Posted on 11/12/2012 4:07:11 PM PST by Enza Ferreri
The video of the original Obamaphone lady that you can see by clicking the link above sums up, better than many words and in-depth analyses, why Obama won. This has truly become a client state. I like the following definition of client state, applied to Scotland:
Keep spending more and more money on more and more voters, and you've built a client state. Those in receipt of the largesse will want it to continue. One day the money will no longer be there to spend (see technical note from Liam Byrne for details), but by that point you will have engineered a situation where any modulation of public spending will cause pain to such a large proportion of the electorate that the chances of the Conservatives winning a straight fight will be much reduced.Although I am not American, I am very, very sad that Romney did not win the election.
I had got to like him, a Christian, obviously good, warm and gentle person. I liked the way he spoke during the presidential debates, firm but always polite, compared to the impersonal and arrogant Obama.
I can easily believe what popular radio talk show host and political commentator Rush Limbaugh said of him, that “Mitt Romney is one of the best people, human beings I’ve ever met.”
Limbaugh also said:
None of it makes any sense! Mitt Romney and his wife and his family are the essence of decency. He's the essence of achievement. Mitt Romney's life is a testament to what's possible in this country. Mitt Romney is the nicest guy anybody would ever run into. Mitt Romney is charitable. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He doesn't hate. He's not discriminatory in any way, shape, manner, or form.This is about Romney as a person. But the reasons why I would have voted for him, if I had been American, are obviously political and I've blogged extensively about them before the election, from the economy to abortion, from Marxism to the presidential debates, from totalitarianism to the Benghazi attack.
Romney's policies were not perfect, but infinitely better than Obama's. Barack Hussein is also someone who has been very shady about his life as well as mendacious about his politics, which makes it unwise to trust him as President of the world's most powerful country.
Exactly because I am European, I've considered the US as something to look to for upholding the western and Christian values that are being eroded so rapidly in my continent.
I'm seriously saddened now to see that the US is going the European way too. But I am still hopeful: this is not the last election, and things may happen before the next that might change America's current political and economical course towards socialism, big government, welfare state, poverty and loss of moral compass.
Looking at the election results, there has clearly been a shift much more pronouncedly to the political left in US voting patterns, strongly determined by minority votes like blacks and Latinos, groups that probably made the difference about who of the two candidates got elected.
Some commentators, on the BBC for instance, said that the Republicans must acknowledge the democraphic change produced by the much higher percentage of Latinos in several states and, if they want to woo these voters, should make changes to their policies, prominently on immigration.
We have to remember this: "As Doug Ross has pointed out, Obama is – among many other things – the lawless president: the first one to sue states for enforcing laws Congress had passed".
The state in question is Arizona, and the law is the immigration law:
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that one key part of the Arizona immigration law, known as Senate Bill 1070, is constitutional, paving the way for it to go into effect. Three other portions were deemed unconstitutional in a 5-3 opinion.This may help explain why Latinos tend to vote for Obama. But should the Republican Party make concessions of this sort and risk going against the Constitution? Is this just a small compromise, or is it damaging what America, since its foundation, really is and stands for?The part ruled constitutional is among the most controversial of the law's provisions. It requires an officer to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there's reasonable suspicion that person is in the country illegally.
The three parts ruled unconstitutional make it a state crime for an immigrant not to be carrying papers, allow for warrant-less arrest in some situations and forbid an illegal immigrant from working in Arizona.
The long-awaited decision was a partial victory for Gov. Jan Brewer and for President Barack Obama, who sued the state of Arizona to keep the law from taking effect. By striking down the portions they did, justices said states could not overstep the federal government's immigration-enforcement authority. But by upholding the portion it did, the court said it was proper for states to partner with the federal government in immigration enforcement.
On immigration, Obama was accused by Bush administration counsel John Yoo of executive overreach:
President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).On the other side of the debate, there are those who say that Romney was not conservative enough. Romney was chosen as Republican candidate because he covered a kind of moderate middle ground in the GOP, in the hope that this would appeal to middle America's voters come Election Day.Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the president has the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This provision was included to make sure that the president could not simply choose, as the British King had, to cancel legislation simply because he disagreed with it. President Obama cannot refuse to carry out a congressional statute simply because he thinks it advances the wrong policy. To do so violates the very core of his constitutional duties.
There are two exceptions, neither of which applies here. The first is that “the Laws” includes the Constitution. The president can and should refuse to execute congressional statutes that violate the Constitution, because the Constitution is the highest form of law. We in the Bush administration argued that the president could refuse to execute laws that infringed on the executive’s constitutional powers, particularly when it came to national security — otherwise, a Congress that had a different view of foreign policy could order the military to refuse to carry out the president’s orders as Commander-in-Chief, for example. When presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR said that they would not enforce a law, they did so when the law violated their executive powers under the Constitution or the individual rights of citizens.
The president’s right to refuse to enforce unconstitutional legislation, of course, does not apply here. No one can claim with a straight face that the immigration laws here violate the Constitution.
The second exception is prosecutorial discretion, which is the idea that because of limited resources the executive cannot pursue every violation of federal law. The Justice Department must choose priorities and prosecute cases that are the most important, have the greatest impact, deter the most, and so on. But prosecutorial discretion is not being used in good faith here: A president cannot claim discretion honestly to say that he will not enforce an entire law - especially where, as here, the executive branch is enforcing the rest of immigration law.
Imagine the precedent this claim would create. President Romney could lower tax rates simply by saying he will not use enforcement resources to prosecute anyone who refuses to pay capital-gains tax. He could repeal Obamacare simply by refusing to fine or prosecute anyone who violates it.
So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support.
Some commentators now say that a more consistent conservative approach would have been the way forward.
British political journalist Melanie Phillips is one of them:
Britain and the Europeans love Obama because they think he will end American exceptionalism and turn the US into a pale shadow of themselves. What they don’t realise is that, all but lobotomised by consumerist rights, state dependency, victim culture, sentimentality, post-religion, post-nationalism and post-Holocaust and Empire guilt, Britain and Europe are themselves fast going down the civilisational tubes.Rush Limbaugh is another:Romney lost because he refused to provide an alternative to any of this for fear of being labelled a warmonger, flint-heart or social reactionary. He refused to engage with any of the issues that made this Presidential election so truly momentous. Up against the bullying of the totalitarian left, he ran for cover. He played safe, and as a result only advertised his own weakness and dishonesty. Well, voters can smell inconsistency from a mile away; they call it untrustworthiness, and they are right.
“If there’s one option that hasn’t been tried in a long time, it’s called conservatism with a capital C,” he said. “This was not a conservative campaign.”This is the trilemma facing the GOP: compromise, stand firm, or go the full length and be more consistent in its conservative principles.
Rush sure loves Romney. I think Romney would have had a better chance had he not changed his mind so much. That makes people very uneasy.
The Republican Party needs to stick to Conservative principles and Conservative candidates.
If we begin to chase power and control at the price of our values, we are lost as a country and the Constitutional Republic has failed.
Democrat reaction to GOP-e supporting amnesty to win Hispanic vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnXz_qZ5RE&feature=g-upl
Ferreri is out trying herd us all back into the two party illusion...
If you believe in the principles you say you believe, then there really isn't any choice but to go on fighting.
This is where we find out who is who.
Repubs are great at arguing for tax cuts as short-hand for limited government. Its been a long time, though, since I've heard a full-throated defense of liberty and limited government by any big-name Repub. We aren't going to turn this around by deal-making. It does little good to win if the people you win with don't believe in the things you believe in.
The GOP seems content to be Discount Democrats. They seem content to deliver the DNC's agenda, but at a ten percent discount on the amount of the increase over a ten year period. Any hint of an intent to limit government and Repubs fall all over themselves to assure everyone that, no, no way will we cut the program you want. No, that program we'll defend to our dying day. We'll keep them all, we'll just cut out the waste. Supposedly.
You can't find a Repub who will argue out loud for a return to constitutional government without immediately backing down when you challenge them about cutting or eliminating a specific program. Do that and they all go weak in the knees.
Granted, fewer Americans every day are interested in freedom if it means giving up their favorite program, whatever it is.
If you can't explain why you are right, if you're just a cheaper Democrat, you won't win and won't deserve to win if you do.
>The Republican Party needs to stick to Conservative principles and Conservative candidates.
My prediction: The GOP will compromise and, if it can, try to project the image of standing firm. This includes things like adding to the party planks language rejecting the exceptions for abortion while pushing a candidate who’s known as being pro-abortion and though claiming to have changed his mind still said “of course I support abortion in the cases of rape and incest.”
>If we begin to chase power and control at the price of our values, we are lost as a country and the Constitutional Republic has failed.
I believe that’s already happened. Look at how the GOP-e pushed Romney. There were states which declared him the winner of their primary... until the next primary was closed. There was the case where the Ron Paul supporters got delegates through a good use of rules-lawyering... only to be denied the delegates by the rules being retroactively changed. There was the text of the proposed rule-changes at the RNC, the voice-vote/teleprompter incident, the refusing to seat delegates, and I’m sure more.
Too bad they don't actually follow through. The "Bush Tax Cuts" aren't really tax-cuts so much as a sort of per-applied subsidy. A real tax-cut would be lowering the rates in the tax-brackets... or, even better, changing to a flat-rate no-deductions/credits/exemptions/discounts.
Its been a long time, though, since I've heard a full-throated defense of liberty and limited government by any big-name Repub.
Ron Paul is the last one that I can recall really making a big deal about it... and look at how people even here react to him.
We aren't going to turn this around by deal-making. It does little good to win if the people you win with don't believe in the things you believe in.
I agree.
I've been saying this for a while; if the republicans don't do what they say they will do, then they-as-a-party are useless.
The beliefs held by those who had a visceral, negative reaction to Ron Paul are the exact beliefs that are not selling at all to young voters and turning them off to the GOP. Ron Paul is almost a perfect litmus test.
Some folks here violently disagree, but I think Ron Paul could have won the Presidency where Romney failed had he won the primaries.
Short version: he's for something, a lot of his supporters have a sort of excitement lacking in most of the GOP, and the Anybody But Obama crowd.
I am hopeful that Rand Paul will emerge in the forefront as time goes along.
It doesn’t matter which direction. We are past the tipping point. Free stuff wins.
Good Lord, Paul couldn’t even win a state office in Texas and he repeatedly ran for president and from two different parties, including running in this election.
Paul’s con was to raise money and live the life, in 30 years of being a career politician and con man, he did nothing more.
Yes.
Liberty (limited government, stop the spending, etc) is the unifying theme that would bring together the disparate elements that tend to comprise the GOP.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of statists within the ranks of those who call themselves “conservative”, who just don’t see it that way.
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