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So much for the Tea Party… I see that Mitt Romney, a big government Republican statist who partially nationalised healthcare in his state and gave Obama the opening for more grandiose Federal healthcare nationalisation, is closing in on the Republican nomination.
Well so much for the influence of the Tea Party. If Romney wins, I can only hope Obama wipes the floor with him for exactly the same reasons I was delighted McCain was defeated… and do not see Romney as any less loathsome than McCain, so I am all for the Greater Evil winning again.
And I hope a large number of Tea Party figures make it clear they will be staying home next election day if Romney gets the nod.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I think they should all vote for Obama.
Then their non vote would count double and the GOP would have to listen to them then.
Tactically I think an Obama victory is the best thing anyway. I can see the “growth” from money printing lasting forever and at some stage someone will have to start tightening the belt.
I’m thinking that the Obama team plan is to postpone any reckoning for another 4 years and then leave the Republicans to carry the can when they win the next election and are forced to act.
Wow! That’s a seriously BAD idea Perry: You wish the US to choose the full Marxist over the partially wonky?
Also, blaming the “Tea Party” – which is merely the first comings together of those who wish smaller government and less taxes – for the years of socialist politicising of institutions is madness.
Is it your wish that the US rides into the sunset of another full on socialist “utopia” ? Is it not better to apply brakes if we cannot fully stop and turn the thing around right now?
Socialism has been inserted into every institution there is – it has done so by making itself the default mindset of the ordinary individual. It will take more than a few kicks to the collective groin before any headway is made on that issue. The majority of the western world lives in a “comfortable” (government will protect you) bubble created for it by the media. The Tea Party can only make headway with those for whom reality has started to bite home. The problem is not the Tea Party it is the MEDIA.
The Media is still largely in control of choosing the Republican candidate – that is why Romney is where he is. Its difficult to overcome such a massive engine as the MSM. (Of course the GOP needs cleaned out – but that too is a long term project)
This is not something that will be won on one election – but it is something that could be set back big time by the loss of THIS coming election. For the idea of the nature of the slow progress look at Harper in Canada.
To throw up our hands and say – we have to vote for the worst because the best isn’t good enough… isn’t that how the party political broadcasts go for the Islamic Jihadi Party?
Yes, indeed I would say the worse, the better.
What on earth are you talking about? I am not ‘blaming’ the Tea Party, just remarking that they have clearly not managed to remake the Republican Party or a Big Statist like Romney would not be close to clinching the nomination.
The fact is the Tea Party would not exist if McCain had not lost, and so the only chance for the Republicans to actually become a conservative party again is for the Tea Party to succeed in remaking the party in its own image… and if Romney gets the nod, clearly they have not succeeded. And until that happens, it is better for the whole system to continue to burn.
Exactly…
On the contrary. It is the nomination of Romney that would set the process back big time whereas a few more years of Obama would radicalise more and more people and drive them into the arms of the Tea Party. This is indeed The Long Game.
The inference of the wording “so much for the Tea Party” is that you hold them responsible for the lack of change, therefore you are “blaming” the Tea Party for not being good enough to prevent the nomination of Romney.
I would rather play the long game of 12 years rather than 70. If Obama gets in the progression will either be towards civil war or fast track to the USSA, neither of which bodes well for anyone.
Going the full marxist will fast track in that direction and would only be useful if you intend to reduce the population and government in order to rebuild from scratch. While useful as a mind game it is much too wasteful and destructive in reality. It’s sort of like the Asteroid of Doom scenario… nice in thought but rather messy in operation.
“If Obama gets in the progression will either be towards civil war or fast track to the USSA”
As Herman Cain and Gary Johnson are out, Obama with a republican congress is probably the best outcome that could happen. I can’t see anything getting fast tracked in that situation which is exactly what you should want.
The only problem I have with this “we have to destroy the country in order to save it” is that this is not a lot of fun during the interim, assuming there is every any prospect of a turn for the better. It all comes back to this argument about gradualism vs Big Bang change.
Of course, we had exactly the same sort of conversation about David Cameron and his lot prior to 2010. And I remembered feeling that if Gordon Brown had remained in charge, that this country would go the way of Greece.
plus ca change…
That’s sort of a tempting tact to take however if the Tea Party can influence the House and Senate races and have Repup/conservative majorities therein Romney will be better than the O. Although Romney will never PUSH actual conservatism, he will not actually FIGHT any conservative agenda coming out of Congress unlike what we have now.
O’s damage would then be confined to foreign policy.
Best idea would be vote for Repub Congresscritters and Obama. The American system was designed for, and works best with, a wastrel king opposed by a legislature that sees itself as defending the people against him. (cf Clinton). A big swing right in Congress would be a fair repudiation of the economic behavior of the last 4 years, but still leave the figurehead to take the blame for all the debt/inflation.
Which country has been saved by going to hell?
I did not do anything for Argentina, once a basket case, forever a basket case.
Nonsense. Argentina is a basket case because both the so-called ‘left’ and ‘right’ are kleptocratic statist control freaks and there is no constituency or tradition whatsoever for limited government.
In the USA, there is, it just needs more people radicalised to give it the critical mass needed to tear up the existing rule book that has been superimposed over the constitutional one by liberty’s enemies.
Indeed. And that is the price to be paid for so many of liberty’s fair weather friends always voting the lesser evil. The end result of which is if course… evil. If the ultimate replacement of a vast regulatory statist system is *not* accompanied by riots by the system’s defenders and detractors plus social and economic dislocation then it probably isn’t being replaced by anything meaningfully different in reality. Pain is a feature not a bug.
The Tea Party is the highly imperfect but clear indication of that prospect.
Gradualism…the Lesser Evil Strategy… is what got us here on both sides of the Atlantic. The days when the hard choices could be put off into the future are gone because the future is now. The chickens or walruses or whatever have come home to roost. The system is hopelessly corrupt and the sooner people realise it cannot be reformed by more of the same (just a bit less of it then the other guy would) the better.
I suppose it’s wishing for the moon to hope that half the TEA party voters would vote Libertarian instead?
Then you infer incorrectly. The tedious pundits of megacorporate medialand are always tut-tutting about how the Tea Party has taken over the Republican party. If that were true, that jackanapes Romney would have fallen at the first fence. So clearly the Tea Party’s influence ain’t what it was cracked up to be… not yet at least. Thus…
…So much for the Tea Party.
However after a few more years of Obama, well I am sure that will work wonders for them, which is fine by me.
Perhaps what we are observing is something that may be inherent in our two forms of representative governments (and seen elsewhere as well): The disintegration of the party systems which results from the conflicts of interests with principles.
I will break at this point to avoid the spamburger machine that has been grinding my slow typing, and will continue further on.
While we can not yet say that parties have become irrelevant, we can note that since they exist to represent interests (most often now combinations of interests) which have become more difficult to reconcile as group objectives have become more diverse and more antagonistic, as well as increasingly in conflict with the principles of increasingly bourgeois (good) societies.
A chief indicator of these trends appears in human form in the “leadership” or “executives” of the parties, whose lives have provided no basis for the tasks of their positions; resulting in dominance within “fractured” interest groups rather than “leadership.”
Obama has shown already in the two years of his reign where he has had a Republican Congress to rein him in, that he is perfectly capable of going round it.
The EPA is implementing his green agenda, the DoEd is implementing his marxist agenda, the NLRB is implementing his socialist agenda and his many Czars are implenting all of the above.
Then there is a little matter of a couple of SCOTUS appointments coming up.
It’s all very well pointing to Congress’s power of the purse and advise and consent and the rest, but Obama will use his bully pulpit, amplified by his MSM loud hailer, to blame everything that goes wrong in the next four years on Congress while claiming credit for every little bit of good news that comes along.
The Tea party are building from the bottom, and reports of their death are greatly exagerated. For this cycle, they need to primary out a few more RINOs, vote for fiscal conservatives for every post from dogcatcher upwards, and hold their nose and pull the lever for the R president du jour and then hold his feet to the fire on every issue that comes up.
They’re not going to do that if that sat at home sulking while they let in Obama.
Actually Gary Johnson is not “out” he is running for President for the Libertarian Party. What tea party people should do to show their distaste for Romney is vote LP for President.
GJ was very much a tea party like Governor of New Mexico. The stated “principles” of the tea party movement (limited government, free market & fiscal conservatism) are far closer to the LP platform than the Republican Party one.
I will be voting GJ for President.
The battleground is not in the legislature or executive. It is in the judiciary. An Obama win, by the peculiar structure of US government, would mean three, possibly four reliably left-wing Justices installed in the Supreme Court. That would be practically game over, with the Gramscians the clear winners. It’s easy to say that Obama only has four more years at worst, but that is incorrect. At worst, he has four years in which to entrench a system of government that can only be removed by revolution. It might be tempting to invoke the spectacle of Samson pulling down the temple on his persecutors, but remember he died too.
(there’s also the problem that there is virtually no conceivable way in which any plausible opponent of Obama could be worse on foreign policy, and a number of important issues are coming to a head.)
When a freedom loving person, such as myself, looks at the reality that is American politics, reading comments like Perry’s demonstrates how much is yet to be done.
Establishment politicians resist any efforts challenging their iron grip. It shouldn’t be necessary to remind you of this, but the ties that bind those in power have little to do with their respective party, as is democratic vs republicans. Both parties are very heavily invested into Progressivism, and until that particular power structure is dealt with, the Tea Party and others like them are marginalized. And will continue to be.
Four more Years of Obama and his regime of corruption, will destroy, perhaps irrevocably, the foundational fabric that was the American experiment. Remember Obama’s own words that he will fundamentally change America. I honestly think it will take the spilling of blood to ever find freedom again.
We Americans are being force fed Romney by the very party which those who are of the Tea party belong. Until enough representatives thinking alike become the majority, the republican party is NOT the opposition to the democratic party. The Tea party is being outmaneuvered this election, outspent and attacked at every turn.
The Tea party may be claimed to be a true “grass roots” organization, but we are being force fed the idea that the Occupy crowd represents the “true resistance”. They are in fact a well funded group of professional and amateur “community organizers”, hell bent in bringing the world into submission to their version of Utopia.
So Perry wants the “greater evil” to flourish in this election because Romney is as bad as Obama. That’s all well and good, but it isn’t as if Americans have ever been given a real choice in this election. Living in a cattle chute is what all this reminds me of any longer.
For me, the bottom line is the possibility of having America once again be the Constitutional republic it was designed to be. Limited government must be more than a nice phrase, it must be the way our expectations of government find their grounding. I don’t think any candidate the republicans offer us offer us hope of that position being stood on. Certainly that cannot be said to be true of the democratic party
I agree with the idea that gridlock (Obama in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress) would be good in theory. In reality, however, there would be no gridlock because Obama has already demonstrated his utter contempt for the Constitution, so he will continue his practice of imperial rule by decree (issuing Executive Orders, making “recess” appointments when Congress is clearly still in session, etc.). And for the next four years he won’t even be tempered by the need for re-election, since he’ll be term-limited, so the brakes will be off completely (assuming, of course, the he abides by that limit and doesn’t simply declare himself dictator). Plus, of course there will undoubtedly be a couple of Supreme Court vacancies during the next term, so his appointments will set the tone for judicial review for the next few decades.
I understand Perry’s argument: he wants to turn up the heat so the frog becomes aware that he’s being boiled. Nice idea. However, as someone who’s stuck in that pot it doesn’t thrill me; I’d rather keep the heat set on low while we find a way to turn off the stove. I’m not ready for rioting in the streets.
It is already too late for that. The system is already broken and it cannot be reformed from within via the Republican party as it is currently configured.
Of course not, who is? But what if the only way to avoid that is to just surrender to the perpetual encroachment of regulatory statism? Do you think Romney will actually reduce the total size of the state? And if you agree that he will not, do you think the Tea Party will flourish more under Romney or Obama? No prizes for guessing what I think.
I totally agree with that.
Getting back to the original PdeH post:
The Tea “Party” movement represents a broad bourgeois commonality of principles, not interests. It reflects the rise in the U S of the independent sector of the electorate, which is breaking the tethers to interests as the dominant political force.
That can be seen in the fact that there is no “leadership,” in the common sense of that word, for this movement.
This movement, by nature, took the electoral course where in the conflicts between principles and interests it would have the most weight, in view of the structure of the other party as a huge, if fractious, coalition of interests since 1930 at least, whereas the party chosen for participation had fewer, and less fractious, interests that could be over-ridden by assertions of principles.
Perry, you misdiagnose the problem. The problem is not a principal-agent problem, in which the Republican Party establishment refuses to nominate a classical liberal candidate whom the classical liberal median voter will enthusiastically vote for. The problem is that the median voter is a confused, half-assed Marxist. The reason is in part because of Antonio Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions.” Giving a Marxist ideologue another four years to fortify his position is crazy. There is going to be a fiscal train wreck in any case, but I want it to be survivable.
My point is the Romney or anyone of his ilk will not un-fortify it, indeed he will either leave it all in place or add to it slightly. What a Republican statist in the White House will do however is create the illusion that things could get better (they will not) and thus take the wind out of the sails for the Tea Party.
That was never one of the possible options. It is all going to burn in an incandescent Keynesian Bonfire of the Vanities and a great many lives are going to be ruined. Too many years of putting off the hard choices, too many compromises, too many people holding their noses and voting for people they actually don’t support (but they are the lesser evil) has made that as certain as anything in this uncertain world. I would just prefer that to all happen sooner rather than later.
To quote Mencken:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard”
And I find my self completely out of sympathy for the casualties that I believe are now inevitable.
Perry, the system isn’t already broken, it is being corruptly abused. That is what makes the difference. Everything required for the system to work correctly is already in place. It is the will of the people wherein lies the problem… the corruption is people abusing the system in an absence of consequence.
Slow change can work to liberty’s advantage, where fast change or stalemate does not. If a stalemate were to occur with Obama in charge – he would attempt to rule by fiat and sleight of hand, while creating chaos with the Media covering for him and blame it on the Republicans. Alternatively Obama’s backers might have him bumped off to create an anti-Republican groundswell.
The current best move for the Tea Party is to get control of the Republican candidate’s thinking, be that Romney or “?”. If they could make inroads on the Medias actions it would be even better. The Media may be more open to change than is apparent – given the right circumstances.
Perry,
There’s a subtlety at play that you have missed. Don’t feel bad: a LOT of people have missed it. It’s not merely that Tea Party folks will try to control Congress so as to make whoever gets the President marginally more likely to engage in minarchist behavior….
it’s that they can afford to do so, because contrary to the hype put out by Republican shills like Limbaugh and Hannity, they can afford to do so. Churchill once said that Americans would do the right thing when there was no other choice? That’s exactly what Democratic politicians in a number of states have been doing, once their states’ finances have finally crashed and burned. Chicago, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, all places synonymous with bloated tax structures, are gradually taking on their own public-sector unions, and winning, because they have absolutely no other choice.
“Vote your conscience,” and even “go out to dinner” are VERY viable positions for libertarian-oriented voters in the US right now. It is the social conservatives who are in the “win or die” position in this election, not the minarchists. We are, and I know this is a word not often spoken, WINNING.
I am as unthrilled as anyone by Mitt Romney. Nonetheless, in a second term Presidente Zero would probably get to appoint three Supreme Court Justices. Given that the current court only voted by five to four to uphold the Second Amendment, I wouldn’t like to see the Maximum Leader entrench his fellow travellers in the Supreme Court for life.
There will be rioting and violence, then only question is when, where, why and who. The dollar will collapse. We have passed the point of no return and the entire Fed Reserve Note economy will be destroyed, probably almost overnight. The window of opportunity for supporters of the Constitution and of liberty will be a brief one when the dollar’s value reaches toilet paper territory and the National government loses the power to bribe friends and foes alike. Think of everything that relies on government distributed dollars, everything from social security to Green investment to highway aids to states, Medicare, the list is endless. Losing the power of Fed Note payoffs, the National authorities will resort to brute force to maintain control and the blush will be rubbed off of the pretty face of socialism.
Certainly a large group of states will reject National mandates that they have accepted in the past once those mandates become unfunded by virtue of inflation. Remember, states will also be losing the method to levy, collect and redistribute property (in the form of Fed Notes) as well. That brief period is the window.
I suspect we will be cast as kulaks and the plan of the central authoritarians is a simple reprise of the twentieth century.
And for the commenters holding out the Supreme Court appointment argument to support Romney, do any of you truly think he would appoint somebody that would vote against Romney/Obamacare? Romney would appoint someone who would flip to the dark side, Republican presidents have history on this. At least an Obama appointee’s decision will generate outrage. The same decision by a Romney appointee will stand unchallenged simply because of his ‘Republican’ provenance.
Perry is right, if we don’t have this fight soon, we will have lost it because we ignored the starting bell.
The dollar will not survive the next term. It may not survive this one but it definitely will not survive the next term. I presume the plan is to hang the collapse around the neck of Constitutional restraint amid calls for pragmatism and ‘fair’ redistribution (supervised by experts of course). At least Obama is divisive. Romney doesn’t even seem to be capable of that.
that is precisely why we need an identifiable bad guy.
@John K: While true, the Kelo decision doesn’t provide me with much faith regarding a truly conservative court, and particularly not one which got the opportunity to appoint as many as 3 justices. The 2nd amendment is important, but so is the 4th. YMMV, but I tend to view that as less of an issue than many.
Two-and-a-half party strategy: if you can’t bring yourself to vote for the establishment candidate (either one), then protest-vote for the Libertarian or Constitutional party’s presidential candidate (depending on what makes you upchuck) and, while you’re at the polls, vote for the Tea Party blessed congressional candidates.
This is the way to keep the Tea Party vote from disappearing if the choice for president, this time, is essentially ‘more of the same’; and of ensuring that next time, ‘more of the same’ won’t be quite as attractive to either the Republicans of Democrats. But we need to hear a major Tea Party figure espouse it loudly.
I really wish there was an eloquent way of saying that ‘staying home and not voting’ accomplishes NOTHING.
It does not ‘send a message’ or ‘teach a lesson’ because if you don’t vote NEITHER PARTY GIVES A DAMN !!
Sorry Perry but I don’t think this country can survive 4 more years of the socialist march of this sock puppet ( and NO, I’m not a racists – I despise his white half equally !! )
I should also point out that the Tea Party exists in opposition to the political establishment, not to the Democrats alone. This has been successfully obscured by the Democrats, who have caricatured it as the extremist branch of the GOP, but it is not really a part of the Republican party. A two-and-a-half party strategy would make that a lot clearer.
PfP: The trouble is a “major figure” was saying that and was forced out of a major tea party organization. Mark Meckler spent a great deal of time and effort (I know much of the time I was help him) to keep TPP (and the movement) from being subsumed into the Republican Party. Unfortunately the money, glitz and pressure worked on other figures involved in the TPP and he was driven out.
This piece I wrote with Chris Barron of GOProud (who supports Gary Johnson) speaks to the problem of the Republicans “using” the tea party movement for their own ends..
TPers who are upset with the status quo should vote Libertarian where they get they have that choice.
Russ:
I don’t see the current Supreme Court as particularly good, but I have no doubt that with 2 or 3 justices appointed by the Supreme One it will be considerably worse.
Midwesterner:
In the face of the economic and societal breakdown you forsee, the identity of the hapless occupant of the Oval Office will be largely immaterial as the noble experiment of constitutional government dies. But I would not wish to see that day advanced by giving the socialist another four years to do his worst.
No thanks Perry. 2nd Obama term gives him another shot at Supreme Court justices. Who knows what kind of nutter he’ll nominate? A 2nd term Obama will be a less restrained, more idealistic Obama. I’m sorry, I’m not in the mood for another four years of this experiment.
Perry:
When was the last time when “the worse” has actually been “the better” for the cause of human freedom?
Carter was thrown out after one term, and it was seen as a repudiation of his folly. Clinton was reelected, and managed to entrench his preferences and adorn them with the fig leaf of reasonableness.
In my question, I refer of course to democracies, in which electoral outcomes are seen as endorsements by the people. In authoritarian regimes, of course, the surest way to change anything is by overthrow, which presents a different calculus.
I agree with Peter. The solution is a continued effort to spread understanding throughout the culture. Politics will follow. While we work on that, though, the political system must be held in check in any way possible.
While gloomy, I do not share the doomy outlook of so many good folks here. The U.S.A. can stumble deeper into stagnation and oppression for quite some time, with politicians always doing just enough to keep the entire goat rodeo just barely on track. We have a ways to go before we even reach the crappiness of Europe, and they haven’t actually hit endgame, either. Who knows when they will, or if. Bad politics is nothing if not tenacious. In the meantime, the ratcheting efforts of the statists must be slowed, stopped, and slowly reversed if possible. I do not share Perry’s optimistic expectation of revolution. If it came, chances are more than half of the masses would be “confused, half-assed marxists”, and would be against us.
Not true, or at least not necessarily true. The losing party may very well give a damn about non voters who might have voted, if only the losing party had offered something different.
One of the advantages of the Tea Party’s ‘bottom-up’ nature is that the failure of one leadership faction to ‘keep the faith’ doesn’t keep another faction – or even an individual – from stepping in. The TPP leadership may have been seduced, but the Tea Partiers are still there, ready to follow someone who’s going their way. And anyway, when I said “major figure” I was thinking of someone like Palin or Limbaugh: not exactly ‘Tea Party’ figures (my bad), but having a lot of clout with the movement.
As far as voting Libertarian goes, you must know that for a substantial number of TPers, ‘Libertarian’ means ‘free sex and legalised drugs’ and Hell will freeze over before they vote for that. That’s why I suggested the Constitutional party as an alternative protest vote. It’s certainly not because I have much love for social conservatives. Actually, any two parties that have a fifty-state presence and provide comfortable places for the different wings of the TPM to register their protest votes would do: the big thing is to get TPers to the polls to elect a better Congress despite discouraging presidential candidates, to keep the existence of a protest vote from disappearing amongst a welter of minor candidates, and to encourage a Tea Party protest vote by virtue of the fact that it won’t disappear.
My reply to your thoughtful comment has been smote. The World trembles, wondering if a work of Great Sagacity will be lost….
Midwesterner (and others);
Riots, forms of civil unrest, etc. are not nearly as likely as the occurrences of selective political assassinations.
As spoken in the old Arab tale, it is possible to break a bundle of sticks one stick at time, when the bundle can not be broken.
Such conduct would probably not be extensive, nor over an extended period of time because some absolutely repulsive event is likely to occur, causing reactive public revulsion, even if there may still be good “cover” in “terrorism.”.
Absent changes in the trends, we are probably at least 5 or 6 years away from the start of such events; and, it can be avoided.
I wanted to explain that Perry de H’s post is kind of dumb for multiple reasons, but I see that he is doubling down on stupid! It is too sad, especially since I have respect for him.
Mr. H, we can’t afford another 4 years of O’s “rule” – what with obamacare being implemented, dozens of judges appointed (including more socialists/marxists to the High Court), more debt, more regs, … etc. So, please stop being dumb.
Perry, a question- can you point to any example to support your idea that more Obama will eventually cause americans to repudiate his ideas and beliefs? you might convince some of us if you can give examples….
RRS,
Our system of exchange, the Federal Reserve Note, will not last. With its likely sudden collapse, barter will be unable to feed the country. Depending on the food stuff, there are very few days supply available at or near the point of sale. Again, barter cannot fill the gap quickly enough. We have inadequate amounts of gold and silver coin available or the means to expand the supply quickly (the government appears to be deliberately obstructing the minting process). Failure of the Fed Note will mean that public safety workers will not be paid with anything exchangeable. They will almost certainly go home to protect and feed their families. Gangs, both legacy and newly formed, will attack food distribution (trucks and trains) for use or resale on the black market. There will be a sudden artificially caused famine. People will not take that quietly. There will be riots. There may or may not be assassinations, but there will be riots when the food runs out. Not many people are willing to starve to death in quiet order.
I am not at all optimistic about our extremely, unprecedentedly efficient just-in-time food manufacture and distribution system. It is too efficient. It is too fragile. It relies heavily on complicated, multi-step manufacture processes. It hasn’t been possible to buy consumable food from a typical Midwest farm for a very long time. T-bill dumping will be the trigger of the dollar crash. The dollar crash will be the trigger of food distribution failure. Restoring the system with a new means of exchange will take longer than people can go without food. Food supply failure will be the trigger of violence. The only questions are in the details.
I hope I am wrong. I really hope I am wrong. But it is an ever thinner hope. The 20th Century was not that long ago and was not that different from the present world. If anything the systems are now more delicate and public order is even more vulnerable.
I certainly do not want Romney in charge; I want the individual states in full self defending revolt against the National authoritarians. Romney is one of those ‘expert’ authoritarians but he is unlikely to inspire the kind of revolt needed to restore Constitutional restraint and federal government.
This comment is very disappointing and disheartening. The reason this country has prospered so much and for so long is because of the nature and structure of our Constitution. A vote for Obama is a vote to allow him to continue to eviscerate it through his political and judicial appointees. Once it’s gone, there is no hope for anything other than a very bleak future at best. Not even the Tea Party, most of whom just recently discovered the Constitution, will be able to save us then.
Ah yes PFP the “limited government for me but not for thee” contingent of the tea party movement. A source of constant frustration for me it has to be said. It always amazed me to hear that sort speak of “limited government” only to then list things they wanted banned at a federal level.
Then again it is not surprising that some are somewhat mistakened about what the Constitution says and means considering the ignorant rants of at least one Presidential candidate.
A classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And if you persist in describing potential allies – “allies,” not co-religionists – as “that sort,” you won’t have to worry too much about accommodating them.
Oh, well, I’ve said for years that the Libertarian Party isn’t ready for Prime Time, and never will be.
Following the rather U S orientation of the original post, it should be noted that, in contrast to the Tea Party Movement, there is a Labour Party in the U S dominated by public sectors unions. That party is interest directed, not principle oriented. Therefore, it has “leaders.” Similarly it associates itself into that elections party that is a coalition of interests, in which theirs has become predominant (at least for the time being).
Little comment has been given to the ffractures in alignmenmt of “election parties,” which exist for ballot purposes.
The U K “Labour Party” and its fracture from the original organizing interest groups (and failures of their diverse “leaders,”) causing a broadening of its interest coalitions several years back, may be a useful example for those seeking to influence the U S electorate.
The current U K problem seems to be that despite the growing conflicts there of principles with interests, there is no “grass roots” movement nor electorate concerns that no election party is strong enough to represent principles.
Which sounds like a pretty good definition of a system being ‘broken’ to me.
For all the guys who “can’t understand” how someone might think voting for Romney is bad idea even though Obama is worse, let me make it simple for you:
— Do you want the Republicans to be a party of limited constitutional government?
— If yes, then you will never get that if you vote for them anyway when they nominate a tax-n-spend big government guy for president.
What about that is so hard to understand? We got the Bush dunces who grew government and regulated the fuck out of us because guys like you, who don’t want more government, voted for them anyway because they were not Democrats. Well that worked out real great for all you “we want constitutional limited government” guys, didn’t it?
Laird beat me to making the point about Congress checking and balancing: as far as Obama is concerned, Congress only exists so that it can be blamed on anything that ever goes wrong. Problem is, with someone like Romney in the WH, Congress will be equally ineffective – albeit for a different reason, and that is that they will serve as an automatic stamp of approval on anything that comes out of the WH, as long as its occupant is a Republican. And, BTW: wasn’t the current crop endorsed by the Tea Party back in 2010, and were supposed to be doing that very checking and balancing? And no, I’m not blaming the TP, I’m blaming the actual individuals who were elected with the TP blessing, but utterly failed to fulfill the expectations.
Yes, another 4 years of Obama will be really and truly awful. No, Romney will not be nearly as awful as Obama. Thing is, the years immediately after Romney will be much, much worse, and quite possibly irreparably so.
No – corruption is the mechanism used to break a system. Consider an iron girder: The girder may be corrrupted by rust, weakening it, but it takes time and stresses for the corruption to damage enough of the girder to bring it to breaking point.
The US system is still working – the powers maintained by the individual states help in this, in that the central government is not yet the be all and end all of the system.
Ron Paul would have been fine if did not blame America for everything – but he does/
So instead of (for example) saying “country X is full of shits – and they are not worth the life of one American soldier” he says something like “the people in country X do not like us because we keep sticking our noses in their affairs – how we would we like it if they stuck their noses in our affairs?”
The left applaud (the sort of people who would never vote Republican – regardless of the candidate), and the typical Republican primary voter feels more like punching Ron Paul in the face (because of the way he puts things) than voting for him.
By the way “for the record” – it is Islamic theology that leads people in country X (and Y and Z) that leads the people there to hate the West, not Western interventionism (real or fictional).
And they have been “sticking their noses in our affairs” – since the 7th century AD
“But not America – America is not part of the West, only direct attacks on Americas count”.
Thanks Rothbardians
You are wrong on two counts – firstly America is part of Western Civilization (sorry but it is) and, anyway, there have been plenty of direct attacks on Americans (which you would know if you were not too busy putting the “9/11 was an inside job” bumper stickers on your cars).
So say that the various wars are a pointless waste of lives – there I agree with you.
But do not say “it is our own fault” or “they are nice people just like us” (a delusion you share with GEORGE BUSH – whom I thought you disliked) and on and on.
“But Paul there were plenty of other candidates that were neither Ron Paul or Mitt Romney”.
Yes – but the important word is “plenty”.
The “nonRomneys” cut each other’s throats (it started when Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty targeted each other rather than Romney), and were picked off by the media anyway.
Michelle because of husband (nice smear job Jon Stewart).
Rick Perry because of his terrible debating performance (just possibly it is a bad move to have a back operation and be on rather hard medication – just as you start an Presidential campaign).
Rick Santorum over contraception (more what the media have presented as his position – but he hardly helps himself).
And on and on.
So the best financed candidate (Romney) wins.
He outspent Santorum more than ten to one in Ohio – and the vote was split…..
But a win is a win.
So all hail Romney.
“Paul I would rather have Obama than a RINO like Romney”/
O.K. – but be prepared for war.
Not “political war” real war – with blood and killing people.
I know that some people here have direct experience of real war – so I will not say “you do not know what you are saying” (because you do – better than I do).
But keep it in your minds.
You want Obama to win – so there is an end to this (no more messing about – as Romney, without really understanding much, thrashes about in an economic crises – and, most likely, fails to do the reforms that are needed to prevent economic collapse).
With Obama back in there would indeed be an end to all this shabby mess.
But it would be an end in a sea of blood.
Perhaps that is the only way – but I would like to think it is not.
Mr. DeHaviland:
I speak only for myself, but if I may give my viewpoint as someone who is both active in the TEA Party and who is a delegate this Saturday to our County Republican Convention and a candidate to be a delegate to 3 higher conventions including State. Part of the problem we are having in this discussion mirrors the old fable of the blind men trying to describe an elephant.
We are in a multi-front war; by electoral means for now. There is the totalitarian Left, of which the Democrats are the most public part. And there is what I call the Institutional Republicans, which are the management of the Republican Party. These make up most of what is referred to by the pollster Rasmussen as the Political Class. The Institutional Republicans are in a subordinate role to the Democrats, and are quite happy with that. Picture a remora fish attached to a shark.
The TEA Party/Patriot/Conservative [of many stripes] movement is opposed to both. And they are hated by the Institutional Republicans as fiercely as by the Democrats. In my state alone, the Institutional leadership has deliberately thrown elections to Democrats when TEA Party supporters have won the nomination. No one said this was going to be easy, or that the enemy would fight fair.
The reason most of the TEA Party people I know are involved with the Republican Party is not because we trust them, or think that they believe the tenets they claim to espouse. It is simply that the Democrats are sufficiently subject to “Democratic Centralism” [q.v.] that action to support liberty within their party is pointless.
So some of us do the grassroots thing. In my county, we have taken the majority of the precinct chairs, which gives us the majority of the County Central Committee. And a seat on the State Central Committee, where the Schwerpunkt will be. We have a bloc of delegates at County who will vote for more TEA Party representatives at higher conventions. The convention delegates choose who will be on the primary ballot, and what their positions will be on that ballot. And yes, we have TEA Party people running.
That is one axis of attack. It is not the only one. I am engaged in it, but I do not believe it is the only one. If electoral politics continue to be relevant, eventually we will need to become a second party.
There is the possibility that electoral politics will no longer be relevant. If the Institutionals force Romney as the nominee, he will lose. He has never in 20 years as a candidate or governor stood and fought against anything the Democrats wanted without caving. He will make Dole’s and McCain’s campaigns look like my namesake driving through the Teutonic Knights.
The electoral battle will then be in Congress, not because Republicans in Congress will suddenly discover that they have a spine. The Institutional congressional leadership has been engaged in pre-emptive surrender on every issue since the TEA Party gave them the House back in 2010. Not only on issues, but they have been yielding their Article I powers to the Executive as fast as they can.
However, the election of as many Patriots to office nationwide as possible will shape the political battlefield of the future no matter what form that politics takes. Laird @ March 7, 2012 02:47 PM has it right. If Obama wins, future elections are not likely.
Since September of last year; high level elected and appointed Democrats have been making statements about the possibility of cancelling the 2012 elections and “reducing the amount of democracy in the system” in the name of efficiency. Not surprisingly once you consider the sources. Nor was it amazing that our Democrat controlled media barely mentioned it. What was telling was that the Republican Party, which could be expected to scream like a ruptured Bann Sidhe if only for political advantage, kept silent.
Politics is a culture’s system for allocating power and resources short of anarchy and pure brute force. It can change in form, but it will always exist. And people will have to adapt to operate in whatever system according to whatever rules are in effect.
Romney’s nomination will be political suicide for an electoral future. It is being fought. It may yet be forestalled. This does not mean that the other candidates are ideal. But there is a chance that a non-Vichy candidate will actually fight in the election and theoretically could even win. Which buys time to try to avoid the collapse.
The collapse may come from political or economic means despite our best efforts. In which case, Patriots will do their best to survive and rebuild, against whatever odds. In the meantime, we try to hold back the long night.
Alisa –
By and large those selected or accepted by the TP Movements have performed as promised.
There is also the “check” of, and pollution by, the Senate (and its procedures) on the legislative effectiveness of the HR.
This stems in large measure from the 17th Amendment (1913 was a bad year) which also has gilded instead of gelded K Street.
It occurs to me that the meltdown will hit hardest in the cities.
And where do all the leftists live?
That’s it, I’m changing my vote. I now want Perry de Havilland’s vision realized.
“which also has gilded instead of gelded K Street.”
You’re on a roll tonight, RRS, aren’t you?
S.B.
Speaking with my politicians hat on (not my political philosophy hat on) you have not grasped the situation.
Romney has basically already won the nomination – he has won (just won – but won) the key tests. And his foes will not unite.
Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich will not step aside to give Santorum a chance (and, this late, he might still lose even if they backed him).
So Romney will be the candidate (unless something really special happens).
As for his election winning record – it is indeed really bad.
All this “I am not a professional politician” stuff is not because Romney did not run in elections – he did (again and again).
It is just he only won once – the Mass Governorship in 2002 (basically he won on the post 9/11 coat tails of the most popular period of Bush).
It is understandable to lose if you are outspent.
But Romney normally outspent his opponent – and lost anyway.
This does not indicate a strong candidate.
Oh well, there we go.
RRS: I was referring to expectations, not promises. The former being subjective, though, you may well have a factual point. Still, I feel cheated, although not surprisingly so.
It was unfortunate for the tea party movement that people like Ryan did not get into the race. There was no one candidate, well maybe except for Cain, who fully embraced the tea party mantra. Cain was driven out of the race and now they are left to choose between four candidates none of whom fully embrace the tea party theme(s).
So the tea party movement has split into its various component parts to support each of the candidates. it is not surprising that in poll after poll those on the right are not satisfied with any of the current crop and want someone else.
I suspect what most tea partiers are going to do, much to the chagrin of the Republican Party, is not vote party line and vote whomever best suits whatever party they might be from.
Ah Alisa,
Alas not all (if any fully) expectations are rational.
Absolutely right, Perry !!
I am so freakin’ tired of Statist nannies and kickback artists and drug warriors and democracy spreaders and debt exploders and military expanders and god botherers that I could scream. All they accomplish is giving free markets a bad name.
In 2010, if there wasn’t a libertarian running for an office, I voted for the democrat.