Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATE II: The Helmet And Her Husband (Bain, Baby)

The inseparable act that is Callista and Newt Gingrich stepped onto the stage, in Tampa, Florida, to deliver a tribute to Ronald Reagan, at the 2012 Republican National Convention. You’d have had to see it to believe it. Here are the duo’s rehearsed comments:

CALLISTA: Thank you for that warm welcome. What a wonderful tribute to President Reagan, and the spirit of the American people.

NEWT: It’s fantastic to see so many friends here: Friends from decades of service to the party, service in public life, and those who have helped us over the past few years. And we’re delighted that tonight we come together to once again renew the American spirit, and put real leadership back in the White House this November.

CALLISTA: The election of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will decisively move America to a better future. Remembering President Reagan reminds us that the choices we make matter, and this year is as important as the choice we made in 1980.

NEWT: Over three decades have passed since Ronald Reagan was first elected to the White House, yet the impact of his leadership is still evident today. While in office, President Reagan had three major goals: To restore the economy; To revive the American spirit; And to defeat totalitarianism, spreading democracy throughout the world.

CALLISTA: By remaining true to his convictions, through his belief in the American people, and with tremendous optimism, President Reagan achieved these goals.

NEWT: It’s striking how President Carter and President Obama both took our nation down a path that in four years weakened America’s confidence in itself, and our hope for a better future.

CALLISTA: Both weakened the respect for America abroad; Both increased government programs, filled with waste and inefficiency that failed to produce results; Both made promises they couldn’t keep … AND, as a consequence of ineffective policies, both were unable to revive our economy and create jobs.

NEWT: For example, both crippled American energy production when there were better ways to develop and use our abundant energy resources. … The Romney plan for North American energy independence is exactly the kind of bold, visionary leadership Reagan believed in, and it’s what we need now.

CALLISTA: The Reagan Presidency also teaches us that there is a better way to put Americans back to work, create millions of jobs, and help every American achieve success. The Reagan program of tax cuts, regulatory reform, and spending controls worked.

NEWT: Reagan’s belief in small business owners and entrepreneurs is a remarkable contrast with Obama’s class warfare rhetoric, massive deficits, and a passion for taxing those who create jobs. The Romney plan for a stronger middle class has deep roots in Reagan’s approach.

CALLISTA: Reagan’s commitment to reform welfare and to create a work-requirement was a major achievement when he was Governor of California. His pioneering work led to the historic welfare reform bill Congress and the President passed 30 years later. This bipartisan legislation reduced the size of government, made our country more competitive, and put millions of Americans back to work.

NEWT: Tragically, President Obama gutted this achievement. And, like Jimmy Carter, over four years he produced little effective legislation that brought the two parties together in the interest of the nation. Obama’s waiving of the work requirements in welfare reform is just one example of his direct repudiation of President Reagan’s values. Obama’s proud of what he’s done, and of his politically motivated partisanship, but he should be ashamed for putting politics before people.

CALLISTA: Governor Romney will return America to work, and to the principles that are at the core of President Reagan’s legacy. … This year the American people will once again have an important choice to make.

NEWT: Now each of us must commit ourselves in the tradition of Ronald Reagan to come together. President Reagan said, “There is no substitute for victory.” And this November, we cannot settle for anything less. … This is the most critical election of our lifetime. Each of us must do our part now to insure that America remains, in the tradition of President Reagan, a land of freedom, hope, and opportunity.

Thank you and God bless.

UPDATE I: And Jeb Bush rehabilitates his brother, George Bush. Judging from the loud applause, that character (“W”) needed no rehabilitation.

UPDATE II: BAIN, BABY. “The Republican Party is moving to embrace Mitt Romney’s time as head of Bain Capital.” And a good thing that is.

There’s no shame in Bain.

The Drag Queens of Politics—No Offense to Drag Queens—Must Repent

Bush, Democrats, Elections, IMMIGRATION, Liberty, Regulation, Republicans

A host of minor Republican politicians and functionaries took to the stage at the 2012 Republican National Convention to speak to the values for which they and the GOP ostensibly stand.

Unlike these representatives, I was speechless. I didn’t know that these politicians stood for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, sound money, individual freedom, and fewer regulations.

My God! Where have these freedom fighters been all my life?

Back on terra firma, last I looked, the repugnant “W” Bush and his band of merry bandits had pushed the unconstitutional campaign finance-reform bill and “Sarbanes-Oxley Act” (a preemptive assault on CEOs and CFOs, prior to the fact of a crime); various trade tariffs and barriers; a Clintonian triumph of triangulation on affirmative action; they colluded with Ted Kennedy on an education bill; sponsored a prescription-drug benefit that would add trillions to the Medicare shortfall, and approved the Kennedy-initiated New New Deal for New Orleans, for which there was no constitutional authority.

Bush handed Obama “almost $11 trillion in Treasury debt, and deficits of more than $1 trillion.” “W” also looted at least $1 trillion from the insolvent Social Security trust fund. His contribution to the mortgage meltdown cannot be overstated. Under “W”, the right to pursue happiness became a right to happiness and a home.

(“Republicans Repent!“)

Then there was the perpetual warfare into which Genghis Bush plunged this country.

I am well aware that the GOP is the party of promiscuous, indiscriminate immigration. Bush issued gold-embossed invitations to illegals which he and the McCain-Kennedy-Specter unholy trinity camouflaged as amnesty (where illegals are born-again as “guest workers” and then placed on a fast track to permanent residence).

Ironically, for their more or less open-borders policies, the GOP will get no return at the ballot box. Perception is reality. Democrats have been successful in painting Republicans as xenophobes.

Besides, as hard as they try, Republicans cannot beat Democrats in the art of robbing Paul to pay Pedro.

Republicans are the drag queens of politics. Peel away the pules for family, faith and fetuses and one discovers either, what economist and political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls “neoconservative welfare-warfare statists and global social democrats. Or, conversely, national socialists of sorts, who fuse economic protectionism, populism and support for the very welfare infrastructure which is at the root of the social rot they decry.”

They can’t expect freedom-loving Americans to believe them. Unless they repent, publicly.

Said Saint Augustine: ‘The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.’ The Republican Party has done the devil’s work. To embark on the good, it must come clean about the bad.

RNC Rules Against Insurgents

Elections, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Ron “Paul’s quick tour of the convention floor was evidence that his supporters aren’t exactly the type to give up easily,” reports Kevin Glass, Managing Editor of Townhall.com.

These supporters are being made to cede to RNC bosses:

“Team Romney has mounted a campaign to change some of the RNC rules that critics allege would make it more difficult for insurgent candidates like Paul to make waves”:

Rep. Ron Paul’s delegates are trying to mount a floor fight over new GOP rules designed to limit the ability of insurgent presidential candidates to amass delegates to future Republican conventions.
They are getting help from other delegates, though it is unclear whether they can rally enough support to challenge the rules on the floor of the convention Tuesday.
Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee, has plenty of delegates to win any floor fight. Nevertheless, party officials agreed to ease the new rules on Monday in an effort to appease some disgruntled delegates. Still, the dispute could provide an unwanted distraction for party leaders who would rather focus on promoting Romney and defeating President Barack Obama.
“It’s so heavily scripted. This is not the forum in which they want to air the proverbial dirty laundry,” said Juliette Jordal, a Paul delegate from Minnesota.

UPDATED: Don’t Be Fooled By Campaign Foreplay

BAB's A List, Debt, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Propaganda, Republicans, War

Don’t be fooled by campaign foreplay, counsels Barely a Blog contributor Myron Pauli, Ph.D., the country is going to be screwed for the next 4 years regardless of who wins the November race.

Over $4 billion will be spent to influence 400,000 swing voters in 6 swing states who are undecided between the champion of the White Churchgoing Party, Mitt, and the champion of the Party of the Secular and the Minorities, Barack. Ten thousand dollars a person to influence mostly ignorant voters. Although both candidates support health care mandates and endless no-win wars, billions must be spent on the façade that it is important to vote for one of these big government parties. The money will be handled by spin doctors, which is a term that also refers to Atomic Physics.
In fact, Atomic Physics seems an apt way to view this whole election process. Romney and Obama are both electrons in outer orbits circling far away from a nucleus (the Constitution) and rarely do their wavefunctions actually overlap with the Constitution. They do, however, obey a political form of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In the Uncertainty Principle, one can know where an electron is somewhat or where the electron is heading, but not both of them exactly.
With Romney, we basically know what sort of person he is – Mormon Venture Capitalist. However, there is hardly any idea what he stands for. His flip-flops are legendary. He can even change within the course of minutes. These rapid-phase oscillations are known in Atomic Physics by the term Zitterbewegung. Romney’s ideological twisting may be the first macroscopic sighting of Zitterbewegung. Perhaps this is part of a larger phenomena whereby supporting a party which claims that supporting the American Dream Downpayment Act, the Prescription Drug Plan, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and the Transportation Security Administration counts as being for small government.
On the other hand, Obama has been generally a consistent supporter of the Hollywood-Academia-Politically-Correct-Left but we have little idea who this Teleprompter-Zelig is as a person. Is he atheist or Christian or Muslim? Is he black or white or mulatto or Asian or post-racial? Is he American or Indonesian or Kenyan? Partisan or above political squabbling? Much of this ambiguity is part of Obama’s own making – in short, he is the primordial “Birther.” Nevertheless, if one votes for the “Party of Peace,” you are going to ensure more presidential undeclared wars
While it really takes a Large Hardon Collider to tell these two apart, the voters will instead be subjected to a great debate, where things hinge on important issues like sweaty unshaven Nixon, or Ford freeing Poland, or Reagan cracking jokes, or Dukakis’ apathy over his wife being violated. Instead of worrying about the impending financial collapse of the economy, Fox News can crown Romney the “winner” of the debate while MSNBC declares Obama the “winner” and the spin doctors search out every possible “gaffe” to magnify into cosmic significance.
The reality is that both candidates are identical particles, and choosing between them is as likely to change things as a Soviet citizen deciding between Brezhnev And Kosygin Regrettably, there is a correlation between having more people voting and the rise of government and the decline of economic freedom and growth as Ilana Mercer demonstrates in her excellent book.
Well, I know which side I stand on – mine. As a true swing voter, I will go for the first candidate who hands me my $10,000. No sense of my wasting a vote for free on Gary Johnson, when I can line up with a “mainstream” statist and pocket $10,000. Show me the money, and I am all yours – Barack or Mitt! Save 3 hours of your life and just watch the 10 minute debate summary here.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

UPDATE (Aug. 19): Facebook Thread. Robbie makes a good point. These automatic intonations about Romney’s past, absent further analysis, run to lazy. My fear is not that MR will flip-flop. That’s such a trite angle. And Romney might have learned his lesson. (Also, Myron’s links are old.) What I do believe is that Romney lacks a good (Austrian, even Chicago) understanding of the economy. The fact that this comprehension is better than BHO’s means squat. MR, moreover, does not understand freedom, and will take us to war, for sure. As I put it, “Mitt’s Foreign Policy Is Obama’s With A Daisy Cutter On Top: Unbridled, Bellicose American Exceptionalism.”