Romney may win the nomination, but make no mistake, he is not the best general election candidate. Like the last election where any Democrat would have beaten McCain, (Hillary by much more than Obama,) any Republican would beat Obama in a landslide if the election were held today. Of course things can change a lot in this year before the election, so nothing is certain.
The question is, what candidate will garner the largest number of votes. The answer; not Romney. He has no core values, and that is clear to anyone who looks. His change in position on abortion and gay marriage along with his incoherent explanation why Romneycare is different than Obamacare are well known. Less known is his endorsement of the climate frauding crowd, and his slanderous ah hominid attacks on those who disagree. His 59 point economic plan (the sheer number of points should make you suspicious,) in which he demonstrates a profound ignorance of basic economics by lowering tax rates only on those earning less than $200,000. This betrays the same fundamentally flawed gene most liberals have, that being the idea that government's consistent failure is the result of poor design (as opposed to simply being incapable,) and if we just implement the "right" program, government will become the solution, not the problem. Once someone thinks that way, they are hopelessly lost.
If you think about it, Romney has found an enormous amount of common ground with Obama. They agree on healthcare, taxes, climate change and the roll of government.In an earlier blog I said that evangelicals would not vote for him in the same numbers they would vote for another candidate. But the dirty little secret is that neither will independents. Even if I were wrong and he did have the best chance of winning the general, would you rather be certain of his victory and unsure how he would govern, or be certain of how someone would govern at the risk of being uncertain of victory. There are already enough John McCains and Lindsey Grahams in positions of power. Don't allow this election to be a Pyrrhic victory.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Hope For War With Iran
It is very possible that Obama will attack Iran's nuclear development facility in the next year. I agree it should be done, but it might seem unlikely given this is the President who had an opportunity to side with the Green Revolution in 2009 chose instead to sit things out (tacitly supporting the regime), the President who pulled defensive missiles out of Poland and Czechoslovakia rather than confront Putin, and the President who sided in Honduras with the Communist leader Zaleya (a Castro and Chavez disciple) rather than the democratic government. In short this President has no stomach to fight a battle today even if it will prevent a catastrophe tomorrow.
But if that battle will help preserve his personal power, well that's another story. As it becomes clearer that the 2012 election is slipping from his grasp, he might realize something radical is needed, and an attack on Iran could shake things up enough to get him re elected. Let us hope he does. He will lose the election anyway, but the public will interpert the decision to attack as prudent and bipartisan.
But if that battle will help preserve his personal power, well that's another story. As it becomes clearer that the 2012 election is slipping from his grasp, he might realize something radical is needed, and an attack on Iran could shake things up enough to get him re elected. Let us hope he does. He will lose the election anyway, but the public will interpert the decision to attack as prudent and bipartisan.
Monday, September 5, 2011
On Being Governed By Scientific Frauds
There are certain papers which capture the essence of long debated issues. The following does just that, and also exposes the pathologies that allow may fictions to be debated and even gain credibility. It is an insightful and excellent American Thinker submission.
September 5, 2011
The more I think about it, the more it looks like global warming is a deliberate attack by the postmodern (anti-science) left on science. Global Frauding attacks all the core scientific values -- of truth-telling, empirical discipline, and skepticism. Our bulging Goracle gets a lifetime grade of F for setting real science back by decades.
My guess is that during the Clinton years, Al Gore planted his ideological allies in NASA and NOAA. It could have been done through his campaign to Make Government More Efficient. After all, he was saving the planet. Gore deserved his Nobel Prize just as much as Obama did for winning while black.
Phony science has a long and terrifying history on the left. Barack Obama was also officially credited by his Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe for inventing the Einstein Theory of the U.S. Constitution. Really. You can look it up. This is so bizarre it isn't even funny.
Nothing is as toxic as a really bad idea. Hundreds of millions of dollars are still being spent in "scientific" pursuit of disaster scenarios about the earth, fiddling with infinitely variable computer models. This isn't science; the burden of proof has flipped to the skeptics, which does not happen in real science. Albert Einstein had to predict observable outcomes before his ideas were accepted. Watson and Crick had to prove the helical structure of DNA before anybody took them seriously. But in Global Frauding it's the skeptics who are supposed to prove that the latest computer model is not true. If they manage that, the crooks just make up a new computer model. It's a sort of card sharper trick. A con artist can always move faster than the suckers.
No real scientist makes a deal with Al Gore and the New York Times to get rich by peddling end-of-the-world stories. No scientist is then allowed to call those planted lies "scientific truths" until somebody can prove they're wrong. If science worked like that, Galileo would still be a pariah and the Vatican would be telling us about Ptolemaic astronomy. In real science the burden of proof is on the proposer. There are good reasons for that standard.
Three decades ago, MIT Professor Edward Lorenz became famous for his discovery of "chaotic dynamics" in weather data. Scientific theorists are still building on that breakthrough. Complex systems like the earth's atmosphere have inherent unpredictability. They are not like Newton's theory of the solar system, which allows for precise predictions. The solar system is simple because everything rotates around the biggest center of gravity, the sun. Strip out the sun, and all the planets would dance around each other like a chaotic system.
As aeronautics engineer Burt Rutan has pointed out, so-called "climate modeling" is a computer game with too many unknowns. Real scientists keep discovering unexpected climate factors; but if you don't even know your biggest variables, how can you build a model at all? It's playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
Global warming racketeers end up doing science by press release. Their models are rigged, and any time they turn out wrong, they change the model. Then they send out more press releases to equally corrupt jourNOlists, who phone in more scary headlines to the New York Times. Millions of suckered voters end up believing that the sky is falling, and they vote for socialist politicians like Obama to Save the Planet. Obama's election would "stop the rising of the seas."
The super-corrupt left keeps funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to the modeling racketeers who crank out more press releases for even scarier headlines. Human gullibility is the only known perpetual motion machine in existence. It's what liberals are always looking for: an infinitely renewable source of energy.
Global Frauding works like a huge criminal racket, and it should be subject to criminal prosecution, like Bernie Madoff. No wonder George Soros keeps funding the left out of the goodness of his heart. For him it has to be a big profit center. According to Center for Media Research, Soros has spent 48 million dollars funding media. Similar amounts of Soros money are funding all the usual fronts for the radical left, from Moveon.org to The Nation. This is going on while the major media like the New York Times are staggering toward bankruptcy. Soros and friends are buying influence on a huge scale.
For a hedge fund manipulator, that means immense clout to make and break news stories. It's a dirt-cheap investment for huge potential returns. Is Soros using his tame regiments of lefties to make more money? Do bunny rabbits make babies in the woods?
Bad ideas are toxic. It took decades for 19th-century doctors to start washing their hands, because they couldn't believe that microscopic germs might be passing on disease. It was normal for women to die in childbirth. It had been that way for centuries. Washing your hands with soap and boiled water was so laughable it wasn't worth trying. Those doctors might have had humane intentions, but they were fixated on false ideas. Any half-decent scientist knows dozens of cases like that.
Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that major scientific advances are often disputed by world-famous scientists just a few years before they are proven to be right. Wrong ideas are common among honest scientists, but it takes a very nasty mind to peddle science fraud on purpose.
Global Frauding is an assault by the postmodern left on modern science, one of the crown jewels of Western civilization. The po-mo left attacks all Western values -- which is why our museums are proud to feature works of "art" like Piss Christ.
Most of all, the postmodern left has assaulted the very concept of truth, the foremost value in science. Without honest science we would not have useful technology, and without 200 years of accumulated technology our lives would still be nasty, brutish, and short.
Global Frauding isn't science; it belongs in the long history of human folly and delusion. The Great South Sea Bubble, Florida swampland, Bernie Madoff, animal magnetism, global warming. They're all popular delusions stoked by greedy demagogues.
Scientists are not immune to greed and corruption.
The prequel to Global Frauding was yet another gift from the delusional left: Jozef Stalin's phony genetics. Led by science fraud Trofim Lysenko, Uncle Joe ordered millions of peasants to force potatoes to get bigger. Once a generation of potatoes was forced to be bigger, the mad notion was that the next generation of potatoes would inherit the genes for bigness. It was forcible labor for plants, a green version of the Siberian labor camps.
The Soviet Union lost the Cold War because it became an ant heap of lies. Everybody had to lie to survive, and the ruling class never knew who was telling the truth. Ever try to run a lemonade stand that way? How about an auto factory?
Lenin and Stalin (and Mao and all the rest) tried the same "Great Leap Forward" fantasy on human beings. Early on, the "New Soviet Man" program tried Pavlovian conditioning to transform millions of ordinary people into Heroes of Soviet Labor. And to their everlasting shame, the Western left celebrated those miraculous achievements.
The left is still delusional. Satellite photos just revealed the size of North Korean concentration camps, estimated at 200,000 prisoners. Even NPR says they are set up to work prisoners to death. So how long does it take NPR to figure out that they've been on the wrong side for all these years?
Obama's greatest intellectual flaw is his failure to understand that the radical left always leads to the abuse of force. In the process of ratcheting up statist control, human beings will start to rebel. The left keeps grasping for more and more power, and the whole story of 100 million innocent victims of Marxism has nothing to do with them.
And yet, the evidence is there, right in front of their eyes. This is not irrelevant to science, because all good science begins and ends with the truth. That's the whole point. Those who cannot face the plain truth of their own historic criminality also want to torpedo honest science. Facing the truth is the last thing the left wants to do. It would crumble of its own inner contradictions, like the Soviet Union.
Marxism itself was supposed to be "scientific." But all of its predictions turned out wrong. Normal people might learn from that experience, but the left never learns. Today, Marxism is again a slyly celebrated subject on college campuses. It makes kids and professors feel grandiose and historic.
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Benjamin Rush were world-class scientific minds. Franklin made important strides in the study of electricity. Benjamin Rush was a pioneer in scientific medicine. Jefferson was an all-round innovator and inventor. Can any politician today stand up in that company? The United States has become the world superpower, but the quality of our leaders hasn't kept up.
Obama's attempt to revive Keynesian economics is another case of the same intellectual blind spots. Keynes himself concluded that massive deficit spending failed to cure the Great Depression. It made the hunger and poverty last longer.
On the best evidence we have, socialism failed in the post-colonial world, which is why Russia, China, and India are now following some version of capitalism. Obama's Dreams from My Father is therefore a cruel charade. Obama Sr. got things seriously wrong in Kenya, and denying that plain fact can lead only to more failures.
In ordinary science any remaining debates would be based on those facts. It's only in pseudo-science that you keep repeating a terrible idea over and over, in the face of the evidence.
The goal of science is to discover truth and to get rid of bad ideas. From that point of view, global warming is on par with the bloody tyranny of North Korea, because they are both based on well-known falsehoods. They are different degrees of corruption and malignancy, but they are both driven by socially accepted lies.
Sigmund Freud taught that reality testing was the greatest sign of sanity; all neuroses distort reality. So yes, the left is scientific in one respect -- if your science studies human delusions.
Harvard University fired President Larry Summers for daring to say that boys might have a genetic edge in pure math. Historically more than 90 percent of math geniuses have been young males. They often seem to be mildly autistic; maybe those are the lonely kids who spend their waking hours thinking about pure mathematics instead of playing baseball.
The National Science Foundation is now investing millions of dollars in large-scale experiments on little girls, to make them better at higher math. Nobody seems to be wondering if their normal sociability might be harmed as a result. Whom are those little girls going to talk to? Math whizzes devote thousands of hours to numbers and topology. Does it occur to anybody how lonely those math whizzes often are?
A century ago, left-handed kids were forced to switch to their right hands for writing. It never worked, and that nutty craze ended up with thousands of self-hating adults, who felt there was something terribly wrong with them. Just a decade ago Latino kids were forced to learn in bilingual classes in California -- when parents know that it's hard enough to learn the three Rs in only one language. Today Hispanic kids are running statistically behind the others, maybe because millions of them had to start with a handicap. It's always "idealistic" adults who inflict their nutty fixations on helpless children.
Two centuries after Jefferson, Franklin, and Benjamin Rush, we are now governed by science frauds. Just let that little fact bubble in your mind -- and then do something about it, please. If we don't do anything, nobody will. There's far too much money in scientific fraud for it to go away by itself.
September 5, 2011
On Being Governed By Scientific Frauds
By James LewisThe news leaked out a while ago that Al Gore scored a D in natural science at Harvard. That would be the science introduction for Other Majors, not difficult chemistry or calculus. So Nobel Laureate Al Gore got a D in Science for Dummies.
But don't worry. Anybody can blow a college course and still bounce back. A lot of us get it wrong the first time. Unfortunately, Al Gore didn't fix his failure. He made it much worse by peddling monstrous pseudo-science and getting even richer from it. As well as repulsively fat -- a walking metaphor for his politics.The more I think about it, the more it looks like global warming is a deliberate attack by the postmodern (anti-science) left on science. Global Frauding attacks all the core scientific values -- of truth-telling, empirical discipline, and skepticism. Our bulging Goracle gets a lifetime grade of F for setting real science back by decades.
My guess is that during the Clinton years, Al Gore planted his ideological allies in NASA and NOAA. It could have been done through his campaign to Make Government More Efficient. After all, he was saving the planet. Gore deserved his Nobel Prize just as much as Obama did for winning while black.
Phony science has a long and terrifying history on the left. Barack Obama was also officially credited by his Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe for inventing the Einstein Theory of the U.S. Constitution. Really. You can look it up. This is so bizarre it isn't even funny.
Nothing is as toxic as a really bad idea. Hundreds of millions of dollars are still being spent in "scientific" pursuit of disaster scenarios about the earth, fiddling with infinitely variable computer models. This isn't science; the burden of proof has flipped to the skeptics, which does not happen in real science. Albert Einstein had to predict observable outcomes before his ideas were accepted. Watson and Crick had to prove the helical structure of DNA before anybody took them seriously. But in Global Frauding it's the skeptics who are supposed to prove that the latest computer model is not true. If they manage that, the crooks just make up a new computer model. It's a sort of card sharper trick. A con artist can always move faster than the suckers.
No real scientist makes a deal with Al Gore and the New York Times to get rich by peddling end-of-the-world stories. No scientist is then allowed to call those planted lies "scientific truths" until somebody can prove they're wrong. If science worked like that, Galileo would still be a pariah and the Vatican would be telling us about Ptolemaic astronomy. In real science the burden of proof is on the proposer. There are good reasons for that standard.
Three decades ago, MIT Professor Edward Lorenz became famous for his discovery of "chaotic dynamics" in weather data. Scientific theorists are still building on that breakthrough. Complex systems like the earth's atmosphere have inherent unpredictability. They are not like Newton's theory of the solar system, which allows for precise predictions. The solar system is simple because everything rotates around the biggest center of gravity, the sun. Strip out the sun, and all the planets would dance around each other like a chaotic system.
As aeronautics engineer Burt Rutan has pointed out, so-called "climate modeling" is a computer game with too many unknowns. Real scientists keep discovering unexpected climate factors; but if you don't even know your biggest variables, how can you build a model at all? It's playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
Global warming racketeers end up doing science by press release. Their models are rigged, and any time they turn out wrong, they change the model. Then they send out more press releases to equally corrupt jourNOlists, who phone in more scary headlines to the New York Times. Millions of suckered voters end up believing that the sky is falling, and they vote for socialist politicians like Obama to Save the Planet. Obama's election would "stop the rising of the seas."
The super-corrupt left keeps funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to the modeling racketeers who crank out more press releases for even scarier headlines. Human gullibility is the only known perpetual motion machine in existence. It's what liberals are always looking for: an infinitely renewable source of energy.
Global Frauding works like a huge criminal racket, and it should be subject to criminal prosecution, like Bernie Madoff. No wonder George Soros keeps funding the left out of the goodness of his heart. For him it has to be a big profit center. According to Center for Media Research, Soros has spent 48 million dollars funding media. Similar amounts of Soros money are funding all the usual fronts for the radical left, from Moveon.org to The Nation. This is going on while the major media like the New York Times are staggering toward bankruptcy. Soros and friends are buying influence on a huge scale.
For a hedge fund manipulator, that means immense clout to make and break news stories. It's a dirt-cheap investment for huge potential returns. Is Soros using his tame regiments of lefties to make more money? Do bunny rabbits make babies in the woods?
Bad ideas are toxic. It took decades for 19th-century doctors to start washing their hands, because they couldn't believe that microscopic germs might be passing on disease. It was normal for women to die in childbirth. It had been that way for centuries. Washing your hands with soap and boiled water was so laughable it wasn't worth trying. Those doctors might have had humane intentions, but they were fixated on false ideas. Any half-decent scientist knows dozens of cases like that.
Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that major scientific advances are often disputed by world-famous scientists just a few years before they are proven to be right. Wrong ideas are common among honest scientists, but it takes a very nasty mind to peddle science fraud on purpose.
Global Frauding is an assault by the postmodern left on modern science, one of the crown jewels of Western civilization. The po-mo left attacks all Western values -- which is why our museums are proud to feature works of "art" like Piss Christ.
Most of all, the postmodern left has assaulted the very concept of truth, the foremost value in science. Without honest science we would not have useful technology, and without 200 years of accumulated technology our lives would still be nasty, brutish, and short.
Global Frauding isn't science; it belongs in the long history of human folly and delusion. The Great South Sea Bubble, Florida swampland, Bernie Madoff, animal magnetism, global warming. They're all popular delusions stoked by greedy demagogues.
Scientists are not immune to greed and corruption.
The prequel to Global Frauding was yet another gift from the delusional left: Jozef Stalin's phony genetics. Led by science fraud Trofim Lysenko, Uncle Joe ordered millions of peasants to force potatoes to get bigger. Once a generation of potatoes was forced to be bigger, the mad notion was that the next generation of potatoes would inherit the genes for bigness. It was forcible labor for plants, a green version of the Siberian labor camps.
The Soviet Union lost the Cold War because it became an ant heap of lies. Everybody had to lie to survive, and the ruling class never knew who was telling the truth. Ever try to run a lemonade stand that way? How about an auto factory?
Lenin and Stalin (and Mao and all the rest) tried the same "Great Leap Forward" fantasy on human beings. Early on, the "New Soviet Man" program tried Pavlovian conditioning to transform millions of ordinary people into Heroes of Soviet Labor. And to their everlasting shame, the Western left celebrated those miraculous achievements.
The left is still delusional. Satellite photos just revealed the size of North Korean concentration camps, estimated at 200,000 prisoners. Even NPR says they are set up to work prisoners to death. So how long does it take NPR to figure out that they've been on the wrong side for all these years?
Obama's greatest intellectual flaw is his failure to understand that the radical left always leads to the abuse of force. In the process of ratcheting up statist control, human beings will start to rebel. The left keeps grasping for more and more power, and the whole story of 100 million innocent victims of Marxism has nothing to do with them.
And yet, the evidence is there, right in front of their eyes. This is not irrelevant to science, because all good science begins and ends with the truth. That's the whole point. Those who cannot face the plain truth of their own historic criminality also want to torpedo honest science. Facing the truth is the last thing the left wants to do. It would crumble of its own inner contradictions, like the Soviet Union.
Marxism itself was supposed to be "scientific." But all of its predictions turned out wrong. Normal people might learn from that experience, but the left never learns. Today, Marxism is again a slyly celebrated subject on college campuses. It makes kids and professors feel grandiose and historic.
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Benjamin Rush were world-class scientific minds. Franklin made important strides in the study of electricity. Benjamin Rush was a pioneer in scientific medicine. Jefferson was an all-round innovator and inventor. Can any politician today stand up in that company? The United States has become the world superpower, but the quality of our leaders hasn't kept up.
Obama's attempt to revive Keynesian economics is another case of the same intellectual blind spots. Keynes himself concluded that massive deficit spending failed to cure the Great Depression. It made the hunger and poverty last longer.
On the best evidence we have, socialism failed in the post-colonial world, which is why Russia, China, and India are now following some version of capitalism. Obama's Dreams from My Father is therefore a cruel charade. Obama Sr. got things seriously wrong in Kenya, and denying that plain fact can lead only to more failures.
In ordinary science any remaining debates would be based on those facts. It's only in pseudo-science that you keep repeating a terrible idea over and over, in the face of the evidence.
The goal of science is to discover truth and to get rid of bad ideas. From that point of view, global warming is on par with the bloody tyranny of North Korea, because they are both based on well-known falsehoods. They are different degrees of corruption and malignancy, but they are both driven by socially accepted lies.
Sigmund Freud taught that reality testing was the greatest sign of sanity; all neuroses distort reality. So yes, the left is scientific in one respect -- if your science studies human delusions.
Harvard University fired President Larry Summers for daring to say that boys might have a genetic edge in pure math. Historically more than 90 percent of math geniuses have been young males. They often seem to be mildly autistic; maybe those are the lonely kids who spend their waking hours thinking about pure mathematics instead of playing baseball.
The National Science Foundation is now investing millions of dollars in large-scale experiments on little girls, to make them better at higher math. Nobody seems to be wondering if their normal sociability might be harmed as a result. Whom are those little girls going to talk to? Math whizzes devote thousands of hours to numbers and topology. Does it occur to anybody how lonely those math whizzes often are?
A century ago, left-handed kids were forced to switch to their right hands for writing. It never worked, and that nutty craze ended up with thousands of self-hating adults, who felt there was something terribly wrong with them. Just a decade ago Latino kids were forced to learn in bilingual classes in California -- when parents know that it's hard enough to learn the three Rs in only one language. Today Hispanic kids are running statistically behind the others, maybe because millions of them had to start with a handicap. It's always "idealistic" adults who inflict their nutty fixations on helpless children.
Two centuries after Jefferson, Franklin, and Benjamin Rush, we are now governed by science frauds. Just let that little fact bubble in your mind -- and then do something about it, please. If we don't do anything, nobody will. There's far too much money in scientific fraud for it to go away by itself.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Another Case For Perry
The pundits should get another job. A survey of Democratic and Republican "insiders" concluded that Romney has a better chance than Perry to win the general election. Forgetting the fact that Perry would govern as a conservative, whereas Romney is at best an unknown (given his mixed record,) the conclusion is ridiculous. I gave several reasons why it is wrong in my last post, but let me add to them.
This election as most Presidential elections will be a referendum on the incumbent. That's good news no matter who runs. It doesn't mean a good candidate won't do better than a poor one, but the overwhelming tide will be driven by the view people have of Obama.
The premise most of the Romney people start with is that the Tea Party "extremists" that ran in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware lost because of their "extreme" conservative views. Nonsense! They were poor candidates, poor spokesmen, and some had past baggage to contend with. Does anyone seriously think Christine O'Donnell or Sharon Angle would have won if they were "moderate?" If this were true, how did so many other Tea Party candidates win?
A voters passion about an issue drives their votes, not casual likes and dislikes. For decades the Left couldn't figure out why they always lost ground on the abortion issue. Until recently the pro choice voters outnumbered the pro life by as high as 70% to 30% (today that number is about even.) Passion is the difference. Only 1% of choice voters would completely rule out a candidate who supported life, whereas 10% of life voters would never vote for a choice candidate. That means the right lost 7/10 of 1% of all voters (1% times 70%,) and the Left lost 3% of all voters (10% times 30%.) Judge Jeanine Pirro once asked me how I liked her campaign (during that short period when she opposed Hillary for the New York Senate seat.) She had been running an ad saying Hillary would not complete her term because she would run for President. I said to Pirro she was wasting her money. She answered that they had polled it and 80% of voters wanted Hillary to finish if she won. I suppose that was correct, but NONE of that 80% would change their vote on the issue, and winning or changing votes is what wins elections.
This is a long winded way of saying that moderation (Romney) might show better numerical support on certain trivial issues, but on the things that people really care about and vote on Perry wins hands down. A winning candidate supports issues that people care passionately about, and Perry has done that for 25 years. Romney is maybe, maybe just now finding his way.
I question the argument that Romney's business success will resonate with voters more than Perry's record. Romney and his record at Bain Capital is impressive, as is the job he did running the Winter Olympics. But when compared with Perry's record on jobs, taxes, tort reform, and his fantastic campaign skills (see Kay Bailey for details,) Romney runs a distant second. Worse for Romney is Romney care. Do you think anyone cares about his ridiculous defense of it (claiming it is different from Obama care in that the state has a right to impose it and the federal government doesn't?) Will Perry get more votes trashing it, or Romney by defending his plan (which is contrary to all free enterprise principles) while saying he would repeal Obama care?
Perry is better on the issues that count, on articulating them, and has a record to prove it. Anyone who thinks Romney's chances are better than Perry's better brush up on political history and political science.
This election as most Presidential elections will be a referendum on the incumbent. That's good news no matter who runs. It doesn't mean a good candidate won't do better than a poor one, but the overwhelming tide will be driven by the view people have of Obama.
The premise most of the Romney people start with is that the Tea Party "extremists" that ran in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware lost because of their "extreme" conservative views. Nonsense! They were poor candidates, poor spokesmen, and some had past baggage to contend with. Does anyone seriously think Christine O'Donnell or Sharon Angle would have won if they were "moderate?" If this were true, how did so many other Tea Party candidates win?
A voters passion about an issue drives their votes, not casual likes and dislikes. For decades the Left couldn't figure out why they always lost ground on the abortion issue. Until recently the pro choice voters outnumbered the pro life by as high as 70% to 30% (today that number is about even.) Passion is the difference. Only 1% of choice voters would completely rule out a candidate who supported life, whereas 10% of life voters would never vote for a choice candidate. That means the right lost 7/10 of 1% of all voters (1% times 70%,) and the Left lost 3% of all voters (10% times 30%.) Judge Jeanine Pirro once asked me how I liked her campaign (during that short period when she opposed Hillary for the New York Senate seat.) She had been running an ad saying Hillary would not complete her term because she would run for President. I said to Pirro she was wasting her money. She answered that they had polled it and 80% of voters wanted Hillary to finish if she won. I suppose that was correct, but NONE of that 80% would change their vote on the issue, and winning or changing votes is what wins elections.
This is a long winded way of saying that moderation (Romney) might show better numerical support on certain trivial issues, but on the things that people really care about and vote on Perry wins hands down. A winning candidate supports issues that people care passionately about, and Perry has done that for 25 years. Romney is maybe, maybe just now finding his way.
I question the argument that Romney's business success will resonate with voters more than Perry's record. Romney and his record at Bain Capital is impressive, as is the job he did running the Winter Olympics. But when compared with Perry's record on jobs, taxes, tort reform, and his fantastic campaign skills (see Kay Bailey for details,) Romney runs a distant second. Worse for Romney is Romney care. Do you think anyone cares about his ridiculous defense of it (claiming it is different from Obama care in that the state has a right to impose it and the federal government doesn't?) Will Perry get more votes trashing it, or Romney by defending his plan (which is contrary to all free enterprise principles) while saying he would repeal Obama care?
Perry is better on the issues that count, on articulating them, and has a record to prove it. Anyone who thinks Romney's chances are better than Perry's better brush up on political history and political science.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Perry vs Romney
It is amazing how many "experts," who make their living prognosticating on political events, are clueless. A year ago they said it is near impossible to beat a sitting President. Well, simply put, that is nonsense. In my lifetime 5 sitting Presidents were re elected, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush II, three lost, Ford, Carter and Bush I, and two didn't run because they knew they would lose, Truman and Johnson.
Now the accepted wisdom is that Mitt Romney would do better against Obama than Rick Perry. Rich Lowry and Pat Buchanan both expressed this on Sunday and with certainty. The logic they apply is that since Romney is closer to the center politically, he will garner more support from independents. I believe they are wrong on this point alone, and very wrong on the conclusion they draw even if they are right here.
The "independent" voters are made up of Republican and Democratic independents, and independent independents. I choose to ignore the former group because they consistently vote 80% to 90% with the party they identify with. Given that independents average around 28% of the electorate, a swing of 10% one way or another among that subgroup becomes inconsequential. However, the independent independents can all go either way and therefore do count. I believe they will be attracted to a consistent, principled politician over one who has been on both sides of far too many issues.
But suppose I am wrong. Suppose Romney does attract more of them. Before concluding he is the more viable candidate, we also must look at a much larger voting bloc, evangelical and born again Christians (about 26% of the electorate.) How will they vote? I doubt there is a lot of negativity about Romney's being a Mormon, but there will be some. More important is the fact that evangelicals love, absolutely love Perry, and this will bring him far more votes than he could ever lose among independents.
Evangelicals vote primarily for Republicans, but enough vote Democratic that they can hardly be taken for granted. To illustrate how important their vote is think about this. In 1992 when Bush the elder lost the election, he was up against Bill Clinton, arguably the best politician in our lifetimes. He was coming out of an economic downturn that was being felt by most of the electorate. Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate taking 19% of the popular vote, most of it consisting of Republicans. With all this going against him, if Bush had gotten the same percentage of evangelical voters he got in 1988, he would have won the election. Breaking his "No new taxes" pledge so offended them, many either switched parties or sat home on election day.
Ronald Reagan taught a lesson to politicians that most today seem to have missed. The principled is also the political. Every time Reagan did something significant the press went apoplectic. When he fired the Air Traffic Controllers, when he called the Soviet Union the evil empire, when he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and when he walked out of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks the press was aghast, calling him stupid, a cowboy, and the worst President in American history. Of course after the hysteria died down the public loved him for it, and proved so with their votes. I don't want to suggest Romney is unprincipled, but if being consistent is the measure of integrity we apply, Perry beats him hands down.
Now the accepted wisdom is that Mitt Romney would do better against Obama than Rick Perry. Rich Lowry and Pat Buchanan both expressed this on Sunday and with certainty. The logic they apply is that since Romney is closer to the center politically, he will garner more support from independents. I believe they are wrong on this point alone, and very wrong on the conclusion they draw even if they are right here.
The "independent" voters are made up of Republican and Democratic independents, and independent independents. I choose to ignore the former group because they consistently vote 80% to 90% with the party they identify with. Given that independents average around 28% of the electorate, a swing of 10% one way or another among that subgroup becomes inconsequential. However, the independent independents can all go either way and therefore do count. I believe they will be attracted to a consistent, principled politician over one who has been on both sides of far too many issues.
But suppose I am wrong. Suppose Romney does attract more of them. Before concluding he is the more viable candidate, we also must look at a much larger voting bloc, evangelical and born again Christians (about 26% of the electorate.) How will they vote? I doubt there is a lot of negativity about Romney's being a Mormon, but there will be some. More important is the fact that evangelicals love, absolutely love Perry, and this will bring him far more votes than he could ever lose among independents.
Evangelicals vote primarily for Republicans, but enough vote Democratic that they can hardly be taken for granted. To illustrate how important their vote is think about this. In 1992 when Bush the elder lost the election, he was up against Bill Clinton, arguably the best politician in our lifetimes. He was coming out of an economic downturn that was being felt by most of the electorate. Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate taking 19% of the popular vote, most of it consisting of Republicans. With all this going against him, if Bush had gotten the same percentage of evangelical voters he got in 1988, he would have won the election. Breaking his "No new taxes" pledge so offended them, many either switched parties or sat home on election day.
Ronald Reagan taught a lesson to politicians that most today seem to have missed. The principled is also the political. Every time Reagan did something significant the press went apoplectic. When he fired the Air Traffic Controllers, when he called the Soviet Union the evil empire, when he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and when he walked out of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks the press was aghast, calling him stupid, a cowboy, and the worst President in American history. Of course after the hysteria died down the public loved him for it, and proved so with their votes. I don't want to suggest Romney is unprincipled, but if being consistent is the measure of integrity we apply, Perry beats him hands down.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Perry: A Palin Who Can Win
The chattering classes are at it again wringing their hands over the possibility of Rick Perry getting the nomination. All the usual suspects are working against him. Karl Rove, Peggy Noonan, Dana Perino and others suffering from delusional myopia suggest we need a more centrist candidate. Sure we do....perhaps like McCain or Romney, or maybe Bob Dole. Guys like these are less likely to win than a real conservative, and if they do win they would govern like Obama lite. Romney has been on both sides of abortion, both sides of gay marriage, defends his disastrous Romney care, and has supported carbon controls. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts 3 times, opposed Guantanamo and enhanced interrogation, and championed Campaign Finance Reform. Newt Gingrich once called Bob Dole the "tax collector for the welfare state." The only reason George W Bush won was he presented himself as a true conservative. Of course, steel tariffs, No Child Left Behind, Campaign Finance Reform, the Prescription Drug Benefit and unbridled spending and regulation put that notion to rest. In fairness he did appoint two excellent Supreme Court justices, defended the homeland with distinction, and lowered taxes getting at least one boot heel off the neck of the economy. But anyone who believes in conservative ideas and values can not possibly support a political/ policy dyslexic like Romney.
Bill Kristol, who was one of the first pundits to suggest Sarah Palin as McCain's vice presidential running mate, has echoed the same dissatisfaction with Perry by suggesting that Paul Ryan run. Ryan is a great young man. He has acquitted himself well in the budget debate and with entitlement reform. But that is it. He is an unproven campaigner, fundraiser, with a very small list of legislative accomplishments. He may someday be ready, but now is certainly not the time. The strange thing is that Perry is philosophically like Sarah Palin (she has all the right ideas too) but one that can win. Why are Kristol and the others so distressed?
Rick Perry has a list of conservative accomplishments a mile long. He believes what he says. He believes in America, free enterprise (he has a copy of Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" on his desk), individual rights and responsibilities, small government and God. We are known by our friends and our enemies (too bad no one looked at Obama's radical friends before they voted for him.) Rick Perry has a list of enemies any conservative would be proud of. The Trial Lawyers because he passed tort reform in Texas, and it is working like a charm. Texas is a right to work state so the unions are in high gear. His other enemies are in a dither and confused trying to decide just how to attack him. They say his spectacular jobs record is meaningless because most are low paying jobs. Others say credit for his success belongs to Obama's stimulus and an increase in government jobs. Are there low paying government jobs? Still others say it is because of energy sector growth. Obama has been a real help with energy jobs. He pretends to create green jobs, and kills real oil and gas jobs. Of course much of the criticism is mutually exclusive, but if I know the left they will see which charge resonates and then all get in line repeating it. There will be the most massive attacks on him since Reagan, and for good reason. He is cut from the same cloth as Reagan. Certainly this guy must be doing something right if he so offends so many liberals.
This is for all the fallen Democrats who realize that liberalism really is a mental disorder, but can't quite get behind some of the conservative ideas and policies because they have been successfully demonized by the Left. For example the charge that Perry is some kind of Bible pounding born again lunatic. First, I find it commendable that he is a man of faith (would you rather live next door to or vote for an atheist?) Politically, the support of evangelicals is an absolute necessity for any Republican to win. They represent 26% of the voting public, and they love Rick Perry. For those independents and Jews who might see evangelicals from the perspective of the Main Stream Media, suggesting they are something to be feared, I can only say that they support the same values you do. A very few might work to convert you (the doctrine of most faiths proscribe the same thing), but unlike the Muslim faith, using force (including the force of law) is not even a consideration. Jews in particular should remember; there are no greater supporters of religious freedom and no greater supporters of the state of Israel on this earth than evangelicals.
Please...get with it. We are lucky enough to have someone running who represents in whole or in part all the things we have dreamed of since Reagan left office, and even better, he has an excellent chance of winning. In fact, I believe he will win. I promise. No conservative, no one believing in freedom or in American exceptionalism, will be disappointed.
Bill Kristol, who was one of the first pundits to suggest Sarah Palin as McCain's vice presidential running mate, has echoed the same dissatisfaction with Perry by suggesting that Paul Ryan run. Ryan is a great young man. He has acquitted himself well in the budget debate and with entitlement reform. But that is it. He is an unproven campaigner, fundraiser, with a very small list of legislative accomplishments. He may someday be ready, but now is certainly not the time. The strange thing is that Perry is philosophically like Sarah Palin (she has all the right ideas too) but one that can win. Why are Kristol and the others so distressed?
Rick Perry has a list of conservative accomplishments a mile long. He believes what he says. He believes in America, free enterprise (he has a copy of Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" on his desk), individual rights and responsibilities, small government and God. We are known by our friends and our enemies (too bad no one looked at Obama's radical friends before they voted for him.) Rick Perry has a list of enemies any conservative would be proud of. The Trial Lawyers because he passed tort reform in Texas, and it is working like a charm. Texas is a right to work state so the unions are in high gear. His other enemies are in a dither and confused trying to decide just how to attack him. They say his spectacular jobs record is meaningless because most are low paying jobs. Others say credit for his success belongs to Obama's stimulus and an increase in government jobs. Are there low paying government jobs? Still others say it is because of energy sector growth. Obama has been a real help with energy jobs. He pretends to create green jobs, and kills real oil and gas jobs. Of course much of the criticism is mutually exclusive, but if I know the left they will see which charge resonates and then all get in line repeating it. There will be the most massive attacks on him since Reagan, and for good reason. He is cut from the same cloth as Reagan. Certainly this guy must be doing something right if he so offends so many liberals.
This is for all the fallen Democrats who realize that liberalism really is a mental disorder, but can't quite get behind some of the conservative ideas and policies because they have been successfully demonized by the Left. For example the charge that Perry is some kind of Bible pounding born again lunatic. First, I find it commendable that he is a man of faith (would you rather live next door to or vote for an atheist?) Politically, the support of evangelicals is an absolute necessity for any Republican to win. They represent 26% of the voting public, and they love Rick Perry. For those independents and Jews who might see evangelicals from the perspective of the Main Stream Media, suggesting they are something to be feared, I can only say that they support the same values you do. A very few might work to convert you (the doctrine of most faiths proscribe the same thing), but unlike the Muslim faith, using force (including the force of law) is not even a consideration. Jews in particular should remember; there are no greater supporters of religious freedom and no greater supporters of the state of Israel on this earth than evangelicals.
Please...get with it. We are lucky enough to have someone running who represents in whole or in part all the things we have dreamed of since Reagan left office, and even better, he has an excellent chance of winning. In fact, I believe he will win. I promise. No conservative, no one believing in freedom or in American exceptionalism, will be disappointed.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Rick Perry's Answer
Rick Perry was asked to explain his skeptical position on global warming by a new Hampshire Democrat yesterday. The political requirement that all answers be brief created an obstacle he navigated poorly, even though his skepticism is well founded. Here is my suggestion on what he should say if asked again.
The test of any scientific theory is how accurately it predicts future events. Global warming theorists have been off by large margins with every prediction they ever made. They predicted rise in temperatures, sea levels and other "catastrophic" events, all of which have been dramatically scaled back (by 90%) as each one failed to materialize. This alone is enough to discard the theory. But add to that the continuing deception by its advocates, and one wonders why we discuss this any more than we do the Lost City of Atlantis.. For years the "hockey stick" was offered as proof of temperature increases, until it was peer reviewed and it was learned the analysis and data werer simply incorrect. East Anglican University, the source of the data used in modeling climate change, had emails revealed where they were sharing information on how to fudge data, and how to avoid giving out the data on which their work was based. This hardly serves the scientific peer review process. Now we find the highly publicized report predicting the death of the polar bear population was a fiction (its authors are being investigated by their peers). Most recently data was aquired showing heat loss from the atmosphere into space is so much higher than the assumption used in climate change modeling that it renders every prediction they ever made useless. GIGO... garbage in garbage out.
OK. So it wasn't short. But maybe Perry can figure a way to distill this into a couple of soundbites.
The test of any scientific theory is how accurately it predicts future events. Global warming theorists have been off by large margins with every prediction they ever made. They predicted rise in temperatures, sea levels and other "catastrophic" events, all of which have been dramatically scaled back (by 90%) as each one failed to materialize. This alone is enough to discard the theory. But add to that the continuing deception by its advocates, and one wonders why we discuss this any more than we do the Lost City of Atlantis.. For years the "hockey stick" was offered as proof of temperature increases, until it was peer reviewed and it was learned the analysis and data werer simply incorrect. East Anglican University, the source of the data used in modeling climate change, had emails revealed where they were sharing information on how to fudge data, and how to avoid giving out the data on which their work was based. This hardly serves the scientific peer review process. Now we find the highly publicized report predicting the death of the polar bear population was a fiction (its authors are being investigated by their peers). Most recently data was aquired showing heat loss from the atmosphere into space is so much higher than the assumption used in climate change modeling that it renders every prediction they ever made useless. GIGO... garbage in garbage out.
OK. So it wasn't short. But maybe Perry can figure a way to distill this into a couple of soundbites.
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