MA Voters Send Obama an Anniversary Present

OK. So I missed on my prediction. Scott Brown won "the people's seat" from Massachusetts in the US Senate by a five percent margin, not the six percent that I predicted. But hey, it's better to be an optimist!

On to the Wednesday morning quarterbacking. What does this present from the voters to President Obama on the anniversary of his inauguration mean? Fred Barnes has a five point analysis that I think hits all the bases. But the key, I think, is his point 2: "Independents are lost to Democrats," at least for now, and most probably until they get fed up with the next Republican administration.

Yeah. I'll say. The big success for Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles was in persuading moderates and independents to vote for them. They did it by fielding moderate-to-conservative candidates in Republican-leaning districts. OK. Good tactics. Then they blew it by tacking hard left after Obama was elected. And so they have lost independents and moderates for the next ten years.

Because all a Republican candidate has to say when some moderate-to-conservative Democrat is running against him is "Remember ObamaCare!"

What the Dems coulda, shoulda done was spend a couple of years doing comforting moderate things, like tinkering with health care, tinkering with global warming, and getting the economy on track. Then they could have tried the liberal stuff, after building a relationship with their new moderate recruits.

Instead they went for broke, figuring that they would get their Moby-Dick energy taxes and government takeover of health care through before the voters could stop them. So the moderates pretty quickly understood that they were a one-night-stand, and that they were being used.

Another thing on the moderate/independent front. Scott Brown picked up the support of the Tea Party movement people. So now it looks as though the Tea Party movement is not going to split the Republican vote as everyone was predicting. Now it looks as thought the Tea Party movement will be a benefit to Republican candidate. The Tea Party movement may be composed of people that are disconnected from the Republican Party. But they are obviously people of conservative temperament.

I'd suggest to by liberal friends that it's about time to stop with the "teabagger" pejoratives. All you chaps are doing is driving the Tea Party folks into the arms of the Republican Party.

Palin Watch:

Sarah Palin weighs in on her Facebook page, and the main point is a suggestion to Democrats that they come up with a better plan on health care.

Scrap your current health care bill and start from scratch... We need common sense solutions like reforming malpractice laws, allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, giving individual purchasers the same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers, and letting small businesses pool together to provide insurance for their employees.

"Common sense solutions." As Pat Buchanan says, that lady sure knows how to frame an issue.

Conservatism in One Paragraph

Norman Tebbit's claim to fame was that he was Margaret Thatcher's rottweiler. Her enforcer, if you like. In fact, he was a skilled politician who just missed being Prime Minister. Now he's Lord Tebbit and sits in the House of Lords.

But in the run-up to the British General Election, which must take place before June, Lord Tebbit is blogging for the Daily Telegraph. In a recent blog he set down in one paragraph a succinct political philosophy about the powers of government which could be embraced by all conservatives.

A state must have a territory over which it is sovereign, and a people who owe it allegiance. It must have the capacity (and the will) to defend its territorial boundaries and its people from aggressors. It must provide not only external but internal security, allowing its citizens to go about their lawful businees freely, and criminal and civil justice systems as well as a currency and the regulatory and legislative infrastructure needed for agriculture, industry and trade. Nothing else has to be provided only by the state. Health and education provision and physical infrastructure may be provided by or precipitated by the state or others, but they are not core functions of the state.

It really doesn't get any simpler than that. Let's do again, with bullets.

• A state must have a territory over which it is sovereign, and a people who owe it allegiance.
• It must have the capacity (and the will) to defend its territorial boundaries and its people from aggressors.
• It must provide not only external but internal security, allowing its citizens to go about their lawful businees freely, and criminal and civil justice systems as well as a currency and the regulatory and legislative infrastructure needed for agriculture, industry and trade.
• Nothing else has to be provided only by the state.
• Health and education provision and physical infrastructure may be provided by or precipitated by the state or others, but they are not core functions of the state.

I think that this needs to be put up in lights. 

Let's Count Some Chickens

Nobody knows what will happen in the special Senate election in Massachusetts Tuesday. Will the enthusiasm of Scott Brown supporters get him Ted Kennedy's seat? Will the Massachusetts Democratic machine put Coakley over the finish line by fair means or foul?

Nobody knows. So let's count our chickens and imagine the effect a Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) would have.

1. It would make it really difficult to pass ObamaCare. Dems are coming up with all kinds of ways to shove it through, from delaying the certification of Brown's election to passing the Senate bill in the House and avoiding another vote in the Senate. But the answer to all such shenanigans is: Make My Day.
   
   
2. It would stiffen the backs of the other Republican senators in New England. There are the gentle ladies from Maine, Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins. They might be less inclined to buy into Democrat adminsitrative bureaucratic expansions if they had a Scott Brown next door. There is Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). Right now he is sponsoring the dreadful Obama deficit reduction commission. After we Dems have trashed the budget let's set up a figleaf commission to force us to make tough choices. With a Scott Brown next door, Gregg might think twice about pulling Democratic chestnuts out of the fire.

You can see the benefit of a Scott Brown. It would be substantial. But first we need to get him elected. I predict Scott Brown by six points.

MLK and BHO

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King said this to a multitude of Americans in Washington, DC. He said:

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

A little over a year ago, Barack Obama was elected to be President of the United States based upon the color of his skin. His performance as president will be judged by the content of his character.

We know that, for African Americans, the election of Barack Obama as president was indeed a dream that they thought could never happen. The open weeping in the streets that we witnessed on the night of his election is testimony enough to that.

But for our liberal friends, I soon discovered, Obama's election was another triumphant "first," America's First Black President.

I confess that I was taken aback by that. That's because, over the years, I've become jaded by the constant liberal yammering about First Black This and First Woman That. To me, the actual election of a black man or appointment of a woman is ephemeral. What matters is not the "first," but the principles, the culture that provides a level societal playing field upon which people can be judged upon the content of their character.

People can and will overcome light-to-moderate discrimination. It is the heavy-duty discrimination enshrined in law and backed by the full force of the state that breaks men's hearts. America no longer has frank, state-enforced discrimination. Not unless you include the "conservatives need not apply" signs at the nation's universities. Sooner or later, an African American would become president.

But now President Obama has to govern. Governing is not a question of skin color. It is a question of character. And it is no startling thing to say that his first year in office has been troubling on the character front for a number of reasons.

There was first of all the pivot to partisanship from a man that ran on healing the divisions. You could say that the election of a filibuster-proof Senate changed the game. But politicians have learned down the decades that they need to keep, more-or-less, to their promises.

• There was the failure to pivot from the campaign agenda to fixing the economy. In good times the American people, a generous people, are willing to spend money of the pet projects of earnest activists. We did quite a bit of that in the prosperous Nineties and Noughties. But when the economy is in the tank they expect their leaders to get with the program. It's a question of character.
  
• There is the cram-down on health care against the will of the American people. Let us rehearse just how extraordinary this is. Back in 1940 and 1941 President Roosevelt famously dithered about entering World War II. He understood that he didn't have the support of the American people. Not until that famous "day which will live in infamy." Back in 2005 President Bush wanted to reform Social Security, but he found that he could not persuade the American people to folow him. He wanted to reform immigration, and had a cram-down all ready, but he found that the American people would not follow him. So he and the leaders of Congress backed off. It's a question of character.
  
• There is the pivot on the war against terror. All through the campaign and through the first half of 2009 Obama was playing to the liberal gallery about Bush's war, about negotiations, apologizing for America's sins, and treating terrorists as criminals rather than enemy combatants. Now, after the deterioration in Afghanistan and the multiple terror attacks, he has changed his policy and is reverting towards the policy desired by the broad American people, but opposed by his liberal base. Only when confronted by the brute facts of reality has he changed his policy. It raises a question of character.

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding in the liberal mind about the nature of government. Liberals believe that it is their destiny to create a new society based upon the liberal values of caring, compassion, and social justice. Maybe it is. But that is not a program for government. It is a religious vision of a world saved from sin.

Government is a mundane thing. It is informed by culture and religion, but it is still government. It is the sector of force, and force being an anti-social thing, it is better to limit its scope as much as possible. That is why the United States advertises in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." It follows that any power of the government not derived from the consent of the governed is unjust.

The extraordinary thing about President Obama in his first year of government is the extent to which he is governing against the consent of the governed. It is not partisan or mean-spirited to say that this is shocking and unprecedented. That President Obama and his advisors do not seem to appreciate this is frightening. It raises a question of character in the president and those that advise him.

Obama's Tame Professor

So now we know how all the rosy predictions of bending the cost curve on health care got put together. The Obamis had a bribed apologist of a college professor feeding them the objective, unbiased truth. His name? Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist.

The Wall Street Journal edit page reports.

The press corps is agonizing, or claims to be agonizing, over the news of Jonathan Gruber's conflict of interest: The MIT economist has been among the foremost promoters of ObamaCare—even as he had nearly $400,000 in consulting contracts with the Administration that weren't disclosed in the many stories in which he was cited as an independent authority.

Why is this not surprising? It is just what we would expect the Obama administration to do.

The disclosure of the Gruber non-disclosure ties in with David Brooks's oped last week about the disconnect between the Tea Party movement and the educated class. This week Michael Barone weighed in on Brooks's theme. He discussed how the Tea Party people are right on the substance of the issues, and the educated class is wrong.

Gun control? More citizens with guns means less crime. Climate? Educated-class scientists have been cooking the books.

On these issues the educated class is faith-based and the ordinary Americans who increasingly reject their views are fact-based, just as the Obama enthusiasts are motivated by style and the tea partiers by substance.

Actually, I think that Michael Barone is being too kind to the educated class of Obama enthusiasts. He equates the educated class and the Tea Party movement as if they are equals. This, of course, is wrong.

The educated class is the power elite in America today. The Tea Party is a grass-roots movement with no power except its enthusiasm and its numbers. What the educated class believes in is its power. The Tea Party movement believes in limited government. It believes in limiting the power of the elite, educated or otherwise.

I know which side I am on.

Bank Crisis Inquiry: Where's Fannie?

Today our noble and self-sacrificing solons are grilling the eevil bonus-begotten bankers. The ones that nearly crashed the credit system in fall 2008 with their greed, according to the MSM narrative. Write Daniel Wagner and Jum Kuhnhenn of AP:

Four of Wall Street's most powerful leaders — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman-CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack and Bank of American Corp. CEO-President Brian Moynihan — were to give sworn testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was holding its first session Wednesday.

Erm. Why aren't the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on that list, Senator? Last I heard the big banks on Wall Street had paid back their TARP loans. But not Fannie and Freddie. The US government has put $400 billion into Fannie and Freddie since the crash. You know things are really serious because the Treasury announcement about the $400 billion was made on Christmas Eve. Here's Bloomberg's Betty Liu and Matt Leising:

Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.

Hmm. Let's get the details.

The Treasury said on Dec. 24 it would provide an unlimited amount of assistance to the companies as needed for the next three years to alleviate market concern that the government lifeline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest source of money for U.S. home loans, could lapse or be exhausted.

Let's get this straight. The bankers have paid back all the money and they are now making record profits. So the banks are no longer a problem.

Meanwhile Fannie and Freddie are bleeding billions and are still losing money. They are going to cost the taxpayers $400 billion at least, and very likely more.

So what does Congress do? It calls up the CEOs of the profitable banks so that it can hector them about their bonuses. They are the problem, apparently.

Can anyone say: Three Card Monte?

"It's the Peoples' Seat"

How much do you think that Scott Brown paid to have David Gergen ask that question about "the Kennedy seat" at the debate last night? Probably nothing.

But I imagine that Scott Brown was waiting for a question, any question with a thoughtless reference to the Kennedy seat, and he had the answer ready. Because if you are Scott Brown and his campaign staff running for the United States Senate seat held since 1962 (!) by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) you are probably seething over the presumption that the seat is a Kennedy seat and that a Kennedy and a Democrat has a right to sit in it. For ever. So you have the response ready.

"With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy seat and it’s not the Democrats’
seat, it’s the people’s seat."

Yeah. There's a lot of presumption among our liberal friends that they own certain things in American life. They own idealism. They own the "little people." They are the compassionate people. They are the evolved people. They are the intelligent people.

These are the beliefs of a governing elite already past its peak. They are the notions of an arrogant upper class already rotted by bad apples, a product already past its sell-by date.

So we ask the good voters of Massachusetts. Are you ready to send a message to Washington DC that you will not be patronized by the mainstream media and the political establishment? Are you willing to send a message to President Obama and Senator Reid on their desperately flawed health reform bill?

Tell you what, Bay Staters. You can always chuck Scott Brown out at the next election, and elect a host of Democrats and Kennedeys to every seat in the state.

But, this one time, why not send a message to Washington, and teach the politicians a lesson?