Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Another Day at the Circus at the End of the World

John McCain's worst enemy is John McCain. Both Obama and Clinton are so inadequate and weak that they don't pose much of a threat to McCain.

Obama, if he ends up the Democrat nominee as most people think probable, will be the least distinguished nominee of a major party in my lifetime, and perhaps in American history. He is the emptiest of suits, a mediocrity who ascended through Chicago politics by networking, going to a church shepherded by a raving leftist anti-American and socializing at the salon of aging radical terrorists. He is an effete liberal who views America as a foreign country and longs to transform it into France. An Obama presidency would look much like Jimmy Carter's, with a naive, appeasing President being bitch-slapped into reality by a mean world that wants to destroy America.

Clinton has high "negatives," the touch of death in a profession that lives on votes. Not only that, she has a way of energizing her enemies, who see her as the Wicked Witch of the West, Mussolini and their mother-in-law rolled into one woman.

All John McCain has to do is smile, kiss babies and stand tough on America's defense and he can waltz into the White House against either of these losers. Unfortunately, he seems determined to prove he is as bad as any Democrat.

McCain wants to take on the highly speculative, dubious problem of "global warming."

McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.

Industries would be given emission targets, and those coming in under their limit could sell their surplus polluting capacity to companies unable to meet their target.

Now, for any reader who might think there is something to all this global warming talk, consider this from Walter Williams:

Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Why is it that environmentalists never put global warming in the context that Dr. Williams provides? Could it be that they're trying to scare us with bad science? Could it be that their real goal is state control of the economy and the destruction of capitalism?

John McCain doesn't give a damn about capitalism and freedom. He loves state power; he holds sacrifice to the collective as the moral ideal. He thrills to the idea of mandating vast regulations on industry in the name of "saving the planet." As a man who has confessed his ignorance of economics, it doesn't matter what the actual, practical effects of his regulations will be; all that matters is his feel good fantasy and massive sacrifice. To altruists the gesture of sacrifice is an end in itself unconnected to any practical benefits. Nay, practical benefits would make sacrifice more of a selfish long-term trade, and where is the morality in that?

But McCain being McCain, he has to take the dishonesty of his proposal a little further by calling his massive regulations a "free market" solution. (In reality his "cap and trade" policies will amount to K Street lobbyists buying off politicians to get favors for their clients.) He does not understand that a market dictated and controlled by the state is not free. Laissez-faire capitalism is the separation of state and economy. The word for McCain's vision of private industry dictated by the state is fascism.

On the heels of this environmentalist nonsense, as if McCain were on a mission to rub the nose of small government Republicans in shit, the word comes out that he is considering Huckabee as his Vice President running mate. Could he make a worse choice than a religious nanny-stater? (Maybe he wants Huckabee at his side because the Arkansan is the only prominent Republican who makes McCain look smart about economics.)

13 comments:

david said...

I had been considering McCain as the proverbial "least of all evils" candidate...but if he does select Huck, then he will lose my vote.

Sigh.

Anonymous said...

McCain is quite old. If he has Huckabee as a VP, there are some not-insignificant odds that this would result in a Huckabee presidency.

McCain has been a non-option in my opinion for some time, but I still hear some folks saying they are thinking of possibly voting for him.

This is something those folks should consider.

Anonymous said...

At the start of the year, I said there were two GOP candidates for whom I would not vote, period. It looks like the ticket may consist of exactly those two candidates.

No wonder they call it the "Stupid Party".

I think I would sooner see Obama in the White House than McCain. The real danger McCain poses goes far beyond the next four years. He would take a wide variety of statist policies and turn them into Republican orthodoxy, leaving laissez-faire advocates disenfranchised long after leaving office. Obama's policies would be amazingly bad, but he wouldn't redefine the political landscape the way McCain could.

I consider HRC to be the 'least of evils' in this campaign. Like Obama, she lacks the ability to fundamentally alter the landscape, but she's so widely disliked that I think a Clinton administration would be more constrained by gridlock. Sadly, she seems unlikely to get the nomination.

Bezzle said...

McCain is still going to win.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not he has any smart aides who'll take him aside in private, and slap some sense into him.

Bezzle said...

Addendum: An Obama presidency would result in a Republican Congress within two years. (Whether that amounts to improvement is a toss-up.)

Myrhaf said...

I agree with mike18xx that McCain will win, although the recent news that Republicans have lost three special elections in a row in safe districts makes me wonder if there isn't something to all the talk about it being a "Democrat year." Still, the Presidency is unique -- it is the Commander In Chief -- and I don't see a far leftist getting elected.

I also agree with Kyle that McCain would change the political landscape more than Obama.

Joubert said...

I swore blind that I could never vote for the Huckster if he won - but I may have to eat my words.

I'm convinced that Reaganism is dead - just look at how many votes the Huckster got from socalled conservatives. We've entered the era of big government. Neocons want it for National Greatness. Southern Republicans still think like the Democrats that they all once were. Youngsters have been brainwashed by Marxist teachers for so long now that they think government is the solution ot the problem.

It boils down to: do you want a totally socialist government or a slightly less socialist (noblesse oblige Tory) government? I'll pick the lesser of two evils.

Anonymous said...

I think that in a McCain vs. Obama matchup, McCain is going to get stomped into ketchup. Here are some reasons why:

The general political environment is skewing strongly Democratic, because the GOP has botched so many things.

The economy is bad and getting worse, and by November that will be obvious to everyone. Lots of people vote their pocketbooks.

The Iraq campaign is very unpopular among the moderate voters to whom McCain is largely pitching his campaign, and Obama will hang it around him like a millstone.

McCain cannot turn to conservatives for financial or organizational support because he has spent his career pissing them off. The effects of this are already apparent in his fundraising -- Obama is going to have much better financed campaign.

Obama is far more charismatic, and will have the press covering for him 100% once he has secured the nomination. The press loves McCain when they can use him as a maverick to beat up on Republicans. When the choice is between him and a Democrat, they'll be in the tank for the Democrat.

McCain is in many respects running as Democrat Lite, as reflected in his support for many positions traditionally associated with Democrats. Examples include his views on immigration, taxation, campaign finance, interrogation and global warming. People who want a Democrat will vote for a real one over an imitation, and people who want a Republican won't vote for a fake one.

Put all these factors together and I just don't see how McCain wins in November.

I too will probably pick the lesser of two evils. Where I differ from Mr. Conlon is in my assessment of which outcome is less evil. My political values are already defeated in this political cycle. All choices will launch massive assaults on freedom across a wide spectrum. But a McCain victory has broader ramifications. It isn't a choice between a totally socialist government and a slightly less socialist government. It's a choice between two parties whose orthodoxy is totally statist versus two parties one of which is totally statist and one of which is mixed.

The argument I see advanced in support of McCain is, in essence, that Obama is so bad that we have to focus on the short-term consequences of his election. My view is the opposite -- both candidates are so bad that we have to focus on the long-term, because the short-term is already lost.

Anonymous said...

"An Obama presidency would look much like Jimmy Carter's, with a naive, appeasing President being bitch-slapped into reality by a mean world that wants to destroy America."

Exactly when was Jimmah ever "bitch-slapped into reality?" If such a thing ever occurred, it was surely only for a fleeting moment, and most definitely had no lasting effects.

Otherwise, I agree with everything Myrhaf wrote.

The Gregor said...

I would never vote for McCain for the simple reason that he claims to champion “free market” solutions while actually advancing fascist ones. McCain is fundamentally as far left as Hilllary and Obama in everything but façade. A McCain presidency would be a disaster for the same reasons Bush’s is all the while providing talking points for the left against capitalism. This would be worse than Greenspan providing talking points against “Objectivist policies” enacted in the fed. True Capitalists will never be heard if these imposters keep getting elected instead of treated as anything more than the charlatans they are.

Anonymous said...

Well said. McCain postures as a defender of markets and limited government while proposing policies that are the exact opposite. The left will use the resulting disasters to push yet another iteration of "freedom has failed, let's try more statism".

We've seen this dance how many times in the last hundred years, and yet people still fall for it.

Bezzle said...

> The Iraq campaign is very unpopular among the moderate voters to whom McCain
> is largely pitching his campaign, and Obama will hang it around him like a millstone.

>shrug< The left (the *true* "moderate" is ambivalent about Iraq) bad up its mind about Iraq in the middle of the 1960s when it sold its soul to anti-Americanism, no matter what it was at any given moment.

The REAL "moderates" (AKA "the silent majority") are those who stab the remote every time a political commercial comes on. They don't watch a damn thing until the two major televised speeches in September and October.

If Obama wins, and Iraq goes straight down the crapper with Taliban-style militias massacring people by the thousands after a US abandonment, every leftist is going to be wearing their "Out now!" screachings as a yolk around their necks like a dirty toilet-seat. YouTube and the blogosphere won't let 'em pretend they never said it (as they did in past weasel-outs when the left controlled pretty much all the media, and could whistle "Dixie" while the boat-people were drowning and getting eaten by sharks.)

==//==

Why is McCain going to win no matter what?

Because every time the left makes an "old" joke, every blue-hair in the nation takes note. They especially notice when the people making the jokes are gen-X and gen-Y snot-nosed punks.

Additionally, the Democratic Convention will bring out all their backbiting worst impulses (as usual). If Hillary wins, half the black liberal voters stay home. If Obama wins, half of white liberal women stay home.

The only way blue-hairs stay home is if there isn't somebody in the race with a comforting Ed McMahon smile (McCain's biggest asset).

EdMcGon said...

I think it's too early to make predictions for November. I'm also taking a "wait and see" approach to Bob Barr's Libertarian candidacy. While I don't think he'll win, he may suck off enough votes from McCain to allow Obama into the White House.