Romney’s Gaffe And Obama’s Reality

September 20, 2012

Well, Mitt Romney sure made a huge gaffe when addressing a fundraiser. Here it is, in all it’s glory:

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.

“And I mean the President starts off with 49, 49…he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. 47% of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect.

“So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every 4 years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

“What I have to do is convince the 5% to 10% that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or another depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

The mainstream media is, naturally, breathing deeply into their brown paper bag in a desperate attempt to calm down so they can roll out another round of editorials and learned punditry about how this spells D-O-O-M for the Republican. Also, the Mideast is burning but that’s not important right now.

The gaffe here—and there is a gaffe—is the conflation of people who unquestionably are part of Obama’s base with the entire 40+% of the population that will vote for the President.

Read the statement again with a bit of editing by me. I have added one phrase, and just removed or substituted very few words:

“There are […] people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are [people] who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.

“And I mean the President starts off with 49, 49…he starts off with a huge number. [There] are people who pay no income tax. 47% of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect.

“So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every 4 years. And so my job is not to worry about those people [during the campaign]. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

“What I have to do is convince the 5% to 10% that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or another depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

Not much of a gaffe, when you remove the equating of “groups that support Obama” with “the entire Democratic base.” Can anybody really deny the truth of that first paragraph?

There are people who will vote for the President no matter what. There are people who depend on government handouts. There are people who think of themselves as victims (hello Sandra Fluke and Occupy Wall Street). There are people who believe government should care for them. There are people who feel that they are entitled to healthcare, etc. And these people will vote for Barack Obama. They are part of his base.

So what’s the gaffe? The gaffe is that these people are only part of his base, not the full 47% (realistically, this number should probably be a little lower).

Romney is also correct that a message of lowering taxes has less impact in a country where 47% of tax filers do not pay income tax. Yes, they pay other taxes (sales, payroll, etc), but the message of a lowered income tax rate doesn’t hold much sway. What Romney does forget, and what he should be messaging, is that this number is only so high because the economy is in such a shambles. If the unemployment rate was five percent, the percentage of people paying taxes would be higher.

Lastly, his comment about “not caring” about these people is clearly about the campaign. It was not about his secret wish to write off almost 50% of the population while he is President. Only the truly cynical and those with an agenda could pretend otherwise. After all, he was answering a question about his campaign, not his governance.

As far as gaffes go, this one sounded bad, but like many such mistakes made by all politicians, it was a product of having too many legitimate, not-very-controversial thoughts (47% not paying income taxes, entitlement society, Democratic base) competing for breathing space and emerging as a jumble. As Joe Biden might put it: Big effing deal.

Meanwhile, the Mideast is burning, Americans are dead in Benghazi at the hands of al-Qaeda sympathizers, the economy is still lousy, and the President of the United States is hobnobbing with Beyoncé and Jay-Z while avoiding the Prime Minister of Israel as he wishes to discuss the shrinking time frame for Iran getting a nuclear weapon, discounting any short-term effects of a 16-trillion dollar debt on The Late Show with David Letterman, and downplaying his own recorded statement that he believes in the Socialist idea of redistribution of wealth (not that we didn’t know this already).

But none of that fits the media narrative of Romney’s moribund campaign, does it?


You Don’t Make It Possible, Barack

September 4, 2012

Time and events conspired against me when Barack Obama went off script and uttered the lines that have dogged him ever since. I figured that the time to write about this had passed, but now that the Republican Convention has wrapped up, using those very words as their theme, opportunity knocks again. Even better, because the theme of the Democratic Convention, which starts tonight, is “We Make It Possible.”

Talk about not getting it…

The Republican Convention was a mix of speeches both bad (Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, and everyone on night two until Mike Huckabee) and good (rising star Mia Love, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney). There were, by my estimation, four great speeches: Rand Paul, Ann Romney, Condoleezza Rice (who really knocked it out of the park), and Paul Ryan. What almost all the speeches have in common is that they touched on Barack Obama’s now infamous words: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else built that.”

The Obama campaign has responded with sputtering indignation that the words are taken out of context. In the full context of the speech, those words mean something entirely different from the way they are being presented.

Obama’s right. The words are taken out of context. And that’s a good thing for Obama, because in context the words speak far more eloquently to the true nature of Obama’s Progressive mindset. Without further ado, the words in full context:

Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President—because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

There’s the full context, and it is pernicious nonsense. What Obama is saying is that successful people are merely winners in the lottery of life. Luck and manipulation of the system are the real determinants in whether or not a business succeeds. In Obama’s world, the web developer with a degree in computer science is separated from Bill Gates only by fate. The key ingredient, however you want to look at the context here, is that it is the ability of some people to take advantage of government programs, tax credits, etc., that determines their success. Hard work and using the brains God gave you is simply not enough. To succeed, you first must reach out to government.

But look at the examples here: teachers, roads, bridges, capitalism, and the Internet. Obama says outright that businesses succeed because business owners had great teachers and access to roads and bridges:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.

Say what? It was successful businesses and people that provided taxes that built the public education system, the roads, and the bridges. Where did government get the money to build the interstate highway system? From tax dollars provided by businesses and successful people. The very concept that businesses succeed because the government built a road is beyond ludicrous. It is a complete subversion of reality. Worse, it indicates that the President’s knowledge of how the economy works never moved on from his college days when he was hanging out at the Socialist conferences at Cooper Hall with his Marxist professors, as he wrote in Dreams From My Father.

Even when Obama veers within a country mile of the truth he gets it fundamentally incorrect. The Department of Defense created the Internet, but it was really no more than an extrapolation on ideas that came out of the free market. Long before the Department of Defense, people like Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell were creating methods for people to talk to each other over wires. But let’s give the government some credit. Beginning in the late 1960s, the government managed to network many of its different agencies through the use of what was then called “internetworking.” For about 25 years government sat on the technology before reaching the decision that it would end its management of the system. During that time, especially in the mid- to late-80s and early-90s, the Internet had been in use by universities, research laboratories, and government agencies. It was never designed to make money for companies and, in fact, most companies aren’t really making any money off the Internet. So how did “internetworking” become the Internet? Simple: government gave up control in 1994, turning it over to the private sector. Government sat on the technology for 25 years, doling it out to universities for research purposes before privatizing it in 1994. Since then, costs have dropped and the Internet has exploded, growing exponentially in ways the government never imagined.

The Internet, and the companies that use it, did not succeed because government built it. It succeeded because government got out of the way.

Obama has everything here completely backwards. He believes that private business can not succeed without government help, but he need only look to history for the reality of the situation. For years, the governing document of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. In 1787, this document was thrown out because it was unworkable. The government, under the Articles of Confederation, was so weak it was practically inert. It could make decisions but not enforce them. It was toothless, and doomed to fail for one major reason: to survive, it needed to ask the states for money. The Articles of Confederation did not allow the Federal government the power of taxation. Without tax money, taken from successful businesses and individuals, the government failed, forcing it to start over with the Constitution.

The lesson here is that businesses do not succeed because of government; government exists because of businesses. Barack Obama is just the latest in a long line of class warfare acolytes who try to convince you that the government is the great provider. He is just the most recent Progressive to use tax subsidies as both a benefit for favored industries and a rhetorical weapon. How often have we heard the Democrats screaming about tax subsidies to Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Banks, Big Coal, Big Pharma while at the same time offering tax subsidies to politically favored industries (solar power, wind power, hybrid automobiles)? The fact is that there is one industry that is entirely subsidized by taxpayers, that would not even exist if not for the tax dollars generated by successful businesses. That industry is government.

The DNC needs to understand that they did not “make it possible.” We, the people, made them possible.

The next time you’re driving over the bridge to get on the highway to go to the public school where the great teacher is using the Internet as a teaching tool, spare a thought for the people who made all of that possible: the hard-working, smart people who put in long hours of sweat equity and worry to build the business that employs you and helps you to pay your bills.

And, of course, your taxes.


Crazy Uncle Joe

August 15, 2012

Ha! That lovable rogue Joe Biden has done it again! You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth. This week, on Oh, That Biden!, he slipped into that down home, faux-black accent that Democratic politicians love to use when they’re speaking to black audiences. It’s a way of saying that they’re down with the Negro dialect, that some of their best friends might be black, or at least have black household help. And what did Biden say while he was patronizing those people by talking like a guest star in a Tyler Perry movie? Why, he implied that Mitt Romney wanted to bring back slavery! Oh, that Biden!

Speaking to a largely, though not entirely, black audience, Biden said that Mitt Romney wants “to let the big banks once again write their own rules—unchain Wall Street!” Then, slipping into that black dialect: “They gon’ put y’all back in chains.” Das right! He went there, girlfriend! Good Lord, the condescension is so thick you could walk on it.

Now the fact is that some of Biden’s gaffes are nothing more than the harmless side effect of having too much speaking time and too little brainpower. Lines like “The President has a big stick” when discussing foreign policy, or telling the nation that President Roosevelt went on TV to address the nation four years before he became President…well, it’s kind of like watching Homer Simpson in the real world.

This should make anyone, regardless of party affiliation, nervous. Homer Simpson is one of the funniest characters in TV history, but he’s a cartoon. On TV. I.e., he doesn’t exist. Joe Biden is one heartbeat away from being the President of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world.

He does exist. He’s not a cartoon. And he is a blithering idiot.

Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle were persecuted by the media for far more innocuous statements. Dan Quayle was forever branded as a moron because he misspelled “potato.” It’s 20 years later and the only thing people remember about Dan Quayle is that he can’t spell “potato” and he was involved in an imbroglio over some liberal wet dream television show that nobody can remember.

Joe Biden? The Human Gaffe Machine is considered a statesman and foreign policy expert by the same media. A little eccentric, maybe, but that’s just Joe being Joe. In fact, Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate because of Biden’s foreign policy acumen, despite the fact that Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy issue for the past 30 years.

Personally, I don’t care about Biden’s legitimate slips of the tongue. He gives a lot of speeches, and everybody flubs their lines on occasion. For example, in the same speech where he implied that Romney is a preppy version of Simon Legree, he proudly proclaimed “We can win North Carolina!” Unfortunately, he was speaking in Virginia. Anyone could make that mistake.

But Biden’s lengthy string of idiotic statements are more than just the drunken ramblings of Uncle Nutty at the family reunion. What Biden said about Romney was more than just a gaffe. From the faux-black accent to the nature of the aside, it is clear to me that this was not a gaffe at all. It was a dog whistle, meant to be heard only by a select few. Biden’s eternal idiocy gives him cover to speak in code to the base. If caught, it’s only “Crazy Uncle Joe meant to say something different and it came out wrong.” If not caught, so much the better.

Not every gaffe is a slip of the tongue. Some of them are messages. What Biden said in Virginia was one of the latter.


Romney/Ryan

August 13, 2012

One of the (many) knocks that Mitt Romney has had to endure is that he is unfailingly dull and cautious. Most of the talking heads on the news programs were convinced that Romney was going to pick either Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman as his running mate. The conservative base, meanwhile, was crying out for Marco Rubio and, to a lesser extent, Paul Ryan.

From the beginning, it was clear to me that Romney was going to have to choose a running mate who would meet with the approval of the Tea Party. A dull, safe choice like Pawlenty or Portman was going to neither inspire nor invigorate the conservative base of the GOP. It’s exactly why I feared those two choices. Portman is reliably conservative, and Pawlenty was a successful conservative governor but let’s face it: they’re as dull as dishwater.

To me, Rubio seemed the smartest choice. Young, handsome, Hispanic, from Florida, and completely Tea Party-approved. Rubio may still be where the future of the Republican Party lay. Right now I’m picturing him as the second half of the 2020 Ryan/Rubio ticket.

But Romney chose Paul Ryan, a lightning rod for the Democrats, a man who was accused of trying to destroy the social safety net, who has gone on record in great detail about cuts he wants to make to government, a man who has been visually represented in an advertisement literally throwing an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman off a cliff.

Bravo, Mr. Romney. Bravo.

Say what you will about Romney, the choice of Paul Ryan was the politically riskiest pick he could have made short of hauling Sarah Palin away from Sean Hannity for another attempt. Was it a smart choice? Time will tell. The Democrats are already blasting the choice, trying to paint Paul Ryan as an extremist right-wing nut. The hatchet job they are trying to pull off will make the character assassination of Sarah Palin look tame. I fully expect the lunatic Andrew Sullivan to write blog posts claiming that Ryan’s children are Midwich Cuckoos.

But Ryan’s place on the ticket proves one thing: Mitt Romney understands the stakes of this election. For a long time, I was unsure whether he fully appreciated the gravity in the black hole of debt with which Obama and George W. Bush have saddled us. Romney in the primaries talked a good game, but it seemed that he considered our rising debt and deficit as just another problem that needed solving, not an impending crisis of nation-shattering proportions.

Paul Ryan is the serious face here. There is nobody in Congress who understands the budget, the deficit, and the debt more than he does. And he has gone on record with his solution. What Paul Ryan does as Romney’s running mate is force this election to be about genuinely big issues. This is a debate the Left claims they want, but in fact they are terrified of this. Ryan has a plan. It is not a perfect plan, but it is an excellent starting point. Ryan is not a perfect conservative, either, having voted in favor of some of the debt he now is trying to curb. But that is in the past and Ryan has seemingly seen the error of his ways and emerged as a budget hawk without sliding into the fantasy fringe of Ron Paul. The Democrats will scream and point fingers, accusing Ryan of everything from trying to destroy Medicare to forcing old people to eat cat food. Ryan will counter as he always has: eloquently, with facts and figures, charts and graphs, and a smile. I’ve watched Ryan on news shows for years now and he has never come across as someone who is less than completely reasonable and rational. The liberal opposition, meanwhile, has no facts, no charts, no graphs, and only vituperation. Most telling, they have no opposing plan of their own. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Paul Ryan when asked about the debt: “We don’t have a definitive solution. We just don’t like yours.”

In their zeal to attack Ryan, the Democrats have moved away from their campaign strategy to keep this election about anything except economics. The Democrats have tried to make the election about birth control, about Mitt Romney’s taxes, about whether Romney put a dog crate on his car in the early 1980s. They have been loath to discuss anything to do with the economy because it is a losing issue for them.

By picking the poster child for entitlement and budget reform, Mitt Romney has shifted the focus of the election back to the issues that really matter. And while Romney is not comfortable with conservative speech, Paul Ryan makes the case for budget and entitlement reform with great eloquence.

The Democrats are falling all over themselves now in a rush to tell the world how happy they are that Romney has picked such a polarizing figure, that Romney’s choice is even worse than John McCain’s in 2008. This is a lie. The truth is they’re scared. They should be. Ryan is not some sort of monstrous ogre who wants to throw grandma into the snow. He is what the Left fears: a living, breathing rebuttal to the vapidity of their rhetoric and the absence of their ideas.


Rick, Rolling

January 6, 2012

Who would have thought, just a few short months ago, that it would be Rick Santorum and not Rick Perry that emerged triumphant from the Iowa caucus?

Not that Santorum actually won (or did he?), but finishing in second place behind the hair apparent Mitt Romney by just eight votes classifies as somewhat more than a moral victory and somewhat less than true triumph.

The race for the Republican nomination is considerably narrowed now. It’s really down to four: Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry. Perry and Gingrich are hanging on like Sergeant Snorkel hanging off a cliff-side tree branch. There’s no visible way up, but down is a very real possibility. Perry has all but given up on New Hampshire, and clearly staked out South Carolina as his Alamo. He will be victorious in South Carolina, or he will be gone. Gingrich is liable to stay in the race as long as his money, ego, and love of television cameras allows him to do so. His ego and autagonistophilia (there’s a $10 word I thought I’d never use!) are inexhaustible, but his money is distinctly finite. It’s likely that unless he somehow pulls off a victory in either New Hampshire or South Carolina, he’ll probably be gone by Super Bowl Sunday. Gingrich’s only chance is that he can so dominate future debates, and so thrill the conservative base with a steady diet of red meat, that voters will overlook his many foibles in their lust to see Gingrich and Obama go mano-a-mano.

The current resident of 2nd place in the New Hampshire polls is Ron Paul. I don’t count Ron Paul as a serious candidate. I like to joke that I agree with Ron Paul 97% of the time…95% on domestic policy and 2% on foreign policy. I am the conservative base, and would vote for Ron Paul over Obama. But I’d vote for Jon Huntsman over Ron Paul in the primaries. That’s how noxious I find Paul’s foreign policy views: a vomitous stew of blame-America-firstism, trutherism, and conspiracy nut musings. His foreign policy views are considerably farther to the Left than even Barack Obama’s…the guy who wants to decimate the U.S. military. Ron Paul has no chance of winning the primaries. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Fugghedaboudit.

I eagerly await the hate mail, but in your heart you know I’m right that there will never, ever, ever be a President Ron Paul. Nor should there be.

What all of this means is that at this moment there’s a two-man race going on between Mitt Romney and, surprise, Rick Santorum. Which means the time has come for Republicans to decide who is the best candidate of those two men to defeat Barack Obama in November. William F. Buckley’s rule of thumb was to support the most conservative candidate who was electable. In choosing between Romney and Santorum, the choice at first appears clear: Romney is the less conservative of the two, but is a polished debater, smooth talking, quick on his feet, the frontrunner with lots of name recognition, a former Republican governor of one of the bluest states in the country. Surely it’s Romney. Virtually every media talking head assures us that Romney is the only Republican who stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of defeating the suave, debonair, charming President. Even the conservative media is beating this drum. My friends The Gormogons posted a wickedly sharp treatise by Ghettoputer that called Romney “the turd in the punchbowl that is the Republican 2012 presidential primary field with the best chance of beating President Obama in the general election.” But is ‘Puter right?

Mitt Romney has been running for election for nearly 20 years, starting with a Senate bid in 1994. During that time he managed one win: governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He didn’t run for reelection in 2006 so that he could concentrate fully on a 2008 Presidential run. Had he run in 2006, he almost certainly would have lost. Romney’s failure to break out of the pack of Republican candidates this year is indicative of just how little emotion he stirs in the base. In the 2008 campaign, he lost to John McCain…the least inspiring Presidential candidate since Bob Dole stammered his way to slaughter in 1996. That’s right: Romney inspired the base less than John McCain, a man who infuriates Republicans on a daily basis.

Republicans need to ask: if Romney is so electable, then why doesn’t anybody want to elect him to anything?

Then there’s Rick Santorum, a man who the enlightened assure us is not electable. The intelligentsia present this assertion as if it were an indisputable fact, with the proof being that in his last race (Senate, 2006) Santorum lost by an 18% margin. Surely, they say, anyone this unpopular could never be elected President. But Santorum has won more electoral victories than Romney has. In a blue state with red tinting, he campaigned as a hardline conservative and won…first as a two-term Representative, then twice more as Senator. The 2006 election that is being held over his head was something of an anomaly: he was campaigning against a blue dog Democrat who shared a name and family heritage with a former, well-liked, governor, Bob Casey. The 2006 election was also the first election suffering from Bush fatigue, and a powerful anti-incumbent sentiment. It was a wave election, carrying the Democrats into power (they gained 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats). Santorum had also deflated the base with his endorsement in 2004 of the wretched and loathsome reptile that is Arlen Specter. To conservatives, this was akin to watching Harry Potter putting a “Vote for Voldemort” sign on his front lawn.

Whether or not a candidate is electable is a difficult thing to ascertain. All candidates have their issues, both pro and con. Romney is an uninspiring flip flopper with an unfortunate, and transparent, tendency to tell audiences whatever they want to hear. The fear is that he has no core principles, and it’s a valid fear. Santorum has come across in the debates, especially the early debates, as annoyed and surly, complaining about his air time. America does not want a whiner for President. Santorum is also intent on focusing on the social side of conservatism. At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, when there is instability throughout the Middle East and Europe, when our nation is so deeply in debt that a bankrupt future looks all too possible, Santorum makes sure we know where he stands on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage. These are important issues, but I’m far more concerned about reforming Medicare than I am about contraception. Sometimes Santorum’s deeply felt Catholicism gets the best of him. He needs to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, debt reduction, jobs, debt reduction, debt reduction, and jobs. Instead he lets a media that hates him trap him into answering questions designed to make him look like a kook (because that’s what the media thinks of devout Catholics).

Note to Rick: When some pinheaded reporter asks you if you want to ban contraception the answer is not a treatise on your faith. The answer is “That’s a ridiculous question you should be ashamed of asking. Of course not. Now can we please talk about the economy?”

I don’t know who’s more electable. That will become clearer as the primaries continue. But it’s clear to me that Romney is less of a sure-fire win than his proponents would like us to believe, and Santorum is a greater threat to Obama than his detractors would argue. Rest assured, though. The Obama campaign is rolling down the streets like Megaweapon, ready to viciously and unfairly tarnish anyone the Republicans nominate. The Republicans need a conservative champion, a Beowulf to slay Grendel (and Grendel’s mom…I’m looking at you, Axelrod!). They need a man with the rock solid principles of Rick Santorum, and the business/economy-related focus of Mitt Romney. A bit of the carnivorous style of Newt Gingrich wouldn’t hurt, either. That combination would be truly unbeatable in November.

Consider that a word of advice to all the candidates.