Romney Was A Terrible Candidate Because He Is A Liberal

So says Steve Baldwin, here, who unaccountably fails to mention that team Obama wanted Romney to be the Republican candidate for that very reason:

"[A]s any conservative from Massachusetts knew, Romney was a liberal at heart who, as Governor, led the nation in passing three of the left’s most sacred issues: Same sex marriage, Cap and Trade, and government control of health care. ...

Romney’s liberal record on taxes (yes, he taxed the corporate world in Massachusetts), Cap and Trade (first in the nation!), gay marriage, gay rights, quotas, gun control, immigration, etc, etc. was little known outside of Massachusetts because many of America’s leading conservatives decided to portray him as someone he wasn’t. Even a number of prominent right to life and national pro-family groups and leaders made a decision to remake Romney as a conservative even though they knew he was not. I should know; I briefed many of them about Romney’s record. Had the conservative leadership told the truth about Romney’s record as Governor, it’s likely he wouldn’t have won the GOP nomination."

That tells you all you need to know about the Republican Party, which doesn't just settle for liberalism. It settles for liberalism of the worst kind. And the so-called conservatives cooperated.

To hell with all of them.

Republicans Attacked ObamaCare. Hispanics Overwhelmingly Supported It. Any Questions?

The idea that Republicans alienate (can I say that?) Hispanics because Republicans are against amnesty for illegal immigrants is ludicrous. Hispanics love the welfare state and the party which stands for it, especially its newest iteration in ObamaCare:

The poll, which surveyed 887 likely Latino voters, shows that 62 percent of respondents approve of the overall job Obama has done with health care while in office, including his creation of the controversial plan for comprehensive health care reform. The poll was conducted the Sept. 11-13 and the margin of sampling error is +/- three percentage points.

More here.

Heather Mac Donald gets it right, for National Review, here:

"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."

Larry Kudlow Slanders Christ On His Radio Program

Larry Kudlow, former Democrat, member of SDS, drug addict and alcoholic, and supposedly a Jewish convert to Christianity, slandered Christ in the final hour of his radio program yesterday. That's a lot of "formers".

He did so while attacking Paul Krugman for advocating that the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire as a remedy for the fiscal cliff, ridiculing the idea with the ever popular provincialism "for Christ's sake".

Obviously the defeat of Mitt Romney has pushed all of Kudlow's buttons at once. He began the program with a full-throated denunciation of the Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party and its anti-amnesty stance on illegal immigrants, saying it must be "crushed".

You can take the man out of the SDS, but you can't take the SDS out of the man.

You can not hear a podcast of Kudlow's program anytime you don't want to, here.

Larry Kudlow Declares War On Pat Buchanan Wing Of Republican Party

Just now on the radio show, saying the anti-amnesty wing, the Pat Buchanan wing, of the Republican Party must be defeated and "crushed".

Two back to back defeats of liberal/moderate Republican candidates for president continue to be misinterpreted by the fifth column on the right.

They should join the Democrat Party once and for all.

Obama Believes Winning Will Be Mandate To Raise Taxes, "Reform" Immigration

Obama has stated explicitly his intent is, if he wins, to raise taxes and "reform" immigration, which is code for amnesty, as reported here:

"If we won, then I believe that's a mandate for doing it in a balanced way."

"We can do some more cuts, we could look at how we deal with the health care costs in particular under Medicaid and Medicare in a serious way, but we are also going to need some revenue."

"If we get [the debt and deficit] done, then immigration reform, I think, is there to get done."

"And I think [the Republican Party] is going to need to get it done because you can't continue to alienate the fastest-growing segment of the country. And it's the right thing to do."

Of course, there are mandates and there are mandates. Obama likes mandates. He likes telling people how things will be, which is why we have ObamaCare shoved down our throats.

In 2008 Obama interpreted his victory as a mandate when his margin of victory in the formerly Red States which went for Bush was merely 1.4 million votes. He lost that "mandate" such as it was in 2010, and if the Republicans keep the US House in 2012 that will still be the conclusion whether or not Romney wins the presidency.

Ulterior Motives In Writing: Why Does Mark Judge Hate Monica Crowley?

Did you ever get the feeling that an entire column was merely a pretext to slam someone the writer didn't like . . . with a sucker punch saved for the very end?

That's the overwhelming feeling I got from reading Mark Judge's "HL Mencken Against The Journalists" here, which ends with this:

"So let's just put an end to it. Call them analysts. Call them pundits. But to coo over people like Frank Rich and Monica Crowley as brilliant intellectuals is to denude the term of meaning."

After ridiculing liberal after liberal in the column the lazy writer realizes at the end he needs to be an equal opportunity critic and throws poor old Monica under the bus just to make himself look objective.

If Mark Judge hangs around people who coo over anyone, let alone journalists, he's clearly in special company already. They used to call them asylums.

You know, the sort of place which makes you write like this: "but as a man with whom we could speak with about any topic".

The New Republic Can't Spell The Name Of The Mayor Of LA

The New Republic has trouble spelling the name of the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa:

What, then, could be the path to a Republican resurgence? The first thing would be to break the Democratic hold on the minority vote by winning back a reasonable share of the Hispanic vote—say, 40 percent or more, which Republicans once got. Success in this case depends on advancing policies on immigration that win favor among Hispanics, but it also may hinge on Republicans take the side of Hispanics in a battle over scare public resources with blacks. One could see this kind of black-Hispanic division surfacing in 2005 Los Angeles mayoral election pitting James Hahn, who enjoyed black support, against Antonio Villagarosa.

Well . . . who wouldn't?

Barack Obama's Enthusiasm For Bailouts Becomes National Socialism in Colorado Remarks

Obama views the GM auto bailout as an example of a successful government investment in the private sector, never mentioning, of course, that the success is at the expense of the former private investors in GM, its non-union elements, and of the tax-paying public. Without those, GM is still a failure, and should be again.

That Obama now says in Colorado that he wants to similarly rescue more companies, however, indicates that the bailout model was more to him than a one-off which he fortuitously inherited from the Republican establishment, an intellectually lazy cohort of Baby Boomers which long ago had betrayed free market principles. Obama's commitment to a model of government superintendence of private industry marks a new public face for an old familiar mixture of State and industry, the inspiration for which Herbert Hoover noted in his memoirs FDR had derived from Mussolini and the other strong men of Europe.

We all know what is the result of this type of thinking because we've already experienced it, not just in FDR's long failure, and not just in the recent auto company bailouts, but also in the rescue of the financial industry:

• more moral hazard which has allowed so-called private banking players like the five or ten biggest banks to take even more unwarranted risks and grow ever larger and more too big to fail than ever, knowing the public purse is backing them up;
• taxpayer-funded bailouts whose pain is never really felt by the taxpayers because, like most public spending, the bailouts are simply financed by more borrowing, which in their turn have only worsened the fiscal health of the nation and contributed to the loss of its once vaunted AAA rating;
• corruption of elected public officials and bureaucrats whose crimes destroy the public's consent to be governed, as witnessed by the rise of protest movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and by the capital strike by individual investors;
• picking winners like multinational GE and Wall Street firms who reaped huge rewards in the form of tax breaks and bonuses because of their close relationship with government, and therefore by definition also picking losers on Main Street like small banks and entrepreneurs who can't beat the system because it is rigged against them, crushing confidence in "capitalism";
• a complete repudiation of free market principles in which failure and bankruptcy become as unacceptable as saying "No" to the kids or as marking an "F" on a report card, unless for unrelated political reasons your industry happens to become a target for elimination, you know, like Chick-Fil-A, or the Roman Catholic Church in America.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Obama's remarks in Colorado is the way he is now touting his commitment to this model in explicitly nationalistic terms, emphasizing his as a patriotic concern for the American people to bring their jobs home, and Romney's as an unpatriotic intent to export those jobs.

Obama's socialism has been deemed a distraction by establishment Republicans, who find all the purported links between Obama and the communist left made by conservatives just a little too disturbing for polite conversation. It reminds them too much of the McCarthy era. But now explicitly linked to nationalism, Obama's remarks become an opportunity to refocus the conversation on the coincidence of these elements in fascism, which the left has hitherto succeeded in attacking and marginalizing as a phenomenon of the right, of conservatism.

Locating Obama in fascism actually makes better sense of his presidency to date. It explains the disillusionment of the left with him as a sell-out who has had the temerity to spend so much of his time enjoying himself instead of pushing their agenda, crafting policy to maximize campaign contributions from favored industries, and throwing his weight around as Commander In Chief. After one year progressives were already ridiculing his administration as a squandered presidency. And fascism also coheres with the interpretation of his experience in Chicago where he allied himself with financial, insurance and real estate interests and the Democrat Party to take over the property of the South Loop, enrich themselves, and further their political careers. The president's friendship with Jeffrey Immelt is not a bug. It's a feature. 

The historical reality is that the fight between the communists and the fascists was always a fight on the common ground of socialism, rather like the fight between Democrats and Republicans has been a fight on the common ground of liberalism. The radicalization which occurred in the arguments between socialists culminating in the Second World War occurred because the conservatism of a prior monarchical age had completely lost its tempering force in society. The civilization of Europe was completely overcome from within by a capitulation to eschaton-immanentizing ideologies before it destroyed itself from without in war. In that process, liberalism was the vanguard softening up the enemy for the totalitarianism to come. Conservatism was beside the point then, but not here, not now.

In the arguments between Democrats and Republicans in our time, matters have not yet degenerated into such violence because the unique contributions of conservatism from the American Founding still inform much of the body politic. And the most important of those contributions, derived from human and religious experience both, has been the self-limiting conviction that human nature is not perfectible and always remains a mixture of good and evil which no rearrangement of human affairs can alter.  In the person of Barack Obama, however, we have met with someone who explicitly asserts otherwise, as an ideologue, that the union is perfectible. He deliberately goes out of his way to attack those individuals and institutions who know, believe and say otherwise. And armed with the imperial accoutrements gathered by his predecessors in the presidency, one might say that the people actually face for the first time a real and foreign threat in charge of the executive, a foreigner in his heart, mind, and affections who keeps his past sealed precisely because the revelation that he once presented himself as a foreigner for his own advantage even though he was born in Hawaii would offend more than actually being a foreigner.

Liberalism is defenseless against this because it drinks from the same cup of idealism. This is why it keeps quiet and doesn't look too deeply into President Obama. It is afraid it might see its own reflection. And this is also why a liberal like Mitt Romney can't bring himself to entertain Obama's socialism, let alone his national socialism. If it worked, he'd actually agree with it.

ABC News has the most recent formulations of Obama's national socialist vision here:

"When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, more than 1 million jobs at stake, Gov. Romney said, let’s ‘let Detroit go bankrupt.’ I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now, I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.  Gov. Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly investing in companies, some of which were called “pioneers” of outsourcing.  I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing.  I want to in-source.  I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas.” ...

"When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, 1 million jobs at stake, Mr. Romney said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt.’  I said, let’s bet on America’s workers.  And we got management and workers to come together, making better cars than ever. And now, GM is number one again and the American auto industry has come roaring back.   So now, I want to say what we did with the auto industry, we can do it in manufacturing across America.  Let’s make sure advanced, high-tech manufacturing jobs take root here, not in China.  Let’s have them here in Colorado.  And that means supporting investment here.”

Irwin Stelzer Wonders Why Romney Isn't Attacking Democrat Crony Capitalism

Maybe because Romney isn't the right candidate?

It's a pretty good piece on American-style fascism by Irwin Stelzer for The Weekly Standard here, but I couldn't help but notice once again how even very smart people pour their ideas into and project their hopes onto candidates even though there isn't the slightest bit of evidence to justify it. Consider all these phrases from the article, which on every issue Stelzer recommends as conservative reveal that Romney is already NOT on board:

... doesn’t mean that Romney should refuse ...

And where is Mitt Romney ...

Alas, that statement came not from Romney ...

Romney must know better than anyone ...

Why does Romney not agree with ...

Romney can propose a simple rule ...

Romney can propose eliminating ...

Finally, where is Romney every time . . ..

If Gov. Romney isn't already showing a firm grasp of free-market conservatism as defined by the neoconservative Weekly Standard, what is he on board with?

Don't we already know that Romney thinks ObamaCare is nothing to get angry about?

Or how about out-of-control government spending (is there any other kind?), the cri de coeur of the Tea Party movement? Romney has explicitly stated that he will not slash spending as president, even though it's the very ground cronyism walks on. His answer for that? Because cutting government spending in a slow-growth environment would throw America into a depression.

This tells you that Romney is no different than Obama in one very important respect: he's cool, in the deceitful sense that he allows supporters to think he shares their passions when he doesn't. Just as Obama has deeply disappointed the American far left, a president Romney will do the same to the right on every issue dear to them.

The caution and calculation of such cool cats often gives the first impression of ulterior motives. Alternatively, however, the coolness may simply be a mask for an underlying mediocrity, or even stupidity.

For example, the single stupidest thing that Obama and the Democrats have done to date was to insist that they prevented a depression and bailed-out everybody to do it. Arguably what they should have done is embraced the depression which did in fact occur in 2008-2009 and blamed it on Bush. They also should have let the depression happen big-time, cleansing the debt-overhang for the good of the country and punishing their enemies in the process. Republicans would have been finished for decades to come, just like in 1932.

And you thought Obama was the smartest president ever.

Can Romney be far behind him? At this juncture in the campaign you would think a smarter candidate would be consistently avoiding everything which depresses the mood of the base of his party. If the neocons aren't happy with Romney, who is?

Not that it really matters much what Romney says or doesn't say about this, that or the other thing when it comes to actual governing. After all, the president proposes, but it is the Congress which disposes. (Unless, of course, you're Obama, who disposes of the Congress fairly routinely, whether on war powers in Libya, recess appointments or immigration.) America's problem with crony capitalism can indeed be made much worse by a president like Obama for whom it becomes his motto, no doubt about it. An awful lot of money has been wasted on failed green energy schemes.

But cronyism in America is really the specialty of our ever more remote representatives to the US House and Senate. Our nearly intractable problems of waste, corruption, and deceit which they are responsible for have taken over ninety years to develop, and they won't go away in an instant. What we most certainly need is to destroy the concentration of spending power in the hands of a few powerful men and women in the House and Senate.

One way to do that is to restore representation numbers to the constitutional ratio of 1 to 30,000, the number one answer to the constitution's number one perceived deficiency during the ratification process over two centuries ago. The immediate effect of installing thousands of new Congressmen today would be to dilute the power of the existing cabal of skilled cronies. It is true that as happened in the 1920s there seems to be nothing that would again prevent Congress from flouting that provision of the constitution even if we restore representation to the status quo ante. The last thing we need is 10,267 corrupt representatives instead of the 435 we've already got. Still, short of revolution in the streets, it's probably the best and most constructive alternative we have presently available, and probably a more certain guarantee of keeping things like ObamaCare from happening in future than mere reliance on one political party controlling the levers of a government distant from the people.

Another way which would help is to repeal the 17th Amendment, and return election of senators to the States and take it away from the globalized monied interests. That is no guarantee against cronyism, to be sure, but at least States would have actual representation in Washington again as the Founders intended. As it is, the only representation they have is before the bar of justice, if it agrees to hear the case at all. Ask the 26 States who lost in front of John Roberts how good they're feeling about that today. ObamaCare, after all, originated in the Senate. All things being equal, senators from those 26 States would not have voted for it and we wouldn't be having this enormous controversy.

These sorts of returns to originalism might actually make a difference going forward, but all the evidence we have right now is that Romney has as little interest in them as he does in the issues animating the base of his party.

A Romney in the White House will most likely mean just another dutiful tax collector for the crony welfare state, like the rest of them.

Illegal Immigration Magnets

Jonathan Turley: Obama's Deportation Order "One More Brick In The Wall Of The Imperial Presidency"

So here:

"It raises some troubling questions, again, about President Obama['s] assertion of executive power. While liberals again celebrate the unilateral action, they ignore that danger that the next president may also simply chose to ignore whole areas of the federal law and criminal code in areas ranging from the environment to employment discrimination. It is one more brick in the wall of the Imperial Presidency constructed under Barack Obama — a wall that may prove difficult to dismantle for citizens in the future."

Another Call To Impeach The President, This Time Over His Deportation Order

The president's executive order is an end-run around existing immigration law, as noted here:

If the citizens of this Republic still took the Constitution seriously, Obama would be impeached for his decision to unilaterally grant amnesty to certain illegal aliens. ...

The role of the President, according to Article II, Sec. 3, is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Obama's refusal to execute Congress's immigration laws (or, for that matter, Congress's Defense of Marriage Act) is an impeachable offense. Article II, Sec. 4 states that the President "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for... Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors." The deliberate failure to enforce valid immigration law and allow hordes of foreigners to live and work in the U.S. is, arguably, "treason," and doing so in an election year to appease Hispanic voters could certainly be considered "bribery."

The Imperial President Gets Flustered And Loses His Cool

Why does "the smartest president ever" get thrown off so easily, so embarrassingly, so often?

Video here.

Obama Is The Imperial President Democrats Thought Bush Was

Charles Krauthammer says it like it is, quoted here:

“This is out-and-out lawlessness. You had a clip of the president himself say months ago ‘I cannot do this on my own because there are laws on the books.’ Well, I have news for president — the laws remain on the books. They haven’t changed.”

“He proposed the DREAM Act of which the executive order is a variation. He proposed a DREAM Act. The Congress said no. The Congress is the one who makes the laws. What the administration does is it administers law.”

“And in fact, what it is pretending to do is to use discretion. That’s what the Homeland Security said. This is not discretion. Discretion is when you treat it on a one-by-one basis on the grounds of extenuating circumstances. That is declaration of a new set of criteria, which is essentially resurrecting the legislation that the Congress has said no to.”

“And I think this is not how you run a constitutional republic. This ought to be in the hands of Congress, and it is an end-run. And what’s ironic of course is for eight years, the Democrats have been screaming about the imperial presidency with the Bush administration — the nonsense about the unitary executive. This is out-and-out lawlessness. This is not how you govern. And I think that is the first issue that should be on the table.”

Mourdock Creams Lugar in Indiana, But is he a Conservative?

Murdock once supported the Fairness Doctrine, of all things, way back in 1992, according to this story. The source cited is National Review.

And he's supposedly soft on sanctions against employers who employ illegals. No source named.

We'll see. He'll have to defeat Democrat Joe Donnelly first though.

Anyway, that squish Lugar is history.

PM Cameron Talks Up Sodomy While UK Takes On Water

Cameron, looking the wrong direction

In the words of the UK Telegraph here, after Cameron's so-called conservatism took a drubbing in the recent elections:

Mr Cameron is a charismatic leader who has refreshed his party, and made it far more comfortable with the modern world. But his political strategy and positioning are failing to deliver. By making a totem of issues such as overseas aid and gay marriage, he has alienated core voters without winning new ones. The result of adhering to a Westminster definition of the centre ground, and trying to be all things to all people, is that the Conservative Party now appears to lack the message, the focus, and the strategy to win a majority. ...

What [the voters] care about – and what Mr Cameron must preoccupy himself with – are earthier issues: fixing the economy, cutting the cost of living, getting tough on crime and welfare dependency, restricting immigration, standing up to Europe on human rights.

Such a strategy is being dismissed as a “lurch to the Right”. But what it actually represents is a lurch towards the public, a fresh offering that appeals to hard-pressed families and striving workers – to those looking for a reason to vote Tory and thus far failing to find one.

The Banker Inmates Are Running The Central Bank Asylum

"[W]hat we see unfolding is the latest chapter in the tug of war between inflationary and deflationary forces. During the “goldilocks” economy of the last decade, investors levered themselves up. Homeowners treated their homes as if they were ATMs; banks set up off-balance sheet Special Investment Vehicles (SIVs); governments engaging in arrangements to get cheap loans that may cost future generations dearly. Cumulatively, it was an amazing money generation process; yet, central banks remained on the sidelines, as inflation – according to the metrics focused on - appeared contained. Indeed, we have argued in the past that central banks lost control of the money creation process, as they could not keep up with the plethora of “financial innovation” that justified greater leverage. It was only a matter of time before the world no longer appeared quite so risk-free. Rational investors thus reduced their exposure: de-levered. When de-leveraging spreads, however, massive deflationary forces may be put in motion. The financial system itself was at risk, as institutions did not hold sufficiently liquid assets to de-lever in an orderly way. Without intervention, deflationary forces might have thrown the global economy into a depression.

"The trouble occurs when the money creation process takes on a life of its own, because the money destruction process is rather difficult to stop. However, it hasn’t stopped policy makers from trying: in an effort to fight what may have been a disorderly collapse of the financial system, unprecedented monetary and fiscal initiatives were undertaken to stem against market forces. Trillion dollar deficits, trillions in securities purchased by the Fed with money created out of thin air (when the Fed buys securities, it merely credits the account of the bank with an accounting entry – while no physical dollar bills are printed, many – including us – refer to this process as the printing of money)."

-- Axel Merk (for the rest, go here)

Current Federal Spending Implies a Head Tax of $12,338 on Every Man, Woman, Child

$3.8 trillion in spending divided by population of 308 million equals $12,338 per person this fiscal year, including every baby and everyone in a nursing home.

It would probably be as popular as was Margaret Thatcher's Community Charge.

But it might drive out the illegals.

The Many Say 'Snuck In', The Few Say 'Sneaked In', But No One Calls It Dishonest

Least of all the sneaker, indeed quite the opposite, here:

Valdez snuck into the U.S., from Mexico, as a teenager and found work picking grapes. He got amnesty during the Reagan administration. Today he owns a vineyard management company and the winery. “This is the beauty of the U.S. --if you’re a hard worker and good and honest you can do it,” he said.

His wine made it to The White House in 2010.

Santorum Bashes Everyone But The Prime Culprit: George W. Bush

Here.

Why bash John McCain, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush?

I don't recall any of these claiming to redefine the Republican Party like W did. And all three of them served honorably in war, one as a prisoner of war, one maimed by war, and one a practised parachutist under fire. W did none of that. And neither did Santorum. 

OK, maybe Herbert Walker came close to an ideological make-over with that kinder, gentler, shtick, but we all know he didn't really mean it. He was not really into that vision thing. But W was full of hubris and said the conservative movement was OVER and that HE would establish a new meaning for it going forward, which boiled down to nothing more than personal loyalty. He must have learned that from the Democrats.

And I don't recall any of these also-rans abandoning free market principles to save the free market like W did. You can rightly say the objects of Santorum's ire represented tax collection for the welfare state, but at least they made a show of being capitalists. George W. Bush, a failed capitalist before he became president, ended his presidency the same way.

W was a knee-jerk liberal on immigration, welfare for the poor and for seniors, and on exporting the American way. A real conservative ought to say so. Rick Santorum never will.