Tag: Sarah Palin

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media and media people political challengers

The Big Christie Problem

The demands of media are not the demands of the American people. Everyone knows this. 

Basically, journalists favor big, juicy stories. They like colorful characters and charisma. And they like puffing up some — inflating reputations as if they were balloons waiting for hot air — only to puncture them later on.

That’s what’s behind the continual discussion of Sarah Palin, the non-candidate.

She’s a media person herself. She’s the media’s No. 1 non-candidate.

The media’s No. 2 non-​candidate? Gov. Chris Christie.

I’m a big fan of Christie, and I had positive things to say about Sarah Palin, very early in the last election cycle. But the attention given to these two, during the current campaign, has been mostly objectionable. It shows more what’s wrong with media folks than with the current slate of Republican presidential candidates. 

Christie’s pluses — a no-​nonsense limited government perspective from a successful state executive — are shared by at least one other candidate, former governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson … who has been barred from most debates and virtually ignored by the media.

So why the fixation on Christie?

He makes for good story. He’s big. He fills the screen. And he’s more glib and polished than Johnson, or Paul or Bachmann or Perry.

In a perfect world, journalists would leave candidate selection to the parties and the people.

This is not a perfect world. 

This, too, is not breaking news. But then, this is not reportage, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Hitler, Ha-​Ha

Monday night on E! network’s late-​night chat show, Chelsea Lately, British comedian Eddie Izzard got laughs with partisan hyperbole:

  1. Izzard identified the Tea Party as “extreme right wing”;
  2. He said, oh-​so-​amusingly, that Sarah Palin and Tea Party folks want to take things back to “1773 when slavery was legal”;
  3. He thanked America for helping Britain out when “we had a problem, in the Second World War, with extreme right-​wingers in Europe”;
  4. He identified the Democrats with the people who’ve pushed progress and “caring about other people” since the beginning of civilization.

He went on. But you get the idea, you see how partisans treat their opponents — in this example, somebody vaguely on the left attacking Tea Party folks as right-​wingers of Hitlerian proportions.

Now, Izzard is a funny guy, and not just because of his funny name. But politics is allegedly serious, and you’d think he would know that Hitler was not a right-​winger. Hitler was a “national socialist” whose policies don’t resemble Tea Party policies at all. He knows that the number of American activists who look back before 1776 and think fondly of slavery is pretty close to zero. 

He may not know, however, that “caring” as such, without follow-​through and principles and a rule of law — and balanced budgets, just to avoid mass insolvency — does the opposite of good.

Except in short-​run politics. And on Chelsea Lately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture incumbents political challengers

Establishment Out

Another one bites the dust: Nine-​term Congressman Mike Castle was defeated in Delaware’s primary by Tea Party-​backed candidate Christine O’Donnell.

Weeks ago, incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski was bested in the Republican primary by Joe Miller, also Tea Party-​supported. Before that Utah Senator Robert Bennett lost his re-​nomination bid.

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, who has actively assisted the insurgent Republicans, clarifies: “The GOP establishment is out.”

Media folks love talking about the angry mood throughout the land. The bad economic times have made people upset, they say — the supposition being that this rage is irrational, aimed indiscriminately at those in government, no matter how well they may have performed.

But the mainstream media hypothesis is wrong on both counts. First, the anger at career politicians isn’t new. Four years ago, long before the recession, Alaska GOP voters tossed out their incumbent governor, one Frank Murkowski, in favor of Sarah Palin. Voters have long disapproved of the way career politicians have wrecked our country. At some point, “enough” has morphed to “too much,” hence the current large-​scale revolt.

Further, voters are clearly discriminating, not taking their ire out on all incumbents, just those they feel have not represented their interests.

That’s why we have elections: to hold elected officials accountable.

We ought not bemoan that citizens are boiling mad, but that it takes so much bad behavior by politicians to raise this righteous fury.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders political challengers too much government

Tea Party Talking Points

Amy Kremer, director of the Tea Party Express, one of the many organizations that try to steer the Tea Party movement, appeared on The View, recently. She stayed on point, talking sense, on the whole:

  • The movement is all about fiscal issues, limited government, responsibility, and free markets. No social issues, she said. 
  • “We have no leader, the leaders are all across the country.” Sarah Palin is not the Tea Party’s leader.
  • The Tea Party is non-​partisan, crossing “all party lines,” with independents, Democrats, Republicans and libertarians participating.
  • Tea Party folk are most angry at the GOP because “there’s no denying that the spending started under Bush.” 

Ms. Kremer ably steered the conversation away from the traps that The View folk might have liked to see her fall into. Co-​host Joy Behar appeared quite pleased that Kremer acknowledged Bush-​era Republicans as responsible for starting this current trend in over-spending. 

So, good talking points. Other Tea Party folks should emulate her. I say this in part to reiterate points I made on Townhall not long ago. To seriously tackle our massive fiscal problems, the Tea Party will have to confront spending across the board, including a Sarah Palin/​John McCain-​style foreign policy.

How is it that people from across the political spectrum can work together in this movement?

It’s simple: No one but a fool would flirt with government insolvency and ruin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

If This Be …

Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors and contributor to Time magazine, is very defensive about criticism of the current administration and Congress. 

Of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, he says the two talk “borderline sedition.” 

Nice hedge, that word “borderline.”

But he’s merely repeating something he wrote last year about Senator Tom Coburn. The Oklahoma senator, responding to the Democrats’ extremely unpopular (and later successful) machinations to enact a form of national medical insurance, said that he understood why some would give up on their government. For this, Klein dubbed Coburn’s comments “borderline sedition” as well as “hate speech.”

How do I see it? Well, to note that Congress is unresponsive to Americans (and thus a cause for hopelessness) is not even close to sedition. It’s to recognize the obvious. 

I’m not saying it doesn’t incite a kind of rebellion. But remember: In America, rebellion against those in charge is not just allowed, it’s been institutionalized. 

The institution is called “elections.”

The current unrest in America — exemplified, at present, by the “Tea Party” protests — seems to be very much a patriotic thing. If the bulk of Democrats and Republicans get targeted as deserving to go, then the means to their removal is obvious. It comes next November, and in November 2012. 

And it does not mean that restive American critics of unconstitutional government and habitual over-​spending are not “loyal to the most important American ideals.” It means they understand these ideals better than does Joe Klein.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Merging or Diverging?

We live in interesting times. Strapped for cash, local and state governments are cutting spending and raising taxes. The federal government, with its chummy relationship with the Federal Reserve and our money supply, along with a shopaholic’s addiction to debt, continues to spend at record rates. 

In this context, perhaps it is not so shocking that Congressman Ron Paul, known for being tight-​fisted on spending, and for his push to audit the Fed, is basically even in a head-​to-​head match-​up with President Obama. A Rasmussen Poll ticked Obama at 42 percent against Paul at 41 percent. 

Interestingly, only 66 percent of Republicans chose Paul. It’s independent voters who are nearly 2‑to‑1 for Paul over the President.

Why do Republicans hesitate? Paul is a severe critic of the Republican Establishment, especially the GOP’s recent fondness for undeclared wars.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party movement is being courted by Alaska’s Sarah Palin and Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann. Representative Bachmann went so far to say that the GOP and the Tea Parties are merging.

I hope not. The main unifying feature of Tea Party protests remains out-​of-​control federal spending and borrowing. The GOP did nothing to curb this problem when it was in charge.

Both parties created the problem, as Rep. Paul points out. That’s why the Tea Party will be more effective as an independent political force, rallying Americans to hold both parties and all public officials accountable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.