Month: May 2008

3 Comments Posted on Iraq, Liberals

profiteers

The left should be grateful to this president for all the money they have made off of his presidency.  Criticism of President Bush is a very profitable business.  We have numerous examples of this, from former WH aides and former military personnel to talk show hosts with no greater purpose in life than to criticize the Bush administration for every single thing it does.  Why else would MSNBC give Olbermann millions of dollars for no noticeable talent other than saying inflammatory things about Bush and our military?  Say what you want about Iraq.  There’s nothing wrong with voicing opposition to the war, but those who watch the news recognize bias when they see it.  Unfortunately, it’s less clear when the media lies to the public to boost its own standing with their colleagues — whether it’s to fatten their wallets or increase their reputation with the popular anti-war people.

Scott McClellan is not blazing any new ground here with his tell-all book.  Has he gained any more credibility than he had when he was fired as Press Secretary?  Doubtful.  Why is that the left suddenly finds him to be a credible source?  Could it be because he now agrees with them on the Iraq war?  If you didn’t believe him before, why believe him now?  What Scott McClellan will soon find out is that the left will use him for their own ends, and then go back to laughing at him behind his back.  If he was really disallusioned by his experience in the Bush administration, I think it’s fair to let him know that his new friends may not be around very long — hope the publicity and some indirect money from George Soros was worth the price he paid for them.

And BTW, even arch-enemy David Gregory isn’t buying McClellan’s anti-Bush spin (h/t Townhall).

On Wednesday’s edition of “Today,” “NBC Nightly News” reporter David Gregory, who covered the White House while McClellan was spokesman, said, “There was never any indication that Scott McClellan, either publicly or privately, held these kinds of views about what was happening at the time on the war, on Katrina, on the leak case — which was his most difficult hour in the White House. He never expressed anything like this.”

I don’t share the opinion of those who believe that McClellan’s book will have a significant impact on the presidential race.  Those who aren’t intimately acquainted with campaign minutia like this (the average voter, for example) won’t pay much attention to what McClellan says.  To them, it’s just another WH tell-all that doesn’t add much to the discussion of where we are now and what to do next in Iraq.

1 Comment Posted on Conservatives, Republicans

go right not left

Believe it or not, there is a Republican left with some credibility on fighting wasteful spending by our Congress — Senator Tom Coburn.  Senator Coburn has been consistent in this area, but unfortunately many of his colleagues have refused to follow his lead, and that of other senators like SC’s Jim DeMint.  There aren’t enough fiscal conservatives in Congress, and we have seen the negative results when  Democrats and Republicans agree to waste our money.  Now there are many so-called wise men, telling the Republicans that we are losing because we aren’t compassionate enough, or that we need to abandon the ideal of limited government completely to gain the favor of those independents and moderates.  Even people who started out believing that government is the problem have changed their minds to be more tolerant of activist government — including Newt Gingrich.   It is an almost irresistible proposal — that there can be a way to merge the activist government policies of the left with the free-market impulses of the right.   I’m not convinced that this is the case, or if it is possible, that Newt has come up with the right balance.

Here’s a sample of what Senator Coburn had to say:

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Truth in advertising.  That “compassionate conservatism” is a euphemism for wasting our money on more worthy causes than the stuff the Democrats want to waste our money on.  That we need to get back to what Republicans said we believed about reducing earmarks and government bloat.  That we should be principled enough to hold our fellow Republicans accountable when they forget what kind of message got them where they are today.  Like Senator Coburn said, “spending other people’s money isn’t compassionate”.  There’s nothing wrong with heartless conservatism when it eliminates excuses for out of control spending and massive pork projects.

This is where Republicans have gone wrong. The voters didn’t reject conservatism, they rejected dishonesty.  Republicans promoted one agenda and delivered something different.  The scandals sure didn’t help us, but at the end of the day those who stayed home in 2006 and those who voted for Democrats sent the same message.  Republicans didn’t deliver what they promised, and they deserved to lose.  Congressional Republicans still haven’t gotten the message.  They are blaming their losses on the stubborn conservatives who refuse to abandon principle to win elections.  Some of our “leaders” have suggested that we need to expand our coalition to include independents and moderates, and that we should do this by watering down our governing philosophy so that those people agree with us. As long they keep following that dimwitted advice, Republicans will keep losing elections.

Posted on '08 Election, Random Musings

please let this be true

Could it be that America’s favorite formerly bow-tied libertarian is throwing his hat into the presidential ring?  That’s the buzz from the Libertarian party convention in Denver now in progress — that Tucker Carlson is considering saving the party from the disaster of a Bob Barr candidacy.  Or something like that.  It should come as no surprise that I am in favor of Tucker Carlson seeking some kind of political office, since I was one of the first to suggest such a thing.  Ok, sure, I only requested a VP slot for him, but I was wrong then. As one of the few who watched his show on MSNBC, I am well aware of his limitations, but I think they can be overcome.

Say what you want about the bow-ties (now gone) and about Tucker’s occasional abrasiveness with stupid people.  He is the guy who has always been for smaller government and opposed to freedom-hating laws, unlike some of my fellow Republicans who only pay lip service to conservative/libertarian ideas like this.  Those who say that Tucker Carlson is any kind of shill for the establishment media aren’t really paying attention.  Bottom line:  I like the guy.  A lot.  If I’m going to cheer for any lost cause third-party candidate, he’s my candidate.  We can be guaranteed a fun ride no matter which Republican or Democrat we end up with in November as long as Tucker is in the race — and that’s what I’m rooting for.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Iran, Liberals

reply hazy

Good to know that I’m not the only one who is still confused about Obama’s potential talks with Iran. Marc Ambinder has a few additional questions for the senator, like what the difference is between preparation and pre-conditions. He points out that Barack Obama’s own website clearly says that he “supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” and that his own advisors don’t always follow the same script when discussing his position on Iran. Hunter at the Daily Kos assures us that no President would unconditionally meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad. It’s just a Republican talking point. Right.  Then those evil Rovian conspirators must have gotten to barackobama.com and changed some text around in that Iran section.

If Obama really believes that there should be strings attached to talks with Iran, he might want to change his website to reflect that and make sure that his advisors get that message out there.  There can’t be any confusion where he stands on this issue going into November against John McCain.  Right now, there is.

7 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

a challenge

John Bolton challenges Barack Obama’s non-cowboy diplomacy. Read it here.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Bolton also says that countries like Iran can use negotiating talks as a ploy to buy time while they continue to chart the same destructive course. To be fair to Senator Obama, we do need more specific details under what circumstances and conditions he would agree to meet with countries like Iran. It’s possible that his foreign policy vision has undergone some evolution from the beginning of his campaign until this particular challenge, so if Barack Obama really wants to fight this battle directly with McCain, I’m with John Bolton — bring it on.

I’m anxious to hear his grand plan on how to get dictators and other foreign heads of state who desire our destruction and Israel’s to stop their evil intentions. In truth, foreign policy is a difficult business. No president has ever handled it perfectly. We have no guarantees that Barack Obama or John McCain will make every right decision, but we should have this foreign policy debate before we decide who should be President.

Posted on Republicans

free-market myth

John McCain says that his lovely new cap-and-trade proposal is a free market solution. 

Skeptics like Lawrence Kudlow disagree.

He says:

Sen. McCain weighed in with a cap-and-trade program that he alleges will solve our global climate and energy problem. It’s a bad idea. It’s really a cap-and-kill-the-economy plan, as well as an unlimited spend-and-tax-and-regulate plan. It’s a huge government command-and-control operation that would make any old Soviet Gosplan bureaucrat smile.

Ironically, the U.S. has virtually the cleanest air of any country in the world. And market forces over the past thirty years have increased all manner of energy efficiency per unit of GDP by more than 50 percent. In fact, according the editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily, U.S. carbon emissions grew by only 6.6 percent between 1997 and 2004, compared with 18 percent for the world and 21 percent for the nations that signed the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses. (Think Europe.)

Guess Kyoto’s not working.  I’m shocked.  The reasons Kudlow mentions for opposing this cap-and-trade deal are the same reasons the Kyoto Protocol was a bad idea. It’s an economy killer, and a promotion of massive new government bureaucracy and more stifling regulation to private enterprise.  This solution to the myth of climate change isn’t the right one.  We will do everything we can to solve the supposed problem except what would actually work to decrease our dependence of foreign oil — drilling and building more refineries.  The answer is obvious, if Republicans would be bold enough to make that case.  But they won’t.  They are too interested in being popular with their fellow Washington insiders than they are in doing the right thing for the American people.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

not so fast

You know that conventional wisdom that this overwhelming Democratic turnout in the primary will lead to certain electoral success in November? Not so fast. The Washington Times found some researchers who insist that’s there’s no coorelation there. Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics says that, at best, the connection is unproven, and that the financial advantage Obama currently enjoys would have more significant impact on John McCain’s chances in November than the Democrat primary turnout numbers. I agree.

It’s not that the enthusiasm shown by the Democrats for their two candidates (but mostly for Obama) shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Republicans going into the general election in November.  What we have seen so far is that nothing is guaranteed for the Democrats, unless John McCain succeeds in completely alienating the rest of the conservatives who were resigned to voting for him with his stupid climate change nonsense.  I’m not ruling out that possibility, by the way.  McCain is trying very hard to separate himself from George W. Bush, and he might just succeed.  I can see how this would be a strategy his internal polling might suggest, but he won’t win with just Democrats and independents.  He still needs conservatives and other Republicans, even though he would like to pretend we don’t exist.

Obama will lose a significant amount of his appeal if he selects Hillary as VP.   She represents what has become the old politics.  It’s not 1992 anymore.  Many Obama supporters weren’t even paying attention during the Clinton years (with a few notable exceptions). He doesn’t need her, and she makes him less electable than he is now.  You can’t talk about the new politics and embrace a Washington insider like Hillary.  I know the Democrats want to end this process, but this isn’t the way to do it.  He can withstand the attacks that the Clintons have thrown out there.  She hasn’t put a glove on him, even with all this bad publicity he has gotten lately.  Obama can wait for the nomination.  He knows that he will eventually win it.

More disturbing for the Republicans and John McCain is that all these side issues that are affecting Obama will be old news by the time the election rolls around.  We need a better game plan than the Clintons had, and a candidate willing to make the case against Obama.  Is McCain that guy?  Stay tuned.

Posted on Random Musings

the new york times gets something right

The title of their latest op-ed is “Rethinking Ethanol”. They suggest that Congress might want to consider ending the corn ethanol tax break as well as the mandates for increased ethanol production in the 2007 energy bill. Now, as a conservative I’m generally for most tax breaks, but in this case, I’m not sure that corn ethanol delivers everything it promises for all the government subsidies that industry receives. The New York Times agrees with me, but in its own unique way, pointing out that the ethanol producers are making too much money for government subsidies, tax breaks, etc.

They have two objections. The first, and most important, is that diversion of corn production to fuel rather than food leads to global food shortages — and this isn’t helpful when food prices are already on the rise due to higher demand. Why did it take the New York Times to point this out? Why isn’t this common knowledge? The second objection is that some biofuels, such as corn ethanol, may in fact accelerate global warming. How about that? Corn ethanol could be harmful to the environment. I mock the New York Times for their lateness to the party, but I welcome the skepticism I see here. It’s a good thing when conventional wisdom on the environment is challenged, even if I have to credit that challenge to the New York Times.

Posted on Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

democrats attempt to punish big oil

They might want to remember what happened last time we imposed a windfall profits tax.

Interesting findings from a 2006 Congressional Research Service Report (quoted here). Full PDF here.

This is the most interesting part:

Reinstating the windfall profit tax would reduce recent oil industry windfalls due to high crude and petroleum prices but could have several adverse economic effects. If imposed as an excise tax, the WPT would increase marginal production costs and be expected to reduce domestic oil production and increase the level of oil imports, which today is at nearly 60% of demand. Crude prices would not tend to increase. Some have proposed an excise tax on both domestically produced and imported oil as a way of mitigating the negative effects on petroleum import dependence. Such a broad-based WPT would tend to reduce import dependence, but it would lead to higher crude oil prices and likely to oil industry profits, potentially undermining its original goals.

Because the pure corporate profits tax is relatively neutral in the short run — few, if any, price and output effects occur because marginal production costs are unchanged in the short run — a possible option would be a corporate income surtax on the upstream operations of crude oil producers. Such a tax that would recoup any recent windfalls with less adverse economic effects; imports would not increase because domestic production would remain unchanged. In the long run, such a tax is a tax on capital; it reduces the rate of return, thus reducing the supply of capital to the oil industry.

So US oil companies would have reduced profits if a windfall profits tax was ever enacted, but according to this study, production costs would go up and the level of imports would also increase.  In other words, it would cost more to produce domestic oil, and we would end up importing even more oil than we do now.  Great solution.

If we tax both our own oil production as well as the imports, it might level the playing field (and by that, I mean punishing everyone equally).  It also could lead to higher crude oil prices and keep those oil company profits high.  These aren’t the best solutions to high gas prices.  Congress needs to figure out that high taxes discourage production, and if they really want to increase domestic oil production,  they should allow domestic drilling and let the oil companies build more refineries.

The Democrats are just saying what they think people want to hear.  That’s common enough for politicians.  What annoys me more than anything is that I don’t see much fight in Republicans to challenge the Democrats on any of their stupid proposals.

Posted on Conservatives, Republicans

this is not good

House Republicans are voting in favor of entitlements and earmarks, and not even trying to resist all these new spending proposals by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  So says Bob Novak.  Maybe it’s fair to blame the Republican leadership for this, although I’m not sure how much they can do, because it’s clear that the fiscal conservatives are outnumbered.  That’s one reason why the Republican brand will remain damaged through the November election.  We are acting no different from the Democrats on this, although I suppose that the few Republicans opposing all this new spending should be given some credit.  Of course they never had a fiscal conservative in the White House to begin with, so that makes the fight against spending even more difficult.