U.S. 2012 Election

[Edward Campbell]

From where is this moderate, socially liberal but fiscally conservative Republican Party emerge? They will have to find a completely new stable of candidates for that, I suspect.

2012 is a write off for America ... neither party is fielding a leader ~ just standard bearers: colour ensigns rather than colonels ... the changes will come in the next two decades, as they did to the Democrats in the 1950s and '60s, when they expelled the Dixiecrats and, with them, the working class.

As to Steyn's claim, there's nothing nuts about this at all - insurance companies have no issue funding contraception as it makes business sense for them. The issue has nothing to do with people's sex lives and everything to do with enforcing phony morality. There's no good way to frame this issue, and it's going to get the GOP nowhere.

They could, as I said, be proposing ways to reduce barriers to economic growth that are moderate, and that would probably capture independents and even some Democrats who are looking for a different tack. There's so much ridiculous regulation they could target that few people would argue over, I'd suspect. But instead, they choose not to for now. I can only wonder if they've got something like that up their sleeves.

If you're going to make the argument that "Obama has failed" those "school leavers", and then suggest that that could be to the GOP's advantage, then to at least those paying attention you have to be able to make the argument that the GOP has policy ideas that would do something different. Those school leavers, however, would in large part probably hear a lot of the usual GOP planks and not actually think it'd make them any better off. The ideas have been tried, and they've not worked. These people, for better or worse, will look through the prism of the Bush years in particular, and they'll see that all the tax cuts and deregulation did not have enough impact. What I'll wonder about is will they vote at all, or will they just become disenchanted with the system and stay home. I wonder if politics will be perceived as so toxic that people don't care. That's probably President Obama's biggest worry - he has to make sure that his base is out and casts votes. I'm sure that the DNC will be busy getting registrations done given how many rules have been brought in in the hopes of excluding voters.

Two points:

1. It is all about capital, unleashing capital. That's Obama's weakest suit; he doesn't understand capital and, like most people, he doesn't like what he cannot understand. He has done as much as he can to impede capital, to chain it down, he needs to enact policies - policies that will drive the Democratic base and Nancy Pelozi et al wild - to make it attractive to borrow American money from American banks to spend on American projects: energy, infrastructure - especially e.g. highway and sewer repairs, transportation, durable goods, etc; and

2. My sense of the American lower classes is that they [size=12pt]hate Obama, for a whole host of reasons, race being just one of them, even many blacks dislike Obama because he is not "of them," he is a rich, middle class, educated black, all the "community activism" in the world cannot make him one of them. But they, the lower classes, cannot see much to like in the GOP, either. Gingrich is a loudmouth Washington insider; Santorum is a prude; Romney is rich ... but the lower classes are not committed Democrats, sure they want entitlements but IF someone can offer them a better.more secure future, with a job they will vote for him.

 

[a_majoor]

More on how the Democrat election campaign will play out. This is the inverse of Edward`s post, while the administration ignores the classical heart and soul of the American body politic, he is pandering to various other groups (yet another variation of the class warfare meme):

http://freebeacon.com/column-the-shameless-obama-campaign/

Column: The Shameless Obama Campaign
At-risk president panders to key groups

BY: Matthew Continetti - March 9, 2012 5:00 am

While the media cluck their tongues at social conservatives and obsess over the rather boring and predictable Republican primary, can we pause for a moment to observe just how panicked President Obama seems to be about his reelection?

Obama may be leading his Republican contenders in head-to-head matchups. But the campaign will not truly begin until after the party conventions in September, which gives the GOP nominee time to recover. Obama’s approval rating is stuck below 50 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. His approval rating has been underwater in Gallup tracking since May of 2011. This is dangerous for an incumbent during the spring of a reelection year. And Obama’s approval rating in swing states is even worse. Last week’s USA Today / Gallup poll had him losing to both Romney and Santorum in the most competitive states.

Nor are the headlines likely to improve. Gas prices keep ticking up. The Iranian nuclear program continues to go forward. The Greek economy continues to go backward.

Since he lacks a significant and popular domestic achievement, the president seems to have concluded that the way to a second term is through the mobilization of key constituencies rather than a broad-based appeal to middle America. He combines these appeals with cheap gimmicks to generate publicity and deflect attention from the Republican primary. Now that his job is in trouble, the man who enthralled millions during the campaign of 2008 has been reduced to just another transactional political panderer. The gloss is off. Even the liberal Washington Post writer Dana Milbank says White House hiring practices make “a joke of the spirit of reform he promised.”

The new Obama strategy was baldly transparent during the president’s recent address to the United Auto Workers conference in Washington. The inspirational rhetoric and pleas for American unity were replaced with fiery and combative words directed at opponents of the auto bailout. A majority of voters may continue to oppose the government intervention in GM and Chrysler, but you would not know that from listening to the president. GM and Chrysler’s recent good fortune has led the Democrats to pronounce the bailout a stunning success. But, if the bailout worked so well, why does the federal government still own around 30 percent of GM? (Clearly Obama understands that the bailouts are a problem: On Thursday, the government began to reduce its stake in AIG—to the ludicrously high share of 70 percent.)

The timing of Obama’s speech to the UAW could not have been accidental. As the president was delivering his broadside against his political adversaries and rallying labor’s shock troops, Republicans held primaries in Michigan and Arizona. Again and again, the president has demonstrated an eagerness to interfere with the GOP’s moments in the spotlight. Think of the time he hastily scheduled a rebuttal to Vice President Cheney’s 2009 speech on detention and interrogation policy. Or recall his Midwest bus tour, timed to coincide with the kickoff of the Republican campaign at the Ames, Iowa, straw poll. Or remember this past Tuesday, when Obama decided that the Republicans’ Super Tuesday elections would be a good time to hold his first press conference in months.

That press conference was also illustrative of the president’s ability to pander with impunity. It was there that Obama backed off from comments he had made to the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) only 48 hours before. In the run-up to his speech at AIPAC, the president and his allies had struck a harsher tone against the Iranian nuclear program. He told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, “I don’t bluff.” He told the 13,000-strong AIPAC audience, “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.” The message to the American Jewish community, and to all friends of Israel, was clear: I am on your side. Don’t go running to the other guys.

The message changed, however, as soon as the AIPAC attendees had returned home. In the press conference, Obama said that his words were “not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action.” His remarks, he added, were more of a commentary on the history of U.S. cooperation with Israel on security, “Just like we do with Great Britain, just like we do with Japan.” Here, too, the president was altering his words to please another crucial audience: in this case the media, who jotted down the president’s utterances without question, and were more interested in asking White House press secretary Jay Carney, “Is the president interested in this new iPad that’s coming out today?”

The cheapest shot of all has to be the president’s attempt to mobilize women voters by scaring them into thinking that the Republicans want to ban contraception. The media have been complacent—if not openly allied—with Democrats such as Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who repeatedly has accused the GOP of engaging in a Taliban-like “war against women.” Intellectual giant Mika Brzezinski, for example, has described the Obama contraception play as “brilliant.”

Forget, for a moment, that all the so-called Blunt Amendment proposed was to enshrine the conscience protections for health care coverage that already are in place. Forget also that no conservative has actually argued for the banning of contraception. What the president did in seizing upon the Rush Limbaugh controversy was cynically attempt to turn a fight over religious liberty and abortion into a fight over women’s equality. This was a naked grab to reclaim women, who he won 56 percent to 43 percent in 2008 but who then broke for the Republicans, 49 percent to 48 percent, in 2010. Moreover, it is an attempt to drive single women to the polls in the numbers they approached in 2008. And it may turn out to be effective.

There is no Democratic constituent group whom Obama hasn’t tried to buy off. The stimulus and auto policies were giveaways to labor. The alternative fuels loan program and his sacking of the Keystone XL pipeline were bait for the greens. Although deportations have risen steadily under this presidency and Latin American immigration to the United States has plunged, Obama promises Hispanic voters he will fight for the DREAM Act and eventual amnesty. Millennial voters get pledges of student debt relief. In fact, the only key Democratic voting bloc Obama hasn’t singled out for giveaways and special treatment seem to be African Americans, who continue to shower Obama with more than 90 percent approval even as their economic fortunes suffer and black teenage unemployment is at 47 percent.

The irony is that Obama’s overall job approval has fared best when he reverts to the message of his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: America is one country, united, and public policy should promote national cohesion, prosperity, and progress. When he has hit on these themes—during his Grant Park speech on Election Night 2008, during his inaugural, during his speech at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson rampage killer, during his announcement that Navy SEALs had destroyed Osama bin Laden—Americans have been reminded of what they like about him and have voiced their assent.

A sickly economy and unpopular policies, however, seem to have nudged the president into embracing a new strategy of slicing up the electorate, lavishing spoils on favored groups, and hoping to squeak by in November. This is the politics of division, not unity. His new attitude is revealing. It’s desperate. And it’s shameless.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The economic "holy grail" is neither numbers nor narrative, it is well paid (well enough to support a lower middle class family) jobs for school leavers. Those school leavers, men, mostly, in their 20s, 30s and 40s, of all races and creeds, are a HUGE minority and they constitute a stubbornly static slice of the unemployment numbers. Obama has failed them, so far. These men cannot be in Obama's favoured groups: school teachers and first responders, because they are not well enough educated ~ instead they are labourers, factory workers, would-be tradesmen and the like. Capital needs to flow into new enterprises in order to put them to work ~ something Obama's henchmen, Dodd and Franks have helped stymie.

All the talk about a "knowledge economy" and "green jobs" and so on is just fluff, all huff and puff, but there is nothing there for the male school leaver who wants to (and can) work with his hands, his brawn and his less than "well educated" common sense. In the autumn, the candidate who offers them a sensible plan to out them to work should win the election. I am about 99.99% sure Barak Obama will  not make that offer because he neither knows nor cares about them ... which is too bad because they are the "heart and soul" of his country.

This is the problem:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealin provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail

The standard solution is: retrain our workers to repair robots ~ but we all know that doesn't work very well.

See, instead, James Dyson on manufacturing and why we may be dead in the water already.

 

[mariomike]

These men cannot be in Obama's favoured groups: school teachers and first responders, because they are not well enough educated ~ instead they are labourers, factory workers, would-be tradesmen and the like.

For what it is worth to the discussion,
"ARLINGTON, Va., (Feb. 7, 2012) -- President Barack Obama continued his commitment to improving employment among veterans by introducing an initiative Feb. 3, 2012, to hire them as the country's first responders.":
http://www.army.mil/article/73192/Obama_announces_program_to_hire_vets_as_first_responders/

 

[Rifleman62]

Bill Maher: Obama's Million Dollar Man

Watch. If a conservative acted like Maher and Letterman .............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5ISKQD7ytSk

Then there is the new Obama “documentary” (and the interview is from CNN not FOX!!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBpk7mDQ20&feature=player_embedded#!

 

[Kirkhill]

From ERC

Two points:

1. It is all about capital, unleashing capital. That's Obama's weakest suit; he doesn't understand capital and, like most people, he doesn't like what he cannot understand. He has done as much as he can to impede capital, to chain it down, he needs to enact policies - policies that will drive the Democratic base and Nancy Pelozi et al wild - to make it attractive to borrow American money from American banks to spend on American projects: energy, infrastructure - especially e.g. highway and sewer repairs, transportation, durable goods, etc; and

I agree it is about unleashing capital but I think there is something fundamental missing.  I can't remember who on these boards first brought it to our attention that Credit literally means He Believes as in He Trusts.

People will only put their treasure in the hands of others if they believe that they will not lose more than they can afford to bet.  In order to make that call then the treasure-owner wants to be able to see a clear path to the future so as to judge the risks.

Obama, and too many other western and eastern politicians fail to grasp that central point.  What repels treasure-holders from investing is random or unforeseen change.  Change can be accomodated and is often welcomed if it is planned for and occurs as promised.  I'm still not sure where I stand with respect to Allison Redford but her 3 year rolling budget strategy makes eminent sense to me.

By contrast Obama not only is cagey about what he actually wants to do and intends to do but he reverses so often that even his friends don't trust him to do what they thought he was going to do.  Combine Obama's vagaries with those of the US Election, the IMF and the European Commission, not to mention a Red Dynasty going through a transition and is it any wonder that people that have cash are standing pat?

Until investors see a more settled future I wouldn't be expecting anyone to be putting any big "game-changing" bets on the table.  Having said that that doesn't mean that people won't be placing affordable side bets on long shots that could ultimately, at some distant point in the future, prove to have been "game changers".  By the way if anybody knows of any such I have a dime I can afford to squander.

It is all about trust.  And Obama (and he is not alone) doesn't inspire trust.

 

[Jed]

Bill Maher: Obama's Million Dollar Man

Watch. If a conservative acted like Maher and Letterman .............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5ISKQD7ytSk

Then there is the new Obama “documentary” (and the interview is from CNN not FOX!!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBpk7mDQ20&feature=player_embedded#!

Well those links are pretty enlightening for any rational thinking person. I challenge the Left thinking people to blow holes in the legitimacy of the obvious bias for President Obama being highlighted in these videos.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Bill Maher: Obama's Million Dollar Man

Watch. If a conservative acted like Maher and Letterman .............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5ISKQD7ytSk

Then there is the new Obama “documentary” (and the interview is from CNN not FOX!!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBpk7mDQ20&feature=player_embedded#!

You know, documentary film making ceased being objective somewhere back in the 20th century. Maher and filmaker Davis Guggenheim are following in the great tradition of Leni Riefenstahl ~ except that she was an exceptionally artistic, able and creative film maker and they are no-talent schmucks.

 

[ballz]

Well those links are pretty enlightening for any rational thinking person. I challenge the Left thinking people to blow holes in the legitimacy of the obvious bias for President Obama being highlighted in these videos.

They don't have to blow holes in it. Maher doesn't pretend that he's not biased and left-thinking. He's actually more left than the Democratic party currently is and has no problem saying so.

His vulgar remarks and the like are part of his act (plus he *is* arrogant because he *is* smarter than the average Joe, by a lot), he is a comedian first and foremost and it just so happens that most of his comedy is based on politics and religion, that's his forte. The GOP is a soup sandwich right now, and they're easy to make fun. He'll call anybody who's a dumb c**t a dumb c**t, and Sarah Palin just happens to have given plenty of examples that she is.

That said, I watch Maher's show every week, and he has much more civil and unbiased debates than almost any place I've seen. Why do you think he (usually) brings an equal number of Republicans and Democrats to his panel? I've seen him point out, to the other Democrats on his panel, when the Republican is stating a fact and they are arguing with that fact (for example, when they were blaming the Republicans for going into Iraq, Maher pointed out that there was a ton of Democrats that voted to go to Iraq as well). He f**king hates Rush Limbaugh, and look who was the one telling the left to accept his apology and get over it.

His thoughts on "getting offended" are basically "that's democracy, and I'd rather be offended than not be able to flap my own lips." Which can be seen here https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=365945040092396&set=vb.62507427296&type=2&theater

Bill Maher: Obama's Million Dollar Man

Watch. If a conservative acted like Maher and Letterman .............

I guess you don't watch Bill O'Reilly

 

[cupper]

At the risk of blowing this up again, I've found references to the Supreme Court decision which covers how the States can have mandated coverages which violate religious beliefs.

New front in birth control rule battle: the courts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-front-in-birth-control-rule-battle-the-courts/2012/03/06/gIQAokQqxR_story.html

Specifically:

To win that argument, they will need to clear a major legal hurdle: A landmark 1990 decision in a case called Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Supreme Court found that if a law is “neutral and generally applicable” — meaning that it is not specifically targeted against any religious group — individuals must comply with it even when doing so imposes a burden on their free exercise of religion.

Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Antonin Scalia — a conservative justice known for his strong identification with the Catholic Church — found that to allow otherwise “would be courting anarchy” by making “the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

In the last decade, the highest state courts of both New York and California cited the Smith decision in blocking First Amendment challenges to state contraceptive-coverage laws virtually identical to the federal rule.

In both instances, the state courts found that their state’s laws met the “neutral and generally applicable” standard set out in Smith. And in both cases, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the lower court’s decision.

 

[muskrat89]

Men's Reproductive health up next??


http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/bill-introduced-to-regulate-mens-reproductive-health-1341547.html

By Jackie Borchardt, Columbus Bureau
Updated 11:53 PM Saturday, March 10, 2012
COLUMBUS – Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.

The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week.

A critic of efforts to restrict abortion and contraception for women, Turner says she is concerned about men’s reproductive health. Turner’s bill joins a trend of female lawmakers submitting bills regulating men’s health. Turner said if state policymakers want to legislate women’s health choices through measures such as House Bill 125, known as the “Heartbeat bill,” they should also be able to legislate men’s reproductive health. Ohio anti-abortion advocates say the two can’t be compared.

Read the rest at the link above. From the Dayton Daily News

 

[GAP]

Whatever happened to bragging talking to your doctor (and everyone else) after a 4 hour erection?  ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

A useful perspective on campaign and, more broadly, "culture wars" rhetoric, reproduced in this article under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/us-election/populists-who-speak-the-relative-truth/article2364593/

Populists who speak the (relative) truth

IAN BURUMA

NEW YORK— From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Mar. 12, 2012

Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has been saying some very strange things about the Netherlands. Ten per cent of all deaths in that country are from euthanasia, he recently claimed, half of them forced on helpless patients. Old people are so frightened of being killed by homicidal doctors that they wear bracelets that read: “Do not euthanize me.”

In a way, Mr. Santorum’s canards must come as a relief to a country that has increasingly been in the news for outrageous statements by right-wing populists about Muslims and Greeks. Indeed, Mr. Santorum’s view of the Netherlands as a kind of progressive dystopia has a slightly old-fashioned ring to it.

The Dutch were disturbed nonetheless; some parliamentarians even asked whether the foreign minister should lodge a complaint in Washington. In the United States, Mr. Santorum’s fantasies were swiftly refuted. The Washington Post concluded there was “not a shred of evidence” to back up Mr. Santorum’s claims, and found it “telling” that his campaign managers didn’t even bother to defend them. One U.S. television station even apologized to a Dutch reporter in the name of the American people.

As the Post pointed out, there is no such thing as involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. The patient’s consent is essential, and at least two doctors must agree that the patient’s suffering is unbearable and beyond cure. Besides, the share of assisted deaths in Dutch mortality is nowhere near 10 per cent. As for those bracelets, well …

But does this matter to Mr. Santorum’s followers? Probably not. Corrections from the “elitist” mainstream media are dismissed as enemy propaganda. As a blogger sympathetic to Mr. Santorum put it: “The Washington Post, as one would expect, attempted to discredit Santorum.”

It’s disturbing, to say the least, that the most cogent refutations of bald-faced lies no longer make any impression. After all, a democracy can’t function without a public that’s properly informed. And informing the public used to be the role of serious newspapers and TV networks.

Of course, not everything in the mainstream media is always true. News organizations have political biases, sometimes reflecting the interests of their owners. But high-quality journalism has relied on its reputation for probity. Editors and reporters at least tried to get the facts right. Filtering nonsense was one of their duties – and their selling point.

That has changed. Populist demagogues in politics and the mass media are doing everything they can to discredit the quality press as propaganda organs for left-wing elites who sneer at the views of ordinary Americans. Mr. Santorum pretends to speak for these people – that is, for a minority of Americans who are mostly white, provincial, highly religious, deeply conservative on cultural and social issues, and convinced that Barack Obama and all Europeans are dangerous godless socialists.

The point is not whether Mr. Santorum is right or wrong factually. What he says “feels” right to his followers, because it conforms to their prejudices. And the Internet feeds and reinforces those prejudices, making it more difficult to distinguish the truth from lies.

The public is increasingly segmented into groups of like-minded people who see their views echoed back to them in blogs, comments and tweets. There’s no need to be exposed to different opinions, which are, in any case, considered to be propaganda. Indeed, Mr. Santorum’s new fame will afford him a rich career as a media demagogue, even if he fails as a politician.

The first people to argue that all truth is relative, and that all information is a form of propaganda that reflects society’s power relations, were far removed from the world inhabited by Mr. Santorum and his supporters. Several decades ago, a number of European and U.S. intellectuals, often with a background in Marxism, developed a “postmodern” critique of the written word. We might think, they argued, that what we read in The New York Times or Le Monde is objectively true, but everything that appears there is, in fact, a disguised form of propaganda for bourgeois class interests.

There’s no such thing, the postmodern critic believes, as independence of thought. Objective truth is an illusion. Everyone is promoting class interests of one kind or another. The real lie, in this view, is the claim of objectivity. What’s necessary to change the world is not the truth but another form of propaganda, promoting different interests. Everything is political. That’s the only truth that counts.

It’s unlikely Mr. Santorum has read any postmodern theorists. After all, he recently called Mr. Obama a “snob” for claiming that all Americans should be entitled to a college education. So he must surely loathe writers who represent everything that the Tea Party and other radical right-wingers abhor: the highly educated, intellectual, urban, secular and not always white. These writers are the left-wing elite, at least in academia.

But ideas have a way of migrating in unexpected ways. The blogger who dismissed The Washington Post’s corrections of Mr. Santorum’s fictional portrayal of the Netherlands expressed himself like a perfect postmodernist. The most faithful followers of obscure leftist thinkers in Paris, New York or Berkeley are the most reactionary elements in the American heartland. Of course, if this were pointed out to them, they would no doubt dismiss it as elitist propaganda.

Ian Buruma is the author of Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

We have become desensitized to shaded "truth" and bald faced lies when they are proffered by politicians and, more often, by our "favourite" media pundits ~ on the left and the right, neither side makes any pretense of being honest and unbiased, they do not pretend to be informing, they are haranguing, aiming to stimulate their own followers and to outrage the opposition. That Senator Santorum is either stupid or a liar - no other explanation fits, does it? - is not surprising; it is part of the "tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," that passes for political discourse in America and, increasingly, in Canada, too. I, for one, am sick of it; maybe we deserve a choice between Obama and Santorum - Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, and their Canadian counterparts, for becoming so careless with out critical faculties.

 

[ballz]

Men's Reproductive health up next??


http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/bill-introduced-to-regulate-mens-reproductive-health-1341547.html

Read the rest at the link above. From the Dayton Daily News

That's absolutely beautiful considering the panel of 70-80 yr old male virgins that are wanting to dictate what a woman does with her vagina. Bravo Senator Turner.

 

[a_majoor]

The race should be a runaway, but isn't. Perhaps the underlying issue which are making this seem so strange is outlined here:

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/03/11/the-real-entitlement-mentality/?print=1

The Real Entitlement Mentality

Posted By Roger Kimball On March 11, 2012 @ 7:30 am In Uncategorized | 46 Comments

As regular readers know, I admire the headlines Matt Drudge chooses for the articles he links to on the Drudge Report. He is especially cunning, I think, in the way he juxtaposes headlines [1]:

* Michelle Obama Cites “Remarkable Progress” On Economy…

* AMERICAN AIRLINES to cut 13,000 jobs…

* NYC goes on hiring spree — for people to work its welfare offices…

Nice, eh?

I was disappointed, though, with today’s featured headline:

SHOCK POLL: ROMNEY 48% OBAMA 43% [2]

The link is to a Rasmussen poll,  and the implication, I believe,  is that readers will be shocked at the news that  Mitt Romney is ahead. (In fact, Rasmussen reports that Rick Santorum also leads Obama, though he trails Romney.)

What is really shocking, though, is that the difference is so small. By any rational metric, Obama has presided over a national disaster. Consider how he has mishandled

* the economy (real unemployment north of 9%)

* the deficit ($1.6 trillion annually)

* the prestige of the Untied States abroad

* our national security

Consider also

* the looming train wreck that is ObamaCare

* Solyndra and kindred adventures in crony capitalism, emetic utopianism, and fiscal irresponsibility

* The GM “bailout,” coming to a tax bill near you (buy a Volt, get a taxpayer-subsidized break of $7000)

* the regulatory nightmare that Obama’s EPA has foisted upon American business

* the malevolent joke that is the Obama Department of Justice (Fast and Furious, the Black Panther case, etc.)

And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What’s shocking is not that Mitt Romney is ahead. A syphilitic camel should be ahead. What’s shocking is that the distance is only 5 points.

Assuming Mitt can hold it together, his advantage should widen. He is, after all, running against one of the most vulnerable presidents with one of the worst records in American history.

Mitt’s biggest challenge, apart from what George Will identified as his inveterate “Romneyness [3],” is countering Obama’s sly, Alinskyite mastery of the levers of power [4]. In 2008, Obama campaigned as a political outsider, someone who would challenge the system and shake up an entrenched bureaucracy.  What was not sufficiently understood was the extent to which that whole narrative was a deliberate ruse, promulgated by a politically radical machine in order to usurp power.  That, in fact, is Obama’s one real area of mastery: the “long march through the institutions” in which the democratic dispersal of power is replaced with a top-down, commissar-style of governing. What he has managed to accomplish in this regard in a mere three years is remarkable.

And that brings me to the title of this column. I take it from an essay by the pollster Scott Rasmussen [5], linked on the page reporting Romney’s surge in the polls.

Republicans, as Rasmussen notes, are often heard grumbling about the “entitlement mentality.” I sing in that chorus myself. Usually, the song dilates on the growing habit of dependency and appetite for, as Rasmussen puts it, “goodies provided by the government and financed by taxpayers.” (Herewith a plug for Charles Sykes’s new book A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing [6].)

It would be hard to overestimate that aspect of the problem. It is a corollary of that “psychological change” in a people that Friedrich von Hayek diagnosed in The Road to Serfdom: a transformation from the practice of autonomy and self-reliance to the habit of dependency. It was, Hayek noted, both a regular result and precondition of “extensive government control.” Cause and effect fed upon and abetted each other. It was (as Hayek also noted) a textbook case of what Tocqueville described in his famous paragraphs on “democratic despotism.”  How would despotism come to a modern democracy? Tocqueville asked.  Not through the imposition of old-fashioned tyranny. No, that instrument is too blunt, too crude for modern democratic regimes. Much more effective is the disguised tyranny of infantilization. Turn government into the  sole provider of all those “goodies” and you enslave the population far more effectively than an old-style tyranny ever managed.

All this is true, and it deserves our constant attention. But Scott Rasmussen shifts his focus to the other side of the equation, one which I tried to adumbrate last week in my column “Wards and Warders [7].” In order to work, the dependency agenda needs not only to cultivate the sheep, a population of dependents. It also needs to foster a population of controlling bureaucrats, the shepherds or warders of the system. And this brings us to what Rasmussen calls “the real entitlement mentality that threatens to bankrupt the nation: A political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us.”

Let’s pause over that observation: “real entitlement mentality” revolves around “a political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us.”

As Rasmussen notes, this mentality is not solely a Democratic or a Republican trait. It affects — or infects — “the nation’s political leaders of both parties.”  Hence the intractability of the problem. It’s not just our habits of dependency that need to be broken. The habits of control and penchant for feeding dependency on the part of our political leaders also need to be curbed. Rasmussen is right: “While most voters view excessive government spending as the problem, those who feel entitled to rule over the rest of us see the voters as the problem. And that’s the real entitlement crisis facing the nation today. The political class wants to govern like it’s 1775, a time when kings were kings and consent of the governed didn’t matter.”

Our job is to remind them, as vividly as possible, that it matters quite a lot. Tea party, anyone?

Article printed from Roger’s Rules: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/03/11/the-real-entitlement-mentality/

URLs in this post:

[1] juxtaposes headlines: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/02/02/matt-drudge-genius-of-juxtaposition/

[2] SHOCK POLL: ROMNEY 48% OBAMA 43%: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

[3] Romneyness: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/01/22/george_will_mitt_romneys_problem_is_his_romneyness.html

[4] Alinskyite mastery of the levers of power: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/04/19/humor-vs-contempt/?singlepage=true

[5] essay by the pollster Scott Rasmussen: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_scott_rasmussen/the_real_entitlement_mentality_that_is_bankrupting_america

[6] A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing: http://www.amazon.com/Nation-Moochers-Americas-Addiction-Something/dp/0312547706/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1331474454&sr=8-2

[7] Wards and Warders: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/02/27/wards-and-warders/

 

[ModlrMike]

“a political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us.”

Sounds suspiciously similar to "Natural Governing Party"!

 

[cupper]

This is the problem:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealin provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail

I for one would like to welcome our new Robot Overlords! ;D

 

[Redeye]

That's absolutely beautiful considering the panel of 70-80 yr old male virgins that are wanting to dictate what a woman does with her vagina. Bravo Senator Turner.

That's one of a few hilarious bills drafted to highlight the absurdity of laws attacking reproductive choices. Mother Jones ran a pretty good summary of them last week.

 

[tomahawk6]

Last I looked there is no shortage of contraceptives and no laws banning their use. Women can still obtain an abortion - they just wont have the tax payer paying for it. Its time people take personal responsibility.

 

[Redeye]

Last I looked there is no shortage of contraceptives and no laws banning their use. Women can still obtain an abortion - they just wont have the tax payer paying for it. Its time people take personal responsibility.

First off, in the case of contraceptives, there's no argument about taxpayers paying for anything - that's not the issue at hand. And these particular bills are responses to laws introduced in Virginia (and I think other states, but not sure) mandating a highly invasive and medically totally unnecessary procedure (transvaginal ultrasound) for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.