Category Archives: Conservatism

Paul’s Peddling Liberty Again

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Constitution, Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Ron Paul

Watch Meet the Press. Contemplate the following points:

* Selling liberty is tougher when free people morph into pliable sheep. But there are still very many buyers—since October Ron Paul has raised more than any other Republican: $19 million!
* If not for Dr. Paul’s run for president, can you imagine Tim Russet ever seriously addressing the elimination of the income tax?
* Is anyone other than Ron Paul repeatedly reminding the unreceptive leaches that form the Media-Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex that they’ve bankrupted us? Who other than Paul is telling Americans that America is a debt nation?
* If not for Dr. Paul, would anyone know that it costs a bankrupt America over a $1 trillion annually to police the world?
* There is no doubt that war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne warned. In her more recent tedious, socialist screeds, Naomi Klein has seized upon and run with this thesis, which libertarian economist Bob Higgs has empirically verified. Why is she listened to but not Paul?
* As you know, while I concur with Paul about the need for the US to leave its posts across the world, I do not agree that that will eliminate Islamic terrorism—just as I don’t believe Israel giving back its well-deserved, disputed territories will make the Palestinians “hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” However, although I think Paul’s understanding of Islam’s impetus is limited and reductionist, his foreign policy is the right one. What’s the problem? If we are attacked on our soil, Paul will not hesitate to retaliate.
* As for earmarks and term limits: this is the first time I’ve seen Russet challenge a politician for real.
* With respect to Russet’s challenge vis-à-vis the 14th amendment, and the elimination of birthright citizenship, Paul retorted: “Amending the Constitutional is constitutional”: A great line.
* The Civil Rights Act: Paul reiterates that any objection thereto is rooted in respect for private property rights and freedom of association, not racism. We’ve said as much, and frequently.
* In the interview, I heard a great deal more of the gradualist approach specified in my critique of Dr. Paul’s strategy. Pragmatism is unavoidable.

See also:
On Idiot Ideologues Who Pan Paul
Huck’s for Huck–Paul’s For America
Ron Paul’s Electability
The Pauline Gospel at Its Best
Some Advice For Ron Paul

‘The False Conservative’

Christian Right, Conservatism, Elections 2008

You read it all before here, in “Huck’s for Huck – Paul’s for America.” Now Bob Novak reinforces, in “The False Conservative,” what we’ve already documented about Mike Huckabee the statist:
Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the “Club for Greed”? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender — definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses and might make more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is no doubt about Huckabee’s record during a decade in Little Rock. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax-and-spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he lost 100 pounds and decided to press his new lifestyle on the American people, he was hardly being a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian….

Read the rest here.

Rudy’s Repulsiveness

Conservatism, Elections 2008, Politics, Republicans

About Giuliani, Clyde Haberman of the New York Times writes this:

“Non-New Yorkers got a taste of it the other day when Mr. Giuliani interrupted his speech — a very important speech — to the National Rifle Association in Washington. His cellphone rang. It was his wife, Judith. Smack in the middle of his talk, he whipped out the phone.

‘Hello, dear,’ he said in a syrupy voice. ‘I’m talking to the members of the N.R.A. right now. Would you like to say hello?’ He listened, and laughed. ‘I love you, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m finished, O.K.?’ he said. He listened a bit more. ‘O.K., have a safe trip. Bye-bye. Talk to you later, dear. I love you.’

Campaign aides said it was a spontaneous moment, with Mrs. Giuliani calling just before she boarded a plane.

Granted, lots of people call loved ones before a flight. But a presidential candidate doesn’t shut off his phone, and instead takes a call, in the middle of a major speech? The episode was so bizarrely cutesy-poo that more than a few people in the audience went, Eeeww! Nor was it an isolated incident; the same thing happened in Florida three months ago.

The cellphone routine was not Mr. Giuliani’s sole icky moment last week.

While rattling the cup in London, he told reporters that he was ‘probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.’ Oh? And who, someone asked, also makes that rarefied list? ‘Bill Clinton, Hillary,’ he replied before aides hustled him away.

Offhand, we can think of any number of Americans who might be more famous worldwide. President Bush, anyone? How about Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey?

The real revelation was Mr. Giuliani’s sense of his own importance. It was on display again in his N.R.A. speech. Freshly returned from London, he told the audience, ‘It’s nice to be here in England.’ Then, seeing an American flag, he said, ‘Ah, America.’
He meant it as a joke about the mental scrambling that the rigors of campaigning can cause. But the underlying assumption was that people were so focused on him that they knew his travel schedule by heart. Many in the audience didn’t get it…

It kicked in hard several times with the mayor’s cross-dressing skits, including one time when he squealed in delight as Donald Trump nuzzled his fake breasts. It turned up in 1999 when he joked to a black audience, of all groups, about the hard time he had getting a New York taxi to stop for him.
It emerged when he told reporters that he was leaving his wife — his second wife — before he bothered to tell her. It resurfaced a few months ago when wife No. 3 allowed that this was her third marriage and not her second, as she had let everyone believe for years.”

Don’t forget how Giuliani Nifonged great business men like Michael Milken.

Nifonged

Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Crime, Criminal Injustice, English, Free Markets, Ilana Mercer, Law