The French are lazy -- leaving work to riot over a proposed hike in the retirement age from 60 -- SIXTY! -- to 62.
France's nationalized pension system is on the verge of bankruptcy. Along with excessively long vacation allowances, a fully socialized healthcare system and laws that make it extremely difficult for employers to fire their workers, France is the model for what American conservatives abhor about liberalism in its purest form. The uproar in France demonstrates the danger of cradle-to-the-grave dependence on government programs and how parasitic humans can be.
Unfortunately, this poisonous mindset has pervaded the American left on entitlement issues. Most critically, President Obama's unbecoming demagoguery over the looming Social Security crisis has its roots in the very socialism that to which the French rioters subscribe -- the president would rather engage in a fear campaign and levy outlandishly unfair charges about his political opponents, instead of trying to reform a system that is so obviously broken.
An entitlement crisis is sweeping the country at the state level, as among others, Illinois is facing a massive budget shortfall as a result of outlandishly generous promises made to teachers, police officers and state bureaucrats. The New York Times examined this phenomenon here.
If congressional Democrats continue to follow their president's lead, and if Republicans are too squishy to stand up to such antics, the crisis in France will be at our doorstep soon.
19 October 2010
07 October 2010
Iowa = Palin's kryptonite
We've written here recently that we don't consider Sarah Palin to be a serious contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
As Rudy Guiliani can attest, being competitive in either Iowa or New Hampshire is absolutely critical to one's ultimate success in a presidential campaign. In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore each won Iowa. In 2004, John Kerry -- at the time, considered a mid-tier contender -- finished a close second in Iowa in a crowded field and won in New Hampshire. In 2008, John McCain won big in New Hampshire, giving him a head of steam to cruise to victories in South Carolina and Florida. Barack Obama also won big in Iowa, and Hillary Clinton never quite seemed to fully recover after finishing a severely disappointing third in the caucuses. (The only reason a loss in Iowa didn't hurt McCain was because the Senior Senator -- an avowed opponent of ethanol subsidies and thus, an enemy of virtually the entire Iowa agricultural industry -- didn't even bother campaigning there.)
The bottom line is that there is no recent precedent for a candidate not winning in one of the first two states and going on to win a major party's nomination.
Sarah Palin will not be competitive in New Hampshire, period. New Hampshire voted for John McCain twice -- in 2000 and 2008 -- and the candidate who closest approximated Palin's place in the party in 2008 -- Mike Huckabee -- barely campaigned there, instead spending most of his time in the much more socially conservative South Carolina. New Hampshire voters are famously independent, a sort of pseduo-Tory mix of center-left social views and center-right economic views. They are revolted by tired, partisan cliches and instead demand face-to-face engagement. If there's a conservative Republican who can win in New Hampshire, it will likely be Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels (should the latter choose to run). Of course, Mitt Romney will be competitive there, but calling him a "conservative Republican" is a stretch. Palin would be better-served following Huckabee's model by avoiding New Hampshire entirely and focusing on her much stronger chances in South Carolina.
So what about Iowa? Some have suggested that Palin's folksy shtick might play well there. Here's why they're wrong:
1. Like New Hampshire voters, Iowa voters demand engagement. In 2008, Barack Obama was a force on the ground, shoring up his already strong ground game with the powerful force of his personality. Palin, to the contrary, only is visible at highly scripted rallies, doesn't do interviews that aren't on Fox News and doesn't have a sufficient breadth of knowledge to engage with voters who have legitimate concerns. There is no precedent for someone of Palin's ilk to win in Iowa.
2. As we've noted before, Barack Obama was so successful in Iowa in large part due to his phenomenal ground game, a well-funded and excellently organized grassroots network of students, labor leaders, retirees and everyone in-between. While Romney and Pawlenty have quietly built apparatuses based on the Obama model, Palin has done nothing of the sort. The people who make comparisons between Obama in 2006-2008 and Palin at the present time miss the critical fact that Obama was able to gain such a massive head of steam not because he was some sort of cult hero, but rather because his GOTV operation was so sophisticated.
3. As a corollary to point #2, Palin is approaching her presidential run in a rather cavalier way. Instead of doing the hard work of lining up the traditional GOP heavy hitters and organizational gurus (as Romney and Pawlenty have done), Palin has instead spent her time touring the country and endorsing candidates like Joe Miller in Alaska, Carly Fiorina in California and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. Her hope, of course, is that these individuals will reciprocate her support in kind in the 2012 primaries. Not only is she banking on these candidates to get elected, but she's also banking on their endorsements of her to be so massively popular that public opinion will swing in her favor. However, this is an idiotic way to build a presidential campaign, for no other reason than there is absolutely no evidence that, for instance, anyone in Iowa cares who Joe Miller is, or what he thinks.
4. Iowa voters already like Tim Pawlenty. Voters in the northern part of the state are especially familiar with the reasonable, salt-of-the-earth Sam's Club Republican governor of their neighbor to the north.
5. If candidates drop out before Iowa or shortly thereafter, there isn't a single Republican candidate who will endorse her. Palin will be an island in the campaign, much as Romney was in 2008. Unless and until Palin is the clear-cut frontrunner, there isn't a single other contender who will offer his support. Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels and Mike Pence will fall in line behind one of each other. Huckabee and Thune, likewise. Gingrich is admittedly a wild card, but he understands that his position as the intellectual poobah of the party will be shredded if he endorses Palin over, say, the uber-cerebral Pawlenty. And if Ron Paul is around, he'll keep swinging 'til the bitter end.
6. She's going to say something stupid. She always does.
As Rudy Guiliani can attest, being competitive in either Iowa or New Hampshire is absolutely critical to one's ultimate success in a presidential campaign. In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore each won Iowa. In 2004, John Kerry -- at the time, considered a mid-tier contender -- finished a close second in Iowa in a crowded field and won in New Hampshire. In 2008, John McCain won big in New Hampshire, giving him a head of steam to cruise to victories in South Carolina and Florida. Barack Obama also won big in Iowa, and Hillary Clinton never quite seemed to fully recover after finishing a severely disappointing third in the caucuses. (The only reason a loss in Iowa didn't hurt McCain was because the Senior Senator -- an avowed opponent of ethanol subsidies and thus, an enemy of virtually the entire Iowa agricultural industry -- didn't even bother campaigning there.)
The bottom line is that there is no recent precedent for a candidate not winning in one of the first two states and going on to win a major party's nomination.
Sarah Palin will not be competitive in New Hampshire, period. New Hampshire voted for John McCain twice -- in 2000 and 2008 -- and the candidate who closest approximated Palin's place in the party in 2008 -- Mike Huckabee -- barely campaigned there, instead spending most of his time in the much more socially conservative South Carolina. New Hampshire voters are famously independent, a sort of pseduo-Tory mix of center-left social views and center-right economic views. They are revolted by tired, partisan cliches and instead demand face-to-face engagement. If there's a conservative Republican who can win in New Hampshire, it will likely be Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels (should the latter choose to run). Of course, Mitt Romney will be competitive there, but calling him a "conservative Republican" is a stretch. Palin would be better-served following Huckabee's model by avoiding New Hampshire entirely and focusing on her much stronger chances in South Carolina.
So what about Iowa? Some have suggested that Palin's folksy shtick might play well there. Here's why they're wrong:
1. Like New Hampshire voters, Iowa voters demand engagement. In 2008, Barack Obama was a force on the ground, shoring up his already strong ground game with the powerful force of his personality. Palin, to the contrary, only is visible at highly scripted rallies, doesn't do interviews that aren't on Fox News and doesn't have a sufficient breadth of knowledge to engage with voters who have legitimate concerns. There is no precedent for someone of Palin's ilk to win in Iowa.
2. As we've noted before, Barack Obama was so successful in Iowa in large part due to his phenomenal ground game, a well-funded and excellently organized grassroots network of students, labor leaders, retirees and everyone in-between. While Romney and Pawlenty have quietly built apparatuses based on the Obama model, Palin has done nothing of the sort. The people who make comparisons between Obama in 2006-2008 and Palin at the present time miss the critical fact that Obama was able to gain such a massive head of steam not because he was some sort of cult hero, but rather because his GOTV operation was so sophisticated.
3. As a corollary to point #2, Palin is approaching her presidential run in a rather cavalier way. Instead of doing the hard work of lining up the traditional GOP heavy hitters and organizational gurus (as Romney and Pawlenty have done), Palin has instead spent her time touring the country and endorsing candidates like Joe Miller in Alaska, Carly Fiorina in California and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. Her hope, of course, is that these individuals will reciprocate her support in kind in the 2012 primaries. Not only is she banking on these candidates to get elected, but she's also banking on their endorsements of her to be so massively popular that public opinion will swing in her favor. However, this is an idiotic way to build a presidential campaign, for no other reason than there is absolutely no evidence that, for instance, anyone in Iowa cares who Joe Miller is, or what he thinks.
4. Iowa voters already like Tim Pawlenty. Voters in the northern part of the state are especially familiar with the reasonable, salt-of-the-earth Sam's Club Republican governor of their neighbor to the north.
5. If candidates drop out before Iowa or shortly thereafter, there isn't a single Republican candidate who will endorse her. Palin will be an island in the campaign, much as Romney was in 2008. Unless and until Palin is the clear-cut frontrunner, there isn't a single other contender who will offer his support. Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels and Mike Pence will fall in line behind one of each other. Huckabee and Thune, likewise. Gingrich is admittedly a wild card, but he understands that his position as the intellectual poobah of the party will be shredded if he endorses Palin over, say, the uber-cerebral Pawlenty. And if Ron Paul is around, he'll keep swinging 'til the bitter end.
6. She's going to say something stupid. She always does.
06 October 2010
The battle for the Senate
Thanks to the voters of Delaware bringing the crazy and nominating a candidate who has never held elected office, it will be a tall order for the GOP to re-take control of the U.S. Senate. Additionally, given the transformation of the filibuster from a sparingly used procedural mechanism into a full-fledged legislative club, the Democrats' agenda has been thwarted since Scott Brown's election to the Senate in January. Because of this, the determination of who actually controls the Senate will be rather anticlimactic. Regardless, there are a few races we're interested in:
In Missouri, Roy Blunt appears to have established a reasonably safe lead outside the margin of error in nearly all of the latest polls. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan seemed to be making headway with her ads tying Blunt to the TARP bailout and Jack Abramoff and painting him -- accurately -- as the consummate Washington insider. Carnahan's problem in this race is twofold: First, she's a Democrat, and running in what is clearly shaping up to be a "wave" election. Second, she's no outsider herself, coming from a family that boasts a former governor, a former Senator, a congressman and a brother who is a gazillionaire wind-farm investor. Unlike in places like Nevada, Wisconsin or Florida, Missouri voters are quite familiar with everyone on the ballot here. You can read here why I refuse to vote for Blunt, who as House Republican whip was one of the Bush administration's key enablers. I doubt I'm done blasting him either.
In the race to fill President Obama's old seat, congressman Mark Kirk is vying to knock off state treasurer Alexi Giannilazskjzmlbfs. As of today, Real Clear Politics rates this one a toss-up. Both men have had their share of issues -- Kirk was inexplicably caught lying about his military service in Iraq, and Giasdkalsfdapdfpaz has had myriad questions to answer about the abrupt collapse of his family bank. Kirk is a moderate Republican from the Chicago suburbs who was an early and key backer of John McCain's candidacy during 2007-2008, and precisely the type of candidate Republicans need to cultivate in traditionally blue states. We're pulling hard for him.
Finally, in Wisconsin, Russ Feingold looks to be in deep trouble. We've written before about our affinity for the civil liberties crusader. Local businessman Ron Johnson -- virtually unknown before winning the Republican primary -- has begun to consistently poll above 50%, and his RCP advantage is 9 points. This isn't insurmountable, but Feingold is fighting an immensely difficult uphill battle -- (i) he's an incumbent seeking a fourth term; (ii) he's considerably more liberal than the majority of his state on virtually every economic issue of import; and (iii) he's a Democrat. Voters know what they're getting with Feingold, and although he's made noise during his time in the Senate as a deficit hawk and an outspoken opponent of earmarks and pork-barrel spending, he is fairly classified as a tax-and-spend liberal. Again, we'd like to see Feingold return to the Senate, simply because the number of Senators who seem legitimately concerned with civil liberties is quite thin.
In Missouri, Roy Blunt appears to have established a reasonably safe lead outside the margin of error in nearly all of the latest polls. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan seemed to be making headway with her ads tying Blunt to the TARP bailout and Jack Abramoff and painting him -- accurately -- as the consummate Washington insider. Carnahan's problem in this race is twofold: First, she's a Democrat, and running in what is clearly shaping up to be a "wave" election. Second, she's no outsider herself, coming from a family that boasts a former governor, a former Senator, a congressman and a brother who is a gazillionaire wind-farm investor. Unlike in places like Nevada, Wisconsin or Florida, Missouri voters are quite familiar with everyone on the ballot here. You can read here why I refuse to vote for Blunt, who as House Republican whip was one of the Bush administration's key enablers. I doubt I'm done blasting him either.
In the race to fill President Obama's old seat, congressman Mark Kirk is vying to knock off state treasurer Alexi Giannilazskjzmlbfs. As of today, Real Clear Politics rates this one a toss-up. Both men have had their share of issues -- Kirk was inexplicably caught lying about his military service in Iraq, and Giasdkalsfdapdfpaz has had myriad questions to answer about the abrupt collapse of his family bank. Kirk is a moderate Republican from the Chicago suburbs who was an early and key backer of John McCain's candidacy during 2007-2008, and precisely the type of candidate Republicans need to cultivate in traditionally blue states. We're pulling hard for him.
Finally, in Wisconsin, Russ Feingold looks to be in deep trouble. We've written before about our affinity for the civil liberties crusader. Local businessman Ron Johnson -- virtually unknown before winning the Republican primary -- has begun to consistently poll above 50%, and his RCP advantage is 9 points. This isn't insurmountable, but Feingold is fighting an immensely difficult uphill battle -- (i) he's an incumbent seeking a fourth term; (ii) he's considerably more liberal than the majority of his state on virtually every economic issue of import; and (iii) he's a Democrat. Voters know what they're getting with Feingold, and although he's made noise during his time in the Senate as a deficit hawk and an outspoken opponent of earmarks and pork-barrel spending, he is fairly classified as a tax-and-spend liberal. Again, we'd like to see Feingold return to the Senate, simply because the number of Senators who seem legitimately concerned with civil liberties is quite thin.
01 October 2010
Why Obama isn't Clinton
Peter Beinart offers this excellent piece on Bill Clinton's move toward the center after the 1994 midterms, and why Barack Obama is quite unlikely to follow Clinton's lead.
Beinart notes that during his time as governor of Arkansas, Clinton was aligned with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which had been at war with the party's liberal base for years. Clinton not only governed as a centrist in Arkansas, but he campaigned as a deficit hawk, promised middle-class tax cuts -- at the time, a heresy for a Democrat -- and vowed to end "welfare as we know it." It was only when he swung left -- pushing health care reform and Don't Ask, Don't Tell during the first half of his first term -- that he set the table for the GOP to sweep back into power. After his party's 1994 defeats, Clinton turned the eyes inward, and seemed to understand that his defeats came about because he deviated from what had gotten him elected in the first place. He then set into motion a series of policies, including welfare reform, the Al Gore-led National Performance Review and most critically, his crusade for a balanced budget, that led to the longest peacetime boom in American history.
While Clinton and Obama both campaigned as centrists in 1992 and 2008, respectively, there is one critical difference between the two: Clinton actually was one, while Obama simply used trans-partisan vagueries to get elected. Anyone who knew anything about Barack Obama knew this image as a bipartisan healer was a fraud. This was a man who managed to rack up the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007 and wrote more autobiographies (one) than serious pieces of legislation during his utterly inconsequential Senate career.
If you were shocked that Obama swung to the left upon taking office, seemed completely unable to stomach bipartisan compromise and engaged in comically hyper-partisan demagoguery, you simply weren't paying attention to what he's been his whole political career.
Now, Obama will be faced with a nearly identical situation that Clinton encountered in January 1995: A Congress controlled by Republicans. And it's up to Obama as to how he will govern. Will he reach out to the GOP and find common ground on deficit reduction, green energy issues and entitlement reform? Or will he continue to dispatch surrogates to blast the GOP for being obstructionists? The president is the one who sets the tone. It's up to him.
These days, after a big-government Republican and an old-time liberal Democrat have spiraled us deep into debt and governed ineffectually, I've begun to long for the days of Clinton, the last legitimately decent chief executive. To say Clinton was a great president is missing his obvious flaws -- he pushed for an even more sweeping health care reform package than did Obama; his foreign policy during 1993-94 was disjointed and misguided; and, obviously, he betrayed his country's trust in the Lewinsky scandal. But in terms of his efficacy as a chief executive, Clinton was everything Obama was not. Clinton was willing to listen to Dick Morris and examine the flaws of his first two years in office. Obama still seems to be in love with his own celebrity, has built a team of yes-men who apparently don't disagree about anything, and genuinely believes the country is just as liberal as he is. In short, he is laughably out of touch, while Clinton was anything but.
That's why "triangulation" isn't coming back, and why the Clinton coalition that Obama so masterfully rallied in 2008 is irreparably broken.
Beinart notes that during his time as governor of Arkansas, Clinton was aligned with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which had been at war with the party's liberal base for years. Clinton not only governed as a centrist in Arkansas, but he campaigned as a deficit hawk, promised middle-class tax cuts -- at the time, a heresy for a Democrat -- and vowed to end "welfare as we know it." It was only when he swung left -- pushing health care reform and Don't Ask, Don't Tell during the first half of his first term -- that he set the table for the GOP to sweep back into power. After his party's 1994 defeats, Clinton turned the eyes inward, and seemed to understand that his defeats came about because he deviated from what had gotten him elected in the first place. He then set into motion a series of policies, including welfare reform, the Al Gore-led National Performance Review and most critically, his crusade for a balanced budget, that led to the longest peacetime boom in American history.
While Clinton and Obama both campaigned as centrists in 1992 and 2008, respectively, there is one critical difference between the two: Clinton actually was one, while Obama simply used trans-partisan vagueries to get elected. Anyone who knew anything about Barack Obama knew this image as a bipartisan healer was a fraud. This was a man who managed to rack up the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007 and wrote more autobiographies (one) than serious pieces of legislation during his utterly inconsequential Senate career.
If you were shocked that Obama swung to the left upon taking office, seemed completely unable to stomach bipartisan compromise and engaged in comically hyper-partisan demagoguery, you simply weren't paying attention to what he's been his whole political career.
Now, Obama will be faced with a nearly identical situation that Clinton encountered in January 1995: A Congress controlled by Republicans. And it's up to Obama as to how he will govern. Will he reach out to the GOP and find common ground on deficit reduction, green energy issues and entitlement reform? Or will he continue to dispatch surrogates to blast the GOP for being obstructionists? The president is the one who sets the tone. It's up to him.
These days, after a big-government Republican and an old-time liberal Democrat have spiraled us deep into debt and governed ineffectually, I've begun to long for the days of Clinton, the last legitimately decent chief executive. To say Clinton was a great president is missing his obvious flaws -- he pushed for an even more sweeping health care reform package than did Obama; his foreign policy during 1993-94 was disjointed and misguided; and, obviously, he betrayed his country's trust in the Lewinsky scandal. But in terms of his efficacy as a chief executive, Clinton was everything Obama was not. Clinton was willing to listen to Dick Morris and examine the flaws of his first two years in office. Obama still seems to be in love with his own celebrity, has built a team of yes-men who apparently don't disagree about anything, and genuinely believes the country is just as liberal as he is. In short, he is laughably out of touch, while Clinton was anything but.
That's why "triangulation" isn't coming back, and why the Clinton coalition that Obama so masterfully rallied in 2008 is irreparably broken.
30 September 2010
Q&A time: The responses
That was quick. Answers in bold.
1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).
To me, defense is the very last thing that should ever be cut from a budget. At the same time, stuff (like these jets) that are doing nothing but taking up space for years should be phased out, and depending on the sensitivity of the technology onboard, sold to Afghanistan in helping them establish an Air Force (this assumes they'd be interested of course).
2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?
While it would help, it's clear some programs would have to be cut. I'd say cut programs with education and green energy. The federal government doesn't have any business running the education system (it's a local/state issue), and green energy simply is a low priority.
3 and 4. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ... Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?
If you want to balance the budget tomorrow, you either cut EVERYTHING or raise taxes. If you're willing to make balancing the budget a process, I don't think taxes need to go up. As I'm willing to make this a process, we begin by repealing Obamacare which takes care of a bit of the deficit. From there, less government jobs at places like the Dept. of Education.
Those were precisely the answers I expected.
There will be more questions soon. I can't help myself.
1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).
To me, defense is the very last thing that should ever be cut from a budget. At the same time, stuff (like these jets) that are doing nothing but taking up space for years should be phased out, and depending on the sensitivity of the technology onboard, sold to Afghanistan in helping them establish an Air Force (this assumes they'd be interested of course).
2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?
While it would help, it's clear some programs would have to be cut. I'd say cut programs with education and green energy. The federal government doesn't have any business running the education system (it's a local/state issue), and green energy simply is a low priority.
3 and 4. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ... Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?
If you want to balance the budget tomorrow, you either cut EVERYTHING or raise taxes. If you're willing to make balancing the budget a process, I don't think taxes need to go up. As I'm willing to make this a process, we begin by repealing Obamacare which takes care of a bit of the deficit. From there, less government jobs at places like the Dept. of Education.
Those were precisely the answers I expected.
There will be more questions soon. I can't help myself.
29 September 2010
Question and answer time
Today, a Facebook friend sarcastically wondered why congressional Democrats would push back a vote on the Bush tax cuts until after the election. This friend -- a card-carrying member of the Palin/Limbaugh/Hannity wing of the Republican Party -- regularly makes disparaging comments toward Democrats on his Facebook page, which normally is fine with me, but he seems to be fond of recycling the cliches he hears on Hannity's show or from Palin's stump speeches. This is not a particularly insightful guy, and, I suspect, one that isn't able to grasp the disconnect between criticizing the size of the budget deficit and his own thirst for an extension of the Bush tax cuts.
To that end, I asked him the following four questions:
1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).
2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?
3. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ...
4. Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?
Answers to come ...
To that end, I asked him the following four questions:
1. Your opinion on cutting defense spending to trim the deficit (as Obama did last year, phasing out those fighter jets that haven't been used in combat since the first Gulf War).
2. Every serious economist on the left, right and center agrees that even after you cut out out "welfare queens," end waste/fraud/abuse and outlaw earmarks, you still will be faced with a massive budget deficit. Do you agree with that conclusion, or not?
3. Do you seriously believe that as we're running a trillion dollar deficit, with the deficit expected to spike up to $1.2 trillion in FY 2011, you can eventually avoid raising taxes to balance the budget? If your answer is yes, that implies that you think you can find a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget, so ...
4. Where do you plan to find this trillion dollars?
Answers to come ...
28 September 2010
Tyranny in America
We were out in front on this one.
The Justice Department is claiming that it cannot be sued in federal court to enjoin its program that targets American citizens overseas for assassination (Glenn Greenwald here.) In effect, the Obama administration is arguing that the program is itself a state secret, which cannot be legally challenged in court, thereby taking a position that totally guts the due process clause of the 5th Amendment because it would serve as an automatic, absolute bar to lawsuits challenging the legality or constitutionality of the program. This absurdly expansive conception of executive power might even make Dick Cheney blush.
We linked Conor Friedersdorf yesterday.
Today, Radley Balko:
You can’t even make the weak argument that the executive at least has to claim this power in the course of protecting national security. Because it doesn’t matter. Obama is arguing that he has the right to keep everything about these executions secret—including the reasons they were ordered—merely by uttering the magic phrase “state secrets.” In other words, that this power would only arise under a national security context is deemed irrelevant by the fact that not only is Obama claiming the president’s word on what qualifies as “national security” is final, he’s claiming the power in such a way that there’s no audience to whom he would ever need to make that connection. So yeah. Tyranny. If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact ... I can’t think of it.
Now: The question is whether the Cato/Reason contingent -- supplemented from time to time by the Ron Pauls and the Russ Feingolds -- will rise up to stop this constitutionally abhorrent practice that has become, sadly, business as usual in Washington.
This is precisely what is wrong with the Limbaugh/Palin/Levin wing of the Republican Party: It shrieks about things like Obamacare, cap and trade and taxes as unconstitutional encroachments on liberty, when in actuality, the most clear and present danger to American liberty in 2010 charges on, right under its nose.
The Justice Department is claiming that it cannot be sued in federal court to enjoin its program that targets American citizens overseas for assassination (Glenn Greenwald here.) In effect, the Obama administration is arguing that the program is itself a state secret, which cannot be legally challenged in court, thereby taking a position that totally guts the due process clause of the 5th Amendment because it would serve as an automatic, absolute bar to lawsuits challenging the legality or constitutionality of the program. This absurdly expansive conception of executive power might even make Dick Cheney blush.
We linked Conor Friedersdorf yesterday.
Today, Radley Balko:
You can’t even make the weak argument that the executive at least has to claim this power in the course of protecting national security. Because it doesn’t matter. Obama is arguing that he has the right to keep everything about these executions secret—including the reasons they were ordered—merely by uttering the magic phrase “state secrets.” In other words, that this power would only arise under a national security context is deemed irrelevant by the fact that not only is Obama claiming the president’s word on what qualifies as “national security” is final, he’s claiming the power in such a way that there’s no audience to whom he would ever need to make that connection. So yeah. Tyranny. If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact ... I can’t think of it.
Now: The question is whether the Cato/Reason contingent -- supplemented from time to time by the Ron Pauls and the Russ Feingolds -- will rise up to stop this constitutionally abhorrent practice that has become, sadly, business as usual in Washington.
This is precisely what is wrong with the Limbaugh/Palin/Levin wing of the Republican Party: It shrieks about things like Obamacare, cap and trade and taxes as unconstitutional encroachments on liberty, when in actuality, the most clear and present danger to American liberty in 2010 charges on, right under its nose.
27 September 2010
Random musings
Barack Obama and George W. Bush are more alike than even I originally thought. We all know that both Obama and Bush spent wildly, drove up the deficit and assaulted civil liberties. But both actually have substantive policy appeal to the opposing party that their opponents' blind hatred makes it impossible to see. Bush was actually a liberal, big-government interventionist on domestic policy -- something most Democrats ignored because of his military adventurism. Obama is almost a mirror image of Bush on civil liberties and executive power issues. Obama has claimed the right to assassinate U.S. citizens abroad by pure executive fiat, pushed an offensively expansionist view of the state secrets privilege, refused to shut down Gitmo and has actually increased drone attacks in Pakistan. But ask virtually Republican, and they'll tell you Obama is a terrorist sympathizer -- or worse.
This is hardly a novel observation, but I've been chewing on it for awhile -- the inability of the U.N. to do anything meaningful in Sudan demonstrates just how worthless it is. Wasn't the U.N. designed to prevent exactly that?
Several outlets have recently written up on this site's early favorite for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Mitch Daniels. Have a read here and here.
The litmus test for whether you're a thoughtful conservative or a hysterical reactionary is your opinion of this Dinesh D'Souza piece. Our reaction here.
I'm still not sure what to make of the tea party. Is it an amorphous, organic grassroots uprising? Or is it controlled and bankrolled by elites like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck? On the one hand, tea partiers tend to echo my criticisms of Obama's domestic policy. On the other, I haven't heard a single tea partier offer up a serious solution to addressing the country's long-term fiscal problems.
Republicans seem to think that repealing Obamacare and eliminating earmarks will make the deficit go away. Hmmm. Not quite.
On that topic, check out this atrocious demagoguery by John Boehner.
John McCain will coast to a sixth term in the Senate, but at what cost? I'm beginning to change my tune from this earlier piece. The fact that he's out in front on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is just absurd. We expected McCain to track back toward the center once he dispatched JD Hayworth; the fact that he is painting himself up as some sort of anti-immigration, anti-civil liberties crusader is sad. Because that's not the real McCain. At least it didn't used to be.
Daniel Larison thinks Mitt Romney is the 2012 frontrunner. Andrew Sullivan thinks it's Sarah Palin. I think they're both wrong. There is no frontrunner yet.
The greatest threat to liberty in 2010 isn't Obamacare, cap and trade, tax hikes or even al Qaeda. It's the imperial national security state. Conor Friedersdorf agrees. Glenn Greenwald explains (in much greater detail than we did, above) how Obama is simply reprising the Bush policies.
If Obama manages to track toward the center -- e.g., suspending the payroll tax -- and happens to realize how abusive his administration has been of civil liberties, I'd seriously consider voting for him in 2012 over the likes of Palin, Huckabee or Thune. Two thoughts on that. First, I originally wrote "track back," but that would imply Obama has been in the center before. That's obviously not the case, so a moderation of his domestic policy is, let's say, less than likely. Second, what's perhaps most ironic is that it is precisely because of his adopting of the neoconservative dogma on national security and executive privilege matters that I find the entirety of his agenda so repulsive -- and therefore, I don't have the stomach to vote for him.
This is hardly a novel observation, but I've been chewing on it for awhile -- the inability of the U.N. to do anything meaningful in Sudan demonstrates just how worthless it is. Wasn't the U.N. designed to prevent exactly that?
Several outlets have recently written up on this site's early favorite for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Mitch Daniels. Have a read here and here.
The litmus test for whether you're a thoughtful conservative or a hysterical reactionary is your opinion of this Dinesh D'Souza piece. Our reaction here.
I'm still not sure what to make of the tea party. Is it an amorphous, organic grassroots uprising? Or is it controlled and bankrolled by elites like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck? On the one hand, tea partiers tend to echo my criticisms of Obama's domestic policy. On the other, I haven't heard a single tea partier offer up a serious solution to addressing the country's long-term fiscal problems.
Republicans seem to think that repealing Obamacare and eliminating earmarks will make the deficit go away. Hmmm. Not quite.
On that topic, check out this atrocious demagoguery by John Boehner.
John McCain will coast to a sixth term in the Senate, but at what cost? I'm beginning to change my tune from this earlier piece. The fact that he's out in front on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is just absurd. We expected McCain to track back toward the center once he dispatched JD Hayworth; the fact that he is painting himself up as some sort of anti-immigration, anti-civil liberties crusader is sad. Because that's not the real McCain. At least it didn't used to be.
Daniel Larison thinks Mitt Romney is the 2012 frontrunner. Andrew Sullivan thinks it's Sarah Palin. I think they're both wrong. There is no frontrunner yet.
The greatest threat to liberty in 2010 isn't Obamacare, cap and trade, tax hikes or even al Qaeda. It's the imperial national security state. Conor Friedersdorf agrees. Glenn Greenwald explains (in much greater detail than we did, above) how Obama is simply reprising the Bush policies.
If Obama manages to track toward the center -- e.g., suspending the payroll tax -- and happens to realize how abusive his administration has been of civil liberties, I'd seriously consider voting for him in 2012 over the likes of Palin, Huckabee or Thune. Two thoughts on that. First, I originally wrote "track back," but that would imply Obama has been in the center before. That's obviously not the case, so a moderation of his domestic policy is, let's say, less than likely. Second, what's perhaps most ironic is that it is precisely because of his adopting of the neoconservative dogma on national security and executive privilege matters that I find the entirety of his agenda so repulsive -- and therefore, I don't have the stomach to vote for him.
24 September 2010
Conservative soul-searching
In the wake of the GOP's banishment to the political wilderness after the 2008 bloodbath, it's evident to me that the party has split into three general factions.
The first group are those who follow the George W. Bush/Colin Powell theory of domestic governance. These are Republicans who either support massive government intervention like Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind (as Bush did) or those that explicitly reject the Goldwater/Reagan model (as Powell did in announcing his endorsement of Obama in October 2008).
The second group are the tea partiers -- those people who are simply reflexive reactionaries, hysterically opposing everything the Obama administration says or does, believing absurd conspiracy theories about ACORN rigging elections or Obama being a crypto-Marxist, and -- most critically -- refusing to understand the inherent discrepancy in clamoring for lower taxes and cutting the deficit. This group doesn't have any ideas beyond deregulation, cutting spending without pointing out specific areas to cut, and the continued feeding of what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex. And it was specifically for this group that the GOP's utterly inconsequential Pledge to America was written.
The third group is made up of people like Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Ross Douthat. Tim Pawlenty was firmly in this group until he began running for president; now, he's dipping his toe in the water of group number two. Newt Gingrich was in this group as well, until he decided he could make more money writing a book. This group doesn't go to rallies, doesn't devour the latest conservative book of the month (Palin's, Romney's, Newt's, Levin's, etc.) and doesn't tune in to Limbaugh. Most importantly, these are the Republicans who (i) have ideas like Paul Ryan's wonderful Roadmap; (ii) have turned a critical eye inward to assess what precisely went wrong from 2001-2008; and (iii) are willing to confront the reality that cutting the deficit and rescuing the country from the looming fiscal abyss will require tough decisions.
If folks like us have our way, the 45th President of the United States will come from this third group. Notably, many people from the first and second groups seem to like Ryan and Christie, especially. They like Daniels the more they learn about him. It's up to the Republican rank-and-file to decide what kind of leader they want. Do they want a demagogue like Palin, who spends her time spitting recycled, tinny cliches and calls her opponents names? Do they want a Romney, who has changed his position on virtually every issue and ebbs and flows with public opinion? Do they want a Huckabee, who, like Palin, has personal charm, but focuses on "family values" and has no real conservative credentials? Do they want someone from the first group like Bush, who drinks the neoconservative kool-aid on foreign policy and largely ignores the guiding principles of fiscal conservatism on domestic matters?
Or, will the Republican Party follow an adult with ideas? Daniels, Pawlenty and Christie are men who have governed in states Barack Obama won in 2008 -- Minnesota and New Jersey in particular are solidly blue -- yet have done so in a fundamentally conservative manner, balancing their state's budgets, injecting new life into their states with cutting-edge policies (read this excellent profile on the wonderfully wonkish Daniels), talk to voters like they're adults, and -- not surprisingly -- have become supremely popular as a result.
These are the men the GOP needs to follow. We don't need Palin's demagoguery, nor Bush's "compassionate conservatism," nor Beck's outlandish conspiracy theories. We need Daniels. We need Ryan. We need Christie. Republicans might well take back the House in the fall, and the Senate and the White House in 2012, but there is no good model for Republican governance in Washington, and virtually no hope for a transformative Republican agenda, save for Ryan. Rather, John Boehner and the congressional leadership will continue to talk a good game about fiscal responsibility, but will refuse to stand up and explain to voters the disastrous fiscal path the last two administrations have set us on.
The first group are those who follow the George W. Bush/Colin Powell theory of domestic governance. These are Republicans who either support massive government intervention like Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind (as Bush did) or those that explicitly reject the Goldwater/Reagan model (as Powell did in announcing his endorsement of Obama in October 2008).
The second group are the tea partiers -- those people who are simply reflexive reactionaries, hysterically opposing everything the Obama administration says or does, believing absurd conspiracy theories about ACORN rigging elections or Obama being a crypto-Marxist, and -- most critically -- refusing to understand the inherent discrepancy in clamoring for lower taxes and cutting the deficit. This group doesn't have any ideas beyond deregulation, cutting spending without pointing out specific areas to cut, and the continued feeding of what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex. And it was specifically for this group that the GOP's utterly inconsequential Pledge to America was written.
The third group is made up of people like Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Ross Douthat. Tim Pawlenty was firmly in this group until he began running for president; now, he's dipping his toe in the water of group number two. Newt Gingrich was in this group as well, until he decided he could make more money writing a book. This group doesn't go to rallies, doesn't devour the latest conservative book of the month (Palin's, Romney's, Newt's, Levin's, etc.) and doesn't tune in to Limbaugh. Most importantly, these are the Republicans who (i) have ideas like Paul Ryan's wonderful Roadmap; (ii) have turned a critical eye inward to assess what precisely went wrong from 2001-2008; and (iii) are willing to confront the reality that cutting the deficit and rescuing the country from the looming fiscal abyss will require tough decisions.
If folks like us have our way, the 45th President of the United States will come from this third group. Notably, many people from the first and second groups seem to like Ryan and Christie, especially. They like Daniels the more they learn about him. It's up to the Republican rank-and-file to decide what kind of leader they want. Do they want a demagogue like Palin, who spends her time spitting recycled, tinny cliches and calls her opponents names? Do they want a Romney, who has changed his position on virtually every issue and ebbs and flows with public opinion? Do they want a Huckabee, who, like Palin, has personal charm, but focuses on "family values" and has no real conservative credentials? Do they want someone from the first group like Bush, who drinks the neoconservative kool-aid on foreign policy and largely ignores the guiding principles of fiscal conservatism on domestic matters?
Or, will the Republican Party follow an adult with ideas? Daniels, Pawlenty and Christie are men who have governed in states Barack Obama won in 2008 -- Minnesota and New Jersey in particular are solidly blue -- yet have done so in a fundamentally conservative manner, balancing their state's budgets, injecting new life into their states with cutting-edge policies (read this excellent profile on the wonderfully wonkish Daniels), talk to voters like they're adults, and -- not surprisingly -- have become supremely popular as a result.
These are the men the GOP needs to follow. We don't need Palin's demagoguery, nor Bush's "compassionate conservatism," nor Beck's outlandish conspiracy theories. We need Daniels. We need Ryan. We need Christie. Republicans might well take back the House in the fall, and the Senate and the White House in 2012, but there is no good model for Republican governance in Washington, and virtually no hope for a transformative Republican agenda, save for Ryan. Rather, John Boehner and the congressional leadership will continue to talk a good game about fiscal responsibility, but will refuse to stand up and explain to voters the disastrous fiscal path the last two administrations have set us on.
22 September 2010
Responding to Sullivan, cont.
Here, we addressed Andrew Sullivan's contention that Sarah Palin was not only a serious contender for the 2012 nomination, but the near-unstoppable frontrunner.
To his credit, Sullivan routinely links those columnists who disagree with him, namely on the issue of Palin's prospects for the presidency. Today, he addresses the contentions of a favorite of this site, Ross Douthat. Douthat's remarks here.
Sullivan's comments in italics, mine in regular type:
Ross may be right, but I think he ignores just how much more radical the GOP base has become since 1994 (snip)
Maybe. We've noted ourselves that the popularity of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin among some corners of the conservative movement is based, at least in part, on either cultural horror at Barack Obama or a fundamental, deep-seated hatred for the other party. I'd also stipulate that GOP has become more radical in the foreign policy realm since 1994, as the Bush administration adopted the neoconservative obsessions with Iraq and torture, put many of the Wolfowitz/Kristol ideas into practice and thereby made them mainstream Republican thought. However, the GOP still stands on a tax-reduction, pro-business, pro-life platform. It's been anti-Don't Ask, Don't Tell forever. The message of fiscal responsibility -- and again, when it gets to the business of governing, things admittedly always seem to change -- rises above all else, regardless of the basis for the opposition to the other party. Everything else is secondary to that.
Therefore, that said, this has two consequences in the primaries. First, everyone -- not just Palin -- will be gleefully slamming the Obama administration for its fiscal irresponsibility. Every Republican believes this -- Palin is simply the one out front right now at tea parties and campaign rallies. By November 2011, the entire field of candidates will be climbing over one another to make this point. Second, Palin's record as a small-government deficit hawk is shockingly thin (some would argue it's non-existent), and not surprisingly, doesn't quote comport with her rhetoric. To the contrary, both Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels managed to balance their respective states' budgets by lowering taxes. Palin's record as governor is no more impressive than, say, Huckabee's or Barbour's. If her entire message is fiscal responsibility, she'll get swallowed up. And truth be told, that's been her entire message thus far.
In addition, the opposition to Barack Obama is approached only by the seething hatred conservatives had toward Bill Clinton. Clinton was viewed among mainstream conservatives as a draft-dodging, tax-raising secular liberal who was, at his very core, a horrible person. Does no one remember the Clinton presidency? Does no one remember the awful things that were said about him? The personal attacks on Obama are simply par for the course.
... how enraged they have become over the years by what they see as condescension and betrayal by their own elites (snip)
Again, maybe. But Daniels, Pawlenty and Huckabee hardly qualify as elites. And as Peggy Noonan has pointed out, Palin is an elite confection "who may as well be a bon-bon." So if conservatives are truly enraged over elite condescension in the party, why in the world would they fall in line behind Palin? To me, this logic suggests that Palin will actually lose support to, say, Mike Huckabee. Virtually every conservative has talked about the party losing touch with its ideological roots.
... and the rise of Fox News and the Malkin/Reynolds blogosphere and Levin-style talk radio.
This logic assumes that all talk radio listeners/Fox News viewers are a bovine herd. Yes, it's a big problem that so many conservatives refuse to read or listen to anything that isn't run through the Fox filter first. But if the big-microphone elites were so powerful, wouldn't Mitt Romney have won the 2008 nomination in a cakewalk? Rush Limbaugh has spent his entire career criticizing John McCain. In slamming the Senior Senator, Glenn Beck actually said Hillary Clinton would be a better president, and Ann Coulter said HIllary was "more conservative." Levin, Malkin, Hannity and virtually every other major talking head on the right spent the better part of a year trying to convince their readers and listeners that McCain was a closet socialist and the most fundamentally un-conservative guy in the field. Romney was endorsed by virtually every major conservative outlet. McCain cruised to the nomination anyway, and the noisemakers' favorite son, Romney, finished a distant third, never really mounting a serious challenge (remember, Romney outspent Huckabee 15-to-1 in Iowa and still finished second). Sullivan and others imply that there is some sort of powerful Fox-Limbaugh-Palin conspiracy at work, when in reality, this conspiracy is either impotent or doesn't exist at all.
I also think that the people to whom Palin appeals will be as economically distressed in 2012 as they are now, since their jobs are overwhelmingly the ones that are gone for ever.
Sullivan doesn't offer any evidence of this, in part, because I don't think any exists. To the contrary -- based on my conversations with various members of my own family, and friends whose families support the tea party movement -- I'd wager that despite the heated rhetoric, the vast majority of tea partiers are actually middle-class. Palin isn't holding rallies in, for instance, Detroit, because those are places unserious folks such as her dare not go.
In this corner of the blogosphere, we fully expect Palin to run -- she very obviously considers herself presidential material -- but again, fully expect her to get crowded out by the adults.
To his credit, Sullivan routinely links those columnists who disagree with him, namely on the issue of Palin's prospects for the presidency. Today, he addresses the contentions of a favorite of this site, Ross Douthat. Douthat's remarks here.
Sullivan's comments in italics, mine in regular type:
Ross may be right, but I think he ignores just how much more radical the GOP base has become since 1994 (snip)
Maybe. We've noted ourselves that the popularity of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin among some corners of the conservative movement is based, at least in part, on either cultural horror at Barack Obama or a fundamental, deep-seated hatred for the other party. I'd also stipulate that GOP has become more radical in the foreign policy realm since 1994, as the Bush administration adopted the neoconservative obsessions with Iraq and torture, put many of the Wolfowitz/Kristol ideas into practice and thereby made them mainstream Republican thought. However, the GOP still stands on a tax-reduction, pro-business, pro-life platform. It's been anti-Don't Ask, Don't Tell forever. The message of fiscal responsibility -- and again, when it gets to the business of governing, things admittedly always seem to change -- rises above all else, regardless of the basis for the opposition to the other party. Everything else is secondary to that.
Therefore, that said, this has two consequences in the primaries. First, everyone -- not just Palin -- will be gleefully slamming the Obama administration for its fiscal irresponsibility. Every Republican believes this -- Palin is simply the one out front right now at tea parties and campaign rallies. By November 2011, the entire field of candidates will be climbing over one another to make this point. Second, Palin's record as a small-government deficit hawk is shockingly thin (some would argue it's non-existent), and not surprisingly, doesn't quote comport with her rhetoric. To the contrary, both Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels managed to balance their respective states' budgets by lowering taxes. Palin's record as governor is no more impressive than, say, Huckabee's or Barbour's. If her entire message is fiscal responsibility, she'll get swallowed up. And truth be told, that's been her entire message thus far.
In addition, the opposition to Barack Obama is approached only by the seething hatred conservatives had toward Bill Clinton. Clinton was viewed among mainstream conservatives as a draft-dodging, tax-raising secular liberal who was, at his very core, a horrible person. Does no one remember the Clinton presidency? Does no one remember the awful things that were said about him? The personal attacks on Obama are simply par for the course.
... how enraged they have become over the years by what they see as condescension and betrayal by their own elites (snip)
Again, maybe. But Daniels, Pawlenty and Huckabee hardly qualify as elites. And as Peggy Noonan has pointed out, Palin is an elite confection "who may as well be a bon-bon." So if conservatives are truly enraged over elite condescension in the party, why in the world would they fall in line behind Palin? To me, this logic suggests that Palin will actually lose support to, say, Mike Huckabee. Virtually every conservative has talked about the party losing touch with its ideological roots.
... and the rise of Fox News and the Malkin/Reynolds blogosphere and Levin-style talk radio.
This logic assumes that all talk radio listeners/Fox News viewers are a bovine herd. Yes, it's a big problem that so many conservatives refuse to read or listen to anything that isn't run through the Fox filter first. But if the big-microphone elites were so powerful, wouldn't Mitt Romney have won the 2008 nomination in a cakewalk? Rush Limbaugh has spent his entire career criticizing John McCain. In slamming the Senior Senator, Glenn Beck actually said Hillary Clinton would be a better president, and Ann Coulter said HIllary was "more conservative." Levin, Malkin, Hannity and virtually every other major talking head on the right spent the better part of a year trying to convince their readers and listeners that McCain was a closet socialist and the most fundamentally un-conservative guy in the field. Romney was endorsed by virtually every major conservative outlet. McCain cruised to the nomination anyway, and the noisemakers' favorite son, Romney, finished a distant third, never really mounting a serious challenge (remember, Romney outspent Huckabee 15-to-1 in Iowa and still finished second). Sullivan and others imply that there is some sort of powerful Fox-Limbaugh-Palin conspiracy at work, when in reality, this conspiracy is either impotent or doesn't exist at all.
I also think that the people to whom Palin appeals will be as economically distressed in 2012 as they are now, since their jobs are overwhelmingly the ones that are gone for ever.
Sullivan doesn't offer any evidence of this, in part, because I don't think any exists. To the contrary -- based on my conversations with various members of my own family, and friends whose families support the tea party movement -- I'd wager that despite the heated rhetoric, the vast majority of tea partiers are actually middle-class. Palin isn't holding rallies in, for instance, Detroit, because those are places unserious folks such as her dare not go.
In this corner of the blogosphere, we fully expect Palin to run -- she very obviously considers herself presidential material -- but again, fully expect her to get crowded out by the adults.
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