Category Archives: John McCain

Update III: Palin Pooh-Poohs CPAC (& A Third-Party Plan)

John McCain, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin

BRAVO. Is this divorce? I hope so.

Politico: “Palin is declining an invitation to address the Conservative Political Action Conference next month because, a source said, she does not want to be affiliated with the longtime organizer of the traditional movement confab.”

This is Palin’s first significant act of political separation from the “GOP RIP”—and from “politics as usual,” that hackneyed term she and “McMussolini” kept using on the campaign trail. Palin embodied unusual politics on a local level.

Stay tuned. There’s more, and it involves Sarah and Farah, WND’s CEO and chief. Developing.

Update: Palin will be headlining the First National Tea Party Convention, scheduled for February 4-6, 2010 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. The formidable Michele Bachmann will join her. And, as David Shyster of MSNBC advertised (negatively), WND’s founder will speak too. (WND announced it as well.) As you all know, I write for WND.COM; have done so going on a decade.

The mainstream swamp of a media is framing Palin’s decision, as is their wont, as one that is based on some womanly whim—the fungus press is feminist only when it comes to ladies of the left. I hope, for Sarah’s sake, that this “break” with the GOP corpse is philosophical. In light of the fact that late last year Palin endorsed the Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman for the 23rd Congressional District of New York, I do believe she is breaking with the GOP.

(I’ll have surprisingly good things to say about her book, which I grabbed at an airport, and have almost finished.)

Losers are those who’re pointing toward the need to revive the rotting, rigor-ridden corpse that is the GOP. Not possible. Not desirable.

A third party is the solution. However, for this to happen in earnest, the (Ron) Paul and Palin factions must commence serious ideological cross fertilization (my diplomatic way of urging Palin to heed Paul), gather the best people around and launch.

To be frank, as someone who considers herself a Paulite—and who has been called “the most persuasive Paul booster” by one of the most perceptive paleos—I see the libertarian Campaign for Liberty falling into the methodology of the GOP. By this I mean the penchant to close ranks and invite into the inner sanctum only strict and obedient adherents, as well as non-entity groupies with zero gravitas (often blond).

How like the GOP.

Good people need to elevate themselves above tribal and ego-bound instincts and gather around the best and the brightest, lots of us—not only five bright sparks, 50 mediocrities, and 500 sparkly, dim bimbos.

I was asked by the Paul Campaign to endorse Ron Paul. He’s my president of choice, so I did. Here is the blurb that was used during the campaign. I was asked to pen a position editorial for said campaign explaining why Ron Paul was VERY GOOD for Israel. I did that too.

Still, when the Campaign roles into town—my town—I am not even invited to the occasion.

I am no seeker of publicity or inclusivity. I’m independent. What matters to me is the integrity and longevity of my writing. Nevertheless, I do believe that by ignoring people with gravitas (just becasue they are independent-minded, but not always like-minded); choosing instead to embrace groupies, lightweights and other anon riffraff—good people with a good cause contribute to the dumbing down of the liberty movement.

Let’s hope Palin can avert this echo-chamber instinct and gather around her a coalition of Buchananites, Bachmannites, Paulites, Beckians, etc.

Update II: Also to be mindful of is the danger of gentrifying a grassroots movement. What you have in the tea party swell is an inchoate, energetic thing with great promise. Politicos, always eager to turn a protest into a constituency, could seize the movement, as a stepping stone to power, and corrupt it. The movement has to be given solid philosophical contours, but how do you keep the Republicans away. Especially when they’re packaged as appealingly as Sean Duffy is. Duffy’s a Hamiltonian (not a good thing) GOPier.

Update III (Jan. 9): The Democratic and the Republican Parties are one and the same thing. Each is a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging forever from one putrid entity to the other.

The balance is kept by bamboozling (successfully, as it would appear from posts on this blog) respective supporters. The mesmerizing momentum will endure forever; will keep the colluding quislings in power in perpetuity, and continue to sell books for their respective fascistic philosophers.

The philosophical foot soldiers for the duopoly have their own game going. Whether they are shouting “liberal this; liberals that” all the way to the bank, or suddenly discovering the Constitution when the rival faction is in power—they help maintain status quo.

I think it was my WND colleague Vox Day who pointed out how the Republican reptiles move to the left when in power, and the Democratic dogs shuffle to the right when they get their turn.

Ultimately the creeps converge.

If what I am saying is true—and it is—then the assertion that the Republican Party can be reformed is a lie, a pie-in-the-sky; not pragmatism but falsehood. People who help elevate the characters involved in this cruel farce; who promulgate The Lie are, thus, either stupid or venal.

There is a scene in “Dangerous Liaisons” where the protagonist, a lying schemer, is “booed and disgraced by the audience at the opera,” and retreats to her boudoir never to emerge again.

This is the appropriate metaphor for the characters involved in American politics.

If our society had an ounce of moral fiber, this would be the fate of the Ann Couters, Rush Limbaughs, Levines—the blood-lusting vampires of the Republican War Machine, whose bitch-hot talk helped send gullible young men to their death.

This would be the fate of the grand designers behind the Democratic welfare apparatus.

A Third Party option is not for the quick-fix quacks among us. It will be slow and laborious. But it is the only way.

The Third-Party road involves a planned strategy whereby support is withdrawn from all candidates running for the duopoly. It involves the meeting of the smartest minds, with the most integrity. That the “Campaign for Liberty” has not called on myself, Vox, and other marginalized voices with sizable (WND) platforms, despite our tireless work for liberty, demonstrates that its movers and shakers are moving and shaking like a cult; not like a force of nature.

What I like about Palin is that she is a force of nature. And she has lived the quintessential American life. She is everything that is good in America. Can she bury the Republican corpse and do what I suggest? I honestly don’t know.

About her book at a later date.

Snub ‘Snob Conservatism’

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”

Snub 'Snob Conservatism'

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”

'Palinomania & Sanford-Phobia'

Conservatism, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, Sarah Palin

Paul Gottfried, one of the best and most under-appreciated intellectuals in this country, provides a superb analysis on Taki’s Magazine of “the unstoppable glorification of the faux maverick and faux right-winger Sarah Palin and the equally nonstop attacks from the same sources against the floundering Mark Sanford.”

“The neocon media” is clearly pulling for a goofy “photogenic dullard,” says Paul, a “Wasilla version of Bill Kristol and John McCain,” over an “economic libertarian” like South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford, who “slashes budgets boldly and is a passionate enemy of every aspect of Obama’s stimulus programs.” Sarah, on the other hand, “sounds exactly like the man who chose her as his running mate in 2008,” “on foreign policy, immigration, and federal laws banning discrimination against women.”

“Neocon Central,” “FOXNews and its NY Post-affiliate,” does not wish Sanford to “hinder Sarah in her run for the presidential nomination,” concludes Paul.

Pay attention to this prescient warning: “For the American Right, Sarah may be the ultimate Trojan horse. She offers the Idaho State- or Wasilla version of Bill Kristol and John McCain,with a few alterations, namely, an inability to engage national issues in a specific manner and the endless recitation of GOP platitudes about ‘smaller government’ and ‘national defense.’ Of course the Doles and McCains pulled out the same tiresome ‘get government off our backs’ rhetoric, while advocating programs to expand federal control. But these candidates could manage to say concrete things in their addresses and interviews, even when they packaged substance in deceitful campaign slogans.”

The complete column is “Palinomania & Sanford-Phobia.”