So a few days to go until Election Day; I guess we can call this the final heat. Texas is pretty much a red state stronghold, although there are pockets of blue adherents throughout. Yes, even in my neighborhood, there are a handful of defiant Obama-Biden yard signs visible, although outnumbered at least three to one by Romney-Ryan signs. It amounts to about three or four dozen, all told; I think that most of my neighbors prefer keeping their political preferences this time around strictly to themselves.
I wasn’t all that wild about Mittens as a candidate, personally; too much the old-line country-club establishment Republican for my taste but he’ll do, especially if Tea Party small-government fiscal conservatives overwhelmingly sweep the House and Senate and assist in keeping his nose to the small-government and fiscally conservative grindstone. So I vote for him with reserved good cheer and considerable hope. There is too much at stake to consider otherwise. The next President of the US will have in their preview the elevation of at least one, and possibly two or more Justices to the Supreme Court, and that is just one consideration. Our foreign policy is even more shambolic than usual after four years of Mr. Hopey-Changey, the Middle East is melting down, our embassies in countries with a strong Islamic component are all but under siege, our rights to free speech are under threat in the guise of accusations of Islamophobia when exercising them in certain directions, we are more bitterly divided across class, regional and racial lines than any time that I can personally recall, the price of gas and electricity is skyrocketing, and our economy appears to be on extremely shaky ground. Which the mainstream media god bless their little cotton socks increasingly is reporting by putting a nice smiley face on the bad news, in the finest tradition of official government press organs everywhere, especially those where an in-law or second cousin of the Big Man is the owner of the largest newspaper and the sole national broadcaster. Those officially licensed pervs at the TSA are still feeling up three year olds and octogenarians in wheel-chairs the length and breadth of this blessed land, the northeast is still digging out from Hurricane Sandy, California’s best option may yet be to fall into the Pacific Ocean … and Texas needs rain.
A Romney-Ryan administration will, it is hoped, do something constructive about many of these problems, or so is our deep and abiding hope. At the very least, they might be able to delay the crash that many of us expect will be just around the corner anyway. It will be a hell of a job, anyway, being undermined, slandered and sabotaged by the die-hard big-Statists infuriated at the prospect of being cut off from the money trough. Our mainstream news media will definitely not be in their corner, along with most of what Angelo Codevilla called the ‘ruling class’. But suppose … just Obama/Biden wins on November 6th. It’s not entirely out of the question, and I am sure that there will be many who will rejoice initially, until all those chickens launched in the last four years come home to roost. So, do we want the pain of the economic and political crash to come in a series of agonizing jerks or one heartrending pull? Might it be better to have all the bad things that almost certainly will happen in the next four years land upon the administration responsible in no small part for launching them? Could it be that the Obama administration and the Democratic party generally having to wholly own the disastrous situation that they created and encouraged? Might the corruption, the abuse of state power, the sheer bloody incompetence bring the Democratic Party down entirely? Given enough rope in the form of a second Obama term, might they eventually hang themselves?
There is a lot of ruin in a nation four more years of this may be more than we can handle and still be a confident, forward-looking and united country; the land of the free and home of the brave. Can we risk such an ordeal … even if it gives us a chance to put the new ruling class off their high thrones in the halls of power, if not once and for all, at least for the forseeable future? I have no idea, but this is certainly something to think about in the next few days.
(An early version of this essay cross-posted at The Daily Brief)
Well, first of all you can rule out any “Tea Partier” other than the Ron Paul types, as a positive force,
because they will go along with Romney’s Big Government Military Spending and further immersion in unwinnable quagmires. We are talking about a guy who still defends spending three trillion in Iraq and in fact prefers we still be there.
Then again, Romney is a vulture capitalist free trader, and Obama is certainly closer to him on this score than to an economic nationalist. So we will not rebuild our manufacturing base under either.
Finally neither Romney or Obama plan on regulating Finance and both will go on being run by the Goldman Sachs crowd when the big banks should be broken up (the original Tea Party was quite populist-Perotista on this, before the Koch Brother-Rove oligarchs took it over) and financial trades be taxed at an appropropriate
rate. If there is one sector as out-of-control HUGE as government, it is the parasitical High Finance sector
which of course has engaged in successful Regulatory capture of that government dating back to Robert Rubin’s
capture of Bill Clinton and beyond.
“Might it be better to have all the bad things that almost certainly will happen in the next four years land upon the administration responsible in no small part for launching them?”
No. I’m afraid too many of the bad things that would happen in the next 4 years of Obama, especially if coupled with increased Congressional control, would be irreversible or very nearly so.
Limitations on free speech, especially on the Internet. Treaties that could be very difficult to ever get out of. Skyrocketing debt. Increasing political violence and general social resentment and toxicity.
Sorry, Ken – I helped establish a Tea Party, and as I have kept in touch with other Tea Partiers, and no, Rove/Koch Brothers oligarchy is a non-starter. The various local tea parties are locally-supported and locally-oriented. Which I suppose is the scary part to strategists. There IS no one holding the reins. Going along with Big Government Military Spending and Further Immersion in Unwinnable Quagmires? Pull the other leg, that one has bells on it.
And don’t you presume to tell me what the Tea Party is or represents – I WAS THERE ALL THE WAY ALONG AND YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY IDEA SAVE FOR THE CRUDE CARICATURE THAT YOU HAVE GLEANED FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
Sorry for yelling … but you have no real idea about what the Tea Party is about.
Sgt. Mom, For my various sins, I’m on a textbook committee for freshman argumentation/composition. It will not surprise that at least one criticizses Beck, another group the tea parties, and one piles on Arthur Brooks. If I don’t beg to be dropped from the committee, I may have more to report later.
A “conservative” essay is the infamous “lifeboat” one. If people accept a straw man, then the real one appears to waffle. Romney’s strength was a calm: he was not only a good but a reasonable man. I don’t want to talk politics in class, but I resent these. Even if I agreed with their choices, I’d prefer the Victorian sages and 19th century Americans: when my students copy over passages for a style exercise, they, too, come to love the rolling sentences – ones impossible for even the masters of op ed pieces today.
I long for freshmen English in the day (my day, of course). Relevance came from its depiction of human nature and style was seen as intertwined with meaning & writing seen as skill and art. Now we emphasize not precision in diction but political oppression, not the rhythm of sentences but global warming. In classes with a sprinkling of corps guys, we see no poems or essays of heroism but many anti-war essays & even more discussions of women’s rights. It is all pretty dispiriting.
I agree that Romney is not my first, second, or third choice. But he is at worst only a RINO and has the overpowering virtue of not being Buraq Hussein Obama.
Yes, Obama may win this election. That win may well deserve quotation marks. If he retains power, it will be the last election under our Constitution. Already, the legislative branch no longer has the power of the purse. The Judicial system is under the control of the regime, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has ruled that the Bill of Rights can be violated at will as long as the violation is couched as a tax. If he is re-elected, further government changes will be by force of arms. If such is to be, it will be. As my nom d’ blog would have understood; “Only the Great Blue Sky Tengri Nor knows the outcome.”.
If Romney wins, the best I can hope for is to slow or stop the bleeding. But he is not of TEA Party/Patriot movement, and we will inevitably find ourselves fighting him, albeit electorally.
It is vouchsafed to Tengri Nor; but it is my hope that the Left will be weakened significantly this year, so that by 2014 a separate TEA Party will have the freedom of movement to become truly a independent party; and the target then is Codavilla’s Ruling Class, regardless of Leftist or Republican pedigree.
Till then, work unceasingly to win on November 6; in the case that we have the scheduled elections, that they are honest enough to reflect the true popular will and consent of the governed, and if Buraq Hussein will leave office if defeated. If not, then other paths will be necessary for our poor country.
Blow, wind! Come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back
Subotai Bahadur
The people who attack the Tea Party have no actual knowledge and are repeating talking points. I wasn’t an organizer but I was there at one of the early demonstrations. Here is a blog post from April 2010 with lots of photos of those who were there. Here is another p[post with photos from another city in California. Some interlopers tried to show signs that would contaminate the Tea Party message but were found out and followed around with signs pointing to them.