Is this the next President of the United States?
Liberals rejoice! Conservatives were vanquished in Iowa. Mitt Romney won in Iowa after hardly giving the state a second thought. Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich all had their moments in the sun before failing spectacularly. Perry and Gingrich are the only ones left and they’re candidacies are on life support.
We’re left with Santorum, Romney, Huntsman and Paul. I’m being generous to Huntsman and Paul. Paul’s candidacy isn’t going anywhere. The problem with Paul is he’s too worried about defense spending. He offers no solution on our fiscal problems. To put it in perspective we could eliminate our defense department and still be on the road to fiscal ruin. Paul seems more concerned with kookiness than with our fiscal problems.
Jon Huntsman has bet the ranch on New Hampshire. I have to admit that looks risky right now. Coming out of Iowa Rick Santorum is going to get all the press. It’s difficult seeing Huntsman being able to chop through Santorumania.
Speaking of Santorum…. the National Review has basically become an extension of the Santorum campaign. Rich Lowry’s tweets this morning were depressed at the very thought that Rick Perry was soldering on in South Carolina. How dare Perry get in the way of Santorumania! Even Rush Limbaugh is trying to defend Santorum today. Mark Steyn is really the voice of reason during these depressing times.
Rick Santorum is a wee bit too far down the compassionate-conservative end for my tastes, but he gave (as Newt would say) an extraordinarily remarkably profoundly good speech last night. Maggie got the right adjective: “grounded” — very real, very secure, very grown-up. Mitt did himself no favors by dashing on immediately afterwards and burbling cheesy stump-speech boilerplate. As readers will know, I broadly agree with Santorum that, ultimately, culture trumps economics — or, as he puts it, you can’t have limited government and a strong economy without strong families. But no doubt by the time the media are through with him that will be assumed to mean he has a secret plan to lock up the sodomites.
It’s a shame Mark Steyn was born in Canada and can’t run for president. Mr. Steyn gets it. Sadly, liberals don’t and many Republicans aren’t much better. Santorum is cut from the same mold as President Bush. If you like big goverment with splash of social conservatism he’s your guy. Santorum will drive the Christianphobes crazy, but he won’t reduce the size of the goverment. He’s not an alternative to Romney in any real sense, other than religion. A candidate who talks about the problems with contraceptives is never going to be elected in the twenty-first century.
It doesn’t get any better than this…
Seriously, no one should be paying this guy’s tuition. It’s a bad investment.
I’ll be monitoring the election returns from Durham, N.C. this year. Here are a couple of resources I recommend to monitor the election results:
If the the GOP is winning big MSNBC will be required viewing. The most deranged news network will reach apocalyptic levels if the Republicans win in a tsunami. Most people are expecting a big night for the GOP so the left is concentrating most of its attention on Delaware and Alaska, because they’re the most embarrassing for Republicans. For some reason Christine O’Donnell is a household name and Alvin Greene is a forgotten Democrat in South Carolina.
In 2008, the mainstream press’ talking points were all about hope and change. It was a joyous moment for the American people. I don’t expect that type of coverage this time around. Expect a lot of talk about the “angry American electorate.” There won’t be any talk about the failed agenda of the Democrats.This election isn’t about the GOP. It’s entirely about the Democrats’ four-year control of Congress.
For actual election coverage I highly recommend Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot. Even better, follow Geraghty on twitter @JimGeraghty. The National Review’s blog The Corner is also a great place for election coverage. That’s all I have for now. Remember if you’re voting in North Carolina you don’t need your driver’s license. All you need to know is your address. Make sure you get to the polls early so a Democratic operative doesn’t vote for you.
Exit question: Remember the gleeful President telling the Republicans in February 2008 elections have consequences, “I won.” Will the Republicans use the same hopeful rhetoric with Obama in January? I hope so, not that it will change anything…
Despite my libertarian leanings I hoped Obama’s White House would somehow live up to his 2008 marketing message. The substance-free campaign and his meteoric rise to power left me open to the hope that he’d do something unpredictable. Never underestimate the predictability of an Ivy League liberal with no real world experience. The National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson’s thoughts on Obama’s recent rhetoric hit the nail on the head.
Looking back at 20 months, we see this Nixonian them-vs.-us world in which good progressives battle against those who make more than $250,000 per year; greedy doctors taking out tonsils; police who stereotype and act stupidly; Arizonan xenophobes who snatch kids out for ice cream; Islamophobes who would deny constitutional rights to Muslim moderates at Ground Zero; and racists who have traditionally stood in the way (mutatis mutandis, as they do now) of freeing the slaves.
All this psychodrama is beneath a president.
During the 2008 election a few of my progressive friends really bought into the whole “unity” aspect of the Obama campaign. Who can blame them? There was little else of any substance to his campaign. As the President goes around the country complaining about his predecessor and comparing his struggle to the march toward abolition I can’t help but wonder how we got stuck with such a terrible president.
At this point the only saving grace for President Obama would be an economic boom. Luck has taken him this far and an economic boom would be another fortunate turn of events. President Obama is the accidental president. He was in the right place at the right time, but now he’s the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong office.
One piece of conventional wisdom that started a few years ago is the idea that liberals dominate blogs. A few years ago this was true when the United States was living under the cruel dictatorship of President Bush. Progressives needed a place to post their laments about faux voter fraud, global warming, and the plight of the American homeless. Liberal blogs were a dime a dozen. Back in 2006 there were all kinds of theories as to why liberals were blogging.
One suggested reason is that more liberal blogs have comments and promote individual blogs, participation and more which bring more repeat and continuous traffic. Also, it is possible that progressive/liberal and anti-war blogs are read in countries other than the United States; this may not be as likely for the conservative ones. The other theory is that the party in opposition has more to complain about, strategize about and work on than the party in power. In that case, I will revisit this article if things change in November of 2008.
It seems clear which of the theories above is correct. Now that Obama is in the White House the blogosphere looks a lot different. Conservative blogs are now gaining more traffic. The National Review’s blog, The Corner, is now the second most popular political blog right behind the Cannibal Post (AKA Huffington Post). That’s no small feat considering the amount of money the Queen of Cannibalism spends on her site. Then there are progressives who feel that liberal blogs are superior because they’ve learned “to be reverent.” No, seriously.
Now compare that concept to the writing style of your favorite liberal bloggers. Notice the sense of awe and reverence? The respect they have of language and a turn of phrase to convey the inter-connectedness of life?
None of that exists in the rightwing blogosphere. I’ve read the so-called A-List conservative bloggers and their essays are rife with fear, stereotypes, and embittered presumptions.
This was written by em dash who earlier in her reverent post called the Bush Administration the “crooks, thieves, and miscreants inhabiting the White House.” That type of rhetoric is certainly presumptuous, bitter, and shallow, but I’ll leave it up to someone else to convey the inter-connectedness of life. As far as fear is concerned the left is just as guilty of using fear tactics as the right.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken
Give us your overpopulation, health care sob stories, homeless rediscovery, DDT, and global warming nonsense. How did the President pass his pork filled stimulus bill? Of course, he used scare tactics. For someone like em dash who is high on intellectually superiority it’s amazing how naive she is when comes to simple politics. I guess that’s just another widely accepted stereotype on the left.
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