Peter Schiff vs. Dick Morris

Should America survive the next four years--and I am not certain our country will remain intact--the dominant political discourse will be social conservatism vs. fiscal conservatism. Liberalism as it has traditionally been defined, is a vanished species. Ficsal vs. social.

This is a harbinger. A portent. Coming attractions. This ain't Foxnews and this ain't Sean Hannity giving his favored guests a Lewinski. Dick Morris gets asked a few tough questions and he turns tail and runs like a pansy.

A lot of us have played along with the Morrises because Obama, et al, have upped the stakes in destruction and ineptitude. The enemy of my enemy is...ugh! Dick Morris.

I'll try to be unifying until after the election.

TOUGH GUY DICK MORRIS RUNS LIKE A GIRL WHEN ASKED A FEW REAL QUESTIONS

He is a Republican Insider After All

I don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm about Paul Ryan. He is smart and he is a man of integrity. But he is also a Republican insider.

A lot of people are reminding us of this inconvenient truth. Paul Ryan supported Bush's prescription drug plan. He was a cheerleader for TARP and he voted for it. He voted to bail out GM. And his austerity plan never quite balances the budget. Yes, in some ways Ron Paul or Gary Johnson or Michelle Bachmann would be better.

But let us not despair. Ryan comes from a blue district, if not a blue state. Most of his bad decisions were made before there was a viable Tea Party. Even three years ago there was no network of support that let political allies know someone had their back. The Tea Party movement started in 2009. It took a while to gel but by 2010 it was a force to be reckoned with.

The elections of 2010 were monumental. It is my hope that this landmark emboldens fiscal conservatives. Romney or Ryan vintage 2008 might be a bit sheepish advocating for fiscal sanity but the 2012 models might be willing to flex some muscle. We hope.

We have been burned before. I thought George Bush and two Houses of Republicans would balance the budget, maybe even pay down the debt. Not even close. Their reckless spending would give license to the free spending Dems and we are now a year or two from insolvency.

Obama/Geithner/Bernanke/Reid, et al, have not gotten the message, and they never will. They either want to see the US crash and burn or they believe that deficits don't matter if they are the ones creating the deficits. Romney/Ryan is our only hope. Both of these men have baggage. But they represent one last chance for America to avoid becoming Greece on a scale unfathomable. We have to support them.

Go Back To Fox News, Santorum. Or How To Insure An Obama Victory.

OK, the Tea Party is not explicitly libertarian. But libertarianism is by definition, small government. Conversely, small government promotes individual freedom. Small government is quasi-libertarian by default.

So too, fiscal conservatism. Libertarianism greatly limits fiscal recklessness. Conversely, fiscal conservatism promotes freedom if by only limiting the scope of government activism.

The GOP is uneasy with the Tea Party. The idea of big government conservatism and/or bureaucratic conservatism and/or conservative social engineering is alive and well within the ranks of the Republican Party. The strong belief that Christian bureaucrats are better than lesbian bureaucrats dominates is alive and well in the GOP. Deficit spending is harmless if it performed by people of virtue. Put moral people in high places and we can all return to the glory of the Bush years.

Santorum's hostility to "libertarian influences" belies a hostility to fiscal conservatism, the Tea Party and yes, a hostility to the US Constitution and that pesky Bill of Rights. It also reveals the Senator's poor political judgment. Mitt Romney is looking better every day.

HEY! MAYBE FOX NEWS CAN GIVE SANTORUM NAPOLITANO'S SOON TO BE VACANT SEAT!!!

A Blog Deferred

The Obama era is not over and it would be imprudent to get ahead of ourselves. The media industrial complex is the ongoing biggest story of our day. The media is water and we are fish. In the person of their hero, Barack Obama, the media reveal their ruling class souls for all to see. So as long as The King of Hope is on the scene, I will joust with the media windmills.

I have this fantasy that someday an elite member of our ruling class will announce to the world that Obama was a joke that got out of hand. The shrewd insider will announce to the world that he and his cabal buddies grew bored selling global warming to the gullible. They wanted to flex their PR muscle in the Super Bowl World Series Idol Derby Battle Royale of Public Relations. They chose to take the ultimate PR challenge. They would take a nobody and make him president. They might even get the empty suit a Nobel Prize to boot.

But the cabalist has not come forward to claim responsibility for a joke that went too far. So until Chauncey Gardner goes back to doing whatever it is community organizers do, we will continue to investigate the only unvetted president in US history. If we can survive the Obama Era where then do we focus our attention?

I would love to someday develop a website that deals with the semantics of politics. It is a subject that we don't spend enough time on. Political discourse has always turned me off. Limbaugh and Coulter and Savage to name a few love to bash liberals. Do they even know what liberalism is? Why would Milton Friedman or John Stossel call themselves classical liberals? Maybe because they owned dictionaries?

Liberal and conservative are not polarities. One can be both. One can be neither. Neither is what rules the day. Elitism negates the worthiest aspects of both liberalism and conservatism. Anti-intellectualism, as in the Occupy Movement, is neither. Religious cults, and I would include Obama loyalists in this category, are neither l nor c.

From my perspective, the most heated rivalry will be between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. The two ideologies are incompatible. I doubt if they can coexist in harmony.

But for now, political rivals of all stripes are uniting against the biggest fraud in the history of Planet Earth. Until that fraud is addressed, we stand united. I can't wait for this nightmare to end.

Obama's Dwindling Support, Diminsihing Returns And The Coming Food Fight

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I am slowing down on the blog, no doubt about it. It isn't writer's block. It isn't the enthusiasm gap. It's deeper than that. In a sense, I feel that I have fulfilled my missions at this blog. Diminishing returns are here.

Some elaboration. Voter remorse is palpable. More than one former Obama supporter has expressed some disillusionment to me. These are people who have never visited this site. For a multitude of reasons, they acknowledge that Obama is a disappointment.

Understand, these people would probably not vote for McCain if they had a second chance and they do not like Republicans generic or specific. But they view Obama as more Jimmy Carter than Bill Clinton. They recognize that Obama will never be a man of the people.

The final bale of straw was Obama's stance on the Ground Zero mosque. This is visceral. Prior to the mosque, disagreements with the president were mostly intellectual. Yes, there was the apology tour and a few other times where his heart seemed to be elsewhere. But then the mosque slapped us in the face and the president did not feel the blow. Obama does not feel what we feel.

Whereas the sensible people are jumping ship, Obama's total approval has held steady at 42% to 46% (Rasmussen.) He still has his legions of hardcore fans who cannot be bothered with facts. Then again, I am not going to reach those people with my blog. Some vapid celebrity might be able to reach them but not a purveyor of reason. Someone else can gather the lost sheep.

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Glenn Beck also got my head spinning. I kind of wish that he would have held off with his "Restoring Honor" rally until after the election. There is an unackowledged schism between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. It might be the most substantial political divide in this country.

I side with the fiscal conservatives and I am suspicious of the social conservatives. The two philosophies are incompatible. Given the chance, the social conservatives will stab us in the back every single time. Ronald Reagan ran a deficit each of every eight years in office while kissing up to the social cons every step of the way.

We then read Bush's lips. Later his son, the first MBA to become president, would show the world that Harvard Business Grads are incapable of balancing a budget. Of course he was able to find moolah to promote abstinence training and faith-based initiatives and even more of our dough to harass pornographers and medical marijuana advocates and to make life difficult for online poker players.

9-11 was unifying. I would rather take my chances with the Ashcrofts than Al Qaeda sympathizers. Ashcroft only put burkas on statues. Live women were spared his silliness.

Obama has also been a unifier. The Tea Party drew from disparate sources but at least we stood united against reckless spending. For once, fiscal conservatism was front and center. Yes, Obama made a lot of us uncomfortable with his hollow patriotism and his thinly-veiled contempt for traditions like the Constitution and Judeo-Christian principles. But those were side dishes. The entree was fiscal responsibility.

If we want to continue the culinary metaphor then I suppose we should acknowledge that a food fight is a-comin. It would be better to fight this battle in say, the 2012 GOP primaries. But Beck has re-opened the wound. Let's hope we can hold off on the pie throwing until after the first Tuesday in November.

Come November 3, let the cream pies fly! I can hardly wait.

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What Would Reagan Do?

He would run a deficit every single year. Every single year! In all 8 Reagan years (1981-1988) our country ran huge deficits. There is much to say for Ronald Reagan but it is inaccurate to promote him as some sort of fiscal conservative. Social conservative? Yes. Fiscal conservative? No.

The myths surrounding Reagan and Republicans are topics I hope to revisit from time to time. These topics include:

1. Reagan's true fiscal legacy.
2. The cultish aspects of Reagan followers. They are not as flamboyant or as stupid as the Obotamicized but their memories are viewed through the lens of Reagan-colored glasses.
3. Yes, Reagan had an easy act to follow. Actually he had four easy acts to follow. Carter/Ford/Nixon/LBJ. Name four presidents who lost control of the office. In matters fiscal and otherwise, Reagan looked good by comparison.
4. The incompatibility of fiscal conservatism and social conservatism.
5. Bush 43's witting or unwitting role in launching Obamanation.
6. The hubris of the GOP.
7. The hubris of the Democrats.
8. The pain and sacrifice of fiscal sanity.
9. Economics: The original inconvenient truth.
10. What are the consequences of continued fiscal recklessness?

The webmeister will not back off from his position that Obama is dangerous and reckless. He will not back off from his position that the Obotamies are a cult of willful stupidity. He will continue to point out the flaws in Barack Obama because it is so damn easy, and because professional journalists refuse to do their job.

But Republicans and the vanishing breed of Common Sense Democrats have to face up to reality. The solution to fiscal recklessness is not "deficit lite." No, it is finding leaders who have the judgment and the resolve to say "No." We need to recruit humble leaders who can balance a checkbook and stand up to special interest groups. Then and only then will we have change we can believe in. Yes we can!