[…] Romney was a starter and fixer of companies, not a wrecker and pillager like Gekko. Nor did he do anything illegal like Gekko. Indeed, the private equity industry overall has been a powerful force for good in American economic life for the past 30 years. Corporate America entered the 1980s fat and uncompetitive. Private equity firms like Bain helped get it back in shape.
As one analysis puts it: ”During the 1970s, productivity growth slipped badly as ever rising product prices protected inefficient production practices. Moreover, many workers protected by strong unions were able to extract wage gains which failed to reflect the slump in output. … The sharp rise in the dollar from 1981-1985 worsened the competitive disadvantage of U.S. firms … America would have to undertake a massive adjustment program to repair the damage done to the nation’s competitive position. … Playing an integral role in the overall restructuring are mergers, acquisitions, and leveraged buyouts … an important catalyst in Corporate America’s struggle to regain its once competitive statute.”
And one study that reviewed the performance of private equity over the past 30 years concluded thusly: “The empirical evidence is strong that private equity activity creates economic value on average. We suspect that the increased investment by private equity firms in operational engineering will ensure that this result continues to hold in the future. Because private equity creates economic value, we believe that private equity activity has a substantial permanent component.”
And that’s the whole ballgame, really. Romney and Bain created value and increased productivity, which is the only true economic security for companies and their workers. And that approach not only saved many of the companies Romney invested in, it will save that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.
— that is, until Romney the non-Gekko proves incapable or unwilling to repeal the whole of ObamaCare, for which his MA state program served as a model. Or until he decides that human exhalation and its warming effects on the planet speak to the importance of maintaining a robust EPA, just as the need for energy supports “energy diversity” programs subsidized by government.
At which point we’re right back into big government overreach, bureaucratic entrenchment, and the diminution of individual liberty cast as compassionate government management of the common weal for the collective good.
And leftward ho we go!
But hey: at least we get to keep capitalism, right? Which, hurray for small victories!
I’m planning on keeping expectations for a Wall Street Romney administration very very minimal
but the trick to getting rid of obamacare is more a congress thing I think
Romney said he would repeal Obamacare on his first day. No candidate can actually do more than make a promise. I see you’ve gone over to rating capitalism as important as, maybe, the postal service. See what adherence to a crazy candidate can do to an otherwise sane man?
“the trick to getting rid of obamacare is more a congress thing”
And a people thing, too — and perhaps most importantly — by means of the people laying the wood to the Congress. Democrat Senators can be made to be uncomfortable, must be made to be uncomfortable in the face of an overwhelming outcry (not ginned in full, just yet, as it can be ginned in potentia), so as not to support an obstructive filibustery business. Unless, of course, the now minority opposition can capture a filibuster proof majority, which I think unlikely at this time.
Romney said he’d grant waivers. Then he started talking about keeping the good parts.
Huh? I don’t understand. Free-market capitalism is essential. As I noted earlier when I discussed how silly it was for GOP candidates to be attacking Romney from the left. Then I pointed out to Mr Pethokoukis how Mitt has other ideas that don’t fit neatly into the idea that, just because Romney was right about Bain means he’s a free market capitalist.
Walking and chewing gum at the same time is what my post was doing.
Since when is “waivers for everyone!” repeal?
I’m sure Mitt will really apply the pressure on Boehner and McConnell to pull the whole thing out root and branch.
Romney is out there today feeling sorry for Debbie Wasserman Schultz; He’s out there saying that what he did at Bain was no different than what Obama did to save GM
So now, all capitalists are equal and state-crony capitalists are more equal
What the hell is it exactly Romney is going to run on? “I’m not Obama, you don’t hate me yet“?
By the time Obama’s through with him, you will.
Either that, or make sure that the whole medical-industrial complex runs in a value-added and productive manner.
Strung together to show just how dicey things are, remarks like these could prompt one to ask if it’s okay to curse like a motherfucker on this here blog.
I’m sure Mitt will really apply the pressure on Boehner and McConnell to pull the whole thing out root and branch.
This presupposes, does it not, that O-care can stand by itself as a program? Given the bilious scope of the plan and it’s early failures, why should we believe that it will be politically expedient to leave it alone?
I don’t believe that I’m unique as a conservative in that I actually believe limited government and maximum freedom is the most pragmatic approach to politics and a growing economy. Conservatism works. Statist clusterfarks don’t.
O-care can become nothing but a miserable clusterfark because it is a miserable clusterfark of a statist fark cluster. The pols that want to stand under a nationalized healthcare tent as it collapses won’t have been known for their judgement. Mitt, even as a finger in the air opportunist, knows this.
Could his ‘fixes’ be as stupid and evil as the original? Sure and there’s no reason to believe that the US populace won’t flip back and become european after a Mitt presidency.
If this thing called America were a video game, I’d be happy to let the prog’s win the next round so we could arrive in the next with much pwnage. But it ain’t.
I believe Romney did eventually get around to saying he would repeal Obamacare, but the first thing I heard from him was about granting waivers to all 50 states (thus leaving the law in place), and I tend to believe that’s what he would actually do. That way he could tinker with it for a bit, and then allow it to go forward later after it’s “fixed.”
There’s nothing like internecine bloodletting to help keep this President. It’s one thing to point to someone’s record, it’s another to trash the notion of free enterprise and describe it in diminutive terms. Today Newt picked up on Obama’s themes of “a fighting chance.” You can’t think that any real conservative could endorse that. Perry has no clue—about anything. Santorum is a big government guy who wants government regulation. Even if you can say Mitt has the same problems, at least he has a chance of being elected. The others have the same chance as Sara.
That was good for a much needed chuckle JHo.
Look. The President can unilaterally grant waivers in the first hour. Anything else requires much more time. The President cannot unilaterally undo a piece of legislation. Honestly, this is such a disingenuous argument.
“The President cannot unilaterally undo a piece of legislation.”
Obama is busy testing that notion as we speak. Or worse, if we simply take the Constitution as the highest form of legislation possible. And oh my gosh, are we ever deafened by the universal outcry, across all media. What’s that he says?
Granting waivers puts the whole issue on the back-burner. “I already granted waivers, let’s move on to something important now.” Romney has a proven track record of thinking stuff like Obamacare is a good idea, from his actions. Words don’t mean much from a man who will say anything to be president.
There’s nothing like internecine bloodletting to help keep this President.
The same goes for a Rockefeller Republican moderate trashing the bona fides of the field’s more conservative candidates in order to prop up the dubious notion of his own electibility.
Sorry, Jeff. We are your readers.
“on the backs of the workers”
Rush is perplexed at having to unfold his own demonstration to himself that Rick Perry is clearly a moron. But, says Rush, he had such hopes. So had we many.
I was skeptical of George W. Bush back in 1999 talking about “compassionate conservatism.” The best that can be said of Romney is he’s running on the spirit if not the name of that same theme.
Running on it, which is bad enough. Actually capable of governing on it?
I don’t trust him that far.
What in the world are you talking about?
Here, let me help: Pethokoukis is right re: Bain: Romney was engaging in capitalism and needn’t apologize for it, nor should he be attacked by Republicans for being a capitalist. At the same time, Romney analogizes what he did as a capitalist and places it in the frame of the way he governs: as a corporatist. Hence, he says at Bain he was “creating or saving jobs,” etc., when what he was doing was making a profit, and that profit — and the mechanisms driving it — acting as correctives to poorly run companies. It was the market working.
Okay. Let’s put it this way then. I trust someone to want to press for repeal moreso if it wasn’t his fucking idea in the first place.
How’s that?
You know the difference between Socialism/Communism and Fascism, don’t you.
The former want the state to own everything, the latter doesn’t care who owns it as long as they obey orders.
PLAY BALL!
Apparently Romney is the first Republican to win both Iowa since 1976.
So it’s probably a good thing that he only won Iowa by media acclaimation. Otherwise, Obama’s chances of winning Jimmy Carter’s third term would be looking pretty good about now, what with Romney be Ford v. 3.0 and all.
Says Romney’s op-research, which he peddled to the media.
Santorum did not support TARP. Romney did. Santorum doesn’t support socialized health care. Romney did. Santorum doesn’t flirt with cap and trade. Romney did.
Santorum’s positions, like them or not, are clear and defined, and he defends them. Romney’s are whatever he thinks you want to hear. He’s a perpetual candidate looking for a constituency.
And now he’s found one in the “electability, do it for the team! GOPers”. Awesome.
Here’s the other problem with waivers:
The ruling class sets aside the Law as and when they chose, and I’m supposed to be grateful?
What do they think I am, a serf?
Don’t you just love a well-timed rhetorical question?
Word. Even the delivery reminds me of a character disorder.
I’d rather we got to keep free markets than capitalism, as least as it is practiced today.
Of course, the GOP will blame the voters when Romney loses, rather than admit the GOP had a lousy candidate.
“Of course, the GOP will blame the
votersconservatives when Romney loses, rather than admit the GOP had a lousy candidate.”Would-be Romney Veep nominees are hereby duly warned.
I’m not sure if this is another rhetorical question: At what point do we conclude that the current political system is not going to be fixed? The Dems have been hijacked by the fringe left and the Repub establishment is making sure that there are no true conservative candidates. Boehner is intent on re-educating the 70+ Tea Party representatives. Unless this Fall strengthens their numbers and resolve, we only have two choices – a high-speed train wreck or a slower one.
“At what point do we conclude that the current political system is not going to be fixed?”
R I Red, I take your thrust, since I’ve been dwelling there myself. Let’s attempt to make it a practical question, as opposed to a rhetorical question, with elements of theory included?
As for instance, suppose — supposing — that we’ve concluded the polity is already at or beyond the stage at which it might be “fixed” “repaired” “reverted” “reformed” or whathaveyou, toward the classically liberal scheme of government — nay, philosophy of politics say rather — that we here largely prefer and are persuaded is wisest, to the extent that we can recognize such a thing. We would mark the particular phenomena we believe persuasive on this score. The people. The representative actors the people choose. The layers of law and bureaucracy troweled on the original plan, both burdening it with excessive weight and changing its appearance and intents past any recognition in the plan the founders made. The courts. The power grabs, rampant on all hands, and in every nook and cranny, if not in every single act of government undertaken today.
The question then is — still supposing — what next (for us)? What would we do otherwise than we do today, were we possessed of certain knowledge of this state of affairs? What would be our strategic approach to solving the problem, or re-defining the problem, should that prove necessary? Here, I’m stuck. Stuck, that is to say, in the practical sense of the term. Where to begin? What is first?
I have ideas about that, but would prefer to hear others’ ideas than rehearse my own.
It’s not just Romney propoganda Jeff.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4784905
Santorum is a fucking nutjob.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/24/gop-2012-candidates/
You really think that a President who rails against the idea of having sex for fun is going to be able to accomplish anything other than making himself the most ridiculed in history?
“You really think that a President who rails against the idea of having sex for fun is going to be able to accomplish anything other than making himself the most ridiculed in history?”
no more so than the nanny staters who want every 8 yo to know to use a condom.
newrouter, don’t forget the all important anal fisting lectures for 8 year olds. Or maybe it was 12 year olds.
“traditional conservatives view the world, and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone, that there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture. ”
imagine a society filled with only nor luap peeps?
So which President (or presidential candidate) has made speeches advocating the importance of anal fisting lectures for 8 year olds?
Like: “One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the value of education about anal fisting in this country, the sexual puritanism idea and many in the liberal faith have said, you know anal fisting is not an appropriate topic for 8 year olds. It is appropriate because keeping such valid sexual practices from our children is puritanical and homophobic and that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Yeah, sure, a Democrat President could get away with that. That’s why those Santorum speeches are no big deal, and won’t really matter in a general election.
I leave Imagining to Lennon freaks, I try to keep a perspective on the reality I am facing. The reality is Santorum is going to get crucified just like his hero, which persecution I am sure he will see as proof of his own righteousness.
“which persecution I am sure he will see as proof of his own righteousness.”
so having core convictions and a willingness to fight for them is a problem?
candy apples are treats!
unless u mean mr mean man stick um up bum..
then they’re painful toffee fruit shit stuff that
remind me of happy days and jolly nazi guards like
that schulz dude
That’s Aristotle, by the way.
Santorum had a fair shake and people were like hey maybe we should make this guy to be the president but then people decided no maybe Wall Street Romney would be better.
Lots of these ones are the people who wanted to make Meghan’s daddy president so you have to put all this in context.
Is Wall Street Romney better than Meghan’s daddy?
Yup. I think so. But not by much.
Mr. buttons! Welcome back you were gone for many many moons and you were missed very much
Politics, bk 1, 1253a [35], roughly
Rachel, I think a democrat president could get away with just such a speech. We’ve already had one get away with calling his own hypothetical grandchildren a “punishment.”
Sure, there were some raised eyebrows, but hardly anyone blinked.
30-37 sdferr, according to the footnote to the text I lifted the Aristotle quote from.
I thought about lifting more, but you can’t get any whiter or deader than Aristotle.
heh, I think the old guy would accede to my clumsy centering efforts, circles being the special creatures they are, in his view, anyhow.
“People” didn’t decide anything, ‘feets. New Hampshire primary voters made their preferences known.
Now it’s South Carolina’s turn.
Re: #34.
The story is part of the “crucifixion”. Here is where the interview, done back in October, that the “story” is pulled from is at. Since it’s 45 minutes long then maybe this WaPo piece in the “She the People” section might do to give some perspective.
I think the trashing of Romney by the rest of the candidates is actually a good thing. Now that the rest of the field have revealed themselves to be a bunch of double-dealing nutters (I’m lookin’ at you Rick Perry) and are going hammer and tongs at Mitt, it will give only make these charges of “vulture capitalism” sound like yesterday days news that has already been asked and answered by the time we get down to the general election.
What new charge can Obama level at Romney that hasn’t been aired and beaten to death by the GOP? Obama knows less than nothing about business or economics. He may be the incumbent, but he’s thin skinned and testy. I wonder if he would even debate the GOP nominee?
I understand your frustration with the lack of traction that Santorum is getting, Jeff. He was never my candidate and he is about six degrees away from purity tests and loyalty oaths. His heart may be in the right place, as far as you’re concerned, but, and this is a big but, he is too weird for the average voter. I have my doubts about him being the best man for the job, and I would not want to vote for him. I don’t love Romney, but I don’t dislike him either. I voted for him in the primary last time around and was disappointed when McCain took the nomination.
What it comes down to for me as a voter is executive experience. Perry has loads of it and looked to be the best bet to me, until he decided to go crazy uncle in the last month. That leaves Romney out of the field that’s left. I know Huntsman was a governor as well, but, honestly, he is even more white bread than Romney, even if he does speak Chinese.
Romney has quietly built up support and good will from a number of heavy hitters over the years. I think on the world stage he will be able to get things done and to be respected. I want our country to be respected again. I also think the Supremes are going to throw out Obamacare as the unconstitutional piece of crap that it is.
“States have the right to pass even dumb laws.”
Super-cereal niggle, on the word “right”, just because: States (or governments) have “powers”, powers lent to them by the people, who, in turn, as biological or natural beings, are the possessors of “right” or “rights”. Yes, it’s a niggle, but not altogether an inconsequential one, I think. Cereally.
If being a tedious bore with a teleprompter is an unconscionable imposition, then we’re already living in a tyranny.
Of course the whole idea that Romney has “won” two in a row is just based on a “Typographical Victory” and some pig headed State Party heads. Sort of like the ones in Virginia.
You have to be a Democrat for the media to grant you the “ask and answered” treatment leigh. A Republican gets the “won’t give a satisfactory answer what’s he hiding? treatment.
Is that a slur on my hometown sdferr?
The last guy to win Iowa and New Hampshire both? Jerry Ford.
How’d that work out?
heh. Oh hells no geoffb. I just wish I could afford more of that product. Grubs again, grumble grumble.
reagan went on to kick ford’s ass in the south
Ernst, Jerry Ford was two generations ago. I remember the winning power of Whip Inflation Now! it wasn’t so winning, was it? Jerry Ford didn’t have a prayer of winning the election and that was carved in stone when he pardoned Richard Nixon. It didn’t matter that he did so to save the country from ripping itself to pieces and in so doing destroyed any future he had in politics.
His heart may be in the right place, as far as you’re concerned, but, and this is a big but, [Santorum] is too weird for the average voter.
So who are you condescending to more here, Santorum and his weird habit of living his life in accordance with the teachings of the church to which he belongs, or the average voter?
I’m ecumenical in my condescention, Ernst.
Yes leigh, that was two generations ago. That was kind of my point. (Mostly it was dismissing the two in a row! Big Mo! meme that’s floating around today.) New Hampshire isn’t the bellwether of Republican opinion it used to be.
Heh. I remember making a remark to you about Iowa hardly being a bellwether.
I didn’t disagree, did I?
“Grubs again, grumble grumble.” 21st century version of “down to seeds and stems“?
per levin in 1976 massachusetts was the next primary after nh
Speaking of cereal, the crew of the Endurance, once rescued, having for months lived on nothing but penguin and seal meat and blubber wanted, craved, nothing so much as a bowl of porridge. Serious business, our cereals. And then, too, come the lovely liquors. (Somewhere, I just saw a thing about Shackleton’s Scotch supply, bottled in roughly the 1890’s, I think, stored in a hut on Antarctica, recovered, tested, reproduced and replaced in the hut. What a world.)
Geoff, my son and I listen to Firesign Theatre CDs in the car all the time. 40 years on and they are still hilarious.
Shackleton’s Scotch supply.
So he is taking the “bully pulpit” literally and is just going to minister to us out of the White House.
Yeah, that’s a great plan. Just what we need.
About $200 a bottle.
It would be a good thing (or a bad thing, depending on your opinion of Romney*) if it were attacking one of Romney’s many weaknesses. It’s a bad thing, Romney aside, when the GOP field sounds like a Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Hugo Chavez roundtable on capitalism. They’re supposed to support capitalism, not demonize it. How the hell can you go argue for free market capitalism (assuming one of these tards could get elected) when you got into the office by bashing it?
Here’s a nice example of just how asinine this is. I give you Newt Gingrich, less than one month ago, referring to a previous attack of his on Romney’s work at Bain.
*mine is Fuck Romney, in case anyone was wondering.
Hey RI Red!
Can I call you a chicken?
Gratuitously, that is. Just to get it out of the way.
“So he is taking the “bully pulpit” literally and is just going to minister to us out of the White House.”
well a leader or mittens which: “flip or flop should i prioritize today?”. also the president doesn’t legislate jack pickachu.
Well, sdferr, since no one has taken the bait that you dangled in 33, I’ll nibble since I’ve been chewing on this for some time, with the resulting heartburn (sorry about all the mixed metaphors, etc.).
After posting, I stopped at a mid-level restaurant for a bite and noticed that there were no recession indicators there – business was brisk and prices had crept up a bit. My point? Human nature is to keep on doing what you’re doing until you are smacked hard by reality. Our body politic, such as it is, is going to put up with considerable pain before making the slightest change.
2010 elections were a bit of a reality check; 2012 with Romney as the (R) candidate is deck chairs on the Titanic. The country has to want to take back the American experiment if the Republic is to survive.
I’m pessimistic, because we have several generations of low-information voters now, ever since we abdicated the education system to the Left (Levin says it’s been going on for a hundred years, but I can only vouch for a part of that). I employ some very intelligent people, but their basic weltanshauung has been corrupted by their education; they simply do not question how different the Republic is now from how the Founders intended it.
Back to the reality check – We have at least $14 Trillion in debt, likely much more. It cannot be paid, reamortized or inflated away.We see little sign of the needed panic from our leaders to address the problem. We will go over the cliff. (more to come)
The Endurance crew were lucky. The Essex crew had to survive on the other “the other white meat.” IYKWIM&ITYD
Pablo, I think you may have mentioned your white hot hatred of the Romney once before.
I agree that the trashing of Romney is making our other candidates look like a bunch of noobs at this politics thing. I can certainly understand the urge to thrash him and thrash him soundly, but surrendering one’s conservative bona fides in order to, in this case, NOT score points with the very voters you are courting makes me want to take to my bed and hope that it’s all just a bad, bad dream.
The resident marketing genius said something about “low-hanging fruit” in another thread that’s apropos.
As in the low information voter vote? It’s been my experience that they don’t vote, just bitch a lot.
The low information voter isn’t taking this brouhaha in. By the time they get around to doing it, Obama will have clips of the Most Conservative Speaker Evah! and the Governor of Texas calling Romney the Vulture Capitalist an evil son of a bitch. It would not shock me to find Gingrich and Obama sitting on a sofa somewhere bemoaning the tragedy of it all.
I don’t despise Romney. I despise the idea of him being the standard bearer of conservative principles. I gather that he’s a nice guy, good family man, etc. What he isn’t is someone that will be a much better POTUS than Obama.
They vote in Presidential elections. How do you think we got Bumblefuck?
Thing about low information voters? They vote. That’s why they’re voters.
Goes down better with scotch I’ve heard Ernst.
Liked this movie.
No, more in line with the lazy libtarded attack on Romney being low-hanging fruit.
We take for granted that the American experiment will survive. But it is so unique in human history and it it is very fragile. This is the only time that the liberty of the individual has been the founding principle in any successful society – and look at how successful it has been! We have helped more people, raised more people out of poverty, and protected them against communism, national socialism and fascism.
So, what to do when it crashes? For me, it would be very easy to keep my head down, put up with the ever-so-incremental tide of regulation, redistribution and “fairness” and leave the problem to others. But I am old enough to now appreciate what our Founders did and I want to keep this unique experiment alive.
I think we have a duty to re-establish the nation. There will be parts of the country that are not capable of this; they are too far gone on the idea that goverment is there to take care of them.
But I suspect that over half of the country is ready to say “Stop – hit reset.” It ain’t gonna be easy and we may have to invoke some of our founding principles.
Or, we can sit around the campfire and sing Kumbaya.
Some french or belgian (I think —can’t remember & don’t have access to the book) expert recommended boujalais (sp?)
Tastes like
chickenvealfrom redstate “i luvs perry”
link
at this point even the fedora thinks perry is a loser
Never Trust a Pundit, Especially Me
I understand, Pablo. Romney isn’t my dream president, either. I do think he would be a much better president than Obama, but I think anyone of the chowderheads in the running would do a better job than Teh Won.
I say shame on Newt and Perry for going there on Bain Capital. I didn’t think they were That Guy, either one of them. It’s such transparent bs that Romney should, she said hopefully, be able to explain it away as business as usual, which it is. Obama has said so many stupid and outrageous things that there should be an entire archive devoted to it in his library when it gets built. Crafting some devastating ads should be easy money.
That aside, I’m counting on inflation kicking in hard this summer and watching Obama try to explain how he’ll fix it when he gets re-elected. When you’re pumping $4-5 gas into your car all summer, those promises are going to look like the lies that they are.
As I said above, it’s been my experience that the low information voters many times don’t.
Re: low information voters. The girl who used to cut my hair was big on the Rock the Vote thing last time around. She yacked about it all of the time. Guess what? She forgot to vote.
the problem with ricky perry and his 10th amendment “beliefs” is that he could have taken on baracky right now. but i don’t think ricky perry has any core convictions other than sound bites.
Do you believe that over half the country actually knows, in any serious sense, what it is that’s lost R I Red? It’s a hard thing to me. That is, I don’t. Not to say that half the country doesn’t or mayn’t have some vague sense that something’s gone awry, but beyond plainting, wouldn’t have a clue what or why, let alone what was required to erect that towering edifice in the first go, nevermind what would be required to make a new attempt afresh.
I agree that we’ll put up with much more, god only knows how much, afore something cracks and uprising takes place. We’ve lessons aplenty on that score. Still, it’s a difficult thing to imagine, how that will go, and wherefrom the active, lively resources of mind will come to drive a new effort.
Almost 130 million voted in ’08. How many do you suppose really paid attention to who and what they were voting for?
at this point even the fedora thinks perry is a loser
I will concede this point to the hatted one.
Oh, I’m not saying there weren’t a slew of them, Pablo. Flashy videos by Will.i.am? Who wouldn’t vote for the cool black guy over the old coot? We’ve really come to a pretty pass.
I think a lot of “fly-over” country gets it; the urban metropolises don’t have a clue. When Perry had the balls (or ignorance) to talk about the 10th Amendment and Texas, my ears perked up. Without throwing bait to the crazies, I also noted Beck’s relocation to Texas with interest.
There are certainly more thoughts in that direction going on than since 1861.
Do your thoughts run toward the possibility of the dissolution of the Union, even, R I Red? ‘Cause, I’m sorta getting that vibe. Not to say it isn’t one among the alternatives to be explored, just to say, I’m not sure I’ve pinned that down yet.
I think this is a completely different world than 08.
We need to stop the bleeding, then we can think about a heart transplant. I want someone with real world experience and an ability to communicate exactly what needs to be said clearly and unequivocally. If Santorum, or anyone else, isn’t planning of pushing legislation about something then shut the fuck up about it.
Right now we need someone to revive the economy, try to head off another world war, and start helping to get a Congress elected that has a shot at actually changing our fundamental political direction.
Think about the job requirements and look at the resumes.
You know the old argument, “OK, Blue States, go ahead and keep your tax and spend socialist approaches going; we’ll go the other direction and compare notes in 10 years”? That’s where I am right now. The details are a little discomfiting.
that’s why fedora and his ilk were stupid. gov. perry could have taken it to baracky as gov. of texas not as a 8th rate bumbler.
I concur that Romney shouldn’t ever apologize for building a business that made him rich, allowed hundreds of employees to build wealth and generated excess rates-of-return for his investors (the sought after “Alpha”) but JP at Reuters is just ridiculous if he thinks Bain was a tinkerer and improver.
Bullshit.
It was a ruthless and amoral hooverer of cash and asset stripper; it is beyond silly to assert some sort of Buffett corporate paternalism. A serial killer is more demure with his victims than a PE portfolio manager is when hunting an extra percentage point increase return.
Let’s be clear: The law and market practices are unambiguosly congruent that what Bain, and its rivals in major private equity shop land, did (and still do) is Kosher.
But no one should be fooled.
Personally, I am hoping for some Franken-candidate, bits and pieces of them all: Huntsman’s bust-the-banks strategy/Paul’s constitutional frugality/Perry’s muscular foreign policy and flat tax/Gary Johnson’s quitting the drug war and so forth.
So Im writing in Jeff.
“If Santorum, or anyone else, isn’t planning of pushing legislation about something then shut the fuck up about it.”
please more npr/commentery quotes on rickys with some ericerickson topping
I think this is a completely different world than 08.
We need to stop the bleeding, then we can think about a heart transplant.
This. A thousand times this.
We’re broke. We’ve lost our AAA credit rating. A ton of people are out of work. Energy costs are skyrocketing. The home mortgage market is on life support. Talking social engineering is stupid right now.
We’re going to hit the wall, go over the cliff, collapse or whatever else you’d like to call it. We’re too goddamn stupid to stop until we get the cold slap of reality upside our collective heads, and hard. It’s going to get worse before it gets better and I’m good and ready for it to get a whole lot worse so we can get on with the reconstruction.
Europe is going to go first, and then we’ll be right behind them, which is a blessed thing, because otherwise we might think that more of doing things their way is the right path.
We might as well reelect Obama, so that an ostensible conservative isn’t at the wheel when it all comes crashing down.
Be ready, my friends. Both for times to get rough, and to make them better.
“Personally, I am hoping for some Franken-candidate, bits and pieces of them all: Huntsman’s bust-the-banks strategy/Paul’s constitutional frugality/Perry’s muscular foreign policy and flat tax/Gary Johnson’s quitting the drug war and so forth.”
you go to battle with the army you have
Roddy, without incurring the wrath of Happy Feet, sounds like you are describing Ms. Palin. Oh, the Horror.
If this happens, the notion that we will then get to rebuild anything like we have now is pure fantasy. A collapse that total would bring about starvation, pestilence and global war on a level unthinkable.
Pablo, I’ll give Mr. Obama one cheer: he rushed us toward the wall faster than any other progg would have. You know how to cook a lobster so it doesn’t fight it? Start off with cold water and increase the heat gradually. Obama went from 0 to 11 and did us the favor of making us notice.
There are millions of people in this country that think Obama is doing a bang up job, that the only problem is that damned obstructionist house. You know, the one that already tried to destroy the economy by blocking the debt ceiling increase?
They are totally convinced that any economic failure is caused by the Republicans not supporting Our Beloved Leader. One of the main reasons is the Republicans have too many people that can’t keep their eyes on the prize and their rhetoric on point.
Obama scares me how much he hates America Mr. Red
Dicentra, I missed that one! Of course you can call me a chicken. Just don’t call me late for dinner.
Seriously, been reading your comments forever and much approve. As I told Jeff, I’m at the point where I now have to comment. Looking forward to where we solve all of the world’s problems.
Madison’s theory, expressed in Fed. 10, held that an enlarged — massive even, from his point of view — Republic wouldn’t be an encumbrance to stability in general, and therefore, to the stability of liberty in specific (the census pop. 1790?: 3,929,214 on 864,746 sq. mi.), due to the variety of interests or factions vying for their share of the pie, so cancelling one another out in the over-arching main, when coupled with the checks and balances lain into the very fabric of government(s): within the states, amongst the states, between the states and the central government, and finally in the tripartite powers in Federal govnm’t itself.
That population grew by a 10 multiple in a bit over 70 years, with the land area growing by 3.4 times. Could be Madison imagined the likes of that.
But is the theory still fit when held to a population of some 300+ million, and 3.53 million sq mi.? That’s an awful huge web of relations.
And even less, will the theory hold when the particulars are abandoned or let slip, one by one: taking powers from the people in the States, from the organizations within the States, from the States vis a vis one another, from the States toward the central government, and finally abandoning the markers of separation within the Federal govnm’t itself? Hardly, it would seem. So power accrues to them that gots it. And the thing goes down.
And then what? We’re well positioned. We’re fully capable of self sufficiency. We’re tough to invade, and I can’t imagine who’d be able to pull it off anyway. I’m not so sure about the global war. Lots of low level, localized skirmishes over resources is probable, but we’ll all be too busy trying to eat to be worried about world domination.
Ugliness is coming. Those parts of the world that aren’t steeped in Islamism are slathered in socialism (us and some of Eastern Europe somewhat excepted), and the economics, the math, is reaching a tipping point. Rearranging the deck chairs isn’t going to stop it, and that’s all anyone seems willing to do.
I was hoping we might find another Washington to lead us out of this mess this time around, but we don’t have one on offer. Gird your loins.
I’ve never tried it, Red. A big pot with a lid is all I’ve ever needed. :)
Well, Mr. Happy, you have hit it out of the park. He does hate America and promised to fundamentally change it. It’s hard to fathom how much damage a President could do in three years when he fundamentally disagrees with the checks and balances of the original compact. What’s worse is that the Congress were his willing accomplices for two years.
In future we should choose our presidents more wisely I think
“They are totally convinced that any economic failure is caused by the Republicans not supporting Our Beloved Leader.”
yes let’s take direction from the “pinball wizard”.
we need a better picachu talent here
@newrouter, rachel, ernst, by way of explanation, wasn’t there a guy in the Obama administration that advocated discussing homosexual sex techniques/behavoir with young kids?
Bolton (and thus Regis) have endorsed Romney.
Oy.
Need a hug, Pablo?
“@newrouter, rachel, ernst, by way of explanation, wasn’t there a guy in the Obama administration that advocated discussing homosexual sex techniques/behavoir with young kids?”
link
pickles
Getting advice on communication skills from newrouter is like getting diplomacy advice from thor.
darwin question: why is the “straight” peep in 3rd place?
I need a drink, leigh. Ah, there’s one now!
“Getting advice on communication skills from newrouter”
please do discuss what’s bothering you
Yes, Jennings had a history of saying stupid shit that he had to spend all his time explaining and defending instead of trying to do the things he really wanted to accomplish.
That is my fucking point.
I can just hear Madison and others saying, “Gay, lesbian and transgendered? WTF? The federal government’s job is to Raise Armies, Regulate Commerce and run the Post Office. You’re kidding me, right?”
Back to the topic, Karl explains why Romney is as incompetent as the next asshole.
On to victory! Or defeat. Or whatever.
“Yes, mittens
Jenningshad a history of saying stupid shit that he had to spend all his time explaining and defending instead of trying to do the things he really wanted to accomplish.I think so too. So there’s no way I’m voting for the guy who should have gotten the nomination four years ago. He was the right candidate then, not now.
mr ricky s tells ,at least, what he thinks. go mittens baracky behind enemy lines.
Respectfully, B. Moe, I disagree. The problem is too many Republicans think the prize is power, wealth and influence, and they won’t take their eyes off it. And that’s why they’ll say anything.
mr ricky s tells ,at least, what he thinks.
Precisely why I don’t like him. He does no such thing. He is an expeditious weasel in his endorsing of Specter.
“He is an expeditious weasel in his endorsing of Specter.”
keep beating obromneycare you gwb loser
hey did anyone say fuck you george w bush today? hardon/harvard dude don’t ya know?
What’s Obama going to run on, nr? That is the question.
Harvard and Yale. It’s a twofer.
hey that pic of romney and babs/grampa bush effin priceless. you go w you effin ahole. give me liberty or karltherovester!!11!!
I have a picture of Elvis shaking hands with Nixon, too.
He is an expeditious weasel in his endorsing of Specter.
And that’s supposed to make switch my support to the guy whose healthcare law became the model for Obama care, who’s own advisors are helping Obama with the home-mortgage refinance plan that was just announced, who can’t call Obama a socialist, who can’t articulate the difference between a gov’t take-over of a private industry and a PE (whatever the hell it is that private equity funds do), who has to rely on demeaning the conservative credentials of folks who’ve held positions for years that he’s held for minutes, and, lastly, claims to be a political outsider by virtue of the fact that he was only an insider for four years because he keeps on LOSING?
Anyways, I’d say Specter is the weasel, and that ought to be the larger lesson drawn from the Santorum/Toomey/Specter farce. Moderate & Liberal Republicans
can’tcan only be relied upon by conservatives to stab them in the back.“What’s Obama going to run on, nr? That is the question”
yea if we had this:
link
I’m done with all the not-Romneys they can go home now. I bet they’re tired and probably they all haven’t bonked their mistress in months.
“I have a picture of Elvis shaking hands with Nixon, too.”
my allen you’re dim
he wasn’t obliged to confess he wanted to say that
i’m tired of picachus. go to china fascist loser like freidman.
What’s Obama going to run on…?
1) BUSH! screwed things up way worse than we could possibly have imagined
2)things are moving in the right direction as the Hope and Change we enacted into law finally starts to overcome the horr of BUSH!
3)Do we really want to go back to the bad old days of BUSH!? Because this Romney fellow sounds an awful lot like BUSH!
4)Romney is the 1% (like BUSH!) I am the 99% (HOPE!)
5)What the fuck is wrong with you crackas? You really going vote me out of office? Fucking racists.
china is the future but mostly cause of America is turned cowardly and feckless, not so much cause of anything innately chinese
Wow. Never saw that coming.
it was an epiphany
Ernst, I’m certainly not trying to change your mind about Santorum. I want to vote for Mitch but he defered to the missus.
And I’m just laying out why I don’t happen to share the conventional view that Romney must be supported because defeating Obama is necessary. It may be necessary, but it certainly isn’t sufficient.
In any event, and hype not withstanding, it seems to me that Romney is the guy least likely to defeat Obama, and I happen to think any of these guys can defeat him.
That’s certainly possible. It posits the power of incumbancy over the edge of fresh blood to our numb cooling corpse of a country that still has a flicker of life. We can keep the corpse alive by forcing fluids while it is bleeding out before we make a transfusion of strong and healthy blood, we need to start closing up the wounds.
Romney is sort of a placeholder. He’s shown himself capable with a scalpel. We’ll see what he can do with sutures. At any rate, it is time for a new doctor. Be he Romney or someone else.
huntsman picachu
Yeah, he has shown himself capable. Too bad he’s running away from that reputation instead of embracing it. That’s his unforced error in response to Newt’s implosion and Perry’s unforced error.
And you shouldn’t amputate with a scalpel.
Okay, I have got to call it a night. But before I go, I want to throw in my two cents on the question R I Red and sdferr started to kick around above joined by Pablo, B. Moe and leigh (#33, #76 and #81-#115 passim).
The only way you can truly save the country is to give it up for lost.
That is if Romney or Huntsman get nominated. All he has to do is just go play golf while Santorum talks. The press will do his job for him.
Except this ain’t no fucking fairy tale, you lose it you ain’t getting it back.
The Conservative Purity test is the support of Cloward-Piven.
I fucking give up.
This is not support of Cloward-Piven. It’s the recognition that we’re headed that way, and no one is going to turn us around before we get there.
We should know better. We should learn from others’ mistakes. But we don’t and it doesn’t seem that we will. We’re going to learn this lesson the hard way, and learn it we will. I’d rather that this weren’t the case, but it is.
I didn’t think I was speaking in a fairy-tale trope, but “letting go of the thing you love” might work too, I’ll have to think about it. Just like I’ll have to think about the Cloward-Piven thing. That almost sounds to me like the proverbial tale of the father punishing his son for sneaking one of his cigarettes by making him smoke the whole pack. almost
As for giving up, that’s exactly what’s going to happen if we keep clinging to false hopes.
This stuff, the stuff of the question whether the country we love, or loved, [tense depending on our certainty, one way or the other, how the question comes out “Is the country lost?”, either “yes” or “no” (and still we love it, whatever the state of the it, the particulars of it)], is very hard.
Particularly hard given our plain uncertainty as to the answer (“yes, gone” or “no, not gone and not possible to be gone” or “not gone yet, but sure to be soon” or “on the edge of gone, salvageable, but not if we don’t do something now” and so on), made more so by the floating definition or specificity as to what exactly “it” is we suppose to have changed or disappeared.
Add to that uncertainty, our uncertainty as to what we would expect to accomplish — politically, practically — to amend, repair, stave-off, or to simply abandon to fate the change we believe we’re living through. Still, for all that, I think it’s good we make the attempt to tie ourselves down to some notions approaching our dim perceptions of the trends of the whole.
I think the only way to save the Republic is to accept the fact that the Republic is lost. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to say and do the things that need to be said and need to be done. Because if the Republic is already lost it doesn’t matter if we lose does it? Right now too many people are concerned about the consequences of losing to Obama to focus on what has to happen in order not only to defeat him, but to defeat what it is that he represents.
As for the Republican Party, the only way to save that is to destroy it.
Spot the difference if one cares to and is able.
I too Ernst, think it lost, long past lost in fact, lost such that I hadn’t noticed it being lost myself (lost years ago, years out of mind, years before I was born), and then had to spend years to learn it was lost (all the while, supposing, in my ignorance, that it had not been — even if I harbored suspicions leaning that way in the meantime). So, in a sense, step one.
But then, how are we to believe we’ll “save” something entirely disappeared?
We insist on a choice instead of an echo and refuse to go along just to get along, because it’s obvious we’re not going anywhere we want to go, and we say so without fear or worry.
We make the case for liberty always being preferrable to tyranny, however well intentioned the tyrants. We call tyranny tyranny without regard for the intentions of the would-be tyrants. We cultivate the higher things instead of settling for the low. (Better yet, we find a way to reconcile Aristotle and Augustine with Locke and Smith) We live our lives in accordance with our beliefs. We build communities —like this place for instance— we teach, we wait.
Take my meaning (“how are we to believe we’ll “save” something entirely disappeared?”) in this sense: while all that you ascribe there, or list, is to the good, and better for us than not, it’s the Republic itself that has gone missing, in contradistinction to those goods you prescribe, and with the Republic, the conditions upon which or in which the Republic was born, lived and flourished.
Which is only to say, I think, that if we’re to have or to find the Republic again, we’ll have to rebuild it or build something anew (or something like it) from the materials at hand, because lacking the thing itself.
Ernst and sdferr, I suspect that we don’t have choices, but that we will have opportunities. There are enough significant events in play that tell me that the West as we know it is done, just hasn’t realized it yet, but will figure it out when it is too late. Everyone knows the major scenarios – recession, depression, financial collapse, Iran/Israel, North Korea/South Korea, Pakistan, radical Islamization – or it could even be something as simple as a stolen election. Or an unforeseen Gavrilo Princip moment somewhere that is the first domino.
In my lifetime I’ve seen some scary times, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t think that I am exaggerating when I say that the current state of world affairs is riskier than I have ever seen. We may just have change forced upon us. The opportunities then arise to rebuild or build anew. Indeed the conditions are different and may not be conducive to replanting the seed. But it may be the only way. I don’t see the political will or power to un-rig the system in Washington, as corrupt as it has become. So, we build, we teach, we wait.
Holding geo-political events at arms length, RI Red, I’m drawn, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, nearer to wondering on the necessary ferment of political philosophy as such in the sweep of great events of change on the political scene, often pressed by crisis — and in the wider sense, I suppose, of philosophy as such (which, I believe, has always and everywhere accompanied the narrower sense of ferment in political-philosophy, as for instance, Hobbes’ concern with Galileo’s enterprise, or Locke’s with the human mind, or looking back further, Aristotle’s synoptic view of the whole, which I believe only reflects a similar stance Plato had taken, and Socrates before him) — all of which seems to me to be deeply problematic, to the extent that philosophy in general terms and political-philosophy in the specific, have long since been discredited among men, standing now in no good light.
Reason, it seems to me, has shackled itself by means of physical science. Our political thought has, in consequence, become dreadfully impoverished, both as an ongoing concern, and the more visibly as a concern of any teaching to our posterity. Indeed, this condition lays very nearly at the heart of the political collapse we see today, whether the utter political collapse on the progressive left, or, more dear to us, in the collapse of the Republic we mourn.
sdferr is correct; the problem lies with us-the people…
The cruel fact is that at the time of the American Revolution only around 1/2 of the polity gave a tinker’s damn about whether we stayed loyal to the crown or formed our own new nation. And of the approximately 50% that did care, the majority were tories! But most folks were largely focused on their day-to-day existence.
Thanks be to God that those we now refer to as “patriots” and “founders” prevailed…
But really, it’s not hard to see why in modern times there are so many “low information voters” influencing the outcome of elections. Better that they stay home on the couch salivating over “American Idol”, than installing one in the White House.
Among the other things that need to be taught to our young folks is good ol’ civics, instead of the post-modern indoctrination they now recieve.
Bingo to you both. Civics is not taught now as I recall it being taught in my youth. My 20 y.o. son confirms that in High School, the Constitution was lightly covered and not in its entirety. If we don’t teach the founding principles and the basic social compact to which we have agreed, how are our successors going to understand basic concepts such as personal liberty and unalienable human rights?
I might have added, had my brain been engaged, that Benjamin Franklin was among the founders of the American Philosophical Society — in which many of the architects of our political compacts joined him — and that his wide-ranging interests, genuine curiosity about the world, the widest world in which he lived, are well known. So too, we can say, was Thomas Jefferson disposed. There are simple ties between passion for the political and passion for knowledge of the world entire.
You keep running down positivism and materialism like that, and somebody is going to accuse you of being a big government pseudo-conservative that wants to shove your weird and archaic value system down the throats of freedom loving peoples everywhere. Probably because you don’t love freedom or the market or free markets and also because your a religious bigot living in fear that out there in the darkness somewhere, somebody is fucking in a way that won’t make a baby.