or This?

Rightscoop.com picked up on a fascinating call Mark Levin took on his show on Friday evening, and what made the call interesting on its surface was the subject matter, and the identity of the caller, Nicholas from Paris, France, and why he thought the world was in trouble given his country’s swing to the hard left in the recent election.  The caller was concerned for the US, and the notion that we are turning into France.  While that’s very important, and certainly bears examination, there’s something else in this call that I found revealing.  I want you to pay attention to what Mark Levin says in response, and what it portends for our future, here in the US. It’s not that it wasn’t clear, but that the context of the call actually serves to hide the worst, most frightening aspect of what was said in the exchange, and if you’re like me, you heard it too:

Levin responds by re-stating the caller’s root question:

“Your question though is “how do you get out of this?”

He then warns the caller that the answer isn’t pleasant:

“I’m going to tell you and you’re not going to like it.”

“The system will have to collapse before it can be rebuilt.”

Think about the context of this remark.  I don’t believe Levin intended it to be taken this way, but everything he tells the caller about France applies to our domestic political situation, including the way we “get out of this.”

I offer this to you because in my few spare moments lately, I’ve been giving some thought to the apparent futility of many of our efforts.  We hear from this caller that in his country, there is only the socialist answer for everything, and I wonder how familiar that this has become to us.  Whether it’s the leftist front and the Democrat Party, or the Republican establishment with their so-called “compassionate conservatism,” all of the answers are big-government, and all are oriented toward socialistic ideas and ideals.

This may come as a shock to a few, but I have long thought that what Levin here admits is true, and that in logic, this system cannot be sustained indefinitely is clear, but the fact that we will likely go through an excruciating collapse is less clear to many people.  The reason is simple, and Levin makes the argument correctly: There are too many people who depend upon this socialist welfare state.  There are too many interests invested in continuing as-is, and virtually none interested in stepping back from it.  The idea behind “austerity” is to try to get back to a sustainable basis, but as you can see from Europe’s results over the last few weeks, austerity simply won’t hold up over the longer run because people are too consumed with short-run comforts, particularly those obtained without effort through the welfare state.

If you believe that same mindset isn’t prevalent here in the US, you’re mistaken.  We are not immune to this thinking, and there is every evidence that we are on the same course, though perhaps a half-step or so behind.  This causes me dread, because what I am coming to believe is that until this country collapses, we will never rebuild it, and I am terrified that those who rebuild it will not be of the same character and temperament as those who established this nation in the first place.   More, I think we may see horrifying conditions erupt along that path, with violence unlike any we have seen or known since the Civil War, and perhaps much worse. In short, collapse seems inevitable, but what that collapse may bring could be even worse, and there is no guarantee that we will emerge as anything even roughly approximating the nation we had known.

or even This?

It is true to say that Obama and his acolytes will have a hand in driving us over the precipice, and indeed, they already have, but let us be circumspect in our evaluation of our situation:  The establishment wing of the GOP has been right there, guiding us in that same direction, albeit somewhat more slowly, but no less indefatigably leftward.  Mitt Romney might be our next President, but if so, what of it?  He, who established Romneycare in Massachusetts will be no more likely to lead us away from socialism than, for instance, Nikolas Sarkozy in France.  In fact, it’s fair to say that Sarkozy is probably a fair analog to the sort of “conservative” leadership Mitt Romney offers, which is to say: It’s not conservative, and it will not change our general direction, or the long-range result.  It will serve as merely one more delay or postponement.

It’s not my intention to cause you undue worry, but it is important that we remain somewhat clear-headed in our view of what it is we’re out to accomplish.  We may see a complete collapse of our country, and it may get as ugly as ugly gets, but I also believe, like Levin admits here, that it is probably inevitable.  What it means to the greater body of the American people is that if you ever wish to return to a free society, you had better start agitating and educating on behalf of such a society now.  Historically, few of the societal makeovers through which nations proceed are bloodless, never mind painless.  More importantly, however, only one came out as well as our adopted Constitution, but what it has demonstrated is that statism, given any loophole, either in the law, or in the culture, will multiply, magnify, and overpower all the restraints thought to have been place upon it.

Our founders attempted to give us a Constitution that would withstand such turmoil, but in the main, avoid it.  It was an imperfect document, but it offered the best shot at a nation built on the basis of individual liberty the world has yet known.  It’s  restraints upon the aggregation and growth of power in the Federal government were not strong enough, and while they may have been plain in the language of our founders, still the language was not plain enough to prohibit the power hungry from perverting the meaning, not merely of the text, but of the very words that are used throughout.  The academics have taken “the people” to mean a collective body, rather than “all individual citizens,” and in this way, we are slowly having our liberties stripped away and delivered to collective notions of “rights,” all to the detriment of individuals.

Ladies and gentlemen, Levin may indeed be right about this, whether he intended it or not, and it’s another warning you should take care to heed.   We are in desperate trouble, and much of it arises from the very contradictions that are slowly consuming us.  Many Americans claim to be “constitutional conservatives,” but I wonder what commitment there is to that idea in practice. Are you willing to undo all the statism that this characterization should imply?  I am, but for my part, I recognize that I am of some tiny minority that would be considered “extreme” both in France, and in the United States, in “polite” political circles.  I read the US Constitution plainly,  and I am versed in the context and meaning in which our founders wrote it.  I neither wear the rose-colored spectacles by which one might imagine into existence rights that cannot exist in logic, nor do I wear the dark masks of those who wish to conceal their grasp for more power.

Our nation cannot survive on its current course.  Cannot.  Will not.  Whether the election in November provides us another four years of the aggressive, lurching tyranny that is Obama, or the more careful, plodding nanny-statism of the Sarkozy-like Romney, the direction is the same, with only the speed along our course varied by the result.  The fundamental issue that confronts us in our time is the same as that which confronts the French or the Greeks, and what would be required to see the salvation of our nation is that which people across Europe now seem to refuse: Austerity.   Austerity is merely the willingness to tell oneself “no” in the short-run, at pains on behalf of a better long-run, and to date, I have yet to see any evidence that a majority of voters (never mind legislators)anywhere are inclined to such self-imposed discipline.  Knowing this, the end of the story may indeed rest in the sentence uttered by Mark Levin:

“The system will have to collapse before it can be rebuilt.”

If it’s true of France, and one could suppose that it is, one might ask whether it isn’t also true of the United States.  What will we be, as a nation, and as a people, when we have been reduced to a sort of atavistic tribalism in which volitional production is replaced with legalized looting of one’s neighbors?  What will the context of that culture impose on the sort of law and governance that emerges?  Do we dare to hope it might in any way resemble  the masterpiece of 1792, much less exceed it?  My pessimism on the subject may reflect my own recent experiences, but history’s judgment is no less worrisome.  If we are to become again a free people, we must change our course entirely. We must identify our malady, and cure it.  Instead, what we now seem to do is to pretend it away.  Until we learn to say “no” and to mean it, we are merely bringing a birthday cake ablaze in candles and gaiety to a what is instead a terrible funeral, with a dirge as our melody.  For those who have mistakenly thought “it could never happen here,” however one might define “it,” the simple truth may be that we’re already well on our way.

It may well be inevitable.

I hope you are hanging in.  Spring is always a crunch-time both here on the farm, and it seems, at the off-farm job.  Between the two, I’ve been putting in outrageous hours, sleeping even less than usual.  I hope that by the end of the first full week of June, things will ease back a bit, allowing me more blogging time.  I realize this is a disappointment to some, but there’s really no way around it.  Others take vacations.  I take on more work.

Thanks to you all for passing along the blog to so many people. I really do appreciate it.  I’m amazed at how many of my older articles have been revisited.  Thanks particularly to “Unit” for posting some interesting links.  I really do appreciate it, Tom!

Producing Our Economic Life-blood

Over the life of this blog, one of the subjects that has arisen repeatedly is our energy problem, and the effects Obama’s policies are having on our nation’s economic condition.  I have offered you charts, graphs, economic theory, and an understanding of why we remain in the economic trouble we’re in, and much of our troubles originate with energy concerns.  Again validating what I’ve previously reported, global oil prices are now falling in response to the economic outlook in the US and in Europe.  The reason I again bring this to your attention is not to thump my chest, since there’s nothing revolutionary in what I’ve argued, but instead to reinforce the point, because in the broader media, there are too many sources interested in obfuscating and otherwise muddling the matter.  To have a growing, vital economy, the US has relied historically on inexpensive energy.

The American economy is a vehicle of vast capacity for growth, and the American people remain its vital engine, both as consumers and producers.  What the Obama policies have done is to choke down this engine, and the result is an economy that is bottom-bouncing at an idle, struggling for air that a reckless government policy forbids it to consume.  Every time the American people start to accelerate, the market effects of the regressive policies of our government govern the capacity of our economy like a vast engine choke. You could rightly call the policies of Barack Obama the “stuck choke” of American economics.

An engine makes a great analog for the state of our economy, because an engine must both consume energy, and convert it into motive power.  In a healthy state, that’s what the US economy does, and it’s why we must not ignore the grave costs of the current Obama policies.  Consider what happens when you step on the gas in your car:  The throttle opens up, allowing the engine to draw more of the air-fuel mixture, permitting the engine to accelerate, reciprocating more rapidly, and those converting the energy to the horsepower needed to make the vehicle go.  This is how our economy functions: It’s demand for consumption increases, and we have traditionally answered it by permitting more air-fuel mix(energy and capital) into the engine, and it accelerates(grows) providing output some of which is reintroduced back into the stream going in.  It’s a marvelous thing, and the prosperity of every American increases on average.

The situation we’ve been placed in by the Obama policies, combined with the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve is that the air-fuel mix becomes prohibitively expensive.  Imagine driving down the road at 30mph in order to conserve fuel.  You could come up to speed, but because fuel is so expensive, you really can’t afford to put your foot in it, so instead, you patiently move along at a snail’s pace because you’re trying to do the minimum consumption you can manage and still get to your destination.  This is what happens each and every time the economic engine gets going these last several years:  The price of fuel begins to tick rapidly upward, we get a price spike, and everybody goes into conservation mode, and as a result, the economy slows down.  Naturally, as soon as the economy slows, the prices for fuel begin to fall again, and one can expect that at around the time they hit the bottom of the trough, people will begin to feel safe accelerating their cars back up to highway speeds, and the process begins once more.

The slippage in oil prices this week constitute a warning, because what it implies is that you’ve already hit that point of conservation.  Of course, it’s not merely consumers, but businesses and every form of productive endeavor that uses energy, which is of course all of them.  In that environment of rationing, what occurs is that people necessarily become more frugal, but so do businesses.  It’s unavoidable.  You can only afford to spend so much of your capital on energy, because you must still pay for all of the other necessities of living, and the United States has been operating very close to this line for several years.  A rational Federal policy would realize that this is a supply-side problem, and that to alleviate the problem, what we must do is increase the supply of energy available to the market, but our government has instead answered with tepid notions about conservation, and highly speculative and fanciful programs for “green energy” while it chokes off the supply of real energy to the market.

This is our situation, and the current drop in oil prices is a result of the fact that our economy is again on the downside, and that is further substantiated by the poor numbers of jobs being created.  At this point, it should be so obvious to every living person with two brain cells remaining to clack together that there ought to be a national movement to remove any politician who isn’t focused on this problem.  Instead, we have an administration that is dithering, and is actually making things substantially worse through its regulatory paradigm that insists America simply do more with less.  This insane, nearly maniacal policy is impossible to sustain, because it is driving us to the poor-house, and yet the radical left is fine with that outcome.  They want to make us poorer, and the reason is clear:  Poor people who must choose between groceries and gasoline are easily managed by a central authority, and they are only too willing to do the “managing.”

Let us place this in context:  Imagine that you have a home that is all electric.  Many Americans do.  Imagine that the power grid that supplies electricity to your home generates that power with coal, oil, and nuclear processes.  You might also have a little hydroelectric power, or a little wind and solar, but on average, those supply only a small fraction of our power generation.  Remembering that oil derivatives are one of the primary fuels used in power generation, what happens if we take away one of the others, like coal?  Coal currently provides half of our electric generation, nationwide.  What happens to the price of oil and all its derivatives, including the gasoline or diesel for your vehicle when coal is taken away from power generation?  The answer is obvious, and so is the result, because we’re living it.

Understanding the relationship between energy and our economic prospects is key to understanding our current economic malaise, and the impending disaster we face if our policy is not soon changed to promote more energy production, and to unshackle energy producers from the chains that prevent them from providing to the market the energy that a growing economy requires in order to sustain itself in that state.   This is why Newt Gingrich’s idea of $2.50/gallon gasoline was important, and it’s also one more reason so many of us had hoped that  we would see a Sarah Palin candidacy, because she understands, perhaps better than any other politician in the country, how thorough is our reliance upon energy, but also how to best develop the resources we already have at our disposal.  We desperately need an “energy President,” who understands that growth and prosperity are only possible with abundant and inexpensive energy, permitting the American people to do what they already know how to do, and want to do: Build, grow, and prosper.

The proof of this thesis is contained in our cycle of boom-spike-conserve-bottom. When energy prices fall, the economy (and the American people who drive it) respond with jobs, growth, and productivity.  The problem is that in our current environment of government regulation and governmentally-induced inflation, when the growth begins, the price of energy begins to immediately climb upward, eventually spiking to unsustainable costs.  This places the entire economy into conservation mode, and very rapidly, we slide to the bottom again.  It’s no longer a matter of proving the theory.  It’s proven, and the evidence is all around us, but until we make the conscious decision to end the misery, we’re stuck.

Brokered Convention Still Possible?

I just received this video via email, and I thought I should share this with readers because it provides an interesting report on the matter of delegate counts, and whether this primary is really over after all.  More, it provides some interesting tidbits on the activities of the RNC.  As you know, Ron Paul is still in the race, as is Mitt Romney, and the reason that’s important is because RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has directed staff to “open up channels of communications” between Romney’s campaign and the RNC. That would most definitely seem to violate the RNC’s rules while there are more than one contestant in the race.  We’ve known the RNC was in the tank for Romney for some time, but once again, this serves as further evidence of how they will do anything to advance their chosen candidate.  Here’s the video report from Ben Swann on Cincinnati’s WXIX News:

As you can see from this report, if the “unit rule” isn’t applied, then Mitt Romney may be looking at an open convention after all.  Look out!  “It ain’t over ’til it’s over…”

Swann also provided the link to thereal2012delegatecount.com in the course of his report.  At present, the count shows 697 delegates for Romney, but he needs 1144.  It would provide the irony of ironies if Ron Paul actually wound up forcing a brokered convention.

Conservatives?

One of the things I’ve already noticed is the start of the excuse-making on the part of the Republican establishment.  They shoved Mitt Romney down our throats, but some of us have vomited him out of our mouths because we simply cannot tame the bile-raising nausea we feel in the pits of our stomachs.  The immediate response of the GOP establishment has been to manufacture a narrative that will effectively blame conservatives if Romney loses.  They won’t blame his lack of conservatism.  They won’t blame his duplicity or his negative primary campaign.  They won’t blame their own complicity in setting us up with a candidate we don’t want, but what they will do is blame we conservatives, and it’s starting already.

I don’t play that game.  If they wanted to win this election, they could have supported a conservative candidate for a change, but they are very much a take-it-or-leave-it crowd.  You see, if they don’t get their way, they take their ball and their donations and go home, all while they insist we conservatives are to blame if we respond similarly, leading to the defeat of their chosen candidate.  The problem the establishment faces is that conservatives still remember Ronald Reagan, and they know too well that genuine conservatism wins.  They can continue to scapegoat conservatism, but we shouldn’t accept their excuses any longer, and we shouldn’t fall into the trap that this year’s crop of post-defeat planners are already laying.

If I owned a hot-dog stand and after years of selling barely palatable wieners,  I go to something even worse, my customers will likely find them disgusting, causing them to flee.  Do I blame them for their lack of “loyalty?”  I might even cry “but you’ll starve without my hot-dogs,” but will they?  I might appeal to their sense of loyalty as customers of long-standing, but if they don’t like my product because it’s terrible, who is to blame?  Them?  Or me?   In making the loyalty argument, I must purposely evade a concept my customers would be right to throw in my face:  If I were loyal to them, I wouldn’t try to feed them bad product, and rather than worsening it, would concentrate on improving it.

They may even appeal to my patriotism: “How can you let Obama win?”   As with the loyalty argument, I again turn it around:  How can they offer us a candidate who they know many of us will not be able to support, if they care about the country?  In a free market, such intransigence would soon lead me to go out of business, and the fact of the matter is that the same is true of the GOP establishment.  Of course, they’ve tried to rig the market in their favor, but it’s really not possible in the longer run.  They use their influence, given them by means of our votes, to solidify their hold on the “market” of political ideas, and it is our willingness to do so that enables them to continue.

The good news is that we can still make gains from this election cycle.  We can still elect conservatives to all of the down-ballot seats, and as is now plain from polling data in Indiana, where Richard Mourdock is now leading Dick Lugar despite a multi-million dollar campaign against him, it’s evident that we conservatives can still turn the tables on the establishment.  In Texas, we’re having a bit more of an uphill battle as the establishment guy, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst continues to run slightly ahead of Ted Cruz and a whole slate of lesser-known candidates, but with less than a month to go, it’s still close enough that it’s anybody’s race and we may well wind up with a run-off, in which case Cruz looks stronger.

The basic point is that irrespective of the Presidential race, we can still have a significant impact in 2012.  If we can sweep away some of the liberal Republicans in the Senate, and replace a number of the Democrats who are up this year with conservatives, we can stymie President Obama and aggressively pursue him should he continue to use illegitimate executive powers to run an end-around on Congress even if Romney loses.  If Romney wins, it will leave us with some means by which to exert control over him.

Of course, the establishment won’t go quietly.  They will continue their game, and part of their play is to make you feel as though you must support their guy.   Once you realize this, it’s easier to understand how it is that they can sell you a lower quality hot-dog, and you will be forced to swallow it, disgruntled though you may be.  In the end, they know that while they are not really the sole source, or the sole choice, they are the sole choice you can bring yourselves to make.  It’s true in both parties, but what this really means is that in most respects, our country is ruled by a political oligopoly that wishes to leave you with no other alternative.  They can afford to wait you out in most cases, because even if you sit out an election or two in protest, you’ll eventually be ripened by some issue to come back to them for harvest.  This is why they’re willing to lose elections in order to punish you.  After all, it won’t hurt them much, but let’s examine who loses what, and under which circumstances the losses really occur.

If Mitt Romney loses in November, does the GOP establishment lose?  I contend to you that they not only win, but they have set up the manner by which they will win big in 2016.  By then, assuming the country endures(and I believe it will,) they will have managed to create some substantial sense of Obama-fatigue.  Its early manifestations are already showing up in the polls, but you see, for the elites of the GOP establishment, none of it will make any difference to their immediate health, safety, or prospects for continuing profits.  In short, they won’t be hurt because their money insulates them.  Your farms may go down, your businesses may crash, your jobs may disappear, or you may find yourselves in other calamities, but none of that will bother them.  In fact, it will tend to make you more compliant with their desires and demands in the future.  If you’re starving, you’ll take my low-quality hot-dog any way I wish to serve it.

It’s for this reason that they don’t mind losing an election or two(or ten.)  If it serves their long-run interests, it may even be preferable to victory.  It also gives the Republican establishment an opportunity to defame conservatives[again.]  This makes it easier for them to win in the future, because if they can succeed in painting conservatives as heartless, inflexible ideologues who would rather lose than compromise, it makes it all the easier to sell the American people a “compassionate conservative,” who does not actually exhibit the first substantially conservative trait once examined closely.   It’s for this reason that I believe the Republican establishment will be happy to see Mitt Romney lose, because in 2016, you’ll be only too thrilled if they offer you Jeb Bush.  At that point, you’ll vote for the most liberal Republican they throw at you if only you can get rid of the Democrats.

Viewed in this manner, the GOP establishment knows it has conservatives over a barrel, and that’s what they’ve been working to do throughout this election cycle, and in perpetuity.  I realize that the choices they offer us are abysmal, because that’s the nature of their game.  Where I will not budge is on this notion that conservatives will have been at fault if they do not support Mitt Romney in November.  Viewed as any other business competing for customers or clients, the Republican Party has a responsibility to put forth an acceptable candidate.  Failing that, it is they who are to blame, and it is they who are culpable in any defeat suffered.

Of course, that assumes they want to win(in 2012,) but given Mitt Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts, I’m not convinced that’s the case.  They have intentionally put forward a man who is a veritable “poison pill” for many conservatives, and I don’t believe it’s accidental, or somehow the result of political happenstance.   Besides, from the GOP establishment point of view, this allows them to kill off a whole flock with a single stone.  Conservatives and Tea Partiers will take the blame, and they’ll be able to sell us on almost anybody in 2016 when they’ll have an easier time winning the Oval Office because it will soon be vacated anyway.  That’s Win, Win, and WIN from their point of view.

Conservatives and Tea Party types should be prepared for the moment when the blame game begins in earnest.  They’ve already begun to push this narrative, and that’s to be expected, but should Romney lose(and many are fairly certain he will,) you can bet that the morning of November 7th, the questions will commence on FoxNews and other establishment outlets:  “What’s wrong with conservatives?  Why are they so hard to please?  What will we do about the Tea Party?”  Bank on it. Even now, the recriminations are beginning, softly, gently now, but they will build to a crescendo by November the 7th.  I actually had a telephone call from one conservative campaign fund call and urge me to contribute on the basis that Mitt Romney probably cannot win, so we need to shore up the Congressional side, and yet there are those conservatives who say I am a gloomy guy?

On the other hand, if Romney manages to win, this will be an even bigger victory for the GOP establishment:  They will have been able to put up a liberal Republican, and out of sheer desperation, have conservatives support him.  Game over! At that point, conservatives will have no means by which to restrain a Romney administration, because they will have been a paper tiger.  This is the dilemma we conservatives face, which is why I still hold out hope, slim though it may be, for a brokered convention.  There’s a reason Romney is having a closed-door meeting with Santorum, and you’d better believe it’s about trying to get more support.   I don’t think conservatives can afford for either Obama or Romney to win, whether out of desperation to rid ourselves of Obama, or in order to avoid the inevitable scapegoating.  In particular now, it seems the GOP establishment is going after Palin supporters.  Ah well, yes, most of us are accustomed to that, as the same crowd tried to make a scapegoat of Sarah Palin in 2008.

The simple fact remains:  I can’t see how Mitt Romney’s supporters or the GOP establishment will be able to carry off such scapegoating with any credibility.  After all, how unpalatable must a candidate be to lose to an incumbent who has unemployment at around 8%, has record deficits, has added trillions of dollars to the national debt, has overseen the devaluing of the dollar, starved us of fuel and energy resources, hobbled our military, aided our enemies, abandoned our allies, and generally made a wreck of things?

Just how bad must a Republican be to lose in that kind of environment?  How thoroughly must he have been disliked, not only in the general electorate, but in his own party in order to lose despite such conditions?  How thoroughly has his campaign offended some sizable number of conservatives?  Should he expect such voters to shut up and eat the week-old hot-dog he’s selling? Are you ready to paste your palate with that stale, low-grade bun that’s been in the steamer rack four times this week?  The GOP knows what it’s doing.  You still believe, innocently, that they want to win, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that they do not, and I’m not willing to let them off the hook by playing the role of scapegoat, and I won’t eat sorry hot-dogs for a notion of loyalty that is clearly unidirectional.

Conservatism Rides On Roof...

Signaling what may be the beginning of a new round of endorsements of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann(R-MN,) endorsed Romney on Thursday, but one wonders how she squares this endorsement with her position prior to exiting the race that Romney “cannot beat Obama.”  This may be the beginning of the big push to get everybody to rally around Romney, with Newt Gingrich having suspended his campaign officially this past Wednesday, and it may leave some number of conservatives in the lurch, including me, because I’m really not interested in endorsing Governor Romney.  On the basis of the adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I find I’m in the position that I have no choice.  I’m not the sort to tell people how to vote, as I would rather make my arguments and leave people to decide on their own, so I’m rarely inclined to “endorse” anybody.  Naturally, as you might expect, any sort of “endorsement” I might offer will be fully justified in the context of my arguments, unconventional though it may be.  In order to explain myself, I need to catalog my reasoning:

Mitt Romney is a spineless wonder when it comes to confronting not only the left, but also the media.  He stays away from interviews he thinks might go poorly for him, considering the particular outlet, and this makes him positively disgusting in my view.  I have no problem with a candidate avoiding a liberal outlet on which it is believed a fair shake will not be offered, but to avoid interviews on conservative shows is another matter.  In virtually every issue over which there exists controversy, Willard remains aloof until the dust settles, never staking out a firm position until the outcome is already settled.  Remember the Debt Ceiling debate?  He had nothing of merit to say until it was over.  Remember the issue of Eric Holder and “Operation Fast and Furious?”  While others called for Holder to step down, and still others called upon President Obama to fire the Attorney General, Mitt remained quiet about it until the evidence was completely damning, and Holder had been criticized broadly.  That’s Mitt Romney’s leadership style, and if you’re going to replace Obama, you might just as well get somebody who joins President Obama in “leading from behind.”

Mitt is the father of Romneycare, and Romneycare begot Obamacare.  If you’re a fan of socialized medicine, this is your guy!  If you like health insurance mandates, and if you really love the notion of death panels, you have found the guy who brought this system to America.  He won’t repeal Obamacare, although he may tinker with it a bit, and if you’re into big government programs, the Republicans couldn’t have picked a better nominee.  Mitt Romney is the son of a liberal Republican archetype, so none of this is really a surprise.

Mitt Romney is a loser.  That’s what Republicans do when they nominate liberals only barely disguised as conservatives, and if you liked the Bob Dole campaign of 1996, you will absolutely love Mitt Romney’s.  He’s been endorsed by a whole slate of Bush-clan members, minus the most recent President Bush, and he’s the establishment’s chosen son.  If you liked the communitarian policy preferences of George W. Bush, or for that matter, his father, you’re going to love Mitt Romney.  If you want somebody who will carry on the Bush dynasty, throwing occasional bones to conservatives while holding court with a bunch of liberals, there has been no finer example of the type seeking the GOP nomination in 2012.

Mitt Romney is not a conservative, despite the pretense, and while the media will do its best to portray him as such in order to attack conservatives, the simple truth is that he’s more inclined to be one of theirs than one of ours.  He will be hammered by the press as a member of the elite, and a rich Wall Street guy, who is out of touch with mainstream America, working-class America, and so on.  He fits the template of the candidate against whom Barack Obama most wishes to run.  He relies upon his own version of Alinskyite tactics, since his father George Romney thought Alinsky was a peach.  We don’t need to worry about Mitt Romney dredging up Saul Alinsky in this campaign, and raise any issues that might be uncomfortable for Obama.  Isn’t that swell?

Of course, if you like failed campaign tactics, consider what Mitt Romney has employed throughout the primaries.  He and his supporting cast of super-PACs have absolutely demolished every opponent, by running dishonest attack ads to a degree I believe is unprecedented in Republican primary campaigns.  He has managed to demoralize conservatives to a degree that some will simply never vote for him, and that means he’s placed his own election chances in serious jeopardy.  His strategy rested upon ad buys that outspent his opponents by as much as twenty to one.  Of course, nobody in the media is asking how this strategy will translate to a general election campaign, when he will not have such an advantage over Barack Obama, and besides, he won’t want to offend any moderates or liberals.  Offending conservatives is fine where Mitt is concerned, but one simply mustn’t offend the left.

Considering all these reasons, I therefore believe it is nigh on inevitable that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and candidate for President, and he will almost certainly, inevitably lose the contest to Barack Obama, barring some completely unknown factor.  Of all the Republicans the party could have chosen to best and most thoroughly lose the coming presidential election, I believe Willard “Mitt” Romney is absolutely the most thoroughly qualified.  It’s clear that the party establishment intends to lose this election, so that they can put up another insider, perhaps another Bush, and Mitt Romney makes the perfect place-holder.  He’s safe.  He stands little or no chance of victory, and that will clear the path for Barack Obama’s second term, and an incumbent-free oval office in 2016.

Since it’s fairly clear to me that the GOP establishment wants to lose this election, as is clear by its “inevitable” nominee who at last seems to fill that role, I believe I will support the Republican party in its goals.  They didn’t want conservative support, and they tried to close off conservative participation, and I am in the mood to grant them their wish.  Many conservatives aren’t excited about a Romney candidacy, because they know even if he were to win, they will spend the entirety of a Romney administration not battling liberals, but instead in a constant battle to prevent Romney from going along with the left.   Even if Mitt Romney manages to beat Barack Obama by some cosmic comedy of errors on the part of the Obama team, he will have done so without my help.  It is with this in mind that I do hereby heartily “endorse” Mitt Romney as the next liberal Republican presidential loser in a long string of them.   Those who have more recently joined the Romney camp may find my “endorsement” somewhat lackluster, but after all, as a conservative, I believe in accepting responsibility and doing things right, so if we’re going to lose, we might just as well lose big.  It’s the least I can do.

Conservatives may eventually hop aboard the Romney bus, but if and when we do, we will be riding on the roof, and we know it.

Note to Readers: My apologies for the lack of posts lately. Between the recent death of my father-in-law, the Spring work on the farm, and a difficult and lengthy project at work that is consuming between twelve and fifteen hours daily, seven days per week, I’ve been unable to post so much as normal.  I expect that by the end of May, the bulk of the farm-related efforts will be complete for the season, and by mid-June, the project at work should be complete.   There will undoubtedly be occasions upon which I am able to post more in that period, but it obviously hasn’t been this week.

Even Tasteless Michelle...

Honest to goodness, one can’t make this up. Barack Obama’s attempt at humor is just abysmal, as he was neither funny, nor clever.  At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he took a swipe at Sarah Palin, and at those who focused on the story of him eating dog, all to concoct one of the most brutally stupid “jokes” I’ve ever heard, never mind from a President.  Is this guy really our President?  Even Michelle “Keep-on-walking” Obama seemed astonished.  His joke wasn’t funny, and while there was some nervous “we’ll laugh at anything this jack-ass says because he’s our guy” chortling from the crowd, I don’t think anybody appreciated it as much as he did.  Of course, that could be said for the entirety of his presidency.

Courtesy Breitbart:

I think Joe Biden is finally rubbing-off on this guy.  The last three-and-one-half years have been a non-stop bad joke on the American people.

Do You Fear This Guy?

Listening to conservative commentators, one can witness a kind of fear of Barack Obama that I’ve never encountered in domestic politics before.  Sure, back in the 1990s, there were some conservatives who were fearful about the things Bill Clinton might do, given a chance, but the unmistakable terror some exhibit at the mere idea that Barack Obama would somehow be re-elected is astonishing to me.  Is he horrible?  Yes.  Is he actively undermining our nation?  Certainly.  Is he a demagogue?  You bet!  Nevertheless, I do not understand the fear that seems to grip so many on the right side of the political divide.  I don’t fear Barack Obama.  He doesn’t impress me that much, and if he takes the country all the way to and over the brink, patriotic Americans will stop him.  I’m not scared of Barack Obama.  I’m not threatened by a temporary political hack.  The thing that makes me fearful is the tendency among conservatives to imagine more power on the part of Obama than he actually possesses, but worse, the willingness on the part of establishment Republicans to cede to him such power.  The power of the presidency doesn’t belong to any man, but to the people, and all it takes to stop any President is their will.

Fear is an important tool used to herd us in the direction of the establishment’s favored candidates.  I am not driven by that sort of thing.  What makes me fear for my country is the endless parade of candidates who are put up by the Republican establishment every four years who leave us with a choice between the wholly unpalatable and the unconscionably unpalatable.  It’s like a perpetual taste test between excrement sandwiches where the only question is whether the prime course originated with a horse or a bull.  What drives me to something like real fear is when I see the uncritical thinking that pervades so much of our culture.  When I hear alleged conservatives saying that they think George W. Bush was a “real conservative,” I shake my head and walk away.  There’s no point to an argument over the matter.  He wasn’t a conservative, but for those who think he was, there’s no convincing them, no matter how many instances of his big-government statism his record provides as evidence.

I don’t fear Barack Obama because we already have an example of how to make a leftist President ineffective.  Newt Gingrich showed us through determined leadership in the middle 1990s, and except for betrayals from the establishment wing of his own party, he might well have accomplished more.  The problem is that the same people who destroyed his campaign this year by one act of dishonest infamy after the other are representatives of that same group that undercut him nearly two decades ago.  Even at this late date, with Gingrich effectively out of the running, still there are attacks by the Romney campaign on Gingrich.  Why fear Barack Obama?  With “friends” like this, who needs enemies?  Still, Gingrich showed us what we can do by his example in 1994.  To do it, we will need to change the face of the Senate.  That’s where Gingrich ran into the most trouble, and apart from our tepid House leadership today, I think this is where we must begin.

We need to eject RINOs like Dick Lugar from the Senate, and send in conservatives like his opponent Richard Mourdock, and just as Kay Bailey-Hutchison is departing the Senate, I will be happy to send Ted Cruz there rather than establishment tool David Dewhurst.  I was a bit astonished, after his appeal to Tea Party types, to see Rick Perry endorse Dewhurst.  Of course, Friday, he also endorsed Romney. I guess we know all we need to about that, but it’s another example of our problem:  We need to defeat not only Democrats who are holding Senate seats, but also a number of Republicans who shouldn’t be left in charge of anything.  You see, we don’t need the Presidency to run the country.  We merely need a large enough majority in both houses of Congress, but that will still only help us if they’re not a pack of establishment types.  While John McCain came out to endorse Dick Lugar, Sarah Palin instead endorsed Richard Mourdock, continuing to demonstrate that one needn’t have a title to be effective, and we need more of that kind of leadership from high profile conservatives.  From the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney? Silence.

I don’t fear Obama, but if you want to see me afraid, observe my reaction to the wasted effort the GOP establishment has made of the Tea Party’s victories in 2010.  There was momentum and vigor, but by a long list of sorry surrenders, Boehner and McConnell have sapped the energy out of the movement.  I fear that the Tea Party waited and waited for a Presidential candidate to emerge who would carry their banner, and when one didn’t appear, or at least didn’t stick around, and while the establishment undermined conservative alternatives to Mitt Romney, the Tea Party seems as though much of its energy has been spent.  I hope I’m wrong, but with Romney emerging as the probable nominee, it’s hard to imagine the Tea Party getting very excited.  Who can blame them?  The establishment of the GOP is intent upon giving us a guy who lost to Ted Kennedy by double digits in 1994, a year Republicans made huge strides and took both houses of Congress.  Do we expect to defeat Barack Obama, and even if we do, to what end?

I don’t fear Obama because I know that he’s just one more step down a path our country and culture has been following all my life.  If it wasn’t Obama, it would be somebody like him.  If it wasn’t Romney, it would be somebody like him.  They fit their respective templates, and they fulfill their respective roles.  We’ve been railroaded into a notion of America that is top-down, and I simply don’t buy it.  There are three-hundred millions of us.  Do you really think Washington DC can impose anything on us that we(or some sizable number of us) refuse to do?  The problem I see is that the longer we let this fester, the more foot-soldiers for the cause they breed.  Do you really wonder why neither party is serious about controlling illegal immigration?  Do you really wonder why it is that our social safety nets are encouraging more of the same, now largely hammocks in which too many people recline endlessly, while you work like rented mules to carry their burdens?

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe we need a third party.  I’d be happy with two.  Unfortunately, from my point of view, I’m finding it impossible to discern much difference at the upper echelons, apart from the much too rare sort best exemplified by Sarah Palin.  The establishment in DC plays both sides of the street, and neither side is composed of conservatives.  This whole system is full of corruption, and it’s not because the system was built to be corrupted, but because we the people, by our shameful inattention, and our general unwillingness to do our homework have left the store undefended, the till untended, and our alleged ‘public servants’ unaccountable.  When I say “we,” I don’t mean you and I, though we surely should do more, but I look around at the popular culture, and I note with dismay that there are hundreds of television channels available, and apart from C-Span, there are perhaps a dozen or so that cover public affairs, politics, and political news, and none of those garner as many viewers as the average prime-time sitcom.

If you want to know why America is in decline, you need only observe the priorities of most people.  The amount of time daily that most Americans devote to public affairs is minuscule.  Most of them can’t recite so much as the preamble to the constitution, and few can recite, verbatim, any of the amendments, even the first ten.  Don’t ask them to provide from memory some notion of the structure of the constitution, and don’t ask them to tell you anything about the enumerated powers of Congress, the President, or the courts.  As long as this remains true, there is no chance to reform the country. You and I can go to Tea Party rallies, and the GOP establishment will do its best to co-opt them.  The broad body of the American people remains unmoved, and nothing short of catastrophe is likely to move them, but as with most such things, the catastrophe will be evidence that they’ve been roused from their slumber too late.  We say we believe in citizen-legislators, and the form of self-governance our founders gave to us, but too few of us who are able step forward to take the risk.

On the other hand, I don’t fear Obama in part because I know that common sense will eventually trump him.  A good example of this is the proposed regulation out of the Department of Labor that would have made it illegal for anybody under 18 to perform certain chores or work in certain jobs in an agricultural setting.  The backlash was so strong, even among Democrats, that the Obama administration actually rescinded the proposed regulation, at least for the time being.   The administration and the Department of Labor were deluged with a huge number of tersely worded communications from across America telling them to back off or else.  One farmer I know locally, whose two sons routinely help him operate tractors and so on actually called and told some government stooge in Washington DC that he was free to come and impose his regulations if he thought he could. Ladies and gentlemen, there are three-hundred millions of us.  Even if fully half have “gone over to the dark side,” the government can’t impose anything on the rest of us if we refuse.  People wonder why I don’t quake in fear about Obama, or any other tin-pot dictator who might set up shop in DC, but this is the reason.

A government loses its legitimate claim to authority at some point, and small incidents like the backlash over farm labor rules is just one such instance.  Another bit of evidence comes in the form of gun and ammunition sales, still at record levels these last three years as people prepare for…come what may.  Sure, it’s only a small fraction of Americans who are preparing to any substantial degree, but that’s still a goodly number.  As they liquidate debt, pull assets out of markets, buy durable commodities and stored goods, and make ready for the possibility that this society may break down.  The core that keeps this country afloat is doing what it has always done: Through prudence, thrift, and industry, they are preparing to the best of their ability for the worst that the world may throw at them.  They don’t fear Obama either.  Like me, they’re more inclined to fear the legion of unprepared network television viewers who will be standing there with one hand out-stretched, gun in the other, issuing pleas for help in the form of demands, if and when things go even more badly for our country.

The thing we must all remember is that as bad as Obama is, he is temporary.  He may do this or that, and he may make a wreck of things for the nation, but he’s temporary, and there’s nothing he can inflict that we can’t undo.  The only thing that makes a guy like Obama dangerous are the people ostensibly on our side who seek to collaborate with him.  It’s the moderates who undo us each and every time.  I offer the debt ceiling debate of last July to any who doubt me.  No, I don’t fear Obama, bad as he may be, nearly so much as I live in terror at the prospects of the next surrender of the Republican establishment.  That’s what makes our situation seem hopeless.  Who among you harbors the delusion of John Boehner riding in to save us?  Mitch McConnell?   Mitt Romney?  That’s what demoralizes our conservative activism.  That’s what cuts the heart out of the resistance.  We won’t be delivered into communistic despotism by Barack Obama, but instead by some gutless cabal of establishment Republicans hurriedly cutting a deal to save their own necks, thereby damning the rest of us into servitude.  It is ever the betrayers, the surrendering class, clamoring to hold onto some vestige of what they see as their rightful place, or even merely to save their own hides.  I see this as the most pressing issue we face.  Barack Obama is only possible because of the sell-outs.

For all appearances, Mitt Romney seems to be part of that class of Republicans, and if you ask me what it is that I fear, it is that once again, we will be saddled with a nominee who is not one of us, doesn’t understand us, and doesn’t see the world from the point of view we mostly share, out here, where the country is made to work by the choices, the goals, and the devotion of millions of individual Americans, each working to better his or her own life, and the life of their families, but actions that also redound to the benefit of the nation at large.  When I listen to Romney, I am left with the unmistakable impression that I am hearing a man who wants to rule over me, the same as Obama, but with slightly different aims.  I hear a man who is speaking to collectivized notions of American greatness that defy 250 years of the history of individual achievements linked by the consent and volition of the achievers.  What I hear is: “New boss, same as the old boss.”  If you tell me you fear Obama more, I can’t help but wonder why.  Nothing is more terrifying to me than the thought that Mitt Romney is the best we could do in the face of Barack Obama’s four years of rampant destruction.  If true, it may mean we’ve already lost the country, and there is nothing about Barack Obama so frightening as that possibility.

The Choices We Make

If you’re a college student, you may want to pay attention.  With the nationalization of student loans under Obama, you’re going to be slaves to the system if you use their loans.  It’s the ultimate racket.  You pay interest to the government at a higher rate than you would have in the previous system where private banks made loans, and the government guaranteed them, and of course, the government has the IRS to strip your future earnings from you.  I listened to a caller named “Jonathan” on Mark Levin’s show Friday evening, and I was astonished at his sniveling over the interest rates.  He insisted that it is “for the greater good” that he took out a total of $220,000 in student loans.  He’s not upset, he says, about the principal amount, but at an interest rate of more than seven percent, he’s having trouble making ends meet.

Let me save all of you aspiring college students some time and trouble:  Most universities don’t teach you much anyway.  You’ll learn more on your own if you want to do so than any college will ever teach you, and it will be more valuable.  I know, I know… The field into which you’re going requires a college education, maybe an advanced degree, perhaps medicine, or the law.  That’s fine.  Go to a cheap school.  Seriously.  All they’re giving you is a piece of paper.  The rest, you get on your own, and it’s the height of foolishness to go into debt to the tune of more than two-hundred-thousand dollars in order to fatten the higher education establishment.  It’s absurd, and our kids should be steered away from this nonsense.

I went to college.  I was thirty-one years old when I enrolled.  I was thirty-five when I graduated.  My ‘student loan officer’ was a nice gentleman with a crew-cut I met in the recruiting office of the United States Army when I was seventeen.  I loaned the government my backside for seven years, and in exchange, they matched my own contributions to a college fund.  Along the way, they taught me to be a hard-charging ass-kicker, and also some practical skills that I would one day convert to civilian use for the purposes of feeding my family.  It was likely the best deal I ever made.  The truth of the matter is that I learned a good deal more in those seven years than any college could teach you in twenty.   Nevertheless, once I was out of the Army, I used the aforementioned skills to make a living, and before long, only six years later, I was on my way to college.

Now I can almost hear caller Jonathan’s retort to such a proposition: “But, but, but,” he might stammer, “I wanted to go to a top twenty-five law-school.  It’s the only way to get work at some places.”  That sound you may be hearing in the background is the sound of the world’s smallest violin, playing just for Jonathan.   My answer: “Then shut up, and pay the interest you promised to pay when you took out the loan!”  You see, the problem is that Jonathan is finding it hard to make ends meet while paying his obligations, and he’s finding that paying for his debt is causing him to delay some gratification as a young attorney.  Boy-o, that’s what happens when you aren’t “born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”  Get over it.

Honest to goodness, $220,000 is a fantastic sum of money to me even now.  When I was that age, if somebody had lent me that kind of money, I’d either be a billionaire, or be locked away in debtor’s prison by now.  Or not.  The point is that to take out loans totaling $220K and then complain about having to pay the interest is a farce. Sure, it will probably take poor Jonathan a decade or more to pay off those loans, but what of it?  Was he making an investment in his future or not? No, you see, that’s not enough for young Jonathan: “For the greater good,” we should all be investors in his future.  Sorry, but I’m not interested in that sort of ‘investment.’

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure young Jonathan is a fine man, and he’ll probably make a great slip-and-fall lawyer one day, but in the mean time, he’d better pay up with a big fat smile on his face.  You see, I actually had this very conversation with a young person recently, who was looking at the costs of attending the school from which he hopes one day to receive a degree, and I offered the other options open to him, and even offered my story about my own ‘loan officer.’  He replied in a matter-of-fact tone that “Well, you made your choices, and you took the path you did.”  His intent had been to dismiss my story, and yet as I the grin widened on my face, he looked confused at first, and then it hit him: “Okay, yes, I guess I see your point.”

It was somewhat amusing to hear his laments about how he’s now “over a barrel.” He can either continue his education, accruing more debt along the way, or he can quit, and begin repaying the loans immediately.  As I explained to him, “life has us all over a barrel.”  Of course, I understand how the government is going to financially wreck so many of these youngsters.  Now that the government is the sole source for guaranteed student loans, the government is going to wreck as many youngsters as they can hook into this system.  Naturally, the education establishment is only too happy to continue to increase tuition, because I can guarantee you that the faculty lounge won’t suffer.  This is the inevitable result of letting government intrude where the private sector should exist.  They created the government-guaranteed student loan program in order to entice lenders into loaning money to students for college, since they had been such an historically awful risk.  Once the government guaranteed the loans, it was inevitable that some Marxist would nationalize the program.

I am fairly certain that was the intention from the beginning.  After all, you can’t walk away from federally guaranteed(and now issued) student loans through bankruptcy, much like income tax debt, and everybody beyond the age of thirty understands that socialists love captive markets.  If we did that with healthcare, we wouldn’t have the insurance problems we do, but that also wouldn’t enable government to grow larger and reach into another market, ultimately nationalizing it, as they intend with seemingly everything.  At some point, this country is going to be faced with a choice about whether we wish to fix all of these things permanently, or simply implode and become a full-bore communist state.  I’ve seen the latter up close, and I’m afraid that’s where we’ve been heading, but young Jonathan doesn’t know that, and his professors aren’t likely to have told him.  Instead, they’ve probably filled his head with notions of how “the greater good” is the sole consideration, but what they’ve never told him is who will be determining what constitutes the greater good, or the public interest.  He believes he will have some say in the matter.

At every level now, the Federal government reaches into everything, but the simple truth of the matter is that this can generally happen only because people invite it in.  Too many people suffer under the delusion that the government is able to fix anything and everything, and that since there’s no immediate and obvious cost to them, they are quite happy to have the “help.”  All of this ignores the tendency of government to resemble a mob loan-shark, or a gang of mobsters in general.  Once you accept the help, there’s no ridding yourselves of them.  More, it’s a bit like the drug pusher, who gets people hooked on “free samples” but once addicted, the new junkie would kill his family to obtain another fix.  In other words, it’s about us.  Just as the pusher can gain no ground so long as you tell him “no,” so too is it the case that if we begin to tell the government “no,” it will lose its power.  That means doing something most people are tested to do:  Say no to themselves.  Young attorney and Levin caller Jonathan could have told himself “no.” That would have been difficult, with a degree from a “top 25 law-school” dangled before his ambitious eyes.  Now that it turns out his eyes may have been a little larger than his belly, he’s not happy about it, but I’m sure there was no dissuading him at the time.  Somebody needs to tell him “no.”  Waive the interest?  No.  Delay payments?  No.  Forgive the debt?  Hell no!

“No” is the most effective word on Earth against socialism, but it’s the word too many in this country are now afraid to utter, to their children, their neighbors, fellow citizens, but most particularly, themselves.  Until we learn to say it and mean it, poor kids like Jonathan will never understand its power.  Government bureaucrats will never understand their limits.  Politicians will never cease in their abuses.  We will never be happy.  Learn to say “No” and stand by it.  Refusing your consent is the one thing that cannot be taken from you.  Jonathan could have said “No” to the interest he’ll now pay, simply by refusing the loans.  Having taken them, he has found that he now has no right to refuse.  Do I feel sorry for Jonathan? Do you?

No…

Crowning Himself

With his speech Tuesday night, it became evident that Mitt Romney intends to take the advice of his establishment GOP friends, and will soon begin a full-on retreat from conservatism.  It’s not that Romney was ever a conservative, but that he was putting on just enough of a show to make some primary voters believe it.  All of that will soon change, and we will see the real Mitt Romney soon, to the degree there is a real Mitt Romney.  He delivered a speech in Manchester, NH, Tuesday night as a victory speech for the primaries on the day, and in so doing, I decided I not only dislike his brand of dishonest politics, but that I’ve begun to really dislike him.  I abhor platitudinous rhetoric spoken with no philosophical backbone, and in my estimation, his speech was full of it.   FoxNewsInsider.com provides the transcript of the speech, and I’ll provide the commentary:

Thank you Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York! And tonight I can say thank you, America. After 43 primaries and caucuses, many long days and more than a few long nights, I can say with confidence – and gratitude – that you have given me a great honor and solemn responsibility. And, together, we will win on November 6th!

Yes, it’s all over, right?  That’s it. All done! Texas hasn’t voted yet. See if you can win the presidency without Texas.  Texas may wind up supporting you, but you presume too much, Governor Romney.

We launched this campaign not far from here on a beautiful June day. It has been an extraordinary journey.

Nobody really remembers your campaign launch, because at the time, Sarah Palin was in the vicinity, and the crowds all went to see her instead.

Americans have always been eternal optimists. But over the last three and a half years, we have seen hopes and dreams diminished by false promises and weak leadership. Everywhere I go, Americans are tired of being tired, and many of those who are fortunate enough to have a job are working harder for less.

Apparently, you don’t know the same Americans I know.  On the one hand, you tell us we’re eternal optimists, but on the other hand, you tell us we’re tired of being tired?  Which is it? Even if you succeed in getting the nomination, Americans who are tired of those false promises and weak leadership will turn their focus on you, since you also have a record of similar leadership.  Most Americans I know are tired of leaders blowing smoke up their backsides, and to date, you’ve offered nothing but platitudes to demonstrate you’re anything more than just another of the same.

For every single mom who feels heartbroken when she has to explain to her kids that she needs to take a second job … for grandparents who can’t afford the gas to visit their grandchildren … for the mom and dad who never thought they’d be on food stamps … for the small business owner desperately cutting back just to keep the doors open one more month – to all of the thousands of good and decent Americans I’ve met who want nothing more than a better chance, a fighting chance, to all of you, I have a simple message: Hold on a little longer. A better America begins tonight.

What is this?  The litany of pandering?  Stop trying to describe in sympathetic terms every conceivable interest group and simply start talking to Americans.  You don’t need to throw a rhetorical bone to women, seniors, and small business owners. And you certainly shouldn’t be borrowing from George W. Bush’s “help is on the way” theme.  If yours is like his, little more than a rhetorical flourish, you’re definitely off to a bad start.

Tonight is the start of a new campaign to unite every American who knows in their heart that we can do better! The last few years have been the best that Barack Obama can do, but it’s not the best America can do!

Looking at your record, I’m not sure Americans will be heartened by their prospects.

Tonight is the beginning of the end of the disappointments of the Obama years and the start of a new and better chapter that we will write together.

To be replaced by the disappointments of a liberal with an “R” after his name?  You’re sounding dangerously like the establishment Republican version of “Hope and Change.”

This has already been a long campaign, but many Americans are just now beginning to focus on the choice before the country. In the days ahead, I look forward to spending time with many of you personally. I want to hear what’s on your mind, hear about your concerns, and learn about your families. I want to know what you think we can do to make this country better…and what you expect from your next President.

Long campaign?  Well yes, you’ve been campaigning continuously since 2007, or sooner, so I suppose that is a long campaign, but I have news for you:  It isn’t over yet.  As your shills in the media continue to put you forward as the inevitable nominee, I’m not finished with you yet, and neither are a number of others.  I just want to know one thing:  If you think you don’t need to compete in Texas for our primary support, what makes you think you’ll have deserved any support you may want from us in November?

And I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. I’ll probably start out talking about my wonderful wife Ann – I usually do – and I’ll probably bore you with stories about our kids and grandkids. I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company. Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.

I know the bio.  Tell us about you.

I’d say that you might have heard that I was successful in business. And that rumor is true. But you might not have heard that I became successful by helping start a business that grew from 10 people to hundreds of people. You might not have heard that our business helped start other businesses, like Staples and Sports Authority and a new steel mill and a learning center called Bright Horizons. And I’d tell you that not every business made it and there were good days and bad days, but every day was a lesson. And after 25 years, I know how to lead us out of this stagnant Obama economy and into a job-creating recovery!

Twenty-five years condensed into a paragraph, but not one word about your four years as governor of Massachusetts?  I suppose that’s a space-saving measure.

Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?

He didn’t dazzle me, and he didn’t dazzle other conservatives, so now I’m certain you’re not talking to us.  Already shifting your focus, aren’t you, Willard?  What do we have after three-and-one-half years of Obama?  Let’s see: We have more debt, a highly socialized healthcare program the burdens of which will not be fully known for years.  We have a head of state who introduces radical environmental regulations without respect to our legislative body.  In other words, it’s not much different from what the people of Massachusetts had after four years of Governor Mitt Romney!

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?

Did the regulations you imposed on the State of Massachusetts make fuel less expensive at the pumps?  Did the healthcare plan you inflicted on that State make healthcare better? I’m asking these questions because these are some of the things the Democrats and their legion of shills in the Lamestream Media will ask of you this fall, and I suspect your answers will be no better than Obama’s.  You may be treated with kid gloves on the ever-fawning FoxNews, but that’s not going to cut it this Fall.

If the answer were “yes” to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements…and rightly so. But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time. But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid.

Barack Obama hasn’t failed.  He’s achieved at least the initial stages of what he set out to accomplish: He is willfully destroying the country, and transforming it through destructive reorganization.  The fact that you don’t recognize this is precisely why you shouldn’t be trusted with the Republican party’s nomination.

People are hurting in America. And we know that something is wrong, terribly wrong with the direction of the country.

Nice platitude. Even in the best of times, somebody, somewhere is hurting, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Stop pretending otherwise.  As one good friend reminds me, “Life is tough.  Get a helmet.”  The direction of the country will not be changed by more platitudes constructed to deny reality.  Are you familiar with John Galt?  He’s trying to give you a clue.

We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions.

Do you really? What concretes exist in this speech to evince that difference?

Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.

Free? Like Massachusetts?

This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He’s asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.

Ruled from a distant capital? Like Boston?

We’ve already seen where this path leads. It erodes freedom. It deadens the entrepreneurial spirit. And it hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. Those who promise to spread the wealth around only ever succeed in spreading poverty. Other nations have chosen that path. It leads to chronic high unemployment, crushing debt, and stagnant wages.

Yes, we have. The people of Massachusetts have intimate knowledge.

I have a very different vision for America, and of our future. It is an America driven by freedom, where free people, pursuing happiness in their own unique ways, create free enterprises that employ more and more Americans. Because there are so many enterprises that are succeeding, the competition for hard-working, educated and skilled employees is intense, and so wages and salaries rise.

Freedom like Romneycare?

I see an America with a growing middle class, with rising standards of living. I see children even more successful than their parents – some successful even beyond their wildest dreams – and others congratulating them for their achievement, not attacking them for it.

I see that America too, but Mitt Romney isn’t its president any more than Barack Obama has been.

This America is fundamentally fair. We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends’ businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.

Great! Now, who pays for that school choice? One of the principles of freedom is that he who pays is he who chooses.  Who is paying for the education of urban children?  The parents of those children, or somebody else?  And not only urban children.    Who is paying for this failed education system?  How do people who do not pay expect to have a choice at all?  As to politicians giving goodies to friends, I a much in favor.  How will you stop this, specifically?  Can I see the legislative language?  More McCain-Feingold humdrum? Or real and lasting reform? As to government workers, could you provide us the statistics on average salaries for state employees in Massachusetts both at the beginning and end of your term as Governor, so that we might see an example of what you would do at the Federal level?  What did you implement, as Governor of Massachusetts, that would dramatically reduce the tax burden on the future tax-payers of that State?  You may not answer me, but you’d better be prepared to answer it, because while no conservatives in media are asking, you can bet the left will throw it in your face if you’re the nominee.

In the America I see, character and choices matter. And education, hard work, and living within our means are valued and rewarded. And poverty will be defeated, not with a government check, but with respect and achievement that is taught by parents, learned in school, and practiced in the workplace.

Kind of like “welfare wheels?” Not only did you dispense government checks, but you also dispensed automobiles.  It’s no wonder that you should want Americans to forget your years in government.

This is the America that was won for us by the nation’s Founders, and earned for us by the Greatest Generation. It is the America that has produced the most innovative, most productive, and the most powerful economy in the world.

Governor Romney, you have a collectivized view of America’s successes, but the truth is that it was millions of individuals who created the most powerful economy on the globe.  Your fixation with collectivized notions of national greatness are disturbing to economic conservatives and libertarians, and for good reason.  The misleading aspect of your view is this: That America, as a nation, was the beneficiary of millions of individual achievements offers no answer to the problem without first understanding that it is only through the promotion of individuals, their goals and their ambitions, through individual actions that the collective you repeatedly reference may see any benefit.  You cannot speak to America as a single body, or even as classes, but instead, you must see America as a diverse universe of people, surely with similarities, but also unique and each one different from the next.  Capitalism doesn’t succeed when people focus on collectivized notions of success.  Capitalism succeeds when individuals succeed, and we notice, after the fact, that the net benefit to the nation as a whole has been positive.  Drop the collectivism.  It makes you sound like a Northeast Liberal.  Oh, wait…

As I look around at the millions of Americans without work, the graduates who can’t get a job, the soldiers who return home to an unemployment line, it breaks my heart. This does not have to be. It is the result of failed leadership and of a faulty vision. We will restore the promise of America only if we restore the principles of freedom and opportunity that made America the greatest nation on earth.

You continue to mention these principles that must be restored.  Can you list them?

Today, the hill before us is a little steep but we have always been a nation of big steppers. Many Americans have given up on this President but they haven’t ever thought about giving up. Not on themselves. Not on each other. And not on America.

The hill before us is vertical.  It’s a cliff.  Our current President is marching us off, over, and into the abyss.  Most Americans are blindly following.  If they follow you, where will you lead them?

In the days ahead, join me in the next step toward that destination of November 6th, when across America we can give a sigh of relief and know that the Promise of America has been kept. The dreamers can dream a little bigger, the help wanted signs can be dusted off, and we can start again.

How?  Don’t offer me 59-point plans that have been cooked up by the torments of technocratic gobbledygook. Instead, list out those principles you reference, but never name, and tell us how you will apply them.

And this time we’ll get it right. We’ll stop the days of apologizing for success at home and never again apologize for America abroad.

We had it right before.  We know how to get it right.  What we need is for you to get government the hell out of the way. Is that what you did in Massachusetts?  I don’t think so.

There was a time – not so long ago – when each of us could walk a little taller and stand a little straighter because we had a gift that no one else in the world shared. We were Americans. That meant something different to each of us but it meant something special to all of us. We knew it without question. And so did the world.

Most of us are still Americans.  To be an American isn’t about where one is born, much as your father would have known.  To be an American is to exhibit an historically peculiar mindset that abhors collectivized thinking.  To date, you’ve shown little evidence that you understand that.

Those days are coming back. That’s our destiny.

Our destiny?

We believe in America. We believe in ourselves. Our greatest days are still ahead. We are, after all, Americans!

I believe in America. I believe in the prospects of individual Americans, as individuals.  Quit blowing collectivized smoke. One thing real Americans hate is B.S.  In the main, you’ve delivered a load.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Indeed.  Texas will hold its primary May 29th, but since you don’t need us, you needn’t campaign here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to apologize.  Let me suggest to you that if Mitt Romney is the best the Republican party can offer, we might as well join hands with Obama in leaping off that cliff.  At least it will be quick.  I may be at odds with some conservatives who would support anybody to avoid Obama, but so be it.  If when the Texas primary arrives, Romney is the only remaining choice on the Republican side, I will write in somebody else.  Of course, at least for now, Romney is not the only choice, and I will vote for somebody who has actually led a conservative insurgence in Washington DC.  I suspect that the reports on Drudge are false about an impending exit by Gingrich, if only because virtually every other story Drudge has run on Gingrich has been hyped or plainly false.  Mitt may want this primary season to end, and his friends in the GOP establishment have done a remarkable job of orchestrating it so far, but that doesn’t mean we conservatives will necessarily go quietly.

Sorry Mitt. It’s not over.