Category Archives: Elections

UPDATED (7/12/020): Have Republicans Dismissed Older Voters As Non-Essential Livers?

America, Conservatism, COVID-19, Culture, Donald Trump, Elections, Republicans

A mild-mannered, conservative man and his wife were interviewed by CNN at the National Mall on July 4.

It looked like they could be closeted Trump voters. The telltale signs: Much to the irritation of the CNN reporter, the couple refused to say anything bad about the president and kept the discussion classy and neutral. In other words, white, typically nice; a middle-class, older American couple: the Trump cohort.

To the question, “Do you like the idea of big crowds here?”, the man apologetically replied: “I’m old and diabetic. I don’t want to die. Protect me with your actions.” He was not over 55, so not in the least “old.” Yet he had certainly been conditioned to think of himself as redundant.

In the youth-horsewhipping, silly society that is America, the man had reason to be afraid: Older people have been cast as nonessential livers. Remember the asinine Republican pol who proclaimed, “There are more important things than living”? Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) was directing his life-cherishing message to the older Trump voter. “Come on. Be a sport. Give it up for the greater good.”

Indeed, conservatives keep being dismissive about COVID. And when the older, at-risk age-group is mentioned, Republicans routinely imply they should self-isolate—and should certainly not expect anyone to wear a mask for them.

Hunker in-place if you’re over the hill.

Is anyone aware of the average age group of those doing cutting-edge COVID research?

Prognosticating about America’s 2020 election, The Economist notes the reason that “Donald Trump’s facing a much bigger task than he did in 2016″:

Mr Trump is being dragged down by the dramatic movement of older voters, horrified by the now-exploding spread of covid-19, away from him. Overall, Mr Biden’s vote margin has increased by about five points over Mrs Clinton’s final performance in 2016 among people who voted last time round, according to an analysis of YouGov’s data. Voters over 65 have led the charge; their vote margin for Mr Biden is six points better than Mrs Clinton’s was, whereas that of voters under 30 has not budged at all. White voters have also fled Mr Trump’s ranks in much larger numbers than voters of colour. Mr Biden is seven points ahead of Mrs Clinton’s position among whites, while Hispanics have moved six points towards Mr Trump (though they still overwhelmingly oppose him).

UPDATED (7/12/020): LinkedIn for some, but not others?
“LinkedIn is replete with political commentary and political commentators. Yet, here is an individual attempting to banish a perfectly proper inquiry (all inquiries are proper), echoed in an august news magazine. Other than his offense of censorship and cancel culture—why does said individual just not hang-out around motivational speakers like himself? Why silence others?

How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?

Democracy, Elections, Feminism, Gender, Political Economy, The State

In 2007, I ventured that, “I’d give up my vote if that would guarantee that all women were denied the vote.”—ILANA Mercer (August 8, 2007)

Coming from the anti-statist stance, the sentiment is a solid one. It’s anchored in data.

One only has to trace the statistically significant correlation between women’s suffrage and the change in the size and scope of the state, as did John R. Lott, Jr. (Yale University) and Lawrence W. Kenny (University of Florida), to realize that the female suffrage has undermined the small-government project.

“How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” is in the Journal of Political Economy (Vol. 107, Number 6, Part 1, pp. 1163-1198, December 1999).

Of course, the tipping point has long been reached, so my altruistic gesture would be in vain.

Naturally, some will laud the growth of government under female tutelage; others will lament it.

Abstract

This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

And look at these excerpts with their bold deductions. The following writers would have been “canceled” by the bumper crops of cretins who control the American intelligentsia (that is not very intelligent).

It  is  not  really  surprising  that  this   welfare  state  should   breed   a politics  not  of  “justice”  or  “fairness”  but  of  “compassion,”  which contemporary  liberalism  has  elevated  into   the  most   important  civic virtue.  Women  tend  to  be  more  sentimental,   more  risk-averse   and less  competitive  than  men—yes,   it’s   Mars   vs.   Venus—and   therefore are  less  inclined   to   be  appreciative   of  free-market  economics,   in which   there   are   losers   as   well   as   winners.   College-educated women—the  kind  who  attend  Democratic  conventions—are   also more   “permissive”    and   less    “judgmental”    on    such    issues    as homosexuality,  capital  punishment,  even  pornography.

—Irving  Kristol,  “The  Feminization  of  the  Democrats,” The Wall Street Journal (September 9, 1996): p. A16

Citing   marriage   as   “a   very   important   financial   divider,”   the American   Enterprise   Institute’s   Doug   Besharov    suggests    more married women did not  vote  for  Dole because of a widespread sense of societal insecurity: “It is not that  they  distrust  their  husband,  but they  have  seen  divorce  all  around  them  and  know  they  could  be next.”  The  Polling  Company’s  Kellyanne  Fitzpatrick  is  categorical: “Women  see  government  as  their  insurance.”  (Perhaps  significantly,  of the  24 million  individuals  working  in  government  and  in  semi-governmental  non-profit  jobs,  14  million—58  percent—are  women.)

—The Richmond Times Dispatch, December 5, 1996

THE REST.

 

UPDATED (7/9): RIP, GOP: Tucker Has Officially Canceled The Republican Party

Conservatism, Crime, Elections, Law, Republicans

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has just gone and canceled the Republican Party in a monologue, in front of one very large TV audience indeed. He’s made it safe for all those who’ve gotten impaled for doing so over the years. CANCEL the GOP can now go mainstream. It may just become a reality.

“RIP, GOP.”

In last week’s June 11 column, “The Barbarians Are In Charge: Scenes From The Sacking of America,“ I concluded:

Across the United States, the message to law-abiding Americans, from city, town, county council members and other legislators came loud and clear: You’re on your own. Neither police nor politicians are coming to protect what’s left of your businesses or your banal, bourgeoisie little life.

In his June 20 monologue, Tucker inveighed:

You vote for Republicans to protect you from this. But when the moment of crisis came, Republicans ran away.

Property was looted, people were beaten and killed and Republicans joined the side doing the looting, beating and killing. President of the Heritage Foundation and think tanks on the right climbed into … law enforcement and ordinary Americans, calling them racists, ignoring the damage done to their property and person.

TREASON?

“Republicans refused even to defend the principle of equality under the law, the foundation of this country, the most important thing we have. Not defend it. Really, in the end, the only people who gave anything in the revolution were the ones waging it. Our leaders, very much including a Republican leaders, shamefully, were focused on meeting their demands. So what should we conclude from what we just saw? The message unfortunately could not be clearer. Voting is for fools. You vote, you put these people into office with their votes, and in return they patronize you and when it matters, they abandon you. They have contempt for you, you know they do, you can smell it, it’s obvious. Voting doesn’t work. But when you riot and you burn things and you hurt people, you get a very different response.”

“Republicans have let millions of Americans down.”

MORE: “Tucker Carlson Goes Off on Republicans for ‘Abandoning’ People in ‘Moment of Crisis’: Now ‘We Know Who They Are.’”

UPDATED (7/9): To Destroy respectfully. 

Chile: A Well-To-Do People That Wants MORE … Socialism, Not Capitalism

Capitalism, Culture, Democracy, Economy, Egalitarianism, Elections, Free Markets, Race, Socialism

“Chile is the country with the highest per capita income and least inequality in all of Latin America,” writes Pat Buchanan. “Yet the protesters have succeeded in forcing the elected government to capitulate and write a new constitution.”

The economic issues propelling workers into the streets to protest inequalities of wealth and income are occurring at a time when our world has never been more prosperous. …
Neither authoritarians nor the world’s democracies seem to have found a cure for the maladies that afflict our world’s unhappy citizens. …

What we have in reality is what Pat Buchanan has always warned of:

The ethnic and racial clashes within and between nations seem increasingly beyond the capacity of democratic regimes to resolve peacefully.
As for matters of fundamental belief — political, ideological, religious — the divides here, too, seem to be deepening and widening.

The Economist concurs that Chile has it quite good, writing that it “is the second-richest country in Latin America, thanks in part to its healthy public finances and robust private sector”:

Sebastián Piñera, Chile’s centre-right president, at first took a tough line with the malcontents. “We are at war,” he declared during the rioting. The state’s response was heavy-handed. Although most of the deaths occurred because of arson …

What the people of Chile want, it would appear, is less capitalism and MORE socialism:

Under a model developed by free-market economists during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990, citizens are expected to save for their own retirement. … In many other countries, public pensions are financed by taxing current workers and giving the money to current pensioners—a system that comes under strain when the population ages. Chileans, by contrast, invest the money they save in privately managed funds. This system has helped Chile manage its public finances and encouraged the development of long-term capital markets, which in turn has boosted economic growth.

IS this good? You bet it’s good.

The conservative Mr Piñera is unlikely to scrap a system which in many ways has served Chile well. It is the second-richest country in Latin America, thanks in part to its healthy public finances and robust private sector.

BUT the people are not interested.

* Image courtesy The Economist.