20 thoughts on “Sorry, Rush”

  1. He’s not preferable to me. I’d hold my nose and vote for Romney, but if Santorum is the candidate I’m staying home.

    1. That’s idiotic. You’d rather have four more years of Obama than a guy who you don’t like? Any Republican president would be a huge benefit to the nation compared to Dear Leader.

  3. Big government conservatism is a fancy 4 dollar phrase for fascism. Non-libertarian conservatism IS fascism, plain and simple.

  4. Yea, the Tea Party Republicans may be united in their hate of President Obama, but when you dangle a prize in front of them like the presidency their true colors show as they rip each other apart like starving hyenas. Time to pop another bowl of popcorn 🙂

        1. The quality of discourse in academia in 2012:
          Compared to the Tea Party candidates the “Joker” from Batman is sensible

          What can’t go on forever, won’t.

          1. Yes, and this will be the last for the Tea Party as they fade to the fringe.

            http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=2

            Op-Ed Contributors
            Crashing the Tea Party
            By DAVID E. CAMPBELL and ROBERT D. PUTNAM
            Published: August 16, 2011

            [[[Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.”]]]

            And this was in August before the Republican candidates pandering to the Tea Party started tearing each other apart and showing their true colors to the public.

  6. In the past few days, Rush has been calling himself a big-government conservative. His point is that size is not the real issue, that it’s fine if the government has to be big to discharge its constitutional assignments (one of which he cites is the protection of the rights of the unborn). The difference between conservatives and liberals, in his view, is what they expect the big government to do. And in his view, Santorum generally wants the big government to do the “right” things.

    1. Yes, would you like your dictatorship to be on the left or right? At least the left doesn’t pretend to be for smaller government when advocating more things for it to do.

  7. If Romney is nominated, most social conservatives will hold their noses and vote for him. If Santorum is nominated, it will split the party; moderate Republicans and libertarians will not vote for him, and will probably rally behind a third party candidate like Gary Johnson. Obama will win, and the Republican Party will break apart between its libertarian and social conservative factions. Fair or not (and I think it is fair), Santorum has a reputation as the most extreme social conservative in the primary, and scares the crap out of Northeastern and Western moderate Republicans.

    Based on the articles from George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and the formerly pro-Romney anti-Newt NRO folks, it seems like the mainstream right would rather kick out the libertarians than beat Obama.

    1. Losing to Obama, although bad in the medium term, might turn out to be a good thing in the long run and the very short run. Can you imagine the blame that a fiscally responsible president would get for the immediate fallout if the government started living within its means for any reason less pressing than “nobody’s dumb enough to lend us more money anymore”? If the voters aren’t smart enough to notice more than immediate correlations, you can’t risk the long run effects of generating correlations that mis-educate them. Otherwise they’ll end up blaming the DTs on the evils of sobriety.

      Even avoiding that trap isn’t enough, but I’m not sure how to avoid the subsequent one. In the very long run after an Obama victory, eventually the story will be that Obama sent us into another Depression by being one of those fiscal conservatives like Hoover (see Krugman for the ludicrous groundwork being started there, or see any ignorant leftist for the precedent).

  8. I dunno, with the proliferation of social media the impact of Iowa could be greatly diminished. I believe the MSM has characteristically waited to see who gets nominated in Iowa and then begins to slant there coverage heavily to the perceived favored candidate and sway the outcome of proceeding primaries. But as the population continues to grow numb the social media (my Dad has an Iphone and routinely text messages now) we might find a propensity for groups of voters to formulate their own voting patterns.

  10. I think the chances of Santorum getting the nomination are actually slim. Romney’s only been getting 25% of the vote because everybody keeps hoping that somebody better will come along, and everybody else has had the chance to try out for the role of “somebody”. I think when the time comes to say “this is it, it’s Romney or Santorum (or whomever — Huntsman, even) — there are no further choices”, Romney will suddenly pick up a much bigger vote. I’m not all that bothered by Romney. He’s an opportunistic flip-flopper, so whoever controls Congress will be able to write much of the agenda. That’s not the worst outcome this year. In fact, pretty much every other likely outcome is worse.

  11. Dunno Romney is preferable to Santorum, at least I hope that some of the republicans in congress will remember the ‘Anybody but Romney’ and won’t be getting behind the ‘Romney’ presidency when he suggests big government initiatives, like they did with Bush. Sure Romney will get some of his big government populist thing in with the help of Dems and squishy republicans like Scott Brown, Olympia Snow, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, but the likes of Bachmann , Demint, Alan West, Marco Rubio won’t be blindly following the Republican leadership as if it was a anybody but Romney pick like Santorum/Perry. In the end libertarians need to push the small government into congress/senate since that obviously not coming from this crowd of presidential candidates besides Ron.

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