Paradigm Shift

Since the New Deal and the construction of the entitlement leviathan, conservatives have occasionally lamented that even when they control the branches of government they have been little more than "tax collectors for the welfare state."

That paradigm might soon be shifting -- shifting because the aforementioned leviathan is soon to collapse. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have trillions in unfunded liabilities within the near future, and no amount of taxation or "Quantitative Easing" will be able to make up that difference without first destroying the economy. We are witnessing as much right now in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. France is not far behind.

Having promised the free provision of everything, the reckoning has come.
The American Left has refused to face this reality (just as the European Left did), but all too soon it will be all too real.

On that day, assuming the Democratic Party is still in power, the condition will modulate from Republicans being the tax collectors for the welfare state to Democrats being the imposers of austerity.

History delights in irony.

Kill Big Bird?

A country $15 trillion in debt that is unwilling to cut subsidies for luxuries like public television is a country that is unable to save itself -- a country that is seeing its future through the tear gas haze that covers the streets of Athens.

Caricatures, Confirmed & Destructed

Few things are more damaging in a debate than coming across true to form with a negative caricature. Conversely, few things are more beneficial than contradicting one.

The president's performance last night was listless, unfocused and ineffective. It was, in other words, a metaphor for his first term. After trillions in stimulus spending, dozens of financial regulations and a complete centralization of health care, growth is still anemic and unemployment/underemployment are high. If there is a defense for this beyond "this is the best we could have done," the president was unable to summon it last night. An absence of solutions was demonstrated by tired meandering.

Worse than that for the president was the energetic, knowledgeable and determined performance of his opponent -- a direct refutation of the out-of-touch, gaffe-prone caricature the president has spent so many months and millions painting.

This is the big takeaway from last night: the president's re-election campaign went all in on a strategy defining Romney a certain way and in an hour and a half he completely destructed that image. With a month to go Romney has now gotten himself back in the game with a largely untapped war chest with which to shape the race on his own terms.

Game on.

Bias, Maybe?

It says quite a bit about the American media's ideological predilections that for the second time in as many weeks (for as many reasons) they are declaring the Romney campaign dead for saying, in essence, Americans are too dependent on government and ignoring the president's breath-taking claim that America's debt is "not a short-term problem."

Fallen Conceit

The eruptions against American embassies in the Middle East this past week condemn what President Obama cannot and could not ever do as much as they condemn what he has done.

Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the postulate of the American Left was that our presence there coupled with the broader War on Terror policies of the Bush Administration fueled anti-Americanism in the Arab world.  As a corollary to this, it was Candidate Obama's contention in the '08 campaign that, because he had spent so much of his childhood in Indonesia and was the anti-Bush, he was "uniquely" qualified to rectify this.

Both were conceits, and hollow ones at that.  Anti-Americanism on the Arab Street did not begin or exist as a result of the American War on Terror or its presence in Iraq.  Anti-Americanism in the violent Islamist strain is a murderous diatribe against civilization itself, and as the leader of the civilized world the United States has always been its main target.  An assertive foreign policy does not change that.

Neither does its opposite, as it turns out.  President Obama has apologized for the role we have traditionally played in the region and in the world. He has ceded the field to the enemy in Iraq.  He was slow and indecisive with Egypt, led "from behind" on Libya, and has not led at all on Syria.  He has done nothing to retard Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

All to no effect.  American embassies are still attacked, the American flag is still burned, and Americans are still being murdered.

If these conflagarations do not demonstrate that the genesis of Islamic Jihad is within Islamic Jihad itself, nothing will.  An America afraid of its own shadow in the region and in the world will not mollify this -- it will only leave us more vulnerable to its explosive rage.

GOP 'Obstructionism'

Nancy Pelosi has penned an Op-Ed this morning repeating a meme the Democrats have grown comfortable using: The GOP Congress is obstructing the President's agenda and sacrificing America's economic well-being for its own political gain.

This trope is at one time two different things; both incomplete and false.

It is false because the Congress is only half-GOP. The Senate is in Democratic control and where jobs measures passed by the House as well as those submitted by the president have gone to die without so much as a vote.

The 'Obstructionist' claim is incomplete because it entirely ignores the fact that President Obama had super-majorities of his own party in both houses his first two years. To pass anything he wanted all he had to do was hold Democrats together.

This he did, passing the stimulus and Obamacare on strictly partly-line votes. Aside from Cap-&-Trade, this was the President's agenda. Not liking it, voters awarded the GOP it's best mid-term since the New Deal.

Apparently what they wanted was a little obstruction.

Tax or No?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

The sublime verse of Shakespeare comes as scant but welcome compensation to all of us who will endure the tedious semantical debate over whether Obamacare's individual mandate is actually a tax or not everyday until November 6th.

Whether it is or it isn't, Juliet's assertion is apposite here: By whatever name you want to call it (a "tax", "penalty", or "fee"), the fundamental issue is that the individual mandate -- and Obamacare, in general -- constitutes an additional expense on both individual Americans and businesses.

The contest over whether it is a "tax" or not is simply whether this fact is enveloped in a fatty layer of euphemism or not.

Political Money & the Wisconsin Recall

Liberals who beat their chests and gnashed their teeth about the dispositive role money played in the Wisconsin recall were not wrong – they just were not right in the manner they thought they were right.

Money, as it happens, was not the reason Gov. Walker survived and the Democratic-public-employee union nexus failed. The evidence was all but conclusive at least a month beforehand that the recall effort was going to fail. Out-of-state liberal interests – struggling to raise as much money as they had the last quadrennial – were understandably loathe to commit resources to a lost cause. Neither was President Obama – mired in an intense state of political vulnerability in his reelection campaign – willing to expend his own personal capital to a cause with little chance of success to recommend itself. Gov. Walker and his allies had and spent more money because they had a decided advantage going in. Groups and individuals throw their money at winners, not losers.

The financial disparity between the two sides was thus not a cause but a symptom.

The role money did in fact play in the Wisconsin recall was in its genesis, not its fate. Liberals who have and continue to declare that big money in politics is an evil that bested them willfully ignore the fact that the reason they pursued the recall in the first place was to preserve their own big money source: unions and, specifically, public-sector employee unions. These have been a cash cow for the Democratic Party for decades and Gov. Walker's reforms, which curtail the ability of these unions to fleece taxpayers for over-generous compensation and benefits, threaten that milk-source as never before.

In other words, the cycle of public-sector unions spending millions to elect Democrats, who then give public employees too much compensation, who then fill their unions' coffers with more money, who then spend that money to elect more Democrats, has been ended, or at least abridged, by the Wisconsin reforms.

That is what the recall was about and where big money actually came into play within it.

The Obamacare Decision

President Obama and the minority of Americans who support Obamacare can take heart that the Supreme Court declined to strike it down today.

That is all they can (or should at least) take heart in.

In denying that Obamacare is permissible under the federal government's Commerce Clause powers, as the administration argued, future expanses of federal power will be, at the very least, made problematic or, at most, headed off altogether. For the first time in decades (since the New Deal really), the Court has rejected Congress' and the President's attempt to sophistically use the Commerce Clause as an empty vessel justifying any and every expanse of the federal government's scope. For future enhancements of the welfare state, something else will be needed to achieve a pretense of constitutionality.

This is a longer-term effect of today's ruling though.

More immediate and more consequential is the finding that the Individual Mandate is justified – and only justified – as a tax pursuant to Congress' taxing and spending powers. Setting aside the constitutional merit of this conclusion, politically it is an endorsement of Obamacare that in all likelihood will be its ultimate demise.

President Obama ran for office promising not to raise taxes. (He also promised a "net spending cut", which the ACA most definitively is not). When Obamacare was being debated he and his surrogates insisted the Individual Mandate was not a tax. Yet the only reason it lives – for now – is as a tax.

Running for reelection then, his signature legislative achievement – already a deeply unpopular expanse of federal power into health-care – has now also been labeled a tax – one of the largest tax increases in American history, no less.

Already struggling to keep even with his opponent and desperate to shift focus away from his record, that much more weight has now been thrown onto the president's back. A deeply unpopular law – the source of the Democratic Party's worst midterm in a century – is now also a massive tax increase. As of today, it is also the paramount issue in this campaign.

Privately the president and his reelection team are all too aware of this. (Conspicuous in his remarks after the decision was a plea that it was now time to "move forward", i.e. to not talk about it anymore.) One cannot help but wonder if, after reading the Chief Justice's opinion, they did not feel much like one of those old Looney Toons characters that has just been handed a gift-wrapped "present" of five sticks of dynamite.

Though it lives past today, after today the likelihood of Obama and Obamacare both being replaced in and immediately after the election are measurably greater.

Greece as Destiny

Unaltered on our current path, we can see the future that awaits us in the social, economic and political disintegration spreading through Greece and, slowly but surely, much of the rest of Europe.

Our problem will be that, unlike Greece, who are we to turn to for a bailout when that day of reckoning comes?

'Spiking the Football'

Not only is President Obama's OBL ad blatantly hypocritical -- having so righteously stressed the importance of not "spiking the football" after his death -- and absurd (who wouldn't have given the order to take out bin Laden?), but it raises a question that not many will ask and whose answer is obvious: What would be the political fallout if a Republican president had questioned his Democratic opponent in that way? I get a headache just thinking about the hyperventilating outrage about questioned patriotism and using national security for political gain.

Oil Exploration

As the Left counters demands for more domestic oil exploration and production with, among other points, the length of time it will take to come online, it's important to keep two things in mind. One, oil production will come online much more quickly than any "alternative" energies the Left dreams of and two, when conservatives called for oil exploration in ANWR the Left said it would take ten years to come online... That was ten years ago.

GOP Turnout

While turnout in Iowa & New Hampshire slightly exceeded levels set four years ago, it was not as high as party luminaries were expecting/hoping.

This may be because Republican enthusiasm this cycle is not as high as first thought. Or, it just may be that the figure that most excites Republicans has not yet appeared on a ballot.

When he does, I suspect GOP turnout will cease to be an issue.

Bain & Romney

Being attacked over his tenure at Bain is a blessing for Romney.

For one, in a Republican primary being criticized for a successful business tenure is unlikely to sting. Republicans are not envious nor anti-capitalist. They prize business acumen and believe that government would be much more effective if run like a business.

If anything, a campaign narrative centered around Romney's Bain experience emphasizes his largest conservative bona fides and pushes him even closer to the nomination.

While this is happening, Romney also gets some free-time to develop an effective narrative of his experience at Bain and how it recommends him as a presidential candidate in the general election. It is no secret that Bain will be the focus of President Obama's purely negative re-election campaign, and so the earlier Romney develops a message on it the better.

Plus, the more Bain is the topic now the less it will be relevant when it comes time for Obama and the Left to attack it.

Iowa, Almost

It is essentially the eve of the Iowa caucuses and it is quite possible that the difference between the winner and the fourth-place finisher will be as little as ten points.

Such a result benefits two candidates: Gov. Romney and Sen. Santorum.

For the former, a win, however small, will leave him having taken a state he had not invested his campaign in going into another state in which he has a commanding lead.  Two wins in the first two contests going into South Carolina and Florida will constitute a sense of inevitability the rest of the field will be hard-pressed to overcome.  Gov. Romney will be the winner in a party desperate to win come November.  That means a lot.

A third place/15-18% finish for Sen. Santorum will mean that, unlike the other anti-Romneys who have sizzled and then subsequently fizzled months before any votes were cast, he is peaking at just the right time.  I doubt it would be enough to launch him past the apparent Romney coalescence, but it would position him to be the beneficiary should there be a late, desperate movement among conservatives to stop Gov. Romney.  (It's much more likely that, at that point, Republicans will get in line and set their sights squarely on defeating President Obama next fall, but you never know.)

Payroll Tax Extension

Substantively the House GOP is right: a two month extension is impractical, non-stimulative policy.

Politically, they lose too much and gain nothing from holding out for a year-long extension, at least not without approving the two-month version first.

The best thing to do at this point is let Obama-Senate Democrats hang themselves with their own rope: adopting another piece of legislation that will do nothing to encourage recovery of a stagnant economy of which they are complete owners.

We tried to do the right thing. See you in November.

A More German Europe

Fears of a "Fourth Reich" are not commensurate with a desire to save the EU from impending implosion.  The only way to save said Union -- for a time at least -- is for a common assumption of the overly indebted members' obligations.  The country with the resources to do this is Germany, meaning a common assumption of everyone's debt is a German assumption.

Germany will not agree to this without Brussels first receiving a veto over members' budgets -- nor should they.  Berlin will dictate the terms by which Brussels will enforce austerity on Greece, Spain, Portugal etc. as a precondition to Berlin underwriting all their debt.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The state of affairs in Europe will thus be Germany both subsidizing other nations and determining what their budgets and finance policies are to look like.

A European Union hence will be a Europe dominated in every relevant facet by Germany.  It is either that or disintegration.

Those countries who would be so subservient must decide if a total loss of self-determination and sovereignty is a price worth paying for a common currency that does not even benefit them.

Egypt & the 'Arab Spring'

Popular unrest has once again boiled over in Tahrir Square, directed in like manner at Mubarak's successors as it was at Mubarak.

Indeed, the fundamentals beneath the facially disparate circumstances are the same and must cause any but the wildly optimistic (or delusional) to question whether the "Arab Spring" is not really just a continuation of a centuries-long Arab Winter.

In the Land of the Pharoahs, as with most of the Arab world, the condition is autocracy -- the strong leveraging their strength to both seize and retain power.  To such an end all means are necessary.

For Mubarak the means were the "emergency laws" enacted (then never rescinded) in the confusion following Sadat's assassination.  For the generals it was Mubarak's ouster, encouraged by their heartfelt promises to be a faithful caretaker until Egyptian democracy went online.

Unsurprisingly, they are now reluctant to cede power, or to step aside without at least a strong guarantee of their continued place of privilige within Egyptian state and society.

To expect the Muslim Brotherhood, or whatever name Islamists choose to call themselves, to behave differently if and when they do assume power is, at best, naive.

The hope for democracy and a pluralistic society along the Nile is frustrated by this culture of power -- of using the most power to gain power and to secure power. 

Not only is this the way it has always been done, but in their efforts to preserve their power Egypt's rulers have always suppressed any and all civic elements that could possibly challenge their autocratic hold.  The upshot is that any kind of meaningful civil society is absent, leaving the Egyptian people feckless before the power struggles between the military on one hand and Islamists on the other.

Democracy, pluralism, and rights of the minority simply have no weight with which to throw a punch or the wherewithal to counter those thrown by the powers that be.

If anything in the Arab world is changing, it is simply the tools of oppression changing from the hands of tyrants to those who wield Islam's sword.

The long winter continues.

OWS, Still

The public's tolerance for OWS, as measured in opinion polling, is running out.

Surprising, this is not.

Weeks after these occupations began, nothing new has really developed from them.  No cause to action, no demands, no political organization.  They are just there, camped out in their own refuse, angry at an abject percentile.  To the extent that there was a point to be made it has been made.  Now they are are just occupying space.

Also, a populace that has endured sustained economic hardship for years now is entirely likely to show some empathy towards a movement fueled by economic grievance, however Marxist and misdirected it may be.  But once that movement, comprised of people who are generally not in search of gainful employment, begins to interfere with people and the pursuit of their own, empathy, sympathy and any other residue of common-cause quickly evaporate, replaced in their turn by anger, contempt and intolerance.

This is what OWS is becoming: a pointless, obstructive social nuisance.

Soon may it wither under the weight of the coming winter cold and wet.

Taxing or Spending?

As everyone mourns the failure of the Super Committee to achieve a grand bargain that would have saved the republic (not that anyone could have plausibly expected them to succeed; they wail for partisan positioning), we must all ask ourselves a fairly simple yet impactful question: Are we on the road to bankruptcy because we do not tax enough or because we spend too much?