George Rebane

More of same + more time = more of same.

Well, if the local lefties are any indication, then there was a lot of Dems dancing in the streets last night after it cooled down a bit.  All the progressive pundits are heralding Obama’s upcoming slam dunk victory.  Might as well not spend the rest of the campaign cash on attack ads because Obama’s ‘one mo’ time!’ plan for the economy will stack up well with the Ryan plan.  It’s going be easy to tell all the Earls of Entitlement what part of their monthly checks will be nipped here and there by the Romney/Ryan team.

Romney’s VP pick of fiscal wizard Rep Paul Ryan sent shock waves over both sides of the aisle.  The socialists know that they will now have an easy message to bend the ears of their constituent legions.  And those who understand the country’s fiscal crisis know they now have a stalwart on the ticket who will keep the center-right Romney on the straight and narrow.  These are the people who have read a history book or two, and know that great empires fall from within when they no longer understand how to manage their money and their fisc.

The rest of the celebrants will never notice when the ‘people’s prosperity police’ finally march in and lay down the new law of the land.   Don’t be surprised if the next national holiday will be Regulation Recognition Day, added to celebrate all the blessings that the fresh batch of yearly regulations brings to each and every one of us.  There may even be ‘spontaneous’ parades like there were in the countries liberated by the Red Army after WW2.  A puzzlement to some was why all the marchers carrying huge banners and signs looked dour.  But we know that if you looked too dour, they sent you to a place where the benefits of collectivism were made crystal clear to you – the first of which was that if you understood, they’d let you live.  Everybody understood.

On the other side there are some thoughtful voices who recommend that Romney not point to the example of where Europe has wound up.  Most independent voters don’t know enough about what’s going on in Europe, and only picture sitting at a sidewalk café in a picturesque city, drinking wine, and listening to pleasant melodies coming from the nearby accordion player.  And most believe that America could do with more of such an atmosphere.  It’s hard to convince people about national bankruptcies and the euro getting inflated to oblivion while the listener can only hear the accordion on a balmy evening.

Nevertheless, people like Peggy Noonan are telling Romney to stay closer to home and use California as the more accessible and recognized exemplar of gross government mismanagement – everyone in the country, most certainly people declaring themselves as independents, know that California is already in the tank.  She also joins those who point out that the country no longer has ANY values – these have been carefully excised by the government educational system that has been on a post-modernism tear for the last forty years.

Post-modernism?  That’s the ideology where absolutes disappear, mores are malleable, and everything is relative.  Repartees like ‘it all depends on what you mean by is’ are offered the limp, lame, and looney to plumb and celebrate their intellectual depths.  And surveys across the land confirm that the triple-Ls dominate the landscape, and by a greater majority every year.

And then I wonder what would happen if there were a great awakening (a true miracle); if people suddenly realized that no liberal candidate or commentator has recognized, let alone offered, any kind of an economic future that does not have the country follow California down the rat hole.  That people suddenly grasp that it requires genuine entrepreneurial, capitalistic, free markets growth to pull us out of our dive.  This is the single piece that is absent from all the myopic mavens who totally miss our only way back, as they focus on their ‘but you can’t cut …’ mantras without realizing that that’s exactly what we have to do, and that is exactly what we will do.  The only remaining choice the socialists have is will we do it without or with blood in the streets.

And that is also the choice that faces us this November – can America’s Great Experiment be revived, or will we also become a one party ‘democracy’?

[17aug12 update]  Bloomberg and Washington Post/ABC News are reporting on data from voter registrations across the nation that should figure in the joyous Democrat celebrations.  My advice to our liberal neighbors is to ignore the whole thing, Obama is as good as re-elected, just have another glass of Kool-Aid.

The news today is that since 2008 the Dems have been losing registered voters at a rate of more than 10:1 than have the Republicans, and this has been most pronounced in the ‘battle ground states’.  Most of these these party-pooper voters have joined the ranks of the Independents, and further polling results show that “Romney holds a 14-point lead over Obama among independent voters nationally.”

Meanwhile, socialist columnists like Amy Goodman are celebrating Romney’s “floundering campaign” that, she says, received another blow with the selection of running mate Paul Ryan.  Given Obama’s performance against a floundering Romney, I wonder how the President will fare when the Romney/Ryan campaign really takes off as they seem to be doing even as I write.

My prediction is that Team Obama is going to duct tape shut Joe Biden’s mouth (‘y’all gonna be back in chains’), and send Congressman Chris Hollen’s (D-MD) good suit to the cleaners.  Hollen is the ONLY Democrat that has bearing and a command of numbers, and can concoct a coherent collectivist spin with them.  The rest – from Reid through Waters to Pelosi – look and talk like an assortment of clowns right out of Central Casting.  But then again, their constituents don’t do numbers.

My advice to the Repubs is stay on message re the economy, Obama’s record, and most emphatically emphasize the demonstrated damage that keeping that guy in the White House will do to America.

[18aug12 update]  The real perspective on deficits.