A Cautionary Note to Conservatives...

I've got to warn my fellow Conservatives that underestimating the Obama administration will doom, not only the GOP, but far more importantly, CONSERVATISM to the wilderness, perhaps for a pretty long time.

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Hear me out on this, please.

Right now, I think it's safe to say that Rahm Emanuel may be the most effective political force since Newt Gingrich, while Barack Obama, is perhaps the best communicator since Bill Clinton, perhaps even as effective as Ronald Reagan was.

The idea that "Obama wants to drive the economy into Depression" is as foolish a thought as are the 9-11 Truther conspiracies that "the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks." Both are as crazy as the idea that "Obama wants to see the U.S. attacked again."

Not only are such ideas foolish, they do irreparable harm to the side the purveyors of such ideas claim to support. They isolate such people in the "lunatic fringe" margins and once uttered, such sentiments can often serve to make those who claim them, unable to be taken seriously.

Ask yourself this, "Was G W Bush a Conservative?"

The ONLY honest answer is, "Not on your life," so PERISH that thought.

G W Bush was, like his Dad (the man who railed AGAINST Reagan's "Voodoo economics"), every bit as Keynesian as Obama, Pelosi and Reid are now.

Scarier still, G W Bush wasn't nearly as effective a communicator and defender of those Keynesian ideals as is Obama.

Right now, a LOT of Americans are lauding Obama's forcing those companies that have taken bailout monies to rein in their corporate compensation (bank CEO's compensation for bailout recipients is now capped at $500K). There's little doubt that with the auto bailouts will come some real fuel changes (forced by government) and perhaps auto downsizing, along with them.

THAT (forcing a deal with businesses that take government monies) is NOT "socialism."

IF it IS, IF that's your definition of "socialism," then the corporations that sought out all that government money are the real culprits - THEY sold out Capitalism, NOT the current administration!

All prevailing evidence indicates that MORE Keynesian policies (more government spending, more bailouts, and more wrong-headed regulation) will not get us out of a crisis brought on by the Keynesian policies of Bush-Jr. - SIX LOOOOONG years of excessive government spending (the prescription drug boondoggle, the NCLB Act, more social spending even adjusted for inflation than LBJ) and ham-handed regulation (ie. Sarb-Ox, which has been so expensive that it was almost solely responsible for the "jobless recovery" of 2002 - 2003, as companies couldn't afford to add payroll due to the added Sarb-Ox compliance costs).

MORE of the same bad policies are never the cure for bad policies.

Saying that, I'm telling you, this crew is NOT a bunch of dopes set on ruining America or having us attacked again.

They've changed the WoT (even scrapping that terms for "the global conflict") ONLY around tha margins, but have ratcheted UP the rendition program, signed onto and kept up the NSA Surveillance programs and are re-focusing on Afghanistan and other hotspots. Very clever.

Economically, their economics team is FAR better than G W Bush's. There's absolutely no comparison. Larry Summers, Tim Geithner...not a "socialist" in the bunch...ALL of them are market-oriented economists and they're all sound policy wonks.

Even their current spending, the overwhelming bulk is targeted to infrastructure repair - creating lots of new private sector construction jobs down the road.

AGAIN, these guys have taken a very cautious, clever approach to this. AND they've fought off Nancy Pelosi's overreach on an number of issues.

Angry Liberalism CAN occasionally be en vogue because the MSM backs it up, but I can assure you "angry Conservatism" s never in fashion and there's NOTHING the liberal media likes more than to see grassroots Conservatives meltdown and engage in the very kind of ODS they themselves not long ago supported as BDS.

Trust me, they'll marginalize angry Conservatives in a heartbeat and the bulk of moderate apolitical America will go along with them, clucking, "Yeah those crazy Conservatives. You can't trust them at all."

Ironically enough, I see Conservative overreaction as MORE of a threat to Conservatism than the Keynesian policies now being CONTINUED....all Obama's done s far is to CONTINUE the G W Bush policies! Moreover, NOTHING done to date, can't be undone in dealing with the crisis these things intensify.

I suppose I'm more nuanced in my political views. I don't see it as "Republicans = GOOD, Democrats = BAD." Not at all.

The way I see it, the Blue Dog (Conservative) Democrats and the Conservative Republicans are BOTH GOOD, the left-leaning, Liberal Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Bill Nelson) are BAD, the far-Left Democratic loons (Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Chris Dodd, John Conyers, etc) are WORSE...and the "Rockefeller Republicans" (those Liberal Republican elites like Arlen Specter, Sue Collins, Chris Shays) are the (to steal a phrase from the batshit crazy Keith Olbermann) "WORST PEOPLE in the WORLD."

Conservatives can't just swing for the fences against the Obama administration. We simply don't have the credibility to do that. Not after having spent the DECADE after Gingrich soiling the Conservative coalition he'd built.

A LOT of so-called Conservatives (G W, McCain, DeLay, Hastert) have screwed things up royally and delivered a bloated government and a sick economy.

We have to fix our own house before we can throw any rocks at Obama's, and while I don't think you're wrong about the disastrous outcome...even the CBO says the stimulus plan will have long term negative consequences; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/04/cbo-obama-stimulus-harmful-over-long-haul/

My caution goes to the tone and tenor of how Conservatives choose to make their arguments.

If your opponent has a hole in his boat, it's best just to let him sink, rather than excoriate him for deliberating sabotaging his own attempt in the race.

We DO indeed seem to be heading from hard times into much worse times, how much worse, remains to be seen, BUT we have to acknowledge that the Bush administration (uncomfortable as this is to admit) had a HUGE hand in moving the U.S. onto the disastrous Keynesian path it's now on.

G W bush bought into the same "Big Government Conservatism" that Rudy Guiliani thrived on for a few years. The problem is that it still balloons government and Bush went even further with his "compassionate Conservatism" and that line of thought led many Republicans to support some of the policies that led to the current subprime mortgage mess that triggered the global credit crisis.

Newt Gingrich had a GREAT article in yesterday's Washington Post about what Conservatives (in government) need to do to win back the day; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/11/where-does-the-conservative-movement-go-from-here/

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Confrontation IS often necessary, but condemnation rarely is.
There IS certainly hope that another economic failure primarily brought about and then intensified by Liberalism will return us to a new direction

AFTER Carter, came Reagan....after David Dinkins (and the skyrocketing murder rate in NYC...over 2,000/year) came Guiliani....and after Bill Clinton veered Left in his first two years, came Newt Gingrich.

The problem with modern Conservatism is that when it's been empowered it's treaded way too lightly - nibbling around the edges, instead of dismantling the programs that weigh the economy down like anchors.

I am, in fact, hopeful of some sweeping changed in 2010, but they won't mean ANYTHING unless they are truly Conservative changes. I hope we can find another Gingrich and not someone who'll settle for nibbling around the edges, and certainly NOT a DeLay or a Hastert who'd seek to "get along with the Keynesians."

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THANKS to Z for encouraging this post.

Politics and Ideology....

In America, one of the interesting aspects of politics is how divorced from ideology it so often is.

Throughout most of the country, political affiliation, like religion is inherited. It often takes on the aspects of team sports, sort of athletics for non-athletes - the Red team versus the Blue team.

On Staten Island, where I grew up, politics is largely ethnic. The two major groups are Irish and Italian – the Irish are largely Democrats and the Italians mostly Republicans.

With an Italian mother and an Irish father, the ethnic team sports aspects of Staten Island politics has always been a little dicey for me.

Moreover, for any number of reasons, ideology has always been more vital to me than politics.

At an early age I was inculcated with an almost Catechismal adherence to individual liberty, private property rights and the ONLY economic system those things are most respected in – the market-based economy.

That has been the basis for my voting my entire life. I tend to oppose both fiscal and social Liberals and support Conservatives on most issues.

When polled most Americans tend to support most of the same positions that I do, four of five Americans want a smaller, less intrusive government and lower taxes, almost 2/3s (64%) support the NSA surveillance program, I’m even with the majority of Americans on the abortion issue – I’m WITH the 65% who support first trimester abortion and I’m also with the 65% of Americans who oppose late term abortion.

In a sense, I’m the quintessential “Center-Right American.”

It is that kind of electorate that had the Gingrich Congress assume control of Congress in January of 1995, with a very clear mandate from the American people. That mandate was outlined in Gingrich’s Contract With America.

That Congress shut down the federal government back in 1995 to force Bill Clinton to accept massive federal budget cuts and a Cap Gains rate cut...those things are what brought about some of the lowest Misery Indexes in history AND those significant budget surpluses of the late 1990s. The DeLay and Hastert Congresses abandoned Gingrich's principles and sullied the GOP in the process. They became just another set of pigs at the trough. As a result the neutered, pro-government GOP ceded Congress to the Democrats in the elections of 2006 , allowing the nation to lurch back onto a Keynesian course.

Since 2007 the economy has only gotten worse, which opened the door in 2008 for a Democratic take-back of the White House..

Interestingly enough, Barack Obama won election on November 4th, 2008 by running in favor of gun rights (the script of one famous Obama commercial went, “Barack Obama supports gun rights, our right to defend ourselves, the Second Amendment," the narrator says. "That's the truth."), tax cuts, the NSA surveillance program, pay-go to restore balanced budgets and a military surge in Afghanistan...on many issues, he was able to not only run to the Right of McCain, he made a better case for those things than McCain did.

In fact, Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbach made McCain's economic arguments better than McCain did...and THAT is the sorry state of affairs facing the Moderate (northeaster) wing of the Republican Party. They have the money, but few ideas and they resent the Conservative (Gingrich) wing that Party and have consistently and all too often, successfully been able to silence that wing.

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How the relatively blank slate Obama will govern is anyone's guess, but his pick of a former Israeli Army member and Conservative Democrat, Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff is interesting, to say the least. I'm willing to hope that President-elect Barack Obama will govern as he ran, as a Center-Right candidate and I'll let both our national security and the Misery Index tell the tale on that score.