Political Football

The real thing was exciting for once. How 'bout them Jints?

As for Tuesday's follies, some predictions and some comments.

McCain will all but clinch the GOP nod, and poor Hugh Hewitt will have to find another graveyard for his whistling practice.

I think Obama may surprise. The numbers are trending his way. With proportional allocation of delegates, this thing won't end on Tuesday and Hillary is out of rabbits.

Romney has been running ads here in California. Even as presented by his own flacks, he puts my teeth on edge. He's going to "change Washington" with the same old nostrums. Pfui.

McCain's stances on immigration and campaign finance are offputting, and although he's been a critic of military boondoggles he appears not to have rejected foreign adventures. I admire McCain's authenticity and I like listening to him, but I'm voting for Ron Paul.

I never delved into Huckabee, and apparently it would have been a waste of time. Huck's a big help to McCain, avoiding the improbable but possible coalescence of the Bushites around Mitt. He could get VP, as could Charlie Crist.

As for the Dems, Hillary is an apparat-chick. She's a lot like the girls who sat next to me in college taking detailed notes in a fine round hand while I drew cartoon animals on the margins of my notebooks pages, waiting to hear something I needed to write down. She never met a gummint social program she didn't like, and I have met few that I did, but if nominated she'll move right and continue Bushian interventionism, although more slickly.

Obama pipes prettily, but he could be marching us all happily to the River of Doom. No one really knows if he's a triangulator with happy feet, or a lefty with calming rhetoric and nice suits. A blank slate upon which each of it can mentally inscribe his own dreams?

Both Hillary and Barack Hussein should pick Jim Webb for VP. They need a white male who can appeal to red staters and white men generally. Webb's the guy.

Entertaining But Disheartening

I have not been blogging about the Presidential campaign. To some extent, personal considerations are to blame. But fundamentally, it's because the affair is so disheartening. The prospect of being governed by any of the major candidates is pretty dismal.

As a political junkie whose addiction started at age 8, I nevertheless find the campaign amusing, especially on the GOP side, where for the first time I can remember the free-for-all just won't end with the usual anointing of the winner.

Now the coiffed, well-spoken, and programmed Mitt Romney has risen from the dead and won a primary, and on to South Carolina (by way of Las Vegas), and the once inevitable Hillary has won a paper victory but with numbers among black voters that presage a train wreck for her in South Carolina. These results are interesting as far as the nuts and bolts of campaigning are concerned, but hardly promising for the Republic. Romney is to national leadership what Velveeta is to cheese.

Consider. The auto industry is in a shambles and once-prosperous Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. McCain told the truth--the jobs aren't coming back. This would be true even if the American automakers managed a design and engineering revolution. Romney, the "conservative," denies the obvious and promises corporate welfare to do the impossible--bring the jobs back--and wins.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are locked in a contentless identity campaign. Mindless feminists vote for the heiress-by-marriage, who is terminally dull and has no qualifications for the job except for having put up and covered for her husband's cocksmanship. On the other hand, Obama, the candidate of the Starbucks Dems, is finally managing to get the black vote on solely racial grounds. Neither has anything new to say, but God help us, one of them is likely to be our next President. At least Obama can deliver a speech.

Let's Get This Over With, or, Dark Suits and Red Ties

My jaded and jaundiced view of the endless campaign was epitomized in a post listing 10 activities preferable to following the dreary rituals of our overripe demi-democracy. It might as well have been inflated by an order of magnitude and included making paper snowflakes and igniting farts.

Others, such is the inimitable and briefly hiatal Larison, as well as the paid handicappers, have more than made up for my reticence on the subject.

If this is a blog that started out mostly political, I suppose, as one who rips the bandaid off quickly, it is time to divagate on the would be POTUSes. I will leave out the purely quixotic efforts, such as those of poor Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, and Slow Joe Biden, not to speak of Dennis Kucinich, the Evil Elf. Tancredo and Brownback have spared themselves being flogged by my wisdom by dropping out. Dodd and Slow Joe, although sadly mistaken about everything except what shoes to wear, do deserve better. In a parliamentary system, they'd be ministers, if not prime.

So, here goes. A general note--candidates' positions tell us something about them, but how many of them have already shown a tendency to tergiversation, and how many Presidents in the past did the exact opposite of what they promised during the campaign. Hence, character and biography are as important as stated positions.

Donkeys

Hillary. The late Leonid Breznev used to mangle speeches about tractor production and Marxist dogma to the "loud and stormy" applause of ten thousand sycophants. Whenever I see this lady, my thoughts turn to the mouldering and decidedly non-meteoric Leonid. She's earnest and dull.

In mitigation, she's dogged and disciplined. When she brought her carpetbag to New York state, she slogged through every apple-knocking corner of the state. I suspect she reads the briefing books and did her assigned reading in American History, which puts her head and shoulders over Chimphitler and much of the competition.

Although some believe she's a secret Bolshie fanatic, others on the Left think she's a sellout only a couple of degrees to port of the simian incumbent and prepared to say anything at all to get elected. Certainly she can be imperious (as in Travelgate), and the Clintons are dangerous to their friends.

Obama. I confess I don't know what the shouting is about. Obama's a mulatto who talks nice and for the nonce has given up pounding the racial drums. He gives a coherent speech, and has virtually no experience relevant to the office. He says stupid things, such as expressing a willingness to talk to hostile heads of state without preparation and being willing to send troops into Pakistan without permission. The country is Oprahfied enough as it is.

Edwards. Another lightweight on experience. I can overlook his pretty-boy hairdo, which seems to be a trait of a certain kind of Southern Protestant. I can even swallow my annoyance at the thought of another cracker in the White House. If I thought his demagogic populism betokened a bit of nationalism on immigration and trade, and a principled anti-interventionism, I'd be tempted to overlook the likely statist implementation of his populism.

It doesn't matter, of course. He can't win the nomination, even if he does win Iowa, which is a slight possibility. He might be smarter than we all think, though.

Elephants

Giuliani. Rudy's still technically the leader. He does seem the smartest of the bunch, and perhaps it's my New York background that makes me sympathize with the guy's style, in spite of myself. And he did stand up to the race hustlers when Mayor, and showed concern about protecting the middle class, and not just the parasitic underclass beloved of the New York Times and other despicable institutions.

However, he has two strikes. He's surrounded himself with the likes of the maniacal Norman Podhoretz and thus seems likely to be the most intransigent and aggressive in international affairs, regardless of the wisdom of such a course. Secondly, he's shown himself to be impervious to constitutional and prudential constraints on his power. Perp-walking stockbrokers whose lawyers would have quietly surrendered them betokens a hunger for publicity and power. I have a visceral distaste for abusive prosecutors; Rudy was one.

Romney. As some say of Jews, "Some of my best friends are Mormons." Romney, however, sets my teeth on edge and makes my skin crawl. He's not only phony, or at least anachronistic, in manner, but appears to be a tergiversating opportunist. Mitt Headroom. I'd almost prefer Hillary's ponderous Brezhnev imitation to having to listen to this guy for 4 or 8 years. GWB's lateralized /s/ was bad enough. What Hugh Hewitt sees in Romney, I'll never know.

Huckabee. The guy's likeable and relaxed, and the GOP Establishment hates him. All of this makes him interesting. However, he's short on experience, unclear on foreign policy, and his closet hasn't been vetted for skeletons. His numbers are starting to decline as the spotlight shines on him. Talk to me in a month if he's still in contention.

McCain. I despise campaign finance reform as an attack on free speech, disagree strongly with McCain's stance on immigration, and disliked his support of the deal on judges. However, he's personally brave, smarter than most of the field, and is his own guy, calling things as he sees them, even doubling down on Iraq when others were tip-toeing away. I now think starting the enterprise was a mistake, but unlike some war opponents, I'd like to get out of there with something that might pass for victory. McCain seems to be getting a second wind. Even if he's grouchy, he has a lot more character than the others. And in spite of his views on Iraq, men with military experience, unless they're maniacs, know what war is like, and are less likely to start one just to prove they have cojones.

Thompson. Nice guy. Lightweight. He didn't catch fire. He's history.

Paul. The man, like many libertarians, comes off as a bit of a crank and has an odd gaggle of supporters, as one expects of any "outsider" candidate. However, he's for small government, he's anti-interventionist, backs off libertarian dogma enough to be tough on immigration, and seems genuinely lacking in the usual vanity of politicos. At least as long as I don't have to confront the possibility of him actually winning, he has my vote. If I actually have to think about the gold standard and the Federal Reserve, I'll have to ponder the man's views more closely.
For all his centralizing authoritarianism, looking at our choices, I envy the Russians their Putin.

Entrusting Health Care To . . . Idiots?

Mitt "Headroom" Romney boasts of his healthcare plan in Massachusetts.

There's a swarm of flies in Mitt's ointment--doctors aren't signing up to treat patients under the plan. Here's why:

In Massachusetts, the state-subsidized plans, collectively called Commonwealth Care, are provided by private insurance companies. Patients can choose from among six options. Residents who make between one and three times the poverty level ($48,000 for a family of three) are now eligible for coverage under the plan. Doctors are reimbursed by insurance providers -- at below-market rates comparable with Medicaid reimbursements.

Imagine that. We could have government-sponsored steak at $ 1.59 per pound, or gasoline at $ 1.00 a gallon, but Exxon and Safeway won't play.

Would you trust your child's health to a doctor who was stupid enough to sign up for such a plan?

Mitt's supposed to have been a successful businessman. He must be lucky, because he sure don't know economics.

HT: Dr. Bob.

Dumb Like Rocks or Sly Like Foxes?

I got into an exchange in Larison's comboxes. Daniel finds alarming the apparent ignorance of the front-runners in the GOP about, say, the difference between a Sufi and a Shi'ite. Given the Max Headroom programming of C-of-C favorite Mitt Romney, it appalled me that he could say some of the stuff he has, like this from the Boston Globe:

“They want to bring down the West, particularly us,” Romney declared. “And they’ve come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent.”

Another commenter, johnsavage, opined that the GOP candidates aren't lithopoids, but clever little weasels, feigning ignorance for the rubes:

Well, certainly they do know the difference. However, the GOP self-consciously views itself as the “stupid party”. It prizes leaders who share their resentment of those eggheads at left-wing universities, together with the Europeans who are similarly opposed to American unilateralism. Karl Rove, who is obviously no fool, allows Bush to continue speaking of “nucular” weapons ad infinitum, among other obvious and less obvious errors. Obviously this is a well-planned tactical move in which Bush shows his solidarity with the less-educated. Only an elitist (it is believed) would dare call attention to the President’s lack of command of the English language. Smart Republicans can see Bush’s bluff, but they actually vote Republican based on real policies, rather than gestures that supposedly show where a candidate stands in the Culture War.

It pains an intellectual snob such as I, but johnsavage might be right.

The candidate's mental process would go like this:

“The country is in grave danger, but if the rubes thought I actually could tell one sand n*****r from another, they’d think I was a pointy-headed intellectual, so I’ll play dumb.”

So johnsavage thinks these guys are acting dumb, like a bunch of teenage girls who are afraid if they get A’s they won’t get dates, or black students who talk Ebonics and fail math so they won’t be seen as “acting white.”

He may have a point when it comes to W. I went to Andover a few years before W, and I can’t remember a soul there who said “nucular” or “athaletic” or “sheeit fahr.” Ruthless adolescent mockery wouid have eliminated such locutions in short order. What’s more, you had to read and at a minimum, regurgitate, even to get C’s. Years of substance abuse and sinecures could have rotted his brain, I suppose, or W could be chopping weeds and saying “nucular” to appease the rubes.

It’s a little harder to believe, though, that all the rest of the pack went to the same clown school as W. You’d think one or two would try flashing a little intellectual ankle just to stand out from the crowd.

Who Is The Real Mitt Romney?

Larison has been gnawing on Romney like a bulldog on a letter carrier. So I suggested this poll:

Was Mitt Romney
	A fake moderate in Mass. and a real conservative now
	A real moderate in Mass. and a fake conservative now
	Converted to social conservatism by studying stem sell research
	Never had any convictions on social issues
pollcode.com free polls