Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Iowa

For those who are interested in the inside baseball of the nomination process, I will leave you in the capable hands of specialists such as Stacy McCain, Professor Jacobson, and Pat Austin.

My own views are from what one might call the 20,000-feet level. Romney appears poised to win, narrowly, in the caucuses, though it remains to be seen whether he can move on to victory in the many upcoming state primaries. If he does win the nomination, I will support him, with appropriate misgivings. He is a technocrat, which I take to mean someone who is interested primarily in making government work. Since, in our present circumstances, that means making big government work, I believe that he is not by any means the solution to our long-term problems. Still, I assume that he is not a man who dreams big, socialist dreams in the way Obama does, and if conservatives make further inroads into the Senate and House, Romney would be far more inclined to work with them than the congenitally hyperpartisan Obama ever would be. So, I suppose that Romney is a kind of methadone that could conceivably help us step down from our addiction to the Obama heroin. Of course, it is still a tad premature to start talking authoritatively about the Romney nomination; Santorum, Perry, Bachmann and Gingrich have all vowed to soldier on, regardless of the outcome in Iowa. And remember: in 1980 in Iowa, George H.W. Bush beat Ronald Reagan.

In any event, looking down the road a term or two, I don’t know that we really begin to get “clean” until the next generation of conservative Republicans starts moving up and demonstrating presidential potential: people like Senator Marco Rubio, for example, and perhaps Rep. Allen West, Governor Bobby Jindal and Governor Bob McDonnell; no doubt there are others, little known today, who may outstrip these in due course. And, most important of all, we need to work harder at electing conservatives at all levels of government, including state and local. If we want to have a great major league team, we need to have an extensive farm system.

7 comments:

JeffS said...

Of the current GOP field, Romney is not my first choice, nor is he my last (the former being Santorum, and the latter being Ron Paul). But, yeah, I could vote for Mitt, even if he did get elected in Taxachussetts, and set up Romneycare.

I can vote for him because he ain't Obama, for pretty much the reasons that you list. I can vote for him, but I won't like it one bit. He's the lesser of two evils, a choice probably being foisted on us by a cluster of intellectual elites who figure it's his turn.

Whoa, lucky us, having those ivory tower idiots who (apparently) game the system for our (perceived) benefit. Good thing we don't live in a republic, else that would be.....oh, wait.

well, maybe the elites will retire, and real people can start running this country. Might take a while, but it'll be peaceful.

Michael Lonie said...

I will vote for any of the current crop of candidates should he or she get the nod, except Ron Paul. I will not vote for an antisemitic, racist, isolationist twit whi thinks we can live in the world of Grover Cleveland. If Paul is the nominee I will write in Sarah Palin, or maybe vote for Mickey Mouse. Either of them would do a better job than Obama, and neither of them is as obnoxious as Ron Paul.

As for Romney being a technocrat, somebody should point out to such people that government would work ever so much better if it was half the size it is now, and tried to do a lot less. If the Feddle guvmint concentrated on the few functions that the Constitution empowers it to do, it would work much better and more competently. Since that would also mean spending a lot less money, it would also get the budget mess and excessive borrowing problems under control, again satisfying the technocrat's desire to make givernment work more effectively.

Somebody should explain that to Romney in words he can understand.

Anonymous said...

I will NEVER cast a vote for Ron Paul. NEVER. And I don't use that word very often.

If he should get the nomination, maybe I'll write in Grover Cleveland.

And then go get drunk.

rinardman said...

To me, it's a simple question.

Who would make a better president than #4?

Answer: His opponent.

And, I agree with Paco. No matter who gets the nomination, and should they win, it's just a stopgap measure until (hopefully) a real conservative leader arrives.

RebeccaH said...

Agreed to all. However, since Santorum made such a good showing in Iowa, maybe there's a chance Romney won't be the nominee after all. But even if he is, I have to hold my nose and vote for him.

Ron Paul is a fruitcake. He won't get the nomination.

Yojimbo said...

If we get a Tea Party Congress in there we might be ok with Romney if you accept much of the following.

A Tea Party Congress will take care of Obamacare. They will start to work on the agencies and over regulation and spending.

Romney is stable and level headed and may be the biggest "adult", with the exception of Santorum, in the field. That may be very important in the coming second third of the decade. We may think that the "May you live in interesting times." came out of Mary Poppins by the time the decade is over.

A nuclear Iran
A ring of Islamic fire in North Afria spreading into much of the "Middle East"
A collapsing Euro zone leading to worldwide depression.
Loss of the dollar as the reserve currency
An uber China attempting to spread its influence over most of Southeast Asia with probaable "Gunboat Diplomacy" not to mention outright country "confiscation".

These are just some of the major ones. You can also throw a collapsed Mexico, tensions between China and India, India and Pakistan in there as well.

We have regressed so far in the last few years under Obama that an actual adult in the White House may be our only chance of saving the Republic as we know it.

I don't thnk I'm being a scaremonger in listing any of those problems as they seem very probable to me. I just wish I knew who his choices for Secs of Treasury, State and Defense are.

Michael Lonie said...

It's a bit early for a candidate to be announcing his cabinet picks right after Iowa's caucases. It might indicate a wee bit of overconfidence.

China may be cruising for an economic crisis too. That high GDP growth rate everybody admires includes a bit of malinvestment, such as whole cities built that no one lives in and no businesses occupy. The Chinese banks are also in trouble, like ours, but the government there keeps the lid on by having its banks (they are government owned) not recongize non-performing loans. They have been making loans to prop up unprofitable government industiral enterprises for years, and a lot of them would be considered non-performing in the USA.

A Chinese crash would probably result in China selling lots of US debt on the market at whatever prices it could get, driving prices down and yields up. Having to pay high interest rates on new debt (or face not being able to place it) and having our former chief purchaser of Treasuries selling as fast as it can, we'd no longer be able to borrow money from abroad. We'd be thrust back to printing the stuff again, ie the Fed "loaning" funds to the Government by buying its bonds. A real arms-length transaction if I've ever seen one.

Happy New Year.