Nice turn of phrase

 So how many political genders are there in the GOP?

We've known the cut of Mitt Romney's jib for a long time

Mitt is in the news beating the drum for war in Ukraine.  Lots of tough talk, including accusing people of treason.  Looks like quite the fighter, right?

Except we've known what he is for a long, long time.  Ten years ago I called out what he is and the past decade has not given me cause to rethink anything.  I took some heat on this back then but believe that the intervening years has proven that he would have been a disaster as President.

In which I endorse Barack Obama for President

Stick with me on this, because I am motivated by hope and change.

The race essentially is between Obama and Romney - Ron Paul is interesting but whatever impact he has had is over.  Likewise, the Libertarian (whatzisname?) will get the typical Libertarian 2%.  As adults, we need to face reality that this is President Composite Girlfriend vs. Mittens.  OK then, which way will make us better off?

Let me start my cheerfully admitting that a second Obama term - unfettered by the need for re-election and likely facing a Congress entirely controlled by the GOP - will be a disaster of faculty lounge inspired radicalism.  It will be EPA killing oil production and the ATF arming the Iranian Mullahs.  He will moot card carrying communists for the Supreme Court, as well as for every open Federal Bench seat.  Nobody can constrain his radicalism now, and it will be much, much worse come January.

So what about Romney?  He's an Establishment Fixer to the core, as his record as Governor of Massachusetts shows.  While he might not support new gun control laws today, he was happy to in the past when he felt the need to "reach across the aisle" to "make an impact" (build a political career).  While he may not support huge State-sponsored intrusion into your private business today (RomneyCare), he was happy to in the past - again, when he felt the need to "reach across the aisle" to "make an impact".  Romney is easy to figure - just ask yourself what's most beneficial for Mitt Romney right now, and that's what he'll support.

He has an exquisitely refined sense of sniffing out tactical personal gain, and does not suffer from a surfeit of political philosophy like those boring old Founding Fathers did, with all their tiresome talk of liberty.

He's Gov.Party the Lesser.

And so we must vote for Obama.  He's the only hope for real change.

The GOP in general, and Mitt Romney in particular are big-government, big-spending, big-intrusion-into-our-business.  The Republic is facing a fiscal crisis - the nation's credit has been downgraded, the Entitlement programs are just now tipping into a bottomless sea of red ink, the middle class has been hammered with collapsing housing valuations, persistent unemployment, and a higher education bubble that is ensuring that our children graduate with so much student debt that they will never be able to marry.

And where are the bold reforms from the GOP?  The best on offer is Paul Ryan's plan which won't balance the budget for three decades.

And dig this: the Media will savage a President Romney mercilessly in hopes that he will falter, lose heart and supporters at the savage attacks, and think it will be in his best interest to reach across the aisle to preserve his re-election chances.  The media will think this because Romney has shown repeatedly that he'll cave if it builds his personal political chances.

So what about change?  We're actually seeing change today, before our eyes.  Just ask Orin Hatch, in the fight of his political life against a Tea Party candidate.  Or ask (former) Senator Bennett, or (former) Congressman Castle.  A Million people were energized to take to the streets to protest, two years ago.  That's change.  And you know what they were protesting?

Barack Obama and his vision for a remade America.

That's what you give up by voting Mitt Romney into the White House.  In six months, Romney will be a sad sack, pummeled by the media into losing his "conservative" veneer (and let's be honest, no one believes he's actually a conservative).

A RINO President will demoralize the one significant spark of change that we've seen, the onlyreaction to an out of control Fed.Gov, our only hope of putting the brakes on before we're as wrecked as Greece.  And quite frankly, a withering of the Tea Party reform movement will be a delight to a GOP Establishment every bit as corrupt and venal - and power mad - as Nancy Pelosi.

And so, it is our civic duty to take a hit for our Country.  Put Obama back in office, unfettered.  The orgy of Progressive overreach by Regulation will be sporadically (and mostly ineffectively) resisted by a corrupt Big Government GOP.  The Agencies will rule the land, and the economy will remain seized up.

And rather than a million Tea Partiers taking to the streets, it will be two million, or three.  Rather than five or ten corrupt GOP Establishment corrks turned out of office, it will be thirty, or fifty.

And that will be the time when the calculators like Mitt Romney will get the idea that they will most likely advance their career by striking down the Progressive beast, again and again.

Because if that message doesn't come across loud and clear, and repeatedly, then the game is over.  It simply won't matter who's in office, because they're both the Establishment Party.

So vote Obama this November.  I do not say this from anger, or frustration, or peevishness, but from cold, rational calculation.  Sure it will be painful, but we got into this mess because like Bluto in Animal House, we f***ed up: we trusted the GOP.

We screwed up, and believed all this, and the government never got smaller under the GOP.  It got bigger, and more intrusive, and more remote from the people, yea even under St. Ron.  Maybe it's too late for us, but if it's not then the only way forward is to burn the GOP to the waterline.  The most expedient way is to keep the Tea Party energized, and a President Romney will cause many to fall away from that movement under the eleventh commandment (another Reagan philosophy).

Well screw that noise.  We f***ed up once, trusting him and the rest of the GOP team.  How's that working out?  Rebuilding a party that Reagan might actually recognize is what this country needs - and right now, damn it - and Mitt Romney isn't the man to do it.

Barack Obama is.

Hope and Change.  Your country depends on you.  Your children and grandchildren will wonder what you did at the Republic's darkest hour.  Don't let them down.  Vote Obama.

What are the Debates for?

The debate last night: meh.

The Queen Of The World and I went to some friend's house last night for a "Debate Party".  This is Trump land and so the atmosphere was a whole lot different than back in Maryland.  Trump threw lots of red meat to the home crowd, which everyone enjoyed.  But Biden did the same for his supporters, which they no doubt enjoyed, too.  Overall, I don't think that either candidate changed any minds at all.

This made me wonder what debates are all about.  Way back in the day, it was really the only way for citizens to size up the candidates.  The Lincoln-Douglas debates are justly famous for this, where the debate would go on for hours.  It was really the only time that the crowd could get direct, unfiltered access in a pre mass-market media marketplace.

That's changed, but the debates continue.  Why?  What do we get out of this whole brouhaha?

Partly this gives us a chance to see the two candidates in a highly stressful situation.  It may be the only time we see them in a highly stressful situation.  Neither candidate has any control over the other and needs to react to unanticipated circumstances.  Quite frankly, this is a pretty helpful insight into how someone ticks - especially someone who will have his finger on the Doomsday Button.

I'm not sure how many people realize how important this is, or pay attention to it.  Certainly there are a lot of political analysts who are talking about how Biden didn't react well to Trump, and even asked moderator Chris Wallace for help controlling the President.  There may be a lot of people who didn't consciously pick up on this but who got a bad vibe about "leadership" and "strength", but this is pure speculation on my part.  As far as I can tell nobody is polling or focus grouping this so all we have is conjecture.

My scoring is that Trump did much better than Biden did on this point last night.  He had to react not only to Slow Joe but also to Chris Wallace who was clearly trying to help Biden.  His reaction is in stark contrast to Mitt Romney who rolled over to Candy Crowley in 2012.  Now it didn't really tell us anything we didn't know - that Trump is much more adaptable and thinks better on his feet in unpredictable situations - but this is confirmation that we saw with our own eyes.

Anyway, I can't see anything else that comes from the debates, but this seems pretty valuable.

Dan Hicks - How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away

Mitt Romney is back in the news.  Like a bitter ex-wife, he keeps coming back where he isn't wanted, pretending to be something that he isn't.  Yup, there's a country song for that.

Dan Hicks was a songwriter who never really got the attention he deserved.  On the other hand, it might have been his work ethic (he more or less dropped out of recording for ten years) and the alcohol and drugs.  Then again, he wasn't the first recording artist who took that path.

Country music often shows a streak of humor, and Hicks was known for that.  Hicks' style was hard to categorize, ranging from psychedelic rock to folk and to this which is unmistakably country.  He always called the style "folk swing".



How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away (Songwriter: Dan Hicks)

I've talked to your mother and I've talked to your dad
They say they've tried but it's all in vain
I've begged and I've pleaded, I even got mad
Now we must face it, you give me a pain

How can I miss you when you won't go away?
Keep telling you day after day
But you won't listen, you always stay and stay
How can I miss you when you won't go away?

Your never ending presence really cramps my style
I dream that it won't always be the same
At first I was attracted but after a while
Have you ever heard of the hard-to-get game?

How can I miss you when you won't go away?
I keep telling you day after day
But you won't listen, you always stay and stay
How can I miss you when you won't go away?
And I mean it, too

Out of three billion people, why must it be me?
Oh, why, oh, why won't you cut me loose?
Just do me a favor and listen to my plea
I'm not the only chicken on the roost

How can I miss you when you won't go away?
I keep telling you day after day
But you won't listen, you always stay and stay
How can I miss you when you won't go away?

Mitt Romney is a jerk

He says he'll vote to convict Trump.  What a small, petty man.

Of course, we've known he's like that for a long, long time.

Update from ASM826: I had to go back to my old blog to find it, but here's what I thought of Mittens in October of 2012.

If Romney Needs My Vote, He’s Screwed

I got slammed in the comments, told I couldn't be reasoned with. I still like this post, still think we were better off without him.

Welcome to MittWorld

Looks like Mittens will assume the coveted "John McCain Sunday Morning Talk Show" spot since he has the election in the bag:

The latest polling in Utah’s senate race has Mitt Romney up by some 36 points over Jenny Wilson, his Democratic opponent. Barring an enormous upset, Mr. Romney will join the United States Senate. This will put him a few checks and balances away from a president — the leader of his party — whom he once called “terribly unfit for office.”

Ah, don't ever change, New York Times.

Of course, a deeper understanding of the soon-to-be-Senator Romney could be had by a quick perusal of the archives.  I'm a little shocked to find that the archives have over a hundred entries on Mitt.  (!!!)

He was my Governor when I lived in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.  Now All Y'all will get a chance to enjoy his governing style, good and hard.    Note to self: Utah doesn't elect Republicans; Utah elects Mormons.  But then, I'm clearly biased, having endorsed Obama over Romney*.

But the future is Mitt-tastic, so there.  Gun control opponents beware.

 I expect that my post tag for him might approach 200 before his career is all and done.

* That was one of my finest rants, althoughI could not predict the rise of Donald Trump back in 2012.  I did hint at the reaction, though:

And rather than a million Tea Partiers taking to the streets, it will be two million, or three. Rather than five or ten corrupt GOP Establishment crooks turned out of office, it will be thirty, or fifty.

And this bit (from that same post) is perhaps the most prescient writing I've posted in this last ten years of blogging:

We f***ed up once, trusting him and the rest of the GOP team. How's that working out? Rebuilding a party that Reagan might actually recognize is what this country needs - and right now, damn it - and Mitt Romney isn't the man to do it. 

Barack Obama is.

You might want to click through and read the whole thing - and the over 60 (!) comments it drew.  Welcome to MittWorld.

Shaddup, Romney

Really.  Like the guy who lost a "can't lose" election has an opinion worth listening to.

Just.  Shut.  Up.

Game Theory and the rise of Donald Trump

Game Theory is a field of mathematics originally developed to try to mathematically derive optimum solutions for card games in the 18th century.  It has developed into a major field of analysis used in computer science and even the design of crypto systems.  Any of you who saw the film "A Beautiful Mind" have at least a passing familiarity with the subject.

You probably even know the most famous example of Game Theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma.  Two prisoners are (separately) offered a deal - rat out the other guy or keep silent.  If they rat and the other guy doesn't, they go free and he gets a long sentence.  If neither of them rat, they both get short sentences.  If they both rat, they both get long sentences.  And most importantly to the prisoner, if he doesn't rat but the other guy does, he gets a long sentence while the other guy walks.

It's a one-time deal, which makes the math simpler.  Real world situations are not so simple, and a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma has incorporated this.  Tit For Tat is a sequential set of prisoner's dilemma events where the strategy is to play what your opponent played in the previous round.  If your opponent was cooperative, you will be cooperative; if he screwed you, you will screw him back.

What's interesting about Tit For Tat is that mathematical proofs have shown that it leads to the outcome with maximum combined utility.  If your opponent always screws you, you're no worse off playing Tit For Tat, but if your opponent is always cooperative or also plays Tit For Tat then both of you derive the maximum benefit.

The political establishment (we're talking both parties here) has essentially been captured by big business and the wealthy, with the coastal educated being coopted by University research grant funding and public sector Senior Executive Service or Think Tank employment.  The elite has been repeatedly screwing the middle class (who have no such access to University to government jobs).  This has been going on for a couple of decades now.

The middle class has been playing nice, listening to red, white, and blue songs of "we're all in this together".  The recent GOP presidential field has been a stunning display of this: Mittens Romney, Sad Sack McCain, GWB, Bob Dole, Bush 41.  Each tools of (Dole, McCain) or members of (Romney, Bush pere et fils) the establishment.

And for two decades, the middle class has been squeezed for the benefit of the elite.  EPA regulations have gutted American manufacturing, free trade has accelerated the movement of high paying jobs overseas, open borders have displaced millions of Americans from traditional good paying jobs (say, construction).

It's got to the point that the Middle Class has shrunk from 61% of the population to 51%.  Neither party is doing anything about it.  Neither party is even talking about it.

Enter Game Theory.  "Play Nice" as a strategy simply isn't working.  Trust in government has been declining for the same 40 years that the Middle Class has been shrinking, but the elites have gamed the system to ensure that no real change will get in the way of them fattening their portfolios at the Middle Class' expense.  The urge to play Tit For Tat has been building, but has had no outlet.  The field has been prepared, over the course of decades, for a candidate beyond the control of the elites.

Hello, Donald Trump.  He was already a "name brand" to TV, and so the Media couldn't ignore him.  He's a billionaire, and so the donors couldn't control him.  He's a smart deal maker with a long history of persuading people to do things.

Right candidate, right time.  Four decades of rapine has led to this point.  The outcome was, you might say, inevitable.

And so the shrieking madness that we see from the elite and their hangers on in the Media, government, and Universities.  The man was supposed to implode because of his many "gaffes" and yet keeps strengthening in the polls.  And the dirty secret that nobody is talking about is that Trump attracts a lot of support from Democratic middle class voters - especially men who think that Hillary is a crook (the Clinton Foundation has scored a billion dollars of donations in political pay-to-play deals) and a liar.

Of course, the Media won't talk about that because the narrative is that Trump must be defeated in the GOP primary or Hillary walks to victory.

Odd that you haven't seen any polls to back that up.  I wonder why.

Tit For Tat is essentially a reputational game - get a bad reputation by screwing your opponent and you pay the price.  The mathematics is unmistakeable on that.

The Middle Class finally has an option to play against their opponent.  An opponent who has a deservedly poor reputation.

No wonder Trump's support seems rock solid.  The mathematics is unshakeable.

Who is the Hammer of the Progressives?

Some ideas survive election cycles.  This one is from the last election cycle.  You know - the one where the GOP dude would have given us more gun control?  But what I said back then about Newt is perennially green:

There are many things that I do not like about Newt, but one advantage that he has over the entire GOP crowd is that he knows how to deflate the Democrat's ideology, to show not that it is mistaken, but that it is immoral.  Four years of that hammer will leave the political discussion in this country profoundly different.  The Republic needs that, and someone who will not flinch from repeatedly telling the opposition that they hate the poor:



It's the same conflict of visions.  Today's UK is profoundly different than it was in 1979, because the Iron Lady refused to back down in the face of a left - unions, the media, the universities - that held her in withering contempt.  By returning that contempt with equal fervor and backing it up with unarguable facts, she wrenched the Realm off of the track to ruin, to the point that "Red" Ken Livingston is a curiosity, and not the head of the Labour Party.

So who will fight this fight this today?  Which GOP candidate will attack their world view?  Who is the Hammer of the Progressives?

Sadly, to ask the question is to answer it.  What's been on offer has not inspired us.

I hate to say I told you so

But I told you so, five years ago.  Scarborough: Senior Democratic Senators, Close Political Allies Tell Me Obama Is "Checked Out".

And as to the health of the Republic, a GOP that (with reason) does not fear him will delight in thwarting him at every turn, and the Tea Party insurgency will wax as Progressives everywhere despair.  Good thing that Romney didn't win.

Unconditional Surrender

Tokyo civilian dead after the firebomb attacks

Both Nazi German and Imperial Japan saw themselves as races of Supermen, destined to rule over lesser breeds.  Both underestimated their opponents.  Both overreached in their ambitions.  Both surrendered unconditionally to their foes.

They surrendered because they both lost the will to fight.  While some hardliners wanted to fight to the last bullet and baby, the countries and their leadership were exhausted and packed it in.  Seventy years of peace resulted.

This was in great contrast to the Great War.  A mere two decades after the November Armistice, Neville Chamberlin flew to Munich in a doomed attempt to avoid a second war.  What was the difference between World Wars 1.0 and 2.0?

It's because in 2.0 the losers knew that they had lost.  They had had enough of what their leaders had gotten them into.

The Czar of Muscovy muses on a surprising poll of the American public's opinion on post-war Presidents:

Last week, despite the intense suppression of the main stream media, the generally pro-liberal Quinnipiac polling team released a poll that asked folks who the best and worst presidents have been in living memory (since World War II, which is fair enough). The results were unexpected, at least by the Czar:

...

This chart is a stunning damnation of Obama. Americans have had it: they want Reagan back. They want his pro-growth programs, his foreign policy, his leadership. Not Hope and Change: America has finished with this. And coming in a mid-term election year, this poll just about punts the Democrats in the crotch.

The Obama Administration is very like the Imperial Japanese War Cabinet: arrogant, sure of their superiority over "lesser breeds" (for example, the ones that you find in Alabama or Oklahoma), convinced that their plans will result in domination and glory for their cause.  Indeed, Obama himself is perhaps the best example of the new Intellectual Class - credentialed but not educated, product of ideological indoctrination, thin skinned, dismissive of his opponents.

His "Hope and Change" mission is now revealed to the American People in its complete folly, just as the corruption of Bushido became revealed to the population of Tokyo.  Great damage is being done to this Republic and to its people.  The Czar continues:

Another item uncovered in the poll: yes, the country has changed its mind. 54% (a six-point lead) of the country wants Mitt Romney president. The Czar is beyond pissed about this, since no doubt that 54% more than includes the millions of Republicans who decided not to vote in 2012 because they were so sure Obama was done for on his own. You stupid morons. Stupid, stupid, stupid morons.

Here I must disagree with our Autocrat.  The Republic was not certain in 2012 that Romney's vision of the world was superior to Obama's.  Had Mittens taken up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the poll would have been much different.  The Senate would have stymied Romney just as the House has stymied Obama.  The Press would have had 18 months to savage the Romney Administration.

Most importantly of all, Obama's sad sack "Hope and Change" mission would not have been revealed to the American People in its full folly.  Indeed, Obama excels at campaigning, and at blaming his opponents for everything.  He would have been eligible for a second term.  He would at this very moment be gearing up his re-election campaign, and helping Democratic candidates in the mid-term elections.  The Press would be working overtime to help him, and them.

Instead, even the Press sees him as a sad sack lame duck, empty of vision or ability to lead.  He's no more use to them now, being ineligible to run for office.  The Democratic Party hardliners are in despair.  And remember, there will be two more years of President Empty Suit to keep that despair sharp.

This country has flirted with what can only be described as fascism, according to Mussolini's definition: everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.  Obama has convinced the people that this was a horrific mistake, by essentially allowing the middle class to be firebombed by terrible policy.

If Romney had won in 2012 this realization never would have dawned and there would be loud calls to implement the rest of the Hope And Change fascist agenda.  In two more years this agenda will be so politically toxic that its proponents will have no choice but unconditional surrender.  Toxic because of the massive damage to the middle class that is blamed on Obama, not on Romney.  Sure, you'll still have the oddball hardliner like Vermont's Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders - but he's the Left's version of Ron Paul, and will have as much impact.

I pointed this out in 2012 when I endorsed Obama for President in a very unpopular post.  But this is how I called it then:

A RINO President will demoralize the one significant spark of change that we've seen, the only reaction to an out of control Fed.Gov, our only hope of putting the brakes on before we're as wrecked as Greece.  And quite frankly, a withering of the Tea Party reform movement will be a delight to a GOP Establishment every bit as corrupt and venal - and power mad - as Nancy Pelosi.

And so, it is our civic duty to take a hit for our Country.  Put Obama back in office, unfettered.  The orgy of Progressive overreach by Regulation will be sporadically (and mostly ineffectively) resisted by a corrupt Big Government GOP.  The Agencies will rule the land, and the economy will remain seized up.

And rather than a million Tea Partiers taking to the streets, it will be two million, or three. 

I was wrong in that there has not (yet) been a repeat of the massive public demonstrations that we saw in 2010.  However, the polls show that the spirit that informed the Tea Party movement is waxing.  Because of Obama.

Rebuilding a party that Reagan might actually recognize is what this country needs - and right now, damn it - and Mitt Romney isn't the man to do it.

Barack Obama is.

And he seems to be doing a bang-up job of it.

The inevitable collapse of the Washington DC bureaucracy

The spirit of secession is alive and well, and is global in scope:

THE list of organisations withdrawing from CBI Scotland over its stance [opposing] the [Scottish independence] referendum grew yesterday, with two more universities among those quitting.

Scotland will vote soon on whether to leave the UK.  A friend in Edinburgh tells me that it's all over but the vote counting.  The periphery is, for better or worse, poised to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the sassenach.

They're joined by Catalonia:

Catalonia’s president has vowed to press ahead with a fiercely contentious referendum on independence from Spain, warning that he now saw little chance of a negotiated settlement with Madrid that could tackle the region’s economic and political grievances...

And the restive populations of Wales, Brittany, and Northern Italy watch with increasing impatience.  Belgium looks fair to break apart within a decade, as the unnatural marriage of french speaking Walloons and dutch speaking Flemings continue to keep that national government vapor locked.

Europe, for all its grandiose centralizing plans to counterbalance the American hyperpuissance is falling apart before our eyes.  Devolution is the game.  Here, we call that secession.  The path to that end is not (quite) inevitable, but is where the smart money is betting already in Edinburgh.  Soon it will be betting that way in Dallas.

I first broached this topic four years ago:

Kings of [Dark Ages Britain] were Ring Givers, as described in Beowulf and echoed in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels. Simon Schama writes about how the system worked in his A History Of Britain:

Their political power rested on the spoils of war and on the unwritten custom of the clan. The blood feud and the inhumation of bodies were standard practice among them. This does not mean, however, that the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were places of sub-human brutality and ignorance, perpetuated by thugs in helmets. War was not a sport; it was a system. Its plunder was the glue of loyalty, binding noble warriors and their men to the king. It was the land, held in return for military service, that fed their bellies; it was the honour that fed their pride; and it was the jewels that pandered to their vanity. It was everything.

And so it is today.  The modern Kings - David Cameron, Barack Obama, M. van Rampouy - are failing because they struggle to be Ring Givers.  Europe has led the charge down this blind alley, and so are running out of rings faster than here in the Colonies, but the plain fact is that Scotland and Catalonia wouldn't even be considering striking out on their own if the political establishment could buy them off.  The used to be able to do this, for the last two decades.  Now an enormous and enormously expensive bureaucracy in London and Strassbourg has consumed the surplus while tamping down economic growth with stifling regulation.  We've see on these shores where that leads.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

The European centralizing experiment is collapsing.  You'll watch it happen this year.  Sic transit gloria mundi, and good riddance to bad rubbish.  And so to our shores, and the inevitable collapse of the Washington centralizing bureaucracy.

Inevitable is the proper term, and this isn't just me being long on sunshine and kittens.  Barack Obama is without doubt the most European US President in history.  His use of power is straight out of the playbook of the European "Elite".  They're running into massive resistance in Europe and Obama is running into it here on these shores:

“I am about ready,” [Texas Attorney] General Abbott told Breitbart Texas, “to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.”

...

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas, General Abbott said, “This is the latest line of attack by the Obama Administration where it seems like they have a complete disregard for the rule of law in this country ...And now they’ve crossed the line quite literally by coming into the State of Texas and trying to claim Texas land as federal land. And, as the Attorney General of Texas I am not going to allow this.”

In a more prosperous day, Washington would have just bought him off.  But they can't now, any more than David Cameron can buy off the Scottish politicians or Señor Rajoy Brey can buy off the Catalan politicians.  There's no money left.  It's all been spent on the coalition that supported each of these leaders ascent to power - the notorious "Stimulus" program was essentially a Trillion dollar payoff to Obama's allies, and he certainly would have not been reelected without that.

But that's all spent now.  And to the Dark Ages reference above, plunder is the glue of loyalty.  In that post I predicted the current conundrum for the leaders of the Western world:

The modern Regulatory State has a more subtle (and less brutal) method of getting plunder, but at its heart the system is the same: politics is still about feeding bellies, vanity, and pride. Regulations need Regulators, which gives ample opportunity for patronage. New regulations can be crafted with the help of powerful allies, which gives ample opportunity to flatter egos and let them show their followers that they too can deliver results. Plunder must be distributed, even it it takes the form of intellectual booty.

...

The Regulatory State has led us, step by step, vanity project by vanity project to a massive bubble of Sovereign Debt. Like someone who refinanced their house to take a vacation, the industrialized world is facing a crisis caused by a dynamic that Rædwald understood: the need for rulers to cater to their supporter's money, pride, and vanity.

What I missed in that post is the bureaucracy as the natural ally of the centralizing power.  The bureaucracy has shown itself to be the creature of the centralizers, with the IRS and the BATF as the poster children for intrusive politization of the organs of the government.  And they have been well rewarded for it as 7 of the 10 richest counties in the US are in the Washington DC area.

But power exists to be used, and the bureaus are either slipping beyond Obama's control - running on the autopilot which is the Iron Law - or it's all part of the plan to subjugate the hinterlands.  In any event, it's not working as a self-organized Nevada militia stared down the BLM and the states become increasingly restless.  This means that smart State politicians see a way to get ahead by getting tough with Washington.  Increasingly, it pays to flip the bird to the king.

The Center cannot hold, because a wildly expensive bureaucracy is stifling the Periphery.  The Periphery doesn't like it.  The cost of the people who keep the Center in power makes it impossible to buy off enough politicians to defuse the Periphery's unrest.  It's a dialectic in action.

The natives are restless, and are increasingly so.

And so the smart politics is increasingly one of defiance to the Center.  We shall see it later this year in Edinburgh and Barcelona.  We will see is to a lesser - but growing - extent in Austin and Pierre.  But the trajectory is locked because Obama needs every scrap of his base for this (and the next) election cycle.  He'll double down because he has to.  That will be throwing gasoline on the fire. And it won't be enough now, as it wasn't in the Dark Ages:

War was not a sport; it was a system. Its plunder was the glue of loyalty, binding noble warriors and their men to the king. It was the land, held in return for military service, that fed their bellies; it was the honour that fed their pride; and it was the jewels that pandered to their vanity. It was everything.

To keep a large kingdom's fighting men in booty, you had to fight a lot. You also had to fight smart - a king that loses a lot of battles loses his men's loyalty and ultimately his life. The chronicles tell us that the Merovingian boy king Sigebert wept in his saddle as his army was routed. That's what led to the Mayors of the Palace becoming the war leaders and Ring Givers, and that led to the replacement of the Merovingians by the Carolingians. You might say that the Merovingian bubble burst.

As is the centralizing bubble.  In the end, Washington DC will collapse because there is no alternative.  There's no plausible scenario where the growth in power and control over the States is sustainable.  Things that can't continue don't.  I believe that the Class Warfare in this Cold Civil War have so weakened the bands that have bound together the Red and Blue States that the easiest solution will be a split.  The Blue States will get Washington, and its bureaucracy, and its cost.

I don't expect that they will ultimately enjoy that.

Bootnote: if you believe that the two political parties are but the two wings of the same bird of prey, then this suggests that President Romney will see this same dynamic continue in 2017 ...

A thought experiment: what if Mitt Romney were President?

In the dark of night come evil thoughts.  Suppose that Mitt Romney had won last year's election and was President.  What might we expect to see from his administration?  Other than more Gun Control?

I think that we'd see President I-saved-the-Olympics jumping in to make Obamacare "work".  Mitt is a fixer, and a fixer must needs fix something.  Saving a program like this would win him a second term, with a grateful MSM gushing on the "unexpected competence and respect for social justice" from the Romney administration.

I'm starting to wonder* if you could do a global search and replace here, substituting "Chris Christie" for "Mitt Romney".

* OK, I lied.  I don't wonder at all.

How would the Media be covering these scandals if Mitt Romney had won?

I expect that they would be more focused on the enemy in the White House than on the scandals, and would be playing them down.

Even more importantly, Mitt would be focused on his agenda he would want to implement, and would force everyone to shut up about the scandals.  After all, he'd need Democrat support for his agenda, and wouldn't want to antagonize them.

And so the scandal most likely to make your typical voter think that the government is out of control (the weaponizing of the IRS) would get swept under the rug.  The scandal most likely to make your typical reporter think that the government is out of control (the secret search warrant against the AP) would get swept under the rug.

This is not to say that either of these crises will lead to needed change.  However, there is a world of difference between fighting tactical battles and fighting strategic ones, even if you don't win.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

Pondering

So what would have happened if Mitt Romney had won the election?  What's the likelihood that he would have stood up to John McCain, Toomey, and the squishy Republicans on universal background checks?

Me, I think that we'd have a new gun control law on the books today.

Quote of the Day, GOP Gun Grabber edition

Weer'd brings it:

Romney loves gun bans as much as Obama does. The only difference is that if he was President today he’d be leading the charge for gun bans rather than Joe Biden.

Which do you think we have a better chance with?

Yup.  The liberal Democrats would line up with him because they want this as a point of philosophy, and a lot of the Republicans would line up with him out of solidarity.

Observe the power of this fully operational Gun Control

Nancy Pelosi or Diane Feinstein or some Democrat

One of the benefits of the Romney loss last November is that the Usual Suspects™ are coming out of the woodwork.  We don't have to smoke them out, they're smoking themselves out.

Let's confiscate people's guns.

No, srlsy - let's confiscate people's guns.

It's only racist to make things expensive for poor minorities when it's not gun control.

Laws for thee, but not for me.

Thank you Mitt Romney.  You (aided and abetted by your GOP establishment buddies) lost a "can't lose" election.  That made your opponents think that they could do anything - get anything past the American People, even if it's wildly unpopular.  Either they'll lose - and show that their "Mandate" is a Potemkin Mandate - or they'll win and set up a huge Democrat loss in 2014.

My hat is off to your depth of subtlety and insight.  Fiendishly subtle.



Of course, the Stupid Party isn't called that for nothing, and so likely didn't plan any of this; rather, they got suckered in by the Democrats.  The rats are only the physical manifestation into our dimension of the pan-dimensional super beings behind it all.  Err, at least if you watch Meet The Press.

But the Rats have made a mistake, in that the flaw in their 1994 Death Star (an exposed exhaust tube allowing a photon torpedo to destroy the Warp Core of their Congressional Majority) has been made worse in their new 2013 Death Star.  Captain Biden doesn't seem to realize that the exhaust tube is now large enough to fly an inter-stellar space ship into.



And so we shall see just how crazed the Democrat's victory has made them.  It is likely that saner heads will prevail before they gear the Republic up for another huge Democrat Repudiation in the next election, but damage has already been done.  People won't forget the talk about confiscation.  Democratic politicians will have to publicly explain that it don't mean no nevermind to their skeptical constituents.

All is unfolding as I have foreseen.

That Romney tattoo has to go

Well, duh:

INDIANAPOLIS - An Indiana man who tattooed a Mitt Romney "R" on his face for $15,000 has had a change of heart about keeping the marking.

Eric Hartsburg, 30, of Michigan City, a self-proclaimed professional wrestler, offered his forehead for advertising space on eBay and got the tattoo this summer.
Initially, he said he planned to keep the tattoo despite Romney's loss. But Hartsburg recently told Politico he plans to have it removed, citing Romney's "shameful" post-campaign performance, including the candidate's contention that he lost because of President Barack Obama's "gifts" to minorities.

Seems our hero is a bit of a delicate flower, with easily bruised sensibilities.  Here he is all pensive-looking and everything:

I think he just wants to rent out the space again.

Why Mitt Romney lost

He wouldn't say any of this.



You don't have to listen to all of this, or believe that Newt was the savior, but he expresses why his way is a better way.  Mitt was all about "I'm not Obama".  How'd that work out for him?

I am not in your Tribe

The bloody remains of a Romney Campaign adviser arrived at Camp Borepatch from Castle Gormogon via Trebuchet mail.  It contained a missive from the Czar of Muscovy:

What do you make of a crazy idea that a portion of Obama's literally incredible re-election was a repudiation of Republicans. Not formally, as in "I voted for Obama to teach the Republicans not to take my vote for granted," but "The Republicans are too disorganized; I'm voting for Obama."

It's pretty clear that everything the GOP thought they had, they lacked. Like you, I was expecting a decisive Romney win and even a GOP capture of the Senate. I based that all, like you did, on logic, math, and reason. This election was pure chaos, and chaos won. And I don't think Obama expected it--I think both the GOP and the Democrats were shocked at the result.

My analysis starts with the stunning news that Mitt Romney received 3 Million fewer Republican votes than John McCain did in 2008.  Let me say that once again so that it can sink in:

Mitt Romney received 3 Million fewer Republican votes than John McCain did.  And that wasn't running against the fresh, HopenChange 2008 reach-across-the-aisle Obama, this was running against the Class Warfare Obama.  They couldn't turn out their base, and as a result lost their chance to sweep the Senate; down-race Republicans lost in unexpectedly large numbers because the base stayed home.

I didn't see that coming, but probably should have.  You see, I used to be a Democrat.

The first election where I could vote was 1976, and I voted straight (D).  I even served (briefly) on the local Democratic Party county committee.  I voted mostly (D) for the next several elections until Michael Dukakis finally made me realize that the Democrat Party wasn't what it had once been.  Scoop Jackson was gone, Ed Muskie was gone, indeed, "my kind" of Democrat was disappearing fast from the party.  I never bought into the idea that Bill Clinton was anything but a liar, even back in 1992.  Paul Tsongas (perhaps "my kind" of Democrat) had it right when he said that Clinton was an unusually good liar.

I'm certainly not the first to say it, but I don't think I left the Party, I think it left me.  From 1988 or so, I started voting increasingly (R).  In fact, I found myself voting pretty much a straight Republican ballot.  Until this year.

Regular readers know that I've never much liked Romney.  I was surprised to see that 3 Million Republican voters agreed with me.  I never saw that coming, but should have.  I thought that people's visceral dislike of Obama's policies would, in Paladin't immortal words, make turkeys fly:

I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me.  It looks like it's running away even fast, what with Boehner saying that new taxes are all groovy and everything, just let us go along to get along.  Ooooh kaaaay then.

I don't think that I'm alone, and think that this is at the heart of the GOP's problem.  Now, I'm not much of a joiner, but if they can't sell their product to McCain voters, they are in a deep, deep pit of fail.  I expected the energy of the 2010 Tea Party rebellion, and Romney and the GOP establishment demonstrated a spectacular competence in eliminating that in its entirety.

As God is my witness, I really thought that turkeys could fly.  Didn't turn out that way.  I guess that's why they call it the Stupid Party.

UPDATE 8 November 2012 15:43: Word:

So good luck in 2016, Republicans. You had this one in the bag, high unemployment, an annual deficit of a trillion dollars, Fast’n'Furious, Benghazi, bailouts, Obamacare. All you had to do was find a conservative that could rally the people to vote and it would have been a cakewalk. I suspect you don’t believe that, and that you will try to go even more liberal in an effort to gather votes that you cannot get, throwing away the core voters that want conservative, responsible government.

Epic, epic political fail.  In other words, I didn't leave their Tribe, they left me.  I'm not the only one, not by a long shot.