Building to the Upchuck

Rich Lowry says that federal Judge Susan Bolton is a joke. Well, not her, exactly, but her decision blocking the Arizona law on illegal immigration.

But I think that the decision is just another hurl point on the road to the Big Upchuck.

You'll remember "Obama and the Upchuck Factor." That was the prescient article I wrote a year ago explaining the periodic voter upchuck of Democratic presidents. Back in FDR's time it took about 6 years for the upchuck. By President Clinton's time it took two years.

But under President Obama, the upchuck took only six months.

Can't we all get along and create a politics without the Upchuck Factor?

Not really. The buildup to the Obama Upchuck shows why.

Back in the Noughties, Democrats built up a fine narrative about corrupt Republicans, stupid Bush, extremist right-wing Christians, and an illegal war. Democrats, on the other hand, were nice moderate veterans running for Republican seats in Congress. They were all for family values and balanced budgets and went to church and provided a moderate alternative to the corrupt right-wing warmongers around Bush.

How can you counter a narrative like that, especially when the fake media echoes it everywhere?

You can't. You have to wait until the Democrats come to power and take the mask off.

Then you find out that the awful Christian right-wingers look like Sunday school teachers when compared with the left-wing ideologues in the Obama administration.

Then you find out that the moderate Democrat freshmen and sophomores voted for the extreme and unpopular ObamaCare, knuckling under to the power plays of Pelosi & Co.

Then you find out that, when it comes to disasters, Bush's Katrina response looks like a model compared to the Keystone Kops routine of Obama and the Busted Oil Well.

Then you discover that your high-toned objections to fundamentalist Christians rather pale beside the prospect of gigantic tax increases in January 2011.

Then you find out that the Obama administration has no idea of a moderate economic policy.

Then you find out that the vague words about health care reform mean a root-and-branch government takeover of the health care system.

And then you find out that the Obama administration has no intention of enforcing the laws on immigration.

Look, all this is natural and healthy. There's no way of avoiding it.

The fact is that you need a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress every decade or so just to remind everyone what the Democrats are really all about.

That way, everyone can build up to the coordinated National Upchuck on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

National Upchuck Day. Why, there's still time for a resolution from Congress to celebrate it.

Two-Thirds of Americans Oppose Death Tax

Over at the Fiscal Times they are marveling over the unpopularity of the estate tax. Properly, writes Eric Schurenberg, Americans ought to love the estate tax, because only two percent of families pay it. Then there are the loopholes, like the first million of assets, and this:

In addition, expenses for your funeral, any charitable bequests, and every cent you leave your spouse are all tax-free. In 2008, according to estimates by the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center, the wealthiest 1 percent of households paid over 80 percent of the $23 billion the tax raised; the top tenth of a percent alone accounted for 46 percent of the total.

Such a deal!

In fact, two thirds of Americans oppose the "death tax" including 55 percent of Democrats. They just don't think it's fair. So how do progressives reverse the sentiment of ordinary Americans and persuade them of the truth, that a "robust" estate tax is fair? Schurenberg turns to Bill Gates, Sr.

“American society has made it possible for wealthy men, women and their families to have an elegant life, first-class education, and virtually unlimited options about where to go and what to do. Society does have a just claim on these fortunes."

Actually, it is freedom that makes this possible. Because in most societies, the elegant life is reserved for the political elite.

In reality, it is not "society" but the robust efforts of jumped-up nobodies like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford and Sam Walton that make it possible for all of us to live our comfortable lives. Society and people in general get a huge benefit from the fortunes of rich men, because riches these days come from serving the consumers really well. Think Steve Jobs and Apple.

It's understandable that progressives want to recapture the fortunes of rich men. Progressivism is a philosophy of power, and progressives since the French Revolution have revolted against the idea of wealth and power independent of the political elite.

But the pressing need these days is for people of independent means who can challenge the power of the politicians and the activists. That doesn't mean we need a new cabal of feudal barons making trouble in the hinterland.

But it does mean that we need a class of people who can be summoned to testify before Congress and have the courage to tell the solons to go take a jump in the lake.

Are Dems This Stupid?

This week the Democrats tried to pass in the US Senate a campaign finance bill that would have privileged liberal groups like unions and penalized corporations. That's after they stepped back from the unpopular cap-and-trade bill, and after the passing of the unpopular ObamaCare bill, and the derisive "stimulus bill."

Don't they get it? Hugh Hewitt wonders:

The Manhattan-Beltway media elite have fundamentally misunderstood or refused to believe what is happening in front of their eyes, and their blindness has apparently led the MSM-addicted Congressional Democrats to ignore the issues that do concern voters while pushing forward an agenda that deeply offends an already outraged electorate. The president's deep-seated ideology similarly renders him incapable of understanding the depth of the rejection of his agenda that is sweeping the country.

Most ruling classes get this way. They settle into their sinecures and lose the sharp edge they maintained when they were insurgents besieging the citadel of power.

In the case of Barack Obama, thoughtful people were already saying in 2008 that Obama and his people only knew urban politics--in Chicago and Boston. They really didn't know much about the ordinary suburban American people that constitute the majority.

That's leads to a piece from Wesley Pruden that explains why the president isn't getting any traction these days. No matter how great a salesman you are, you can't ignore Rule #1 of selling:

He never learned the drummer's first rule for success: "You gotta know the territory."

You have to hand this to the Democrats. They are master tacticians of day-to-day politics. They excel at 24-7 political combat.

But they seem to lack a strategic sense of what is prudent and possible.

I'm reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow right now. The astonishing takeaway is that Hamilton, who was in his early twenties when he became General Washington's chief of staff, had an amazing strategic vision.

Hamilton saw, at age twenty-one or twenty-two, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, that the patriot strategy should be one of retreat, avoiding battles with the British. He saw throughout the war and particularly in 1782, when the un-paid revolutionary army started getting fractious, that there was no substitute for a strong central government with the power to tax--and pay its soldiers.

It is this penetrating vision that Democrats lack today. They do not see into the future. They do not understand how their brazen political tricks utterly disgust the average American. They do not see the greater currents at work in our society.

And so they will fail. Hugh Hewitt again:

Taken all together the Democrats are not merely headed towards a political cliff, they are sprinting towards it.

Yes, but don't they see what they are doing to themselves? No, they don't. They have become a classic aging dynasty. They don't understand the roots of their power; they don't understand the injustices their power has spawned; they don't understand the people they rule.

And that's a shame.

Power Leads to Injustice

Last week Sen. James Webb (D-VA) wrote an important op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about race politics.

The fact is, he argues, the current "diversity" policy of the governing elite is a policy that discriminates against whites. A policy that was intended to help black victims of pervasive discrimination now discriminates in favor of all "people of color" including millions of people who came to the United States whos never experienced any discrimination.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The fact is that, e.g., in the South, there are whites that have experienced significant and extended deprivation and hardship, even as considered in the dry-as-toast categories of liberal social science. And "diversity" programs often help non-whites that are anything but deprived.

There is a word for this sort of thing. Injustice. Injustice that will rise up out of the hinterland and sweep to vengeance one day with a terrible swift sword. And as usual, the ruling elite doesn't have a clue what is coming.

Jim Webb calls for an end to diversity programs, except for blacks: "Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end."

No, Jim. You just don't get it, not even now. What the Negro needs, above all, is to be left alone. That was true 150 years ago just as much as it is now, when Frederick Douglass wrote the following:

What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... your interference is doing him positive injury.

Do nothing, Jim! Have the decency to respect the American Negro as a person as worthy and as capable as yourself. Let the Negro alone to make his or her individual journey to the center of this Nation of Nations. When he or she is left alone, no longer the darling of the political elite, then he or she will have a chance to find their place. Not the place that the Southern racists wanted for them. Not the place that the Northern liberals wanted for them. Not even the place that African Americans might think is waiting for them.

No, what is waiting for African Americans, if left alone, is a destiny that nobody can know.

Meanwhile, a horrible indictment is building up against liberals in the scales of justice, growing heavier every day. It is frightening to consider the retribution that is coming.

The Cold Civil War

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's house conservative Kyle Wingfield reviews the week of Shirley Sherrod and the use of the race card. He worries that US "politics increasingly resembles a cold civil war", and that last week represents the first successful testing of the race card as a weapon of the right.

Of course it's a cold civil war. Clausewitz's dictum: "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means" applies to civil war as well as any other war. Domestic politics, we might say, is merely civil war by other means. The insults and provocations of the daily game of politics all point towards the ultimate domestic threat, the jump to real war rather than the normal "politics ain't no beanbag."

You get to civil war, in my view, when the Ruling Class gets clumsy, just like the bloody Brits in the runup to the Revolutionary War. The Obama administration is a good example. Obama ran for president as a healer who would calm the rancor of the Bush years. He would be post-partisan and post-racial.

Instead he and his counterparts in Congress have mounted an attempt at partisan breakthrough, attempting a huge liberal agenda that would be almost impossible to reverse. Thus the huge stimulus plan, which starts up a whole raft of new programs under the guise of one-time stimulus. Thus ObamaCare, rammed through on a party-line vote. Thus the Dodd-Frank financial reform that merely increases government control over the financial markets.

When you do that, you expose the fictions of politics. You expose the reality underneath the comfortable euphemisms of day-to-day politics, that we are all in this together, that each government reach for power is in fact a consensus of all parties, that government programs are kindly attempts to help people rather than payoffs to supporters. And you encourage a growing minority to believe that only force will serve to redress its grievances.

Today the Weekly Standard has a big piece on President Obama's shift to divisive populism: "The Unpresidential President." James W. Ceaser argues that a president makes himself bigger by being inclusive and presidential. He makes himself smaller when he gets down and dirty. And President Obama, as his problems mount, resorts more and more to naked populist demonizing of the opposition.

The president should take a look at the tactics of his predecessors. President Bush was presidential to a fault, avoiding partisanship except in the direct runup to elections in 2002 and 2004. President Clinton, in his inimitable way, faked bipartisanship even at his most partisan, as in: Those Republicans are opposing my bipartisan balanced budget.

The big question in the cold civil war comes down to this: if and when the American people, led by conservatives, decide to roll back the welfare state, will liberals accept the will of the people and keep their supporters peaceful, or will they "take to the streets?"

It's the difference between Ireland and Greece.

The Fight over the Economy

Today there's a curious column from economist Paul Krugman sneering at the Republican call for a return to Bush era economic policies. He's evidently against the extension of the Bush era tax-rate cuts.

In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation.

Meanwhile Larry Kramer is calling for corporate income tax-rate cuts as the sure way to ignite a very sluggish economic recovery.

Think of all the economic obstacles of spending, taxing, and regulating coming out of Washington. What should be done to spur growth? Keep tax rates down. And stop passing massive regulatory bills, like the bank reform Obama just signed into law.

By the way, if Bush passed "tax breaks for the rich" how come the income tax share paid by the rich went up in the Bush era? Here are the numbers from the IRS for the federal income tax paid in the Bush years for the top income brackets.

Share of Federal Income Tax Paid by The Rich
Year	Total	Top 0.1%	Top 1%
2001	100.00%	16.06%	33.89%
2002	100.00%	15.43%	33.71%
2003	100.00%	15.68%	34.27%
2004	100.00%	17.44%	36.89%
2005	100.00%	19.26%	39.38%
2006	100.00%	19.56%	39.89%
2007	100.00%	20.19%	40.42%

Notice that the only years in which the tax share of the rich went down was prior to the implementation of the Bush tax cuts (OK, the recession had something to do with it).

So. With the Bush tax cuts the share of income tax paid by the rich went up--substantially. I just don't understand how you get to "tax breaks for the rich" from this data.

We are going through a period where the American people are going to experience, first hand, the claim of Keynesian economics, that you get out of recessions with government stimulus spending.

The record of the decade when the US was stuck on stupid suggests that stimulus spending and business-bashing don't work.

Already, key Democratic senators are getting nervous. They are worried that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will abort the recovery and endanger their political futures.

The fact is that government spending is too high. Government tax rates are too high. Government borrowing is too high. Government regulation is too high.

This is the year when all the rhetoric from the liberal elite on the wonders of government power is going to break down.

If only the American people could be saved from the hardships ahead.

A Miss is as Good as a Mile

When we look back upon the presidency of Barack Obama we will think just this. How could he have thrown away such an opportunity?

President Obama had the chance to forge a new center-left majority that could govern for a generation.

Think about it.

In the Fall of 2008 the economy was in free fall. Americans were prepared to believe it was all the Republicans' fault. But Candidate Obama proposed to get beyond partisan differences and the games in Washington. So what did President Obama do?

President Obama backed the most partisan economic program in our lifetimes, one that practically no Republican could be bullied into supporting. The result? The Tea Party exploded onto the public square within a month of the president's inauguration and independents started bleeding away by the summer of 2009. The president could have disappointed his base (as presidents must do) and forged a co-opting policy that commanded the middle ground and left the right out in the cold. But he didn't.

Candidate Obama gave the impression that his presidency would be post-racial. That's what his famous speech in Chicago in 2004 was all about. But President Obama has acted as a full-on race warrior. His supporters constantly resort to the race card in demonizing his opponents. As a result, the president is losing white moderates. He had a chance to command the middle ground on race and leave the right out in the cold. But he didn't.

Rush Limbaugh hit the nail on the head yesterday while discussing the Shirley Sherrod flap (the black USDA administrator who told an NAACP audience that she realized that her job was not to conduct a race war but a class war). After noting how quickly the mainstream media has rallied round her and the way her remarks were taken out of context, Rush asked what happened to the mainstream media time after time when his remarks have been taken out of context? He then said that the president could put an end to all this race-card game forever. He could say: That's It! We are going to stop this divisive race baiting right now. This administration will not tolerate racism and it will not tolerate false accusations of racism.

At once I felt a partisan chill of fear. Why, if the president did that he would win reelection and probably get the center-left majority that he has almost thrown away with his left-wing economic policy.

But then I thought. Oh no he won't. If President Obama didn't have the strategic vision to understand how a moderate economic policy would create a lasting Democratic majority, then he's hardly likely to realize the strategic opportunity to his party of calling an end to race politics.

Still. I am almost overwhelmed by the scale of the lost opportunity for Democrats. Everything was set up in the fall of 2008. The economy was in free fall; the candidate had promised a new era of post-racial, post-partisan politics.

But as it turned out, the candidate didn't believe the words put into his mouth. It was all just focus-group-driven pablum. President Obama believes in the old religion. He believes in big government. He believes in race wars. And as for class wars...

And in November his party is going to suffer the biggest defeat at the polls in our lifetimes.