Republican Fiasco

I get so frustrated with the Republicans. Here is Romney, who endorsed essentially the same health care nonsense in Massachusetts that the Democrats imposed on the entire country. It failed miserably in Massachusetts, which ought to tell you something about how it will fare for the country as a whole.

But this poses a problem for Romney, who now feels it's necessary to oppose Obamacare, even though he defended the same thing in Massachusetts. But instead of saying that he made a mistake in Massachusetts, he is now saying that even though he was right to endorse it in Massachusetts (hello?), it is wrong for the federal government to impose it on the entire country. I guess this is the so-called "states rights" gambit. Each state has the right to enact their own dictatorship, but God help us if the federal government does it! What he should have said, if he had any brains, is that it didn't work in Massachusetts, as everyone can see, so he's not going to make the same mistake with the country as a whole, and will therefore work to repeal Obamacare on that basis, not on some kind of goofy "states rights" rationale.

And it looks like he's currently the most politically viable of all the other suspects.

Gingrich shot himself in the foot when he too defended the individual mandate and then tried to distance himself from it. I'd like to see Obama a one-term president, but right now that doesn't look like a sure thing, even though no other incumbent president has been reelected with more than 8% unemployment. If Obama is reelected, the Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves.

Post 1

Sunday, May 22, 2011 - 3:48pm

Bill, too true... But it is still early in the primary season and we have yet to see if the Tea Party is still alive. When we start seeing the votes roll in, we may find that Romney is no longer number one. That is my hope.

Post 2

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 - 8:40am

I have to believe that both parties are playing train wreck politics.

1] They've long ago concluded the fiscal train is heading off the tracks, and that DC and our politics are long incapable of averting the wreck. And so...

2] They each simply have been jockeying for position to out 'They did it!' the other party in the aftermath.

3] The GOP, as a whole, doesn't want to be sitting in The Chair on that Tuesday when the music actually stops, so as not to take the full wrath of the nation on that day. Their calculus is that blame will rule the day. The nation, in the aftermath of the wreck, will finally see the folly of an unchecked government endlessly trying to 'run the economy,' and as a result will finally neuter Big Government and rein it back into place.

4] The Democrats don't mind sitting in The Chair, especially if they are sharing government, because their calculus is that fear and panic will rule the day. The nation, in the aftermath of the wreck, won't care at all how we got there, they will just want government to do something to fix it, and will grant even more emergency power to government.

Romney, Huckabee and McCain, blubbering on to Anderson Cooper at the January 2008 GOP Primary debate at Reagan's Library about why they were each best to "Run The Economy" is what buried the GOP in my mind. Stick a fork in the GOP, if those are representative of the 'front runners' that emerges from their tired old machinery.

No great loss. False hope for freedom is worse than no hope at all. Better to have the certain knowledge that we are on our own, with no help in sight from any major party.

Post 3

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 6:47am

What are the chances of a third party candidate in the upcoming presidential election? There is precedent for it.
And this just happened in Western NY:

Democrat Kathy Hochul swept to victory Tuesday night in a closely watched Congressional election in New York State, which turned into a proxy battle on a House Republican proposal on Medicare.
The race in New York's 26th Congressional district was to fill the seat of former Republican Congressman Chris Lee, who resigned over pictures and e-mails of him trying to find a date on Craigslist.
The seat had been considered safe for Republicans, who had held the district for more than four decades.
...
With nearly 90% of precincts reporting, Hochul has 48% of the vote, Republican Jane Corwin 42 %, self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate Jack Davis 9 %, and Green Party candidate Ian Murphy 1 %.

Assuming that those who voted for the Tea Party candidate would have voted for the Republican if Davis hadn't run, and those who voted Green would have voted for the Democrat if Murphy hadn't run, the election was given to the Democrat by the Tea Party.

Thanks,

Glenn

Post 4

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 8:23am

The election was also given to the Democrat by the false hope GOP, clinging to its offering of false hope and the same old same old.

The TeaParty candidate managed to push the boulder about 1/5th up the hill.

The Democrats will over-reach based on that result, call it a new mandate of some kind. It isn't going to help them in the long run.

Another path to eliminate the false hope GOP is exactly to let the Democrats publicly screw the pooch and accelerate the coming train wreck with their nonsense. This is also a play in train wreck politics. The gamble that, in the aftermath, the nation decides "A pox on both their houses." In that scenario, the strongest non-mainstream party emerges as the new front runner. That ain't the Greens.

Just like the false hope GOP and the pedal to the metal Dems, a true gamble, because none of us knows what comes out of the other side of the coming train wreck.

Post 5

Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 9:38am

I don't like the idea that third parties screw things up and are to be the blame for anything. It's morally deflective and potentially dissembling. Like Fred said, if there is anything getting screwed up by anybody, it is by the first 2 parties. It is Republicans and Democrats which are doing the screwing.

The reasoning behind blaming third parties is the same reasoning behind blaming businesses for screwing up economies (thus leading to more government intervention). It is a deflective, potentially-dissembling, argument for the status quo. There is nothing inherently-superior about a bipartisan political system. It is just a tool, and it is being used in the wrong way. And the kicker is that, because of incentives, it will always be used in the wrong way. It will -- for as long as we cherish and therefore maintain it -- continue to foster abuse and corruption.

A better tool for political progress in any given country is multi-party politics coupled with instant run-off voting and frequent elections.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/28, 10:28am)

Post 6

Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 7:06pm

I think term limits for all elected offices are a better idea. I think the main driving force behind the organization of political parties in the first place is to have a means to raise funds for re-election campaigns.

Post 7

Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 7:40pm

What can be done to reduce the power of the two parties?

Maybe when a person is elected, they only have the two terms (or maybe 3 for Representatives), the term limits, but the instant they are elected, they are immediately dropped from their party.

Everyone in congress would be an independent, by law. In the next election, the incumbent will have to run against any republicans, democrats, other independents, etc.

No party can have a caucus - they are forced to be an independent and can not use any party money or party mechanism to run for re-election. They should have only a small number of avenues they can use to campaign (web site, limited number of appearances on TV, no commercials, unlimited number of debates as long as the debates have all the other candidates, etc.) The idea is to force the incumbents to run on their records, and to not be able to spend a lot of time campaigning when they are supposed to just say, "This is what I've done, if you want more of that, re-elect me."

Parties are bad enough when they just control and distort the election process, but to have them active in control and distortion of the governing itself... Ugh!
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But in the long run, the only real cure for these problems will be to take the money away from the politicians - like with a balanced budget amendment that has a GDP cap PLUS the elimination of Income taxes and the implementation of kind of tax where no one can get a deduction or special rate or anything else that can be lobbied for or against. The Fair Tax eliminates ALL items that can be lobbied about except for the rate and the only one who is hit by that is the consumer (there are no taxes of any kind on any businesses) - all consumers have the same rate.

Post 8

Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 2:13am

"What can be done to reduce the power of the two parties?"

Not voting for candidates from those parties, and choosing the alternatives where available, or blank balloting when not available, sends a message.

For example, the recent special election in New York, where the votes for the third party candidate were greater than the difference in the votes for the two major party candidates. Never mind that the "Tea Party" candidate was a fake, a leftist stalking horse -- the fact that the balance of power was held by disgruntled voters fed up with the major party candidates, if repeated often enough, would force politicians to quit ignoring voters in the Tea Party and elsewhere.

If politicians know they have your vote even if they screw you over, they will ignore you and your concerns.

Post 9

Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 5:08am

For what it's worth, the Tea Party candidate in this case was a hoax - a longtime Democrat with a history of running in (and losing) Democratic primaries. His big issue was protectionism, a distinctly anti-free market position. Google 26 new york tea party candidate for more. Perhaps some or even most of the people who voted for him thought he was the real thing, but that is the only way you could rationalize such a conclusion.

Post 10

Monday, May 30, 2011 - 6:50am

Steve:

re: What can be done to reduce the power of the two parties?

Draw our pool of candidates for office the same way we form juries; via random pull from the populace.

Then pare that pool down by vetting it.

Eliminate the current bias in our means of staffing the plumbing of state with plumbers: do not make it a requirement that the first characteristic of state plumbers must be a self-desire to seek power over others.

Juries make life and death freedom eating decisions. If a random pool formed from the populace of We The People is good enough to form juries, then it is good enough to form a pool of candidates for our state plumbers.

Otherwise, before you know it, the folks we empower to paint the double yellow lines fairly down the middle of the road elevate themselves to emperor status and are talking about running 'the' economy...for the benefit of their crony friends, political contributors, and whoever else they've sold themselves out to for a buck.

I don't see any liklihood at all of the present machines permitting anything like this to ever reach the light of day. We are hostages to the Jr. High sensibilities running the nation, clinging to power until their fingers ... and the nation's butt... bleeds.

Post 11

Monday, May 30, 2011 - 11:21am

Fred,

I can feel the attractive pull to the idea of eliminating the professional politician as a class. But I don't think picking our lawmakers like we do jurors is the way to go. As you pointed out the current group aren't going to make that kind of change happen. And, once upon a time we had a good group in place - from the founding fathers on through most of our history we had adequate people in place, until the Fabian Socialists got our schools all turned around and we came to find ourselves a dumbed down nation of entitlement whiners and elitist control freaks.

The long term answer has to education and the passage of a few generations. Short term we have to do the basic fixes to the monetary and fiscal policies. We have to hope the tea party has what it takes to put in enough fiscal conservatives and libertarians to get those laws changed. Then, like I said, fix the schools and keep beating the drums. If the culture, in say 60 years, is mostly libertarian and reasonably knowledgeable in economics, then I think term limits, diminishing the power of the parties, a few constitutional changes and we'll be good for maybe 400 years next go around.

Post 12

Thursday, June 2, 2011 - 8:27am