"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

A Vote for Taking, not Making

More from the Fox News exit poll:




















Essentially, this was a vote by people who are either poor or unemployed or employed in jobs that aren't very productive, if by productive you mean the value of what you offer in the free market that free people are willing to pay you for.  

A vote for taking, not making.   We have become the nation Tocqueville feared:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

A Vote for Tribe

More from Fox News' exit poll:

















This is the election when America became a tribal nation.  

What histories tell us about tribal nations isn't pretty.  
***

Re America's increasing tribalism, here's a chart from 2008 regarding the demographics of recent elections:






































I don't know what this means yet.   Obviously the percentages for minority voters increased over 2008 ,just as they had been increasing for the past 25 years.   But did they increase in absolute terms?   Or did white voters stay home?   Or a combination of the two?

With regard to the Hispanic vote, however, it's safe to say that it's changing the face of American politics rapidly.   For the GOP, what that means is that in 2012 you will hear a lot about Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Susana Martinez.  

A Vote Against Wisdom

From Fox News' exit poll:



















Let's posit that the older you are, the more responsibilty you have, the more experienced you are, and the more people you are likely to have depending on you, including spouses, children, and employees; while the younger you are, the more likely you are to be irresponsible, inexperienced, and to have no one depending on you.

This is the election in which America rejected wisdom, and opted for silliness and shallowness.

What Happened? What Now?

I'll be writing more today and in the weeks to come about what happened last night and what it might mean for the future.   For now, I offer, via the Regular Son, a reading from this morning's Mass:

Do everything without grumbling or questioning,
that you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
among whom you shine like lights in the world,
as you hold on to the word of life,
so that my boast for the day of Christ may be
that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

White House Insider on Romney the Man

Ulsterman's White House Insider source about Romney today:

Earlier in all of this, I really didn’t fully appreciate the kind of man Mitt Romney is.  It’s a rare thing to have a quality human being in politics at this level.  Everything I hear, everything that has come back to me, points to the governor as being that rare thing, a real quality human being who happens to also be running for President of the United States.  If this all comes down to “may the best man win”, Mitt Romney wins this thing in a landslide.

Girl of the Day - Ann Romney

Less cheesecake, more wholesome goodness.

I'm calling it early.   Welcome to our new First Lady.

The Margin of Fraud

Powerline reports:

It is being reported that Democratic Party operatives are evicting court-appointed Republican poll watchers from polling places in Philadelphia. Specifically, this reportedly has happened in Ward 32, Div 13; Ward 43, Div 14; Ward 56, Div 1; Ward 56, Div 22; Ward 32, Div 28; Ward 32, Div 28; Ward 12, Div 17; Ward 39, Div 1; Ward 24, Div 9; Ward 18, Div 25; Ward 43, Div 14; Ward 29, Div 18; Ward 65, Div 19; Ward 20, Div 1; and Ward 6, Div 11. The idea is to kick out the Republicans, then stuff the box with ballots marked for Obama. This is how some of these precincts have achieved 99 to 100% turnout in past elections.

He's an Incompetent Employee, Fire Him

Barack Obama works for us, the people.   We have the right and the duty to fire him if he's doing a bad job.   Toward that end, two thoughts:


Private capitalism creates wealth by permitting the market to allocate resources to the most efficient and productive enterprises.

Crony capitalism destroys wealth by allocating resources to inefficient and non-productive enterprises.

Choose capitalism.   Choose wealth.   It's good for everyone.

And:



Obama's crony capitalism/statist liberalism hasn't worked in the past four years and won't work in the next four years because it can't work as a matter of economics.  

Fire him.  

Broken Glass Voters




























In 2008 John McCain was a "hold your nose" Republican candidate.   Conservatives voted for him, but without joy, and many stayed home.   Squishy Republicans flipped to Obama to catch the wave of "the first black President."   Democrats, and especially liberal Democrats, and more especially African-Americans, would have crawled over broken glass to vote for Obama.

In 2012 the scenario is flipped 180 degrees.   Now it is the Democrats who have to hold their noses to vote for Obama.   His record on the economy -- high unemployment, slow growth, high deficits, the promise of higher taxes and more regulation -- is dismal and everyone knows it.   No thinking Democrat is excited about four more years.   But Republicans, and especially conservatives, will crawl over broken glass to vote against Obama and, increasingly, vote for Mitt Romney, a man who has proved himself equal to the moment in discipline, grace under pressure, and ability to govern.  

That difference will translate into millions of 2008 Obama voters either staying home or voting for Romney.   And it will translate into millions of conservatives who sat out 2008, particularly evangelicals, rushing the polls this morning, lining up all day, and then waiting deep into the night to celebrate victory.

Monday, November 5, 2012

The Regular Guy Crawls Out on a Limb - Re-Posted

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON 10/29:

Here's my prediction for 11/6.   I'm out on a limb, but I think things will break hard this week for Romney and he'll win going away.   People are fed up, no one is talking about how much they want another four years of Obama, Democrats will stay home, independents will either stay home or break hard for Romney, Republicans will be up early and voting, and then volunteering to call others, drive people to the polls, etc.  

So here goes:

































If everything really cascades, Romney could also pick off Michigan, Minnesota, Maine - 1st District, and Oregon.   That would get him to 355 and be a huge repudiation of liberalism, and it would also likely bring the Senate with him.  

Believe Your Eyes

Peggy Noonan hits the nail on the head:


Something old is roaring back. One of the Romney campaign’s surrogates, who appeared at a rally with him the other night, spoke of the intensity and joy of the crowd “I worked the rope line, people wouldn’t let go of my hand.” It startled him. A former political figure who’s been in Ohio told me this morning something is moving with evangelicals, other church-going Protestants and religious Catholics. He said what’s happening with them is quiet, unreported and spreading: They really want Romney now, they’ll go out and vote, the election has taken on a new importance to them.
                                                                                                                       
There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm. The Democrats do not. Independents are breaking for Romney. And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear thesame.         

Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of what’s in front of us? Maybe that’s the real distortion of the polls this year: They left us discounting the world around us.

Preference Cascade Alert!!!

Rasmussen's October 31, 2012 party identification poll has Republican party ID leading by 5.8% over Democratic party ID.

If that holds, you know what it means.


Girl of the Day - Pre-Election Prediction Edition

The Regular Guy predicts that America will go red tomorrow in a big way.   And when I say big, I mean big.


Guiliani Calls Obama a "Disgrace" on Sandy Relief

You would think Rudy Guiliani would be an authoritative voice on how New York copes with disasters.   So will the mainstream media cover him calling Obama's performance on Hurricane Sandy a "disgrace":

The Last Gasp of Skewed Polling

CNN's presidential poll today has a dead heat, 49-49, between Romney and Obama.   But the sample they use has 11 percent more Democrats, 41-30.   And the poll also shows Romney with a commanding 22 point lead among independents.

Mark it down.   If Romney wins independents at all, much less by 22 points, he will win the Presidency.   There is literally no universe where Democrat turnout will be 11 points higher than Republican turnout.  

Indeed, Gallup's latest poll actually shows Republican turnout higher than Democrats.   If that happens, it's a Reaganesque wave election.  

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Love of Country

This speaks for itself:

Birthday Today - Grandma!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

I posted this a couple of years ago, but it's such a great picture I wanted to post it again.   Here she is, before the Regular Guy was born, taking care of the Regular Sisters:































If Mitt Romney wants to take us back to the 1950s, I'm all for it.  

Oceans of Red Ink

Michael Ramirez is brilliant today, as always:

Dangerous Rhetoric

The nastiness of the Obama campaign reached a new low yesterday with Obama's comment that revenge should be a motivation for people to vote against Romney:




This is dangerous rhetoric in a democracy.   We have (or used to have) a civil society.   We vote, we count the votes, then we congratulate the winner and move on with our lives.   We don't seek "revenge" against our fellow Americans.   That kind of talk leads to riots, civil discord, violence, civil war, mayhem.  

Consider this:  with the al Qaeda terrorists who killed Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Obama talks about "bringing them to justice."   With his fellow American, Mitt Romney -- a father and grandfather, a "sterling" businessman (according to Bill Clinton), a man who has committed no crimes, who has always served the communities he's lived in, who has to all accounts no personal vices, who gives millions away to charity, who serves his church, etc. -- he talks about "revenge."   Revenge for what?   For being successful?  For living a good life?   For being white?   For being a Christian?  

I wonder whether a reporter will ask the President what exactly Mitt Romney has done in his life that merits revenge. 

Chart of the Day

This chart is getting some play on the conservative blogs:




And yet they lambasted Romney for having the audacity to notice that Obama's plan appears to be to create a huge constituency of people who literally can't feed themselves without first feeding at the government trough.

Zombie Presidency

The "Zombie" blogger at PJ Media has a useful list of the serial scandals and missteps and policy debacles of the Obama Presidency.  His theory is something like this -- the natural liberal tendencies of the media to ignore Obama's misdeeds is exacerbated by the sheer number of them.   We just can't keep up with what a disaster this Presidency has been.

Anyway, here's a taste of the list, just the first twenty or so to whet your appetite:

The Complete List of Barack Obama’s Scandals, Misdeeds, Crimes and Blunders


• $6 trillion in new national debt under Obama…after he promised to decrease the deficit.
• Obamacare — A massive and incredibly convoluted bill which exponentially increases the federal government’s control over our personal lives…which neither Obama nor a single Democrat even read before passing, and which will likely bankrupt the nation.
• In both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the Obama campaign purposely disabled the credit card verification system for its Web site donations, allowing anyone from any foreign country to donate with no limit and no proof of identity; in both elections it was demonstrated that people overseas and people with obviously false identities were able to donate to Obama campaign, in direct violation of several laws. To this day it is not known what percentage of Obama’s campaign funds are illegally obtained, since there is no documentation.
• Billions of taxpayer dollars gambled on “green” companies like Solyndra, NextEra, Ener1, Solar Trust and many others — all of which went bankrupt.
• An intentional refusal to enforce federal immigration laws.
• Unemployment at or above 8% for almost his entire term in office (which was actually closer to 15% actual unemployment).
• Operation Fast & Furious — a government-sponsored illegal gun-running scheme designed to purposely go awry so as to induce public outcry for gun control.
• Spent 20 years listening to a racist anti-American pastor (Rev. Jeremiah Wright), whom Obama desribed as a mentor. On March 18, 2008, Obama gave a speech in which he said “I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother” and “[Wright's church, Trinity United] embodies the black community in its entirety.” Now Obama tries to pretend that Jeremiah Wright doesn’t exist, and that his extremist anti-white philosophy didn’t influence Obama’s worldview.
• Increased the percentage of Americans dependent on food stamps to unprecedented levels (now over 15% of the nation’s population).
• Before he entered politics, Obama worked as a lawyer suing banks in landmark cases, forcing them to give home loans to unqualified minority borrowers — a practice now understood as one of the primary initial causes of the eventual housing bubble and market collapse.
• Handed out over 1,200 waivers to politically connected donors exempting them from the onerous requirements of Obamacare.
• Greatly expanding the number of unaccountable “czars,” which essentially amounts to unilaterally adding new federal departments with no congressional oversight — leading to a true “bureaucracy” in the original sense (rule by unelected bureaucrats).
• Using taxpayer dollars to bail out the private pension funds of autoworkers’ unions at GM & Chrysler.
• Illegally ending the welfare-to-work requirements passed by Congress.
• Doling out $800 billion in stimulus cash for “shovel-ready” jobs that didn’t exist — the money just evaporated with no measurable economic benefit.
• Alienating and isolating Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East.
• Apologizing to Islamists and terrorists for offending them.
• Under Obama’s watch, for the first time in history America’s credit rating was downgraded, due to his poor economic policies.
• Stopped American oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, allowing other nations with worse environmental records to drill instead — thereby managing to both weaken our economy and damage the environment simultaneously.
• Proposed in 2008 to intentionally bankrupt the coal industry — and now lies to voters and workers in coal-producing regions about his true intent.
• Pretends to be concerned about skyrocketing energy prices, when in fact he vowed to increase them on purpose (so as to make alternative energy schemes more competitive.)
• In a primary debate against Hillary Clinton in 2008, Obama said he would never force people to buy health insurance, since those without it couldn’t afford to buy it. Less than two years later, he rammed through Obamacare, which does indeed force people to buy health insurance.


It goes on and on.   But it ends on Tuesday.  

All Jacket. No Bombers.

Mark Steyn kills it this morning on NRO:

In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats and tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers. He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket. He announced that he’d instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America “we leave nobody behind.” By doing all this, the president “shows” he “cares” — which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn’t care....

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats’ calls for help — even though he had aircraft and special forces in the region. Too bad. He’s all jacket and no bombers.

Photo ops are easy.   To decide to put on a costume -- and that's what his "bomber jacket" was -- is easy.   To affect a look of "concern" is easy.   To fly over devastation is easy... you just look out the window and not thoughtfully.   There is no downside from your "decisions" to do those things... you can count on the mainstream media dutifully reporting the image you are trying to project.

To actually do your job is hard.   To make a decision where the outcome is uncertain is hard.  

President Photo-op has three more days.   And then the real job starts.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Freudian Slip

A heartbeat away from the Presidency:

Overflow Hits Breitbart

Breitbart has a story up about the overflow crowd at Romney's State Fair rally today, including a picture of the overflow outside at the ampitheater.   If you look hard you can see the Regular Son and me in dark coats, with Mom partially obscured in a light blue coat.  Fun!


Thousands Overflow Romney Speech in Wisconsin


Video of Romney Rally

A few notes about the Romney rally this morning at Wisconsin State Fair Park, attended by the Regular Wife, Regular Son, and yours truly.

1. We got there late and hundreds of people were already leaving because they couldn't get it.   The Products Pavilion held only 2,500 or so.   But probably around a thousand people ended up, like us, standing outside in the cold for two hours, listening to the speeches over loudspeakers.    Ultimately, we got very lucky because we got to see Romney up close when he stopped by outside to say hello.   We were probably thirty feet away, as the video below shows.

2. The crowds were very very energized, happy, upbeat, as was the candidate and, especially, Governor Scott Walker.   I think that they are really confident, and it showed.  

3. So the takeaways I have:  Republicans are energized, confident, happy warriors.   I think we're going to win this thing.

Here's the video.   About 4:30 I pan back and you can see the Regular Son with the next President in the background.   Pretty cool stuff to be able to share with your wife and kid.


Minnesota and Pennsylvania?

Paul Ryan will be campaigning in Minnesota on the Sunday before election day.

Mitt Romney will be campaigning in Pennsylvania on the Sunday before election day.

Did anyone think you would be hearing those sentences four days before the election?

Not sure what I think of this.   If Romney is this confident of winning that he's going for a mandate, OK.  I hope it works.  But if he's worried about Ohio and thinks he needs a different path, then not OK.

We're hitting the Romney rally at Wisconsin State Fair Park this morning.   Hopefully I'll be able to flip up some pics later.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Perfect Storm Weekend

A scenario, not a prediction: 

  • The jobs report tomorrow will be a correction from last month's outlier, and unemployment will tick back up to 8.0%.
  • The weekend news will be dominated by two stories:  the unraveling Benghazi scandal and the deepening frustration of New York and New Jersey residents at the slow recovery of basic services after Hurricane Sandy.
  • Polls will continue to show a close race through tomorrow, but then will start breaking over the weekend.
  • By Monday, Romney will have a 2-3 point lead in the polls.
  • On Tuesday, Romney will win a 5-6 point victory and 300+ in the electoral college.

I hope it is so.    Wasn't hope enough in 2008?

Some Thoughts on Hurricane Sandy's Political Impact II

As I said below, we don't yet know what the political impact of Sandy will be.   If headlines like this continue, Obama's narrative of being a "steady leader in a crisis" will look less and less positive for him:

Despair sets in for some Coney Island residents as living conditions deteriorate rapidly in Sandy’s wake

And Obama can't like this kind of reporting:

"We are scavenging for food like animals," said another tenant Jeffery Francis. "We are in a crisis and no one will help us. Look at us. We are misery. Everyone cares about Manhattan. No one is looking out for us. Nothing. We are Katrina."

Some of this is inevitable.  We live in an extraordinarily interdependent world, where the delivery of food and water and basic services is dependent on complex systems, computers (which run on electricity), networks, organizations, communications, transportation.   When those systems are disrupted, a degree of chaos is going to happen no matter who is in the White House or the Governor's Mansion or the Mayor's office.   And when it happens to an area of the country that has an aging infrastructure and an extraordinarily dense urban environment, the chaos is multiplied exponentially.  

But Obama made a show of being "in charge" for political purposes.   So he owns the aftermath of Sandy.   Blaming him for it wouldn't be fair, not really, but then again it wasn't fair to blame Bush for the aftermath of Katrina.  

Girl of the Day - Rita!

Sometimes after all this politics you need a palate cleanser: