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Samizdata quote of the day A lot of people like the way Obama has governed less than they liked the idea of Obama governing.
– Michael Barone
If Obama loses – if – I think that will sum it all up very well. And if Obama does lose, we must all hope that Romney governing turns out better than the idea of Romney governing looks now.
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Agreed – on all points.
“I voted for Obama” has become the modern substitute for “Some of my best friends are black”. It takes the guilt away for middle class hand wringers and it has the advantage of being much more convincing lie. They actually did vote for Obama, but their brother’s son’s softball coach isn’t really their friend.
The liberal wet dream of a black man in the white house was the sum-total of Obama’s campaign – now the penny is starting to drop that electing a president solely on the basis of an appealing image maybe wasn’t a good idea.
Romney represents the probably death of the only viable group who might eventually rescue the US from the institutions consuming it: The Tea Party.
He is the very epitome of everything that is wrong with the GOP and I hope he crashes and burns seeing as the point of no return has probably past any way.
We need to be looking ahead to how to capture the post-Crash world and not concentrating on who has the joystick when the nations of the First World fly in controlled quantitatively eased formation into the side of the mountain of reality with bouzouki music playing faster and faster in the background.
Romney is an inevitable consequence of American politics. The powers that be decided that he was their preferred candidate.
So what happens? He goes from being the most hated longshot candidate to the party nomination in just a few months. And all it took was a media blackout and targeted muck racking on every other candidate, coupled with an incredibly easy ride from the media himself.
I’m sorry to say it, but the general public by and large will vote for whoever they are told to vote for.
Herman Cain was the one I was really sorry to see go. He was like the anti-Obama.
Jaded: quite so, and ditto sex wrt the prospect of Madam President (or Madam Prime Minister, as my countryfolk have similarly learned the hard way).
Still, you must admit that a dreamt-up Cain & Rice Republican administration would have its appeal on one score at least: it would be worth it just to see the left go utterly apoplectic. The MSM would be so incredibly and obviously vicious they’d destroy what remains of their credibility amongst even the dullest, leaving only those who know full well what the MSM is about and approve of such evil.
JJM
It’s not that we like the idea of Romney as president, it’s just that we hate the idea of Obama being president more.
I trust the Tea Party isn’t so fragile as to be undone by a Romney presidency. The immediate problem is to get rid of Obama: rescuing America from its government is next, and if Romney turns out to be part of that problem then too bad for him.
I see that The One has now managed to insult Poland on a majestic scale, referring to the various Nazi murder factories as “Polish concentration camps”. I guess his teleprompter failed him again – the same evil gadget that confuses the Malvinas (Falklands) with the Maldives.
But then again, this is a man who cannot easily distinguish Hawaii from Kenya.
I never know whether to be amused by people who think Obama has on the whole been wildly different from Bush, or those who think Romney will be wildly different from Obama.
The thought of judicial appointments alone make the choice easy. I’m confident that Romney will be quite different than Obama.
Throw in a completely new Attorney General? That’s just gravy.
Well, the 1969 Ford wasn’t wildly better than the 1968 Chevrolet, but the 2012 model surely is. We’ll take what incremental improvements we can get for now and hope they compound over time.
I think it is common usage to employ the word “Polish” to mean “in Poland”.
I’ve certainly read plenty of reports of French and Dutch launch sites for V2s which didn’t suggest any involvement of local populations.
There are plenty of more important fights to pick with Obama and this one’s getting on my nerves.
if Obama does lose, we must all hope that Romney governing turns out better than the idea of Romney governing looks now.
It’s not that we like the idea of Romney as president, it’s just that we hate the idea of Obama being president more.
I never know whether to be amused by people who think Obama has on the whole been wildly different from Bush, or those who think Romney will be wildly different from Obama.
I’m sure there are plenty of True Believers who thing Romney will be wildly different, though I haven’t met any. What I hope is, the reality of Romney will be better than the idea of Obama looks now. I don’t *expect* it, mind you, because I have extraordinarily low expectations of politicians. It’s just that Obama has managed to dive below even those. (And no, I didn’t vote for the twerp, because he was so incredibly unqualified, but I sure hoped he’d succeed.)
For once I must disagree with you Perry.
Inspite of Romney…..
The Tea Party movement is alive and well – and winning Primary contests accross the United States.
The Economist magazine people are deeply upset – and it is the sacred duty of the righteous to upset the “liberal” elite as much as possible.
I would be delighted if it turns out that I was wrong and you were correct Paul!
Agree with Paul Marks. The TEA Party have the scalp of ostensibly rusted-on GOP blueblood Richard Lugar, and are spoiling for that of David Dewhurst. OK, Dewhurst wouldn’t be quite as juicy a prize as Lugar, but there’s clearly a pattern forming here. and the GOP Establishment are (possibly literally) soiling themselves as it’s becoming clear that they’re all up against the wall, so they’d better watch their p’s and q’s.
Case in point is John McCain’s desperate 180 on his career-defining “maverick, bipartisan” approach to legislating that he jettisoned at the first sign of principled conservative primary opposition – now he’s telling anyone who’ll listen that he doesn’t even know what an aisle is, let alone how one would go about reaching across it.
Romney is turning out to be a far better candidate than I expected. Obama’s much-vaunted crack team of campaign advisers are being as ham-fisted as they’ve always been, and Romney’s team haven’t set a foot wrong in exploiting these blunders. I think he’s going to win in November. And I think he’s going to be pushed in the right direction by TEA party operatives. The Establishment, desperate not to be unseated by a widespread, angry and organised grassroots conservative movement, are being increasingly marginalised. Romney’s nomination was their last hurrah, and that was only due to a combination of accident and attrition. Romney knows who his new master is now.
I agreed heartily with Perry in 2008 when he said that an Obama win would be, in hindsight, a boon for Republicans. However, I think his pretty much identical call this cycle is dead wrong. The GOP simply isn’t the same party it was back in 2008. Assuming that Romney isn’t a closet leftist out to whiteant the conservative agenda (which I doubt), an unrelenting pressure for him to compromise that was such a prominent feature of the the Bush Presidency – and that would have plagued a McCain Presidency – simply won’t be around to force a President Romney off course. And, conversely, pressure on him to act responsibly will be intense, thanks to the ever-increasing assertiveness of the TEA party candidates.
I’m actually pretty optimistic about the way things are turning out in the States at the moment.
Among the things overlooked in PdH’s hoped for “crash and burn,” is consideration of the crash site and the lives of occupants of dwellings destroyed.
Politics in the U S has been a series of transitions.
Those have occurred over the uncoordinated time-spectrums of varying “movements” of which the current “grass roots” resorgemento is only one.
Not really overlooked, RRS, as the premise I am operating under is not “a crash can be avoided” but rather “a crash is now inevitable” so I am more concerned with what happened in long run.
So to follow the analogue, lives will be lost and dwellings destroyed, that much is as close to certain in an uncertain world as anything, so changing that event from 2 days from now to 2 weeks from now does not concern me all that much as I already pondering what happens afterwards.
PdH,
It is likely that the legislative elections will determine the things for you (and the rest of us) to ponder.
I doubt it will change the underlying problem unless much of the GOP establishment is swept away.
The GOP establishment is receiving the mother of all existential shocks as we speak, Perry. Those that get with the zeitgeist will be allowed to stay. The incorrigible ones will be swept away.
Get ready for a long, loud whine from them about how the GOP is “banishing all its moderates”* – happily, they’ll probably all land jobs with CNN or CurrenTV or some other cable network that gets about three viewers and we’ll never hear from them again.
I agree that Romney is ideologically malleable – but, unlike Bush, he’s going to be kept honest by a GOP-dominated House, which is stuffed full of TEA party Congressmen, plus a (likely) GOP-majority Senate with a good solid rump of TEA party Senators holding forth.
Furthermore, there are some SCOTUS vacancies pending that both conservatives and liberals will be itching to fill. If Obama has the opportunity to fill a vacancy left by Scalia, that would be disastrous. For that reason alone, a Romney victory is worth hoping for.
*plenty of Democrats are saying this too. They clearly don’t do irony. After all, the GOP just nominated Romney – possibly the most moderate candidate in the field – as their Presidential candidate; whereas the Blue Dogs have been systematically hounded (ahem) out of the Democratic party and pinko Pelosi rules the roost.
Incidentally, with the abysmal jobs numbers coming out of the US today, I think we need to start getting used to the idea of a President Romney (barring, of course, Events, dear boy, Events).
Yes Perry – a crash now can not be avoided.
The main thing now is to survive the crash and rebuild (and rebuild on better PRINCIPLES) afterwards.
At least that is the American situation – and why the Tea Party movement is so important.
In Britain we do not need to worry about surviving the crash and rebuilding civil society on sound principles.
“You mean we are going to avoid the crash”.
Errr no, that is not what I mean.