President Obama pokes the bear
Who is my dream candidate for national office? I want a true moderate. Not a political hack whose “moderation” is just accepting the overspending, corruption, and big government programs of both sides of the aisle. But someone who recognizes the flaws—and benefits—of each side in the debate, and who fights corruption wherever it occurs and not just when it occurs on the other side of the aisle.
Too many politicians—for all practical purposes, 100%—are against corruption and all the powers of incumbency when they’re the underdog, but willing to look the other way when they’re the ones benefiting. My dream candidate will take on corruption in both parties.
The obvious example is cronyism. Cronyism ensures a constantly expanding government. Conservatives can rail against encroaching government power all they want, but until they take on the reason that government keeps getting bigger, they won’t be effective at stopping it. Crony capitalism is that reason. It is the reason programs rarely get smaller, that budgets baseline at the previous year’s level, and that new programs are created in the backrooms.
To the extent that I’m a single-issue voter, that issue is effective self-defense, because it impinges on all of our other rights. When self-defense goes, so does free speech, free assembly, and privacy. So my dream candidate needs to support effective self-defense.
A candidate who recognizes that contraception and abortion legislation are distractions from the real issues facing America today would be awesome.
These are the things that have to be dealt with if we’re going to make any progress.
Unfortunately, that candidate chose not to run, and I think for good reasons, at least at the time.1 So, imagine my surprise finding out yesterday that Obama thinks that candidate is in the race!
Oddly enough, Barack Obama’s latest campaign attack ad is leveled at Sarah Palin, dishonestly editing a number of her remarks into a one-minute video that can’t even rebut any of the phony sound bites Team Obama manufactured, other than to unilaterally declare “these attacks are wrong and dangerous” at the end of the video.
What makes the ad truly bizarre is that Palin is not running against Obama, or running for any elected office at all. She’s a private citizen, whose comments Team Obama heavily edited to turn her into a demon figure, apparently in the belief that it will help them raise money and energize their dispirited base.
How many great leaders of American history have tried to run against the vice-presidential candidate from the previous ticket, after they retired from all elected offices?
If Obama expected her to respond as a social conservative and shore up his anti-anti-contraception campaign, well, he doesn’t know Palin well. Instead, she responded by pointedly challenging him to a debate on the real issues:
…a debt crisis that has us hurtling towards a Greek-style collapse, entitlement programs going bankrupt, a credit downgrade for the first time in our history, a government takeover of the health care industry that makes care more expensive and puts a rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats between you and your doctor, $4 and $5 gas at the pump exacerbated by an anti-drilling agenda that rejects good paying energy sector jobs and makes us more dependent on dangerous foreign regimes, a war in Afghanistan that seems unfocused and unending, a global presidential apology tour that’s made us look feeble and ridiculous, a housing market in the tank, the longest streak of high unemployment since World War II, private-sector job creators and industry strangled by burdensome regulations and an out-of-control Obama EPA, an attack on the Constitutional protection of religious liberty, an attack on private industry in right-to-work states, crony capitalism run amok in an administration in bed with their favored cronies to the detriment of genuine free market capitalism, green energy pay-to-play kickbacks to Obama campaign donors, and a Justice Department still stonewalling on a bungled operation that armed violent Mexican drug lords and led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
I’d love to see a debate on these issues, and I challenge the White House Press Corps to follow up with the President. If Obama wants to debate a non-candidate, then do it for real. Back in 2008, I made a joke post about how George Bush lost the election because it seemed that Obama would have preferred to run against Bush than against McCain or Palin. Perhaps now he’s finally up to campaigning against Palin, even if it’s four years late. Can he do it on the issues, though?
In response to Your candidate is unelectable and stupid: Unelectable and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Partly I think she didn’t run because at the time she chose not to run it looked like there were some strong conservatives in the race, and she’s good enough to recognize that her reputation has been damaged by the media’s lies so, given that people like Rick Perry were in the race, America was better served by them running than by her. No one expected Perry to fail so spectacularly, except perhaps Stacy McCain.
But partly I think it’s something she can’t talk about: on the left and in the media, she is hated. Really hated. And her family is also hated. The person who kills her or a member of her family will get Likes on Facebook and they know it. While the op-eds will pretend to say that it shouldn’t have happened, they’ll start the op-ed with “I didn’t agree with Palin, but” and they will end it by blaming Palin and Republicans for the killings. And if they kill Trig? Then Palin will be blamed both for having run for office as a mother and for not having aborted Trig in the first place.
We get the candidates we deserve.
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- George Bush loses election
- Democrats, pollsters, press celebrate successful campaign following controversial president George W. Bush’s failure to gain a third term.
- Let’s Talk About the Real Issues, Mr. President: Sarah Palin at Sarah Palin’s Notes
- “This latest ad is quite odd, but also quite telling. It shows that our President sure seems fearful of discussing the economy, energy prices, and all the other problems people need addressed.” (Memeorandum thread)
- Necessary to the Security of a Free State
- We cannot have a free state when citizens are not encouraged to be responsible for their own defense.
- Obama Targets Breitbart, Palin, Hannity with Heavily-Edited Ad: Ben Shapiro at Big Government
- “The Obama re-election campaign has released an internet ad targeting Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Breitbart.com. Coming up short in the fundraising department and under fire for President Obama’s longtime association with the radical ideas of Professor Derrick Bell, the Obama campaign video features the McCain/Palin logo, and claims that right-wingers are dog-whistling racism.” (Memeorandum thread)
- Palin the Pragmatic: Fred Barnes
- “Palin, John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, is a strong social and religious conservative. She opposes abortion and gay rights and, as an evangelical Christian, believes in a God-centered universe. But these matters are neither her top priorities as governor nor even her second-tier concerns… Instead, her agenda since being elected governor in 2006 consists of oil and gas, taxes, and ethics reform.”
- Perry Campaign’s Amateur Hour: Robert Stacy McCain at The Other McCain
- “Even Perry supporter Dan Riehl is getting sick of this clumsy campaign. Yesterday, I was talking to people about how a candidate with such a great story to tell—Texas has the best economy in the United States—has done so poorly. People who had called Herman Cain’s campaign the worst-run presidential campaign of the year may owe Mark Block an apology.” (Memeorandum thread)
- Why not challenge Palin to a debate, Mr. Obama?: John Hayward
- “So, how about it, Mr. President? Your cowardly attempts to whip up your base by demonizing a private citizen have led to her gracious extension of an offer to repeat this garbage to her face. How many great leaders of American history have tried to run against the vice-presidential candidate from the previous ticket, after they retired from all elected offices? Here’s your chance to convince us what a brilliant strategy that is!”
More Sarah Palin
- Sarah
- Published while Governor Sarah Palin was just Governor Sarah Palin and not the 2008 Vice Presidential nominee for the Republican Party, this is a fascinating look at the pre-media frenzy governor.
- The anti-politician
- In 2007, then-governor Sarah Palin turned down federal funds for a pointless Alaskan roads project in hopes that the money could be put to better use by another state, Minnesota, that had just seen a tragic bridge collapse during rush hour.
- Nothing to fear but a brokered convention
- The reason someone smart would want a brokered convention is that it’s exciting, and it means media coverage, and even more, it means unfiltered media coverage.
- Who is the fiscally-sane candidate?
- Which of the Republican candidates is most likely to help turn this country back on the path of fiscal sanity?
- Going Rogue: An American Life
- Unlike politicians who have to fall back on their ancestors for middle-class anecdotes, Palin lived them. In the seventies, her father took them from rural Idaho to greater opportunities in Alaska, but it wasn’t her father who built their family business: it was Todd and Sarah.
- 19 more pages with the topic Sarah Palin, and other related pages