An inspiring view of the next four years, brought to you by Powerline

The AP reports that the Republican nominee-designate replied angrily to a reporter’s question, and Powerline leaps into the fray, energetically demonstrating how unfair is the liberal media’s treatment of said nominee-designate.

Powerline came into existence largely to defend George W. Bush from unfair leftist attacks. Now it has transferred that mission to defending John McCain from unfair leftist attacks.

Indeed, massing together as in a phalanx to defend a Republican president from leftist attacks has been the unifying principle of the mainstream conservative movement for the last seven years.

So, if McCain is elected, here is conservatives’ future for the next four years: defending John McCain from the left … even as he lies through his teeth about his intention to secure the borders, seeks to legalize all illegal aliens, tries to push through a huge expansion in legal immigration, attempts to pass a “temporary guest worker” program that amounts to open borders, calls all critics of his open borders plan xenophobes and bigots, commits America ever more deeply to the Thousand Year Iraq, and constantly tells the American people that we’re fighting a global war against radical Islamist extremism, even as he permits the mass immigration of Muslims into America to continue and angrily calls anyone who opposes this policy a xenophobe and bigot. All the while, the leftist media will be attacking John McCain as a hard-line extreme right-winger, and the conservatives will make it their principal aim to be partisans and supporters of John McCain against his leftist enemies. And the whole time, conservatives will be enslaved to the whims of the left, because the harder the left goes after McCain, the more the conservatives will be required to defend him and his liberal policies.

Think of it—being a slave to the left, and all for the sake of John McCain.

That’s the fun, meaningful future for conservatives delineated by the party men at Powerline.

The only way to break the neocons’ deathgrip on conservatism and America is for McCain to be beaten.

- end of initial entry -

Adela Gereth writes:

You write: “The only way to break the neocons’ deathgrip on conservatism and America is for McCain to be beaten.”

In other words, only four more years of the Clintons or the election of a leftwing member of an Afro-centrist church married to a grievance mongerer can break the neocons’ deathgrip on conservatism and America.

I think you’re right. I wish you weren’t.

Incredibly, as it stands now, I think Hillary is the least of the three evils.

A reader writes:

Absolutely. Hillary or Obama in the White House will mean real conservative vitality.

An Indian living in the West writse:

The conservatives should let the Democrats win. They should abstain from voting.

Whoever is elected President this time will almost certainly last only one term. The country is on the brink of its worst recession since WWII. The banking system is a complete mess and inflation is likely to rocket upwards in the years ahead. In times like these, it is best to have a left-wing Democrat take office and take the flak for wrecking the country (unfairly I might add as the work has really been done during George Bush’s eight years). I think Obama will probably be the next President—and he will have probably have about as much success as Jimmy Carter.

So all in all, I think the result would not be unsatisfactory.

Richard W. (who earlier laid out cogent arguments for a vote for McCain) writes:

You really are winning this argument with me. I am starting to understand the downsides of a McCain presidency much more clearly. Just for fun I discussed this with a friend yesterday and he said “many of us are starting to think this way”.

I’ve even come around on Obama, I see positives from has victory. A black face on affirmative action. A pure liberal icon to demonstrate what pure liberalism can accomplish.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

The difficulty I have with this argument is trying to figure out what phrases like “real conservative vitality” mean, and what positive program you believe will be enacted in the future (when?) after conservatives (who?) have re-taken control of the federal government (how?).

What we do know is that if a Democrat is elected president, the borders will not be secured, the size and intrusiveness of government will continue to grow, new middle-class (and lower-class) entitlement programs are likely to be enacted, the military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies will be enfeebled, stridently left-wing/pro-choice justices will be appointed to the Supreme Court, taxes will go up (both income taxes and social security taxes), and so on. These are all tangible evils that will be much less worse under a McCain Administration (more or less so, depending on the issue). And if Barack Obama becomes president, the very ethno-nationalist basis of the conservative movement will have been decisively repudiated, at least in the short run.

Yet the fatal flaw in this argument, in my view, is that it offers no practical blueprint for how conservatives will “win” in the long run, so as to justify throwing in the towel in the short run. I fail to see where this strategy is supposed to lead. Let alone how the country would be better off under a Democratic administration. How can people who love their country be so willing, by their refusal to vote for the better candidate (McCain), to condemn millions of Americans to an even worse society? It makes no sense to me. I’d like to see at least a rough sketch of the actual political scenario that justifies this strategy. It all sounds rather romantic and impractical to me.

LA replies:

I love the way Steve Warshawsky has set up the discussion in such a way that supporting McCain is simply the default position, not requiring any particular justification, while not supporting McCain is so extravagant and strange that it requires an entire detailed road map to justify it! He captures this attitude with his description of a refusal to vote for McCain as “throwing in the towel.” Since when is not supporting someone you don’t support “throwing in the towel”?

As for the demanded road map, I’ve never said that a McCain non-victory would lead to some assured result. Rather, I’ve said that if McCain is elected, we know exactly what we will get, the continuation of the brain dead reign of Bushism and neoconservatism, which squelches even the possibility of a decent mainstream conservatism, let alone of a right-wing traditionalism. If we want that reign to end, McCain must lose. Right now we are frozen in the death grip of the mindless Bush, the mindless Rice, the mindless Podhoretz, the mindless McCain. The only choice at present is between that death grip and the left. If there is to be some other choice, the death grip must first be removed.

As for the harm a Dem president would do, if the GOP maintains a reasonable number of seats in Congress, it can stop and modify the destructive program of a Democratic president.

As for “conservative vitality,” by which I was really referring to a revival of a decent mainstream conservatism, not to the more radical traditionalist politics I favor, is it really necessary for me to spell this out for Mr. Warshawsky, as though he’s never heard of it before?

Also, I’m not telling other people what they ought to do on this. If someone feels that we must stop the Dems from getting into power no matter what, even if that means voting for McCain, I’m not going to say that that person is wrong. I recognize this is a difficult subject and there are reasonable grounds for disagreement. But I have my position and I’m arguing for it.

What I do strongly object to is the establishment conservatives who say: “Ok, McCain is our boy, everyone line up, all dissent ceases, we must be unified,” because they are the enforcers of the death grip.

Indian living in the West writes:

Even if McCain miraculously does everything that the conservatives who support him want him to do, he will only last one term.

As I said in my previous comment, the U.S. is on the brink of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. This sounds like an exaggeration at the moment but it won’t in a year’s time. Globally, commodity prices are skyrocketing. The total global surplus supply of wheat would last about 60 days in total right now. The price of all types of food have skyrocketed in the last three years as increased demand from Asia with its booming economies has sent prices skyrocketing. Oil is now trading at over $100 a barrel—was $10 a barrel in the late 1990s. Oil will go much higher in the next few years as production struggles to keep up with demand.

In the U.S. economy, you have astronomical levels of debt—public debt and private debt, most of it uncollateralised as property prices have plummeted. U.S. Banks are currently recovering 50 cents on a dollar lent to homeowners if they choose to foreclose. If property prices drop lower (which they will do—as the whole thing was a bubble inflated with cheap money from the Federal Reserve), the losses will mount even further. The total amount of securitised “sub-prime” debt is only $1 trillion. However, we are only at the tip of the iceberg—as the crunch bites, securities collateralised with credit card loans, student loans and other forms of consumer debt will get hit and may be rendered close to worthless. And after that you are likely to see waves of corporate defaults that will wreak havoc in the markets. The total size of “Credit Default Swaps” (akin to insurance policies written by banks against corporate defaults are, take a deep breath—$43 trillion). This has the potential to be the worst market meltdown since the Great Depression.

So given this background, if you are a Republican, why would you want a Republican to win? Even Reagan would not have lasted more than a term if he got elected under these conditions. So let Obama win I say—he will be flushed out of people’s memory like Carter and will be forgotten. Better to lose one election and win three later than to win one now and get voted out for a generation.

LA replies:

This seems a questionable basis on which to choose a president, almost as though the election of a president were one move in an ongoing video game rather than a decision about the leadership of a country. Besides which, we don’t and can’t know the future; and the more complex and contingent the future predicted events are, the less our ability to predict. For example, even if the economic downturn ILW predicts occurs, why should it end in time for the happy GOP restoration he predicts in 2012? It may well last beyond the next four years, in which case it would drag down the Republican elected in 2012 as well as the Democrat elected in 2008. We’re electing a president here, not gambling on wheat futures.

ILW replies:

The last time the U.S. had a depression, Republicans got voted out of Congress for 14 years and out of the White House for 20 years. These are not normal economic conditions in which we have normal boom and bust cycles. This is going to be far worse—and while most people who aren’t involved in the financial markets or are regular investors may not be easily convinced, there are sound reasons behind the prognosis.

To take the simplest possible yardstick, gold traded at $253 an ounce in 1998, while today it trades at close to $1000 an ounce. This might seem like an irrelevant statistic but what it says is that globally, investors have begun to surrender their trust in the U.S. dollar. This is an event of far reaching proportions and will have economic consequences far beyond the next election. Of course, one could say that an economic disaster may be so bad that even a Republican winning in 2012 may get ousted in 2016. That is a fair point but it is far more likely that a financial mess will be cleaned up in eight years than in four. And that is why I would say that a Democratic victory is likely to be good for the country in the long term—as it could permanently discredit a number of pet “causes” that they espouse. A Republican victory on the other hand would make things worse—as the economy gets worse with every passing month, the media will crucify the President for ruining the country by pandering to the “rich.” That kind of demagoguery is much more likely to enjoy currency when people are losing their jobs and struggling to pay their bills.

So I’ll stick by what I said before and hope that Obama wins—one term and is then dusted out of our memories, which would be in everyone’s interest.

LA replies:

If ILW is right about the econonic future, then the open-borders lobby will be stopped in its tracks. Immigration will cease to be an issue.

LA writes:

A further point to Steven W.: I said a few days ago about the prospect of Obama’s becoming president, “Let it come.”

What I mean is, there is a left in America, there is a right, or a kind of right in America. Instead of mushing up this conflict with a liberal Republican as president, let’s have the conflict out in the open. I want battle lines to be drawn. That’s much better than slowly dying.

E. writes:

More likely than not the Muslims will elect McCain by bringing us another 9/11.

It would make sense for them to wait until Hillary or Hussein or jointly come in but the Muslim lust for blood and mayhem will likely overpower all rational calculations on their part. Besides they want and must capture it by war and conquest and do not want it handed to them—as you can see in the case of Israel whose State Department-bought government can’t seem to give it enough away fast enough.

Adela Gereth writes:

Again I must say in the strongest terms I can muster that I believe it would be disastrous for America, both domestically and globally, if Obama were elected president.

Unlike you and most of the “regulars” at VFR, I have only the most tenuous grasp of foreign policy, and I am even less certain when it comes to economics. I tend to arrive at my conclusions by viewing things through a cultural and psychological prism. On that basis alone, regardless of whatever policies he might implement, or reverse, Obama as president would the worst possible outcome for our country, from a traditionalist point of view

I have no doubt that if Obama wins the election, it would be perceived by the entire world as America lurching leftward. We would be seen as “catching up” to the Europeans and both they and many non-Westerners would view this with smug satisfaction. The European elites would feel vindicated in their anti-Americanism (which I think would abate only slightly, if at all). The non-Western elites would interpret it as meaning we are ripe for succumbing to the kind of appeasement for which the Europeans have already shown such remarkable aptitude that it amounts to genius. Overall, we might be less hated but we would be even more despised and more vulnerable.

Meanwhile, on the home front, the grievance mongering would not only continue but intensify. My observation is that all groups, of whatever demographics, who feel a sense of entitlement are not only not placated by receiving what they feel entitled to but that their sense of entitlement only intensifies and spreads. And those with a sense of entitlement are poor sports. They are bad losers but even worse winners. Obama as the first “Black President” (or second, if you count Bill), would be virtually immune to criticism, any mistakes he made would be ascribed to the racism of nonliberal whites. If he were not returned to office, that, too, would be ascribed to the same racism. Indeed, I don’t think it is going too far to say that any future election of a white POTUS would be seen as a step backwards by the “progressive” community. (We are, after all, part of the global community, most of which is nonwhite; further, as the left so gleefully points out, we are well on the way to becoming a nonwhite majority nation.)

I am not persuaded, therefore, that breaking the deathgrip of the neocons would justify a development which would entail such unrelentingly negative consequences and from which our nation might never recover.

LA replies;

As I’ve said, I am open to the argument that Obama would harm the country so much that his election must be opposed through support for McCain. But the terrible things Miss Gereth expects to happen under a President Obama seem rather insubstantial and temporary, rather than substantial and permanent: foreign nations would perceive the U.S. as ripe for the taking and would despise us more; the minority entitlement grievance psychology would increase. That’s it? For these reasons I must support McCain? Miss Gereth has got to come up with stronger arguments than these.

N. writes:

I agree with Indian Living in the West on the economy. Without getting into the details, the parallels between right now and 1929 are extremely alarming. I disagree with ILW when he puts all the blame on Bush, though. My charts strongly suggest that the U.S. was overdue for a recession in 1996-97, and that the Treasury and Federal Reserve chose to manipulate the economy by flooding it with credit. The result was the dotcom bubble. When that popped, the Treasury and Federal Reserve flooded the economy again with credit, resulting in the real estate bubble. That is now popping, and it will take years for the excesses to be worked off.

One could even argue that Alan Greenspan laid the foundation of the current economic situation in 1987, when he bailed out the stock market with Federal Reserve actions, for that matter. These discussions can go on and on, but right now I see huge danger in the international credit markets, there is a real possibility of some large institutions being broken up because they are not solvent. Please note that both political parties are desperately trying to stave off trouble; the “stimulus” legislation that will be handing out checks in May was passed with support from both Republicans and Democrats easily.

You are correct that the issue of immigration will be affected. Already, the Bank of Mexico reports that remittance money from the U.S. to Mexico is down by six percent in one year. Since many illegal aliens were employed in construction of houses and commercial real estate, their jobs are going or gone. I suspect that one reason the official unemployment numbers for the U.S. have not moved much is that so far, the brunt of layoffs has been borne by illegals. [LA replies: Hey, that’s the kind of unemployment we need.]

More broadly, and philosophically, from reading on a variety of sources I’m seeing a tendency on the part of people towards the local, towards smaller political entities, and away from bigger ones. Maybe it is selection error on my part, but there does seem to be a pulling-back from globalization/centralization showing up in web logs and other sources. When I have some sources to cite, I shall send them to you. For now, it is just an impression, but couple a desire for “localization” vs. globalization with an economic crisis, and there are some chances to restore traditional social structures.

Steven H. writes:

I think your reply to Steve Warshawsky was well and thoughtfully done.

The more I focus on social issues such as abortion and homosexual marriage the more I feel compelled to support the McCain candidacy. Hillary and Obama’s positions on these issues are so radically Left that as a Christian man and a father, I can not even consider casting a vote for either one of these candidates nor will I sit out the election or vote for a third party. The loss of the Supreme Court to the radical judges that they would support would leave us powerless to stop them legally for a generation. McCain may not be the best but I still would rather take our chances with him.

Our best hope is to get McCain to veer right and then when elected hold his feet to the fire. Yes, there will be Republicans like Paul at Powerline who will simply fall in line and toe the party line but unlike with Bush, the right leaning PC types on talk radio and some writers will excoriate McCain if he sells out.

If that should happen, then that would be the time to start looking towards the 2012 election for a real conservative candidate. It would be the time truly to fight for change within the Republican Party. I am not saying that we have to wait for this scenario to unfold but that it would present an opportune time.

If we have Obama, whatever disaster that should befall us will be glossed over by the brain dead media and Republicans could even take the brunt of the blame. I do not have faith in the majority of Americans.

We are so firmly entrenched in political correctness that McCain’s description of our enemy as “radical Islamic extremists” is considered to be daring even by what we call the “right”. Rush, when asked by a liberal caller, “who is the enemy?”, found himself speechless and finally blurted out al Qaeda. The left won’t even acknowledge that there is a problem with Islam. They are too busy fighting Christianity. Robert Spencer is still searching for moderate Muslims.

We have a long way to go. With an Obama presidency we may never come back. I am focusing on Obama because not only is he far more dangerous to our country but also the likely nominee.

Spencer Warren writes:

I wonder if a Republican presidential defeat in 2008 will break the neocon death grip in light of their control over the mainstream “conservative” media. Hannity is already in line for McCain and, if only in his reflexive anti-Democratic politics, I am sure Limbaugh will follow.

LA replies:

At the least, it will break their death grip on national policy. As things are now, their guy is in the White House, running Iraq policy, and every atom of their energy is devoted to maintaining that policy forever. Once their guy is out and a Democrat has replaced him, that dynamic will be finished. If McCain wins, the dynamic, or rather the death grip, continues.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 07, 2008 11:57 PM | Send