Simon Heffer has a pretty good – and by his standards, measured – take on how Mr Obama has been doing. Latest election results in Virginia and New Jersey were clear slaps in the face for him, and a boost to the GOP.
But as we have found here with Mr Cameron’s Conservative Party, which has profited from the sheer, plodding ghastliness of Gordon Brown, the welcome fall from grace of Mr Obama, a puffed up Chicago machine politician, is very different from meaning that the GOP is back on the road to recovery. As our own Perry de Havilland points out, the Republicans need to rediscover the “leave me alone” agenda of limited government, low taxes, tight spending and free trade. And they need to rediscover it convincingly, and learn the lessons of George W. Bush’s terrible error of talking the free market talk while doing the exact opposite. The GOP also needs to remember that being in favour of small government is not just about economics, either.
As I wondered at the time, the absurd decision to award Mr Obama the Nobel Prize for Peace was almost like a curse. And maybe it proved a turning point: the point at which the sheer absurdity of this hard-left “community organiser” and his Marxist associates became too much for too many Americans to bear. The odds must be shortening on him becoming a one-term occupant of the White House.
This might sound like I’m trying to score a point, and I’m honestly not. I was under the impression that Republicans have never really held the ‘leave me alone’ agenda, except as a talking point. Certainly measures like historical government spending that I’ve seen would appear to bear this out. Could you tell me what time period they would be rediscovering?
The Goldwater Republicans were very much about that as were (to a much lesser extent) the Reagan Republicans.
The Goldwater Republicans have the good fortune of never having been in power, so we can’t tell. Reagan… he’s given way too much credit. At least Clinton was fiscally responsible.
lukas, fair point, but remember that Clinton was fiscally quite sensible because his wings were clipped by a GOP-controlled Congress for most of his term. And he had the benefit of the “Cold War dividend”. That has now gone.
I’d agree with lukas on Goldwater. As for both Reagan and Clinton, it seems that government grew markedly under both of them, though to varying degrees. So unless what Carter left us was too small government, I’d conclude that neither they nor their accompanying legislators embraced the ‘leave me alone’ agenda.
Discounting Carter, then, simply because he’s a Democrat, we’re now back to Ford. Is that what you had in mind?
Well made point Paul H. Just because the conventional wisdom has it that Democrats are big spenders does not mean we should not look keenly at the claim that Republicans work towards small government. You show they are not better but perhaps evidence is inconvenient when making political points. For some people.
Observers have noted that Obama’s “dynamic” has been “The Power of Personality.”
That is how he gained position in Chicago, and by fluke became a Senator, had that reaffirmed by the Nobel – and he seems to believe in the force of his personality as a (if not the) main re-agent of his political chemistry.
If he does not see it himself, others certainly will (and do) perceive that the force of personality can not long substitute fully for acumen.
PaulH, I don’t completely buy your characterization of Reagan (after all, he had to deal with a Democratic Congress [which actually controls all spending], and he did try to shrink government but ultimately failed). Still, you make some good points.
Continuing your progression, I don’t think going back to Ford accomplishes anything, as he was a one-term lame duck whose administration was completely consumed by the (necessary, in my mind) Nixon pardon. Nixon himself was certainly no exemplar of a “leave me alone” Republican (he of the wage and price controls, anti-impoundment act, and other unforgiveable sins against the Constitution). So let’s keep going: Eisenhower? Hard to say, since he presided over much of the post-war rebuilding era, but he was never truly a Republican (the Democrats tried to recruit him as their candidate, too) and he did give J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI pretty much free reign to spy on US citizens, so I don’t give him high marks, either. Before that you’re into the paleolithic political era and it doesn’t have much relevance to the modern Republican party. Back in the 20’s there may have been some glimmers of “leave me alone” Republicanism, but that was also the era of Prohibition which Republicans largely supported. Not much help there, either.
So on balance I think I agree with you: as a party the Republicans have never demonstrated much of a “leave me alone” posture, certainly not in the last 75 years or so. However, there has always been a strong element of that within the party, and if it could somehow rise to prominence I could be persuaded back into their tent. I don’t have much hope of that occurring, however, yesterday’s election results notwithstanding.
Laird – I’d agree with your assessment (I’m less of a fan of Reagan, but that’s a detail). I’m raising this as a serious point because returning to a previously held conviction is a different process than adopting a new one (or, perhaps, allowing what has been a minority conviction to come to the fore).
Whenever Republicans come to power they end up expanding on that power in some way. One could argue that they’re always forced into that as a political expediency by Democrats, and I’d agree at least some of the time with that. But it’s difficult to find large-scale, sustained resistance to such pressure that could be characterized as a substantive commitment to the ‘leave me alone’ agenda. It seems, then, that we need to wait for the Republicans to invent themselves, not for them to rediscover their ‘true’ nature.
The problem is that this isn’t a philosophical problem any more, if it ever was. The fact is that the Democrats sell themselves to one set of interest groups and the Republicans sell themselves to another (niche-corruption, if you will). A party’s philosophy is about as relevant to its behavior as the corporate slogans that appear on ad copy (“Progress Is Our Most Important Product,” “Feeding the World” etc.) are to how the companies actually behave.
The solution is massive reform: throw all the incumbents out of Congress (even the good ones for the sake of thoroughness), elect honest replacements who will repeal vast swaths of corruption-enabling law, and have their predecessors prosecuted for crimes committed. A few years ago I would have said there was no chance at all of this happening, but the problems brought on by rampant corruption have now become acute and the voters are starting to notice.
Sorry, PFP, but that’s not going to happen. The voters may be “starting to notice”, but we’re not going to see any serious “throw-out-all-incumbents” movement; that’s a pipe dream. The reason is that most people don’t see their congressman as being the problem, it’s the other guy’s congressman who needs to go. Couple this with the seniority argument (“I’ve been in the House 18 years and am chairman of my subcommittee; you don’t really want to lose all that power and ability to bring home the pork just for some lofty but impractical principle, do you?”), and the rampant gerrymandering which has become the norm in almost all congressional districts, and you wind up with what we now have: congressmen for life.
In 2010 we might see a few vulnerable red-state Democrats unseated, but the only real hope for serious change is challengers bubbling up in the Republican primaries. And despite the lesson of NY-23 I don’t see much hope for that except in unusual situations such as that one. This is going to be a long, slow process, and it might just fail.
“The problem is that this isn’t a philosophical problem any more, if it ever was.”
Oh god give me strength…
Look at the person and their voting record – for a member of the House or Senate that easy enough (unless someone is terminally lazy).
Still I will help.
There is no point at looking at any Democrat in House or Senate – because none of them have a good voting record, they are all big goverment people (the “blue dog” Democrats may be less extreme – but they have voted for TRILLIONS of extra spending already).
As for the Republicans, actually two thirds of them (in both House and Senate) have a respectable (ish) voting record on limiting the size and scope of government.
“But how can I tell whether my Republican Senator or Representative is part of the two thirds or the one third?”
GO AND CHECK – and if they are no good, vote against them in a Primary (unless your State, like New York, does not have them).
Do I have to wipe your backsides for you?
Laird, wasn’t it Congress that passed the anti-impoundment act? Wiki says:
What am I missing?
Paul Marks – I’d say it’s a little more complicated than you suggest, as you should discard any vote made when the Senator or Representative was in opposition, and any vote made where it wouldn’t make a difference (e.g. where the Congressperson voted against a bill their party supported because he or she needed to appear to be against it for local electoral reasons, not because they were actually against it). That’s potentially quite a lot of detective work, but only then do you see what the Congressperson would do with actual power.
Alisa, Congress did indeed pass it (it must pass all legislation), but Nixon concurred in it and signed it. He should have vetoed it, but he didn’t. In my book that is one of his unpardonable sins, as it is the proximate cause of the runaway federal spending which followed to this day.
ZAP! You’re strong.
But don’t tell, I’m travelling incognito….
Laird, realistically I’d settle for throwing out ten percent and giving a thrill to the rest. But the politicians have to be reminded they work for us, and the voters have to be reminded that fingers-in-the-till is their representatives’ default position.
The basic reason the Founders opted for limited government was because they realized that government invites corruption and that big government invites big corruption.
Got that Laird – thanks.
Some dicta and predictions:
Tuesday’s vote, in context with everything else that’s happening and has happened, is the beginning of the end of Obama, who will go down in history for, among other things, the man who destroyed the Democratic Party as a Left-Wing institution and the worst and most disastrous President in United States history.
The 2010 election will return a a conservative majority to Congress, possibly including the Senate, and Obama will become a certified lame duck president, although his wings have already been clipped severely. The bloom is off the rose; people seek “Obama-Free Zones”.
Exactly who or what will take Obama’s place as President, who or what will take over Congress, will be determined by events as they unfold and conservative and liberal response to those events. Recent history suggests the liberals are in total and complete denial of reality, so this will work to conservatives’ advantage.
The context:
Continuing high levels of unemployment, which is currently around 17% if we include those under employed or who have stopped looking for work, with no hope of getting better, since liberal policies are turning a recession into a depression. Without dramatic repudiation of liberalism the prospect will be a jobless recovery extending as far into the future as liberals hold power.
We shall see a second steep decline in housing as another wave of massive foreclosures arrive during 2010. Most of these foreclosures will consist of speculative mortgages taken out in 2005 whose adjustable rates are due for readjustment in 2010. Probably 75% of these mortgages are of the type where mortgagors didn’t even pay the interest, so they will be deeply under water.
This new onslaught of foreclosures will depress housing prices which are already effectively below prices (inflation adjusted) fetched in the previous housing recession caused by the S&L bailout in the early 90’s.
The picture might become a tad less gloomy if socialized medicine is defeated, since its passing will involve massive new tax hikes across the board, but especially on small business and entrepreneurs–the source for something like 80% of new jobs.
Dramatic decline of the dollar as the unsustainable debt Obama and the liberals have already saddled us with gets monetized by the Federal Reserve and the printing presses. The dollar has lost something like 17% of its value since Obama became President.
When recovery does arrive, with the repeal of liberal policies, we shall doubtless experience a massive inflation comparable to the period of the 1970’s. We shall have to inflate ourselves out of debt since we have no other way of meeting our obligations.
Tuesday should be marked on our calendars as a day of celebration and the lifting of oppression. We can see light at the end of the tunnel and this nightmare dream we’ve been experiencing for the past ten months will have finally dissipated.
Take heart. Where there’s change, there’s hope.
I don’t know, Tom. It’s that massive inflation that scares me more than anything else (I’m afraid it will be nothing like the 70s) – or more precisely, the collapse of social order that might follow. But yes, one still does have to hope.
Obama’s election was very much like that of the separatist Parti Quebecois in Quebec. Anglos, who should have klnown better, voted for a party intent on destroying their own country in order to get brownie points by voting for a party that was allegedly standing up for the rights of the ‘oppressed’ franco Quebeckers.
I think a large percentage of the Obama voters were self-congratulatory types too displaying how broad-minded they were by voting for this black man.
Apart from being completely wrong historically because Quebec has been more cosseted by the federal government than any other Canadian province and exists on subsidies from the same federal government, francophone Quebeckers’ grievances are as tiresome as those of the Jeremiah Wright Louis Farrakhan black Americans.
Obama will be a one term president because he’s not a can do type but of the can’t do ilk. He’s all smoke and mirrors who thinks bullying trumps performance.
Alisa, yes, I agree, the size of the inflation is the big question. I can imagine scenarios where the damage done already can be greatly attenuated with the right policies.
But if no robust recovery takes place, the dollars will just sit there, unused, or exchanged. I don’t see any big rise in interest rates in the foreseeable future. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a situation before and the dimensions of the problem and effects makes my head spin.
Doubtless some economic brainiacs will develop models and we’ll all know in a few years.
Life is interesting, no?
Heh, no need for models this time – we all are “fortunate” enough to soon live through it. And yes, ‘interesting’ in a purely Chinese sense:-)
I chose to believe in the vitality of the American Constitutional arrangement of checks and balances, and we are seeing right now those checks and balances coming into play. Democrats are finally beginning to get concerned about jobs . . . their own.
Coolidge was a fairly ‘leave me alone’ kind of guy.
“The Democrats are starting to get concerned for their own jobs”.
39 – out of hundreds.
And some of those 39 Congressmen only voted against the 2000 page “health care” Bill because they knew it would pass anyway (which it did 215 to 220).
One Republican also voted for it – Mr Cao (who represents part of the city of corruption).
The vast majority of modern Democrats may be corrupt in the old sense (i.e. they are happy to accept bribes to make minor changes to legislation – for example to hand out subsidies for politically connected corporations and so on), but over principles they are NOT corrupt.
They are ideologically committed collectivists – mostly not formal Marxists like Barack Obama, but still “edcuated” in the doctrines of evil (and they are the doctrines of evil).
The voted for this Bill in the House (in spite of the seats in will cost them) – and do not discount the possibility that the Senate will pass something (and then it goes into Conference with the House and…..).
There are Democrat Senators who are not ideologically committed collectivists (people who would think that things like the “Federation” of “Star Trek New Generation” is perfectly rational) – but you would be surprised at how few the non totally terrible Democrat Senators are.
I am (as normal) utterly serious – and can back up every word I have just typed.
It is later than people think – this is not the Democratic party of previous decades (bad though most of that was).
The “education system” has done its work.