Free Republic

Actually, if you look at Assange as being a Russian agent/provocateur all along, suddenly a lot of things start making sense.

If you want to know what “crony capitalism” looks like, look no further than SOPA and PIPA.

At some point, we’re all going to have to suck it up and get behind somebody that—no matter who it is—a bunch of us aren’t going to particularly like. Certainly most of us will wind up with a candidate who wasn’t our first choice.

Welcome to politics, I guess.

But the road back will be a marathon, not a sprint. Today’s (primary) enemy will be tomorrow’s (general election) ally—or our best hope, anyway to at least try to turn back the Obama-led leftist flood.

If it was about the person, you weren’t in it for the right reasons.

For me, it’s about what the person was, and continues to stand for.

The fight goes on.

It’s never been about Palin. It’s always been about freedom.

I think you generally overestimate how economically sophisticated many Americans are, and underestimate how completely lied-to, misinformed, and kept ignorant many Americans have been.

Yes, the information is out there. No, it isn’t that easy for a lot of Americans to come by. It certainly isn’t pushed into your face every day by the media and the culture kings the way the other side is.

I don’t know what your background is, but I a) grew up in pretty-conservative South Dakota and b) had sisters who read Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein among others, so I was exposed early and often to an alternate narrative. Lots of Americans aren’t that lucky, unfortunately.

Most Americans don’t read FR, Instapundit, Tyler Cowen, Arnold Kling, Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, any newspaper, or really any information outlet anywhere where they’re exposed to basic economic concepts. They get their news from Jon Stewart and ESPN, for heaven’s sake! They have absolutely no idea where wealth comes from. That’s the fundamental problem.

A lot of people really do think wealth comes from the government. Go ask them.

A lot of people really do think that the rich people are rich because they’re taking all the money from the government that’s supposed to go to the people. (This is, in a wildly distorted, funhouse-mirror sort of way, kinda, sorta true, for a certain class of rich person.)

A lot of people really do think that they’re poor because their government isn’t giving them what it owes them. A LOT of people think that.

The linkage between “working harder” and “getting ahead” has, for a lot of people, been almost completely severed by government welfare programs on the one hand, and oppressive government laws and regulations on the other.

That’s the problem we’re facing.

Yelling at these people, making fun of them, and calling them names won’t fix the problem.

(And yes, there are those who are simply lazy “takers” who are simply parasites on the rest of us. They are why we have prisons.)

The really weird thing is—I bet you—if you read Palin’s Indianola, Iowa speech to them without letting them know who it was from, they’d stand around going “yeah, man!” “right on!” “too right!” “damn straight!” or whatever the hell the young’uns say nowadays.

They’re well-meaning, ignorant dupes, mostly. They have a sense that things are really screwed up (wasn’t Hope and Change supposed to give everybody a Unicorn?), but they have never been told the truth about who were the people who actually screwed it up. They’ve been victimized and abused by our educational system—intellectually raped, in fact. They’ve been lied to continuously and repeatedly by people—their teachers, the media—who they’ve been told that they can trust to tell them the truth.

I feel deeply sorry for them, actually.

We have let them down. We, and those who came before us, have failed them, by letting the cancer of “progressivism” spread until it is about to consume this entire country.

We have a LOT of work in front of us, friends . . .

“A pack, not a herd.”

The thing about a pack is that at some point, somebody needs to emerge to challenge the alpha leaders and, if they’re able, overthrow them.

The “progressive” alpha pack leaders (both D’s and R’s) who’ve led the pack into disaster and despair are looking pretty long in the tooth, aren’t they?

Not that they won’t go down without a fight, of course.

I forgot to add “tax code simplification” to my laundry list of How To Fix Everything . . .

A real government budget cut passed through Congress and signed—especially if it included Obamacare repeal, all-of-the-above energy policy, and significant regulatory relief—would quickly ignite a business boom the likes of which the world has seldom seen in its history.

The “progressives,” plutocrats, and Beltway mandarins of both parties will do everything they can think of to try to stop that from happening. That tells you everything you need to know about their REAL priorities. They don’t give a damn about the people. The only thing they care about is power.

I could see a scenario, if Palin gets in, where she, Cain, and Romney finish in the top three going into the convention, and Palin and Cain cut a deal to combine their delegates.

I’m really not picky about which one would be on the top of the ticket in that scenario. My personal preference would be Palin/Cain, but I’d be OK with two terms of Cain/Palin followed by two terms of Palin/Ryan.

A guy can dream, yes?

I want Palin to run as much as anybody but . . . does this guy have any kind of track record for veracity, or is he just blowing smoke?

Throwing another tea leaf into the cup for people to argue about:

The palintv.com site has a splash page up saying “Site undergoing major overhaul—We will be back by end of October—Sorry for the inconvenience”

It obviously means she’s running/not running/has a plan/is just in it for the money/whatever, whatever/lather, rinse, repeat. . .

We now return you to your regularly scheduled tedious internecine sniping . . .

So, what Todd is saying is that Sarah isn’t a barracuda or a mama grizzly, she’s a honey badger.

I’m OK with that.

Suggested Republican response:

OK, we’ll discuss tax hikes as soon as you agree in writing to eliminate the Department of Education and use the department’s funding for deficit reduction—except that portion for grants and scholarships which we’ll return to the states as block grants.

If Democrats are actually starting to talk about eliminating an agency of ATF’s visibility, you know that there’s blood in the water . . .

This thing goes all the way to the top, I’d wager.

All the way to the very, very top.

I'd never say "never" but . . . this seems even more far-fetched than Palin running as an independent.

It's really, really, REALLY fun to contemplate as a thought experiment, though . . . the sheer number of exploded heads in both the Democrat and Republican Parties alone . . . hooo baby . . .

Or would that be "uncivil?"

I think you'd be surprised . . .

I don't care what your favorite candidate is. That's USDA Grade A Choice ironic humor there . . .