Moderate John McCain didn’t do so well in last year’s election, but RINOs never seem to let the facts get in the way when making their case for a more liberal Republican Party:

The Republican strategist who helped Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman prepare for a possible presidential run says the Republican party is in for a devastating defeat if its guiding lights are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.  “If it’s 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we’re headed for a blowout,” says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. “That’s just the truth.”

This “truth” seems laughable.  The 2012 election is going to be a referendum on President Obama.  Will health care suck then?  Will debt and taxes be spiraling out of control?  Will unemployment be high?  Will terrorism be resurgent?  Those are the questions people are going to be asking themselves as they consider giving Obama another 4 years at the helm.  Not whether Rush or Sarah Palin are playing prominent roles in the party.

Sorry to break it to you RINOs, but the sun doesn’t revolve around you.

I stopped contributing to the Republican Party in 2006.  Subsidizing President Bush’s steady march toward big government socialism, while admittedly slower than his Democratic counterparts, just got to be too much.  I had high hopes for a rejuvinated party with the newly formed National Council for a New America, but it didn’t take them long to quash that idea:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that it’s time for the Republican Party to give up its “nostalgia” for the heyday of the Reagan era and look forward, even if it means stealing the winning strategy deployed by Democrats in the 2008 election.

If the party hadn’t abandoned Reagan, don’t you have the feeling they’d be in a much better position today?  The more I read about the NCNA, the clearer it is that they don’t understand the problem:

“You can’t beat something with nothing, and the other side has something. I don’t like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that,” Mr. Bush said.

Is he serious?  Barack Obama was a blank slate designed to be anything a voter wanted to project upon him.  His campaign messages, “Change you can believe in” and “Yes, we can”, were completely devoid of meaning.  The few times he actually did get somewhat specific, like a middle class tax cut, were conservative ideas that the complicit media never questioned.  Next up for the NCNA?  How we need amnesty, taxes aren’t so bad, and why don’t we give abortion a chance. 

There was a time when conservatives tried to attract people with conservative ideals.  Remember those Reagan Democrats?  Now we have the big tent theory where we surrender conservative ideals in the vain attempt to draw liberals into the fold.This effort was doomed before it started.

McCain’s former campaign manager Steve Schmidt says what the GOP needs is to embrace gay marriage, move away from religion, and be more leftist.  But in case Mr. Schmidt didn’t notice, he just ran a center left campaign and lost.  Remember how you and your boss thought the independents and centrist Democrats were going to flock to the Maverick?  Remember how fair the press was to you, Center Left Coalition Dude?  Remember how you had to bring a real conservative in to energize your moribund campaign?  Have you given any thought to how your fund raising and rallies picked up steam once the conservative joined?  Remember how Barack Obama, a guy who only showed up for photo ops on illegal immgiration, wiped the floor with your candidate with Hispanics after McCain risked everything for them?

Republicans didn’t lose the election because of some new found left-wing coalition.  They lost because they gave up on conservative principles.  If we listen to the David Brooks and Megan McCains of the world, there’s no hope for the GOP.  You’re not going to out left the left.  You tried, and it failed miserably.  Now is the time to stand on conservative principles, not swing farther left.

What is it with Obama?

His disgraceful DHS report brands Americans that disagree with him as extremists and names returning war vets specifically. Secretary Napolitano cobbled this together, put it out; it’s here in Vermont with the State Police and the Sheriffs Depts. Here’s the .pdf of the report.

Here’s the letter the Commander of the American Legion wrote to Secretary Napolitano.

I’m doing my damnedest to get on that list; anyone with any sand will too. Who in hell are these fascists to publish such a manifest.

Unless they have ideas of scrapping the Constitution altogether, then it becomes akin to Hitler’s SS collecting the opposition for a train excursion.

What is materialism?  Since the early 20th century, materialism has meant, usually, the over-valuing, and habitual acquisition of things.  Forget the Marxist distortions of the word.  Materialism of this kind is behavior, not philosophy.  Members of any class can accuse members of any other class of lowbrow taste and selfishness by calling them materialists, and be a little more worthy themselves for having done it. 

The Christmas season can complicate these things, because it churns the easy condemnation of materialism to mud, with  economic demands to consume and to give.  To generate income for producers and sellers we must spend, as if the proper workings of a reward system depend upon some hazily immoral cost-benefit calculation. The correct purchase is a form of right conduct; it occupies more effort and thought than old ideas about sin, and gratitude to Nature or God, depending upon your viewpoint about either.  

To remind you of your blessings, you get all the media and church discussions you can endure on the subject of the unequal distribution of material wealth, so you don’t need to read it at NER.  I’m not one who believes that material comfort, or lack of it, are, either of them, necessary conditions for moral sufficiency, although G.B. Shaw (I think) was  generally right when he said that deprivation and hardship make people mean and cruel, not prosperity. 

Prosperity only makes us indifferent and insensible, and by “prosperity” I don’t mean wealth.  I mean having more than enough, particularly when the horizon of “enough” is glistening like a water-mirage down the road in the southern heat.  You move on but never reach it.  You can’t stop and pick up something meaningful along the road because your hands are full of junk.  And that’s the point.

However much we want to make materialism an issue of consumption and personal judgement, materialism is simply the philosophical position that human welfare, and human states of mind are reducible to some aspect of matter.   I think this is, vaguely, the central position of all the political ideas that descend from 19th century progressivism, even when they’re mixed with establishment or non-establishment religions.  But I don’t care about them.  There is so much missing in their worldview that asking them how materialism can help us transcend the material word itself, is impossible.   Conservatives used to be different.

What worries me is that popular conservatism is now the chief promoter of materialism as a transcendental pursuit;  in something called “excellence”, in the refining wisdom of markets - in the things you eat, own, wear, drive, observe, combust, feel, smell and even think, the best is the moral, where self-denial, moderation and thrift are exceptions.  When did this kind of lifestyle, rather than life, become a conservative virtue? Some of us can’t even admit to the social consequences of globalization; however irresistible it is.

We need to remember who we are, and where we went wrong.  Unless I’m “mis-remembering” things, the subprime calamity at hand started with the ownership society package of ideas of Jack Kemp and Margaret Thatcher.   Blame the Community Reinvestment Act, but the germinating idea was that people could be coerced to good and profitable citizenship by a material possession.  The whole idea is nonsense. 

John McCain and Barack Obama were all smiles in today’s bipartisan (AKA doing what liberals want) meeting, but is John McCain the leader of the Republican Party now?  I hope for its sake that’s not true.  McCain’s constituents, the mainstream media, jumped ship during the election.  John simply has nothing to offer a rebuilding party except failed “maverick” policies that provide top cover for disastrous liberal policies.  And let’s be honest, had McCain pulled the election out, it would only have masked divisions between conservatives and RHINOS.

Get smart Republicans and dump McCain.  Your path back is by opposing Democrats, not helping them wreck the country.

From the moment Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for POTUS, I assumed that he would win.   The Clinton machine was worn out, and there were social forces and irrefutable facts that no “conservative” candidate could overcome.  Everything was in place when it came time to vote.  Briefly….

First, demographics:  Immigration and generational changes have eclipsed the Euro-centered, Post WWII electorate.  The young don’t care about Bill Ayers or radicalism any more than my generation cared about Tokyo Rose and Henry Wallace; the world of the young today is so bizarre and free-wheeling that nothing as tame as Jeremiah Wright can stand out and get serious attention.   Immigrants - most of whom have come here from despotic or chaotic countries - are seeking advantage through political power, and Barack Obama poses no threat to their conception of liberty.  They also don’t give a damn about Ben Franklin or Paul Revere, if you get my point.

Second, The Welfare State, or the same thing by other names:  Has grown in every administration since 1936, with a lapse during WWII.  All administrations have supported and expanded Human Resources and Defense ”superfunctions”, until it accounts for almost 62% of federal outlays since 1940 (adjusted for inflation). Everyone gets a piece, including those who call themselves conservatives.  Arguments about The Welfare State are window-dressing, because no faction or party seriously argues about its existence, and none attempt to define its sufficient size.

Third, popular conservatism itself, today, is a side show.   Buckley’s generation-long efforts to make conservatism respectable expired along with his sincerity, good sense and originality.  His heirs - like the bore George Will,  have made the essential muscularity of conservatism into a watery, disgusting gruel fit only for bow-tie wearing drama queens.   George W. Bush’s incoherence and government by passive silence has earned the detestation of almost every political perspective, especially the paleoconservatives.  Compassionate conservatism appeared to be ritualistic soul-cleansing, where things not belonging to you could be freely given to others.  Watch Barack Obama on this issue, too.

On the radio side, conservatism is dished up in the same old tropes, accompanied by country music, audio cuts of Ronald Reagan’s speeches and Wright’s squeals, and endless hammering on the anvils of American Exceptionalism and Rugged Individualism.  Together, their conclusions about why conservatism is moribund, is that voters dismayed by Republican cowardice and cupidity, punished them by voting for liberal Democrats.  Brilliant.   With analysis like this, we can win the T-Shirt slogan contest and forget the battle of ideas.

Speaking of ideas, that was McCain’s fatal problem.  He didn’t have any; he had a maverick personality, a biography, and expected us to generate ideas from there.  Obama projected plainly liquid and uncertain ideas, and his persona expanded like a Macy’s Parade balloon while McCain turned into a homunculus. Why this happened is unclear, and material for another post.

Right now I’m damned angry.   We’re exchanging one set of fools and poltroons who are clueless about the rationale, modes and aspirations of conservatism, for another set who are clueless about life, human nature, and the dangers in the world at large.  Great.

(Pat’s post below about Christopher Buckley’s endorsement of Barack Obama is the source material for what follows…The truth about Buckley being “sacked” from National Review can be found here.) 

Long ago, P.G. Wodehouse set himself the task of satirizing the historical tail end of the British hereditary aristocracy.  He did it  in the Jeeves and Wooster series, and the Blandings Castle saga.  Wodehouse’s male characters, when not plainly sinister like the fascist Roderick Spode, were a certain type of affable, facile, rich and well-educated, obtuse dopes, like Bertie Wooster and Gussie Fink-Noddle.

Orwell complained that Wodehouse’s creations made the British upper-classes seem nicer than they actually were, which was true.  P.G.’s toffs would trip over a chalk-line in the grass, fumble every ball and get every issue wrong.  But they were rarely of the mean and brainless species which includes men like John Kerry and, now, a few chattering -class conservatives like The New York Times token “conservative” David Brooks, and the gadly Christopher Buckley.  Brookes recently opined that Sarah Palin is a “cancer on the Republican Party”,  ignoring the auto-immune diseases killing the Republican Party without the help of a malignancy.     

Both the fictional and actual groups populated by Wooster, Brooks and Buckley seem to be governed mainly by matters of class and style.  Convinced  that their social milieu and status are permanent, they’re stupidly complicit with, even bemused by, their mortal enemies, and deaf to the winds of change howling around them. 

The broad scorn for Sarah Palin destroys William Buckley’s long-ago remark about preferring government by the first 500 names in the Boston phone directory rather than the faculty of Harvard.  Buckley retailed the progressive infatuation with The Common Man, but this was probably just an ideological festoon .  W.F. Buckley didn’t believe it, and neither does his son, Christopher.  

Wodehouse’s male characters gathered at The Drone’s Club, to hammer themselves silly with champagne and to rough-house in games of cricket played with wheat buns in panelled halls. Imagine a version of this ritual  with David Brooks pitching canapes to Christopher Buckley, and you get the picture.      

Buckley derides McCain for being “inauthentic”.  The masthead photo we see of Buckley, authentically fitted out for the chilly wilderness of Greenwich, in his fedora and dark coat, nibbling the stem of his tortoise-shell frame spectacles is of a man who prides authenticity?  His smug, leering self-satisfaction  is that of a man who’s just taken down two grouse with one shot of his new Purdy shotgun.  He has the authenticity of Ronald McDonald. 

He tells us he’s supporting Obama because Obama is Ivy League (ignore his caveats), and because Obama has a “first-class temperment”.  This is the quality that Wodehouse’s Roderick Spode would have called “breeding”; the standard by which clowns like Christopher Buckley would also judge horses, dogs and “gentlemen”. 

Scrape off the suede and gilt crust of Christopher Buckley’s political socialization and you don’t find Everyman, you find a buffoon wallowing in the cash and cachet of his forebears.  Note to Chris:  After 2500 years of counter-factual evidence, we’ve ditched the idea of a Philosopher King.    Especially of the Obama kind.

The latest meme being pushed by the media elite is that Republicans are angry and that this is somehow unheard of in presidential campaigns.

There were shouts of “Nobama” and “Socialist” at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

[snip]

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of “Country First” but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation’s economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

I’m shocked, absolutely shocked!

Who would have thought that McCain/Palin supporters think Obama is a socialist and that the biased mainstream media is for all intents and purposes the enemy.

Isn’t it funny how you never see media reports about all the moonbats comparing Bush to Hitler or spouting their insane September 11th conspiracies. Since the media ignores them, I’ll just repost one picture from a protest during the 2004 election.

I’ll take our angry republicans over their moonbats any day.

Right Wing Nut House has more here, including this:

I can’t tell you how much contempt I have for the Post and other media outlets who have been pushing this meme – that it is somehow dangerous, or racist, or indicative of something horribly ugly in the mindset of GOP supporters to show strong emotion at the mention of Obama. Not when similiar outbursts happen at Democratic rallies. Not when Democratic party partisans on the internet and elsewhere have whipped up a frenzy of hate against John McCain.

Has there ever been someone who screamed out about McCain “Kill him!” at an Obama rally? We don’t know because the idea that the press would report what one, lone, idiot shouts out at a rally of thousands is ludicrous – except if it is a McCain rally and then it becomes front page news.

Update: Stephen Hayes finds “unhinged democrats”. At least that is how the media would describe them if they were republicans.

This is the mess you get when the balance isn’t. It isn’t Donks and Republicants.It is Liberals and RINO’s voting to spend like drunks on social programs with no accountability; robbing one program to pay for another.

Now that Congress put the taxpayer out to dry, from where comes the money to pay for Medicare which is in the hole now. Social Security which is teetering on the edge and the prescription drug plan, you remember the one EVERYBODY clamored for, is in the red zone from the start.
Liberals and RINO’s, tell me your plan to pay the interest on T-Bills held by other countries? What are you going to do if they wish to cash in to ease their problems?
Now to the banking mess.

The fiasco we face does have a beginning and a time line of a perceptibly short duration.
We only look back to 1988, to a Democrat controlled congress. There is some Republican complicity too, in the FED by Greenspan and in Treasury. We need some names at which to point fingers; here is an ample supply. For the chimpy Loveable Liberal ALL are annotated to save you calling out bias, racist or liar. Makes the info easy for you, links to the WaPo, which as we know, is NOT biased.
Here’s the progression.

In 1990, the Fed, under former J.P. Morgan director Alan Greenspan, permitted guess who–J.P. Morgan–to become the first bank allowed to underwrite securities. [snip]
Four legislative attempts were made to weaken or repeal parts of Glass-Steagall from 1988-1996. One reason they failed is because smaller banks feared that opening the doors to allow banks to trade in securities would lead to the domination of larger banks–a fate that has come to pass.
The biggest change came in 1996 when Alan Greenspan issued a ruling allowing bank investment affiliates to have up to a quarter of their business in investments. [snip]

In 1986 a young man named Sanford Weill grew bored with Wall Street and purchased one of these subprime lenders, Commercial Credit, a loan company based in Baltimore. In his paper “Banking on Misery Citigroup, Wall Street, and the Fleecing of the South,” Michael Hudson notes Weill drove employees to sell more. [snip]
This kind of practice resulted in multiple lawsuits that surfaced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hudson cites one example:

Jackson, Miss., attorney Chris Coffer says, he obtained confidential settlements for about 800 clients with claims against Commercial Credit or its successor, CitiFinancial.

Starting with Commercial, Weill began wheeling and dealing until a little over a decade later he would head the largest financial institution in the world.

The Repeal of Glass Steagall

In the background of the go-go economy, the feeling grew among some economists and the financial community that Glass-Steagall hampered America’s financial competitiveness. Among the many voices favoring this was Alan Greenspan along with former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. In a 1995 speech and testimony to Congress Rubin signaled the Clinton Administration was ready to repeal Glass-Steagall:

“The banking industry is fundamentally different…[]…domestically, the separation of investment banking and commercial banking envisioned by Glass-Steagall has eroded significantly.”

Anyone who thinks the repeal of Glass-Steagall was forced on an unwilling Bill Clinton need only read Rubin’s testimony. A year later Sandy Weill set in motion the forces that would finally end Glass-Steagall. [snip]

Of course a NY Times photo of the event is with Clinton smiling is worth how many words?

Weill proposed the most audacious financial merger of in American history: he would merge one of the largest insurance companies (Travelers), one of the largest investment banks (Salomon Smith Barney), and the largest commercial banks (Citibank) in America. The problem was the merger was illegal in terms of Glass-Steagall. Independent Community Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther captured the audacity of the deal in an interview with Frontline:

Here you have the leadership — Sandy Weill of Travelers and John Reed of Citicorp — saying, “Look, the Congress isn’t moving fast enough. Let’s do it on our own. …[]… And they pulled this off with the blessings of the president of the United States, President Clinton; the chairman of the Federal Reserve system, Alan Greenspan; and the secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin.
And then, when it’s all over, what happens? The secretary of the treasury becomes the vice chairman of the emerging Citigroup.

Talk about a sinecure.
Then we have this marvelous statement from the bozo Rubin;

Curiously, one of those converts is none other than Robert Rubin who has stated:

If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

Since it was Rubin who played a major role in the deregulation this statement is nothing short of incredulous.
As the record shows, Rubin had a great deal to regret. [snip]

(The link in the quote goes to Paul Krugman who has an antenna full of pigeons)
Before you say it, yes, Gramm was the Chairman of McCain’s committee since tossed off the campaign.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Phil Gramm, House Banking Committee chair James Leach, and Virginia Representative Thomas Bliley introduced bills in the Senate and House under the benign-sounding name of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, becoming the key sponsors of the bill as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act,
The Senate voted on this and it passed. Biden voted for the repeal, McCain didn’t vote. 90-8 was the roll call in favor.
Finishing up, here are some questions I’d like answered.
Obama has already stated he would not reinstate Glass-Steagall. When asked Barack Obama notes:
Well, no. The argument is not to go back to the regulatory framework of the 1930’s because, as I said, the financial markets have changed substantially.
Also, four of Obama’s top six contributors include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and–guess who–Citigroup. Another biggie, Fannie Mae fat cat Franklin Raines chatting up the Obamoe although the Obamoe lies about it. (Get it here in the WaPo)

This mess is getting tougher, not easier and still may crush the economy. While we wait, perhaps Hillary might tell us what she thinks of the repeal of Glass-Steagall; Would she roll back the repeal? It is a toss up between Monica and this for the greater ignominy.

“All I know is that I am not a Marxist” - Karl Marx 

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” - Groucho Marx

Conservative radio pundits and some of their callers, along with a few bloggers, have described Barack Obama as a “Marxist. ”  If  by “Marxist” they mean that Obama’s politics are a brew of socialism, authoritarianism and radical egalitarianism, they’re right.  But I see no evidence that Obama believes in violent overthrow of our capitalist system, or in any of the real complexities Marxism aims at the stupid, the envious, the unbalanced, the power-mad and the credulous. 

True, the Black Liberation Theology of Trinity United is infested with Marxist class dynamics and socialism; it offers up some Marxian and Neo-Marxist musings on the subject of consciousness, hermeneutics, violence as means, and an entire honey bucket load of dialectical excreta.   But I doubt that Obama is a BLT believer; its spurious but powerful demands for charity and sanctioned humility compete with his personal vanity, his insight, and his desire for the good life.  We will not see Barack Obama in any real egalitarian arrangement.

As for Marxist orthodoxy, it’s difficult today to find any political philosophy, Left or Right, which doesn’t incorporate some of the prejudices, social values and processes which shaped the pseudo social-science built by Karl Marx.  Some hard, utilitarian market-love adored by conservatives is, in ways, Hegelian/Marxist.  It’s impossible to define or isolate Marxist “thinking” as the sole property of Marx.   

That’s because so little that Marx wrote about, or formulated, was actually original or creative; it consisted of pages of intellectual theft, and the elaboration of ideas and concepts broadcast by his predecessors, collaborators and contemporary superiors, among whom the primary concerns were human liberty and dignity.  The elements of “Marxism” were everywhere before Karl Marx grew his first beard.     

His ideas floated atop an age of rationalism, where eventually Darwin and Freud would add their own gears and wheels to the “scientific” study of mankind.  That Marx’s clockwork absurdities, his  observations and predictions have survived at all into our age of deconstruction is puzzling.  A lot of it is simply obvious and mundane, while its emotive theorizing and puffery continue an egalitarian road blazed by Rousseau, and the communard, utopian silliness of thinkers as far back as Plato.  

The reason I doubt that Obama is a Marxist is that Marxism has fallen on hard times and Obama is no consumer of the second-rate.  Marxism appears in a few places, like shiny scales dropping from a rotting fish - leftist riffraff, for example, who gorge on the lard of weirdo capitalism, then show up to protest in mass-marketed fancy-dress, and assert their devotion to a dead, 19th century socialist failure and crank. Laughable.  

You can also find Neo-Marxism in that intellectual burger joint, Critical Theory,  where brainy work is found for otherwise unemployable socialist academics. Critical Theorists question everything, including Marxism, except the dialectical process which makes Marxism possible.   Hello? Why?  Because without it, Critical Theory would be 100% charlatanry rather than just 99%. 

No, Obama is worse than a Marxist.  He’s a modern “progressive”,  a clever, wildly ambitious believer in the ever-progressing good society.  He believes that group life is a process, and that he’s going to have something to DO with it!  In his world, nothing can be left alone to develop, mature or even regress on its own.  He’s interested in YOU, and that should scare the hell out of you.    

Palin’s hubby and son not Republicans

Democrats may be blasting Sarah Palin as a doctrinaire conservative, and Republicans may be embracing her for the same reason, but her husband and oldest son are independents.

Or more precisely, their party affiliation is listed as ”undeclared” on voter registration records reteieved from the Alaska Division of Elections. [snip]

Leave it to the media to ask the wrong question, probably on purpose. Donk or GOP really have no meaning anymore. The question is, “Are they Conservatives or Liberals?” “Guess!”
Registering undeclared means you don’t get batches of garbage mail and solicitations for funds.

Here’s a photo of Palin welcoming PETA to Alaska.

Gotta love it!

The Middlebury Institute has promoted Vermont secession. Nothing they have provided shows a grasp of the intricacies faced in this process even if it passed.
Today, Vermont is a cassava root ahead of being a Third World Nation; if not for the earmarks dragged in by Sen. Leahy, it would be one.

These numbers below are probably close, given the level of education in this country.

Secession, Ignorance, and Stupidity:

A recent Zogby/Middlebury Institute poll shows that 22% of Americans believe that “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.” Belief in states’ and regions right to secede was especially common among blacks (40%), Hispanics (43%) and people aged 18-24 (40%). Interestingly, Political liberals (32%) were more likely to believe in a right to secession than conservatives (17%). 18% of respondents say they would support a secession movement in their own state, including 24% of southerners.

Constitutional law professor Ann Althouse claims that these poll results show that “all these people [who believe in a right to secession] have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War.” She concludes that the pro-secession survey respondents are “fascinatingly stupid.” [snip]

I certainly agree with Ann that much of the public is shockingly ignorant about American history and constitutional law. This is one aspect of the more general widespread political ignorance that I have often written about on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. here and here). At the same time, I don’t think that ignorance is necessarily a sign of stupidity. [snip]

I agree with Althouse, fascinatingly stupid is a mild term however. I think the largest majority of them are clueless to what will be in order.
Unlike Althouse, I would encourage them to secede while they still know everything. And once out they cannot return. Citizenship is revoked.

First lets look at the demographics and their political suasion (this is important): from above

• Blacks–40%
• Hispanics–43%
• 18 to 24–40%
• Political liberals–32%
• Conservatives–17%

There are two groups, which I suspect fit in the prior numbers but listed separately:

• Own state respondents–18%
• Southerners–24%

The odds are good that each group has their own ideas as to how and where to form their country. This may cause some discombobulation in some areas for an unknown duration. For the sake of this discussion, all is amicable; selection and agreement is with minimal delay. People leave who wish to and others arrive all done equitably.

Government

With your own country, you need to form a government and some form of document of guidance. This will be by ballot or bullet. Given the liberal’s past history and for that matter most of the world, I’ll let you guess which method forms the ruling body.

Monetary system

Every country needs to have a means of settling internal debts, trade on the world markets and negotiate as something other than a third world nation. Or did these secessionists think they would use Sam’s money? It doesn’t work that way; you are a sovereign nation, act as one. All we have to do is change the color of the currency, declare the old valueless and issue the new in our banks. Don’t be stupid and think the Government hasn’t all ready printed the necessary notes. Those from the military remember MPC’s being changed to shut down black markets overnight.

Infrastructure

Roadways, airports, hospitals and rail lines are in place. All the new country needs is to equip and staff the existing structures and maintain them. Who says the professionals doing this work now are going to stay there. How will they be paid, housed, fed?
Forget keeping the National Guard equipment, guardsmen stay if they wish, but they are no longer paid nor receive any federal benefits if they do. Why should they, now they are foreign troops.

Business and Industry

Whether you have any industry and business depends on the tax structure. The tax structure depends on the country’s monetary system. If you cannot pay the employees in something other than rubles, your industry moves. No industry, what do you trade for things you need?

Basic services

Most of the listed above believe they will get the same basic services they get now: socialized medicine, welfare, WIC, food stamps, public schools Section 8 housing, police, fire and emergency response and working telephones. Yeah, think about that, working phones,

I encourage the above groups to opt for nationhood; pure emotion drives it and it drives it right into the Swamp of Stupidity.

If this should happen, we need to know who occupies what areas. All borders with new nations are fortified like the Korean 38^th parallel until and if treaties are negotiated.

(Political liberals)
New England–The Democratic Republic of Gated Communities (Might contain NYC, Long Island and NJ)
Who will mow the lawns and plow the snow, I haven’t an idea. After seeing what happened in South Africa, nobody but the swells will live there. That is all ready graven in liberal stone.

(18 to 24)

Southern CA—High Kingdom of Surf
Dude, like it will be soooo tomorrow and full of tatts.
It will be until we shut off the water for non-payment and shut off the power so they can conserve to their heart’s content.

(Hispanics)
Florida—Sovereign State of Sunny Sombrero
They can mow lawns, pick oranges and smuggle illegals to surfeit.

(Blacks)
Louisiana—Chocklit Empire
With Chief Nagin as the Wonka Man and Jesse “Fillin’ Man” Jackson as Minister of Appointees with Al ‘Mouth’ Sharpton as Minister of Graffiti, a government with portfolio is formed. This former state, having been run by liberals and Donks for years won’t know the difference except there won’t be any money.

(Conservatives)
I haven’t a clue who these individuals are. Guessing says Bible people so
Del Rio, Texas.
If that is wrong, then the panhandle of Idaho. They’ll all fit and you’ll never see them again.

John McCain spent most of his career bashing conservatives, cultivating media “friendships”, and celebrating his maverick image.  Therefore, the NY Times rejection of his Op Ed because it’s not “Obamaish” is just laced with bitter irony.  However, I’d be curious to know how many rewrites Obama did on his piece before it was accepted.  Truth be told, and as clearly implied by the Times response that Obama’s piece just “worked” for them, they treat every utterance by Obama like he’s giving the Sermon on the Mount.

When it’s all said and done, I wonder if the wedge McCain drove between himself and the base for media approbation will pay off?  I’m skeptical that he’ll get more independents and liberals than the conservatives he turned off with his “maverick” ways.

Republicans have traded the “compassionate conservative” for the “populist capitalist”:

“John McCain is a populist. He believes in free markets; he believes in limited government and having the free enterprise system produce the jobs and the prosperity that he seeks, but he does think, as did Teddy Roosevelt, that you do need government there with some oversight and some regulation to avoid excess.”

It’s an odd message for a man whose base doesn’t trust him.  If McCain thinks he can win by trying to attract disaffected Clinton voters while driving conservatives away, he’s got another thing coming.  Those people are going to vote for the liberal, not the quasi-liberal.