Posted on 07/17/2008 4:51:17 AM PDT by KLFuchs
I'm a lifelong Republican - a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole's presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp's Empower America.
This November, I'm voting for Barack Obama.
When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that's antithetical to almost everything I believe in?
The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies - this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.
Taxes, economic policy and health care reform matter, of course. But how we extract ourselves from the bloody boondoggle in Iraq, how we avoid getting into a war with Iran and how we preserve our individual rights while dealing with real foreign threats - these are of greater importance.
John McCain would continue the Bush administration's commitment to interventionism and constitutional overreach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. That's what conservatism used to mean - and it's what George W. Bush promised as a candidate.
Plus, when it comes to domestic issues, I don't take Obama at his word. That may sound cynical. But the fact that he says just about all the wrong things on domestic issues doesn't bother me as much as it once would have. After all, the Republicans said all the right things - fiscal responsibility, spending restraint - and it didn't mean a thing. It is a sad commentary on American politics today, but it's taken as a given that politicians, all of them, must pander, obfuscate and prevaricate.
Besides, I suspect Obama is more free-market friendly than he lets on. He taught at the University of Chicago, a hotbed of right-of-center thought. His economic advisers, notably Austan Goolsbee, recognize that ordinary citizens stand to gain more from open markets than from government meddling. That's got to rub off.
When it comes to health care, I am hoping Obama quietly recognizes that a crusade against pharmaceutical companies would result in the opposite of any intended effect. And in any event, McCain's plans in this area are deeply problematic, too. Take drug reimportation. McCain (like Obama) says he's perfectly comfortable with this ill-conceived scheme, which would drive research and development dollars away from the next generation of miracle cures.
But overall, based on his embrace of centrist advisers and policies, it seems likely that Obama will turn out to be in the mold of John Kennedy - who was fond of noting that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Over the last few decades, economic growth has made Americans at every income level better off. For all his borderline pessimistic rhetoric, Obama knows this. And I believe he is savvy enough to realize that the real threat to middle-class families and the poor - an economic undertow that drags everyone down - cannot be counteracted by an activist government.
Or maybe not. But here's the thing: Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed-in-the-wool, big-government liberal, I'm still voting for him.
These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil - and lost countless lives - and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.
If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It's not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.
This is another idiot who thinks that ‘let’s pretend’ is going to make a difference.
I’m sure all of his liberal friends like him now.
The real danger that Obama poses is not that he will ‘change’ things— he will, and it will be for the worse— it is that he will be such an unmitigated disaster as to make Black Leadership a code word for failure.
Barack is going to make Jimmy Carter look competent.
Of course, his other choice is Juan McLame, so I can certainly understand his personal confliction.
At the rate things are going economically GWB is going to make him look competent too.
At the rate things are going economically GWB is going to make him look competent too.
“I fear that we may have already gone too far down that road.”
So do I.
...another propoganda piece. This guy was never a conservative.
I detect the distinct scent of Ron Paul...
Imbecility.
"Your child has just had the bloody crap beaten out of him by the biggest bully on the playground because he wouldn't give him his lunch money. Do you tell your child to hit back, or to "negotiate" with the bully, who is probably just misunderstood, in the hopes that he will leave the child alone next time he will beat the crap out of the OTHER children on the playground."
If you answered B, you probably are probably already going to vote for Obama.
“The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies - this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.”
These are products of Congress. You are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
As soon as he mentioned Jack Kemp, I stopped reading.
How the HE** did we let the two major parties get to this point, Jeff?
I'm so disgusted I'm thinking about becoming a hermit.
So the importance of losing in Iraq and constitutional rights for terrorist trump individual rights to keep what you earn or the 13th amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime?
...and Benedict Arnold was a darn good general.
Unfortunately, his vanity and uncontrolled anger got the best of him.
Even still, I’m certain that Benedict was a smarter and better class of person than you, Larry.
The lie begins in the title.
Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies
Unjustified - matter of opinion, but an unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights? It is liberals just like Obama who would have Christians silenced, would have the right to life finished off, and all firearms confiscated from law-abiding citizens (just for starters). Talk about some abridged constitutional rights...
it seems likely that Obama will turn out to be in the mold of John Kennedy
Years of hard-core drug use causes considerable brain damage... as is proven by that statement.
Is this the Larry Hunter posting stories at Huffington Post, or the Larry Hunter who’s chasing UFO’s?
I don’t believe he was ever a conservative anything.
Although his comparison of Republican leadership to shuffling zombies isn’t too far off.
“Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself ....”
This is because his *hopes* are not based on logic....and they probably WILL be dashed (among other things).
Here’s what Warner Todd Houston says at News Busters: “Larry Hunter claims he is a “lifelong conservative.” Yet, in his recent New York Daily News article, he also says he is voting for Barack Obama for president. The two simply cannot coexist. One has to be obliterated in favor of the other. And, regardless of the facile reasoning Hunter gives for his apostasy, this article does nothing to support any supposed conservative cause. It does, however, give the media something to crow about.”
He continues, “Hunter’s second reason, the “unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights” is simply absurd. There have been no such abridgments. If Hunter means the reputed abridgment of the non existent rights of the terrorists, it is even more absurd. Additionally, when compared to the actions of past presidents in past wars, Bush’s efforts seem wonderfully measured and moderate. But it is his last part that is most absurd, that of the “mortal sins” of bad economic policy. I am no fan of much of Bush’s domestic policies, but to use these failures as an excuse to vote for a party that will institute socialist inspired policies that will make Bush’s policies seem as if it was crafted by Joseph A. Schumpeter or Milton Friedman, well that simply makes no logical sense at all! It makes Larry Hunter appear as if he has taken leave of his senses.”
You can read more here: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/07/17/nydaily-news-lifelong-conservative-throwing-all-principles-winds
If that's the case, I think that he's making a bad bet in a very public way.
I agree. Work must be hard to get for these guys. Several have publicly voiced support for BHO. Which means they think he is going to win and/or they hate McCain.
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