The GOP is split into four overlapping factions: the libertarians, fundamentalist theocrats, pragmatic Republicans and the Tea Party. It would be ideal that a leader would emerge that would unite the factions, but that will be unlikely. What is more likely is that Obama will unite these factions like only a common enemy could.
Newt, who filmed a global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi and bashed Mitt for being a capitalist is deemed the truer conservative than the man with experience in the private and public sector who actually got elected and governed as a GOP in a dominantly Democratic state. Men with records have something to shoot at. Both men have made attractive targets.
In a game of football you achieve points by moving the ball down the field. If you move it at least ten yards you get to keep moving. If you don’t move it ten yards you either hand the ball to the other side or kick it to them. You can go for the Hail Mary Pass, a desperate measure in the final minutes of the game, but if a desperate measure is a part of your early strategy you will not likely win.
Mitt is playing traditional football, moving the ball to the goal, one play at a time. Mitt understands a critical factor that the Tea Party seems to miss; there is opposition in the political game. It is easy to pontificate opinions as I do in this blog. It is quite another to govern; to pass bills and make changes when there is opposition.
Mitch Daniels referred to RIMOs (Republicans In Mouth Only). These were Republicans who could talk a conservative pitch but were clueless to the realities of governing. He often found that when he tried to move the ball toward a more conservative goal, his biggest opposition was from fellow Republicans who complained that he was not moving the ball far enough down the field. Due to the opposition from his own party he sometimes failed to move the ball the ten yards toward the goal and ended up fumbling any progress.
The Tea Party keeps Twittering and Facebooking to their choir and have become blind to the political realities. We need candidates who can consistently move the ball ten yards at a time. In the NFL Roger Staubach (a Roman Catholic) said, “I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.” It may have worked for the Vikings in a 1975 playoff, but it will not win the White House.
With Pelosi explaining that unemployment benefits are the best form of stimulus spending and the President suggesting that further regulation actually creates jobs, it is hard to conceive of more misguided economic thinking.
On a tour in China economist Milton Friedman asked why workers were using shovels instead of earth moving equipment to dig large holes at a construction site. The guide said that they used shovels to create more jobs. ”You should then be using spoons,” Friedman suggested.
Historians still argue whether FDR’s policies shortened or lengthened the Depression, but Obamanomics makes FDR’s busywork schemes look brilliant by comparison.
In descending order:
• FDR redistributed money to the poor by using the government as an inefficient middleman. But under his system at least something positive got achieved — roads were built, parks improved — however non-essential they may have been.
• The Leaf-Blower Paradox also redistributes money to the poor, but is one step down; instead of inefficiently achieving non-essential goals, the leaf-blowers collectively produce nothing whatsoever.
• And then we have Obama, who takes us down to the absolute lowest level of counter-productiveness: He proposes that we “create jobs” by employing people to prevent the creation of jobs. Hiring people to implement economy-destroying EPA regulations — and then touting this dubious strategy as a way to “create jobs” — is the equivalent of hiring thousands of men to drive steamrollers over America’s farmlands. Not only have we lowered unemployment by creating thousands of new Steamroller Driver positions, but we’ve created more jobs in the agricultural sector as well, since the farmers now have to hire workers to re-plant all their crops!
In my admittedly primitive way of visualizing economics, there are two basic kinds of jobs: The first kind, which I call “productive jobs,” involve the creation of new things: manufacturing, inventing, designing, building, extracting raw materials, and so on. The second kind, which I call “maintenance jobs,” involve preserving a pleasant and safe civilizational environment: policing, service jobs, cleaning, health care, and so forth. These “maintenance jobs” are less glamorous but they are just as essential to the economy, because they create and maintain a status quo in which productiveness can be achieved.
Yet Obama and his crack team of economists have now dreamt up a third kind of job: The destructive job. Except Obama is more subtle than hiring Steamroller Drivers. No, instead, his destructive employment program involves the hiring of bureaucrats to stifle and crush entrepreneurialism and the free market; technicians to install machinery which makes doing business more difficult and expensive; IRS agents to squeeze more and more money from the dwindling number of productive Americans; and public servants whose job is to remove as many people as they can from the employment market by enslaving them to addictive lifelong entitlements like Food Stamps and unending unemployment benefits.
HKO comments:
The Leaf Blower is a great analogy to government make work schemes. The idea that government actions that destroy jobs can be described as creating them is the shallowest of Orwellian economic thinking.
Preaching that this is not class warfare generally precedes a volley in the self destructive attacks on the wealthy. It is like the shyster who precedes a dishonest act with “trust me.”
There was some news of some of the protesters on Wall Street being paid to march. That pretty much sums up the integrity of their argument.
Apparently the Democrats do not agree what wealthy is. The president wants to define it as over $200,000 for singles, $250,000 for households. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi thinks it should be over $1,000,000 in income. I have contended that clarity destroys poorly thought out plans. For the controlling elites excess wealth is the income from anybody who either a) makes more money than they do or b) makes it in an industry or profession that they deem less worthy than their chosen or preferred profession.
Speaking of poorly thought out plans, Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan smacks of yet another poorly thought out populist idea. I like Herman Cain in many ways and I like a consumption tax for several reasons, but the devil is in the details and tax policy is no place to think out loud. It takes some thought.
The President’s jobs bill was dead on arrival: another poorly thought out plan, a political hip shot at poor economic performance. The tax increases from the health care bill have not even taken effect yet and he is already piling on additional taxes. Republicans in the Senate have petitioned to bring it to the floor (assuming to embarrass the president and his own party) and Harry Reid has killed the vote. The bill does not even have a co-sponsor from his own party in the House. Yet the Republicans are blamed for obstruction. This is not a serious effort to stimulate job production; it is a cheap political stunt.
There are three rules often missing in economic analysis.
What works in one quantity does not necessarily work in another quantity.
What worked in one time period may not work in another time period.
What works in the short term may not work in the long term. The reverse is also true.
Economic models only work to the extent that they must exclude variables that inhabit the real world. That is why economics, unlike physics and math, is not a science.
There is a distinct connection between a free economy and growing economy, but freedom is not enough. There must be a moral center, security of property, and a reasonably educated population. But without individual liberty these other factors will not create the growth that other countries with liberty can.
Looking back on the economic collapse, it is hard to reconcile the intellect and credentials of the people in the public and private sector who participated in this fiasco. Yet at the end of the day this collapse was no different than hundreds of other financial disasters. Too much debt, too much money, and too many well educated elites who think that this time is different. Yes there was also greed, but we have had greed since the dawn of man and we still have greed today. Blaming the collapse on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity.
Yet we are still enamored with well credentialed ignorance. We listen to Keynesian economists tell us that every dollar spent by the government creates economic output of $1.50. It makes me wonder why private business owners work so damn hard to make a buck when all we have to do is play golf and wait for the government to just spend our way to prosperity.
It is only a slight corollary to hear ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi state how unemployment benefits are the most productive way for the government to spend money, because these poor slobs need the money so bad that they will spend it quickly giving the economy a big boost. In fact it is such a great idea, I wonder why we do not double or triple the unemployment benefits to give us a bigger faster boost. I realize the left thinks Sarah Palin is a moron, but this statement along with her famous “we have to pass the health care bill to see what is in it” makes Ms. Palin look like a Rhodes scholar.
As I hear Senate Majority leader Harry Reid justify funding of the Cowboy Poetry festival while we have a record deficit it is hard to escape just how removed from reality our leaders are. Every business who saw huge cuts in their volume in the last year knows how to solve this problem.
To believe that we can spend and tax our way out of this pending catastrophe is the equivalent of believing in the tooth fairy.
The Syrian dictatorship possessed in the extreme two qualities particularly dangerous in a military adversary- ruthlessness and patience. Like all dictatorships, the regime had the advantage of not needing to cater to its domestic opinion. It could do whatever it deemed expedient to achieve its goals. The Syrians had been playing a diplomatic card game with us for decades: doing just enough to look accommodating or coming up just shy of being too provocative. They played the international media like skilled poker players-offering public words of support for peace efforts so as to be seen as not unreasonable. The Syrians would float friendly diplomatic overtures to give the regime deniability when negotiations went off-track, as they had intended all along. This left them free to pursue their hostile interests behind the scenes: destabilizing the Lebanese government and supporting armed militias and terrorist groups.
From Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld
HKO comments:
This was written in reference to troubles in Lebanon in 1983 with Rumsfeld serving as a special envoy under Reagan. When the U.S. decided to pull out after the devastating loss of 241 marines in the barracks bombing, Rumsfeld had to deliver the news to President Gemayel. Both men knew how devastating the U.S. exit would be to Lebanon’s future. We later learned this was one of several actions of perceived weakness on our part that emboldened Bin Ladin. Rumsfeld learned that perceived weakness in the face of a ruthless enemy does not lead to peace.
After taking the House in 2006, Pelosi reached out to Assad in Lebanon in a visit strongly discouraged by the State department and Bush who was still president. If Assad was a “skilled poker player” Pelosi proved to be a naïve rank amateur. In September 2007 the Israelis destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria.
