The Extinction Burst

Before the 2008 election, I told my wife that I think the real reason that the media was completely tossing aside even the pretense of objectivity was that it was - to me - obviously an "extinction burst."

Consider the following:

1) The continuing daisy chain of newspaper/newsmagazine failures
2) The utter failure of liberal talk radio
3) The declining ratings of the alphabet networks, CNN and MSNBC
4) The ascendancy of Fox News
5) The enduring popularity of conservative talk radio
6) The rise of the dextrosphere and the already peaked popularity of the sinestrophere.
7) The repeated best-selling success of conservative books - not just on current topics, but re-examining political history as well (e.g., Liberal Fascism).
8) The calamitous decline in union membership outside of government.

Put them all together and what do you have? The end of the ability of the Left to completely control the narrative, to hide inconvenient truths and to pretend that opposing views are without merit or that they even exist.

I believe that the media understood very well that 2008 would be the last presidential election in which they had as much influence as they did. So they had no incentive to pretend they were objective any longer. After all, most of them wouldn't even have jobs by the time the next election rolled around anyway.

By 2012, it is very likely that neither Time nor Newsweek will even exist as print magazines. The NY Times may or may not be putting ink to paper, but even if it is there will be far fewer copies to circulate. Air America has already gone silent. Etc., Etc.

The Leftists in this country have controlled political conversation in this country for generations now. That monopoly has effectively ended, and now their agenda is being shredded daily by Glenn Reynolds' "Army of Davids" who are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, and in fact, never really did.

So the Democratic Party had no choice but to go "all in" after the last election. From ObamaCare to Cap-N-Tax to Card Check, every liberal wet dream is on the table.

They thought "we've only got one more shot to get this through, so we've got to jam as much through as possible RIGHT NOW." They know they're not likely to get another bite at this apple for a very long time to come.

Because not only have they lost control of the message, they've run out of money. Federal and state budgets are exploding across the country as the inevitable result of decades of liberal mismanagement (see California) and the extraordinarily high cost of government union workers (see GM and Chrysler for examples of where this is heading).

The appetite for, and the ability to fund, the expansion of government is over for the foreseeable future.

We just can't afford it. Democrats knew the debt bomb was ticking, but this recession and their own irresponsibility in passing the stimulus plan, sped up the countdown timer far faster than they had planned. The Tea Party movement was a completely unanticipated development which is why they were left floundering when it took off so suddenly. They never saw it coming, and it left them angry and sputtering ineffective, inaccurate and inane responses like "Nazis," "racists," and "unAmerican."

Time has run out. The steady flow of money and muscle from their union allies is quickly drying up, and that will affect the Democratic Party's ability to remain competitive. (And why they reacted so vehemently to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporate participation in elections.)

The Leftist agenda will always find a way to come back eventually. That totalitarian impulse isn't going to go away. It never really does as there are always people who seek to use the heavy hand of government to control other people's lives. But if it gets defeated now, it's going to have to go underground for a long time. And the actions of the Leftists for the last few years proves that they know it too.

Obama at the House Republican Retreat

One of my favorite bloggers, Ann Althouse, put up a post on yesterday's interaction between Obama and the House Republicans at their retreat. I'm reposting here my intial comments which I originally left at her site:

I agree with the general assertion that Obama didn't really say much yesterday that he didn't say in his SOTU speech. Nor was his tone any better. He repeatedly blamed the Republicans for his and his own party's inability to move his agenda forward. Shocker! Then he ludicrously repeated over and over again that it was the responsibility of Republicans to come to his side of the aisle.

The biggest takeaway in terms of actual news - rather than just spin - is that Obama was forced to admit repeatedly that the Democratic talking point of Republicans having "no ideas" or being the "Party of No" is, and always has been, a big fat lie. Republicans got him on the record about him having received copies of their legislation over the past year. "I've read that...", "I've seen that...", etc.

Since at least half of the Democratic electoral strategy going into the fall was attempting to paint Republicans as nothing more than obstructionists with no ideas of their own, Obama absolutely shattered his own party's plans for what he thinks was a short-term political gain. Yet another example of getting outmaneuvered in the long run.

There is a huge difference between "you haven't proposed any ideas," and "you've proposed lots of things with which I don't agree." To that end, Republicans wound up getting the better end of that argument as well. Obama was forced to swallow all his own talking points about Republicans. Go back and review Obama's many speeches about how we should pass his agenda because, hey, it's the only option available to fix a broken system. Turns out, he's been lying all along and yesterday he was forced to admit that too.

He backed Pelosi and Hoyer into a corner in the way they manage debates in the House. Every time Pelosi/Hoyer shuts Republicans out of the debate, Republicans will be able to march up to the cameras and point out how they're not living up to the bipartisanship House Republicans have with Obama. That sets up a very nasty inter-necine fight between the House leadership and Obama going forward.

Obama seems to forget he's not the entirety of the Democratic Party. He needs Pelosi/Hoyer to move his agenda. While he didn't explicitly throw them under the bus yesterday, he might as well have. He set himself up as the good guy, and the Republican caucus got to look like good guys for inviting him to their retreat and broadcasting their interactions. Guess who was missing? Guess who the Republicans immediately issued invitations to have the same kind of conversatino with? That's right. Pelosi and Hoyer. Now guess who will never show up to do that.

Now who looks like the ones who are getting in the way of accomplishing things on a bipartisan basis? That's right. Obama just set up the dynamic to make the Democratic House the bad guys...How many additional seats do you think this costs them in the fall?

Cap-and-Trade Follow-Up: Democratic Senators Want to Wait

Last night I blogged about the failure of the Australian Senate to pass a cap-and-trade system and predicted that it would spell trouble for senators looking to pass a similar system here. So what headline are we seeing from Bloomberg this morning?

"Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say"
Go figure. Also note the bias in the headline which refers to "U.S. Senators" when the article specifically talks about Democratic senators who are the ones pushing for the delay. Republican senators want it killed completely. See the huge difference there?

The Democratic senators want to push it off because they're concerned that passing cap-and-trade so close to the 2010 elections will hurt their re-election chances, but rest assured that once they have safely won another six years in office they will return once again to their ruinous plans to institute some sort of carbon trading scheme. The only way to actually defeat it, rather than just delay it, is to vote the Democrats out of office completely. They only understand the language of the ballot box, and we should never stop reminding them that we speak it fluently.

2010 Elections, Cap and Trade, Democrats, Congress

What TEA Partiers and Sarah Palin Have In Common

Republicans were sensing momentum earlier in the summer, but events of
the August recess -- specifically, the town hall meetings in which
opponents of the Democratic health care reform plan have turned out in
force -- have changed their view. "This month has opened our eyes,"
says one plugged-in House aide. "We're seeing real people who are fired
up who weren't engaged before -- the first time we've had a popular
movement that could really benefit us electorally."

That's the take this morning from Republican House members talking about their prospects in the upcoming 2010 elections. Both Democratic and Republican insiders are talking about the effect of the TEA Party movement, and there's widespread agreement that it's generally bad news for congressional Democrats.

"I think what's going to happen is Obama's going to be fine, and the
Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010,"
says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named.

It's only the middle of August and the TEA Party movement is already making itself felt deep inside the halls of Congress. That's why you're seeing people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ratcheting up their rhetoric against the grassroots who are spontaneously rising up across the country. They're genuinely scared. (They're whistling past the graveyard with regard to the potential impact on Obama, but that's a discussion for another day.)

In mid-term elections, the president's party generally loses seats in Congress as there is generally some pushback against the agenda of an incoming president - no matter what his party is. But this year has been exceptional in that conservatives have taken to the streets, a virtually unheard of phenomenon, early and loudly within months of him taking office. Reid and Pelosi may publicly be dismissing TEA Partiers as "rent-a-mobs" carrying swastikas who only show up at the behest of insurance companies, but privately they understand its true grassroots nature.

This is the second time in less than a year that genuine grassroots enthusiasm from the other side of the aisle has thrown Democrats for a loop, and they are returning to the only thing they really understand: demonizing the opposition. The first instance was the vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin, and I don't think I need to remind anyone how the Left continues to hound her even today. The fire she lit under the conservative base briefly pushed McCain over Obama in the polls and struck fear into the hearts of Democrats. So they responded with the most vicious smearing of a politician in recent memory, with the active assistance of the mainstream media which has since admitted that they took sides against her.

Even in the last few days, Palin has had an impact on the ObamaCare discussion by forcing the Senate to drop the end-of-life counseling from its version. A recent headline proclaimed that "Sarah Palin Defines the Health Care Debate." When was the last time that the vice presidential candidate on a losing ticket was able to make her voice heard a year later with nothing more than writing a few paragraphs on her Facebook account?

TEA Partiers should look forward to more hate-filled diatribes to be directed their way from both Democratic officeholders and the mainstream media. Like Palin, they will be dismissed as stupid and ill-informed. They will be accused of being tools of nefarious corporate interests and hating poor people. Can you remember an effective opponent of Leftist ideology who they didn't say these exact same things about? There hasn't been an original thought in the Leftist playbook for decades: they go after all their opponents the same way.

But TEA Partiers should take every sling and arrow which is thrown at them with pride. They should recognize that the greater the insults being hurled at them, the closer they are to the mark. There's another saying from the bomber corps that TEA Partiers should keep in mind:

You only take flak when you're over the target.

Sarah Palin, TEA Parties, Democrats, Leftists, 2010 Elections, Congress, Nancy Pelosi

Ill Omen For Cap and Trade in the USA

In a sure sign that cap-and-trade is in serious trouble here, the Australian Senate has voted down a cap-and-trade system in their country.

Why does it matter what the Aussies are doing? Because one of the primary arguments for a cap-and-trade system in this country is that everybody else is doing it, and we're not living up to our global responsibilities if we don't. It becomes awfully difficult to make that argument if other countries have already rejected similar schemes themselves.

Australians tilt farther left than Americans do as a whole, and if they can't muster enough to support there then it's highly unlikely that it can be done here either. Much as they did with the Kyoto Treaty which was rejected 95-0 in the Senate while Bill Clinton was still president largely because China and India were exempted, senators are highly unlikely to put businesses in their home states at such a disadvantage to their foreign competitors - especially in a recessionary economy.

Hillary Clinton recently tried to get India to do something about their carbon emissions too, only to be told in no uncertain terms that India wasn't buying:

"There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the
lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions," Ramesh
told Clinton. He asserted that "detailed modeling" showed "unambiguous"
results -- that developing country emissions would remain well below
the averages of developed countries even with high growth rates.

Australians understand that cap-and-trade would be an economy killer for them. Indians get it too. Too bad American Democrats still don't. It's going to be up to the American people to explain it to them in a language they DO understand: beat them at the ballot box. The 2010 election season is coming fast. It's never too early to let your representatives know that we're watching and, unlike their MoveOn.org paper tigers: we vote.

Global Politics, Democrats, Diplomacy, Cap and Trade, 2010 Elections, Enivronmentalism, Global Warming, Foreign Policy, Economy

Blue Dogs On the Edge

Once again doing the job that the mainstream American media refuses to do, the Financial Times has an article about two wavering "Blue Dog" Democrats who are both saying that they could not vote for the House version of ObamaCare in its current form.

If there was any doubt that the TEA Partiers are having a profound effect on the current debate over socialized medicine, this should put an end to it. Just a couple of days ago the junior senator from Maryland, Ben Cardin, got an earful at a townhall meeting he held in Towson - a northern suburb of Baltimore:

Towson is a very liberal area - especially in relation to the far more conservative congressional district that Frank Kratovil, one of the Blue Dogs mentioned in the article, represents. Kratovil won in 2008 by a margin of only 3,000 votes in a traditionally Republican-held district. That puts him on the razor's edge of electability in 2010: he can't afford to be on the wrong side of his constituents. There's no doubt that the massive turnout at Cardin's townhall, someone who Marylanders know is likely going to vote for ObamaCare no matter what, has to have an impact on a vulnerable House freshman without Cardin's political muscle.

The question someone like Kratovil is likely asking himself today is: If a statewide Democratic Party potentate like Cardin can't even maintain control over one of his own townhall meetings, what are the 2010 prospects for a guy representing a conservative district in the face of this level of public anger?

It's not just a matter of being heard: there is a real opportunity for TEA Partiers and others who oppose socialized medicine to actually affect not just the ultimate structure of the House bill, but whether one is passed at all. The pressure is being turned up to 11: it's just a matter of how invested politicians like Kratovil are in having a future in elected office beyond November 2010.

2010 Elections, Democrats, ObamaCare, TEA Parties

What's Up With Mel?

Cassy's post reminded me about an odd piece of news out of Florida the other day: namely that Mel Martinez wouldn't be returning to his seat in the Senate after the August recess. While she, and others, are rightfully thinking about the implications for Charlie Crist who is the current governor and has already stated his intention to run for the Senate seat, I'm simply struck by the oddity of the announcement itself.

While some people may immediately draw a parallel to Sarah Palin, I fail to see any similarity other than the obvious one that they both resigned their offices after announcing that they would not seek another term. Palin was being subjected to an abuse of the ethics complaint process and had much brighter prospects outside the governor's office anyway. Martinez, on the other hand, has no such prospects and has not been the subject of anything other than the normal level of abuse one would expect as a national officeholder.

It does beg the question: why? I have to believe that he did so for family reasons of one type or another. Whether it was due to the threat of an affair being revealed, an illness or other personal problems, it would be pure speculation to hazard a guess. No matter the reason, he decided that he could no longer do the job that he was elected to do and stepped down. Too bad more politicians don't have the decency to do the same.

Republicans, 2010 Election, Congress

Help Wanted: New Congressmen

It seems that some Congressmen still aren't getting the message that people are fed up with government waste, fraud and abuse.

10 members of Congress decided that, in the middle of one of the most contentious public debates in years, they should skip town with their spouses to go on a "global warming fact finding mission" rather than go home and meet with their constituents.

1) If you still believe that man-made global warming is anything other than Leftist snake oil, you have no business representing anyone in Congress.
2) If you believe that the taxpayers should be footing the bill to drag your husband/wife along on a "fact-finding mission," you have no business representing anyone in Congress.
3) If you believe you need to spend half-a-million taxpayer dollars for a glorified sight-seeing tour, you have no business representing anyone in Congress.

Perhaps I'm too idealistic in thinking that we should expect our public servants to be wise stewards of our money, but idealistic or not it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Just keep this trip in mind when you go to the polls next year to decide who should - and should not - be left in charge of representing you.

Congress, Government Waste, Global Warming