Posted on 08/14/2011 10:19:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Tim Pawlenty is exiting the race for the White House the same way he came in — on a tidal wave of conventional wisdom.
He was too even-tempered, they say, to catch on with a white-hot electorate. He was too level-headed, they say, to connect with a grassroots that’s gone to extremes. He was a nice guy — “boring,” in the parlance of our times — so he finished last.
Breaking news: The conventional wisdom is wrong. Pawlenty’s personality problem wasn’t a charisma deficit — it was a wimpiness surplus.
But the wimp factor is meaningless relative to the flaw that doomed his candidacy. As Ron Paul has amply proven, a certain kind of message can propel even the most unlikely of messengers deep into a crowded field.
Pawlenty is out, and out first, for one reason and one reason only.
It’s not Pawlenty. It’s Pawlentyism.
Tim Pawlenty is the canary in the establishment coal mine. His message — that the Republican Party doesn’t need to rethink any of its main policy propositions — no longer computes with a critical mass of Republican voters: not just in Ames, Iowa, but nationwide.
Paul and his (growing) army of faithful are no longer the lone data point. Michele Bachmann has built her campaign around a radical alternative to Republican spending orthodoxy. Sarah Palin fuels hopes of an even broader renunciation of the Republican establishment.
Even Mitt Romney now knows better than to re-run his losing proto-Pawlentyist campaign from 2008, when his change-nothing play for the mushy conservative middle left him obliged to spend millions to avoid T-Paw’s glum fate.
But time is running out on Romney’s current luxurious alternative, the anti-campaign. Rather than serving pabulum, Romney has served nothing; pointing a finger at Obama has been enough. No longer. He will have to offer, like any Republican candidate serious about claiming the nomination, a fundamental departure from the miasma of convention that clings to the Republican brand.
It’s not that Pawlenty’s brand of mainstream, fusionist conservatism is wrong. It’s that it misses the point. The principles are necessary, but the policies Pawlentyism derives from them are inadequate to the daunting task that Americans have — let’s face it — set before themselves.
Given how grievously we’ve undercalculated the real debt burdens at the state, local, and federal levels, an “ambitious goal” of 5% economic growth is not just absurd but dangerously so. (Perhaps real growth is in reach with a massive and open-ended influx of immigrants who are ready to work cheap and stay off entitlements. Good luck with that.)
Given how weary America has become of its network of military actions, a bear-any-burden approach to muscular interventionism sweeps all our serious strategic questions under the rug. (Note: We Americans are fine with wars. It’s the massive and open-ended imperial mission of garrisoning “restive tribal areas” that we rightly lose patience for.)
And given how deeply all economic classes have been penetrated by dependency on perpetual federal wealth transfers, the “Sam’s Club Republicanism” that anointed Pawlenty its poster boy cannot be taken seriously when it proposes to “reform” the country and the GOP by replacing our system of targeted tax credits with one of out-and-out wage subsidies.
The cultural and economic problems America confronts are structural. The lifelong biological family is unable to reliably function as a source of social order. The size and scope of the criminal justice system is unsustainable and corrosive. The magnitude of privately held debt spins nightmare scenarios in the heads of policymakers already hesitant to undo a system of governance dedicated above all to artificially maintaining for Americans of every class a lifestyle many of them could not accomplish on their own.
That may feel compassionate — or even merely prudent — but on anything more than the most shortsighted of timelines, it is neither. The endemic subsidization on which our virtual prosperity depends is incompatible with any fair view of Americans as a free people. And against that most serious charge, Pawlentyism — no matter how conservative in its convictions, commitments, and attitudes — has no answer.
Does any Republican approach? For now, it’s difficult to answer yes. But the contours of a satisfactory alternative to establishment drift are easy to recognize.
In foreign policy, end our indefinite military garrisons, increase our ability to poke hard with a sharp stick at key moments and help our cornerstone allies in Europe and Asia better assert a constant regional presence.
On criminal justice, legalize soft drugs, clean up the appeals and capital punishment process, overhaul our corrupt (and corrupting) prison system, and reform and reintegrate felons.
On border issues, permit brief stays for true migrant workers, and demand an immediate choice between citizenship and deportation for resident illegal immigrants without criminal records.
On social issues, embrace the Tenth Amendment, and work to defeat and reverse judges who don’t just legislate from the bench but philosophize.
And on the defining issue of our time — subsidy and entitlement spending writ large — begin the urgent task of painstakingly unraveling the cocoon of incentives, payoffs, behavioral modifications, and socioeconomic engineering that has forced well-off, middle-class, working-class, and poor Americans to choose between greater prosperity and greater independence.
There’s no reason a Republican candidate can’t embrace these or similar positions. They amount to a post-establishmentarian vision of governance that steps outside the box created by misleading categories like “extreme” on the one hand and “centrist” on the other. And they sharply rebuke the sitting president.
Tim Pawlenty didn’t flop because Iowans are crackpots or Tea Partiers are wingnuts. It’s not extremism along the traditional political spectrum that grassroots Republicans (and independents and others) want. It’s an extreme departure from that spectrum, which has become — to say nothing of the parlous state of the left — a license and excuse for a great drift into inadequacy by conventional fusionism on the right.
If the candidates counted as the winners in the wake of Pawlenty’s departure don’t grasp that fact, they might have beaten him, but they’ll have joined him, too.
The lifelong biological family is unable to reliably function as a source of social order.
Let’s see, government makes it illegal to discipline children and encourages divorce.
“There’s no reason a Republican candidate can’t embrace these or similar positions.”
Sorry, maybe it’s me, but I really don’t understand WHAT this guy is recommending. Our author seems to have striven hard to make himself obscure.
It is unfortunate, but Pawlenty doomed himself with his inability to repeat the phrase “Obomneycare” to Romney’s face. It made him appear to be a craven backstabber and really, who needs that?
I thought at the time he had doomed himself, but hoped he might recover, he didn’t.
Pawlenty failed because he let himself be bullied by the press. It’s pretty simple. Every Conservative knows that the press is on the Liberals side and they won’t give us permission to win.
WRT the article,
“In foreign policy, end our indefinite military garrisons, increase our ability to poke hard with a sharp stick at key moments and help our cornerstone allies in Europe and Asia better assert a constant regional presence.
On criminal justice, legalize soft drugs, clean up the appeals and capital punishment process, overhaul our corrupt (and corrupting) prison system, and reform and reintegrate felons.
On border issues, permit brief stays for true migrant workers, and demand an immediate choice between citizenship and deportation for resident illegal immigrants without criminal records.”
Goodness.
No comments but one question: Who is responsible for the plethora of "enough" keywords on this thread?
Which extremes are those?
Only spend what you have, lower taxes, really cut spending, don't just reduce the rate of growth, end the EPA, NEA, funding for NPR and public TV this will be a good start.
Bring home the troops from England, Germany, Japan and S. Korea.
Either turn the troops in Afghanistan loose in order to win, or bring them home and nuke the terrorist savages.
Turn Iran into a sheet of molten glass, check with me on August 15, 9011 and we'll see if the cockroaches are back.
Think this is extreme, you should catch my plan late in the day, after a few Johnnie Walker Blacks.
I felt he had a sincerity problem. When he spoke it seemed as though he didn’t really believe what he was saying himself. He would attack his opponents, but then face to face with them or when questioned by the press, he wouldn’t own them as his own. This made him look as though his statements were just “politics as usual” and not true convictions. In other words, he gave every indication he was a RINO and not a real conservative.
“I felt he had a sincerity problem. When he spoke it seemed as though he didn’t really believe what he was saying himself.”
I noticed that too. I would like your opinion of how Bachmann and Perry came across when they addressed the post-straw poll crowd in Iowa Sunday. They have been playing clips from that on TV news all morning.
That's about the stupidest remark anyone can make about the entire illegal alien debacle.
Why would any pick deportation except in some rare circumstance where they really wanted to go back to the sh*thole which they left due to accumulating enough money, wanting a free visit home, etc.?
And if you force them to choose citizenship under threat of deportation, just what kind of citizen would they be? At best, you would have reluctant citizens who see America as an ATM. At worst, you'd have resentful citizens who would make better fifth columnists and Quislings.
We have more than an ample supply of native born moochers and Quislings. Why do we need to import them?
TPaw failed because he is not charasmatic, does not have a clear message or a vision for America.
I don’t see a cadre of old men in overalls following Paul around to all his events. I don’t see old farmers flooding social media outlets with artificially high support for this guy or taking over CPAC in an attempt to bastardize the event.
I would be curious to chat with these agricultural men you cite. I would like to know:
1) If they thought Abe Lincoln was a tyrant using the Civil War as an excuse to dismantle the Constitution?
2) If they thought 911 was an inside job?
3) If they felt Israel and our support of them was the root of all our foreign policy problems?
4) Iran having a nuke was a good thing because they just want to be relevant to other large powers?
5) If they thought Ronald Reagan was a failure as a President and wanted to be fully “Disassociated” from him?
6) If they thought Heroin should be legalized?
Just curious what their answers would be.
IIRC, he won with pluralities in 3-way races.
It will be a great day when all States and the Federal Government finish making this a “right to work” country.
Once the slimy parasite union thugs can no longer force decent hardworking Americans to join their socialist organizations, America will be a much better place.
The lifeblood of the socialistic democrat party, unions must become a thing of the past. My goal and all freedom loving American’s goal is to not rest until that happens.
We are making great strides with newly elected Republican leaders in NJ,WI,OH and other states. Soon we will be victorious!
Unions and Associations are sometimes a necessary evil. I was an aircraft mechanic for a major airline for 20 years, certifying the airworthiness of mainline jets for a pay of about 75k per year. Auto mechanics working at the dealers make more.
Until you live the life of working for ‘Corporate Tyrants’ with their ‘Greedy Fat Cats’ who rake in the profits on the backs of the ‘working man’ I suggest do some more research.
Just as the far left socialist ideology is extreme, the far right anti-union is also.
History has proven that without collective bargaining, the middle class and its standard of living would never have been so great.
This has all changed now because of greed, both from the corporations and unions. Greed and selfishness is what brought down capitalism.
Remember… someone is ALWAYS willing to work for less.
Passion defeated organization when it came to the straw poll. Pawlenty would probably be a very good president. Voters are no longer looking so much for a competent leader as they are a venue and a candidate to help them vent disgust with the current political climate.
You are right. still don’t know how he did it. (other than he was running aginst lib, and lib lite)
What the elder bunch have done, though, is studied the Constitution before many of the latter-day invented-on-the-bench "rights" appeared between the lines the Founders wrote there.
What they don't see is why a soverign state cannot declare the same right to associate or not with other soverign States--especially when the representation of the State as an entity was effectively removed by the 17th Amendment.
They take a dim view of folks who live in the land of the great sidewalk handing down edicts with the full force of law and backing if need be of the United States Military or other armed Federal Forces, of which there are many in increasing number--from thousands of miles away, when at best these selfsame people have seen their state from 27,000 ft. as they flew over, and have never, even in their wildest imaginings, experienced thirty below weather.
They thought 9/11 was a tragedy, and that the government screwed up by letting its intelligence agencies be corralled and not interacting. That was Clinton, not Bush, despite when the attack happened. They were pissed off about it, but wonder why we've spent ten years with their neighbors sons (or most of them) coming home, some in a box, from fighting for people who will go back to their old brutal ways when we leave.
Now, maybe it'll work that way, maybe not, but they wonder.
And yes, they'll buy those young men a beer proudly down at the Legoin Club or the VFW, because they've been there, too, just in a different place and time.
The root of our foreign policy problems is much the same as a guy on payday flashing a roll of money in a bar. He'll have lots of friends until the money runs out.
We've been setting the drinks up for the world, and our bar tab is due. We'll see how many friends we have when the last shot is poured.
Old farmers believe in a fair fight, and figure the rest of the world does, too. Until Iran puts a nuke on the end of a missile or tests a warhead, they can claim it was all "for peaceful purposes". If they have a weapon, they aren't unarmed, and we're free to draw down on them. If you don't get that, I can't help you.
Ronald Reagan did well with the economy, but a service economy can only go so far. As one fellow put it, you can't all make a living scrubbing each other's toilets.
Creating wealth is the key, taking raw materials and making finished products.
As much as I admire Reagan, the border remains open.
Do they think Heroin should be legalized?
Did their wife get morphine in her IV when she went in for the angiogram?
Where in the Constitution is the Federal Government empowered to regulate what anyone willingly puts in their own body?
If you are talking about old farmers, you'll be hard put to find a more independant lot. They've survived, even thrived by their own ingenuity and the sweat of their brow. They willingly put in 18 hour days, year round, because that is what they do. They feed a goodly portion of the world, and they don't need the nanny state, Federal Regulators, or other BS to do it. They believe the government which governs best governs least.
In that sense, they are libertarian leaning, what in Jefferson's day would have been a Liberal, althought the meaning of that has been since corrupted.
Now, if you put that snapshot together, you might see why they would support someone who would call for sweeping reductions in the scope and size of Government. --And don't ask them to show up at the rally, it's planting/harvest season--the work never ends, and you make hay when the sun shines.
But they will take a night off and go vote. After all, it's their duty.
Obvious now. If he had any stones he'd have stayed in.
If he'd really wanted it, he'd have kept plugging away.
Don't know about the article. Not sure the writer does either.
Well, the unions took care of the greedy tyrants in the auto business all right. Nearly flushed the entire industry down the tubes. Now the government is in partnership with the propped up remnants and together they’re pushing the unwanted green dream machine. Won’t be long until the airliners follow suit. The “non-greedy” unions drive wages up until it’s nearly impossible to do business. Free markets work best!
I lived in Detroit once. It’s not hard to see what the socialist’s ideology has done to that once great city. I also lived in Minnesota where Pawlenty was governor.
Was also once a member of the IAM union (AFL-CIO) at NWA until we kicked them out and replaced it with AMFA, a mechanics only association, (no afl-cio, no corrupt leadership, no baggage handlers).
I believe a companies labor force is its most valuable asset yet know first hand the hardship of being locked out after 20 years of dedicated service. I walked a strike line and witnessed the destruction of friend’s families, the suicides, etc.
I’ve lived it … http://www.kclabor.org/strike_at_northwest_airlines.htm
The race to the bottom is NOT a good thing, at any cost.
Companies require their employees to be motivated, dedicated and honest.
After years of faithful service to their employer, the worker does feel a certain bond to the company and has a vested interest in its success. They earned the right to call it ‘their job’. Why shouldn’t the same standards of respect apply to the company?
Greed from BOTH the corporations and unions have destroyed all this.
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