The Party’s Problem

National Review Online ^ | November 14, 2012 | Ramesh Ponnuru

[Trailerpark Badass]

Uh, we DID have an example of government investing in American businesses, pretty recently in fact.

How'd that turn out? You got a new job yet?

And you want more of that?

If you're not talking about govt investing in American businesses, then I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Who said government?

While government has a place, its place has gotten out of hand.

Granted it is overgrown now, with our private sector running away.

But bring the private sector back in a big way, and we can shrink the government big time.

Shrink government. Pay for things.

Make money.

How about it.

[C. Edmund Wright]

You speak in meaningless childish platitudes that have no meaning. An economy works, or fails, for a reason. That reason is rooted in human nature. You don’t want to deal with that. YOu just want it the way you want it when you want it.

So you say now is the time. No, it isn’t. You say this is an opportunity. No, it isn’t. If we suddenly got serious about devleoping our own energy, that would be an opportunity I am all for, and it would impact everything. In fact, I consult for an American Energy PAC. So I am all for American jobs.

But only within realisitc parameters...which means we must shrink government regs and must shrink union power and must reduce inbedded costs like energy. If not , it is in no body’s interest to open a company here, and in case you haven’t figured it out, people only open companies when it is in their best interst to do so.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Well we disagree then.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Of course we disagree, one of us, me, writes widely on business and economic issues and has done so for years - and has done so for some major national figures. One of us, me, has owned part of 20 some odd businesses and dealt with tens of thousands of potential employees.

In other words, one of us, knows what they are talking about. One of us does not. Of course we disagree. We have to.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I am an employee. I work every day.

You are a writer and an idea man.

Not necessarily at odds. Not necessarily even disagreeing.

Except right at the moment.

This will pass.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I am a businessman first and foremost. It’s that experience, yes, that real world experience, the experience of getting screwed by governmetn bureaucats and threatened by unions and ripped off by the IRS and the EEOC on a routine basis - that gives me the abject confidence to flat out tell folks who have never owned a business that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

It is this experience, much good, much not so much, that animates and informs my writng. And yes, I could tell you were an employee. I can instantly tell who is, and who is not, an owner or manager.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Well all that said, we have gone about as far as possible in the anti-American direction about businesses.

Now is time to reverse course.

It will be informative to see how Obama approaches this idea.

Both parties have opportunities during the next 2 and 4 years playing pro-American positions.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Are you really that naive about Obama’s attitude on business? He holds a jobs summit and invites unions and academics, and no business people. He keeps the gulf moratorium in place. He cancelled Keystone. He sued Boeing. He is raising taxes on small businesses.

What do you think he will possibly do to help? Seriously, what the hell wil lhe to do help?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I’m not suggesting joining forces with Obama.

I’m saying outdo Obama with a pro-American message and a pro-American agenda of growth and jobs.

STOP sending jobs overseas.

That is my point. More still, bring jobs BACK.

Without Obama’s input.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Let me help you out here - pro American does NOT mean putting up with anti liberty anti business anti American ideals simply to locate on American soil.

America is much more of an idea than it is a piece of real estate. You probably are scratching your head wondering what the hell I just said. Add that to the mountanous list of things you don’t understand.

I act in accordance with American ideals. You suggest acting against American ideals in favor of American real estate. I submit I am more pro American than you are.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

We seem to be getting along well, let’s not tempt fate.

Nice talking with you.

:)

[trappedincanuckistan]

You seem to lack a basic understanding of economics my friend.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

:)

That’s another way of saying you disagree.

I can take it.

[trappedincanuckistan]

I’m glad. I meant no offense.

[generally]

I don’t think so either. Republican strategists seem to think that logical arguments will sway voters and win elections. This is their fatal flaw.

[superloser]

We need to emphasize America in deed, in law and in business.

Bingo.

Reagan did a good job of articulating populist fiscal conservatism which also included jobs, business, and entrepreneurship. Reagan was not above using tariffs to save iconic American businesses either and trumpeting loudly that he would not allow them to fail. Not on his watch at any rate.

That kind of thing wins people over. When they know you are on their side, they tend to vote for you.

When you spend all your time and political capital protecting uber-wealthy liberals, people start to wonder whose side you are on and they vote accordingly.

It isn't that difficult to figure out. It is even less difficult to get on the campaign trail and talk about, unless you're an uber-wealthy liberal yourself.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It's a good article, but the main problem we have, and had in this election was the media.

If we don't neutralize the Academic/Hollywood/Media complex, it hardly matters what we do.

That is undeniable IMHO. I have studied the issue pretty deeply, I dare say, over the decades since the Carter era when I belatedly understood the fact of “bias in the media” and - relatively quickly - became bored with people sawing sawdust with example after breathless example proving what I already knew was true. But of course, we want to keep - and enhance - respect for our First Amendment rights. And my first conclusion was therefore that although “media” fiction such as Hollywood definitely promotes socialism, there is no principled way to oppose the rights of people to create leftist fiction specifically.

But that still leaves nonfiction. And IMHO even there, people can write nonfiction books and still be wrong, without our having any principled argument against their right to do so. But it was the strawberries, that’s where I had them </Cain Mutiny> LoL!

As I was saying, but it is in the field of federally licensed broadcast nonfiction - broadcast journalism - that there is the strongest case that leftist activism should be actionable. And I wrote a vanity about that

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

back in ’01 and kept commenting to it for years as I worked to clarify the point. And it still seems to me that action should be brought against the broadcast networks and the FCC simply on the basis that the FCC promotes broadcast journalism as a public good, and yet journalism is systematically tendentious. FULL STOP.

But there are two other points to make on the topic of journalism. First, that journalism’s character changed in the Nineteenth Century. Whereas in the Founding Era, journalism consisted of mostly weekly publications whose central feature was the opinion of the printer, and the printers’ opinions were all over the political map, by the start of the 20th Century newspapers were a lot more like what we are used to now. After an absurdly long time the answer came to me - it wan’t so much high speed printing presses that changed things, it was the telegraph. The telegraph and the Associated Press. The AP in particular, but any wire service would and does tend to homogenize reporting and claim that the homogeneity is a proof of “objectivity.” A wire service has to do that in order to justify printing information that came from a reporter that the editor of your newspaper doesn’t even know, hasn’t even met.

The other point is about objectivity itself. IMHO the dictionary definition is unsatisfactory. My preferred definition of objectivity is, “the opposite of subjectivity. And what is subjectivity? It is nothing but the natural tendency of a person to believe that what is convenient for himself is true. Thus, it is laudable and even necessary to attempt to be objective, but is not possible for a person to know that he is objective. The attempt at objectivity must involve an openness to discuss the known motives of the person making the attempt. Of course, declaring one’s interest has the ironic superficial effect of making it seem like the person is subjective. Equally, claiming to be objective is the exact opposite of actually trying to be objective.

And joining an organization which claims objectivity for its members is no different than directly claiming objectivity for yourself. Thus, we know that the members of the Associated Press aren’t even trying to be objective. All window dressing and fact checking and “both sides of the story” telling notwithstanding, if you don’t understand an opposing viewpoint, you cannot give it an objective airing. If you aren’t taking the difficulty of objectivity seriously, you don’t actually believe that there actually are two sides to the story.

Journalism and Objectivity

[publius321]

You are welcome neverdem. Likewise.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem for this topic, and the excerpt in the other topic that led me here:

Romney was not a drag on the Republican party. The Republican party was a drag on him. Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Romney ran ahead of most of the Republican Senate candidates: He did better than Connie Mack in Florida, George Allen in Virginia, Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Denny Rehberg in Montana, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Pete Hoekstra in Michigan, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, Rick Berg in North Dakota, Josh Mandel in Ohio, and of course Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. In some cases Romney did a lot better. (He also did slightly better than Ted Cruz in Texas, a race Blake for some reason ignored.)

None of those candidates were as rich as Romney, and almost all of them had more consistently conservative records than he did. It didn’t help them win more votes. The only Republican Senate candidates who ran significantly ahead of Romney were people running well to his left in blue states, and they lost too...

The 2012 Senate races were more like the ones in 2006 and 2008: wipeouts for Republicans of every description -- veterans and newcomers, conservative purists and relative moderates alike... their party is weak -- and has been for a long time. Consider the evidence: Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Since the Senate reached its current size, Democrats have had more than 55 seats 13 times; Republicans, never.

The one and only success of Newt Gingrich was in his flipping the House in 1994's "Contract with America" campaign. It spelled out what the agenda was and gave a time frame. Then of course he did a Pontius Pilate job on all of us by allowing his fellow politicians to "vote their consciences". If they had consciences, they wouldn't go into politics in the first place.