Ruling class vs the rest of us, made flesh.
I mean, Christ: Huntsman has spent the entirety of his campaign attacking conservatives — and there has been no grassroots demand for a Huntsman candidacy from anywhere on the right, save with those who early on placed Obama’s former Ambassador among the “top tier candidates,” along with Romney, Daniels, and Pawlenty.
It’s time to face facts. Many of the most prominent of the “right wing” organs — who claim to speak for “our” side — are merely mouthpieces for establishment types who’d prefer we keep leadership within the leadership class. The people simply must know their place:
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board endorsed presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s economic growth plan in a column published in Friday’s paper.
The board declared that the plan put forward Wednesday by the former Utah governor and Ambassador to China “is as impressive as any to date in the GOP Presidential field, and certainly better than what we’ve seen from the front-runners.”
Last month the same editorial writers called on fiscal conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to enter the GOP presidential race — calling the declared candidates a “weak field.” But weeks later it seems conservative intellectual class has found its candidate, albeit a longshot one, in Huntsman.
The far-reaching plan would upend the nation’s tax code, rein in government regulation and promote free trade agreements.
“Perhaps Mr. Huntsman should be asked to give the Republican response to the President’s jobs speech next week,” the editorial says. “The two views of what makes an economy grow could not be more different.”
[…]
[…] his plan — and the positive response it has gotten from fiscal conservatives — is enough to get Mitt Romney worried. The former Massachusetts governor will announce his own plan on Tuesday, and he is under pressure to cater it to appeal to the tea party. Such a move would weakening his position in the eyes of the so-called “conservative intelligentsia,” who haven’t found a candidate to get behind — until now.
Tax reform. That’s the extent of Huntsman’s plan.
And that’s about all that establishment Republicans care about. Entitlement reform? Huntsman doesn’t deal with that.
Big government, ruling-class “compromises,” and lower taxes.
That’s what the GOP ruling class is. That’s all it is. And it’s time we told them, in no uncertain terms, that we aren’t interested.
Tax Reform? Lovely. Whenever some politician starts talking that way, I begin wondering which deductions we middle-class taxpayers are gonna lose now…
Tax and regulation reform? Sure, I’ll take that. As the salad course.
Then afterwards it is into the actual meat and potatos – the entitlements – and all of the rest of the gifts to friends, family, and contributors that are sucking us dry.
Well, that was an easy guess.
Romney has too much Romneycare stink on him, so Huntsman is their new guy. Lovely.
I hope Huntsman gets buried. Deep. That way he could quit the campaign early to spend more time with the people he loves: Democrats.
Fixed it for ya, Mr Ambassador. Those (formerly private, government-sponsored) entities were the engines behind the financial crisis we are in today. They have served no useful purpose for at least the past 3 decades (other than Democrat Party ATMs), and can’t possibly serve any useful purpose in the future.
Mind you, Fannie and Freddie were hardly the only reasons, as we had politicians of both Parties at the controls, with their collective feet on the accelerator, mashing it firmly to the floorboards, with Acorn v Countrywide like hooking up a nitrous oxide injection system to Grandpa’s Buick.
And then, everyone was surprised with the wheels fell off…
How about we also make it so banks cannot sell mortgages unless they are going out of business entirely? That way everyone knows who holds the paper, and no bad loans can get bundled with good ones. A bank that makes too many bad loans goes under all by itself.
Naturally, while I’m dreaming, this idea includes the government not applying any pressure to make loans to those who don’t qualify.
Spiny Norman,
Except, eliminating Fannie/Freddie would necessitate a proper accounting of their actual finances. Right now, Fannie and Freddie obligations are kept off the books. Eliminate them and a few trillion in debt magically appear on the government finances. That might lead even Fitch and Moodys to downgrade us, which would require DoJ investigations, and those are expensive.
I’m actually for a massive simplification of the tax code, including elimination of home mortgage interest deductions. The present tax code props up a multi-billion/yr private industry of tax compliance and one of the largest and most intrusive federal bureaucracies in the IRS. A low flat rate with no deductions/credits is an egalitarian move that results in less distortion of the private market and fewer dollars wasted on non-productive compliance labor.
Yes, you end up paying more after-tax dollars for a home, but instead of your pre-tax dollars being 35% cheaper, they are only 18% cheaper, helping to mitigate the sting.
That said, tax reform is far from enough to make me consider Huntsman anything other than McCain without all the principles and conservatism.
Meow.
Rush was channeling ‘feets earlier, speaking of the three fiscal points we must stress to win this election: Jobs, Taxes, and cutting Regulations. We should shelve all SoCon considerations – illegal immigration, gay military-marriage, anything not laser-focused on the economy, for to save the Republic.
Jon Huntsman’s a moby. That is all.
cranky,
At some point, banks will then have no money to loan to anyone. Selling mortgages to the secondary market is not a problem, per se, it’s selling securities when no one knows what’s actually securing them, with the assumption that the federal government is backing them.
serr8d,
A moby? Huntsman is a Democrat/Establican stalking horse, waiting for someone to stalk.
Rush was channeling ‘feets earlier, speaking of the three fiscal points we must stress to win this election: Jobs, Taxes, and cutting Regulations. We should shelve all SoCon considerations – illegal immigration
I heard that and threw up a little. The economic implications of illegal aliens are absolutely staggering.
That means they have over-extended themselves then, doesn’t it? Why should they be able to make loans forever?
At some point, banks will then have no money to loan to anyone. Selling mortgages to the secondary market is not a problem, per se, it’s selling securities when no one knows what’s actually securing them, with the assumption that the federal government is backing them.
THIS. If Fannie and Freddie had not been Affirmatively Actioned, their credibility would not have been lost, the housing bubble would never have inflated, and this whole mess would not have happened. Secondary marketing of securities is not a problem in itself.
Why are they pushing this Huntsman cretin when Romney is right there, loaded with cash, and certainly RINO enough? It almost makes me think well of Romney.
Link
Actually requiring paper to stay in house would cause a severe correction in the market’s AND in the people’s behaviour. Banks would not have the reserves to loan enough or broadly enough and people would be required to have a lot more skin in the game – say similarly to the 1970s when at least 20% down and a top indebtedness of 33% of bills to income. On the bright side, it would incentivize people to NOT want the appraisal to be rising rising rising as the 33% limit severely cramps the top end mortgage payment and they would want the lowest payment for the biggest house (which is as it should have always been).
Private mortgage lenders would again rise to the fore and fill some of the void, though. It used to be that you didn’t have to go to a bank for a mortgage as private firms and people were willing to lend to home buyers and hold the paper themselves. Fannie and Freddie really did a lot of damage to the market just by existing and backing any and all comers. They put the private lenders out of business and severely turned upside down the home buyer’s expectations for what they should be aiming for when getting mortgages… smaller payments and an ability to repay them.
Someone explain to me how the outlook Stephanie proposes is more bad than good.
The rule-of-law implications of illegals is staggering, and the economic implications of the loss of the rule-of-law are catastrophic.
Huntsman’s tax thinger is OK, but now any of the candidates can pick it up and run with it. What, he patented it?
Too bad we’re not dealing with Huntsman Sr., a genuinely ethical guy who made his fortune when he invented that styrofoam they use for egg cartons and to-go boxes.
He’s determined to die broke, having given all his money away to worthy causes. He built cement factories in eastern Europe after an earthquake so that they could rebuild. He built a cancer center in Salt Lake that is designed to be converted into a hotel after they find the cure for cancer.
But Huntsman Sr. is prolly too ethical for politics, and it looks like this time the acorn fell from the tree and rolled down the hill for a bit.
Were I an evil person I would suggest that it would lead to smaller houses on smaller lots with more houses per hectare and bad smog and traffic jams… IOW, Los Angeles proper. ;)
Or Compton. Can’t forget about the shotgun nature of 50s housing.
If Jon Huntsman’s economic plan is so great, he should hand it off to someone electable.
/twisting the knife
So the greens would love it because it would lead to smaller houses meaning less energy expenditure. BIPARTISAN!
New houses are already crammed right next to each other. In the high desert east of L.A., they build developments in the middle of nowhere just like that. I’ll pass.
Yeah, but all those evil people spread out all over mother Gaia like a bee hive!11!1eleventy! And don’t forget about the trees! And the smog!! And the traffic jams with those evil cars polluting… High Speed Rail! Finally a reason for HSR – but with all the people spread out we’ll need lots more stops…
Hail, Obama Bringer of Super Slow High Speed Rail! Only moderately slower than your car and people packed in like sardines. What’s not to like? Frigging hippies will probably outlaw deodorant due to its causing 2nd hand allergic reactions in .001 of the population, too. All hail, BO!
“So the greens would love it because it would lead to smaller houses meaning less energy expenditure. BIPARTISAN!”
The “New Urbanist” Watermelon “greens” would love this. They want to ban your suburban home.
I thought the point Rush was trying to make was, lets not allow ourselves to be distracted from focusing on the economic issues, where there’s almost universal agreement that Obama is a miserable failure, when the Democrats and their media sycophants want to change the conversation to issues like abortion and illegal immigration, where we’re more divided. That’s not quite the same thing as saying social issues aren’t important. And anyways, it wasn’t his point so much as it’s Boehner’s, with whom Rush happens to agree. This time.
And besides, the current economic malaise has social implications that are just as staggering as the economic and rule-of-law implications of illegal immigration (to expand upon Crawford’s excellent observation).
Huntsman’s tax thinger is OK, but now any of the candidates can pick it up and run with it. What, he patented it?
And anyways, he’s not the guy who can deliver on it.
Obama is a
miserable failurescoamfRush was channeling ‘feets earlier
It occurs to me that Rush’s advice to not allow social issues to become a distraction from the core issue applies for ‘feets as it does for the rest of us scary Christers.
As in, don’t let the scary hoochie mamases scary hoochieness scare you into voting for Barak Obama. They have to save the economy from the looters before they can save your soul for Jesus.
Obama is a
miserable failurescoamfSo that’s what that stands for.
The only solution is to elect enough Tea Party Republicans to take over the party and appoint Tea Party people to positions of authority over the party. The only other option is splitting from the GOP and starting a third party, which would guarantee four more years of Obama, and probably more Democrat control well beyond that. Because the minute it happened all of the different Far Left elements would smell an opportunity and rush straight to the Democratic Party and make it even more leftist than what it already is. The best thing to do is just be patient and build things up gradually. The important thing now is beating Obama. There’s no way in hell Huntsman is going to get the nomination. Romney, yeah that might happen.
One of the first things that needs to change is the open primary system. That’s what gave us McCain in ’08. And if anything will give us Romney, or Huntsman, or anything like that, that’s what will do it this time. Well that and too many conservatives diluting each others votes.
Most of these point are right on, but Huntsman’s plan is straight up fantastic. If the fellow came up with another plank or two, he’d have a platform.
For real, that plan is great.
Sure. If a campaign promise means more to him than it does to Obama, and if he’s williing to work harder than Clinton.
There is nothing Huntsman could do to get me to vote for him.
The conservatives in the primary race should take Huntsman’s proposal as a minimum starting bid, a floor from which they can move to even more comprehensive solutions to getting the economy moving again.
36. Well, it’s the only thing he has done or said so far in his bid to be POTUS, other than to split the Mormon vote. So there’s that.
37. That seems to be a theme among voters generally when confronted with the man. Other than the fact that this is the only truly intelligent thing any politician has said in a few years, I might share your opinion.
Surely that’s untrue, Roddy.
I do share the enthusiasm for the broad outline myself though. We want broader and flatter? Well, this is broader and flatter.
Some other candidate can surely pilfer this off his campaign after he’s out of the race.
Something I didn’t mention earlier but upthread I see illegal immigration being referred to as a social conservative issue. I wouldn’t doubt that most social conservatives are against illegal immigration but I’ve never heard of that being considered a core socon issue before.
It’s more “law and order” than anything.
BH #42 They do seem to be more concerned about it than economic or national security conservatives, though I don’t know why that should be. I don’t particularly see myself as a SoCon, and it sure concerns me, for economic reasons, as well as cultural and security concerns. If anything, illegal immigration should be an umbrella issue that all conservatives should be able to agree on.
It was one of the things that Rush mentioned as being a distraction from the core of running on a fiscal conservative position. His view is that any of the candidates that truly run on the fiscal issues will be for the socon ones too anyways but need not push that to the foreground.
Number four, Bobby Orr.
Perhaps a modified version of this could work out nicely. During the last — continuing — crisis, it crossed my mind that we should create two asset classes for MBSs, transferable and non-transferable. Transferable would be treated as they are now but non-transferable wouldn’t count for mark-to-market and similar accounting rules.
immigration could be tied to the whole selective enforcement of laws by baracky. gibson guitar star witness.
Agreed, tpt. Or, to put it another way, it’s hard to be a conservative if you’re for wide scale law-breaking, forced black market economies and the creation of an underclass.
I was more quibbling with the categorization, Geoff, more than anything else. I would also like to see fiscal issues emphasized during a time when that’s what’s on everyone’s mind. Don’t have to give an inch on anything else but people care about the economy and jobs right now.
also what happen with gm bond holders, drilling in the gulf et al. illegal immigration doesn’t have play a leading role.
I was just trying to show where it came from bh. I don’t consider it to be a socon issue exactly either. Rush wasn’t on about socon issues so much as how the press will try to foreground things other than the fiscal issues and that we should not take that bait this election.
You’re right, nr. All these things are of a piece: their contempt for the rule of law. We should hit those notes as part of the same chord rather than take on the environmentalists, unionists and La Raza-types individually as if they were unrelated poor decisions.
Oh, thanks, Geoff. Didn’t catch him today. Guess I took a quick paraphrase too literally. My bad.
Douse himself in gasoline and smoke a cigarette?
The Wall Street Journal types excuse illegals on “economic liberty” — that labor should be as free to move around as capital. They don’t have the honesty to argue for changing the laws — just to maintain the current near-slavery system for illegals.
The party establishment types are blinded by the dream of capturing a minority population to vote Republican with the same loyalty blacks have shown the Democrats. They seem to miss the Democrats’ 175+ years of experience with racial demagoguery; that party has been doing it so long it’s reflexive for them. Plus, there’s the danger of alienating the Christian conservatives who are 99.999999% against government racial discrimination, so they can’t follow the Democrat model too closely without losing their most loyal voters and volunteers.
I don’t get why the national security types are blase’, but they inarguably are. Perhaps they just can’t bring themselves to consider Mexico a threat, even just as a channel for one. Or they’re too beholden to the establishment types to speak up too much.
Well it was toward the end of his show and he mentioned three issues, abortion, gay marriage, and illegal immigration as examples so it could be seen as about socon issues but those were just three he had articles that were pushing to have them be questions for the candidates.IIRC
“The party establishment types are blinded by the dream of capturing a minority population to vote Republican with the same loyalty blacks have shown the Democrats. ”
ruling class “slave” envy
I consider illegal immigration a social issue. But then I consider pretty much all issues social issues.
As in what kind of society do we want to live in?
I’m a societal conservative, I guess.
I like that especially when I combine it with your comment above, Ernst:
I’ve had similar thoughts myself. Start at Pygmalion. What’s the line about not being able to afford a rich man’s dainty morals? End with selling your daughters into the sex trade for a few thousand baht.
This easy but simplistic categorization doesn’t illuminate. We’re asking that question you pose. What kind of society do we want to live in? That entails quite a bit.
I suppose (perhaps know) that this is sdferr’s motivation with his approach. This is not new. It’s all about pondering good, good man, good life, and the city that allows such to exist and maybe thrive. They didn’t speak of these things as trifurcated before. Why do we do so now?
“They didn’t speak of these things as trifurcated before. Why do we do so now?”
the demonrats as a party won’t tolerate dissent on this issue which polls show 65% against their position. half the rethuglicans establishment agree with the demonrats. you can fight here only if you have someone who believes. perry and romney ain’t it.
Actually, I probably shouldn’t guess towards sdferr’s thoughts as I’m not a mind reader.
This is just one of the thoughts his comments and suggested reading put into my head.
I’m not entirely sure on that, nr. Not saying you’re wrong but just saying that I’ve spent about 3% of the research time on Perry that I’ll probably end up doing before next November.
ymmv maybe fun:
Link
mr rick has the texas’ problem of pandering to his constituents legal and illegal bh. it is what it is. then there’s romney.
Allan Bloom said it was because we stopped thinking of these questions in moral terms and, thanks to the importation of continental (primarily German) philosophy, started thinking about them in terms of values. Lionel Trilling said something similiar: we stopped imagining morally and started imagining socially.
In any event morals are involved.
And Germans.
And you’re quite right that quite a bit is entailed in the question. The trick, it seems to me, is in not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good (The leftist failing, perhaps) while simultaneously refusing to settle for the “good enough” when the better is genuinely achieveable (perhaps the right-establishment failing).
“And Germans.”
Basil Fawlty waits on the Germans
Damn Germans. What with their Kantian historicism and their Weberian sociology (he’s like Keynes that guy, his terms define the field, as we’re at pw and Jeff speaks to this) and other things I wrote poorly reasoned papers about back when grunge was fresh and new.
I’m tempted to get back to Bloom. I’ve read some but not enough in my youth and later youth. Been pushed back to Strauss lately. I’ll probably be pushed back again. That’s been the trend.
At my very slow rate, I might make it back to the future with Bloom in another couple decades.
Actually the Germans chaffing Bloom’s ass are Nietzsche and Heidegger along with all those Frankfurt Schule refugees who came along and seduced the academy with their Bier und Wurst voices and Sauerkraut charm and made enlightenment rationalism and liberalism look ridiculous.
And the Enlightement cannot afford to look ridiculous.
“Actually the Germans chaffing Bloom’s ass are Nietzsche and Heidegger along with all those Frankfurt Schule refugees”
idiot statists see Link
Heh, those are the ones chaffing my ass, anyways. Bloom, I’m sure, is a bit less pedestrian than this under-read dummkopf.
Admission? Okay, fine. I could give two or three polite cocktail party remarks about Heidegger. Tops. Think I maybe read something Kant related back in college. Don’t remember a word of it.
Come to think of it though, the academy was always a pretty easy lay. I mean, Derrida? Foucault? Who won’t the academy put out for?
Other than Jeff? [wink]
What was Heidegger’s beef with rationalism?
(I know I’m not paying for this education but think of this as pro bono work. I could be mugging people in the street if I didn’t have this hobby to civilize my ass. You don’t want that on your conscience.)
That’s two or three more than I could give, bh.
Heidegger, wasn’t he the Nazi fuck who used to bang Hannah Arendt?
I don’t get invited to many cocktail parties, as you can see.
“What was Heidegger’s beef with rationalism?”
sauerkraut maybe. goes better with schnitzel.
Heh. Also a Catholic, Ernst.
That’s all I got. Nazi, affair with Arendt, Catholic.
You, sir, are lucky.
I hit maybe 10 a year. Stupid clients. Stupid business. Stupid work.
They’re terrible. You can’t actually tie one on. Even though “cocktail party” sort of implies you could. It’s a lie. A dreadful, boring lie that can last hours.
What was Heidegger’s beef with rationalism?
I’m parrotting a single sentence in Bloom: “The fact that German thought had taken an irrational and antiliberal turn with Nietzsche, and even more so with Heidegger, was evident.” (Bloom, Closing, 149).
Gimme a cracker, willya.
You have earned a cracker. Possibly two.
Hello, breakfast!
Do NOT dismiss Huntsman. Have you seen the CREASES on that man?
Jeff I swear to God I don’t understand why you just don’t come out in support of a new party.