Some Political Predictions - You Heard 'Em Here First, Folks
Now Playing: "Stick it Out" by the Men of Willowdale, from Counterparts, 1993
No crystal ball, no ouija board, no Al Gore whispering his Revealed Truths in my ear, just some prognostication based on philosophy and the simple patterns of recent history. See if you agree:
Prediction #1: If the GOP doesn't hammer out and announce - very soon - a radical, focused and committed agenda to privatize and deregulate American medicine, then stick to it without compromise, there WILL be socialized medicine in America, á la Canada or the UK (where things like "self-dentistry" have become all the rage.)
The Democrat-Socialist Left have demonstrated conclusively that they are in this for the long haul - having just regurgitated a new SCHIT bill a mere matter of days after their first was rejected via a sustained veto. It's clear they have no interest in identifying and eliminating the root of the current "crisis" in government controls. For the Democrat-Socialists this is not about quality medical care for Americans, it's about the acquisition of political power for themselves, in perpetuity.
It's clear they intend to stop at nothing short of Clinton Care - a.k.a. health care nationalization - and absent principled opposition from the GOP, they will get it. The Demo-Socialists know that the (current) GOP typically compromise and cave on principle over time, so all they need do is continue chipping away at the few remaining private elements in the medical industry, and their patience will be rewarded by GOP default.
Note to the GOP in office and running for office: The defensive posture is no longer adequate, and "adequate" was never conscionable in the first place. Unless you get together as a team, hammer out and strike back with a proposal as radical in the direction of free markets as the Leftists' plans are in the direction of de facto fascism... the latter will be a Done Deal. We cannot allow that to happen, not if we value our continued physical existence.
Frankly, I remain amazed - though not surprised - at the in-your-face barbarity of the Democrat-Socialists in this nationalization push. The very notion that government has a "right" to take over something as intensely personal as the care and maintenance of my own physical body is contemptible. But history has shown that when governments engage in violating the property rights of citizens for decades, the attempt to violate the last, most direct property each of us has - our own physical bodies - is inevitable.
We must plot a course directly opposite that of the Demo-Socialists. We must fight for a complete Separation of Medicine and State - on ethical grounds.
Prediction #2: If Rudy Giuliani is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, Giuliani will win decisively, probably by a landslide. Whatever votes he loses to the myopic and destructive vestiges of the religious right, he will gain ten times over from Independents and (genuine) Democrats who are as disgusted with the Clinton/Reid/Obama/Pelosi/Boxer crazies as the rest of us. Recall that Clinton's negative approval numbers are breaking records while approval of the new Democrat-controlled Congress has been at a record-low 11% for two months running.
As for the GOP: Given that none of the GOP candidates is on a par with Reagan - easily the closest we've come to principled leadership in the last 50 years - the next best choice is a placeholder who at least appears committed to fighting the foreign barbarians who want to destroy us, and who will not turn the SCotUS into a mirror of the lunatic-left Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. IOW, in the absence of a candidate of consistent principle, and with frothing statist maniacs as the certain alternative, a pragmatic choice is all that's left to the...non-Left, and Giuliani will have to do.
Prediction #3: If Fred Thompson is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, the spread will be narrower - Giuliani enjoys a cross-partisan popularity that Thompson does not - but Thompson will still win a decisive victory.
The problem with Thompson is an echo of the problem at the core of the contemporary GOP: a conflict between a stated embrace of altruist ethics on the one hand, and on the other, the pressing need to shut down copious quantities of altruism-fueled Big Government institutions and edicts. As such, his campaign has been muted and lacking any kind of decisive ideological punch. As I wrote in a letter to the Fred'08 site, "How do you propose to effect any significant Reaganesque downsizing of that bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig that is our government, if your ethical credo is precisely the same as that used to impose that 'alphabet soup' leviathan in the first place?" Whether Thompson will reject that hoary, collectivist "sacrifice for the greater good" lingo in favor of an unequivocal defense of individualism remains to be seen. Even with that rot, however, he still handily defeats Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton.
If you guessed that I believe Clinton to be unelectable you'd be 90% correct: Unless the GOP defaults spectacularly with some late-hour intellectual sellout, with some "October surprise" scandal, or...
Prediction #4: If Mitt Romney is nominated as the GOP candidate, the next President of the United States will be a Democrat-Socialist. Period. Trust me on this. The man reeks of RINOism and everybody knows it but the Romney camp, the religious conservatives, and talk radio host Hugh Hewitt (one of his staunchest backers.) Romney is Bush III, only with better speaking skills and a better barber. He would not sell America and Western Civilization down the river like a Democrat-Socialist, but his default on key principles would effect the same thing over time. That's if he somehow got elected. Romney is the embodiment of everything voters tossed out of Congress on its compromising, Big-Government-Conservative arse in November of 2006, and I think it's readily apparent. Like any other RINO, Romney is a non-starter with the GOP base - at least those who plan on voting for a President of the United States, not Pastor of the National Church.
Moral of the Story: The GOP have this to win or to lose, and any bright nine-year-old could blow any current Democrat out of the water in the 2008 Campaign. But the GOP will have to go on the offense, not lounge around on defense. In other words, lampooning the Democrat-Socialist Party's lunacies is not enough.
They must propose a Republican agenda that aggressively counters the Democrat dry-rot that's been allowed to fester in American government, law and society for decades. That means we will need to hear more than "Wel-l-l-l, we could maybe sorta try to control the rate of growth of Federal spending..." and "Wel-l-l-l, the health care industry maybe should be unshackled, but...we can't be 'ham-fisted extremists,' now can we..."
We need to hear some solid Reaganism: Radical reductions in the size and scope of government power and of all government institutions not directly related to the defense of individual rights (i.e., the armed forces, the police and the courts); We need to hear some concrete proposals for regulatory review and sweeping repeal on a government-wide scale.
I will post some specifics on this eventually, but when you get right down to it, I shouldn't have to. Everybody knows that Big Government is out of control, but our political "leaders" are too frightened of negative press - or the dread labels of "ham-fisted extremist!" and "mean-spiritedness!" to even identify the problem, much less its sole solution.
Frankly, I don't know what's more exasperating:
a.) The fact that the patently obvious - the ethics and practicality of private, independent, free institutions - is still getting edged out in the battle for liberty by the threadbare yet historically-deadly toxin that is collectivism;
or...
b.) The fact that default on the part of those who are supposed to understand individual liberty, uphold individual liberty and defend individual liberty - i.e., the GOP leadership - is the primary reason for liberty's disintegration in America.
Get with it, guys. If you can't beat a mental midget like Dolores Umbridge Clinton, you're in the wrong line of work.
No crystal ball, no ouija board, no Al Gore whispering his Revealed Truths in my ear, just some prognostication based on philosophy and the simple patterns of recent history. See if you agree:
Prediction #1: If the GOP doesn't hammer out and announce - very soon - a radical, focused and committed agenda to privatize and deregulate American medicine, then stick to it without compromise, there WILL be socialized medicine in America, á la Canada or the UK (where things like "self-dentistry" have become all the rage.)
The Democrat-Socialist Left have demonstrated conclusively that they are in this for the long haul - having just regurgitated a new SCHIT bill a mere matter of days after their first was rejected via a sustained veto. It's clear they have no interest in identifying and eliminating the root of the current "crisis" in government controls. For the Democrat-Socialists this is not about quality medical care for Americans, it's about the acquisition of political power for themselves, in perpetuity.
It's clear they intend to stop at nothing short of Clinton Care - a.k.a. health care nationalization - and absent principled opposition from the GOP, they will get it. The Demo-Socialists know that the (current) GOP typically compromise and cave on principle over time, so all they need do is continue chipping away at the few remaining private elements in the medical industry, and their patience will be rewarded by GOP default.
Note to the GOP in office and running for office: The defensive posture is no longer adequate, and "adequate" was never conscionable in the first place. Unless you get together as a team, hammer out and strike back with a proposal as radical in the direction of free markets as the Leftists' plans are in the direction of de facto fascism... the latter will be a Done Deal. We cannot allow that to happen, not if we value our continued physical existence.
Frankly, I remain amazed - though not surprised - at the in-your-face barbarity of the Democrat-Socialists in this nationalization push. The very notion that government has a "right" to take over something as intensely personal as the care and maintenance of my own physical body is contemptible. But history has shown that when governments engage in violating the property rights of citizens for decades, the attempt to violate the last, most direct property each of us has - our own physical bodies - is inevitable.
We must plot a course directly opposite that of the Demo-Socialists. We must fight for a complete Separation of Medicine and State - on ethical grounds.
Prediction #2: If Rudy Giuliani is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, Giuliani will win decisively, probably by a landslide. Whatever votes he loses to the myopic and destructive vestiges of the religious right, he will gain ten times over from Independents and (genuine) Democrats who are as disgusted with the Clinton/Reid/Obama/Pelosi/Boxer crazies as the rest of us. Recall that Clinton's negative approval numbers are breaking records while approval of the new Democrat-controlled Congress has been at a record-low 11% for two months running.
As for the GOP: Given that none of the GOP candidates is on a par with Reagan - easily the closest we've come to principled leadership in the last 50 years - the next best choice is a placeholder who at least appears committed to fighting the foreign barbarians who want to destroy us, and who will not turn the SCotUS into a mirror of the lunatic-left Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. IOW, in the absence of a candidate of consistent principle, and with frothing statist maniacs as the certain alternative, a pragmatic choice is all that's left to the...non-Left, and Giuliani will have to do.
Prediction #3: If Fred Thompson is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, the spread will be narrower - Giuliani enjoys a cross-partisan popularity that Thompson does not - but Thompson will still win a decisive victory.
The problem with Thompson is an echo of the problem at the core of the contemporary GOP: a conflict between a stated embrace of altruist ethics on the one hand, and on the other, the pressing need to shut down copious quantities of altruism-fueled Big Government institutions and edicts. As such, his campaign has been muted and lacking any kind of decisive ideological punch. As I wrote in a letter to the Fred'08 site, "How do you propose to effect any significant Reaganesque downsizing of that bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig that is our government, if your ethical credo is precisely the same as that used to impose that 'alphabet soup' leviathan in the first place?" Whether Thompson will reject that hoary, collectivist "sacrifice for the greater good" lingo in favor of an unequivocal defense of individualism remains to be seen. Even with that rot, however, he still handily defeats Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton.
If you guessed that I believe Clinton to be unelectable you'd be 90% correct: Unless the GOP defaults spectacularly with some late-hour intellectual sellout, with some "October surprise" scandal, or...
Prediction #4: If Mitt Romney is nominated as the GOP candidate, the next President of the United States will be a Democrat-Socialist. Period. Trust me on this. The man reeks of RINOism and everybody knows it but the Romney camp, the religious conservatives, and talk radio host Hugh Hewitt (one of his staunchest backers.) Romney is Bush III, only with better speaking skills and a better barber. He would not sell America and Western Civilization down the river like a Democrat-Socialist, but his default on key principles would effect the same thing over time. That's if he somehow got elected. Romney is the embodiment of everything voters tossed out of Congress on its compromising, Big-Government-Conservative arse in November of 2006, and I think it's readily apparent. Like any other RINO, Romney is a non-starter with the GOP base - at least those who plan on voting for a President of the United States, not Pastor of the National Church.
Moral of the Story: The GOP have this to win or to lose, and any bright nine-year-old could blow any current Democrat out of the water in the 2008 Campaign. But the GOP will have to go on the offense, not lounge around on defense. In other words, lampooning the Democrat-Socialist Party's lunacies is not enough.
They must propose a Republican agenda that aggressively counters the Democrat dry-rot that's been allowed to fester in American government, law and society for decades. That means we will need to hear more than "Wel-l-l-l, we could maybe sorta try to control the rate of growth of Federal spending..." and "Wel-l-l-l, the health care industry maybe should be unshackled, but...we can't be 'ham-fisted extremists,' now can we..."
We need to hear some solid Reaganism: Radical reductions in the size and scope of government power and of all government institutions not directly related to the defense of individual rights (i.e., the armed forces, the police and the courts); We need to hear some concrete proposals for regulatory review and sweeping repeal on a government-wide scale.
I will post some specifics on this eventually, but when you get right down to it, I shouldn't have to. Everybody knows that Big Government is out of control, but our political "leaders" are too frightened of negative press - or the dread labels of "ham-fisted extremist!" and "mean-spiritedness!" to even identify the problem, much less its sole solution.
Frankly, I don't know what's more exasperating:
a.) The fact that the patently obvious - the ethics and practicality of private, independent, free institutions - is still getting edged out in the battle for liberty by the threadbare yet historically-deadly toxin that is collectivism;
or...
b.) The fact that default on the part of those who are supposed to understand individual liberty, uphold individual liberty and defend individual liberty - i.e., the GOP leadership - is the primary reason for liberty's disintegration in America.
Get with it, guys. If you can't beat a mental midget like Dolores Umbridge Clinton, you're in the wrong line of work.
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