Quote of the Day (Morning Edition)

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Commenter “Annoy Mouse” at Belmont Club:

The Republicans are Montgomery Ward competing against iPods.

9 thoughts on “Quote of the Day (Morning Edition)”

  1. I hope he’s right. I’d like to the GOP replaced by something much more libertarian. These days, they’re Dem-lite. All the corruption, but only 2/3 the spending.

  2. “I’d like to the GOP replaced by something much more libertarian.” They won’t be. Such a party would always lose elections. Parties exist to win elections. The public is not libertarian.

  3. I think that the Montgomery Ward Republicans are mostly the old school wasp Republicans of the Northeast and maybe the West coast. In the heartland, south and southwest, Republicans in the majority are still something of a novelty. There they have energy can stir things up.
    and
    I do find the idea of (I presume) the Democrats being the iPods extremely funny. They are the party who as literally not a new idea for at least 30 years. They’re not iPods, they’re, at best, 8-tracks.

  4. Interesting that he used Montgomery Ward as an analogy.

    They are gone.

    And I have been thinking “What is a Republican”? The same nasty fight has been going on between the conservatives and the “Dem-Lite” wing since Goldwater-Rockefeller.

    That’s 1964 for you to young to remember ;-)

    I with Shannon on who the “Monkey Ward” Republicans are.

  5. “They’re not iPods, they’re, at best, 8-tracks.” Yeah, I don’t get how the Ds = iPods. They are stuck in the past.

  6. “The public is not libertarian.”

    While few people self identify as libertarian, there is very broad support for libertarian ideas, especially if you don’t use the l-word when presenting them.

    Imagine a hypothetical candidate who was:

    * Staunchly free enterprise, while strongly opposing bailouts, corporate welfare, crony capitalism etc.
    * Skeptical of military intervention, pledging not to commit U.S. troops abroad without a proper declaration of war from Congress. (No extra-Constitutional “authorizations of force” accepted.)
    * Skeptical of the drug war, pledging to let the states regulate drugs as they see fit, and limiting the DEA to keeping drugs from crossing into the U.S. from abroad
    * In favor of expanded legal immigration (but not amnesty for illegals) with special emphasis on skilled professionals and others who will likely be net contributors to the American project
    * In favor of limiting the rate at which the Fed is allowed to “print money”. (This could take the form of a cap on FOMC operations, perhaps, but that is way over most voters’ heads.)
    * Willing to cut both entitlement and military spending

    I suggest that such a candidate could easily win an election, and that very few people would even notice that this platform is essentially “Ron Paul lite”.

  8. Tatyana,

    I didn’t have Gary Johnson in mind, but he’s a good example. He doesn’t have snowball’s chance of getting the Republican nomination, but I’d give him better odds against Obama than Mitt Romney in the general election. I’d vote for him with more verve than I could ever muster for Mitt.

    To my mind, Johnson’s biggest political liability is that he comes across as a know-it-all college professor type: a leftist who is a reluctant convert to the free market. My ideal candidate would be the inverse: someone who is conservative by temperament, but a reluctant skeptic of military force and government social meddling.

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