Quotulatiousness

May 1, 2012

A second Obama term might be better for the Republicans

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

Shikha Dalmia explains why a Mitt Romney presidency is far from the best outcome for the Republican party:

One: Smart folks are betting that the Supreme Court will outlaw the individual mandate but leave the rest of ObamaCare to Congress. Hence, one conservative argument for a Romney victory is that, combined with a GOP-controlled Congress, it’ll offer the last hope for repealing the law. But repeal is not an end in itself. The question is, can the GOP replace ObamaCare with sensible market-based reforms?

[. . .]

Two: Commentators like Michael Gerson maintain that precisely because Romney has been a serial flipper previously, he’ll be less likely to flop now on conservative issues. But Romney’s desperation to establish his street cred with the base is not a blessing when it comes to government spending.

[. . .]

Three: Both the left and the right, according to the polls, are troubled by the fact that America is becoming a land of crony capitalism. No doubt that’s why Romney has been mouthing clumsy platitudes about how “you’ve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism” and striking a brave pose against the auto bailout.

But, tellingly, the financial bailout was just fine with him. That’s no coincidence. He is, after all, the ultimate Wall Street insider, receiving millions of dollars in subsidies and government handouts for companies he was trying to rescue as CEO of Bain Capital. He might not be running with the intention of helping his corporate pals, but it is inevitable that they’ll have his ear. Their interests and needs are far more comprehensible to him than, say, those of consumers

[. . .]

Four: If Romney wins this election, odds are he’ll automatically be the Republican nominee in 2016. Regardless of whether he wins then, this will effectively kill all prospects for putting a more serious Republican reformer (such as Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan) in the White House until 2020 or 2024. It might be far better to swallow hard and accept another Obama term to keep the path clear for a Republican more likely to deal with our fiscal and political dysfunction, rather than elect President Romney and block that possibility for another generation.

The Onion: Every Potential 2040 President Already Unelectable Due To Facebook

Filed under: Government, Humour, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:47

April 27, 2012

Colby Cosh on the Alberta election results versus the pollsters

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:42

Most of the national press live and work in either Ottawa or Toronto. Neither location is a good vantage point for figuring out what is happening in the rest of the country:

One point three. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Eight, seven, seven, six, eight, seven, ten, nine, nine . . . two.

That’s a word picture of the polls taken in the run-up to April 23’s Alberta election, starting with a Leger survey for which interviews took place April 5-8. The numbers represent the Wildrose party’s estimated province-wide lead over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives. No public poll taken by a respectable firm during the campaign had the Wildrose behind the PCs. All pollsters agreed that at least a narrow Wildrose majority government was likely. Reporters in Eastern Canada dutifully filed “Wildrose wins” copy for the April 24 morning papers, believing that the outcome was certain.

And then came the shocking result of the election itself, arriving at the end of the mathematical sequence like some indecipherable symbol from a lost language:

Minus nine point six.

April 26, 2012

Romney’s biggest challenge in selecting a running mate

Filed under: Government, Humour, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

Steve Chapman outlines the big issue that Mitt Romney needs to consider while ruminating over who’ll be his running mate this year:

As he begins his search for a running mate, Mitt Romney needs to keep one question foremost in his mind, because the decision could affect us all for years to come. He needs to ask: Will this person be good for American comedy?

The prospective Republican nominee will have a tough time living up to recent standards. It’s hard to imagine a Romney vice president who would inspire a story like the one in The Onion: “Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway.”

Nobody is ever going to have a run like Tina Fey had with Sarah Palin. The chances are slim that the next veep will accidentally shoot someone in the face.

[. . .]

Dan Quayle instantly became a national joke while riding to victory with George H.W. Bush in 1988. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket in 1984, couldn’t keep Ronald Reagan from capturing 55 percent of the female vote.

In 2000, when Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to be the first Jewish running mate, the Democratic share of the Jewish vote soared to 79 percent — from 78 percent four years earlier. Dick Cheney brought the GOP the shimmering promise of Wyoming’s three electoral votes, which hadn’t gone to a Democrat since 1964.

It’s a rare vice presidential nominee who affects the outcome. Even if Palin hadn’t cost John McCain 2 percent of the overall vote, as one study calculated, Barack Obama would still be president.

April 24, 2012

Colby Cosh on the “Alberta surprise”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

From his most recent column at Maclean’s:

An Alberta astronaut returning from Titan and seeing the result of last night’s election would say “Meh, so what else is new? The PCs carried 61 of 87 seats? Kind of an off year for them, I guess.” Yet the ostensibly boring, familiar outcome wrong-footed much of the media and absolutely all the pollsters. Even PC insiders, correctly detecting a last-minute shift away from the Wildrose Party heirs-presumptive, envisioned a much smaller vote share than the 44 per cent Alison Redford’s party achieved. The public polling firms all botched the job, with none forecasting anything but a Wildrose majority even on the final weekend.

The Wildrose Party’s final count of 17 seats must surely leave its braintrust, heavily stocked with Conservative Party of Canada veterans, obliterated with horror. The CPC has built a pretty good electoral machine, but as old Ralph Klein hand and Wildrose supporter Rod Love reminded CBC, the Alberta PC brand is the most successful in the country. He probably could have gone even further afield if he wanted to. (On August 24, 2014, the PCs will officially become the longest continuously serving government in the annals of Confederation.) In 1993 the PCs were in trouble late, but succeeded in outflanking a popular Liberal opposition and running against their own record. They did it again in 2012. Redford succeeded in making herself the “change” candidate — though not without help from the Wildrose insurgents, who suffered late “bozo eruptions” of the sort the CPC itself has long since succeeded in extinguishing.

Update: Even Colby can’t seem to avoid the “Ten things” meme:

1. Proportional representation just won itself a whole passel of new right-wing fans.

2. Alberta Liberal morale remained high throughout an election in which pollsters warned continually of disaster. And the pollsters proved to be almost exactly right about this (if nothing else). Yet even as the mortifying results rolled in, Alberta Liberal morale still remained high. Then their egomaniac not-really-Liberal disaster of a leader, Raj Sherman, won his seat by the skin of his teeth. This means he will not have to be replaced unless an awful lot of people smarten up fast. Alberta Liberal morale after this event? Easily, easily at its highest point in ten years. “Please, sir, may I have another?”

[. . .]

5. Those who did boycott the Senate election seem awfully proud of themselves, because it was a “meaningless” election. Why, one wonders, does it have to be meaningless? The “progressive” parties could have agreed on a single Senate candidate in advance; if they had done so, that candidate would certainly have ended up first in the queue, and provided an excellent test of Stephen Harper’s integrity, which I am told is much doubted.

The problem is that Harper might pass the test, you say? Then what’s the harm? You get some smart, popular left-wing independent speaking for Alberta in the Senate? That’s bad for “progressives” how?

I’m still waiting for the definitive post-election analysis of why all the polls were so far off: I didn’t see a single poll in the last two weeks of the election that didn’t have Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party in clear majority territory. Nobody was predicting another PC victory in that time period (or if they were, the national media wasn’t picking it up).

April 23, 2012

French presidential voting: on to the second round

Filed under: Europe, France, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

For the first time, a sitting French president did not win the plurality of votes in the first round:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is wooing far-right voters after losing narrowly to his Socialist rival in the presidential election’s first round.

Francois Hollande came top with 28.6% and Mr Sarkozy got 27.1% — the first time a sitting president has lost in the first round.

Third-place Marine Le Pen took the largest share of the vote her far-right National Front has ever won, with 18%.

Referring to her voters, Mr Sarkozy said: “I have heard you.”

“There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another — an answer must be given to this crisis vote,” he said.

Pollsters say Mr Hollande is the clear favourite to win the second round on 6 May, a duel between him and Mr Sarkozy, who leads the centre-right UMP.

If Mr Hollande wins he will become the first Socialist president in France in 17 years

[. . .]

Nearly a fifth of voters backed a party — the National Front — that wants to ditch the euro and return to the franc.

Reacting to the Front’s success on Monday both the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that populist politics was a threat to Europe.

Mrs Merkel said the Front’s “alarming” rise would probably be “ironed out” in the second round. She said she would continue to support Mr Sarkozy.

April 21, 2012

The French presidential election candidates

Filed under: Europe, France, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:49

Conrad Black provides a thumbnail sketch of the first round of the French presidential election:

There are five principal candidates, arrayed very symmetrically, from right to left: The reactionary anti-Europe and anti-immigration National Front’s Marine Le Pen, espousing petit bourgeois know-nothingism, though less rancorously than her father, the party’s founder, did. Next on the ideological compass is the centre-right Gaullist Sarkozy, who believes in the omnipotent French state of Richelieu, Colbert and Napoleon. He has lengthened the work week and boosted the retirement age. He has also raised taxes, and now wants to impose a heavy exit tax, as the wealthy French are again fleeing the country, as they often have before. The French call Sarkozy “the water-bug” and “President Bling-bling” because of his frenetic behaviour and garish tastes.

Then there is the radical centrist Francois Bayrou, who doesn’t really have a party, and departs his farm every five years to take 10%-12% of the presidential vote for a median platform of moderate tax increases and spending reductions.

Moving to the left, there is M. Hollande, who casually repeats: “I don’t like the rich,” and wants to raise their taxes to 90%.

The piece de resistance in every respect is Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Leftist Bloc, a coalition of Trotskyites, orthodox Communists, dissident socialists, militant environmentalists, vegetarians, nudists and anarchists. Melenchon wants a 100% tax on incomes above 360,000 euros a year, a 20% increase in the minimum wage, and the inability of any profitable company to lay off anyone.

“Alberta appears headed for its fourth change of government in its 107-year history”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

Lorne Gunter in the Edmonton Sun on the last public opinion poll numbers before Monday’s election:

Alberta appears headed for its fourth change of government in its 107-year history. The Tories’ 41-year rule seems set to end on Monday.

Wildrose still leads the Tories by 10 points, 41% to 31%.

Wildrose has fallen five points since last week – not surprising, perhaps, given the battering the party took early in the week when two of its candidates badly fumbled issues of gay rights and racism.

What is perhaps surprising, though, is that the Tories have not been the only beneficiaries of Wildrose’s tough week. While Premier Alison Redford and crew rose two percentage points between Week 3 and Week 4, so too did the Alberta Liberals under Raj Sherman. The NDP under Brian Mason also climbed a point.

April 19, 2012

The (richly deserved) end of the Tory era in Alberta

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

Unless all the polls are way off, the election in Alberta will see the eternal rule of the Progressive Conservatives finally come to an end. But as desperate times call for desperate measures, the Tories have unleashed the last of their secret weapons to hold back the Wildrose barbarians — perhaps the most embarrassing political video ever posted. David J. Climenhaga saves you the pain of watching the video:

If you have any doubts left there are only four more sleeps before the end of the Progressive Conservative Era in Alberta, look no further than the video and website called “I never thought I’d vote PC.”

Whether or not the PCs under Alison Redford had anything to do with this vain effort to encourage hip, edgy young people to vote for the clapped out Conservative party in a last-ditch effort to prevent a Wildrose Apocalypse, there could be no surer sign of the imminent demise of the once mighty Tory dynasty.

I mean, really, telling young voters you understand why they’d “rather gouge their eyes out than vote Conservative” in an effort to get them to vote Conservative is just … embarrassing.

[. . .]

After this pathetic excuse for a Tory campaign, the tattered remnants of the Alberta Conservatives have less dignity left than Saddam Hussein when he was hauled out of his hidey-hole in Tikrit by the soldiers of the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division! This little video squib is just the final excruciating evidence before our eyes notice that the moribund Conservatives’ best-before date has passed.

I’m not kidding about the quality of the video — I couldn’t make it past the first minute before feeling too humiliated on behalf of the folks who made it and I had to shut it off. If you want to watch it in all its cringe-inducing glory, David has it embedded on his site.

April 15, 2012

Is crony capitalism the way of the American future?

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Sheldon Richman on the distressing similarities shared by the Republican and Democratic parties:

So the presidential campaign is shaping up as a contest between a Democrat who says we had a free market from 2001 through 2008 and a Republican who . . . agrees — he says “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.” You can’t cease to be something you never were.

Thus Barack Obama claims and Mitt Romney implicitly concedes that the free market 1) has existed and 2) therefore presumably created the housing and financial debacle. This bodes ill for advocates of liberty and voluntary exchange.

Notice what will happen if this framing is widely accepted: Genuinely freed markets won’t make the list of feasible options. That will leave us with mere variations on a statist theme, namely, corporatism. How will voters choose among them? Most of those who abhor “socialism” (however they define it) will rally round Republican corporatism because of the pro-market rhetoric, while most who abhor the cruel “free market” (“Look at the hardship it created!”) will rush to Democratic corporatism because of its anti-market rhetoric.

And the winner will be: Corporatism. (That is, the use of government force primarily to benefit the well-connected business elite.) The loser? The people, who would benefit from freedom and freed markets — markets void of privileges and arbitrary decrees. That’s what maximizes consumer and worker bargaining power and enhances general living standards.

Sarkozy reaps media benefit from video conference with Obama

Filed under: Europe, France, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

It’s often said that there’s no such thing as bad media exposure during an election campaign, and Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to take advantage of this in the run-up to the first round of voting:

Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of using a video conference with Barack Obama to boost his election campaign. In an unprecedented move in French diplomacy, newscasts on several TV channels showed the first few minutes of a video link-up between the French president and his Washington counterpart.

Days before the 22 April first-round vote in the French presidential election, the rare glimpse of banter between world leaders shows Obama saying of the campaign, “It must be a busy time.” He adds: “I admire the tough battle you are waging.” Sarkozy replies, grinning and with arms folded: “We will win, Mr Obama. You and me, together.” The cameras leave before the presidents talk about Syria, Iran and oil.

The benefits to Sarkozy are quite clear: it allows him to appear presidential (always a trick the incumbent can use and the ambitious opponent is denied) and gives a subtle boost to French pride — their president is clearly on good personal terms with the American president. France’s representative is seen as being the equal of the superpower’s representative (it doesn’t have to be stated, but it’s a useful subliminal message in an election).

It’s not quite as beneficial to Obama, although this may be a marker put down to be redeemed later in the US presidential cycle. The same trick can be played for the benefit of Obama’s east coast voting base: look how well he deals with foreign dignitaries.

April 12, 2012

Reason.tv: Why Democrat vs. Republican is the Wrong Way to Look at the 2012 Election

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:59

“We had a non-Obama president recently, his name was George W. Bush, it wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows,” says Reason’s Matt Welch. “Being Republican is not enough to counter Obama. Mitt Romney is not offering an alternative to Obama,” adds Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie.

From Newt Gingrich’s inexplicable campaign chatter about a taxpayer-subsidized colony on the moon to Mitt Romney’s refusal to discuss any specific spending cuts he would implement as president, Republicans continue to offer no real substantive alternative to President Obama’s spendthrift economic policies.

Welch and Gillespie, the co-authors of “The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America,” hosted the discussion “Why Democrat vs. Republican is the Wrong Way to Look at the 2012 Election” at Reason Weekend, the annual donor event held by Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website).

April 3, 2012

How Galloway’s win in the “Bradford Spring” caught the media completely by surprise

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

Mick Hume tries to dissect the actual results of the Bradford by-election, rather than what the London media is trying to say about it:

It was, they tell us, ‘a one-off’. Top pundits have tried to put the shock victory of Respect candidate George Galloway in the Bradford West parliamentary by-election down to the ‘unique’ personal appeal of the new member of parliament, to suggest it has limited relevance for wider UK politics.

[. . .]

In his victory speech the ever-modest Galloway hailed his remarkable triumph as a ‘Bradford Spring’, a popular uprising on the Arab model. What this result really demonstrated was the depth of the autumn-style decay in mainstream British politics, where all of the parliamentary parties have shed their distinctive political foliage and been reduced to a dull, indistinguishable mulch.

[. . .]

Respect ran an ‘Islamicised’ campaign, appealing to the area’s many Muslim voters on the basis of divisive and insular communal politics. This included a remarkable leaflet, signed in Galloway’s name, which assured them ‘God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not… I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have… I, George Galloway, have fought for the Muslims at home and abroad all my life…And with your support, and if God wills it, I want to give my remaining days in service of all the people — Muslims, Pakistanis, and everyone in Bradford West’, and much more in a similarly ‘socialist’ vein.

[. . .]

At a national level, the most striking thing about the Bradford West result was how it took the political and media elite almost completely by surprise. There they were at Westminster last week, happily musing about how the fuel panic and ‘pastygate’ might damage David Cameron’s Tory-Lib Dem Coalition government, and confidently predicting that Ed Miliband’s opposition Labour Party was ‘well placed’ to clean up in the polls. Then suddenly, on another planet called Bradford West, an alien breed known as ‘ordinary voters’ stunned the entire Westminster village.

It was a graphic illustration of how detached and isolated from the populus the political and media elites have become. The immediate responses to the result rather reinforced the point. According to one neighbouring Labour MP, Galloway’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother a few years ago had been ‘a very significant factor’ in persuading local people to vote for him rather than the Labour candidate. Leave aside for a moment the small fact that Galloway’s risible appearance on CBB, crawling around the floor in a red catsuit unflattering to the fuller figure, was widely considered to spell the end of his political career. And leave aside also the question of who introduced ‘personality’ and celebrity politics as a substitute for principles. The idea that people are sheeple who will vote for whoever they see on reality TV summed up the mixture of incomprehension and contempt with which the elite views the masses today. They have not got a clue what any of us is thinking.

March 18, 2012

“Santorum’s own web site suggests that seeing this turned between 15 and 25% of the crowd insta-gay”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:31

Title courtesy of Popehat’s Twitter feed. Article at Gawker:

Santorum’s virgin eyes have been tarnished by sin — as a protest against the Republican presidential candidate’s vehemently anti-gay policies, two men got the attention of the crowd at an Illinois rally and kissed each other. Guards removed the men from the gym as the crowd chanted “U-S-A.” Because nothing is more American than repression.

March 15, 2012

Santorum vows to eliminate online porn

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:26

As if he wasn’t already socially conservative enough, Rick Santorum is now promising a moral crusade to clean up the internet:

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.

The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

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