One-and-a-Half Party System: Republicans Want to Lose

I first voted in a national election in 1972. I was one of about five on the UCLA campus who cast a ballot for Richard Nixon. I never regretted that vote. As a budding conservative, I had inchoate doubts about some Nixon policies, e.g., creating the EPA, price controls, but those never really overcame my fear of a Democrat, e.g., McGovern, running our foreign policy which was what I cared about deeply. In every election, local, state or national since, I voted straight Republican. I found the Democrats increasingly at odds with what I believed America should be and what I saw that it was. The liberal ideology became evermore repellent and destructive.

Since about 2008, when Bush caved in to demagogic demands for the Feds "to do something" about the economy, i.e., bail-outs for losers, I began to question my unswerving loyalty to the GOP. I had a hard time with McCain as the standard bearer in 2008, but look whom he ran against--a Chicago Marxist fraud. I applauded his choice of Governor Palin as a running mate, seeing it as a brilliant tactical and strategic move, but then as I feared, and later wrote on June 19, 2011,

The good Senator from Arizona, a bonafide American war hero, ran a disastrous campaign. He could not bring himself to go for the jugular of a very vulnerable and inept Democratic candidate. He made a brilliant move by picking Palin as his running mate, a move that generated enthusiasm and activated the base he needed to win, and then he sabotaged her. Her sent off to gain the respect and kudos of the mainstream media, and wasted her. He seemed to think that because the NY Times had endorsed him for the GOP nomination, they were on his side, so he sent Palin to get the same endorsement. That, of course, never came. 

McCain has not learned.

I think I am safe in doubling down on that ending statement: McCain has not learned. He continues to seek "respect and approval" from the liberal establishment, including Hollywood and the crumbling New York Times.

I liked and supported Governor Romney in 2012. Of all the candidates, he was the one, in my view, with the clearest vision on the economy and foreign policy, and again in my view, with the best chance of beating Obama. His choice of Paul Ryan was a gusty one. Ryan bought a Tea Party intensity and excitement to the GOP ticket. Ryan, of course, is the foremost Congressional expert on how the government budget process works and does not. He knows the impact of taxes on the productive sectors of the economy. He understands deficits and the tricks government accountants use to hide them. As with the choice of Palin, I was very pleased with the Ryan choice. Romney, however, proved somewhat of a prisoner to his staff, made up of good but very "moderate" and cautious Republicans.

The Romney campaign made three big mistakes (there are others , of course):

1) The surprising and unforgivable failure to understand that the Mainstream Media would give him no break, no slack;

2) Holding fire on Obama's grotesque mishandling of foreign policy, especially on Fast and Furious and Benghazi, in the belief that to corral Obama on those issues somehow would detract from Romney's economic emphasis;

3) Failing to appreciate fully how in the last few decades politics in the Western world increasingly comprise a battle between voters and taxpayers. As I wrote May 31, 2011,

In the United States, for example, we have the top one percent of earners paying 38-41% of all Federal income tax. We have nearly half of Americans who pay no income tax, and another large percentage 15-20% who pay minimal income tax (and lets not even get into "Earned Income Tax Credits".) We essentially have a society where some 25% of the income earners pay close to 90% of all Federal income taxes. That 25% does not consume anywhere near 90% of the services provided by the Feds. 

You can argue until you're blue in the face that this imbalance is "fair" because those who make more SHOULD pay more. Whether, however, you are "right" or "wrong," in socio-political terms this imbalance has set up a clash between those who pay and those who do not.

Point #3 means that it is very tough for a candidate advocating for individual responsibility and initiative to win national elections. The Democrat proposals on welfare reform, and the hideous Obamacare are nothing but further efforts to bring in more people dependent on the government, and who will vote Democrat.

We now have another situation wherein the GOP again allows the liberal media Mau-Mau machine, with the energetic assistance of the still hazy McCain, to determine its positions. I refer, of course, to the ongoing phony crisis over Syria--the real issue is Iran, and Obama ain't touching that one. I have written a lot about Syria (here, here, and here for example) and don't want to tire your patience by repeating all my arguments against intervention there. What, however, we see is a President waking up to the fact, as seen in polling, that he and "his" foreign policy team have mishandled the issue. In typical Chicagoland politics style, he seeks somebody to blame, or at least to share the blame with him, and, added benefit, sidetrack discussion of the amazing array of major scandals that swirl around his misadministration. After weeks of telling us that military intervention in Syria of some undefined sort is imperative and in the national interest; that we don't "need no stinkin' allies" or the UN; and that he, as President, has the authority to order it, he takes a break and passes the hot potato to Congress. Our "Constitutional Professor" suddenly decides that Congress should vote on the intervention, even if he reserves the right to ignore it.

As I wrote before (emphasis added),

Obama has said that, well, after all, he wants Congressional approval to engage in a limited warning strike of brief duration that will involve no major US military presence with the objective of . . . we don't know. He also undermined John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry by saying that, well, there is no hurry, and that we can strike whenever we want, now, tomorrow, in a week, in a couple of months, it's all good, dude . . . time for some golf with the ever-grinning Joe "The Plugs Don't Hurt Anymore" Biden. 

My recommendation, for what little value it has, is for Congress to vote "NO," unless the misadministration comes up with a real, solid thought-through proposal with goals and an exit plan. President Obama built this bizarre structure, he should get full credit for it. He should be told, you didn't want us in on the take-off, don't call us in on the crash landing.

Incredible, absolutely incredible, but the GOP leadership has announced that it intends to give Obama the authorization. Again, the GOP has demonstrated that it does not want to win, that it does not have the guts to stand up to the Obama Mau-Maus in the press and Hollywood. It will not stand up for the average American Joe, including real-life GI Joes who will be asked to put their lives on the line to save jihadi's in Syria whom elsewhere we drone to death on an almost daily basis. The GOP should say, "NO" in unmistakable terms, and, if Obama really believes in his own policy and that he has the authority to go ahead and attack Syria, then he should do that, and live with the results. The GOP leadership instead has decided to be "responsible" as defined in the Washington bubble and by the liberal media, and surrender to this mountebank of a President. Could you see a Senator Obama supporting a President McCain on a Syrian intervention?

I hope there is still some sense of honor and courage in the ranks of the Congressional GOP, and maybe even within some forgotten pocket of Democrat legislators, and that we will see a substantial "NO" vote. The GOP, as it did with its refusal to press on F&F and Benghazi, for example, is holstering a major 2014 campaign weapon; it will be forced to share in the disaster that will become our policy in Syria. If the GOP yields on this, when it has widespread public support for a "NO" vote, does anybody really believe the GOP will carry out a much tougher political fight on Obamacare and on all those scandals?

I am just about fed up with the GOP. If I wanted Democrats in charge, I would vote for them.

WLA