December 2, 2015
The GOP Reset Button: 'You're Fired!'
Progressives
aren't mentally normal, and neither is the GOP political establishment
in Washington. Normal babies learn that if something hurts, you stop
doing it, but when progressives see their policies fail, they blame the
people involved and demand that the same ideas be tried again, and
again, and again -- in just the same way that the GOP reacts to one
Obama double-cross after another by trying appeasement and appeals to
reason or fairness on the next issue, and the next, and the next.
Review
any Obama policy and you'll find first that it has been tried at other
times or in other countries, and second that the damage it does to the
American ideal and the American nation is unambigiously predictable from
the historical record - so if rule one says "don't do stupid stuff",
then what's wrong with people who keep doing these things? Are they
stupid? Insane? Or are their policies intended to achieve the
destruction of American freedoms and American democracy?
Consider,
for example, some of their domestic achievements: they've crippled
American health care; corrupted federal agencies, including the IRS, the
EPA, and the DOJ into political service; stopped innovation in banking,
manufacturing, power generation; and software through tax and
regulatory policies whose effect is to help billionaire oligopolists
push their smaller, more disruptive, competitors out of business; made
Spanish the nation's second language; inflamed racial tensions; strained
every police and social welfare agency to the breaking point; and just
about doubled the national debt while raising nearly every tax affecting
the middle classes and working poor -- with the result that national
statistics agencies now straight-facedly report unemployment at the boom
times rate of 5.5% while one third of the workforce is either
unemployed or significantly underemployed, and a Craigslist ad for a
full time toilet cleaner will generally draw 200+ responses on the first
day.
The
picture doesn't get more positive if you look at foreign policy, where
they've specialized in selling out America's friends and encouraging its
enemies: while bludgeoning Republicans over race and women's rights
issues at home, the Obama democrats have strengthened male ownership of
women and children throughout the Muslim world; encouraged riot, civil
strife, and the killing of dissidents from Egypt to Somalia; betrayed
democracies in Israel, Pakistan, and Taiwan; financed the growth of
Argentine hatred for England through loans for deep-sea drilling (!)
around the Falklands; forced Japan to rearm; and had multiple police and
security agencies look the other way while an unknown, but possibly
significant, number of Islamic fanatics dig themselves into the American
social fabric in preparation for all out attacks on Americans once
their champions in the White House leave office.
I
don't think the left's leadership, as a group, is particularly stupid
-- and their policies appear insane only if you value people, democracy,
equality under the law, and economic progress. If you despise ordinary
people, however, and want, as I think the national socialists now in
control of the Democratic Party do, to re-establish feudal government,
the left's actions make perfect sense -- but the GOP's response in
getting along by going along does not.
The
voters understand rule one: if it doesn't work, stop doing it -- and
voting in establishment Republicans isn't working. They've done the
right thing in electing Republican majorities to the House, to the
Senate, into governor's mansions, and into the majority in most
statehouses -- but the minute most of these people take the oath to
defend the Constitution all the moral clarity that got them elected gets
absorbed into a cloud of maybes and ifs and laters whose net effect is
to make Neville Chamberlain look pretty good in retrospect.
Rule
one is all the explanation anyone needs for Donald Trump: he isn't
actually a Republican at all, but he's caricaturing the leader people
want to see: someone willing to say "you're fired!" to the Washington
elites -- in both parties.
More
subtly, the same frustration with GOP waffling is driving Ben Carson's
poll numbers: look carefully and what you see is Jimmy Carter redux, but
his public policy persona is what makes headlines and that's been
trending much more Trump than Boehner.
If
it doesn't work, stop doing it -- that's the change in the air: and if
you don't believe me, talk to Trump supporters: they're no more clear on
what he stands for than he is, but they're clear on his willingness to
say "up the establishment" and mean it. That's what counts, that's what
they want -- and the first credible candidate willing and able to make
"you're fired!" the new way of life in Washington is going to take the
nomination, and the presidency, in a walk.
aren't mentally normal, and neither is the GOP political establishment
in Washington. Normal babies learn that if something hurts, you stop
doing it, but when progressives see their policies fail, they blame the
people involved and demand that the same ideas be tried again, and
again, and again -- in just the same way that the GOP reacts to one
Obama double-cross after another by trying appeasement and appeals to
reason or fairness on the next issue, and the next, and the next.
Review
any Obama policy and you'll find first that it has been tried at other
times or in other countries, and second that the damage it does to the
American ideal and the American nation is unambigiously predictable from
the historical record - so if rule one says "don't do stupid stuff",
then what's wrong with people who keep doing these things? Are they
stupid? Insane? Or are their policies intended to achieve the
destruction of American freedoms and American democracy?
Consider,
for example, some of their domestic achievements: they've crippled
American health care; corrupted federal agencies, including the IRS, the
EPA, and the DOJ into political service; stopped innovation in banking,
manufacturing, power generation; and software through tax and
regulatory policies whose effect is to help billionaire oligopolists
push their smaller, more disruptive, competitors out of business; made
Spanish the nation's second language; inflamed racial tensions; strained
every police and social welfare agency to the breaking point; and just
about doubled the national debt while raising nearly every tax affecting
the middle classes and working poor -- with the result that national
statistics agencies now straight-facedly report unemployment at the boom
times rate of 5.5% while one third of the workforce is either
unemployed or significantly underemployed, and a Craigslist ad for a
full time toilet cleaner will generally draw 200+ responses on the first
day.
The
picture doesn't get more positive if you look at foreign policy, where
they've specialized in selling out America's friends and encouraging its
enemies: while bludgeoning Republicans over race and women's rights
issues at home, the Obama democrats have strengthened male ownership of
women and children throughout the Muslim world; encouraged riot, civil
strife, and the killing of dissidents from Egypt to Somalia; betrayed
democracies in Israel, Pakistan, and Taiwan; financed the growth of
Argentine hatred for England through loans for deep-sea drilling (!)
around the Falklands; forced Japan to rearm; and had multiple police and
security agencies look the other way while an unknown, but possibly
significant, number of Islamic fanatics dig themselves into the American
social fabric in preparation for all out attacks on Americans once
their champions in the White House leave office.
I
don't think the left's leadership, as a group, is particularly stupid
-- and their policies appear insane only if you value people, democracy,
equality under the law, and economic progress. If you despise ordinary
people, however, and want, as I think the national socialists now in
control of the Democratic Party do, to re-establish feudal government,
the left's actions make perfect sense -- but the GOP's response in
getting along by going along does not.
The
voters understand rule one: if it doesn't work, stop doing it -- and
voting in establishment Republicans isn't working. They've done the
right thing in electing Republican majorities to the House, to the
Senate, into governor's mansions, and into the majority in most
statehouses -- but the minute most of these people take the oath to
defend the Constitution all the moral clarity that got them elected gets
absorbed into a cloud of maybes and ifs and laters whose net effect is
to make Neville Chamberlain look pretty good in retrospect.
Rule
one is all the explanation anyone needs for Donald Trump: he isn't
actually a Republican at all, but he's caricaturing the leader people
want to see: someone willing to say "you're fired!" to the Washington
elites -- in both parties.
More
subtly, the same frustration with GOP waffling is driving Ben Carson's
poll numbers: look carefully and what you see is Jimmy Carter redux, but
his public policy persona is what makes headlines and that's been
trending much more Trump than Boehner.
If
it doesn't work, stop doing it -- that's the change in the air: and if
you don't believe me, talk to Trump supporters: they're no more clear on
what he stands for than he is, but they're clear on his willingness to
say "up the establishment" and mean it. That's what counts, that's what
they want -- and the first credible candidate willing and able to make
"you're fired!" the new way of life in Washington is going to take the
nomination, and the presidency, in a walk.
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