Who says Obama can’t govern?

(Previously posted at Redstate.com in June, 2010, but still very much relevant.)

A response to Vassar Bushmills' scurrilous attack on our duly-elected President

One thing we might all agree on:  He’s doing the best he can.

Now that we’ve dispensed with that–why are we in the mess we’re in today?  Doing the best he can at what? I think the answer lies somewhere along a continuum.

A. He’s incompetent and clueless.  That is, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know what to do about it.

B. He’s just incompetent.  He’s trying to solve all these problems, he knows something must be done, he just doesn’t know how to do it.

C. He is very competent, but events and the Republicans have conspired against him to make everything he does turn out wrong.  None of his mistakes are his fault–they aren’t really mistakes, they’re good ideas that just haven’t worked because he had to follow eight years of Bush’s failed policies, and he’s stuck with a Congress full of and directed by Democrats who don’t know their should-be-kicked-a**es from leaking oil wells in the Gulf and are no help whatsoever.  Even John McCain isn’t reaching across the aisle these days.  And there are so many disasters happening all at once.  Nobody could keep his attention on more than one at a time.  It’d be like asking a President to both walk and chew gum at the same time.

D. He’s not too concerned about these incidents and developments because he has bigger fish to fry.  He’d prefer that these things didn’t happen, but they’re not that important to him.  He is occupied with a desire to centralize our economy and nationalize key industries.  Or, as Maxine Waters said for him, “socializing” America.

E. He feels serendipity all around him.  Every one of these incidents gives him an opportunity to move the US closer to a centrally-directed economy, and he’s done so.

F. Not only are they serendipitous, he wants to make them last.  Again, he’s been very competent at doing so.  And he’s had help and direction from very powerful, very rich people.

Now, an ordinary optimist would wish that C were the right answer, or if not C, it’s A or B.  In all those cases, things can still be turned around in 2012, and mainly the voters are to blame.  A hard-core optimistic socialist would hope that the answer is D, E, or F, and those would also be the answers given by an average, ordinary pessimist.

But what of us, the great unwashed public, trying to make sense of him without letting our optimism or pessimism take over?

Although A looks like a strong contender, nobody could be that far out in left field, could he?  This is the choice for those who like Obama personally, but can’t stand any of his policies.  It’s actually a pity choice.

B is a possibility, but we must ask ourselves about the probabilities of his making the wrong decision (for the People) every time.  The odds against that must be astronomical.  But this seems to be the answer selected by Vassar Bushmills in his excellent column, Why can’t Barack Obama Govern? I don’t think Vassar considered the odds when he made his choice.  And his predictions later seem to indicate that he truly believed the answer is elsewhere.

C seems to be what Obama wants us to think.  It’s the least objectionable of all the choices, filled as it is with “politics as usual” and “ObamaCompetency.” And it’s the answer that the MSM keeps whispering to us, “Pick C, pick C, C is it,” liberal optimists that they are.

D, E, and F are just the spectrum of the darker side of the Obama presidency.  (THAT IS NOT A RAAAACIST COMMENT!)  People who think he’s a well-meaning socialist vote for D.  They know that what’s really important are the ends, not the means.

E is the “Rahm Emanuel answer.”  Obama is just making sure each crisis doesn’t go to waste.  Vassar’s prediction that in the wake of a Republican avalanche in November, “Obama will unilaterally attempt to seize control of as much of the government as he can, by executive order, and pass it over to the bureaucracy….” fits nicely here, or even with answer F.  [See UPDATE below.]

F is the favorite of the conspiracy theorists.  They say, the only way anybody could be that cold would be on purpose, or if George Soros had his boxers in a vise, ready to apply the world’s biggest wedgie if Barack were to stumble.

In case you didn’t notice, A, B, and C are practically benign compared to the sinister implications of D, E, and F.  Unfortunately, the first three are the least likely answers, given the circumstances and the position involved. Could a clueless dunce be elected President?  Maybe, but highly unlikely unless an element of answer F were also involved.  Again, could anybody graduate from Harvard Law School and come out so pathetically incompetent?  Even if he could, wouldn’t happenstance cause him to choose at least a few good policies?  That’s the problem with B.  As noted, C is the Obama choice, but how likely is it that everybody is conspiring against him?  How likely is it that even our maverick Republican Congresscritters wouldn’t reach across the aisle to help him if they thought one of his policies were at least salvageable?  The appeal of the first three choices is that in all of them, the President is occupied with doing the Peoples’ business for their benefit.  He isn’t trying to advance his own agenda.

That leaves D, E, and F, and all three of them are pretty scary.  That scariness is why so few non-conservatives (and not even very many conservatives) are willing to commit themselves to these propositions.  They all imply that our President cares more about his own ideological agenda than he cares about being a President of all the people, more than he cares about taking care of the Peoples’ business.  That would make him a Congressionally enabled Dictator rather than a President.  Who wants to believe that?

So, you make the choice.  Will you believe your heart (choices A, B, or C) or your own lyin’ eyes (D, E, or F)?  Remember it in November.

UPDATE: Subsequent events have demonstrated that the Obama has behaved exactly as Vassar predicted.  What he can't get passed through Congress he tries to force by executive order.  Given the compliant press and the reluctance of anybody to go to court to stop him (and the reluctance of courts to stop him when they do), he is running circles around the spirit of the Constitution and the laws.

What Obama's Deepwater Horizon Response Tells Us

(Previously posted with further commentary at Redstate.com)

We Should Be Thankful, and So Should Obama 

We have been studying petroleum, intensely, for over 100 years.  We know what it is, how it behaves, and what it can do.  We have many years of experience with it.  There are thousands of people with BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Petroleum Engineering.

Therefore, when a deep-sea well failed in a way that left a gaping hole in a pressurized oil deposit, it shouldn’t have surprised anybody that the oil came out fast, in great quantities, and that it could rather quickly flow through the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps towards our coastline.  We knew that it wouldn’t shut itself off, yet President Obama seemed satisfied to sit back and wait for BP Oil to “handle” the situation.

True, BP did have the most expertise regarding this particular well, but there are thousands of other human resources available to the President who could have helped him set up the task force necessary to keep a tragic accident from developing into the disaster it has now become.  It’s known now that this event isn’t unique–other oil companies in other parts of the world have had even worse accidents.  Yet day after day, week after week, for more than a month, the President did little more than threaten BP while at the same time he allowed BP to set the priorities for whatever mitigating actions were being taken.  Today, near the 50-day mark, he still hasn’t announced anything about any extensive use of government resources to remove the oil from the Gulf water or haul it away.  And BP is doing all the work of capping the well to stop the flow at its source.

Early in the morning of June 10, the June 4 press release was still featured on the White House website.  It mostly covered legal issues, and how there were

federal folks [assigned] to look over BP’s shoulder and to work with state and local officials to make sure that claims are being processed quickly, fairly, and that BP is not lawyering up, essentially, when it comes to these claims.

That’s nice, but it doesn’t prevent any beaches or birds from becoming oil-covered.  Obama mentioned there was lots of boom deployed in Louisiana, but not necessarily in the right places.  He was concerned because “we’ve got limited resources.”  (Sounds like an excuse to me.)  The June 9 White House blog starts its substantive report with

Today, National Incident Commander Admiral Allen meet[sic] with BP claims officials to assert claims oversight and ensure BP meets commitments to restore Gulf Coast communities….

And

At the President’s direction, Admiral Thad Allen today met with top BP claims officials to assert the administration’s oversight of BP’s claims process in order to ensure that every legitimate claim is honored and paid in an efficient manner. He expressed the American people’s urgent need for additional transparency into BP’s claims process, including how the process works, and how quickly claims are being processed for both individuals and businesses impacted by the oil spill. Additional meetings will be held in each of the four impacted states from June 11-13.

The emphasis still seems to be on legalisms and clean-up and recovery after the fact, political grandstanding, paper-pushing and meetings, not mitigating the oil damage before more occurs.

So why do I say we and Obama should be thankful?

Oil is an inanimate object.  It can’t think.  It can’t plan.  It can’t observe, learn and adjust its behavior.  It must follow the laws of physics and chemistry in all respects.  That means it floats, it dissolves, it forms solutions and compounds, it dissipates, it clumps, and it coats, but mainly it just “is,” and whatever it “does” is the predictable result of whatever comes in contact with it.  It really can’t surprise us very much.  Yet this President has found it beyond his ability to get a working plan set up in less than 50 days to stop it.  Nobody would expect him to do it personally, but he couldn’t even get it in gear to delegate to the Coast Guard immediately the task of assembling the right “panel of experts” to attack the entire problem before the disaster could develop.  If he wants an “ass to kick,” perhaps he should look behind him.

We should be thankful because this wasn’t an attack by our sentient enemies. In many respects it’s a static incident.  Only one source is spewing oil into the Gulf, and it’s flowing in a fairly predictable stream from there.  Yet its systematic containment is still baffling to this President.  That the oil slick has attained the size of South Carolina just makes matters worse.

If it were of human origin, we’d have new “leaks” springing up in other places.  Instead of one, there’d be many.  Whatever we would do to defend our shore, the enemy would know it and take countermeasures.  While an enemy would of course not use oil wells to attack us, we know they could use many other weapons, and the response so far to this much simpler challenge indicates they would do a lot of damage before the administration knew what hit us.  The response so far seems to be, “I hope, I hope, I hope BP can fix things before they get really, really bad.”  That wouldn’t work against a human enemy any better than it works against an oil slick.

I am thankful this wasn’t an enemy attack, and if the administration and President learn something from it, maybe that will be its silver lining (I don’t have any real expectation that learning will take place).

But consider events of the past year.

The uproar over Arizona’s new immigration law leaves the impression that all immigrants illegally entering the state are Mexicans. But according to a 2006 report from the House Committee on Homeland Security, an increasing number of illegal immigrants from nations known to produce, train and harbor Islamic terrorists are using the Southwest border as a gateway to the United States.

Hundreds, more likely thousands of illegal migrants from Middle Eastern countries, Europe, and even China have been captured crossing into the US over the Texas-Mexico border since 2001.  We don’t know how many have escaped detection.

Major Doctor Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Ft. Hood before he was stopped by city police.  The Christmas airline bombing was thwarted by civilians.  A May 1 bombing disaster in Times Square was averted only by incompetence on the part of the bomber and sheer luck.  In all three cases, the first thing the administration announced was “It isn’t al Qaeda, it’s not part of a coordinated attack, the perpetrator was acting alone and on his own, it might not even be connected to radical Islam, maybe it was a right-wing wacko.”  In the first two cases, there were warning signs that officials both missed and ignored, yet seemingly nothing has been done to improve the system.  They were all connected to radical Islam.  None of them were prevented by federal procedures or personnel.  And the debate about border security almost never mentions the high number of OTM’s (Other Than Mexicans) captured by the Border Patrol.

How do we know that they weren’t separate but coordinated attacks designed to test our defenses and our preparedness?  How do we know the “flying Imams” weren’t the first test?  How do we know that al Qaeda operatives are not crossing into Arizona still?  We don’t.  All we know is that our legislative, executive, and judicial responses have all been inadequate and misdirected.  I’d bet that al Qaeda is watching us bumble around in the Gulf and using what it sees to plan its next attack.  And for that I’m not thankful.

Deepwater Horizon is NOT Comparable to Hurricane Katrina

(Previously posted at Redstate.com)

The news readers and pundits keep trying to draw parallels between the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher and Hurricane Katrina.  The way they look at it, they both have to do with water and Louisiana, and with the federal government’s ability to solve a problem or at least ameliorate a bad situation. They’re looking at the politics of Presidential action, not the physics of the two “disasters.”

Of course, they also note the differences–Bush was too slow to visit the scene (2 days), while Obama’s measured response time of 12 days was about right.  Bush’s FEMA botched the response and recovery process, but FEMA is rarely mentioned this time, while blame is heaped upon BP Oil and (gasp) George W. Bush.  Bush didn’t care about the black residents of New Orleans, but Obama cares so much about all the residents of southern Louisiana that he thinks about them and the oil spill when he wakes up in the morning and when he goes to bed each night, and every minute of the day between.  (That’s a rough quote from this morning’s radio news or hyperbole; it doesn’t show up on the internet.  I wonder when he has time to think about North Korea, golf, Iran, dinner dates in New York, Israel, vacation, Arizona laws, visiting basketball teams, Cap and Tax, Memorial Day tributes, Osama, playing basketball, Major Hasssan, trials in New York….  I guess that’s why he has geniuses like Eric Holder working for him–so he doesn’t have to think.)

Nevertheless, they are missing the obvious.  There is a corresponding disaster which compares quite nicely to the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher–illegal immigration.  They both originate from a high-pressure force which pushes something valuable towards our shores, but not in a controlled manner.  The lack of control turns the valuable resource into an overwhelming deluge.

In both cases, the problem divides itself neatly into two sub-problems–How do we stop the flow? and What do we do with the resource that’s already escaped/broken through?

Strangely, Obama recognizes that in the case of oil, the first step necessary is to “Plug the da** hole!” yet he refuses to acknowledge that the same is true of the immigration problem.  In both cases he has no idea that he’ll share with us about what to do with the deluge that’s already here, nor does he have any idea about how to prevent more of the same in the future.

So far, he’s addressing both problems with the same weapon, that of threatening lawsuits, threatening jail time, threatening fines, and generally interfering with the attempts others are making to really solve the problems or at least mitigate their effects.  Like the Chicago pol that he is, he’s looking for scapegoats, not solutions.  He is in fact treating both problems as if they were political in nature, rather than one being based on engineering design shortcomings (possibly) and the other being a dilemma of human psychology.  Because he’s trying to reach an acceptable political goal rather than correct the problems, he isn’t getting anywhere, and it’s painfully obvious.

Of course the two disasters are only superficially parallel (although closer to each other than to Katrina).  Each eventually will be solved by different approaches.  Deepwater Horizon will be solved most quickly if Obama lets as many engineers as possible try as many ideas as possible all at once.  We should be trying to stanch the flow of oil, ASAP, of course, and we appear to be doing that.  But there’s no reason we shouldn’t be trying to soak up, sop up, suck up, and round up the oil that’s in the water at the same time.  Better that it is removed from the water before it hits land than have to clean it from the beaches.  The resources are available to take this two-pronged approach to protect the Gulf Coast.  This part of the solution is NOT being carried out.  There’s no political downside to this approach, and it’s mind-boggling that Obama is flubbing another opportunity to improve his personal approval numbers.*

The resources are not available to treat illegal “immigration” “comprehensively.”  Oil doesn’t know what is happening.  It just gushes, floats, and coats.  People aren’t that simple.  There are both psychological and political aspects to stopping illegal “immigration.”  Simply put, to address the problem of those who are already here before we permanently and credibly stop the flow of new illegals would be counterproductive, given our lack of will to fund the process.  Psychologically, it would increase the pressure driving Mexicans to enter the US illegally, and it wouldn’t be supported by a skeptical US electorate.  To convince Americans that we are serious about the bigger problem (a political necessity), we must solve the inflow problem first, and do it in a way that can’t be easily reversed.  That will “cap” the psychological and social pressure that is pushing foreigners across the border and into the US.  Then and only then can the question of what to do with present illegals be answered.

Because Obama isn’t willing to take the political heat such an effective psychological solution would entail, he also can’t employ an effective political strategy.  The result?  Finger-pointing, threats, and dithering.

*The fact that he hasn’t taken charge in this respect and doesn’t even recognize what’s happening proves that he has neither natural leadership ability nor competent advisors that he listens to.

“Arizona Police are Racist Pigs!” say Obama Administration and Democrat echo chamber

(Previously posted on Redstate.com)

The headline may not be a direct quote, but it captures their message very nicely.

If you consider the wording of the law resulting from AZ SB1070, with or without its clarifying amendments, and then consider what President Obama, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Napolitano have said about it, no other message can possibly be intended.

Federal law is much less fettered than is this Arizona law.  Federal agents can stop anybody for the express purpose of “checking their papers.”  AZ 1070 does not allow that; Arizona police must first have made contact in the enforcement of a different law before asking for proof of legal presence.  Federal agents need not have any reason for their request for ID at all, beyond their own “WeSaySo.”  That is, Federal agents need not meet any burden of having a “reasonable suspicion or belief” that they are dealing with illegal aliens before asking for ID.  AZ 1070 requires that the officer must have such a suspicion before even asking for proof of legal presence.  And finally, Federal law requires a legal foreign resident to carry his green card at all times.  The Arizona law specifies that if the person in question has an Arizona driver’s license, that is sufficient and no more documentation may be legally sought.

Yet with all that, the President, the AG, and the Secretary of Homeland Security have all condemned the Arizona law without reading it, saying that it “has the potential” to result in racial profiling, and the Democrats in the US Congress gave Mexican President Calderon a standing ovation for even worse remarks.  At one point he claimed the law “institutes the terrible idea that racial profiling is the basis for law (garbled).”

Following that lead, commentator Kirsten Powers on Fox News Sunday asserted that, “Lawful contact can be anything….  Police can find a lot of different ways to [make a lawful stop]….  They could use that as an opportunity to say, ‘Oh, look, here’s a bunch of Hispanic people standing there, I’m going to find a reason to go up to them….’”  When Brit Hume interrupted her to point out that the law specifically prohibits that action, she went on to say, “They [police] would not say that to the judge, they would say that ‘They were doing something that I thought was suspicious,’” and her example was that the person being questioned walked away after being spoken to.

When Brit pointed out that Federal law has none of the safeguards of the Arizona law, she brushed that aside with the airhead comment that “I haven’t really heard of that [stops by Federal agents for immigration checks] being an issue.”

What can be inferred from the public statements and the above exchange?  See the headline.  After all, there is no uproar about the more draconian Federal law which AZ 1070 emulates.  There is no outcry that Federal agents “might” use racial profiling to arrest an illegal alien.  There seems to be no fear that ICE agents will lie to the judge to make an arrest stick.  There isn’t even any comment about the similar California law that’s been on the books, ignored, for years.  It’s only Arizona police who will do these things, who will circumvent the law as written and perjure themselves in court, at least so say the Democrats.  Logically, they must think that Arizona police are racist pigs.

Make no mistake, those things do happen, but they happen all over the country, on rare occasions, and the officers committing those offenses are not restricted to local and state agencies, and certainly not restricted to Arizona.  A Federal officer can offend as easily as anyone else.

Eliminating the ditz factor, we must ask ourselves Why are our senior officials saying these things while claiming to have “not read” the Arizona law?

First, if they haven’t read it they can always claim to have been misinformed when the time to face reality is convenient.  Second, by making a big fuss about Arizona, they have postponed the day of reckoning, the day that they have to actually face up to the problem of our wide open borders.  They are continuing to Blame America First while they do nothing to solve the real problem.

In other words, they are trying to distract our attention from the situation that the Arizona law was passed to address–the citizens of Arizona are not safe, because of illegal aliens in the form of drug cartels who cross into the USA daily with impunity.  The law itself will actually change very little, but the rabid opposition to it tells us a lot about those who oppose it.  They’re more interested in promoting their own agenda than in enforcing federal law or in protecting citizens from criminals. Thus, they often include a call for “comprehensive” immigration reform, ignoring the fact that this law is not an immigration law but a statute that mandates enforcement of existing federal and state law.

The attacks on Arizona by the administration are personalized and polarizing.  Imagine that, Saul Alinsky.  They change the dialogue from “search for a solution” to “who should we condemn.”  They change the issue from “protection for American citizens and both legal and illegal residents” to “fear of state and local law enforcement agencies.”  If the President had not taken this approach, he would have been forced to either agree with Arizona and address the open border issue or be left with even the lamestream media asking him why he wasn’t doing so.  For him, that question is unanswerable because the reason is political and he can’t admit that everything he does has a political reason behind it.  And he can’t address the border issue directly as it should be addressed because his base supporters wouldn’t stand for it.

Why the Tea Parties Mystify the Media

(Previously posted at Redstate.com, including 30 pertinent comments)

Tea Parties and their participants have been an ongoing mystery to the media, including some commentators that we sometimes think are relatively unbiased.  When it comes to the participants, even though they’re acknowledged to be mostly independents and Republicans, the pundits have strange ideas about what motivates them, where they came from, and what they mean for the future of the Republican Party.  One reason is that the media pundits are all too ready to accept the Democrat spin on any issue.  Another reason may be that they and we have the wrong mental picture of the electorate.

When people called “independents” are imagined, where are they placed in the political spectrum?  Usually, they’re thought of as being between the Democrat Liberals on the left and the Republican Conservatives on the right.  They are the moderates, occupying the middle ground, neither liberal nor conservative, neither Democrat nor Republican.  They are pictured as torn between both camps, willing to go with the one that appeals to them on some particular issue, but not very strongly interested in either philosophy of government.  That’s why Republicans are often encouraged to create a “Big Tent” that will attract these uncommitted voters on their left flank.  This picture is probably accurate in some cases.

But this vision of independents becomes very confusing when applied to the Tea Partiers, and as a result, some of the pundits, listening to Democrat spin, label them “haters” and racists and fringe characters of all sorts–gun nuts, rubes, angry white men; fearful, uneducated and uninformed boobs, you name it.  But it’s only confusing because that stereotype isn’t an appropriate description.

They are obviously more than slightly energized by a philosophy of government, the one that says the federal government is too big, too intrusive, too expansive, too expensive, and out of control. But this implies that, rather than being the aforementioned boobs, they’re as well-educated and better informed than the average man on the street.  They certainly know enough about the issues to ask questions about them, and they don’t like the answers they get back.

They aren’t just anti-Obama, and there’s really nothing to indicate that either hate or race is a motivating factor behind the movement.  They aren’t even necessarily anti-Democrat–many of them are probably disaffected Democrats.  And it’s not helpful to describe them as “haters” who are anti-everything unless you also identify the object of the projected “hate.”  That object is not the President–it’s the huge government, and the increasingly intrusive government, and the exponential growth of government that he’s advocating.  You could as well say that they’re “lovers”–they love smaller, less intrusive and less expensive government that is controlled by the Constitution.

They are fearful, but not because of ignorance, and they’re not afraid of a Black President, as is always implied.  They’re afraid that their modern-day Captain Edward Smith is in the process of steering that Titanic government into a field of icebergs from which his successor won’t be able to escape.  Those are their motivations. To dismiss them as merely “angry and afraid” (media code for “irrational, ignorant racists”) is to disparage them as irrelevant, which they obviously are not.  Yet the left has tried to do that, perhaps because they’ve given up on winning any of these voters to their side.

If we accept this alternative view of Tea Party supporters, they aren’t hard to explain at all.  It’s only because the media pundits want to believe they’re some new expression of extremism that they haven’t understood them yet, and why they don’t recognize where they’ve come from. I would describe them as a group of voters who would be Republicans if the Republican Party could convince them it stood for the things they want–a government that’s under control, that follows the Constitution, that isn’t trying to do everything for everybody while taking their money in taxes to do it.  (In fact, that’s basically what the Republican Party says it stands for.  The Tea Partiers would just like to see Republicans acting on those principles, not just more often but all the time.)  Picture them not on the middle ground between the Democrat left and the Republican right, but as an overlay stretching philosophically from somewhere left of the political midpoint all the way to the right, soaring above the Republican party. They haven’t come from anywhere; they’ve been there all along.  They are conservatives and conservative-leaning independents, Libertarians, Republicans, and even Reagan Democrats that the Republican Party has been ignoring for years.

If the Republicans want to expand the size of their tent, they don’t need to put on faddish Liberal pretenses to entice the odd passerby in through the side entrance.  They need to blow the roof off the tent, replace it with a giant magnet of awareness, understanding, and responsible conservatism, and let those millions of independents, Libertarians, and disaffected Democrats and Republicans come pouring down from the sky above.  It will happen if Republican leadership responds to their pleas, not for Compassionate Conservatism, but for effective, Principled Conservatism, conservatism with a backbone.

This is not news to Democrat strategists. It’s precisely why they’re afraid of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and even Glenn Beck (not a Republican) and every Tea Party speaker and supporter who firmly believes in and convincingly advocates conservative principles.  Those philosophical trailblazers already have the attention of the American people, including independents.  Democrats are afraid that Republican Party leadership just might start following that trail as well.  They had a glimpse into the future last Thursday, as Republican after Republican gave conservative, principled reasons for their opposition to ObamaCare.  It’s a future Democrats don’t want to contemplate.

It’s not the Medium–The METHOD is the Message.

(Previously posted on Redstate.com)


Political argument, represented in political advertising and public statements, is more than simply persuasive words.  By its nature it is biased and partisan, promoting one philosophy over all others.

To be effective, it must be one-sided, uncompromising, certain of itself, and aimed more at the emotions than at the mind.  It must also be repetitive and persistent, never giving an inch.  Most important, it must be cohesive and focused on a basic idea or two, no more, because details are irrelevant and quickly forgotten by the target audience, the voters.  In fact, too much information is confusing and counterproductive.  Therefore, it should never be self-critical or self-questioning, because that distracts attention from the message.  For the same reason, of course, it must never allow for any “right” to fall on the side of the opposition–the other side is always wrong.  Let the enemy present its own case.

Nowhere in here is the need to be technically correct, or even to fill a real need.  These methods can sell ice to Eskimos.  Consider that there was (and still is, in fact) no great demand for “health care reform” outside of the great Democrat spin machine called the MSM, yet we’ve been talking about it for a year.  In fact, we’ve been conditioned to believe that “insurance coverage for pre-exisitng conditions” is real and achievable.  It isn’t.  It is pure and simple welfare, but the Democrats have convinced many people that such an idea belongs in whatever bill is written to change the current health insurance system.

Still, nothing has been passed, and that illustrates one of the biggest mistakes that can be made in this arena, one that, fortunately, the Democrats have made repeatedly about health care:  thinking that the argument is an end in itself, that “getting it right” is important.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The argument, the message, is just a means to the real end, which is to get everyone to agree with you.  (I think Saul Alinsky said something like this, too.  He probably read the same stuff I did.)  You say what works best to garner agreement.

These precepts didn’t originate from my not-so-fertile brain.  They were laid down decades ago by a polemicist (not Alinsky) who had compared the effectiveness of this approach to the alternatives.  He had seen what worked.  (I assume that someone else had figured it out earlier, or at least stumbled upon the effective formula.)

Democrats are well aware of all of this, and more.  They follow most of this advice rigorously.  When was the last time you heard any of them admit they were wrong and we were right, about anything?  Never!  At least, not the successful ones.  Republicans are another matter.  We all too often extend the olive branch, reach across the aisle, give the Devil his due, in public.

Compromise has its place, but it isn’t in public.  It’s in those smoke-filled rooms, where secret negotiations can determine what will work for the good of all, without kibitzing from the public.  Compromise in public simply makes the compromiser look as if he doesn’t really believe in his original positions or proposals.  That may be one reason that Obama is still pushing his disaster of a health-care philosophy–he’s committed to it, he believes in it, and to admit otherwise makes him weaker for future negotiations.  I can also add that some reasons it is a disaster are because it is so big their messages about it can’t be cohesive and focused, and Democrats make emotional arguments mixed with intellectual arguments which are incoherent and irrational.

Republicans should keep all this in mind any time they meet Democrats in public.  Agree with Democrat ideas of any kind, to any degree, at your peril. It’s your own philosophy of government that you’re undermining. These truths are what Republicans like Newt Gingrich and George H. W. Bush and John McCain ignore when they sit on a couch with Nancy or Bill or any other Donkey.

Things I’m absolutely, positively sure about. Mostly.

(Previously posted at Redstate.com)

President Barry hasn’t found a campaign promise he isn’t willing to break.

It will be a mistake if Republicans help Democrats “fix” their health care disaster.

Bipartisanship is a losing proposition for Republicans.  In that football game, the Democrats are Lucy and the Republicans are Charlie Brown.

Personal biases make any political event difficult to analyze on live TV.  Liberal commentators have the added handicap of being wrong to begin with.

The American public has very little understanding of what the Federal Reserve is, does, should do, or could do.  Making a public issue of the Fed Chairman is a classic red herring.

George W. Bush was wrong about everything.  It’s all his fault, including the earthquake in Haiti.  Just ask President Barry.

Barack Hussein Obama is right about everything, but George W. Bush is causing his policies to fail.  All that leftover anger, you know.  Just ask President Barry.

Speaking of anger, angry is a media code word for irrational.  And populist is code for redneck rube.

Democrats aren’t losing elections because of anger, populism, dumb political tactics, money, or because their message isn’t getting out.  They’re losing because their ideas are wrong, and even public school students can recognize it.

Republicans aren’t winning because of anger, populism, shrewd political tactics, money, or because their message is convincing.  They’re winning because they have to win if the Democrats lose.  Conservatives are winning because of the above, however, and because their ideas are right.

Democrats use the federal deficit as a distraction.  Excessive spending during good and bad times is the ongoing problem, not the annual deficit.

If the recent Supreme Court decision overturning some campaign finance “reform” rules will bring about election-year disasters (according to Liberals), why didn’t those disasters occur before the unconstitutional laws in question passed?  Because they are wrong once again.

Robert Gibbs and his boss, President Barry, can dance around the truth like the Four Step Brothers used to dance around the Ed Sullivan Show.

When the government does a favor for one business, it steps on the neck of that business’s competitors.

Attempting to control what other people make is an exercise for the true egomaniacs among us.  Attempting to justify it by claiming to know what other people deserve is delusional.

CEOs are paid by their stockholders, so overpaying them is the stockholders’ problem.  If they aren’t paid by their stockholders the problem lies elsewhere, not with the CEOs.

President Barry is following President Billy’s lead at double-time.  He’s doing many things wrong quickly, making it difficult to keep tabs on all of them.

It’s not surprising that President Barry and his people can’t make sense out of the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts.  They couldn’t connect the dots before the Fruit-of-Kaboom bomber either, and his father went to the Embassy twice to warn them about his son, who then proceeded to travel while sending up all the red flags already identified by the TSA.  The dots need to be MUCH bigger for this administration to even see them, let alone make connections.

Of course the TSA shouldn’t profile travelers.  If they did, they wouldn’t be able to stop anybody.

I am very suspicious of Eric Holder.  Based on his record he’s working for the other side, and I don’t mean the Republicans or the Democrats.

Our government is spending too much of our children’s money.  My own money is all gone.

It’s not surprising that President Barry’s political appointments are mostly incompetent and/or on the left fringe.  Who else does he know?

Only a politician with no respect for the Constitution would either propose or consider subsidizing newspapers.  Interference in the free market of newspapers certainly qualifies as “abridging the freedom of…the press.”

Even if GM pays back its bailout money, how does that help its former bondholders who had their rights abrogated and their money taken by an unethical if not illegal government takeover?

Sarah Palin is a good conservative and would have made a fine Vice President.  She has an inspiring life story.  That doesn’t make her a good Presidential candidate.

Closing the prison at Guantanamo and paying millions to replace it on the mainland is stupid.  See “Eric Holder,” above.

Trying illegal combatants in NYC?  See “Closing the prison at Guantanamo” above.

Only a religious zealot would think it’s a good idea to bet everything on the idea that completely altering our way of life is necessary in order to avert a questionable catastrophe that is being foretold by computers, especially when told that going all in can only produce a 0.006 percent change in the result.

To freeze part of the budget, but not foreign aid, is window dressing and therefore meaningless.  But it sounds good.

Adding a job within government hurts the economy, it doesn’t help it.  Government workers don’t pay taxes–we pay their taxes for them, because we pay their salaries.

The Tea Party has been wildly successful as a movement.  It will dissolve into nothing if somebody tries to turn it into a political party.

Nobody in the media, other than Rush Limbaugh and perhaps Glenn Beck,  understands the Tea Party movement.  For example, Bill O’Reilly: “…it’s the conservative, Tea Party, hard-right people, against the John McCain, Charley Crist, moderate Republicans.  You know those factions are fighting it out within the Republican Party–much like the far left, …is fighting the moderate Democrats in that party.”  Calling the Tea Partiers “hard right” and comparing them to the far left Democrat wingnuts completely misses the mark, as does the concept of “moderate Democrat.”  The Tea Party would have gone nowhere if it were a fringe movement on either side.  In fact, it’s right down the center of the American people.

Mark Steyn is brilliant.  He, too, understands.