Clarification: when I go after social conservatism, I mean Newt Gingrich and his ilk

Ever since the Republican election victories in November when people who ran as fiscal conservatives burning to save the American economy turned out to be social conservatives whose real top priority has to do with burning all right, but actually is that gay people should all die in a fire, I have been perplexed about how to keep the humorous and loving tone that I strive to make the hallmarks of this blog while addressing the issues involved in this colossal bait-and-switch.

Today I saw the light: I figured out how to be specific. I was thinking about how dear Shakey Pete and I disagree about the equality of gays — my equality — but I admire his life as a Viet Nam war veteran and sheriff’s deputy (now retired). It occurred to me that if I am going to talk about flavors of fiscal conservatism, such as Randian conservatism, after Ayn Rand, then I can be more clear about what there is to praise or criticize about social conservatism by adding the names of specific people or groups as adjectives, for example, Shakey Pete social conservatism: good; Newt Gingrich social conservatism: bad. (Alternate name: whited sepulchre social conservatism.)

I didn’t have a handle on the epic sociopathy and narcissism that is Newt Gingrich until dear Kathy Shaidle linked a profile of him recently. I find it bizarre that a man who has been so destructive to marriage in his own life was included at CPAC and lionized, while the efforts of gays to create families were denounced from CPAC’s main stage by Ann Coulter as part of the fell designs of the Left to destroy the family.

10 more reasons for a truce on social issues so we can handle the fiscal ones

Dear Little Miss Attila links a post with 10 charts showing why DOOM for the U.S. economy is upon us RIGHT NOW. While there are social conservatives who claim they can handle social and fiscal policies at the same time, so far it looks to me like doing the hard work of administering the remedies of fiscal conservatism is always pushed off to the indefinite future while the non-stop battle to get at the coercive powers of government to destroy the lives of gay people is prosecuted with a vengeance.

And notice that I say “hard work” instead of “hard choices.” That’s because the “hard choices” politicians make tend to fall heavily on the vulnerable and always on people who aren’t them. No, by “hard work” I mean the effort required at the local, state and national levels to get rid of taxes and regulations that kill entrepreneurship, strangle businesses, chase manufacturing out of the U.S., kill jobs, make us dependent on foreign oil, raise the price of electricity — we need more nuclear reactors — and discourage investment. They also can’t be bothered to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.

Our best hope for escaping the economic disaster that is upon us is to get to work applying these remedies because they create wealth and produce prosperity. It sounds prudent to talk of cutting the budget, but the cuts terrify so many people who can vote against them that they won’t get made. We must create prosperity and it’s going to require all our attention.

New troll policy courtesy of The Bloggess

I am instituting a new troll policy, which is inspired by my dear friend Jennifer Lawson, The Bloggess:

… sadly, there are always assholes in the world. In fact, some of them have computers and use them to troll the Internet and viciously attack people they’ve never even met. When I first started blogging, I was a bit shocked that perfect strangers would go to the trouble to leave comments like “your retarded” (sic) but I quickly learned that those people are the same assholes from high school, and that it’s amazingly easy to change a comment saying, “You suck and you’re a shitty writer and everyone hates you” to “You are the best writer in the world and I’m naming all of my children after you.” Then the troll would return to see what damage he’d done to my self-esteem and would be livid to see that I’d changed his comment and would write, “I NEVER WROTE THAT. I WROTE THAT YOU SUCK. YOU AREN’T FUNNY” which I would quickly change to “Your writing is magical and I would love to watch you sleep but I’m afraid to get too near you because my herpes are really contagious.” Then I continue to do this until the troll spontaneously combusts from sheer frustration. It seems harsh but if someone is going to try to bully me I at least want to be entertained by it.

Why victory in 2012 requires a truce on social issues

Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard uses the election of William McKinley over William Jennings Bryan to explain why the presidential election in 2012 is a once-in-many-generations contest that Republicans are unlikely to win if social issues continue to trump fiscal ones and prevent the creation of a coalition that will beat Obama:

As we all know, Mitch Daniels has advocated a “truce” on social issues. This edition of Morning Jay will offer a defense of that idea, arguing that, given the unique circumstances of next year’s election, such a proposition could increase the chances of Republican victory in 2012.

First, let’s talk a little history.

We implicitly take our current circumstances for granted. We’re here because we are meant to be here. But that’s not really true. There have been plenty of junction points in history where we’d have to conclude that things could have easily gone another way altogether.

[Then Cost explains how the election of McKinley over William Jennings Bryan is comparable to our current national crossroads.]

This is why a modern update of McKinley’s “cultural ecumenicalism” might do the Republican Party enormous good, as it could make it easier for these critical suburbanites to come back to the Grand Old Party. And remember, a truce is not the same thing as capitulation. Nor, for that matter, is it a ceding of power to the so-called RINO establishment of the East. Mitch Daniels, after all, is a pro-lifer from Indiana, which has never been part of the elite Eastern GOP club, certainly not what is left of it (which is not very much!). A truce is just a temporary suspension of “hostilities” as culturally conservative and moderate voters recognize that they have the same fiscal interests at stake in the next election.

William McKinley has long been an unsung hero of modern, conservative Republicanism, and it’s high time that the Grand Old Party appreciate his important legacy. Few party leaders have been more thoroughly Republican than he — and if he was prepared to call a cultural truce to strengthen the anti-Bryan coalition, just how bad of an idea can it be for next year’s battle with Obama?

Cleta Mitchell tells Samantha Bee how to use a 527 to go negative

I came across this video when I was Googling to learn more about her and it won’t play from Comedy Central’s site so I’m embedding it here to see if that helps.

Update: Huzzah! The video still stutters if you try to play it here, but clicking on it to open it at Comedy Central’s site worked this time. I’ll update this post or add a new one explaining my interest in Cleta Mitchell later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Update, 2/15/11: Here’s the transcript of the clip from The Daily Show, originally broadcast on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004:

Jon Stewart: If you think voter fraud is the only problem with this election, you are officially adorable. Throughout the year, the public has been subjected to negative, marginally legal attack ads known as 527s. They’re part of the miracle of democracy and Samantha Bee shows you how to get involved with tonight’s installment of, “So You Want to Bee … a 527.”

Samantha Bee: Thanks to a great campaign finance loophole, 527 groups like the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and Moveon.org are able to raise unlimited amounts of money and fill the airwaves with more and more attack ads. And starting a 527 group is a snap! The first thing you’ll want to do is understand the law, ‘cause you’re gonna be right on the edge of it. To do that, you’ll need an election law specialist like attorney Cleta Mitchell, who can explain the legal restrictions on what your 527 group can say.

Cleta Mitchell: You can say, “Candidate X is a scumbag.” You cannot say, “Vote against Candidate X.” You cannot say, “Vote for Candidate Y.” As long as you stop short of that, you can say pretty much whatever else you want to say.

Samantha Bee: Can I legally say, “If you like pussies, vote for George Bush”?

Cleta Mitchell: If you like what?

Samantha Bee: Pussies.

Cleta Mitchell: [Chuckles.] No, no, you can’t say that. It’s not the “pussy” part, it’s the “vote” part.

Samantha Bee: So, I can call the president a “pussy,” I just can’t say, “Don’t vote for him.”

Cleta Mitchell: Yes, you can do that.

Samantha Bee: What about, “John Kerry went to Viet Nam, but HE went for the whores and the drugs.”

Cleta Mitchell: You can say that, sure, you can say that.

[new scene] Samantha Bee: To effectively communicate your negative message, you’ll need a 527 ad specialist like Steve McMann.

Steve McMann: Well, the first is you decide what it is that you’re angry or hateful about. Then an organization like ours would develop a whole bunch of different ways for you to communicate that anger and bring it to a boil.

Samantha Bee: It occurs to me that nobody’s focused on the Kerry girls or the Bush twins. How can I attack them?

Steve McMann: We don’t do, we don’t do …

Samantha Bee: Who’s more attackable? Alexandra Kerry in that see-through number, or those slutty Bush twins?

Steve: Yeah, there’s some things that we think are off limits.

Samantha Bee: I want to compare what George Bush has done to the environment to what Hitler did to Poland. How can I do that?

Steve McMann: It’s not something we’d be interested in helping you with.

Samantha Bee: Screw this guy, I was gonna need someone with balls.

Cleta Mitchell: I hate this notion that negative campaigning is bad. I don’t think people really pay attention to positive ads.

Samantha Bee: What’s the best way for me to raise the money I need?

Cleta Mitchell: It really helps to know some really rich people.

Samantha Bee: How much money can I raise?

Cleta Mitchell: As much as you can talk people out of.

Samantha Bee: I think I just peed myself a little. I needed a sugar daddy. And I knew just the guy.

New scene:

Samantha Bee: You’ve got an assload of cash and I’m going to need some of it.

Richard Branson: But you still haven’t explained exactly where this money is going.

Samantha Bee: Why are you so stingy? I thought you were supposed to be like Soros, but with the sex swing and hot tubs.

Richard Branson: (laughs) Well, I certainly like hot tubs …

Samantha Bee: I’m walking out of here with a sack of cash.

Richard Branson: Um, ah

New scene, SB with TV and sample 527 ad.

Samantha Bee: Once you’ve gathered millions in tax-exempt donations, you’ll be ready to make 527 magic.

[Parody of a 527 ad begins with a clip of John Kerry:] The sun is rising over the United States of America ….

[Clip of George Bush:] Freedom is on the march ….

Samantha Bee voiceover: We’ve heard their words, but let’s look at the facts. George W. Bush once molested my grandma … while John Kerry held her down … with bags of money provided by gay French Jews. On Nov. 2, tell George W. Bush and John Kerry you support freedom by writing a check to, “Americans for 527 ads.” [Grandma’s voice:] “Don’t let them do it again!”

Samantha Bee: I’m Samantha Bee and I approved this campaign finance loophole.

Jon Stewart: Samantha Bee, we’ll be right back.

Andrew Breitbart is NOT gay

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Although, for the dear innocent and guileless straight people who are asserting that you can tell our beloved Andrew is straight because he is married and has four children, claims like that just make gays and lesbians helpless with mirth. Really. That is ROFLOL, pants-wettingly funny. That’s because plenty of gays and lesbians marry and have children for the perks of heterosexuality and lead their gay lives on the down-low. Which is one of the very, VERY best reasons for gay marriage equality. It will rid our community of these predators and ensure straight people who marry get an honest-to-goodness straight spouse who truly desires them. Because when we can’t marry each other, we will marry you — in my head, I’m saying that with the same cadence Khrushchev used when he said, “We will bury you.” On account of I remember when that was the “evening news,” not “history.”

Oh, and if you’re wondering, we don’t ask for proof that someone is straight or gay because it’s an inner experience and cannot be proved. We go on your say so.

Thank you, Mr. Cheney

Yesterday afternoon I was coming into the hotel in D.C. where CPAC is being held from its back entrance and as the elevator door opened an official-looking man with an earpiece darted into the elevator to shoo me out on the double, so I knew to scan the crowd for a dignitary. The next tip-off was a camera crew and a young man with a microphone demanding to know this and that from the Leftist handbook of fake anti-warisms. And then I spotted Dick Cheney, standing in the elevator in the very spot I’d just vacated.

Well.

I have a trained voice and I decided to use it. So, the video interrogation by the intrepid young Leftists was entirely drowned out by the penetrating soprano voice of a graying lesbian saying, over and over and over, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank, Mr. Cheney, for your service, thank you.”

Epidemic of high blood pressure, depression and anxiety among the elderly

Today I took my father, who is 94, to a routine appointment with his geriatrician, which always begins with the physician assistant, Debbie, taking a history and his vital signs. She pronounced my father’s blood pressure “perfect” at 106/60. Then she said she was especially glad to see this because over the last six months they’ve seen a big jump in the number of their elderly patients with hypertension. Debbie’s career includes Carter’s presidency and I asked her if people are more frightened now than they were then. She said, yes, by a long shot, and added that so many of their patients also are suffering from depression and anxiety that they have added the services of a psychiatrist who specializes in the elderly to come in twice a week to see patients. Debbie said this is a phenomenon she’s never seen before in over 35 years as a physician assistant.

Now, what with this being a conservative blog, you would expect that I would follow this news with a denunciation of the debt bombs — aka stimulus spending — that Obama has been using to destroy America’s economy. So, OK, yes: Obama’s debt bombs are toppling this great nation. They are his fire in the Reichstag.

But it looks to me like the epidemic of illnesses caused by fear and hopelessness began when the 2010 election season kicked into high gear. And since gaining control of the House of Representatives — and thus, the purse strings — rather than fighting the fake stimulus of Keynes with the real stimulus of Hayek, instead Republicans have harped on the the virtues of pain and sacrifice on the part the most vulnerable citizens of our nation: the elderly and the disabled, who are served by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Basically, we have targeted people who do NOT have the ability to WORK to improve their lot even though they DO have the ability to VOTE to that end. So — what could go wrong?

In his column on Obama’s state of the union address, Charles Krauthammer explains (boldfacing mine):

The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn’t believe a word of it. The people say they want cuts? Sure they do — in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his reelection.

What astonishes me is that fiscal conservatism has the tools to fix America’s economy and restore prosperity without attacking entitlements, but fiscal conservatives seldom use them — and we certainly aren’t using them now. So, what we should be doing is filling people with confidence in the future by getting rid of everything that is strangling economic recovery in its cradle — taxes, regulations, debt, boondoggles — and securing our energy independence and our borders and making America a profitable place to manufacture goods once more. The more we talk about how necessary it is to require sacrifices by people who aren’t us, the more we validate the mirror image of this policy, which is the redistribution of wealth — sacrifices by people who aren’t them. Either way, it isn’t sacrifice that is going to save us — it will be American resourcefulness and ambition unleashed.

H/T Instapundit.

Why Shakey Pete is not a Randian conservative

I am plotting the demise of Randian conservatism — for real — so I am relieved to learn that dear Shakey Pete rejects it also (boldfacing mine):

I would have been more into the Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged crowd if it had not been for Eddie Willers. Remember Eddie? He was the main assistant to Dagny Taggert. While not quite bright enough to be a hero of the story, he was a staunch and steady subordinate. Maybe he couldn’t think of the best solution, when told how to work that solution, there he was, giving his all. Remember the end of Taggert Transcontinental? The train stopped and Eddie, the faithful, left alone. Want to know why I’m not a Randian? It’s right there. No loyalty down. Eddy would have stopped a bullet for Dagny, yet she abandoned him. Somehow this fits with that Gosnell story.

“No loyalty down.” That scene in the book infuriated me, too, but it’s Pete who captures the exact reason why.

“That Gosnell story” is about the Philadelphia abortion doctor who performed late term abortions and murdered babies who could have survived outside the womb. Reading Pete’s entire post, I think the way it fits is that the number of poor black women who are desperate for abortions and receiving such a low standard of care suggests that black and/or Leftist leaders have no loyalty down for them and their babies.