Andrew McCarthy tries to explain why Republican voter turnout was so low for this election. Apathy among Republicans explains a big part of the loss. But how do we explain apathy in this election? Here is an excerpt:
Somehow, Romney managed to pull nearly 2 million fewer votes than John McCain, one of the weakest Republican nominees ever, and one who ran in a cycle when the party had sunk to historic depths of unpopularity. How to explain that?
The brute fact is: There are many people in the country who believe it makes no difference which party wins these elections. Obama Democrats are the hard Left, but Washington’s Republican establishment is progressive, not conservative. This has solidified statism as the bipartisan mainstream. Republicans may want to run Leviathan — many are actually perfectly happy in the minority — but they have no real interest in dismantling Leviathan. They are simply not about transferring power out of Washington, not in a material way.
As the 2012 campaign elucidated, the GOP wants to be seen as the party of preserving the unsustainable welfare state. When it comes to defense spending, they are just as irresponsible as Democrats in eschewing adult choices. Yes, Democrats are reckless in refusing to acknowledge the suicidal costs of their cradle-to-grave nanny state, but the Republican campaign called for enlarging a military our current spending on which dwarfs the combined defense budgets of the next several highest-spending nations. When was the last time you heard a Republican explain what departments and entitlements he’d slash to pay for that? In fact, when did the GOP last explain how a country that is in a $16 trillion debt hole could afford to enlarge anything besides its loan payments?
It’s pretty good when you can get every single voter in some large voting districts to show up and cast a vote. That is what they say they are accomplishing in some parts of Philadelphia. I have seen this kind of accomplishment in third world countries, where sometimes there are even more voters than there are people, but not in America.
100%. That’s the percentage of registered voters who voted at a number of Philadelphia voter precincts in the last several elections. Indeed, as Republicans in the state capital pointed out during the debate about the voter ID law, in many parts of Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, voter turnout in contested elections routinely exceeds 100 percent of registered voters. But because the Democrats control the local elections board that supervises voting in the city, there is no accountability for this obvious fraud. If it is enforced, the voter ID law may make this rather flagrant method of cheating a bit more difficult this year.
Listen to the fraud enablers as they kick the Republican poll officials out of the polling place crime scene:
How do you feel about having open vote fraud in your country. I don’t think our Attorney General cares. Holder has a name for citizens who want honest elections: Racists.
UPDATE - 11-12 – It is being reported today that Romney got 0% of the votes 59 Philadelphia districts. There were also more that 100 districts near Cleveland, Ohio where Obama got more than 99% of the reported vote. Absurd corruption on display.
In an imaginary world, government does things efficiently and economically. In that world, you would want government to provide health care.
In the real world, politicians cobbled together a monstrous piece of legislation called Obamacare, with a structure that cannot possibly be efficient or economical.
John C. Goodman at Townhall.com has a superb analysis of what Obamacare will do when reality comes up to bat.
If you read this at the source, you will see links to other supporting information. John Goodman:
The morning after Tuesday’s vote, there is one thing every commentator agreed on. The election of Barack Obama guaranteed that his signature piece of legislation — health reform — can now go forward. Republicans are powerless to stop it.
Yet there is something all these commentators are overlooking. There are six major flaws in ObamaCare. They are so serious that the Democrats are going to have to perform major surgery on the legislation in the next few years, even if all the Republicans do is stand by and twiddle their thumbs.
Here is a brief overview.
ObamaCare is not paid for. At least it’s not paid for in any politically realistic way. As is by now well known, the legislation will lower Medicare spending over the next 10 years by $716 billion in order to fund health insurance for young people. This reduction will primarily consist of lower payments to physicians, hospitals and other providers — reductions that are so severe that they will seriously impair access to care for senior citizens.
In the last two Medicare Trustees reports, the Office of the Medicare Actuaries has predicted that these cuts will force one in seven hospitals out of the Medicare system in the next eight years. Payments to doctors under Medicare will fall below Medicaid levels in the very near future and will fall continuously behind Medicaid in the years ahead. From a financial point of view, seniors will be less desirable patients to doctors than welfare mothers. Harvard health economist Joe Newhouse envisions that seniors may have to seek care in the same places that now cater to Medicaid beneficiaries: at community health centers and in the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals.
During the election campaign, Barack Obama claimed that his administration had found $716 billion of “savings” and Democrats generally claimed that the money would come out of the pockets of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, with no bad effects on seniors. In fact, no “savings” have been found and seniors will indeed be affected by low reimbursement rates — just as low-income patients must deal today with the fact that almost one in three doctors is not taking any new Medicaid patients.
But if the current crop of politicians is afraid to admit that they have taken something away from senior voters, what do you think future politicians are going to do when real pain starts setting in? The betting in Washington is that the cuts will be restored. That will mean that ObamaCare will hugely add to deficit spending, indefinitely into the future.
ObamaCare promises what it cannot deliver. To most politicians, acquiring health insurance means that people will be able to get medical care that the uninsured are not now getting. Yet in order for the country as a whole to get more medical care, there must be more doctors and nurses and hospital personnel — something that ObamaCare does not create. Continue reading →
I have pasted some interesting election commentary below. Let’s start with Rush Limbaugh, who explained the election in just 8 words:
“In a Nation of children, Santa Claus wins.”
“Do you realize that Barack Obama’s message is that the people who are making it possible for him to be Santa Claus in this country aren’t working hard enough so he’s going to tax them more?”
“Say what you want, folks: Mitt Romney did offer a vision of greatness, a vision of traditional America, a vision of an American recovery and return to prominence.” But it was rejected.
——————————-
Michael Walsh at NRO:
First, the Republicans should never again agree to any debate moderated by any member of the MSM, most especially including former Democratic apparatchiks like Stephanopoulos. What used to be the American journalistic establishment — and I spent 25 years in it — is now out and proud and fully committed to the Obama Way. For them, this was the moment they’d been waiting for since the 1960s, their chance to (as they see it) change the course of American history, to be participants instead of just observers and stenographers, and if they had to first compromise, and then abandon, their stated principles of objectivity and neutrality, so what? The game was worth the candle. They will go to their graves feeling good about themselves.
…[Republicans] can’t win without a media operation that can neutralize the 15 to 20 points that MSM advocacy regularly contributes to the Democrats. The only way to beat the media is to replace the media — and if you don’t think the media won this election for Obama, you’re delusional.
Finally, as for Romney, whose political career is now over, I have mixed feelings. Like John McCain, he never really took the fight to Obama and, more important, Obamaism; he spectacularly refused to engage the Democrats on an ideological level, to explain why conservative principles are better than the chimera of “progressivism,” ….And with the intelligence community leaking damaging details about Benghazi on a near-daily basis, he inexplicably took the entire issue off the table. He’s a good man, but a bad candidate, albeit the “most electable” of an unelectable lot.
In the end, though, Mitt lost because he and his team were incapable of grasping one simple, terrible fact: Far too many Americans today don’t want a job, they want — again, to use Obama’s term — revenge.
They just got it.
—————————
Veronique de Rugy at NRO:
The status quo won last night. I am sure that both sides will spend the next few months trying to understand what happened and what lessons they should draw from yesterday’s election results, and I suspect that there is a long list of valid reasons that explains why Governor Romney lost.
However, I would like to suggest that one of these reasons may be that voters’ enthusiasm for the Republican party has faded as the party embraced big-government policies. In fact, in spite of what Republicans lawmakers say about or think of themselves, they have not been the party of small government for long time, and people know it. Obviously politicians try to come across as wanting a a smaller government than Democrats, but that’s not enough. Actions matter too, and on that front, Republicans have shown that they aren’t really willing to cut spending or to shrink the size of government. In recent months alone, Republicans voted for a huge new farm bill, voted against getting rid of Solyndra-type loan-guarantee programs, voted to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank, approved sugar tariffs, and more.
I think that it’s also unfortunate that on the issues of spending and the size of government, this campaign was fought only in the middle; there were talks of saving Medicare, not touching Social Security, and promises to increase defense spending while protecting federal education spending.
—————————
Ann Coulter:
No one can be blamed for the hurricane that took the news off the election, abruptly halting Romney’s momentum, but Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock can be blamed on two very specific people: Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
The last two weeks of the campaign were consumed with discussions of women’s “reproductive rights,” not because of anything Romney did, but because these two idiots decided to come out against abortion in the case of rape and incest.
After all the hard work intelligent pro-lifers have done in changing the public’s mind about a subject the public would rather not think about at all, these purist grandstanders came along and announced insane positions with no practical purpose whatsoever, other than showing off.
While pro-lifers in the trenches have been pushing the abortion positions where 90 percent of the country agrees with us — such as bans on partial birth abortion, and parental and spousal notification laws — Akin and Mourdock decided to leap straight to the other end of the spectrum and argue for abortion positions that less than 1 percent of the nation agrees with.
In order to be pro-life badasses, they gave up two easy-win Republican Senate seats.
No law is ever going to require a woman to bear the child of her rapist. Yes, it’s every bit as much a life as an unborn child that is not the product of rape. But sentient human beings are capable of drawing gradations along a line.
———————————–
Andrew McCarthy on “Immigration and Delusion”:
Could you find a more sharp disagreement between genuinely smart folk than in the competing description of Hispanic immigrants offered by Heather Mac Donald and the editors of the Wall Street Journal? Here is the Journal this morning:
Immigrants should be a natural GOP constituency. Newcomers to the U.S.—legal or illegal—tend to be aspiring people who believe in the dignity of work and self-sufficiency, and they are cultural conservatives. They are not the 47%.
If Republicans want to change their stance on immigration, they should do so on the merits, not out of a belief that only immigration policy stands between them and a Republican Hispanic majority. It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation. Hispanics will prove to be even more decisive in the victory of Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which raised upper-income taxes and the sales tax, than in the Obama election.
Heather is clearly right. Anyone who has followed her work on this topic for years knows her sobering insights are based on extensive, on-the-ground research and careful analysis. The Journal, which often reflects the views of the Republican establishment, bases its immigration views on wishful thinking. And not just its immigration views. Today’s bromides about “aspiring people who believe in the dignity of work and self-sufficiency” are of a piece with the Journal’s similar soft-spot for the “Arab Spring” and Muslim outreach. These GOP fantasies are similarly based on the wishful thinking that Islamists are also “cultural conservatives” sure to forge freedom-embracing democracies when empowered in the Middle East and become model Americans when courted here — sure to assimilate seamlessly into our society rather than seek to change it fundamentally.
Falling in love with your own high-minded rhetoric is no substitute for clear-eyed examination that takes the world as it is, not as we would have it. In point of fact, Islamists, like many Hispanic political activists (think: La Raza), are statists. As I’ve detailed in The Grand Jihad and, more recently, Spring Fever, their thoroughgoing alliance with the American Left is ideologically based — it is not a product of insensitive messaging or “Islamophobia.” Islamists revile finance capitalism, favor redistributionist economic policies, and endorse nanny state regulatory suffocation as well as an ever-expanding welfare state. This is not because Leftists made inroads while conservatives idled. It is because — though this often seems unimaginable to the Journal — Islamists, like many Hispanic activists, are the vanguard of a different culture that they passionately believe is superior to the culture of individual liberty.
There is no single-issue quick-fix to the challenge of ushering them into the Republican coalition. Rather, there is a choice to be made: either convince them that they are wrong, meaning make the unapologetic case for liberty and limited government; or fundamentally change who you are, meaning accommodate their statism.
The fact that this choice is easy to identify does not mean the right alternative is easy to implement. Convincing skeptics of the long-neglected case for freedom is going to take a long time — you can’t cede your leading institutions to statists for decades and expect to turn things around over night. But the second alternative, the one that is so easy — and obviously for some, so tempting — is surrender and steep decline. Accommodation only works in a normal political order where both sides have the same core values but differ on how to validate them. It does not work when one side is looking to vanquish the other.
I appreciate the sterling if pitiful efforts of my comrades to clutch at straws these last few hours, but, on this grim morning after, I fear the most salient analysis comes from Sir Richard Mottram, Her Britannic Majesty’s former Permanent Secretary for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, albeit speaking in another context:
“We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department’s f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed.”
Words to ponder.
[You can read about our future in Steyn's book, "After America".]
—————–
Neal Boortz analysis:
It’s not going to get better. The welfare state will expand more. The 49.1% of American households in which at least one member is getting an unearned check from government will grow to well over 50% by the next election. The 60% of American households who get more unearned money from the government every year than they pay in taxes — that number will expand as well. The numbers on food stamps and Social Security disability will expand, and ObamaCare will create still another dependent demographic, government health care dependents. By 2016 the Democrats will have achieved their decades-long dream of being able to go into an election battle saying: “If you vote for the Republicans they are going to take away your medical care.”
The argument could be made that this was our last chance .. this election … 2012. Our LAST chance … and we blew it. Turning this country back toward freedom, economic liberty and self reliance will be an even tougher task in the midterm elections of 2014, and probably impossible in 2016. By 2016 even more Americans will realize that they can use the ballot as a weapon .. a legal weapon .. to do something that would put them in jail if they did it with a gun … and that is take someone else’s money. Game. Set. Match.
————–
We have published this quote before, but it’s worth re-reading today. It was a letter to the editor after Obama’s first victory. The expressed fear about the intelligence of the electorate is painfully more obvious today:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president… The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince… The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of Idiots such as those who made him president.”
Here’s an email from Zack White to Instapundit that fits my mood today:
“If Obama is reelected, good hardworking people should give up and go Galt. The tipping point is the 2012 election. Will the makers finally succumb to the takers? It’s pointless to think that if America reelects the most unqualified disastrous president in recent memory, we should stand our ground and continue fighting. it’s a signal that marxist free-lunchism and free birth control for everyone trump economic well-being and prosperity in the minds of the masses. Give up. Go Galt. Protect what few assets you have left, and start to hunker down for the coming storm. America is beyond screwed, well past the fiscal insanity of a number of EU countries. Think of it this way – we sit and watch California destroy itself and wonder who could be so foolish as to remain there and dedicate himself to indentured servitude in a state headed for disaster. Why don’t those fools just leave!! Same for Venezuela. as they descend into chaos and totalitarianism, do they reject Chavez more? The answer is plainly no. The spiral down the drain is irreversible and obvious. The more the government creates misery, the more they create programs to help people cope with the misery they’ve created, and we achieve a perpetual negative feedback loop. My advice is simple – if Obama is reelected, get a lawyer and a financial advisor, cash out as much of your assets as you can, and prepare yourself for a nosedive off a cliff. anything else would be imprudent and irresponsible to yourself and your dependents. Who wants to be a Dagny Taggart dedicating themselves to a life of indentured servitude trying to correct the wrongs of a heavy handed government? i will not be volunteering. I didn’t give up on America, America gave up on me.”
The extent of blatantly racist voter suppression is starting to become clear as courageous news organizations uncover the details. In one recent case, billboards like this started popping up around Cleveland:
People who are not racially sensitive may think that this a benign billboard, promoting honest elections. But those in the racial grievance business know that this is nothing but ugly racism. Civil rights activists were immediately indignant :
Cleveland Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland said,
“When you have the words ‘felony,’ ‘voter,’ and ‘fine’ all in the same message, and by placing it where it is, the only message that you are intending to send is that this is a threat to you if you vote,” “It’s just a blatant attempt to keep people in this community, particularly black people and poor people, from voting.”
Connie Schultz is the wife of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Here are clips of what she wrote about the billboards:
Signs of trouble are rising like the ghosts of Jim Crow in the heart of Cleveland’s African-American community.
The billboards’ written message: VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY — UP to 3 1/2 YRS and $10,000 FINE.
The billboards’ unwritten message: We will do anything to keep you from voting.
The plan, of course, is to intimidate an entire community of innocent Americans accustomed to withering suspicions steeped in race.
Voter fraud is a myth.
Redemption may be the law, but it does not reside in the hearts of those who will go to extraordinary lengths to keep certain people down and out.
I am ever mindful of Michael Green, an African-American man in Cleveland who was falsely incarcerated for 13 years for a rape he didn’t commit. After I wrote a series about Green’s ordeal in 2002, he extracted one promise from me, kept to this day. Whenever I speak to classrooms with young black men, I share Green’s warning: Never run when a police officer shows up. No matter how innocent you are, stop in your tracks and put your hands in the air. [Huh?]
MSNBC raced to the scene. Sharpton and Ed Schultz were outraged. Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner told Schultz that when she saw the sign, ”tears welled up in my eyes at the sight of that. The fact that African-Americans have had to fight so hard to get the right to vote, and then you have groups who are putting billboards up like that.”
The billboards were taken down, but that story is just scratching the surface of this problem. There are people in favor of legal voting all over this country. I’m talking about nefarious organization like True The Vote which says its goal is to stop voter fraud so that we have honest and fair elections. They are trying to get dead people and fraudulent registrations removed from the voter rolls. I know, it’s pretty disgusting stuff, but there is hope that they can be stopped.
True the Vote is currently under an investigation prompted by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Congressman Cummings says “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated, and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”
Another group fighting this voter suppression is The Georgia Coalition of the People’s Agenda. Helen Butler, the Executive Director, says, “They’re trying to stop certain people from voting – communities of color, poor white people as well.” This organization is led by Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, who gave the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration. Who can forget that poignant prayer when Lowery hoped for the day when a black man would have a chance in this country. He prayed, ‘Lord, …we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, … when white will embrace what is right.” Say Amen!
Still working in the fight against racism , Lowery was speaking at a get out the vote event last week in Georgia when he said, “all white people are going to hell“. Lowery went on to say, “I don’t know what kind of a nig___ wouldn’t vote with a black man running.”
Racism in this country will not end until we have more people like Joseph Lowery. At least he is working to instill anger in the next generation so we can continue the battle.
The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, CNN and others are running stories about racist Republicans and voter suppression. We see headlines like, The Last Refuge of Scoundrels — Republicans and Voter Suppression” ,and ”GOP’s Push to Suppress Vote Threatens Democracy”. If Obama loses the election, this will be a big story for a long time. We all know that racism is the only reason he could lose.
Don’t be fooled into believing that voter fraud is a problem. You may hear, for example, that ACORN was in the business of creating voter fraud all around the country. Or you may hear that in many cases when registration lists are carefully checked large numbers of fraudulent names are found. Connie Schultz told us that voter fraud is a myth. The whole issue is just created by racist Republicans so that their so-called efforts for fair elections can somehow keep black people from voting.
James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sent investigative reporters to the polls during the New Hampshire presidential primary on January 10. The goal was to show how easy it was for someone to obtain a ballot using the name of a deceased person. They attempted this at more than a dozen polling places, and were successful in obtaining ballots in all cases except one. That was one where an alert poll worker personally knew the deceased person. This must have just been a fluke, like when O’Keefe successfully voted as Attorney General Holder:
Our Attorney General is, in fact, very concerned about voter fraud. He strongly believes that asking for ID for this most important act of voting is simple racism. He says it is like a Poll Tax. Asking for ID’s is good for things like checking out library books, but certainly not for voting.
Holder knows intimidation when he sees it. For example, when Holder saw that some Black Panthers were being harassed for standing at the doorway of a polling place and simply waving billy clubs and yelling threats at white voters, he knew that this was not voter intimidation. Not at all. He intervened to make sure these scurrilous charges were dropped against the fine, Panther voting assistants.
***************************
In an unrelated story, once again this year, thousands of ballots won’t reach military people in time for their votes to count.
The Obama campaign recently released an attack ad that ended with the words, “Mitt Romney, Not One Of Us”. People pointed out that if Romney had an ad saying Obama was not one of us, he would have been criticized for making a racial attack. But, let’s look at the ad another way. Let’s assume that Obama is saying that, from Obama’s own political perspective, Romney is entirely alien to Obama’s political values. The “us” is Obama and his political allies. Let’s fact check the ad from that perspective.
Let’s look at some of Obama’s political associates to see what Obama means by “one of us”.
• Obama’s earliest political mentor, during his formative teen years, was a man named Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a card-carrying communist who wrote a column for the communist weekly newspaper in Hawaii. His biographer, Paul Kengor, said the Davis columns “flawlessly parroted official soviet propaganda”. Davis was a big fan of Joseph Stalin. According to Kengor, Obama devoted 2,500 words to Davis in “Dreams From My Father”. When Obama left Hawaii for college, Davis warned him not to start “believing in equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit”.
• John Drew was introduced to Barack Obama at Occidental College by Drew’s girlfriend, Caroline Boss. Boss and Drew were committed, activist Marxists and Drew remembers Boss introducing Obama by saying “he is on our side” (He is one of us, so to speak). Drew says, “Obama was already an ardent Marxist when I met him”. Drew has written that Obama “made it clear that he was looking forward to an imminent social revolution, literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a socialist utopia in the United States”. Drew went on to get a PhD at Cornell and rejected Marxism.
• At Columbia, Obama was introduced to the ideas of Francis Fox Piven when he attended the “Socialist Scholars Conference” where she was the keynote speaker in 1983. Her ideas of organizing from the bottom and creating revolutionary change through community organizing were key elements in Obama’s future pursuits. The Cloward- Piven Strategy involves “overwhelming the system” to create an economic collapse. The economic system is to be destroyed by a combination of building anger and resentment in the lower classes and expanding welfare spending to the point of economic collapse. After the destruction, a beautiful socialist world will arise from the ashes. It’s the socialist utopian delusion. Piven spoke at Occupy rally’s and said, “We desperately need a popular uprising in the U.S.” To Piven, and those like her, our burgeoning welfare rolls and crushing debt are good things.
• When Obama went to Chicago to become a community organizer, he was trained by disciples of Saul Alinsky, father of community organizing, and author of “Rules For Radicals”. Obama became such a shining advocate for Alinsky that he was honored in 1998 at the premier of the Chicago play, “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky”. Obama was chosen to be on a panel of extreme leftists who discussed their love for Alinsky after the play. Alinsky sought a socialist revolution where “the means of production will be owned by all of the people”. He sought an overthrow of the government, but his method was slow and patient. Rather than calling for a violent revolution, he suggested infiltrating institutions of power. He called it “boring from within”; the Trojan Horse approach. Along with infiltration, he taught that organizers should foment discontent and “rub raw the resentments of the people… fan the latent hostilities”. In this way, the people would be ready for destruction of the system. Eventually, he wished, an Alinsky disciple would have enough power to boldly say something like, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”.
• For obvious reasons, Obama lied about the depth of his relationship with Bill Ayers, saying Ayers was “just some guy in my neighborhood”. The relationship was actually long and deep. Obama’s political career began with a fundraiser in Bill Ayers living room. Ayers and Obama worked together in many capacities over many years. Ayers has spent his life as a communist revolutionary. In his younger days, he was the leader of the Weather Underground, which he called “America’s Red Army”. His mission statement included, “Kill the rich people… bring the revolution home …kill your parents”. They bombed several targets, including the Pentagon and a police station where an officer was killed. Ayers’ methods have changed, but not his ideology. On the day after 9-11 he was pictured on a magazine cover standing on the American Flag. He says, “This country makes me sick”. Speaking at an Occupy rally in March, Ayers said, “I get up every morning and think …today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution”. In July 2005, Obama was at his buddy Bill Ayers’ house for a 4th of July barbecue. What do you do at Ayers home on the 4th of July? Spit on the flag? Have Reverend Wright over to sing, “God Damn America”? Ayers takes politics seriously. He chose Obama as “one of us”.
• Wade Rathke is another extreme leftist radical from the sixties who decided to bore from within. Rathke started ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It is a corrupt, criminal organization that was caught in enough nefarious activities that Obama sought to distance himself from the group in 2008. As with many other associations, the media helped him hide from his past. In fact, Obama had a close relationship with the group. He worked with them to force banks into sub-prime lending, he worked on their voter registration projects, he trained ACORN leaders starting in 1992 and when he was in a position to direct money to Acorn, he did so in a big way. In a 2007 speech to ACORN leaders, Obama said, “I’ve always been a partner with ACORN…I’ve been fighting with ACORN…my entire career”. He is one of them.
• Another relationship that Obama successfully lied about before the election was his relationship with the socialist New Party. Francis Fox Piven and ACORN were both involved in founding the New Party. The goals of this political party included standard socialist demands like a guaranteed income for all, free health care and day care and a tax system based on ability to pay. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. After the 2008 election, substantial documentation was found proving that Obama was a member of the New Party. He was one of them.
• On the Sunday after the 9-11 tragedy, when most Americans felt a real bond of solidarity and sadness, Reverend Jeremiah celebrated the event in his church. He spoke jubilantly of America’s chickens coming home to roost. The congregation was jubilant, too. This was Obama’s congregation for 20 years. It’s a congregation where the church bulletin said that AIDS was created by white men to kill black people. It’s where Wright preached that “white man’s greed runs a world in need”. Is Rev. Wright Obama’s kind of person? Obama spoke lovingly of the man.
• You could make a long list of Obama’s radical appointments as President. Czars were [illegally] created so that the people who run the executive branch of government could avoid the normal rigors of the appointment process for cabinet members. Office space near the White House was rented so that the interest group lobbyists who Obama caters to could peddle their influence more secretly, outside of normal reporting requirements. It is clear to any honest observer that radical leftists have been given substantial power in this administration. People who were openly Communists, Maoists and rabid enemies of the free market are on the inside now. His people.
Obama swims in an ocean of radical left politics. It is his world, it always has been, and these are his people. Obama says Romney is “not one of us”. Thankfully, that claim is 100% correct.
I have a friend, Bill Bregar, who is an independent thinker and a very smart guy. Like many of us, he is concerned about the future for his children and grandchildren. Bill took the time to write down the key reasons why this election is important and why Romney is the sensible choice. I think he wrote it for interested members of his family. It deserves a wider audience. Take it away, Bill:
I think this election represents a decision point for this country, and that the decision we make will have a far greater effect on our long-term future than any other election in the past 40-50 years. My greatest concerns are the future of the economy and the state of the nation’s finances. This is because I believe that progress on any of the other big issues may happen, but will either take place far slower or not at all, unless we have a robust economy to allow for the development of and payment for solutions to those issues. The economy depends on the business climate and the fiscal situation. I do not believe that the President has put forth any viable strategy for solving these issues, and failing to solve them leaves all other issues by the wayside. Instead, from all I can see, he plans to continue the same strategies that have, thus far, led to a tepid recovery, at best.
The two candidates have significantly different views of how the country works and the role that government should play. The President holds to the idea that a strong and large central government can best solve our economic problems (as well as all other problems). He relies on experts to determine the shape of the economy, and he relies on government’s power to spend money to drive economic sectors that he and his experts want to succeed. He would use the tax code to provide incentives to those companies and industries he wishes to support and to deter those he wishes to suppress. He believes that it’s government’s job to redistribute wealth in the name of “fairness” or “social justice”. Obama aims at cultural issues (race, class, gender), which appeal to a lot of people, but, I believe he has used these issues to divide the electorate, rather than bring us together.
The Governor sees individuals and businesses as better positioned to determine how to invest their capital. He takes the view that individuals, while acting independently, tend to apply and confirm the principles that have been formulated through the years and use their collective wisdom to determine how to grow their own financial concerns. It’s the difference between a big bet on a few key industries and companies within them versus spreading your bets to cover the widest possible range. In investment terms it’s the difference between a balanced portfolio and one that is dependent on one or two large investments.
Supporting free enterprise does not preclude paying attention to some of the excesses of private enterprise. However, when pressed, free enterprise comes up with better, more efficient solutions to problems. One, in particular, is the problem of funding the government so it can do the things it must be doing. My contention is that growing the economy is a better solution than simply raising taxes, and it provides both more revenue to the government, as well as jobs for people. Raising taxes alone is a known deterrent to economic growth. If it weren’t, why would everyone be so fearful of the potential financial cliff that will take place at the beginning of the year, unless congress takes some action on the deficit problem? In addition to spending cuts, there will also be tax increases across the board, which most economists predict will send us into another recession or worse. Continue reading →
Two Reminders – 1. Turn back the clock today. 2. Get a new President on Tuesday.
Hugh Atkin took 60 years of campaign ads and made this 4 minute video of short clips. It is an interesting look at how things change and how things remain the same.
Andrew McCarthy tries to explain why Republican voter turnout was so low for this election. Apathy among Republicans explains a big part of the loss. But how do we explain apathy in this election? Here is an excerpt:
