Global Warming and GOP Politics

By Alan Caruba

Here’s a handy guide to the campaigns to be the Republican candidate in 2012. Any effort to advance the “global warming” hoax, discredited since 2009 when it was revealed that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change computer models were all rigged, should disqualify a candidate from serious consideration.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is already well ahead of his GOP competitors for the nomination and has actually passed President Obama in a recent poll regarding the voter’s choice in 2012. Much of this can be attributed to his attack on Obama’s failure to stimulate job creation, but his position doubting “global warming” is a contributing factor.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann has also voiced doubts about “global warming”, but it is former Gov. Mitt Romney who is likely to be the biggest loser on the topic.

It is comical that former Vice President Al Gore, the face of the “global warming” fraud, chimed in back in June to endorse Romney’s “global warming” position. He praised Romney for not heeding, according to Politico.com, “right-wing calls to reject the science behind climate change.” There is no valid science behind “global warming” and never was. Climate change is something that has been on-going for the last 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence.

The great Flip-Flopper, Romney will prove the biggest loser. At an August town hall meeting in New Hampshire he was asked whether he believed that “global warming” was real and he responded by saying he didn’t know. “Do I think the world’s getting hotter,” he asked rhetorically. “Yeah, I don’t know that but I think it is”, adding that “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.”

He doesn't know much on the subject, does he? Well, Mitt, here's a tip, the Earth has been in a perfectly natural cooling cycle since 1998. Suffice to say, humans have nothing to do with its climate and it should be worrying that Romney doesn’t know this.

Worse yet, Romney said “I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and global warming you’re seeing.” Wrong on all counts!

Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah and Obama appointee as ambassador to China, is also in the GOP race, though most Republicans are probably unaware of this. He recently tweated that, “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy. Okay, Jon, you’re crazy. To be this massively uninformed and misinformed at this date rules you out of consideration.

I do not know the other fading GOP candidates’ position on “global warming”, but I suspect most of them, if they want any chance to capture the nomination, will flee from suggesting there is a shred of truth to it. At least I hope so.

It should be a factor in the GOP choice because the “global warming” hoax has been the cause of legislative initiatives that have cost Americans billions over the course of many years.

As for President Obama, we know all too well that he has been in the tank for “global warming” along with most environmental claims. For a multiplicity of reasons, he has to GO.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Global Warming and GOP Politics

Washington's Magical Thinking

By Alan Caruba

The term, “magical thinking”, has been around a while to describe what individuals do to cope with the vicissitudes of life. I, for example, regularly buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket in the hope of winning when, logically, rationally, I know the odds are millions to one of that ever happening.

Magical thinking can be found in all aspects of life and it is surely magical thinking that caused America’s politicians, starting back around the turn of the last century, to believe that a really big government could take care of everyone when, prior to that, self reliance, support from the family structure, and hard work were the early guiding principles.

Indeed, the U.S. Constitution is testimony to the Founding Father’s intense distrust of a centralized government—hence checks and balances—and the fallibility of individuals entrusted with power over others. It turns out they were right because now there is no aspect of our lives into which government does not intrude.

A lot of this can be traced to the rise of Communism, the handiwork of Karl Marx, and its adaptation into Socialism, a modified form. In 1917 Russia had Communism imposed on it during the Bolshevik Revolution as the antidote to the rule of the czars. In time it utterly failed, but few have taken a lesson from that. It wreaked havoc and death on Russians for over seventy years.

Indeed, throughout the last century, wars were required to defeat various forms of totalitarian rule. Even the Peoples Republic of China eventually embraced its own form of Capitalism while retaining power in the hands of a centralized government.

Communism is a kind of magical thinking based on collectivism that always seems to come back to a handful of men ruling by coercion.

In 1908, the Socialist Party nominated Eugene V. Debs to run for president. A dedicated unionist, Debs had studied Marxism while in jail. What he believed then is still prevalent today. “When I joined the Socialist Party,” said Debs in accepting the nomination, “I was taught that the wish of the individual was subordinate to the party will, and that when the party commanded it was my duty to obey.”

“I am not satisfied with things as they are,” said Debs, “and I know that no matter what administration is in power, even were it a Socialist administration, there will be no material change in the condition of the people until we have a new social system based upon the mutual economic interests of the people; until you and I and all of us collectively own those things that we collectively need and use.” Debs was soundly defeated.

The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, brought socialism to its zenith of power in America. He remained in office from 1933 until his death in 1945. Social Security is collectivism. Medicare and Medicaid is collectivism. Government “make work” programs are collectivism.

A government that owns an auto company is collectivism. A government that can shut down oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is collectivism. A government that decides how much mileage the car you buy must achieve is collectivism. A government that thwarts the building of new utilities to meet the needs of a growing population and then instructs people to reduce their use of electricity is collectivism.

And a government that believes it can continue to borrow and borrow and borrow from the rest of the world to maintain sixty percent of its annual budget for “entitlement programs” is engaged in magical thinking.

It is magical thinking to believe that the same ratings organizations, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, should be trusted. They both granted top grades to the “government entities”, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which plunged the nation into a huge financial crisis. Indeed, the rating organizations never saw the implosion of Wall Street institutions coming until billions in public funds were needed to keep a complete collapse from occurring.

Spending more to get out of debt is magical thinking and yet that is the only “plan” the Democrats and the President offer the public. A July 25 Wall Street Journal editorial, “Toying with Default”, provided an insight to this saying, “Here’s a number for the debt history books: Mr. Obama’s final offer in the Biden talks was a $2 billion cut in 2012 discretionary spending. The federal government spends more than $10 billion a day.”

At a time when European nations are imposing major austerity programs, the Republican Party is charged with having to save the nation from a Democrat Party that has reluctantly concluded that a reduction in spending is necessary and increase in taxes is not achievable..

As a nation, if we are to survive, we must disengage ourselves from a century of “progressive” programs that are not based in reality. Debts must be paid. Entitlement programs must be revised and eventually abandoned. Government must be reduced in size and scope. Private enterprise must be set free to function and thrive.

Earlier generations fought a Revolution to free ourselves from the British monarchy and parliament. Earlier generations fought a Civil War to preserve the Union. A present-day older generation of Americans fought two major wars against totalitarian governments and lesser ones in Korea, Vietnam, and most recently in Iraq.

The present generation of Americans must empower Republicans in Congress to save the nation from the errors of the past, the wild spending, and the confiscatory effort to “transform” the nation into a collectivist society that mirrors failed “progressive”, Communist and Socialist thinking and programs.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Washington's Magical Thinking

Republican Russian Roulette

By Alan Caruba

I have a friend who thinks the ghost of Bob Dole is stalking the Republican Party and Dole isn’t even dead! What he means, of course, is that, at this point, the present batch of candidates are not that inspiring. The Party needs to articulate a distinct, conservative agenda and have the guts to stick with it.

For the record, Dole ran with President Gerald Ford as his vice presidential choice and together they lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Later he ran as the GOP candidate for president in 1996 and lost to Bill Clinton.

The latest example of the GOP’s knack for second string candidates is Newt Gingrich.who is a former Speaker of the House. While he was president Bill Clinton ran circles around Newt.

Newt’s most recognizable characteristic is to seek accommodation with opponents of his political views. Instead of staking out a definitive conservation platform, Newt has always been too eager to "get along" with the opposition—shades of John McCain who also lost a campaign to be president.

A patsy, Newt is the smartest kid in the school who no one wants on their team. In essence, he has abandoned Republican issues in his quest for the presidency and forgotten that he is a Republican who is expected to oppose Obamacare, avoid talking nonsense about the environment, and not adopt the rest of the liberal agenda.

Republican voters are hungry for someone who unabashedly opposes the size of the federal government, the billions it borrows and wastes every day, the funding of Planned Parenthood, and comparable issues. They want to build a great big fence on our Southern border. They want us to drill for our own oil.

The flurry of interest that Donald Trump evoked came simply from his willingness to yell at President Obama loud enough to get him to put out another phony birth certificate. Only the hopelessly naïve thought he would actually run.

Conversely, everyone expected Mitt Romney to run, but instead of shedding the millstone of Romneycare, he defended it! It’s a flip of the coin as to who has flip-flopped more on issues, Romney or Obama. Still, if you were a movie director casting the role of president, wouldn’t you pick Romney?

Masseurs Santorum and Pawlenty suffer the Dole/McCain problem. They give all the right, safe answers, but they are not loudly sounding the alarms about four more years of Obama. Ron Paul is trotting out his mixture of good and bizarre notions. If he’s a “serious” candidate, it is only for the lonely Libertarians longing to legalize marijuana and bring Muslim combatants to justice after reading them their Miranda Rights.

Rumor says Michelle Bachmann will get into the race and, having had Sarah Palin on the ticket in the last election, one might think that Republican enthusiasm for a woman candidate might have waned by now. Bachmann’s smart and articulate. She can’t win the White House.

By contrast, a virtual unknown non-politician, Herman Cain, is making a very good initial showing.

Of course, Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and ambassador to China, would be every Democrat’s choice as a Republican President if for no other reason than he joined that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Western Climate Initiative, chasing the illusive global warming and advocating taxes on carbon dioxide emissions. Fortunately for the other candidates, he’s hired John McCain’s former campaign geniuses to craft his campaign. Can you spell l-o-s-e-r?

What Republicans have not noticed is that President Obama has rather neatly fulfilled nearly the entire agenda bequeathed to him by George W. Bush while, at the same time, blaming him for the Recession and everything else.

This isn’t “triangulation.” It is the wholesale absorbing of the other Party’s platform in an era when it is very difficult to tell the two parties apart. Obama is going to have to kill a whole bunch of al Qaeda big shots to keep his poll numbers from falling any further.

If this keeps up Republican political consultants will be praying the economy will be so bad by November 2012 that only crazed Dem-a-robots will vote for Obama, along with the teacher’s and other unions. To them, add 95% of the black vote and 80% of the Hispanics.

If independents decide to stay home, Obama could win. They won't. The Tea Party folk have not gone away.

My bet is that 2012 is like 2010 when the House changed hands. It could just be a total blowout and all the agonizing over the current crop of GOP candidates will seem silly in retrospect.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Republican Russian Roulette

Who the Hell is Reince Priebus?

By Alan Caruba

Okay, we have had two years of the token black man as the chairman of the Republican National Committee and it’s goodbye Michael Steele. Thanks for whatever, but the party’s broke and still has to raise a ton of cash for the 2012 elections. Bring in the white guy, Reince Priebus.

Reince Priebus? Who the hell is Reince Priebus? Well, for one thing he is the new RNC chairman. A former GOP leader in Wisconsin where the citizens were so totally fed up with the Democrats they voted in a score of Republicans. Priebus could and did take credit for it. Some say it was largely the Tea Party movement in Wisconsin that was responsible, but a win is a win.

Inside the Beltway Priebus is referred to as a “nuts and bolts” guy, another way of saying his job is to raise the money the RNC needs. Given that the Democrat candidate in 2012 will be Barack Hussein Obama that is not likely to be a problem.

I just sent the Republican National Committee my annual $25 contribution and my reward to be to get a call every two weeks for the rest of the year from the RNC asking for more. Believe it or not, I actually stop being unbelievably polite after the seventh or eighth call. No, really.

Of course, it is hardly my contribution that matters at this point. The real question is whether Wall Street will embrace the Republican Party and start backing whoever emerges as the GOP presidential candidate, along with the others.

As far as Wall Street is concerned it’s all about “access” to whoever might win and, aside from disliking Obama even more than he dislikes them, Wall Street has examined the tea (party) leaves and concluded Obama is, as the kids say, so over.

Beyond the money crowd there’s the business crowd and they have zero reason to back Obama unless they are solar panel and wind turbine manufacturers. Corporate America, with the exception of General Electric, is just sick of Obama and all the uncertainty he has created for them.

Obama and the Democrats have only two constituencies on which they can depend in 2012. One is the unions and the other is Afro-Americans. The Dems have a solid lock on the 25% to 30% of Americans who are so liberal they wish Obama, in addition to being black, was gay, a cross-dresser, trans-gendered, and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the USA.

Back to Priebus; in addition to having to raise a boatload of cash for the GOP, he has to worry about who gets selected to be its 2012 presidential candidate. His job is to remain neutral, but I’m betting he’s hoping it’s not the Great Straddler, Mitt Romney, capable of bestriding both sides of any issue.

The other reoccurring nightmare for Priebus is Sarah Palin. The Momma Grizzly says the right things for meat-eating, gun-shooting, fish-clubbing Republicans most of the time, but she would never get elected President.

Americans have tried electing a “novelty” with Obama and now they want a nice, old white man, but not too old as in John McCain. McCain spent so much time “crossing the aisle” they never knew where to seat him during a State of the Union speech.

There are, at this point, just way too many Republicans who want to be President and we shall have to wait for one of them to catch fire and ignite Republican passions.

In the end, it will be INDEPENDENTS who will defeat Obama in 2012 and elect, well, someone-anyone else.

I suppose, at this point, it doesn’t matter who Reince Priebus is unless he turns out to be as prone to making goofy public gaffs as the departing Michael Steele. If he does, all bets are off.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Who the Hell is Reince Priebus?

Election Fatigue

By Alan Caruba

It’s a lot like the marathon experience of “hitting the wall” when you have to push on to get to the finish line. It’s election fatigue.

Elections give media news people hundreds of hours to speculate, to evaluate, to discuss what is occurring in every district of every State, to report which candidate is ahead or behind, to trot out a new poll every day, until those who have probably made up their mind long before refuse to listen to another word.

There are, of course, thousands of words that follow an election and it must be said that the 2010 midterms were quite literally historic. As Karl Rove noted, “Tuesday’s election was epic. Republicans gained over 60 seats in the House and six in the Senate. They’ll now occupy eight additional governor’s mansions and at least 500 more seats in state legislatures.”

“The Republicans picked up more House seats than in any election since 1938, leaving the Democrats with the smallest number in the House since 1946,” and, predicted Rove, “Democratic losses could get worse in the next election. In 2012, three times as many Senate Democrats as Republicans face the voters—and many are from red states. Two more years of voting for the Obama agenda could do them in.”

The question in the minds of most Americans is how does all this translate into solving the awesome problems facing the nation and, more particularly, what does it mean to my future?

Everyone is going to have a different answer to the latter question because everyone has their own specific circumstances. I would not, for example, want to be a new college graduate right about now. The likelihood is they will be moving back in with mom and dad while others will be struggling to hold onto their homes.

While it is likely that the Bush tax cuts will remain, the temptation of States like California and other big spenders to raise taxes exists. The great challenge of our times is to shrink government at every level to an affordable size. Something is very wrong when the largest union in the nation is for government workers. It is inherently wrong that this union can give money to candidates when that money comes from members being paid with public funding.

The answer to the former question, the personal impact the post-midterm nation will have, involves the potential for a huge inflation, a continued devaluation of the U.S. dollar, a stagnant employment prospect as few jobs are created, and for some the prospect of being laid off from work or running out of the funds put aside or invested for retirement.

Real reduction of government is needed, but few believe it will occur. We have a bloated federal government workforce, many of whom are earning twice what a comparable private sector job would pay. There are entire federal departments and agencies that could be pared without being missed.

There are some important policy changes that could significantly improve the job sector and the mythical “energy independence” politicians love to talk about. You don’t just poke a hole in the ground and get oil. It takes time. Involves a lot of risk, and it takes lots of money.

Big Oil is in the business of risk and would spend the money if it was permitted to drill in and offshore of Alaska where vast amounts of oil are known to exist. There’s oil in the Dakotas and there’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico where the Obama administration is deliberately rendering thousands unemployed by slowing the permitting process. When you think oil, also think natural gas. The oil companies are as interested in it as crude.

Let’s stop handing out billions in tax credits and other funding for “Green energy”, wind and solar power. Few projects are more stupid than a proposal to build the world’s largest solar-thermal power plant in the Southern California desert. It just got the green light (no pun intended) from the Obama administration to the tune of $6 billion.

While the Greens are always screaming bloody murder about endangered species and the destruction of “pristine” land, this one project will take up 7,025 acres of federally owned land near Blythe, California. The cost of the transmission lines that will be needed is ridiculous when a single coal-fired or nuclear plant could produce many times more dependable, 24/7 megawatts of electricity than this blanket of solar panels ever will.

Barack Obama is still talking about a fictitious and fraudulent “climate change”, i.e., global warming at a time when most of the world has concluded that there is no global warming and when the largest carbon credit exchange in the U.S. just closed its doors.

Therein lies the real problem. Granted that the election has been a blow against the Obama agenda, Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton who moved to the center after his midterm losses.

Obama is a very different animal. He is still capable of doing a lot of harm from the Oval Office and, as we have seen, he is not shy about doing it. This is an administration that added $2.7 trillion to the national debt, including a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009 and a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2010.

That’s why we must shake off election fatigue and be as relentless in the two years ahead as those through which we have passed. Obama is punishing America because he doesn’t like America.

He must be politically neutralized. It won’t be pretty.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Election Fatigue

Caruba's Crystal Ball: The 2012 GOP Presidential Nominee

By Alan Caruba

If the Republican Party nominates a RINO (Republican in Name Only) like John McCain in 2012 it will lose and, assuming the Democratic Party clings to its suicide pact with Barack Hussein Obama, he will win.

It is doubtful that Obama will not be re-nominated for the 2012 race. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel pointed out, “History doesn’t inspire optimism. Over the past 100 years, every time a president two years into his first term lost Congress, he went on to be re-elected: Truman in ’48, Eisenhower in ’56, Clinton in ’96.”

What we do know is that independent voters will decide whoever will be elected in 2012. There were no Tea Parties in those earlier elections and a lot depends on what the GOP does over the course of the next two years. While they control the House, they have limited options beyond a declared intention to repeal Obamacare, cut government spending, etc. Twenty-three very nervous Democrat Senators up for election in 2012 may prove cooperative. Obama will not.

So, let the speculation begin! Rasmussen Reports polled likely primary voters to find out who Republicans favored at this early point and released a November 4 announcement that three ex-governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and Sarah Palin were in a dead heat.

My crystal ball says that none of these politicians will be on the ticket.

Romney is a RINO who brought an early version of Obamacare to Massachusetts when he was governor. Huckabee plays well on television and should stay there. Palin has a cult following, but is a political anomaly who could be defeated in a general election.

Many Republican women candidates did not fare well in the midterms. None of these early potential candidates should be considered serious contenders for the presidency at a time when many Republicans are looking for new faces, not failed earlier contenders.

Others to ignore in this category include Governors Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour, as well as Tim Pawlenty. All are good governors, but none have the star power it takes to be president.

There are Republicans who are already making appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other early primary states and, of these, Mike Pence, an Indiana Representative who won a recent presidential straw vote at a “values summit” in September looks like a viable contender. There’s some buzz for John Thune, a handsome Senator from South Dakota, but Thune has not geared up for the campaign and few voters know anything about him.

Marco Rubio, the newly elected Senator from Florida, is a bright young, articulate face of the new GOP, but he needs to get a full term under his belt before running. He needs his name on some piece of legislation that gains attention. He is, for sure, a rising star.

Newt Gingrich may want to be president, but he is likely to conclude that being the party’s “elder statesman” is the role in which he is most comfortable. I do not think he will run for the nomination. For all his virtues, Gingrich is no Ronald Reagan.

The 2010 midterm elections were unique in that they were all about rejecting Obama’s actions in his first two years and the growing suspicion that he is a few cards short of a full deck. He can be depended upon to pursue the same policies that led to his rejection.

It is worth noting the way even some Republicans in Congress who had been there a long time got swept from office and the way some people with no political resume were elected. A “wave” election, the midterms were also in many ways an anomaly or, as Wall Street would call it, a correction.

My crystal ball tells me that the Republican Party could likely embrace Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

A lot depends on whether Christie will campaign for the presidency and he seems determined to serve out his first time. In two years he will look even better having already demonstrated that his endorsement is golden and he is a great campaigner whom audiences love. One day after the midterm elections, the respected political pundit, Stuart Rothenberg, addressed a group of D.C. insiders His pick? Gov. Chris Christie.

Gov. Christie says he wants to stay in New Jersey to address its need to reduce its burden of debt and shake loose the civil service union’s grip, but few serious politicians can or would ignore their party’s call to run for the presidency. Gov. Christie has enormous personal appeal on many levels and just the right values for a large segment of independent voters who have demonstrated they want to “clean house” in D.C.

One mistake the Republican Party must not make is the expectation that it can “co-op” the Tea Party. The GOP needs to cooperate and be responsive to it. It’s not a third party. It is a movement.

While potential candidates begin to maneuver for a shot to be the Republican Party choice, I think the time for the familiar faces has passed and the demand for real change based on rediscovered conservative values favors a new face.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Caruba's Crystal Ball: The 2012 GOP Presidential Nominee