TheAgitator.com
A Bit More on the GOP
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008My piece on why the GOP needs to lose this year has gotten some nice play around the Internet.
A couple points on the general reaction I’ve seen:
First, I’m not sure how many more caveats I could have put in there, but I have no plans to vote for Obama, nor do I encourage anyone else to vote for him. I’m voting for Bob Barr. My point is that of the two candidates who have a chance to win, I’ll be rooting for Obama. Then, I’m sure, I’ll be angry with him from the day he takes office. And while there are some Republicans I’d like to see win (Sen. John Sununu in New Hampshire, for example), on the whole, I think the party needs the kind of major correction that can only come from a thumping at the polls.
Second, I’ve seen several people make the point that while there may not be much difference between McCain and Obama, the most significant and important difference between the two is in the judicial nominations each would make.
Perhaps that’s correct. But McCain has promised us more justices like Roberts and Alito. As I’ve explained before on this site, there’s little about either of those justices for a libertarian to like. At least with the lefty judges you get piecemeal attention to civil liberties. With few exceptions, Roberts and Alito both have a history of general deference to government. If I thought McCain had it in him to nominate and fight for someone like Janice Rogers Brown, I’d vote for him on that fact alone.
But of the judges on “the right,” McCain’s mentioned only the names of authoritarians. And the last thing we need is John Paul Stevens replaced by another imperial presidency fetishist.
6 years of a Republican house/senate and 8 with a Republican Pres has led to bigger, more intrusive government, less rights, lees privacy, No more posse comitatus, no habeas corpus, more spending /borrowing/debt than ever, and now, nationalized businesses. Please hit me with a hammer if I EVER vote for a Republican again. It cracks me up when people say if I think it’s bad now just wait until Obama gets elected. How could ANYONE make things worse? (Higher taxes?)
Speech Codes
Gun Bans
Single Payer Heath Care
Enviro Wackos in positions of authority (more so than now)
Just a few of the ways things can get much worse.
Man, Radley, if you’re a closet democrat, you’re pretty good at hiding it.
I’m done voting for the lesser of two evils. I’m going to vote tomorrow (early!) in exactly 2 races. For president, I’m voting for Barr and I’m voting against the latest Florida anti-gay-marriage amendment.
Everyone else on my ballot blows.
When they give you the proverbial south park choice between the giant douche and the turd sandwich, you simply shouldn’t encourage them. It’s bad for your karma and it encourages them to supply us with a new pair of douche/turds for the next election.
I don’t like the dems, but I give them due credit for being honest about the socialistic nature of their plans.
The republicans on the other hand, say one thing on the stump, and do the opposite after their elected. They can’t be trusted. Every cycle the trot out the same tired social conservative issues to energize their base, and every time, their base falls for it.
Vote Chuthlu ’08! Why choose the lesser evil?
Okay, seriously though the Republicans need to go the way of the Whigs.
Do you have Boston Tea out there? I think you’ll dig Boston Tea more than Barr.
How’s this for street cred? They’ve already split the party!
“My point is that of the two candidates who have a chance to win, I’ll be rooting for Obama. Then, I’m sure, I’ll be angry with him from the day he takes office.”
Some would call that “cognitive dissonance”.
I call it insanity.
I cannot imagine what that must sound like in someone’s head.
I think we can all agree both major political parties will do whatever they can to get votes. What makes you think the Republicans won’t see America voting for the most liberal Senator in the Senate as a reason to shift to the left instead of heading in a Libertarian direction? Doesn’t Obama winning stand a much better chance of completely eliminating any small government Republicans instead of bringing about more?
Portocan:
According to Annenberg, Obama was “the most liberal Senator in the Senate” only in 2007.
He was 16th in 2005, 10th in 2006, and then 1st in 2007. My point still stands. He is very liberal and voting for him in order to punish the Republicans only shows them that we want more liberal politicians. Do we expect them to think Obama won because a small percentage of people wanted more freedom or because America prefers liberal policies?
Portocan: then vote for Barr.
If Obama wins, things will get much worse. But, if McCain wins things will also get much worse. I’m reminded of the saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It could be changed to “when we deserve one, a good presidential candidate will appear.” Evidently, we still have some lessons to learn the hard, painful way.
I’ve rephrased the “lesser of two evils” statment to be “which mistake will cost fewer lives”. Still, it’s a close call but I’d rather America learn Obama’s painful lessons than McCain’s. This doesn’t make me an Obama supporter.
It’s not the political parties who need to learn a lesson, it’s the voting public.
As long as the voters are simply voting for More Bread vs. More Circuses, the politicians are going to campaign on a strict More Bread and Circuses platform.
As soon as Obama as sworn in, the Republicans are going to start bitching about all the power he has; never mind the fact that all that power wasn’t a problem when their man was in office.
In 2012, it’s not going to occur to anyone to campaign on a platform of restoring the system of checks and balances. That shit’s for eggheads.
As long as the R’s continue to thump their chest about their “god” and abortion they will continue to get 45% of the vote. They can do damn near anything else and make some lame half-ass excuse and it’ll all be good with that 45%. Just a sad fact.
The D’s are the same with pretty much an automatic 45% lock as well (on different equally bogus issues).
Given that situation I don’t see how there can be any improvement.
You’re nuts if you’d support an extreme ideologue like Janice Rogers Brown.
If by “extreme ideologue,” you mean principled libertarian, you’re right. I’m nuts.
“Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies.”
This perspective (of Ms. Brown) speaks to her tendency to adopt simple-minded, theoretically conclusive explanations for the role of the state in civil society. The fact that she describes herself as a former Maoist should be another red flag that she has a proclivity towards inflexible and hegemonic strains of political thinking.
Yes ktc2, the duopoly is a rigged game. Heads they win. Tails we lose.
I don’t understand why you get so much flak, and so many accusations that you’re some sort of not-so-secret Democrat. It’s not that hard to grasp that a libertarian with no intention of voting major party might fear or hate one candidate less. I guess I hope that Obama wins over McCain myself, but nobody who knows my politics would EVER think that meant I was at all to the left… Except my brother who is always trying to convince me that I am a secret Democrat, just to annoy me.
The two oldest justices on the Supreme Court right now are Stevens and Ginsburg. So even if Obama picks incredibly left wing justices, he’s likely just going to be maintaining the status quo.
Janice Rogers-Brown for SCOTUS!
Even as someone who’s voted Democrat in the past (and am still undecided this time), the prospect of not just a “friendly” Congress, but a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, is a huge concern. I’m surprised that hasn’t been discussed here (it has at some other sites).
Radley, I agree that the GOP getting its ass handed to it in this election would be a good thing in the long term, if it happens the right way. An issue that I (and maybe some others) had with your article is that it leaves the impression that a voter who doesn’t like Obama but who is disappointed with McCain (and big-government conservatives in general) might be doing something positive in voting for Obama.
If libertarians think, as a whole, Obama’s agenda represents movement toward a less statist federal government, then they are crazy, but they should vote for him. But the rest of us should not, especially if we are trying to nudge a GOP re-alignment. An Obama vote sends the exact wrong message to the GOP. If the goal is to encourage a libertarian correction in the GOP, then a voter will not accomplish that by using his vote to say “I like even bigger government than the already big government the GOP represents.” That’s how an Obama vote will be interpreted. Instead, the message must be “I will only vote for smaller government; that’s how to win elections.” Otherwise, the GOP brain trust might veer even further toward statism by maintaining its social conservatism while trying to regain votes by co-opting part of the left’s big government agenda. Case-in-point: Karl Rove’s disastrous Medicare Part D (prescription drug benefit) triangulation.
In the Fox article, you generically mention third-party candidates as an aside, but it shouldn’t be a back-burner option. Voting for genuine anti-statist candidates is really the only way that a GOP trouncing will be meaningful in terms of prompting reform of the GOP (and, BTW, in serving as a reality check to the Democrats, too). The useful GOP trouncing doesn’t mean Obama wins; that’s just an unfortunate side-effect. The useful trouncing means McCain lost because he lost the votes of libertarian-leaners who might have voted Republican.
Another point: I agree this is a bad year to get bullied by the “dangers of lefty judges” argument, since the judges likely to retire are lefties anyway and it would be no net loss if they were replaced by lefties. (And count me among the supporters of Janice Rogers Brown.) But, I seriously disagree that democratic judges are better on civil liberties. That’s a notion left in the popular perception that hasn’t been reality for quite some time. People can dicker from case to case, but I think the archetypal recent cases would be Kelo, Raich, and (since I consider the 2nd Amendment a civil rights centerpiece) Heller. The anti-civil rights justices on those cases were pretty solidly Democrat appointees.
(BTW, I am not making a case that the Republican appointees are any great shakes, either. But, the idea that the “liberal” justices are measurably better on civil liberties is really an anachronism at this point and we need to avoid assuming it out of habit.)
There’s an insomnia bug going around, so I can’t resist. First, I agree with freedomfan 100%. This is the conclusion to Radley’s article: “Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.” This should be the thesis, but it’s not, and nothing in the article explains why this is a real-enough possibility to support the Dem hat trick over divided government.
To my main point: I have a fundamental concern with Obama that is closely related to my primary criticism of Radley*. I grew up in a majority-black town, went to majority-black schools, and played on majority-black sports teams. I still spend much of my time in the South and much of that time is in the black community (to use a political term). Did I establish my WASP-speaking-about-a-black-candidate credentials? The nonsense that Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers preach (read Stanley Kurtz’s articles about Annenberg) is absolutely toxic in the black community IMO. The problem with Wright & Co. isn’t the leftism, which characterizes most black churches, it’s the absolute stupidity of the conspiratorial ideas** that unfortunately are bolstered by Wright’s and Obama’s elite educations. I’ve seen too many politicians embolden the instincts of poor, uneducated blacks (and whites, but that’s another issue) in my life to simply evaluate Obama on his stated presidential positions. I really liked Obama after seeing his 2004 DNC speech. I heard several radio intervews after that and before I realized who was speaking, I thought, “I’m afraid of this lefty. Damn he’s good.” After the Wright controversy and his ridiculous speech***, I did a 180. Why didn’t Obama use his position in a largely-poor black church to promote responsibility and entrepreneurship? It seems to me, until he proves me wrong, that Obama respesents the worst of Clinton and Rev. Jackson. Until Obama does something more substantive than cracking on KFC, my opinion won’t change.
* If someone asks, I’ll explain. Also, I have immense respect for his blog, his magazine, and his former employer. I think he does great and vital work.
**For example, Wright mentioned somewhere that he thinks AIDS was created by the government, and he cited the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. That’s ludicrous scientifically, but it also doesn’t match the facts. Tuskegee was performed on already-infected poor black men, and several of the doctors and nurses were black. It’s horrible enough without gross over-characterization. Of course the MSM, to my knowledge, never called him on this.
*** After Obama got in trouble for being so close with a racist preacher, his speech about everyone else being racist really set me off. Throwing his longtime preacher, who we were previously told was a great guy, and his grandmother under the bus was pathetic. Glenn Loury’s sentiments on bloggingheads perfectly echo mine.
Kudos, Alex, for the first footnoted reply I’ve seen!
For those of you who are interested in “nudging” the Republicans toward a limited government agenda, I agree that the best way for that to happen is for McCain to get beaten…but to be beaten by a a margin that’s smaller than, or at least close to, the vote for Barr, maybe also the vote for Chuck Baldwin. Since Republicans lie about being for smaller government, they assume that they own the libertarian vote. Probably, the most we can hope for is that they’ll just lie harder, but if they see that the libertarians are not supporting them, and the libertarians become the “swing vote”, they may try to convince them that they mean what they say.
I really do not see the point of rebuilding the GOP at all. Everytime they’ve had their ass handed to them they retreat and start TALKING principles again but the second they’re back in power that all goes out the window. So, why bother?
What’s needed is a replacement.
The Republican party no longer has anything to offer. They have become so wrapped up in targeting swing voters that they have completely lost touch with their base. They have betrayed everything they have ever stood for in the name of expediency and are no longer guided by principle.
The Republican party has matured into a money-driven behemoth completely vested in appearances at the expense of effectiveness. They are living proof that candidates are only in it for themselves. Like CEOs who drain the coffers of the corporations they run into the ground, candidates are nothing more than parasites who ride the party into office, because getting elected is all that matters.
After George Bush, I am now convinced that the occupant of the White House is nothing more than a puppet under control of those who finance his bid for office. If he hadn’t been sponsored by one of the two main parties, Bush would have been laughed out of politics before he even began.
It’s time the Republicans did “the right thing” and disband so that a completely new party that stands for something can rise in it’s place.
It should be noted that gridlock is a thing to savor. There would be absolutely none under Obama.
However, McCain’s liberal enough to negate gridlock from an opposite-party Congress. That is not a reason to champion Obama.
Since it’s unlikely gridlock will occur — though nobody cares to actually articulate that — the deciding factors become the danger of policies.
Biden has convinced me the danger of Obama, so in comparison McCain looks more reasonable. However, McCain’s positions on amnesty and civil rights, which mirror conservative Democrats, are close to unacceptable.
In the end, I’ll probably go with Barr because he’s the most defensibly Right-wing, and because one vote makes more of a difference on margin to such a small candidate than to the State-wide race at large.
I think this is a legitimate point, and well presented, but do you have any idea what the libertarian-reconstruction of the conservative movement should look like? How it should be effected? How do we get another Reagan to the top of the Right’s ticket, instead of more bloated neo-cons?
“It should be noted that gridlock is a thing to savor.”
It most certainly is not. That’s like being satisfied with stopping a knife attack and calling it a day without stopping the victim’s bleeding.
That’s like being satisfied with stopping a knife attack and calling it a day without stopping the victim’s bleeding.
I find this analogy so poorly constructed that I hardly know how to respond, probably because it requires a leap to identify a collective “victim” that doesn’t make any sense.
A far better analogy would be the bar scene in the movie Duel (1971).
I would gladly follow Janice Rogers Brown around for the rest of my life, and do whatever she told me to do (within the limits of human dignity, of course) for subsistence rations.
I’m not having a very good life at the moment.
“If by “extreme ideologue,” you mean principled libertarian, you’re right. I’m nuts.
Principled libertarian = Bob Barr supporter. Heh, now that’s funny.
Incidentally, for those of you who support Janice Rogers Brown, she recently joined a D.C. Circuit opinion that gave the Federal Trade Commission virtually unrestricted authority to stop corporate mergers — and force companies to undo mergers after the fact — without having to meet any burden of proof or follow any constitutional due process. Just something to think about.
“I’m voting for Bob Barr.”
“Democracy is the notion that the common man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.” H.L. Mencken
“principled libertarian”
I’m sorry — what? How would you know, Radley?
Radley, is any force between adult individuals legitimate, other than self-defense?
Once one allows for a personal subjective interpretation of the legitimate use of force beyond immediate self-defense (and I can even rationally contest that), then one loses the logical and moral consistency to complain about, among other things: puppycide, warrantless spying, the death penalty, taxation, militarization of police forces, foreign wars, vice laws, engineered inflation, pervasive intervention in commerce. Did I leave anything out that you post on, Radley? Every one of these issues is the direct consequence of someone’s subjective interpretation of the legitimate use of force. Get it?
When one condones violence in any form, one is part of and inseparable from the problem. Everything that you post on, Radley, is merely a branch of the tree of violence, whose roots are watered and nourished by every individual decision to commit violence — including and especially voting.
Continue to vote, sheeple — that dog that was shot in Oklahoma will be followed by a million of his kind. Dog owners, voters, cops — you’re all doing a mad dance of death.
Thoreau wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
That was then, this is now. Make it a million. Just so we’re clear, you’re among the million, Radley. Fancy yourself a libertarian like your buddy Rogers-Brown if you want — the truth is that you’re a statist.
#38 — The anarchist shtick is old. This is a libertarian site. It isn’t an anarchist site. If you don’t like what I stand for, go find anarchists to play with. But your lectures are tiresome. I know your arguments. I don’t buy them. And after about the twelfth time you make them, they start to become trollish.
If my “statism” offends you so, stop reading. But you’re not going to use my space to propagandize in every post.
The best justice on the bench, IMHO, is Justice Thomas. Scalia, Roberts, and Alito make an effort to read the Constitution, even though they are too willing to fit their reading to whatever the government seems to be doing, rather than forcing the government to fit its actions to the Constitution.
I can see little to recommend Kennedy, and nothing to recommend Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, or Stevens.
I would have been happier if McCain had promised justices in the mold of Clarence Thomas, but Roberts and Alito don’t seem too bad. Which justice would you have preferred as a model?
“The anarchist shtick is old. This is a libertarian site. It isn’t an anarchist site. If you don’t like what I stand for, go find anarchists to play with. But your lectures are tiresome. I know your arguments. I don’t buy them. And after about the twelfth time you make them, they start to become trollish. If my “statism” offends you so, stop reading. But you’re not going to use my space to propagandize in every post.”
Funny, must have missed the “No Anarchists” sign at the door. Very inclusive of you, Radley.
Just as I thought. Ad hominems. You’ve got a keen logical mind, Radley. It’s on display for everyone to see. You shouldn’t let a “troll” get the better of you like that.
I don’t seek out like-minded people because there’s no intellectual challenge there, Radley. Is that who you want to post here, only those who agree with everything you write? How childish!
I can understand just how tiresome I must be. You could always ban me.
Funny, but after the 12th time someone like you or one of your regular posters opines about this statist outrage or that, I don’t find them trollish. I just confront them for the irrational, IMHO, thinking that it is, hoping to change a mind here or there.
It’s not your “statism” that offends me, if offense is even close to what I feel, not that my feelings matter, Radley. It’s your pretense to a principled libertarian position. Libertarianism (small ‘l’) is antistatist. Every one of your posts is statist, as I have demonstrated. Res ipso loquitur.
As for “propagandizing” in every post (utterly false absolute on your part), you should be careful about throwing stones. This is a mighty glassy house you inhabit. There’s quite a few people who come here who thoroughly sympathize with every logical argument/refutation I’ve made, and many whose comments I respect. One can easily label your posts propaganda as well.
You know, Radley, I’ve been reading your blog for years. This is a pretty compelling blog you’ve got. Meaty topics, generally intelligent commentors, good readership. Congratulations.
Ban me, denigrate me, ignore me, challenge me. Whatever. Do what you gotta do. I’ll do the same.
Radley, on further reflection I admit to poor form on my part. I have failed to identify myself.
My name is James Greenberg, resident of Tustin, CA. It’s only right that you know my name if I am going to direct a post at you personally.
I apologize for my lack of social grace, I mean this most sincerely.