UPDATED: J. D. Hayworth Betrayed

Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin

In addition to their creedal Keynesianism, another measure of the movement conservatives is the manner in which they betrayed J. D. Hayworth, who ought to have beat Senator John McCain in the Arizona GOP primary. Hayworth had a strong record as an immigration patriot—his was not a “desperate lurch to the right,” for electoral expediency as was McCain’s successful bid.

Read VDARE’s Washington Watcher’s analysis of the one-two punch Hayworth sustained from Palin, Brewer, and the gang at Fox:

“… no Beltway groups endorsed [Hayworth]. Mark Levin and Michelle Malkin supported J.D., but few other prominent conservative personalities supported him. This is despite Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc. repeatedly stating how important it is for us to support ‘true’ conservatives over liberal Republicans.

Without any major conservative help, the fact that Hayworth raised 3 million dollars was an accomplishment. But that cannot fight McCain’s $20+ million.

“Not only did most conservatives fail support Hayworth, many went to bat for John McCain.

The NRA, Arizona Right to Life and, (in an unusual but all-too-typical move), National Review, all endorsed him.

Most effectively for McCain, the two most significant people for the Arizona Republican base, Sarah Palin and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (benefiting, arguably undeservedly, from signing SB 1070) actively campaigned for him.”

UPDATE (Aug. 29): John McCain wanted everyone to believe that he has only just stumbled into the fleshpots of Washington. And Arizonans did, despite the fact that McMussolini was right by Bush’s side as the latter presided over the greatest expansion of government since Lyndon B. Johnson.

McCain had informed Hannity (who didn’t seem to mind) that he’d resume his work for amnesty as soon as the border was secure, which is, by my calculations, round about NOW—the time of the senior senator’s GOP renomination.

Greg is right. Arizonans have chosen their political poison. Alas, it will percolate into our drinking water as well.

Now comes confirmation, via CNSNews.com, that the Obama administration has resolved “not to build the border fence and to follow a catch-and-release policy with illegal aliens.” It goes without saying that “Recent steps the administration has taken regarding the border, including the deployment of 520 National Guard troops in Arizona,” have been “insufficient and amounted to ineffective pre-election posturing.”

The next defining date for Mr. McCain: the Tuesday following the first Monday, in November, when both houses will probably be stormed by Repbulicans. Then, it’ll be time for talk amnesty again. You do know that the economy will have turned around on that day too.

And Dana and SE Cupp will have grown a brain (not to mention a facility with economics and rational thought). If you believe all that … here I’ll leave it up to you the reader to fill in with one of those underwater property-sale jokes (let’s have some southern ones, please, to lift sagging spirits).

Big-Government Gerson

Bush, Conservatism, Constitution, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy

BUSH’S Bastardized Conservatism is also Michael Gerson’s. As a committed ideologue, formerly of the Bush administration, Michael Gerson is a completely consistent, dangerous statist. He imagines that the General Welfare Clause gave our overlords, and the Little Lord Fauntleroys who serve them (the female version: Dana Perino), authority to enact the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, federal civil rights law; direct what Gerson terms “economic growth,” and pursue the national greatness agenda.

To oppose “Alexander Hamilton and a number of Supreme Court rulings” that affirm such overreach is “morally irresponsible and politically disastrous,” says Gerson.

Today, Laura Ingraham referred to Gerson, affectionately, as being part of that wonderful big tent that makes the GOP so inclusive. Yet Gerson, whom BAB celebrity Myron Pauli long ago identified as the most dangerous kind of (crunchy) conservative, holds that the welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”—Article I, Section 8—implies that government can pick The People’s pocketbooks for any possible project, even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the limited powers so delegated.

Asks historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: “What point would there be in specifically listing the federal government’s powers if the general welfare clause had already provided the government with an essentially boundless authority to enact whatever it thought would contribute to people’s well-being?” Woods evokes no less an authority than the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison: “Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

You’d think Madison knew one or two things more than Michael about this document.

I once wrote that “sometimes the law of the State coincides with the natural law. More often than not, natural justice has been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute.” When Gerson and company (you’ll find that Rove, Perino, and the rest, currently masquerading as conservatives, are no different) reject “a consistent constitutionalism,” namely a critique of the current promiscuous applications of the 14th, the “General Welfare” clause, and so on, and embrace the concept of the Constitution as a “living, breathing” document—they rely for their case on layers of that rubble.

Having shoveled the muck of lawmaking aside, constitutionalists base their case on the natural justice and the founders’ original intent.

Gerson is the enemy of liberty. But even more so, because so deceptive, are the Ingrahams of the world. Ms. Ingraham wanted to know how Gerson could bad mouth the tea part, yet still call himself a Bush conservative. Ms. Ingraham has set up a dichotomy where there is only congruity and consistency on the part of Gerson: now that is dangerous.

UPDATED: The 2 Parties' Question: How Much To Steal

Debt, Democrats, Federal Reserve Bank, Political Economy, Republicans, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

The following is from my new, WND column, “The 2 Parties’ Question: How Much To Steal”:

“… If I understand the Republican line for the coming midterms, it is that, thankfully, there is a smart, economically stimulating way for the State to spend money it had lifted from the private economy (and, in the process, crowded out private, productive economic activity).

Time and again, Republicans will explain to us of the booboisie that the stimuli consisted of misguided spending so typical of Democrats, instead of precision-guided make-work projects, the hallmark of Republikeynesian economic ‘thought.'”

With few exceptions, Republican politicians, and their matching Tweedledim and Tweedledimmer cable personalities, seem incapable of countering the fiction that vests central planners with the ability to create viable jobs by appropriating private property, and redistributing it, based on bureaucratic and political considerations.

The unsparing critique the likes of dodo Perino, Newt, Dick, Karl, et. al, will invariably voice is that the Dems did not apply the stolen funds the way one ought to have; as the GOPers would have.” ….

The complete column is “The 2 Parties’ Question: How Much To Steal.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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UPDATE (Aug. 27): Wiley hereunder, in the Comments Section, clearly misunderstands an ad hominem argument. My column has some fun with Fox’s affirmative females, after which their “arguments”—“things go in cycles“/Republicans would ‘stimulate‘ better than the Dems”—were showcased for their profound folly. This is not ad hominem. Had I presented Dana dunderhead’s “case” for economic recovery without the spice, no one would read this column.