indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay. One wonders if waterboarding will be next.

But nowhere is the radicalism more evident than in Chapter 7, “A Conservative Foreign Policy,” and nowhere else is it more evident that Rand Paul is indeed his father’s son.

In this important chapter, the reader is treated to discussions of the neoconservative influence on foreign policy, the long-forgotten Senator Robert Taft, and a call to end nation-building.

Outside of the often insular conservative movement, there is scant attention or even acknowledgement of the existence of the neoconservatives and to find a discussion of this sect of interlopers in a U.S. senator’s book is more than just a breath of fresh air – it is a torrent, especially when there are phrases peppered in like “a Republican Party tainted by neoconservative ideology.”

The importance of the issues discussed in this chapter have been brought up before in Ron Paul’s books and more academic treatises, but the blessing in Rand Paul’s book is that he makes arguments that got his father booed without incurring the same wrath himself. In other words, Rand Paul takes foreign policy, an issue on which there was no allowable dissent during the Bush years, and presents it in a way that can be accepted by conservatives:

“The great irony is that conservatives preach individual responsibility and reliance domestically but practice policies abroad that create dependence on foreign aid and dependence on foreign soldiers. Where conservatives will ask the domestically unemployed to seek work and become independent of government welfare, abroad we let nations depend on our succor. We don’t demand the same self-reliance internationally that we do domestically.” (131-132)

If there are a couple of faults with The Tea Party Goes to Washington they have to do with the frequent references to his father. Littered throughout the text are phrases like “My father always says . . .” or “My dad believes . . .” but these are only slightly distracting. This is not necessarily Rand Paul’s fault – it just proves he came from a stable home and his father was obviously around enough to influence him – but this may expose the younger Paul to criticism among the uneducated that he is just a clone of his father.

There were also a couple of minor historical errors regarding years. On page 144, Gerald Ford is referred to as the moderate candidate for president in 1974, the year Ford ascended to the presidency, not the year he was a candidate for president, which was 1976. Then on page 154, Neville Chamberlain is said to have signed a peace treaty with Germany in 1939, the “appeasement” of Hitler. The author is probably thinking about the Munich Agreement which was in 1938.

The Tea Party Goes to Washington, with over four pages of recommended books and websites at the end, is undeniably a book about not just ideas, but fresh ideas. The Republican establishment did its best to wall Rand Paul out of the U.S. Senate during the 2010 primary, in much the same way they did to his father at the 2008 Republican National Convention, a sleight that does not go unnoticed by the son.

It's easy to see why.

No Shame: The Case Against Mitt Romney

Under discussion: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness by Mitt Romney, 323 pages, $26.95.

It’s hard to imagine a worse presidential contender than Mitt Romney. Yet, he nearly won the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and whether conservatives will admit it or not, Romney is the most likely member of the party to win the nomination in 2012.

The flip-flopping, status quo defending, conventional wisdom-spouting pol is certainly viewed as “safe” and “electable” by the Republican establishment and as a “tolerable Republican” by the Democrats. 1964 excepted, this is the course Republicans always take. Despite the grassroots’ anger over Romneycare becoming Obamacare, Republicans should get comfortable with a Romney candidacy.

Editors Rich Lowry and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review, the so-called mast of so-called conservatism, are still behind him. A Rasmussen poll shows that Romney, three years out, is the strongest Republican opponent to Obama -- a 45-45 statistical dead heat. The same poll says Obama would beat Sarah Palin 48-42. Mike Huckabee’s political star is fading and the party still refuses to acknowledge the existence of Ron Paul who will be 76 during the primary season.

Make no mistake, Mitt Romney is running for president. Nobody writes a book like No Apology unless they’re running for something. And Mitt Romney is always running for something. With entire chapters dedicated to topics such as health care, education, energy, and four chapters wailing about foreign policy, Mitt Romney intends to be president.

But if Romney thinks he will be able to effectively challenge President Obama in 2012, he does have some convincing left to do – and not just the Democrats he spent his pre-2008 political career trying to schmooze.

While he should face little resistance to his atrocious foreign policy, the GOP base is sure to have huge question marks about Romney’s unfolding positions on abortion, gay marriage, and the bank bailouts.

The American Conservative columnist Daniel Larison has quipped that Romney should just not talk about foreign policy because he seems hopelessly confused, conflating differing sects of Islam with each other, exposing inexcusable ignorance of the millennia-old rivalries between Sunni and Shiite. But as George W. Bush proved, simple regional and religious ignorance may be just part of the job qualifications.

The self-stated purpose of No Apology is that American greatness is inherent and there is no reason for America to feel sorry about anything ever, the meme used by statists in both party to indicate that there is no difference a government and its people.

Through this, it is implied that No Apology is the antithesis to the supposed “Apology Tour” of President Obama. In practice, the purpose seems to be that Mitt Romney believes he can take both sides of an argument at the same time and think that that makes him smart. Also, it becomes evident that in addition to offering no “I’m sorry”’s, Mitt Romney offers no justifiable defense, or apology, for past Republican failures he fully intends to repeat.

An example of this shows up in Chapter 2 when Romney gives a great deal of attention to why great nations fall i.e., when they isolate themselves and refuse to accept the changes of modernity:

“While Europe embarked on the early stages of manufacturing, the Ottomans did not; . . . The Ottomans’ growing isolation from the dynamic world of manufacture and trade was reinforced by the conviction that their holy scriptures provided all the knowledge that was necessary; foreign technology was infidel technology. The empire banned the printing press for half a century.” (37)

And about China:

“For the Ottomans, the Qur’an contained everything that life required; for the Chinese, it was their ancient culture . . . But rather than viewing learning and innovation as paths to prosperity, [Mao Zedong] saw them as threats.” (39)

Remarkably, the author of No Apology wrote the following statements in Chapter 3:

“. . . Mao never really took to modernity and technology, and his military continued to reflect that prejudice, maintaining a massive four-million-soldier army as only a weak compensation for the nation’s obsolete or non-existent weapons systems and logistical support. It wasn’t until approximately twenty years ago that China decided to build a modern world-class military. . .”

“Rather than embracing discovery, the Islamic fundamentalists condemn it. For them, the Qur’an contains all information and learning that is needed, and everything that should be known. In this view, modernity itself is evil – contemporary law, business practices, social mores, tolerance, rationalism, and scientific inquiry are heresy. And as the world’s epicenter of innovation and intellectual discovery, America is emblematic of the world’s sinful pursuit of everything forbidden by Allah.” (64-65, 66)

It’s difficult to concisely summarize Romney’s cognitive dissonance. On the one hand he seems to argue that great and powerful nations fall when they refuse to adapt to change and embrace technology and modern innovations. He uses the dissolution of the grandest Islamic empire as evidence of that. But on the other hand, bands of terrorists who do not accept modernity and represent a backward worldview, are inexplicably more dangerous than the Ottomans themselves or Mao’s pre-modern military.

But this is also symptomatic of the fundamental phoniness of Mitt Romney.

He draws some comparisons from history and hopes the reader will accept Romney’s façade of intellectualism at face value. How can Romney honestly think, six inches beneath his mound of hair gel, that 4 percent of GDP is required to battle an enemy that he has already explained has sown the seeds of their own futility by refusing to accept modern innovations?

Even on a subject on which Romney is generally accepted as having unique knowledge, the economy, he again shows himself riding both sides:

“It doesn’t make sense to bail out individual companies or banks or financial institutions that get in trouble. As we’ve seen, creative destruction is part of a growing, productive economy. Bailing out sick enterprises . . . merely prolong the final act.

“But Secretary Paulson’s proposal was not aimed at saving sick Wall Street banks or even at preserving jobs on Wall Street. . . . It did in fact keep our economy from total meltdown. (127-128)

Here Romney uncritically repeats the conventional wisdom used by both corporate parties to justify the largest redistribution of wealth in history. What’s worse is that he essentially repeats Bush’s lie that he had to abandon his free-market principles to save the free market.

This time, it’s Romney who is fine with abandoning the concept of “creative destruction,” the way the market rewards good businesses and eliminates poor ones, for a titanic propping-up of the banks, as if their industry should have been immune from the laws of economics.

Apparently it has never occurred to ol’ Mitt that much of the American economy was already propped up by an illusion of wealth created by the Federal Reserve and that rescuing the banks only prolongs a tragic final act that is yet to come.

But perhaps Romney’s most brazen attempt at obfuscation is the most predictable one: Massachusetts health care.

It isn’t difficult to see why. Just as Romney’s amorphous position on abortion (one dependant on which office he’s seeking), might have been enough to derail his 2008 presidential bid, his signature achievement as governor of Massachusetts is what is temporarily angering conservatives in 2010.

He addresses the situation in Chapter 7, “Healing Health Care”:

“In 2009, the national health-care policy supported by President Barack Obama was often and erroneously reported as being based upon the plan we had enacted in Massachusetts. There were some very big differences – in particular, our plan did not include a public insurance option.” (176)

On this much Romney is right. At the time of the book’s writing, the so-called Massachusetts Model, which mandated that all citizens purchase health insurance, was not the same as the public option plan that was eventually discarded.

However, since No Apology went to press, the new health care law, which mandates health insurance for all Americans, does more closely resemble the Massachusetts Model, casting the proverbial aspersions on Romney’s claim that his model is different and likely putting a smile on Obama’s face when he sees Romney’s blabbering doubletalk on TV.

Republicans salivating at the prospect of an inevitable Obama defeat in 2012 should exercise caution when assuming that any suit or skirt will win. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might be ancient history by then and Mitt Romney is just unprincipled enough to play John Kerry to Barack Obama’s George W. Bush.

And there would be no apology big enough for that.

Is Glenn Beck Healthy for the Right?

Following the anti-Obama festivities of the weekend of September 11, 2009, headlined by Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project and march on Washington, one must certainly attest that the radio and TV host wields some amount of influence on the grassroots Right and beyond. Beck’s exposure of the depravity of ACORN and a rare willingness to sharply criticize the Bush administration make him stand out among the conservative commentariat. But could Beck be just as much of the problem of the Right as its solution?

Watching in 2009, it might appear as though Beck would be a suitable spokesman for a Bush-less Republican Party. He wails against the bank bailouts and the readiness with which Dubya expanded the government. Beck’s eagerness to attack the Bush administration is commendable and many of those attacks are those which Republicans and conservatives need to hear because if someone’s goal is to cut government, restore individual liberty, and be governed by laws instead of men, the first fact that must be grasped is that today's Republican Party is not your friend.

The problem with windbag talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and their minor league impersonators, is that they never seriously challenge the status quo of their party. This is done to the point that conservative talk radio may as well be called Republican talk radio. After all, these are the folks who jumped on the bandwagon for pro-choice, state-run health care Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The speed with which they followed the empty suit perfectly illustrates how empty the vessel of contemporary American conservatism is. And it is why the talk radio medium ought to be generally, but not completely, ignored.

Is Glenn Beck different? It’s true that he frequently has Ron Paul as a guest, as well as his son, Rand. Judge Andrew Napolitano, who readily calls Republican and Democratic politicians the criminals that they are, is a regular guest host. Another regular is Professor Kevin Gutzman, a contributor to takimag.com, among the most anti-Bush and anti-GOP establishment webzines, Left or Right, to talk about states’ rights, an issue faux conservatives avoid like the Bubonic plague. Plus, Glenn Beck openly criticizes the Republican Party when the sycophants are still tip-toeing around the fact that maybe Bush might have, possibly, done some things that might not have been quite okay.

I actually somewhat like Beck. His schtick can get a little tiresome, going from crying to yelling to having a fire-side chat all in the same afternoon, but he also does some relevant reporting. Everyone following the news right now has heard about Beck’s reporting of the ACORN scandals. He’s the only TV or radio personality I can think of who has actually taken a skeptical view of the Federal Reserve and the insane monetary practices of printing a trillion dollars. He’s also the only TV host I’m aware of who actually has members of Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty for segments on his show. To people like Rush and Hannity, Ron Paul is still a four-letter word.

Beck’s 9.12 Project is admirable and rather uncontroversial. “Common Sense” was a decent read and was actually pretty independent-minded, calling out both parties for their extravagance but most of it falling on the Democrats.

However, a recent mash-up video has surfaced where Beck can be seen calling Ron Paul a “crazy, kooky guy,” suggesting that last year’s bank bailout “wasn’t nearly enough” and that he “supported the Patriot Act.” Interspersed were neocon party lines of Ahmadinejad as Hitler who was making preparations for a second holocaust. (Also see this video where he contemptibly smears Ron Paul supporters for having a “money bomb” on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, as domestic terrorists, oddly foreshadowing the Obama administration’s reports about potential right wing domestic terrorism which Beck would ironically denounce.)

Such a video obviously has the potential to be easily taken out of context and spliced together in Michael Moore fashion to make Beck look like a despicable flip-flopper. Indeed, anyone could be embarrassed by seeing their worst predictions all glued together. For example, in a needlessly rambling blog from over a year ago, I implied support for the war in Afghanistan over the one in Iraq, a position I certainly do not hold today.

Since the material from the nefarious video was originally uttered, Beck has admitted that he did support the Patriot Act but regrets it. In a more surprising video, Beck reveals that

“I guess the scales are falling off my eyes. . . . In 1900 with Teddy Roosevelt . . . we’re going to tell the rest of the world, ‘We’re going to spread democracy.’ . . . in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse after the next progressive came into office . . . the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did, we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant, global government, it was originally . . . League of Nations . . . then it became the United Nations, one world government. The Republicans took it as ‘We’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it.’ I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, and then come home.” (emphasis mine)

If there is one issue that continues to unite the mainstream Right, outside of opposition to Obama, it’s the unwavering support for Bush’s wars. Even if it took him more than seven years, Glenn Beck should be commended for speaking out against enduring military occupations. May he keep it up.

But it’s still quite precarious that Glenn Beck has shed his more odious positions once the Republicans were thoroughly repudiated. His antics are a bit annoying, bordering on bad soap opera acting, but he still displays better independence than his more unoriginal talk radio colleagues.

So, is Glenn Beck healthy for the Right? Maybe, maybe not. Is he part of the solution or is he part of the problem? If he’s part of the problem, he’s far less of it than Rush, Hannity, Levin or Coulter.

Conservatives have been betrayed in an unrepentant fashion for the entirety of this century. If the evolution of Beck’s positions mean anything, it means that he might be a spokesman and a platform for an effective and genuine anti-government movement. It also means he’s someone who’s worth keeping at an arm’s length for any Republican Party that wants to move past the errors of the Bush administration.

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.

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.