A Open Letter to Sen. Obama

Here at Road to the Middle Class we are not exactly fans of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). He seems a nice enough chap, son of a liberal anthropologist who turned to raciial identity politics. But we hate to see his campaign imploding. Somebody do something! Best thing to do is to write a letter.

Honorable Barack Obama

United States Senate

Washington DC 20510

Dear Senator:

I’ve never been a supporter of yours, but I just can’t watch and do nothing while your campaign goes down the toilet.

By my reckoning, your campaign has been dead in the water for nearly two weeks. No it wasn’t the introduction of Gov. Palin that killed the motor; it was the speech from the silly sophomoric Greek Temple. Whose brilliant idea was that?

The problem is that the GOP team of McCain and Palin have stolen your issues of Hope and Change, stolen them fair and square.

The further problem is that they make a better argument for representing Hope and Change than you do. After all, what have you ever done to buck the system? What have you ever done?

And for goodness sake, stop with the attacks on Gov. Palin. First of all, she’s not the candidate, John McCain is. And secondly, we are getting to the point where many Americans actively like her and they are not going to put up with anyone criticizing her. And that goes in spades because she is a woman. Women hate it when another woman gets attacked by a man. It activates all their protective instincts and there is nothing you can do about it.

Forget the Swift Boat narrative. A lot of Democrats are running around saying that we must never let the Republicans Swiftboat us again like they did in 2004. They are missing the point. The point was that John Kerry decided to run as a war hero. But John Kerry didn’t really have a very good story on his war service, at least, not in the sense of “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” John Kerry made his bones as an anti-war political activist. That’s who he was in the 1970s. By 2004 he was just another undistinguished liberal Democratic senator with many years of service in the Senate.

You must learn from Kerry’s mistake. Your narrative has to tell the voters who you are, not who you are pretending to be.

Focus on the issues. The three big issues right now are: energy, the economy, and the mortgage meltdown. The American people want to know what you are going to do about these issues. You do have a plan, don’t you? Of course it’s true that we have an energy crisis because Democrats have spent the last generation standing in front of the oil derrick plafform, standing at the nuclear plant gate, stopping all energy development, but the American people don’t mind that. They just want someone to get gas prices down.

On the economy, you ought to be sweeping the floor with the Republicans. What’s with you guys? Here you are proposing gigantic spending programs and tax increases when you should be proposing to cut wasteful special-interest spending and cut taxes to get the economy moving.

And the mortgage mess. Today it is reported that you don’t like it that the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie are walking away with big severance packages. Very deep that. How about a real plan to solve the problem of unaccountable government sponsored enterprises going belly up?

Frankly, Senator, I don’t know if there is time to turn your campaign around. I don’t think you have the experience of dealing with a crisis like this. But if you can pull it out and turn your campaign around you will deserve to be president.

sincerely,

Christopher Chantrill

Fannie and Freddie Hit the Buffers

It was Weekend at Henry’s again last weekend as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson executed another credit system surgery operation. This time, as we all know, the surgery was on the failed Depression era program that began as the Federal National Mortgage Assocation back in 1938. Today it is two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Fannie and Freddie operate a secondary market in home mortgages, buying up mortgages and securitizing them into mortgage-backed bonds for sale to the public.

But like all government programs, what began as a good idea to mitigate the mess of the Great Depression turned into a political slush fund, and a firehose that sluiced mortgage money at the housing market.

Now it’s all ended in tears, because losses due to the housing collapse have used up all Fannie and Freddies reserves. It’s all Bush’s fault, my Democratic friends will say, because it happened on his watch.

Well maybe that’s a small price to pay, if we can put a stop to this silly program which has jacked house prices into the stratosphere, and is now insolvent as prices fall back to earth.

The Federal Reserve Board has been warning for years about the risks inherent in the operations of Fannie and Freddie. Back in the early 2000s President Bush and some Republican senators tried to get Congress’s attention to reform them. But Congress wouldn’t listen.

Everyone is talking about how the taxpayers are now going to have to bail Fannie and Freddie out. Actually, more likely it is not the taxpayers but the bondholders of Treasury securities and the average American who will pay. The bailout will result down the road in higher prices and a lower value of the dollar when the government papers over its mistakes with higher inflation.

Making It In Politics the Hard Way

Politics ain’t beanbag, right? But most prominent women get ahead the old-fashioned way, writes Victor David Hanson.

[Think of] successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins[.]

How did these women get started? They married well, or they were the children of established politicians.

Nothing wrong with that. Hey, you gotta play the hand you are dealt.

But it makes you realize that you wouldn’t want to start with these cards, not unless you are playing low-ball.

1. Grow up in small-town America.
   
2. Make it Alaska.
   
3. No Ivy League law school.
   
4. Marry a guy without money or influence.
   
5. No money, connections, or “name” in her family either.
   
6. Have lots of children.
   
7. Conservative: pro-life, pro-gun, pro-religion, pro-drilling. Republican.
   
8. Start career in all-male corrupt machine.
   
9. Get national attention in bad year for your party.
   
10. Corny photos with moose or party-hardy Alaskans, and more to come.
    

You gotta hand it to Gov. Palin; she did it her way.

Of course, you say, talent will out. No doubt. But it sure makes things easier when hubby or daddy can get you into the game.

Now It's Obama's Turn

My old Greek friend used to say that you can’t tell the worth of a dog when it’s out hunting. You can only tell when it’s being hunted.

That’s been the story of the McCain campaign. It came to near death a year ago, and they were measuring him for his political shroud. But John McCain never gave up. Now he’s the Republican Party’s nominee for president.

Two years ago, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) set out on Barry’s Excellent Adventure. Against all the odds he beat the favorite in the early primaries and managed to eke out a win against a surging Hillary Clinton. That was Barack Obama out hunting.

But now it’s clear that the Obama campaign is in trouble. Against all the odds, what with the war, the economy, the housing mess, the gas price explosion, John McCain is just behind in the polls, and we haven’t seen the full convention bounce yet.

Today, on the day after the Republican National Convention it is Barack Obama who is being hunted.

Obama supporters should be glad of this.

Up to now, Sen. Obama has been a candidate with a good organization and a great style on the stump. He has introduced the age-old themes of Hope and Change in a new vernacular to a new generation. So far so good. But we don’t elect organizations to office, and we want to know a bit more about what’s on offer than the gauzy vision of Hope and Change. We’d like to know if Obama can lead.

Now that the Obama campaign is in trouble, we are about to find out. How good a leader is Sen. Obama when the going gets rough? Can he revise his tactics? Can he retire broken formations without the tactical retreat turning into a rout? Can he deploy new units into the gaps and advance?

Stay tuned. We are about to find out.

If Obama demonstrates an ability to learn from mistakes and come back stronger than ever he will deserve to be elected president.

If not? Well John McCain and Sarah Palin just spent three days in St. Paul, MN demonstrating that they are ready to rule if Obama isn’t.

The Mom vs. The One

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave a polished speech last night in accepting the 2008 nomination for Vice President from the Republican Party. This morning conservatives are thrilled and lefties are a-feared.

Obviously Sarah Palin is a great natural political talent with real potential.

But right now I am trying to draw a line down the great cultural divide in this country. It is the divide between women like Sarah Palin and the lefty feminist women that despise her. It is the divide between Christian believers and the lefty secularists that despise them. It is the divide between loyal husbands and fathers that go to work every day to support their families and the Cultural Creatives that sneer at them.

What this adds up to, I believe, is the divide between the culture that celebrates ordinary life, and the culture that wants to escape it.

The life of Sarah Palin is an ordinary life. She went to school, she went to college, she got married and had kids. She supported her husband’s commercial fishing business. Then she got involved in the PTA and got into politics. One thing led to another, and now she is the Vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

The life of Barack Obama is the life of the Chosen One. He was plucked out of a rather messy childhood and chosen. He was sent to elite universities, and became, like the Dalai Lama, or a Janissary, a creature of that special education and training. He has not, at any time in his life, lived or celebrated an ordinary life. He vaulted through temporary occupations: community organizer, part-time university lecturer, non-profit board member. And then he got helped into politics by the Daley machine.

This difference, between The Mom and The One, is a symbol of the great divide in America. The beginning of the modern era saw a huge and influential affirmation of the value of ordinary life. The best life was not Aristotle’s life of the mind, or the warrior (and politician’s) life of honor. It was to work at ordinary life and value it. But in our era, the liberal elite celebrates a life that rises above and utterly transcends the ordinary life in the cult of creativity. Instead of creating a family and children, you create a philosophy, a creative and original work of art, a new vision of society.

Which is best? Which is truth, and which is lie? That is what the culture war is all about. That is what we are fighting about.

Newt ImPales MSM on Experience Issue

Yesterday at the Republican National Conventions it looks like good old Newt had his talking points on the Palin experience issue ready to go.

Confronted by CNN’s Ron Allen worrying that Gov. Palin’s resume is not something we’re familiar with in presidential candidates, Newt unloaded with both barrels.

I don’t know why you guys walk around saying this baloney. She has a stronger resume than Obama.


She’s been a real mayor; he hasn’t. She’s been a real governor; he hasn’t.


She’s been in charge of the Alaska National Guard; he hasn’t.


She is a whistleblower who has defeated an incumbent mayor; he has never once shown that kind of courage. She’s a whistleblower who turned in the chairman of her own party and got him fined $12,000. I’ve never seen Obama do one thing like that.



She took on the incumbent governor of her own party and beat him, and then she beat a former Democratic governor in the general election.


I don’t know of a thing that Obama has done except talk and write.

Hum. I’ts sad that Howard Cosell is no longer with us to celebrate this “telling it like it is.”

Another Camel's Nose Under the Conservative Tent

Some people reckon that the conservative movement is composed of three parts: the social conservatives, the economic conservatives, and the national-security conservatives. Others, like Ken Blackwell, have dvided it into six parts.

1. Social conservatives
2. Christian conservatives
3. Second Amendment conservatives
4. Economic conservatives
5. Philosophical conservatives
6. National Security conservatives

But my question is: Where do the Palin conservatives belong in our movement?

It’s a big question, and I think it is the determining question for the next phase of conservative expansion. We conservatives see a new camel’s nose appearing under the tent and we want the Palin conservatives in our coalition. I mean by “Palin conservative” people from unremarkable origins, people who maybe were in a hurry to get married. People who have Downs Syndrome babies, and pregnant teenage daughters. People who had a DUI in their twenties. People who want to get on with life, don’t have big expectations or big resentments. People who more or less take the world as they find it, but want to go to work, obey the law, play by the rules, and give back to the community.

Ross Douthout and Reihan Salam have addressed this issue in Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. How can Republicans get their head out of the clouds and get their feet on the ground to welcome people like the Palins into the conservative movement?

I don’t like to call the Palin people “blue-collar” or “working-class” conservatives, because that’s demeaning. They aren’t, anyway. They are middle class and think of themselves that way. People who go to Bible church are no longer rank-and-file working class, because the whole point of Bible church is to leave the tribal world of identity politics and enter the great middle class where service and moving out replaces battling for a bare existence and defending the community against injustice and exploitation.

I think all this is very important. I think that, after a Democratic interregnum, Republicans will come back stronger than ever. But first we need to do some thinking. Well, maybe first of all we need to do some listening. What is the Palin candidacy telling us? What do the Palin people want for themselves and America? What can the rest of the conservative movement do to welcome them into the tent?

One thing is for sure. The current liberal sneer-in over the Palin pick is going to boomerang big time. The New York Times today, Tuesday September 2, 2008, had three front-page stories on the Palin daughter’s pregnancy. What is it about these liberals? Have they no decency? As attorney Robert Welch said at the Army McCarthy hearings:

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.... You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

But, of course, our liberal friends don’t think that they have “done enough” on Palin’s daughter, or on Palin herself, or on McCain, or on any conservative or any Republican. Indeed, they have hardly begun!

UPDATE: In a blazing denunciation of the Drive-by Media (driving by the Palin family for the last three days and spraying media gunfire on them) Rush Limbaugh just used the notion of “heartland” conservative to describe the Palin conservatives.

UPDATE TWO: Or maybe “fly-over” conservative.

UPDATE THREE: How about “bedrock” conservative?