As a result of legislation that can’t be paid for, increasing debt rising into the $trillions, unemployment rate stuck at about 10% (over 30 million people out of work), racial and class divisiveness, and RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) going along with this destructiveness, there’s a grass roots revolt happening.
The TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party Movement started a couple years ago to bring public awareness to the need for limited government and lower taxes. That in turn has put RINO’s in a losing position, and they don’t like it at all. The Statist Democrats can only resort to character assassination, malicious defamation, and negative campaigning. RINO’s recently have been doing the same to Conservatives and the TEA Party movement because their jobs and power are just as threatened. Not only will the Democrats be voted out this coming November, but a lot of RINO’s will be too.
There’s a big kerfuffle going on in the Republican Party, and some talking heads that have been identified as Conservative Republicans, namely Karl Rove (GW Bush’s campaign manager) and Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, have sided with the RINO's. Christine O’Donnell, an inexperienced politician beat out a RINO, Mike Castle, in the Delaware
The counter attack against Rove, Krauthammer and the rest of the RINO’s and weak kneed conservatives have backfired with a vengeance. Conservatives don’t want Liberals with an “R” for Republican behind their name that vote with Democrats, and want to get along with the Statists. Castle is a prime example; he mostly votes with the Democrats. Rove, Krauthammer and the rest seem to think that an unreliable Statist is preferable to a Conservative because the Statist is more likely to win in the general election this coming November. Then they’ll mostly vote Statist, with the Democrats, and that’s a good thing?
O’Donnell, within 48 hours after her win, had over $750 million donated to her campaign in small donations from all over the US
Here’s a little history of what RINO’s have done in Congress. The major ones are Arlen Spector, Olympia Snowe, Jim Jeffords, and Susan Collins. Jim Jeffords cost Republicans the Senate when he accepted bribes from the Democrats and changed his party affiliation to Independent. Obama’s stimulus packages could have been successfully filibustered and stopped in the Senate by Republicans (unsuccessful packages that has run up the national debt by $trillions), but Snowe, Collins and Spector voted with the Democrats. This kind of thing has been going on for years, and Conservatives are fed up with it.
The question becomes why do people that identify themselves as Conservatives think running a liberal Republican against a liberal Democrat is a winner. They will vote with the Statists, so what’s the point? We have reached a crossroads, and I think the general public is beginning to notice that the Conservative message of low taxes and limited government works, that deficit spending, anti-business, high tax, top down government control doesn't. It’s just not practical.
A bit of a side note. Not one Democrat that is up for reelection that voted for the Obama\Democrat health care bill are campaigning mentioning that vote.
There’s a revolution happening in America
Viva la Revolucion!
Thanks for posting such an informative (particularly for our non-American readers) and interesting post, Steven. I think you did a great job here!
ReplyDeleteI would just like to make one thing clear, on behalf of non-American readers, with regard to the use of the term “Socialist.” After reading your post, a Swedish Facebook friend of mine, Eva, argued that she “can't see how Obama could be a socialist.” “He is far from it,” she said, “rather he is some kind of social liberal, in the spirit of John Stuart Mill.”
And this is how I replied to her:
Eva, the author of this blog post is an American friend of mine and a regular and highly appreciated contributor to my own blog. I think that Obama is perhaps the closest thing to a Socialist that the American mind can tolerate (he is certainly the closest thing to a Socialist that has ever been a president in the USA). For us Europeans, in an European perspective, Obama is probably more to the left than a German Christian Democrat and more to the right than a German Social Democrat or a British Labour Party member. As always, it’s a question of perspective.
Obama’s attack on the free market began long ago. Legal documents, news articles, and videos show his part in causing this crisis over the past fifteen years. Now he uses it as an excuse to do even more damage. To him, our free enterprise system is a beast that he and his allies have succeeded in wounding. Your choices as a consumer select quality and virtue over shoddy workmanship, selecting against the product of laziness and poor attitudes, which he represents. So the Obamabots, having won, are still seething with hatred for their opponents. Having wounded the beast they are now closing in for the kill. The recovery of our free market economy is not their objective. They would replace it with something else, where they imagine that losers don’t loose out to their betters. So their policies are only making matters worse. They want revenge for the unfairness they perceive in the free market.
ReplyDeleteI take more seriously the claim that Obama is a socialist than the claim that Bush was a fascist.
ReplyDeleteMerriam-Webster defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime . . . that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."
M-W defines socialism as "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
Calling Bush a fascist is flatly false; his philosophy and administration met none of the criteria in the definition. Calling Obama a socialist, by contrast, is merely a gross overstatement.
Good point, Martin. But I’m not sure about the Merriam-Webster definition of the term “Socialism” as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” I mean, it’s “technically” correct stricto sensu, but we both know that there have been—and still there are—many “sub-categories” of Socialism, e.g. Communism, Social Democracy, Liberal Socialism, etc. I’d also include the so-called “Third Way” (Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair), of which I used to be a fan—until I realized that it was somehow self-contradictory, and that both Blair and Giddens had almost nothing to do with the old Labour Party and the traditional Left, and that’s why I had to acknowledge that it would be more honest to admit that I was a moderate-Conservative, and this just because I was a “Blairite” …
ReplyDeleteThat’s also why I think that calling Obama a Socialist is not that much of an overstatement. There is much confusion about what is meant by terms such as Liberal, Socialist, Left. In other words, if Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and Anthony Giddens’ Third Way are what they say they are, then Barack Obama may well be a Socialist… and I am a Leftist!