The Elephant In The Fail Room

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by Smitty

From Has the conservative elite really failed?

Alan Greenspan, a free-market hero, blundered horribly in failing to regulate shadow banking, followed by another Republican appointee, Ben Bernanke. They forgot the old adage that the job of a central banker is to take away the punch-bowl just as the party is getting good. If they had acted to pop the housing price bubble earlier, they probably would have been lynched–it’s easy to beat them up with hindsight–but they still deserve a lot of blame.
These were mistakes, to be sure, but do they imply that America has suffered an “unprecedented failure” of its conservative elite? Just what sort of conservative elite did Ross Douthat have in mind? The victors of the Cold War and the authors of the Reagan economic boom set the tone for an enormous expansion of conservative intellectual life. How could we have done it better?
More disturbing, I think, is the extent to which America has suffered not a failure of the elites, but a failure of the people. Do we measure up to the founders of this country? The fact that Americans fought a revolution against Britain in the first place continues to astonish me. When in all of history have prosperous men with property–farms and businesses–risked their lives and fortunes to establish a better political order? Only a spiritual grandeur of a depth we barely can imagine today can explain it. When in all of history has a country gone to war and sacrificed a 5% of its total population to suppress slavery? The evangelical zeal that sent the North to war, singing of the grapes of wrath in the apocalyptic vision of Isaiah 63, surpasses our understanding today.
Some of that sense of American purpose awakened after 9/11, and the conservative elite misspent the spiritual energy of Americans in the Quixotic pursuit of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Ron Paul is not the only candidate to state this plainly. Newt Gingrich has said the same thing.
What sets Mullah Ron Paul apart is something malicious, in my judgment: the assertion that a conspiracy of malefactors is responsible for the economic pain of the American people, and if these malefactors (for example the Federal Reserve) were to go away, the pain would disappear. That is demagoguery of the most insidious kind.
There is no truth-telling here: to absolve Americans of their greed, indolence, and cupidity in the great home price bubble of 2008-2006 is the biggest lie of all. Americans caught a ride on a $6 trillion wave of foreign capital inflows, and thought the free money would be there forever. The smartest kids got MBA’s and law degrees instead of learning engineering.

Why are we bashing Greenspan and Bernanke? The Federal Reserve is, to quote Thomas Sowell, “A cancer” The best those blokes can do is coax the tumor into growing more slowly. The unfortunate thing is that the ugliness of Ron Paul’s remarks is going to get blended with the idea of curbing the Federal Reserve, and thus it will be OK for our conservative elite to continue their failing ways, and protect the Fed.
The Federal Reserve is the crossroads of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy and moral hazard, he said, easing himself quantitatively. Ahhhh!

Do you have a reference for this claim? It would be very interesting to see where Ron Paul offered:

the assertion that a conspiracy of malefactors is responsible for the economic pain of the American people, and if these malefactors (for example the Federal Reserve) were to go away, the pain would disappear

Again, I’m no apologist for the fellow, but I don’t think he offered any magic wand in “End the Fed”. The conspiracy has been the tacit one of the Iron Law mentioned above. Significantly curbing the Federal Reserve isn’t going to reduce the net pain of fiscal policy, but, removing power from un-elected, opaque officials would at least be in keeping with the spirit of representative government for which we claim to clamor.

And what’s this noise?

There is no truth-telling here: to absolve Americans of their greed, indolence, and cupidity in the great home price bubble of 2008-2006 is the biggest lie of all.

Mister, I have not been late on my mortgage these 12.5 years. That a group of folks, along with Fannie/Freddie, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, the Federal Reserve, and some bad banks, engineered a vast wealth transfer since the Community Reinvestment Act was signed is not an indictment of “Americans”. Conservatives who were in office and want to claim anything like the title “conservative” are not exactly at fault, either; but neither are they blameless, having been in office as the crime went down. The conservative elite is so afraid to scare the horses that you’re a kook if you talk about chopping a trillion out of the budget. Say Social Security is a Ponzi scheme? Yeah, you’re out of consideration.

Our conservative elite is so interested in playing ball-control offense that it is in jeopardy of repeating 2008.

via Instapundit

Don’t Underestimate Rick Santorum’s Campaign Strength in New Hampshire

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“Ten days ago I was at 5 percent [in the polls] and every question I got was ‘Why don’t you pack it up and endorse another candidate?’ And now they’re saying ‘You’ve got to win [in Iowa] to exceed expectations.'”
— Rick Santorum on NBC’s Meet the Press

JOHNSTON, Iowa
One of the stupid assumptions pundits keep making about Rick Santorum is that he’s got nothing happening beyond Iowa.

There is no need to call out by name the people who have been promoting this counter-factual nonsense that Santorum is “another Huckabee,” who will do well in Iowa on the basis of his support among hard-core evangelical Christians and accomplish nothing meaningful thereafter. This myth has become a sort of conventional wisdom among some conservative pundits, a talking point promoted by advocates of the campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, who have insisted that only their well-funded “brand name” candidates have the wherewithal to fight Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination. And it’s high time for people to begin critically examining that conventional wisdom because:

A. It’s not true;
B. It prevents consideration of a viable alternative strategy for the “Anybody But Mitt” movement; and
C. The campaigns promoting it — Gingrich and Perry — are evidently on their way to finishing fourth and fifth in Iowa.

Conservatives: Why let a bunch of losers dictate strategy to you? Why outsource your thinking to people who are only repeating what they’ve been told by paid campaign operatives? Why not examine the facts and think for yourself?

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. What I want to point out is that, while Rick Santorum has campaigned relentlessly in Iowa, it isn’t as if he has ignored New Hampshire. In fact, Santorum’s campaign manager Mike Biundo is a veteran of New Hampshire politics with strong Tea Party connections, as was pointed out by ABC News a year ago:

Biundo is a seasoned Granite State political operative who most recently helped Republican Frank Guinta defeat incumbent Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter in state’s 1st Congressional District. Biundo also served on Guinta’s successful campaign for mayor of Manchester and has been involved in politics for two decades.
“I am thrilled to have Mike a part of our team. His experience and knowledge will be invaluable in New Hampshire,” Santorum said in a statement. “As I continue on this journey, it is important we determine our ability to build grassroots support and Mike will be an integral part of this process.”
Biundo served on the presidential campaigns of former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Pat Buchanan, who won the New Hampshire primary in 1996. He is also a veteran of grassroots organizing in the crucial early primary state and led the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition, a group promoting limited government.
“As former Senator Santorum continues to consider a run for president, I am pleased to have the opportunity to play a part in that process,” Biundo said in a statement. “The Senator’s fiscally responsible approach to government and vision for America’s future will play well here in New Hampshire.”

Biundo was originally hired to run Santorum’s New Hampshire operation and is now national campaign manager and it is a national campaign. Santorum is already running this new TV ad in New Hampshire:

That’s a pretty strong signal that, while Santorum is now in the midst of an all-out final push here in the Hawkeye State, his campaign hasn’t neglected the rest of the country.

As I mentioned Friday, the plan is that if Santorum does well here — as he clearly expects to do now — his Iowa field director Jake Braunger will hopscotch ahead to South Carolina with two-and-a-half weeks to work on the “ground game” there before that state’s Jan. 21 primary. Given the possibility that Rick Perry is supposed to be the candidate to beat in South Carolina, and Perry may suffer a humiliating fifth-place finish in Iowa (and may not even try to compete in New Hampshire), there is a chance that Santorum could come into South Carolina with a wave of momentum, looking like the most viable conservative alternative to Romney.

We talked about this Saturday on Granite Grok’s “Grok Talk” podcast with Skip Murphy and Mike Rogers, and I’d urge you to listen to that because one of the things we talked about was the danger of looking too far ahead in the campaign, trying to base decisions on hypothetical suppositions about what will happen two weeks or two months in the future. Too many people, I suggested to Skip and Mike, began their 2012 calculations by asking, “Who can win?” And they ruled out the potential of a candidate like Rick Santorum (or Ron Paul, for that matter) to have an impact on the results.

We are now about 48 hours away from Tuesday’s caucuses, and I hesitate to predict what’s going to happen Wednesday until I know what happens Tuesday. But those who have pre-emptively dismissed Santorum as a possible contender for the final “Not Mitt Romney” role in this campaign may need to re-examine their calculations. And the sooner, the better.

Rick Santorum Talks Steelers Football

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
My friend Dan Collins insisted that I must interview the candidate about his favorite NFL team, which I did Friday night:

SANTORUM: “We will beat the Browns this week. My prediction is, both the Patriots will lose to the Bills and the Ravens will lose to the Bengals and we will be the Number One seed in the AFC playoffs.”
ME: “And who is going to be your opponent in the Super Bowl?”
SANTORUM: “I cannot see how the Packers don’t get it. …”
ME: “So the Steelers and the Packers?”
SANTORUM: “Rematch. And of course, Green Bay, after the last Super Bowl says, ‘Ain’t gonna be no rematch.’ Well there is going to be a rematch.”
ME: “So you don’t give any credit to the Cowboys?”
SANTORUM: “Who?”

The kind of tough questions they don’t ask on “Meet the Press.”

Rather Harsh, But Hard To Counter

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by Smitty

Goldfish and Clowns:

It’s becoming painfully apparent that the conservative movement has learned nothing from, or since, 2008. We continue to eat our own and mount a circular firing squad, not once stopping to consider whether our actions further the conservative cause or merely provide free ammunition to the left. It’s also becoming apparent that we have learned nothing from the 2010 election when we screamed that we wanted non-professional politicians, people who were committed to the ideals of the Tea Party, yet when we got them in the presence of candidates such as Christine O’Donnell or Sharron Angle we ran and hid, appearing only long enough to throw brickbats at them. Why was this?
The answer is it has become more imperative to maintain or improve position within the conservative blogosphere’s echo chamber than to embrace reality. Our commitment is not to conservative ideals, but rather how much credit we get for those ideals. We say we want a revolution, but unless we can assume the position of Washington crossing the Delaware we become quite disinterested.

In musical terms, we are The Ramones, in all their egalitarian glory, but we crave the virtuosity of the Satriani elite.

This is the paradox of American politics, to admire the seemingly effortless performance of the pro, while despising the orders of magnitude more time spent practicing than cranking it out on stage.

And yet, I’m not sure that the GOP nominee is going to be abandoned like O’Donnell or Angle. For all the primary support is scattershot, I anticipate the blogosphere (to the extent that it matters) will turn on a dime and support the nominee. What’s crucial, however, is communicating to that nominee that, in contrast to the cult-like support offered #OccupyResoluteDesk, that nominee can expect to have the hindquarters handed to him, insofar as he deviates from the conservative principles he ran on.

FMJRA 2.0: Cry Tough

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— compiled by Wombat-socho

The Santorum Surge: Mainstream Media Finally Beginning to See Omens in Iowa

Rick Santorum to Ann Coulter: ‘I Mean, Ann, Should I Have Voted for Amnesty?’

Prayer For The Egyptian Christians

SANTORUM SURGE: Finally, the Polls in Iowa Are Catching Up With … Me

Gingrich Misses Virginia Ballot, Too

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Edasurc: ‘Crusade’ Spelled Backwards

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: How’s the Weather Today in Vanuatu?

Fear and Loathing at BWI

The Lonely Conservative Injures Herself While Linking Us

Greetings From Iowa

Rule 5 Monday: Boxing Day Edition

VA Attorney General Cuccinelli On GOP Primary Ballot

Ron, When You Accuse Israel Of Starting Hamas, You Need To Cite A Good Reference

Rick Santorum On Greta

Republicans With Shotguns

Romney Campaign Infiltrated By DHS-Certified Right Winger In Black Ford Mustang Thinking Santorum Thoughts

When the Story Writes Itself

Greetings From the Quad City

Shorter Victor Davis Hanson: Postmodernism Sucks

Rick Santorum Gets ‘The Kind of Optics a Cash-Strapped Candidate Can’t Buy’

Nancy Pelosi, Victim Of Those Bad, Bad. . .Campaign Donors

‘Everyone Sells Out in Iowa’

IOWA NOTEBOOK: Occupy Caucuses?

I Thought Fischer Sounded Fishy

Guess Who’s Gonna Be Watching Hawkeye Football Tonight With Rick Santorum?

‘Quite a Difference!’

Missing The Point On Marriage!

Newt Throws A Hail Sarah Pass?

You Can View The Uncertainty With Trepidation, Or As An Opportunity

Perry Campaign’s Amateur Hour

Top linkers this week:

  1. Katy Pundit (8)
  2. (tied) Lonely Conservative, The Conservatory, and Daily Pundit (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery, especially during the holiday season when most of us have so much other stuff going on. Deadline for next weekend’s FMJRA will be Friday, January 6. Happy New Year, everybody!

 

Ah, Yes: The Wallet, Plus Two More Predictions For Next Year

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by Smitty

Mark Mardell at the Beebs:

The other major factor in whether or not Obama survives in office is the state of the economy. There are glints of light, indications it is getting a little better. But another set back in Europe could blow the US further off course. And whatever story of slight optimism the statistics tell, most Americans won’t be bathed in the glow of a feel-good factor.

My 2012 predictions, well, really only three:

1) Economy. Starting with late spring/early summer, the economic news thaws. The economy, itself, remains frozen in a block of ice, but the news thaws. By high summer, there is a lot of upbeat news. Some may be genuine. If you have some cash, and you really think BHO is OUT, then buying some stocks could be sensible. So the Dow will be up, a little. This will be touted as a Really Good Sign. Of course, the actual hiring of new workers, well, that won’t exactly be going on, but the last reports on jobs and the economy will be railed at the maximum favorable side of the margin for error. They always adjust them downward later, do they not?

2) Election. My crystal bollocks do not see an easy ride for Romney to the GOP nomination. In the first place, even though it sort of looks like the fix is in, behaving as though the fix is in may pop that fix right out. Romney has to appear to have earned the nomination. The Tea Party cannot and will not roll over for him, nor should he wish such. Mitt is going to have offer some detailed, specific assurances to conservatives to lure them to his banner. Buying Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie, Christine O’Donnell and Ann Coulter, while good business, may not buy you as much as, say, Limbaugh, Levin, and Beck. We should know by Super Tuesday how things fare. It’s not clear whether Rick Santorum can play BHO to Romney’s Hilary Clinton (how is that for disparaging comparisons?) but I will be putting my money where my mouth is once I’m back to work.

Irrespective of the winner of the GOP nomination, conservatives do rally, push back upon the #Occupy weenies, and send BHO into a permanent golfing arrangement. If I’m wrong, you can have my crust of bread in the gulag.

3) CPAC. Stacy’s Rodney Dangerfield routine about listings and event panels reaches a crescendo, and Tabitha Hale goes all Jim Croce on him, Ron Paul wins the straw poll, and the network is still under-provisioned.

SANTORUM SURGE SUNDAY: Final Poll Makes Front-Page News in Des Moines

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
You’re looking at the front page of Sunday’s Des Moines Register, which I just bought this morning at a convenience store down the street, and which carries the results of their final poll:

Mitt Romney tops the latest Des Moines Register Iowa Poll in the closing days before the Iowa caucuses, but Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are poised within striking distance.
The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, shows support at 24 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; 22 percent for Paul, a Texas congressman; and 15 percent for the surging Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.
But the four-day results don’t reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.
“Momentum’s name is Rick Santorum,” said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.

A good solid third would be great for Santorum. Second place? Awesome. And we dare not dream of what Rich Lowry suggests:

If Bachmann and Perry fade more at the end — and this poll result could hurt them — Santorum is within striking distance of a stunning upset.

Yeah, that would be stunning. Even I would be stunned if Santorum somehow manages to win this thing. But why does Lowry suggest that only Bachmann and Perry have the risk of a “fade”? Why can’t Romney and Paul and Gingrich fade, too? Never mind.

The point is, if this lastest poll is an accurate measure, Gingrich and Perry are now locked in a desperate struggle to avoid placing fifth in Iowa. And yet the Perry campaign — which ought to be focused on beating Gingrich — is instead pouring a steady barrage of attacks on Santorum.

‘Get Crazy With The Cheese Whiz’

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by Smitty

Pat in Shreveport sums it up for us: “I Suck”. I blogged from Afghanistan for much of 2011; Stacy’s gonzo efforts continue to this day. Yet we’re still clocking in somewhere between haggis and chopped liver on Director Blue’s roundup.
Last night, reached for comment at ~2300 EST, Stacy allowed he was on the way to crash “The Raucous Before the Caucus,” though he was dubious as to whether or not Tabitha Hale had been invited. At the mention of Director Blue’s post, Stacy recalled a diagram:

Cue the Beck:
I might also mention that I overheard a GPS unit in the background of Stacy’s cel phone, a severe blow to his Luddite cred.
Update: Nice Deb at least noticed us. 🙂