Limited government cannot exist without social conservatism

People who won't limit themselves, who in the name of freedom will not restrain themselves, cannot produce limited government, just as gay people cannot produce the next generation.

My candidate in the Michigan GOP presidential primary finished in the top 1.2% of the field lol

Yes, I'm well aware he dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Turn out was pretty pathetic in Michigan, despite mail-in voting and early in person voting up to 29 days in advance.

Combined turnout for the two parties was less than 23% of the 8.275 million registered voters.

The Hamas vote racked up a big protest vote against Joe Biden of more than 100k.

Uncommitted Republican votes of 33k+ must be the small L libertarians? Social conservatives could vote happily for Ron DeSantis.

Meanwhile Nikki Haley attracted 293k of the AWFLs, most of whom were Democrat voters.

The primary is well nigh useless as an indicator of much of anything since all you have to do is check the Republican box or the Democrat box when you appear and you are given the appropriate ballot. There is no party "registration". You are what you say you are, but every man is a liar (Romans 3:4).

 

The voters never get what they want: Economic liberalism and social conservatism

The problem with this analysis, now standard, is that libertarianism co-opted conservatism

The three-legged stool of "conservatism" in the age of Reagan consisted of a libertarian leg, a social conservative leg, and a foreign policy hawk leg. The libertarian leg came to dominate (the money interest), as is typical, which discarded the conservative leg except when it needed it, at election time (traditional values agenda), and put the foreign policy leg to work in its interests (global free trade).

This has happened before. The proponents of the professional, managerial state in the early 20th century similarly co-opted the rural Christian farming population to pass the "progressive" agenda, in the name of Christian fairness, of women's suffrage, popular election of senators, the corporate and income taxes to make business and the rich pay their fair share, and Prohibition, in exchange for political power.

The gulls in this game have always been the core Christian population. They are being replaced now, however, by a new class, the Latinos.

The 3-D chess masters will have to run the future scenarios. Yo no hablo espanol. But I expect them to be less charitable when jilted.

Must see video: Tucker Carlson says socialism is exactly what we're going to get unless we stop worshipping at the altar of (capitalist) materialism

Pretty smart coming from a guy who eschews intellectualism.

For example, I wish he had said that you can't have limited government without individuals composing it who first limit themselves. He says that, and more, just not in a lapidary way. Tucker is revolting against the reductionism of Conservatism Inc. to mere materialism. He is revolting against ideology, and it's amazing. 

Here.

Bons mots:

Republicans see it as their duty to make the world safe for banking.

Questioning markets feels like apostasy to social conservatives.

Economics and culture are not separable one from the other.

Rural America now looks like Detroit.

Putting corporations first is bondage.

We tax capital at half the rate we tax labor.

Divided countries are easier to rule.

Market capitalism is not a religion. It's a tool.

Libertarians tell a lie when they say any deviation from market fundamentalism is socialism.

Social conservative Judge Roy Moore wins the first round in Alabamy, conservative talk radio almost uniformly backed the wrong guy

Mostly female social conservatives saved the Republican platform from Paul Singer surrogate Annie Dickerson

From the story here:

But the [Tony] Perkins wing was met with vocal opposition from Annie Dickerson, an adviser to billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer, who is a proponent of same-sex marriage and other issues championed by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Dickerson fumed as her socially liberal proposals went down and the socially conservative measures she opposed sailed through the subcommittee. ... 

The 16-member subcommittee, made up of 13 women and three men, rejected Dickerson’s request to remove language in the platform that “salutes” states like North Carolina for passing controversial bathroom laws that critics say discriminate against transgender people.

She protested language that said the party supports “traditional marriage and the families a husband and wife create,” arguing instead for a provision that said children should be “raised in a loving and stable home.”

And she argued against having language in the platform that opposes the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

Trump throws social conservatives overboard, marginalizes opposition to homosexuality as anti-American, anti-Western

Which would come as quite a shock to the founding generation, whose colonies made homosexuals "universally subject to the death penalty."

From the story here:

Trump also called on Muslim-Americans to turn in members of their community that they suspect of terror links, saying radical Islam isn’t compatible with “Western values and institutions” because it is “anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American.”

Blame the libertarians for handing Romney his loss in 2012, not conservatives

Third parties bled away over 60% of the few votes Romney lost by in his failed eastern strategy in Election 2012.

Mitt Romney's bid to win the White House failed by 64 electoral college votes, all of which he narrowly lost in an eastern strategy in just four states by a total of only 429,522 popular votes:

Florida, lost by 74,309 votes, where third parties garnered an unbelievable 90,972 votes;

Virginia, lost by 149,298 votes, where third parties garnered 60,147 votes;

Ohio, lost by 166,272 votes, where third parties took a whopping 101,788 votes;

and New Hampshire, lost by 39,643 votes, where third parties took 11,493 votes.

That's a loss for Romney of 64 electoral college votes, enough to have taken him from 206 to 270 to take the presidency, losing 429,522 total popular votes in just four states where third parties all told took 264,400 votes, 61.5% of the total needed by Romney to win.

This isn't to say that those were all necessarily Republican votes which went third party, but fully 50.5% of the 264,400 were cast for the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who had been a Republican candidate for president until late 2011 when he was excluded from the Republican debates. At that point he bolted to the Libertarian Party, and openly stated his intention to play a spoiler role:

“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.

Combine the pique factor around that with the natural alienation felt by libertarians toward a Mormon candidate who was himself socially conservative in his habits and loathe to exercise himself on behalf of libertarians' usual limited government ideas and you can make a case that it was libertarians who cost Romney the election, by casting spoiler votes, staying away from the polls entirely, or even voting for Obama out of spite.

This is a better explanation for the Romney loss than some mythical 4 million conservatives staying away from the polls in 2012 as Rush Limbaugh keeps saying. The numbers themselves disprove that, as Romney garnered 1 million more votes in 2012 than McCain in 2008. It was a much closer election than the (mostly libertarian) punditocracy wants you to know.

Conservatives, most of whom are Christians, aren't put off by abstainers like Mitt Romney the way libertarians might be (many Christians are abstemious too), and Christians find it much more morally problematic to stay away from the polls, or to vote out of spite, in a way which libertarians would not. Christian voters are nothing if not preoccupied with their moral and social responsibility, but libertarians care little for that.

In fact, withdrawing from social responsibilities is elevated to the level of a moral principle by libertarians. Staying away from the polls is a John Galt tactic straight out of the playbook from Ayn Rand. It's an ongoing and adolescent fantasy of theirs. It's not a Christian tactic, which is to say it's not a conservative tactic. Conservatives love their country too much to let it go down the drain, and they actively admired Mitt Romney for his commitment to and long record of public service even if his religion and social policy positions bothered them.

It remains a question if Republicans can expect to succeed in future with a brood of vipers in their party such as the libertarians. Republicans should reconsider their tilt toward libertarianism and seriously ask themselves whether things might not go better for them if they more actively pursued the social conservative vote. From the Christians Republicans can expect forgiveness, but from the libertarians only vindictiveness. Isn't that how the Bushes got elected after turning their backs on the Reagan revolution? Isn't that the conceit of moderate Republican presidential aspirants still today?

Why isn't that an easy call? After all, the libertarian Ron Paul who bitterly lost to Romney in the Republican primaries never left the Republican Party, but he never endorsed Mitt Romney either: "I don’t fully endorse him for president,” he said, as late as August 2012, less than three months before the election. Message to libertarians: good ahead, stay home, see if I care.

Call it an ironic payback to Romney, whose moderate Republican father likewise wouldn't endorse the conservative Barry Goldwater after losing to him in 1964, but it's also another sign in a long list of signs that libertarians have more in common with liberals than with conservatives.

They're content if they too can defeat Republicans.

Wall Street Journal fears conservatives are winning: Trots out libertarian from Cato Institute to smear Laura Ingraham as nativist

You know Laura Ingraham. She hates foreigners so much she adopted three of them, one from Guatemala and two from Russia, and reportedly almost married a very dark-skinned man.

Here:

Many in the GOP are jockeying for the soul of the party ahead of an anticipated 2014 midterm election victory. Social conservatives are eager to reassert their influence after repeated defeats over gay marriage. Fiscal conservatives make the case for a greater emphasis on runaway spending. And then there are the nativists, who contend that the future of the Republican Party lies in opposing immigration reform. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, for example, said last month that, “Immigration could be to 2016 what ObamaCare was to 2010.”

----------------------------------------

Swine.

It used to be the conservative movement consisted of social, fiscal and foreign policy wings. The libertarians don't have a foreign policy because they believe in open borders, so they had to invent something they could caricature and toss in order to have a simpler, Manichean world in which they, the sons of light, fight us, the social conservative sons of darkness.

Two-front wars are too hard for libertarians.

Godless Libertarian Triumph In MI-3: Justin Amash Is Pro-Gay All The Way, Just Like Brian Ellis His Challenger

There really is no choice for social conservatives between the two Republicans in the MI-3 primary in 2014.

Neither candidate can bring himself to support Republican Committeeman Dave Agema's lonely stand against moral and spiritual decadence in our society. In fact, both candidates attack Dave Agema. The only reason to vote for Ellis in the primary is to spoil the reelection of Amash who is a complete traitor to conservatism and never was a conservative to begin with. Of course this means a Democrat has a winning chance in MI-3. But arguably Republicans should vote for the Democrat in the general that the full measure of God's wrath may be felt here.

Michigan's 3rd Congressional District is hopelessly lost from the Judeo-Christian point of view in any case, for reasons which prevailed long before Brian Ellis and Justin Amash existed. Whatever power traditional Calvinism may have possessed in the area in the past is long since transmuted. At least Vern Ehlers gave the appearance of a Christian. This place is cursed, and deserves everything that's come to it, and is coming.

Justin Amash, Antiochian Orthodox, quoted here in January:

“Defending civil liberties is at the heart of the Republican Party and our Constitution. As I've demonstrated with my words and record, I am trying to grow a new generation of Republicans that includes more gays and lesbians, racial-ethnic minorities, women and young people," Amash said.

And Brian Ellis, an Episcopalian, in the same story:

"Dave Agema’s discriminatory rhetoric gets in the way of sharing our Republican solutions," Ellis said in his statement.

Well, look at it this way. If you are looking for a church to join, you now have two more to cross off your list.

Social Conservatives Save, Liberals Just Go Into Debt

Social conservatives tax themselves (it's called saving for retirement, now $21.9 trillion saved), liberals tax everyone but never save anything (it's called the Total Public Debt, now $17.3 trillion owed).

Republicans Preach Unity After Eating Their Own

Republicans were preaching unity this week at their meetings, as reported here by TheHill.com, but those few of us out here who have politicians who actually represent us in our values and ideas can only cry, "Hypocrites! Liars! Cannibals!"

Republicans these days specialize in nothing if not eating their own. Unfortunately they always choose unwisely from the menu. They enjoy a soupçon of conservatism here, and another there, when what they should be devouring is a full plate of Bushmen.

That's because there's only one kind of unity in the Republican Party anymore: Republican Establishment dictated unity, which is to say, rallying around liberalism in the vain hope of forestalling criticism from Democrats.

If you are a social conservative like Gov. Mike Huckabee or Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema of Michigan or Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, then shut the hell up, which is just what Democrats yell in the direction of Republicans all the time. It is another aspect of the way in which there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties.

The moment in history when this sorry fact became memorialized was in the 1920s when Democrats and Republicans conspired to fix representation at 435 so that they didn't have to listen anymore to the voices of the great unwashed from central and southern Europe who had swelled the population for forty years, nor have to rub shoulders with them in the House of Representatives.

If you want to hear that kind of crap on a regular basis, tune in to the likes of Royalist Republican David Frum. But I, for one, am sick of it. As far as I'm concerned the Axis of Evil runs from the Speaker's office to Reince Priebus' office to wherever Jeb Bush happens to be at the moment.

Republicans can go to hell with the Democrats for all I care. Democrats never get my votes, and this year Republicans won't.

Libertarian Freaks In Virginia Hate Cuccinelli's Social Conservatism, Funded By Former Cato Institute President

Tim Carney reports, here:

Purple PAC, a political action committee headed by Libertarian Ed Crane, former president of the Cato Institute, announced Oct. 25 it would spend $300,000 to back Sarvis. And many Beltway politicos with libertarian leanings are backing Sarvis and expressing disgust for Cuccinelli.

Why are libertarians working so hard against Cuccinelli, who is probably the most libertarian statewide official in Virginia in recent history?

I suspect identity politics plays a role.

I asked Sarvis why a libertarian should oppose Cuccinelli, and the first words out of his mouth were “social issues.” Crane’s only critique of Cuccinelli when announcing the $300,000 buy for Sarvis: “Ken Cuccinelli is a socially intolerant, hard-right conservative with little respect for civil liberties.”

Cuccinelli is undoubtedly conservative. He’s an observant Catholic with seven children and a home-schooling wife. He’s a hero to the pro-life cause and an opponent of gay marriage.

Sen. Rand Paul Is Dreaming If He Thinks "Libertarian Republican" Can Win In 2016

Here:

"You know, points have been made and we'll continue to make points, but I think the country really is ready for the narrative coming, libertarian Republican narrative, also because we have been losing as a national party. We are doing fine in congressional seats but we're becoming less and less of a national party because we don't win on the West Coast, we don't win in New England. We really struggled all around the Great Lakes."

"Libertarian Republican" is an oxymoron, kind of like "Reagan Republican". The Libertarian Party in the United States characteristically considers itself successful when it defeats Republicans, not Democrats. Taking over the Republican Party from within is simply another version of this.

Both libertarians and Reaganites are essentially Democrats on the social issues but Republican to the extent that Republicans believe in the free market, which actually is where the rub is. They make a lot of noise protesting their social conservatism, but when the rubber hits the road they do nothing about it legislatively. Meanwhile the country continues to reset to the left on the social issues with every passing year. This is not by accident.

Since neither group gains traction in the Democrat Party on the economic front, the Democrats having sold out long ago to socialism and social license, they both naturally come to the Republican Party to play, where they are partly welcome but eventually cause trouble. The problem is both groups alienate the social conservative base of the Republican Party to one degree or another, and then can't quite convince the Republican establishment either, which is still economically liberal in its orientation and currently is based in the Bush clan. There's a reason, after all, why the Republicans continue to nominate economic liberals like Bush 43, McCain and Romney who do not naturally exude free market principles.

Reagan Democrats succeeded in the Republican Party because they made successful alliances with both Republican factions, which are otherwise so divided they cannot stand on their own. They need liberals of one kind or another to win, either libertarian social liberals or Democrats recovering from the economic radicalization of the Democrat Party, like Ronald Reagan. When Republicans do win with this help, they call it conservatism but still govern from the left, whether it takes the form of Reagan's 1986 tax reform with its hidden mandates and expansions of middle class welfare or George W. Bush's guns and butter in the Wars on Terror and Drugs for Seniors.

The libertarians will not be able to reduplicate this achievement, however, because under their banner fly all the fruits, nuts and flakes Republicans have always identified as socially fringe characters with whom there can be no agreement, while their doctrinaire free market devotion will preclude compromise with the Republican establishment's tax and spend liberals which they will need to win.

As ever, the Republican Party is a house divided against itself, which is why Pres. Obama just loves Pres. Abraham Lincoln.

NRA Grades Dem. Pestka Better Than Rep. Amash In Michigan 3rd

Don't believe it? See for yourself, here.

Michigan Democrats are making hay with this. A four-color direct mail piece arrived in my mailbox today highlighting the fact, mailed from the party office in Lansing.

Amash's beef with the NRA is principled, based on his belief, which is correct, that the Commerce Clause of the constitution is not the basis for legislation for interstate reciprocity for concealed carry. The McDonald decision is another example of a "victory" for gun rights which was wrongly decided, but the NRA nonetheless cheered. The NRA is not infallible, and Amash is right to point it out, but in the political contest against the foes of gun rights, his trumpet makes an uncertain sound.

But while Pestka scores better than Amash with the NRA, you'll notice there's no endorsement by the NRA. That's because NRA members think they know Amash is a friend of gun ownership who just hasn't yet persuaded the NRA to improve its constitutional interpretation.

One might be tempted from this to think Pestka is an alternative to consider instead of Amash, especially since liberals haven't been too happy with Pestka for once voting to de-fund abortion providers, something Amash recently couldn't bring himself to do, alienating social conservatives, including me (a specialty of libertarians like Amash). See the HuffPo story, here. But Pestka now regrets his vote. His record is being used opportunistically.

Amash continues to defend his vote against de-funding Planned Parenthood because singling out PP for defunding is unprincipled, thus favoring others who still get funding. To which we say, so what? There is tons of spending in government which is unprincipled because it picks winners and losers, and is otherwise simply wrong. To err on the side of picking losers by cutting them off isn't a failing, it's a start! The journey to a clean room begins with one moldy sock.

We shouldn't make the good the enemy of the perfect as Amash does now and again. It's a lesson learned from life experience, which Amash hasn't had enough of yet. That's an argument against investing young people like him with political power until they are ready, something Aristotle understood long ago, and our Founders understood when they enshrined age requirements for office in the constitution. The young are to be tested and tried as they climb a ladder of offices, an idea which derives from the old Roman cursus honorum, with which the Founders were intimately familiar. A good boy is just that. It remains to be seen if he turns out to be a good man.

Not all matters are susceptible of resolution by appeal to the constitution. It is not an infallible holy book which dropped from the sky for our instruction in everything, as much as we rightly submit to it. For example, the constitution is now schizophrenic because it allows those aged 18 to vote, but only those aged 35 to serve as president. It is probably only theoretical that one day there could be a dearth of people in the country old enough to serve as president, or that there might one day be a surplus of people serving in Congress under 35. Nevertheless in the former case the pressure to change the constitution to lower the age requirement would fly in the face of the Founders' wisdom, experience and judgment on the matter. In the latter it could happen that the death of the president and vice president might mean a too young speaker of the house would be next in line to the presidency, in violation of the constitution.

We adhere to the spirit of the constitution, but to which part? Shall we make the 26th Amendment the enemy of Article II. Section 1, or the other way around? Shall we stifle youth and enthusiasm utterly, or channel it and shape it?

Not everything is reducible to the letter on the page, or to a single principle one only imagines superintends our deliberations. What were once thought remedies on later reflection turn out to have been mistakes, which only the good mind can conclude. 

Romney Is Half Right: One Tax Proposal Is New, And Alarming

And it is amazing no one has taken this seriously:

"My plan is not like anything that's been tried before. My plan is to bring down rates, but also bring down deductions and exemptions and credits at the same time so the revenue stays in, but that we bring down rates to get more people working."

Romney is threatening to reduce the value of exemptions and credits which exist under the existing tax code.

This amounts to major fiddling which the preoccupation with "deductions" obscures.

Deductions we have lost before, as in the 1986 tax reform. That he wants to reduce the value of more deductions is bad enough. But the truly alarming thing is the proposal to do the same to exemptions, and to a lesser extent to credits. That is new, and alarming.

That can only mean the whole set of assumptions involving the system of personal exemptions, and perhaps also the time-honored "married filing jointly" status itself, and credits such as the Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit and the like. I can well imagine a President Mitt Romney eliminating the favoritism of the tax code toward married people, and toward their housing and their children, to make gay and unmarried people equal to them in the tax code. Remember, in Massachusetts Gov. Romney had a reputation, deserved, for being a tax equalizer.

I also expect he will propose capping the value of deductions and credits by using something like Martin Feldstein's plan, in order to preserve the deductions and credits for lower income individuals but phasing them out as one climbs the income ladder. In other words, the progressive tax code stays, but progressivity of tax deductibility goes out the window. That may be fair to a liberal like Romney, but it isn't maintaining progressivity, it is steepening it.

Mitt Romney is not a social conservative. And if he gets his way with the tax code, I suspect he's going to prove it, unless conservatives in the US House stop him.

Good luck, America. You're going to need it.

Sarah Palin at CPAC: Still a Vulgarian and a Believer in the Imperial Presidency

As reported here:

Palin zeroed in on President Obama. The current state of the economy "is not a failure of the American people," she said. "It is the failure of leadership. We know how to change that, oh yes we do. Oh yes we can," she said, echoing Obama's campaign line. "Hope and change – yeah, you gotta hope things change."

"He says he has a jobs plan to win the future. WTF, I know," Palin said, spelling out W-T-F. Palin hasn't endorsed any candidates and didn't do so today, telling the crowd that "For the sake of our country we must stand united, whoever our nominee is." Palin left the stage to an extended ovation, having managed to do what none of the candidates except Santorum could: get social conservatives truly fired up.

That's right. Never tell the people they have the government they deserve, especially that crowd. 

If The Republicans Were Smart, They'd Follow The Rahm Emanuel Strategy

Rahm's strategy was to make the big tent Democrat party open to so-called fiscal and social conservatives in competitive states. It was a feint to the right.

They were liars, mostly. Some were dupes. And their public face was the "Blue Dogs" who helped the Democrats take over the House in 2006. It bled votes from the Republicans and brought them into the party, while their elected representatives dutifully voted for almost everything the Democrat left under Pelosi and Reid and Obama put forward after 2008, although not without occasional difficulty, especially in the case of ObamaCare.

That's why this analysis from one "Ben Shapiro" here is totally wrong (a troll?) and rather sad to see this late in the game because it misses the Emanuel strategy entirely:

John Kerry was a flip-flopper, a wishy-washy liberal who made liberals squeamish. So they responded by moving to the left, bringing in Nancy Pelosi to run the House and the anti-Kerry, Howard Dean, to run the Democratic National Committee. The result was a Democratic victory in 2006 in the House, and the victory of the most far-left candidate in American history, Barack Obama, in 2008.

The Emanuel strategy recognized what polls tell us even today, nearly a decade on: the American people are not Democrat or Republican predominantly, but conservative in their self-understanding, however ill-defined that may be. Liberalism as a category still comes in last, as Politico reports here:

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one, according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from 2010.

These simple facts explain why Newt Gingrich is doing so well on chewing gum and chicken wire against one of the richest Republicans to run for office in decades.

Republicans, if they want to win, should embrace this. People like Tim Pawlenty, Bill Bennett, and Ann Coulter should get with the program and stop supporting an unelectable guy whom Republicans rightly discarded in 2008 for JOHN S. McCAIN, of all people.

Gingrich's chief appeal is his ability to go mano a mano with the media, which are an unpaid arm of the Obama campaign, C-student shills who deserve a real education for once.

Gingrich will give it to them.

We might not get real conservatism, but no one can say with a straight face that we'll get that from Mitt Romney. We're trying to fill the Bully Pulpit here. It's the most important lectureship without tenure in the history of mankind. Newt never got tenure in academe, and I can't think of a better person to fill this chair at this time than Newt.

Feint right, Republicans. You've done it before, you can do it again.

We know you don't mean it. 

Sarah Palin: The Vulgarian Streak Runs Deep

If Sarah Palin is supposed to represent a resurgent social conservatism, her fascination with all things 'WTF' speaks against it.

I had forgotten this one, which Toby Harnden of The UK Telegraph recalls here a couple of days ago, breezing right over it:

The notion of Mrs Palin as White House kingmaker would have seemed wildly improbable if anyone had raised it before August 2008.

It was then that she was catapulted to international fame by Senator John McCain’s surprise decision to make her his vice-presidential running mate. Her reaction? “Can you flippinbelieveit?!”

Cleaning out the alcohol from the Alaska governor's residence was easy by comparison.

"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man."

-- Matthew 15:11