Thanks to Heritage:
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Having lost his best opportunity to steer the Republican Party over a cliff of squishy moderation on November 4th last year, John McCain is diligently working behind the scenes to bring about his vision of a worthless, Democratic-lite party.
His strategy is to recruit and support “moderate” candidates in his own mold – despite the fact that he was an electoral loser – like Mark Kirk of Illinois, who supported cap-and-tax.
Senator Grahamnesty rationalizes, “[McCain] has an understanding that the party is in trouble with certain demographics and wants to have a tone that would allow us to grow.” If he succeeds, the Republican Party will most certainly not grow. Pandering to identity groups is a strategy that has been a proven failure for Republicans. The most important demographic, which Graham unsurprisingly ignores, is the conservative base. Lose them and the party is finished.
He also underestimates the power of attracting followers by staking out principled positions. Reagan expanded the Republican Party with principled leadership that convinced conservative democrats to switch parties. With the growing backlash against Obama’s massive government, many Americans not currently identified as Republicans are yearning for a principled, limited government alternative. If Republicans listen to the likes of John McCain, they will find themselves ill-prepared to rise to the challenge and take advantage of an opportunity to increase their ranks through principled leadership.
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While John McCain and Barack Obama disagreed on taxes, health care and foreign policy, there is at least one issue on which they found common ground during the recent presidential campaign: the polarization of Washington and the nation. Both candidates made it one of their central themes. McCain observed that he’s “never seen Washington as polarized as it is today,” while Obama thought that President Bush “polarized us when he should have pulled us together.” McCain promised, while accepting his party’s nomination, to end the “constant partisan rancor” of Washington, while Obama made sure to clarify that he wasn’t blaming voters by noting that “the country is not as polarized as our politics would suggest.” Rather, we are to conclude, it is cynical politicians who exploit wedge issues to win elections, and launch personal attacks against their opponents, that are to blame. To hear each candidate tell it, all we need is the right leader with a conciliatory tone to unite America and end polarization. History shows this to be a fantasy.
The conventional wisdom is that politicians create polarization by being excessively negative in their campaigning. Every four years we are told that the current election is the most negative in history. Commentators bemoan the debasement of the political process, while reporters highlight voters turned off by the negative tone. Rarely are these assertions placed into historical context. The problem with the conventional wisdom is that our politics are no more contentious today than in the past.
The birth of the attack campaign can be traced back to 1800 and the contest between President John Adams and then Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. Despite the personal friendship of the candidates, the campaign was brutal. Adams was accused of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
This is not to say that Americans haven’t become more polarized, but we should separate the distinct issues of campaign negativity and polarization of voters. Political mudslinging is not new, but there has been an increase in the degree to which voters view others as not just political opponents, but as outright enemies. Negativity is a constant and thus incapable of explaining changes in polarization. To what, then, can we attribute increasing polarization?
While negative campaigning has not changed since 1800, the size and scope of government has. It doesn’t matter which measurement is used; they all tell the same story. Per capita expenditures – the amount of money spent by the government per citizen – exploded during the 20th century, growing in 2004 to 55 times that of 1910. Total government expenditures at all levels (federal, state and local) grew 417% in just the last half century. Economic growth cannot account for this increase, as it has been significantly outpaced by government spending. With the federal government falling all over itself to hand out shockingly large sums of money to banks, automakers and any other big business that asks nicely, or at all, this trend shows no signs of slowing.
Despite the modest downsizing after the end of the Cold War, by 2000 the federal government employed almost 3 million people, and government employment at the federal, state and local level now combine for 16% of the total national work force. There are ten additional cabinet positions compared to the beginning of the 20th century. So in addition to spending more, they are also doing more.
We have all these bureaucrats to manage the regulations covering every aspect of our lives. Government tells us what we can eat, where we can smoke, what medicines we can use and what insurance we can purchase. It even tells us who we can marry and where we must send our children to school, along with what they must be taught.
This intrusion of government has sparked the “culture war.” It exists because government, by design, requires one-size-fits-all solutions on issues on which there is no one size that fits all. As an example, when parents cannot choose where to send their kids to school, they must fight within the political system to see that the schools teach what they want. Different parents have different ideas, often mutually exclusive, on what they want their children to learn. Because they must fight over control of the same system, some must inevitably lose.
When issues of importance to the people must be fought over, it’s understandable that the fighting can be intense. A lot is at stake in every election. Repeat this process again and again, on issue after issue, and it is little wonder why Americans are polarized today. Government has pit us against our fellow citizens in a battle for control of our own lives. It’s a battle we can only lose, and which the new administration’s big government programs can only make worse.
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I don’t believe the polls any more than I believe the so-called journalistic organizations which commission the polls. Despite absurd claims of ten and fifteen point margins of victory, this is going to be a close race right up to the last minute. Ultimately, I’m afraid, my gut tells me that Obama and his party of frauds will prevail in this election.
But before you rush to clean out the local ammunition store stop, take a breath, and let’s look at the situation rationally.
The fact that the race is this close, despite everything the republican ticket has stacked against it, is cause for extreme optimism about the future direction of this country. This election can be seen as a last ditch act of desperation on the left’s part. Their last gasp. They are expending every last bit of ammunition they have to pawn Obama off as a post-partisan, post-racial moderate, instead of the far left, redistributionist, black-liberation theologian he is. The dying dinosaur media has doubled down with it’s final shreds of credibility. Zillionaire leftist financiers and subsistence-class liberal donors alike have dug deep in these trying financial times and thrown every last red cent they could muster into the Church of Obama’s unscrupulous online offering plate. The left has played every magic political card in the deck, from the race card to the elitist card. The Obama campaign linked Acorn has registered every real or imaginary Obama supporter in the world to overwhelm and effectively sap the efforts to oversee the veracity of the electorate at the local level, which aids the typical beneficiaries of voter fraud – the Democrats. All in an effort to skew the playing field in favor of the left. In Washington, ballots are being mailed to democrat supporting felons, despite laws forbidding it.
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Lost in the financial hysteria was a very important question asked of the two candidates during the second debate. Brokaw queried, “Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?”
McCain’s response was reasonable, though not profound:
I think it’s a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that — that I have, that will do that.
But government mandates I — I’m always a little nervous about. But it is certainly my responsibility. It is certainly small-business people and others, and they understand that responsibility. American citizens understand that. Employers understand that.
Obama’s reply, in addition to being a rambling excuse to hit on numerous irrelevant talking points, revealed a fundamental misunderstanding common to the left on the nature of rights:
Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”
The problem with Obama’ reply is that, in carving out a “right” for something like health care, he is creating a burden on others and violating actual rights. In order to supply this right to a product, Obama must ignore property rights and demand a specific allocation of resources that a respect for people’s property rights might not produce.
For a more thorough discussion on why health care is not a right, see my previous post on the subject.
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This election cycle has seen a proliferation of “fact checking” and “ad watching” columns and websites, all pretending to peddle impartial analysis of candidate claims. While useful in the aggregate, some of these are little more than venues for partisan advocacy under the fig leaf of impartiality. The most recent such Ad Watch column by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post exemplifies this behavior.
Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are — (Barack Obama:)“. . . just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” (Narrator:) How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops. Increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and congressional liberals. Too risky for America.
ANALYSIS
This John McCain ad blatantly distorts Barack Obama’s words in an effort to paint him as callous about the role of the U.S. military. The commercial truncates a comment that Obama made to a voter in New Hampshire in August 2007. According to the Associated Press, the senator from Illinois brought up Afghanistan when asked whether he would withdraw troops from Iraq to fight terrorism elsewhere: “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” In short, Obama was saying he wanted to avoid just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, not that this was all that American troops were doing. His meaning was the opposite of what is portrayed in this spot. Civilian casualties have been rising in Afghanistan this year, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month apologized for U.S. airstrikes that have killed civilians.
This is an utterly dishonest analysis by Kurtz. Obama was indeed saying he wanted to avoid air-raiding villages, but that doesn’t preclude him from also saying that it’s all that American troops are doing. Those two positions can be held simultaneously, much to Kurtz’s chagrin. So while it’s true that the ad does not include that Obama wants to avoid “just air-raiding villages,” it doesn’t claim he wants to encourage it either, and thus can’t possible portay the opposite of Obama’s meaning, another of Kurtz’ false conclusions. And that issue isn’t even the point. Whether or not Obama wants to avoid it is immaterial to his assertion that “just air-raiding villages” is what he thinks we are doing now.
Kurtz would have us believe that Obama is just mentioning civilian killing air-raids as a hypothetical outcome of having too few troops, but that’s an overly generous reading of Obama’s statement. While Kurtz scolds the McCain camp for cutting out part of the quote, Kurtz himself completely ignores an important qualifying clause from his analysis. If Obama did not believe we were “just air-raiding and killing civilians,” why would he then immediately and describe how that is presently affecting Afghanistan, when he says it “is causing enormous pressure over there.” He doesn’t say that it “would” cause pressure, he says that it “is.”
Kurtz is free to conclude that Obama didn’t mean to imply that he thought that American troops were only air-raiding villages and killing civilians, but it’s not dishonest to point out that, if taken how it was actually delivered, it’s exactly what his statement claims. If Obama was overly flippant and imprudent in his response, that’s his fault and his problem. Obama is prone to these kind of gaffes when speaking off the cuff and without his precious teleprompter to guide him. Falsely attacking McCain as a liar is apparently how Howard Kurtz wishes to contribute to the Obama campaign and cover up this particular shortcoming of The Messiah.
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The McCain campaign’s decision to run an ad attacking Obama for making a sexist attack in use of a common metaphor was unquestionably stupid. On the back of the Sarah Palin and convention bounce, McCain is spending too much time engaging in democrat-like tactics of phony indignation, when he should instead be pressing for the advantage on the economy following the huge gains he’s seen on the issue.
Any fair-minded observer can see the charge is false and that Obama was not calling Palin a pig with lipstick. Making such a charge gives democrats a chance to distract from Obama’s floundering and lifeless campaign and cast McCain as a deceitful candidate. Moreover, while Democrats routinely exploit identity politics to make these kinds of spurious charges, republicans should not follow suit. McCain should get back to pointing out Obama’s irresponsible and socialistic economic policies and save the fake anger for those on the left otherwise devoid of ideas.
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The New York Times has an interesting diagram highlighting the frequency in which certain words and phrases were used during the recent conventions.
A couple of things stand out. Contrary to the media narrative, the democrats, and in particular Barack Obama, were more negative. Also, neither party seems to want to talk about immigration. This is probably because both candidates are at odds with the wishes of a majority of the country.
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The New York Times, which just recently ran an editorial on Iraq authored by Obama, hasn’t any room in its daily rag of democratic talking points for a McCain rebuttal.
An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.
‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’
In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’
NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’
[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]
A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator’s Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not “re-work the draft.”
Just don’t you dare call them biased.
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Phil Gramm, top economic adviser to the McCain campaign, correctly diagnosed a problem with contemporary Americans society:
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.
Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence. Various surveys show that consumer confidence has fallen precipitously this year to the lowest levels in two to three decades, with most analysts attributing that to record high gasoline prices over $4 a gallon and big drops in the value of homes, which are consumers’ biggest assets.
“Misery sells newspapers,” Mr. Gramm said. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”
Gramm is right on the money. Economists have for years been mystified by the stark divergence between actual conditions and public opinion about the economy.
This is not to say that everything is fine. Indeed, the last year has seen objective indicators turn for the worse, thanks largely to the skyrocketing price of oil, though it still doesn’t merit the level of national angst we see today. Nor does this recent change retroactively justify the people who have been crying “recession” for the entirety of the Bush administration.
The overly sour public mood is easily attributable to the grossly distorted and hyperbolic news coverage we’ve been inundated with. One of the primary indicators that the public mood is not justified has been the disparity between how people rate their own finances versus how they think others are doing. Generally they have said their situation is okay while everyone else is doing poorly. Well how would they know? They get it from news, of course.
McCain, sadly, has no room for such honesty on his Straight Talk Express, though there’s plenty of room under it:
“So, I strongly disagree,” McCain told reporters gathered for a press conference that was added to his schedule following a town hall meeting near Detroit at least in part to deal with Gramm’s comments that the economy was not in as poor shape as is portrayed.
…”I believe that the person here in Michigan who just lost his job isn’t suffering from a ‘mental recession,’” McCain said, citing Gramm’s remarks published in the Washington Times. “I believe that the mother here in Michigan, around the country trying to get enough money to educate her children isn’t ‘whining.’”
America, McCain made sure to note, “is in great difficulty.”
“Vote McCain: Because the democrats just aren’t gloomy enough!”
Obama, for his part, thought whining about the comments would be a perfect response to being accused of belonging to a nation of whiners:
“It’s not just a figment of your imagination,” Obama said. “Let’s be clear. This economic downturn is not in your head.”
“It isn’t whining to ask government to step in and give families some relief,” he said, drawing a standing ovation from the nearly 3,000 people in a high school gymnasium. “And I think it’s time we had a president who doesn’t deny our problems or blame the American people for them but takes responsibility and provides the leadership to solve them.”
Rumor has it Obama then passed out tiny violins.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
