The Dread Pirate Romney

The New Hampshire primary is tomorrow and Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman are stepping up their attacks on Mitt Romney in the dumbest possible way.

One of Romney’s talking points is that he has knowledge of what it’s like to be in the real world. As the CEO of Bain Capital, he was in charge of a venture capitalist group that invested money into businesses and helped those businesses achieve success. This being the real world, it didn’t always work. Some of the companies Bain attempted to help went bankrupt. Many others went through what corporations euphemistically called “restructuring.” What this means is that a lot of people were laid off from their jobs as the companies, under Bain’s guidance, refocused their energies, eliminated divisions, and concentrated on core strengths. Sometimes this restructuring led to more success, which enabled the companies to hire new people in new jobs. This is the way of capitalism.

As someone who has watched the company he works for lay off more than 50% of its workers over the past six years, and whose own job is perpetually on the chopping block, I’m well aware of how this looks. Companies that lay people off are cast as villains, but this is nonsense. Being laid off hurts (believe me, I know) but, while it may feel otherwise, getting laid off is not personal. While I have no doubt that companies use mass layoffs to also get rid of undesirable employees, for the majority of people the layoff is about the job, not the worker. It is the job that is being eliminated, and this is not a judgment on the worker.

The cold hard reality is that companies don’t care about you. They don’t care that you just took out a new mortgage. They don’t care you’ve just had a fifth child, with two in college. They don’t care that your commute is two hours each way and costs you thousands of dollars a year. When you sign on with a company you are agreeing to do a job in exchange for money. You have the right to leave that job at any time, and the company has the right to eliminate or restructure that job.

For this reason, it’s disheartening to see Gingrich, Perry, and Huntsman ganging up on Romney for engaging in standard capitalist practices. These attacks on Romney are not just coming from Romney’s Left, they’re coming straight out of the entitled, unwashed vermin at Occupy Wherever. I expect Obama to make these attacks because he’s a far Left ideologue and is planning on running a class warfare-based race this year. But to see supposedly principled conservatives who claim they believe in a free market issue statements as stupid as Newt’s “I think that’s plundering. I don’t think that’s capitalism” or Perry’s quip that Romney’s only worry about pink slips was that “he was going to have enough of them to hand out” is downright revolting. I get it, Newt. I hear ya, Rick. Layoffs suck. But this is, in fact, capitalism. This is the free market. Companies like Bain invest money and offer guidance to improve the bottom line (profits, you see) of different companies. Sometimes improving profits comes at the cost of cutting expenses, and sometimes those “expenses” are people. But again…it ain’t personal.

Mitt Romney has enormous issues as a candidate. In 2012, every one of the candidates has enormous issues whether it’s Newt’s personal baggage and ideological inconstancy, Santorum’s devotion to the dreaded “compassionate conservatism” I despise, Perry’s unserious promises and inarticulate babble during debates, Paul’s Chomskyite foreign policy views, or Huntsman’s eyebrows. It is fair game to attack Romney for Romneycare, or for his flip-flopping, or for his moderate stance in the face of approaching economic Armageddon. But the attacks on his tenure at Bain, designed to portray him as a rapacious pirate taking glee in handing out pink slips, are cartoonish and wrong. The attacks land blows not just on the frontrunner, but on the entire system that conservatives should be championing. The GOP candidates are making Obama’s case for him. They are using the same flawed reasoning, and Obama will be using the words of “conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry” to bolster his argument that Romney is a robber baron who doesn’t care about people.

Economic growth does not come without some temporary pain. It’s horrible for those who face unemployment, but a booming economy and rapid economic growth—virtually impossible under the anti-business regulatory nightmare of the Obama presidency—will make that pain easier to deal with, and a booming economy is only possible with a free market where groups like Bain Capital are willing to invest money in businesses that might not otherwise succeed.

Rick, Rolling

Who would have thought, just a few short months ago, that it would be Rick Santorum and not Rick Perry that emerged triumphant from the Iowa caucus?

Not that Santorum actually won (or did he?), but finishing in second place behind the hair apparent Mitt Romney by just eight votes classifies as somewhat more than a moral victory and somewhat less than true triumph.

The race for the Republican nomination is considerably narrowed now. It’s really down to four: Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry. Perry and Gingrich are hanging on like Sergeant Snorkel hanging off a cliff-side tree branch. There’s no visible way up, but down is a very real possibility. Perry has all but given up on New Hampshire, and clearly staked out South Carolina as his Alamo. He will be victorious in South Carolina, or he will be gone. Gingrich is liable to stay in the race as long as his money, ego, and love of television cameras allows him to do so. His ego and autagonistophilia (there’s a $10 word I thought I’d never use!) are inexhaustible, but his money is distinctly finite. It’s likely that unless he somehow pulls off a victory in either New Hampshire or South Carolina, he’ll probably be gone by Super Bowl Sunday. Gingrich’s only chance is that he can so dominate future debates, and so thrill the conservative base with a steady diet of red meat, that voters will overlook his many foibles in their lust to see Gingrich and Obama go mano-a-mano.

The current resident of 2nd place in the New Hampshire polls is Ron Paul. I don’t count Ron Paul as a serious candidate. I like to joke that I agree with Ron Paul 97% of the time…95% on domestic policy and 2% on foreign policy. I am the conservative base, and would vote for Ron Paul over Obama. But I’d vote for Jon Huntsman over Ron Paul in the primaries. That’s how noxious I find Paul’s foreign policy views: a vomitous stew of blame-America-firstism, trutherism, and conspiracy nut musings. His foreign policy views are considerably farther to the Left than even Barack Obama’s…the guy who wants to decimate the U.S. military. Ron Paul has no chance of winning the primaries. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Fugghedaboudit.

I eagerly await the hate mail, but in your heart you know I’m right that there will never, ever, ever be a President Ron Paul. Nor should there be.

What all of this means is that at this moment there’s a two-man race going on between Mitt Romney and, surprise, Rick Santorum. Which means the time has come for Republicans to decide who is the best candidate of those two men to defeat Barack Obama in November. William F. Buckley’s rule of thumb was to support the most conservative candidate who was electable. In choosing between Romney and Santorum, the choice at first appears clear: Romney is the less conservative of the two, but is a polished debater, smooth talking, quick on his feet, the frontrunner with lots of name recognition, a former Republican governor of one of the bluest states in the country. Surely it’s Romney. Virtually every media talking head assures us that Romney is the only Republican who stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of defeating the suave, debonair, charming President. Even the conservative media is beating this drum. My friends The Gormogons posted a wickedly sharp treatise by Ghettoputer that called Romney “the turd in the punchbowl that is the Republican 2012 presidential primary field with the best chance of beating President Obama in the general election.” But is ‘Puter right?

Mitt Romney has been running for election for nearly 20 years, starting with a Senate bid in 1994. During that time he managed one win: governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He didn’t run for reelection in 2006 so that he could concentrate fully on a 2008 Presidential run. Had he run in 2006, he almost certainly would have lost. Romney’s failure to break out of the pack of Republican candidates this year is indicative of just how little emotion he stirs in the base. In the 2008 campaign, he lost to John McCain…the least inspiring Presidential candidate since Bob Dole stammered his way to slaughter in 1996. That’s right: Romney inspired the base less than John McCain, a man who infuriates Republicans on a daily basis.

Republicans need to ask: if Romney is so electable, then why doesn’t anybody want to elect him to anything?

Then there’s Rick Santorum, a man who the enlightened assure us is not electable. The intelligentsia present this assertion as if it were an indisputable fact, with the proof being that in his last race (Senate, 2006) Santorum lost by an 18% margin. Surely, they say, anyone this unpopular could never be elected President. But Santorum has won more electoral victories than Romney has. In a blue state with red tinting, he campaigned as a hardline conservative and won…first as a two-term Representative, then twice more as Senator. The 2006 election that is being held over his head was something of an anomaly: he was campaigning against a blue dog Democrat who shared a name and family heritage with a former, well-liked, governor, Bob Casey. The 2006 election was also the first election suffering from Bush fatigue, and a powerful anti-incumbent sentiment. It was a wave election, carrying the Democrats into power (they gained 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats). Santorum had also deflated the base with his endorsement in 2004 of the wretched and loathsome reptile that is Arlen Specter. To conservatives, this was akin to watching Harry Potter putting a “Vote for Voldemort” sign on his front lawn.

Whether or not a candidate is electable is a difficult thing to ascertain. All candidates have their issues, both pro and con. Romney is an uninspiring flip flopper with an unfortunate, and transparent, tendency to tell audiences whatever they want to hear. The fear is that he has no core principles, and it’s a valid fear. Santorum has come across in the debates, especially the early debates, as annoyed and surly, complaining about his air time. America does not want a whiner for President. Santorum is also intent on focusing on the social side of conservatism. At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, when there is instability throughout the Middle East and Europe, when our nation is so deeply in debt that a bankrupt future looks all too possible, Santorum makes sure we know where he stands on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage. These are important issues, but I’m far more concerned about reforming Medicare than I am about contraception. Sometimes Santorum’s deeply felt Catholicism gets the best of him. He needs to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, debt reduction, jobs, debt reduction, debt reduction, and jobs. Instead he lets a media that hates him trap him into answering questions designed to make him look like a kook (because that’s what the media thinks of devout Catholics).

Note to Rick: When some pinheaded reporter asks you if you want to ban contraception the answer is not a treatise on your faith. The answer is “That’s a ridiculous question you should be ashamed of asking. Of course not. Now can we please talk about the economy?”

I don’t know who’s more electable. That will become clearer as the primaries continue. But it’s clear to me that Romney is less of a sure-fire win than his proponents would like us to believe, and Santorum is a greater threat to Obama than his detractors would argue. Rest assured, though. The Obama campaign is rolling down the streets like Megaweapon, ready to viciously and unfairly tarnish anyone the Republicans nominate. The Republicans need a conservative champion, a Beowulf to slay Grendel (and Grendel’s mom…I’m looking at you, Axelrod!). They need a man with the rock solid principles of Rick Santorum, and the business/economy-related focus of Mitt Romney. A bit of the carnivorous style of Newt Gingrich wouldn’t hurt, either. That combination would be truly unbeatable in November.

Consider that a word of advice to all the candidates.

Is Romney Inevitable?

Fresh from another Republican debate watched by dozens of people on the Bloomberg network, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the race is Mitt Romney’s to lose. The question is: is this a good thing for the Republican party?

I haven’t decided who to support in this campaign for the same reason as many conservatives: there are reasons to dislike or worry about all of them.

• Rick Perry doesn’t seem like he really wants the job. I think the pressure to join the race appealed to his ego and got him thinking Big Thoughts, but his heart’s not in it. He clearly is spending no time on debate preparation and is on a neutrino-paced ride back to Austin and the job with which he’s done well.
• Jon Huntsman has, in Jonah Goldberg’s phrase, a face that you just want to punch. He’s insufferable and arrogant, and the least conservative candidate in the field.
• Ron Paul is right on many issues that have absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. His foreign policy stance is a toxic stew of isolationism, blame-Americaism, and outright denial of reality.
• Newt Gingrich is the smartest guy in the room. Also the one with the most baggage. He’s simply unelectable to high office, and suffers from some of the same sense of intellectual self-importance that makes Obama so arrogant.
• Gary Johnson is…I don’t know who Gary Johnson is. Some dude who’s running for President and has a smaller chance than I do.
• Michelle Bachmann is a fighter as she tells you at every single opportunity. One gets the feeling that right now she’s tracking somebody down so that she can pin him to the wall and tell him what a fighter she is. The trouble is that there may have been a lot of battles she waged in the House, but there are no victories. She’s also gaffe-prone and so doctrinaire in her beliefs that I’m not sure she’d be capable of compromising, even if it meant she got 99.9% of what she wanted. Whenever I see her talking policy I think of George Costanza talking himself and Jerry out of a deal with NBC by insisting that the show be “about nothing” despite what the network executives want. I think Bachmann is right on a lot of issues, but her campaign is unraveling at light speed (i.e., slightly slower than Perry’s).
• Rick Santorum is where my heart lies. He’s about as solid a conservative as you can get, he’s got a good resume (a great resume includes a gubernatorial stint), he’s been good in the debates. I’d happily cast a vote for Rick Santorum in November 2012. The problem here is that I’m probably not going to get that chance. His campaign is cash poor and being run out of a camper parked on a front lawn somewhere in western Pennsylvania. He is the only candidate talking about the morality of how economics affects families, and I think that is a great issue that can be easily sold to a lot of people who are feeling the pinch. Bad economic policies do more than hurt your pocketbook, they can also tear at the societal fabric. What Santorum lacks is star power and charisma. Sadly, that’s a lot more important now than it was when, say, Grover Cleveland was running for President.
• Herman Cain is the single most likable candidate. He’s sunny, optimistic, funny, smart, and has the best “rags-to-riches and I beat the Big C, too” backstory of any of the candidates. He’s got some problems, though. His “9-9-9″ plan will not work. Period. End of sentence. It’s a lousy plan that is based on unrealistic projections. He is clueless about foreign policy and doesn’t seem inclined to learn. While he has many great lines, he’s not really a great debater. Whatever the subject of the question, he turns it back to “my 9-9-9 plan,” which has crossed the line from “talking point” to “mantra” and is likely soon to jump the shark. Also, we learned in 2008 that the presidency is not an entry-level job. His business experience, like Romney’s, is interesting but not conclusive. Government is not business, and the President is not the national CEO. It’s one thing to be CEO of a company and have your employees implement your desires. It’s another to deal with coequal branches of government.

Which brings us back to Mitt Romney, one of the most inauthentic politicians I’ve ever laid eyes on.

First it must be acknowledged that this is not the same Mitt Romney who ran in 2008. Somewhere in the past three years Romney has loosened up, become an excellent debater, and has gotten much more comfortable in his own skin. Maybe that means that the Romney we see now is the real guy, that he’s finally letting his conservative freak flag fly. Maybe he’s just been in some coaching sessions with media consultants.

But Romney is a very bitter pill for conservatives to swallow. Obamacare, the solar-powered windmill conservatives have spent two years tilting at, is not much more than a CinemaScope remake of Romneycare. Nominating Romney removes, or at least damages, that issue for Republicans. Romney also has a well-deserved reputation for flip flopping on various issues, most famously abortion. He gives the impression that he will agree with whatever the majority is telling him. In liberal Massachusetts, Romney was a liberal Republican who partnered with Ted Kennedy (as did George W. Bush and don’t think for a second I’ve forgiven him for that). Now he sounds like he’s wearing a tri-corner hat at a local Tea Party, and questions about his liberal record are deflected or treated as if they are irrelevant.

Mitt Romney is not the inevitable candidate. Yet. The Republican primary voters are still looking for, in John Podhoretz’s words, the “Not-Romney” candidate. Today it’s Herman Cain. Previous winners have included Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. It’s possible that Cain will give way to Santorum, the only truly viable Not-Romney left, but it is most likely that when the dust settles Mitt Romney’s perfect hair, smile, and endless record of prevarication will be the only things left.

This isn’t necessarily the end of the world. As a candidate in the general election, I would support Romney. That’s an easy choice given the alternative. The key to Romney’s success as a conservative politician will be the makeup of Congress in 2013 and beyond. A conservative House passing conservative bills to a conservative Senate who passes the bills to President Romney will likely result in conservative policies being implemented. A divided Congress or, God forbid, a liberal/Progressive Congress, will co-opt Romney and he will govern from the center, much as Bush 41 and Bush 43 did.

I can live with Romney as the candidate, though he’s very far from my first choice. His candidacy does raise the stakes, though. With Romney in charge, it will be more important than ever for conservatives to maintain or increase their control of the House and to gain control, preferably filibuster-proof control, of the Senate. An “important to have” Congress under a conservative President like Santorum, Bachmann, or Cain becomes a “must have” Congress under President Romney. It would do the Tea Party well to remember this if they’re thinking about sitting out the election: Romney isn’t the only name on the ballot, and President is not the only office needing to be filled.

Today’s Lesson In Progressive Politics: Bev Perdue

Bev Perdue, the Governor of North Carolina, has come out in favor of suspending elections for a few years. She thinks this will allow lawmakers to concentrate on fixing the economy and not worry about getting themselves elected.

“You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It’s a little bit more contentious now but it’s not impossible to try to do what’s right in this state. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

For the Left, this is nothing new. Suspending or denying elections has been the pathway to dictatorship for Leftists from Lenin to Hitler to Castro to Chavez. It speaks to the mindset that the people who vote are the rabble, and that the elected officials are the wise intellectuals who can solve problems through Brain Power and, in Obama’s case, Word Power.

This Kinsleyan gaffe comes on the heels of former Obama budget director Peter Orszag’s commentary in The New Republic that, to achieve our goals, we just need less democracy. It also follows about a billion columns by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman where he wishes that America were more like the Communist dictatorship China, because China can mandate and enforce policies without fretting over any political fallout. Even the President of the United States has made several comments about wishing he could “work around” Congress, displaying a total lack of understanding in the concept of co-equal branches of government, as well as a desire to concentrate considerably more power into the hands of one man (himself, coincidentally).

For the Progressive, society and government can be perfected. The history of bloody tyranny dovetails with the history of trying to create Heaven on Earth (“immanentizing the eschaton” in Eric Voeglin’s words). Progressives believe their ideas can shape human destiny only for the better, that a Utopia will be created if only we would do what they want us to do. They disregard the play in Thomas More’s word “Utopia,” that it comes from the Greek words meaning “no place.” For the Progressive, Utopia is just another mandate away, virtue can be ordered and enforced, and those who oppose their ideas are obstacles that must be overcome by whatever means are necessary. From the baseless slanders of Tea Party America on one end of spectrum to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Holodomor on the other, Progressives view their opponents as an enemy that must be marginalized, vanquished, or destroyed. From “individual mandates” to suspended elections, creating a perfect society must be legislated and enforced to overcome those who think they know better than their more enlightened Progressive leaders.

Of course, the media provides cover. The headline of the article about Bev Perdue’s wish for less democracy is: “Perdue jokes about suspending Congressional elections for two years.” Jokes? It’s crystal clear from the quote, presented above in context, that this was not a joke. “I really hope someone can agree with me on that,” she says after calling for suspending elections.

Well, har-dee-har-har.

Hot Air has more.

The Mob Rules: Ann Coulter’s Demonic

For the political Left, probably only Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh rank higher than Ann Coulter as “The Person You Most Want To See Silenced,” and that’s only because Rush is on radio for three hours, five days a week and Palin…well, I still don’t understand the Left’s vitriolic hatred for the former Governor of Alaska.

As a conservative, even I find Coulter to be a little over-the-top at times. She famously (in political geek circles) had a small contretemps with National Review about ten years ago when her article about 9/11 included the advice that we go to the Middle East, kill their leaders, and convert them all to Christianity. Somehow this got past the National Review editors, one thing led to another, and Coulter was dropped as a columnist for the prestigious conservative magazine. She responded by calling the NR editors “girly men.”

But that is Coulter’s style. She is amazingly (and amusingly) brash, never backs down from a fight, and takes no prisoners. Hers is a scorched earth policy as far as liberals and liberalism goes. Just the titles of her books about liberalism say it all: Treason, Godless, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must), Slander. Now comes her latest: Demonic.

Subtlety is not Ann Coulter’s forte, but I’m sure that she would defend that by saying that subtlety doesn’t work when talking about cloven-hoofed minions of the Devil.

Despite her sometimes abrasive rhetoric (even to someone like me who essentially agrees with most everything she says), Coulter is much more than simply a provocateur. The Left discounts her as an extremist, hate-filled, enfant terrible, but Coulter backs up the acid that drips from her tongue with genuine smarts and a lot of research. Rather than rail about the political maneuvering of liberals on the issues of the day—subjects that grow tiresome and dated—Coulter fills her books with examples of liberal rhetoric and actions from history and ties them in to the present time. It’s a style that works well. Coulter’s books are more cohesive and coherent than many of her weekly columns, which have an unfortunate tendency to spin apart as Coulter tries to pack in as many asides, jokes, and insults as she can.

In Demonic, Coulter discusses the history of Left wing mobs, drawing an unbroken line from the French Revolution to protests staged at private homes by SEIU goons. The “mob” is not a collection of individuals, it is an organism unto itself. Individuals can be swayed by reason, by rhetoric, and by appeal. Mobs can not, and this groupthink allows the mob to alter their perception of reality in order to achieve its goals. Coulter is at her best when she writes about how the viciously racist Democrats of the old South managed to assume the mantle of “the party of civil rights” when they were no such thing. She gleefully pokes holes in the nonsense that the segregationist Left simply switched party affiliation from Democrats to Republicans. Her arguments are bold, convincing, and often very funny.

She also excels in her dissection of the French Revolution and how it compares to the American Revolution. The French Revolution, and the horrors that followed it, are the Ground Zero for Left wing mobs, and it is still the playbook they use (consciously or not). You can see the echoes of the French Revolution in 1917 Russia, in Weimar Germany, at the Kent State campus in 1970, in the shattered storefronts of Seattle in 1999, and in the burning buildings of 2011 London. Coulter’s argument is that mobs and riots, the thirst for violent change, is a distinctly Left wing phenomenon. The violence is real, yet whenever two conservatives get together with a cup of tea and a sign saying “Taxed Enough Already” it is the Left that warns us of encroaching violence, furrowing their brows and warning us in worried tones that fascism is right around the corner. It is a mark of the Left’s success that they have convinced generations of people that fascism is a political philosophy of the extreme Right when, in fact, it is nearly as far to the Left as Communism. Coulter will have none of that nonsense. With her trademark bluntness, she hits liberals and the Left where it hurts: she does not try to convince them of anything because she knows that the Mob can not be reasoned with. Instead, she uses humor and wicked wordplay to mock the Left. Coulter puts red noses and clown shoes on the Mob, rendering them objects of ridicule and scorn. It is a very effective tactic because the Mob is also humorless. Many conservatives I know watch and appreciate The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but I can not imagine any of the many liberals I know watching a similar show targeting the Left.

One of the hallmarks of liberalism is its self-seriousness. The Left is convinced that the world is perfectable and that they have the brain power necessary to make all things good for all people everywhere. Such tendentious self-righteousness hates to be mocked, and Coulter knows it. It is the very reason she takes such unabashed glee in skewering the Left.

The biggest issue I have with Coulter is her use of absolutes when engaging in these discussions. “Liberals always…conservatives never…liberals will do this every time….” By phrasing things this way she immediately calls to mind the personal instances everyone knows where liberals or conservatives did not act according to the stereotype she promulgates. The fastest way to lose an argument is to say that someone always or never does something, because it is rarely true…especially when discussing groups. One senses that she does this precisely because it burrows like a tick under the Left’s skin, but to the wider audience it only takes one crazed anti-abortion zealot to kill a doctor or blow up an abortion clinic to disprove the line that violence is always from the Left. Coulter’s desire to paint with the largest brush possible weakens her argument and allows her ideological opponents to cast her as an extremist. Saying that mob violence is a Left wing tactic going back hundreds of years is not an extreme statement, but her insinuation that the desire for violence is baked into the DNA of all liberals is a) extreme, and b) simply not true. Coulter makes no distinction between the guy who lives next door to you who genuinely believes that the Federal government needs to be taking care of the citizens and the guy throwing a brick through the front window of a nearby Starbucks. To Coulter, they are all part of the Mob. For me, the distinction is between “liberal” and “Left.”

The Left underestimates Coulter at their peril. They dismiss her as a crazy Right-wing bomb thrower. But her prose, while at times unruly, is convincing, and the smile and laughter that comes from her so readily in her TV appearances and on her book jackets belies the caricature of her as someone who is filled with hatred. When Coulter connects, she hits towering home runs. Demonic is a home run.