Ilya Somin explains. I share them.
Needless to say, there is much dissension (from many who think themselves libertarians) in comments.
[Saturday morning update]
Well, IBD certainly thinks that the prospect of an Obama presidency has the market spooked.
What is that agenda? It starts with a tax system right out of Marx: A massive redistribution of income -- from each according to his ability, to each according to his need -- all in the name of "neighborliness," "patriotism," "fairness" and "justice."
It continues with a call for a new world order that turns its back on free trade, has no problem with government controlling the means of production, imposes global taxes to support continents where our interests are negligible, signs on to climate treaties that will sap billions more in U.S. productivity and wealth, and institutes an authoritarian health care system that will strip Americans' freedoms and run up costs.
All the while, it ensures that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- will be done to secure a sufficient, terror-proof supply of our economic lifeblood -- oil -- a resource we'll need much more of in the years ahead.
The businesses that create jobs and generate wealth are already discounting the future based on what they know about Obama's plans to raise income, capital gains, dividend and payroll taxes, and his various other economy-crippling policies. Which helps explain why world stock markets have been so topsy-turvy.
But don't take our word for it. One hundred economists, five Nobel winners among them, have signed a letter noting just that:
"The prospect of such tax-rate increases in 2010 is already a drag on the economy," they wrote, noting that the potential of higher taxes in the next year or two is reducing hiring and investment.
It was "misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s," the economists remind us, that "greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression."
We can't afford to repeat these grave errors.
Yet much of the electorate is determined to vote for the candidate most likely to make them. If he wins, what we consider to be a crisis in today's economy will be a routine affair in tomorrow's.
Someone needs to run some ads showing the similarities between Obama's proposed economic policy and that of Herbert Hoover.
there is much dissension (from many who think themselves libertarians) in comments.
These are probably the same short-sighted bozos who clung to Huckabee in the primaries just long enough to push out the one guy (Romney) who could have run rings around The O on the subject of economics, who is utterly unconnected with the Bush Administration or Congress, has beaucoup executive experience as well as health-care reform credentials credible to center-left softies, and has more understanding of wealth-creation and cool-headed crisis management in his little finger than the donk's precious community-organizin' Hyde Park hothouse ACORN flower.
They sure "sent a message."
An Obama Presidency would be infinitely better than placing the petty dictator and proven serial liar Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the same.
McCain never vetted her. He took her on under pressure from talk radio - the medium that will one day be recognized as that which destroyed the GOP. Now he has his own baby that he can't disown.
A sad situation for a basically decent man.
Romney's problem was that during the campaign he diverged (with about a 100 millisecond time to double) drastically from what his prior political and executive career had been about, morphing into a strident suckup to the "conservative base". This let McCain tar him with the "flip-flopper" label that he never shook. Plus he seemed genuinely inauthentic, uncomfortable in his new skin.
Of course, the "Straight Talk Express" was a sham too, and unfortunately McCain's instability seems to be more oscillatory than first order exponential, so he's managing to piss off all sides of the body politic. Maybe the best we can hope for is a political calamity similar to 1993-1994, and a resurgence of smaller-government Republicans in 2010.
..I see the Obamatons are out in force... and the idiots.
Cthulthu, I ferverently hope that if your hoped-for economic cataclysm hits...it's YOU and your family on the soup lines, telling each other stories about the times when you could afford your own cars, internet access, clothes that have been washed, et cetera.
Romney's problem was...
You know, that sentence reads as if Romney was a job applicant who flopped the interview, and we're sorry for him because his resume says he's really probably a lot better than he came across.
Instead of, you know, it was our urgent problem to pick a candidate for Chief Executive, and if we screwed up the interview and hired the wrong guy because we put too much emphasis on the "screen test" and not enough on actual demonstrated character, then we're the ones that are to be pitied.
Plus he seemed genuinely inauthentic, uncomfortable in his new skin.
Welp, now we're going to get a guy who positively specializes in "seeming authentic" and being comfortable in his own skin, even if he's betraying his friends or principles when he's doing it. Plus a Vice President who can state the most fantastic untruth while looking you straight in the eye and with a warm throb of sincerity in every syllable.
Good job, men.
Romney had to put on the new skin so to speak since he could not have won the primaries without increasing his appeal to the base. It isn't as if he had a choice. And so yes, he came across as a fake . It wasn't the Romney who won in Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the nation.
It's all about being beholden to talk radio in the generic sense. It is the anti-intellectual behemoth that guides the GOP ship today. Until the entangled skein of Limbaugh-Hannity-Levin-O'Reilly-Kristol is peeled off and rejected permanently, the GOP will continue to plummet in a vortex of lunatic assertions, far-fetched theories, chaos and even the possiblity of reconstituting itself as a precursor to an American Third Reich.
It is not a wonder that so many thoughtful conservatives are hurling themselves overboard into a liberal night.
Unlike Ayers, ACORN, CRA, and all the other half-founded, mud-slinging, guilt-by-association Obama conspiracy theories running around the web and the McCain campaign, this is a reasonable concern. Even if Obama doesn't win the Presidency, there will still be a huge paradigm shift in the relationship between the federal government and the very foundations of our private financial system, and all the stars are aligning for greater federal involvement (e.g., McCain's mortgage purchase plan). Even if there was a desire to limit federal involvement, there are huge opportunities for half-baked ideas, misbegetton programs, and cures that will be worse than the disease. Decisions made in the next year or two will redraw the borders between public and private monies for decades to come. Here's hoping the lines are redrawn carefully and wisely, regardless of who's in power.
Romney used to be my Governor. The man had substance and executive acumen. He understood business and real wealth creation. It is a shame that the bozos in the Christian Right fearing Romney's own nutty religion followed that populist Huckabee and prevented the Republicans from nominating Romney, a man qualified for and capable of the job of Cjief Executive of the United States. We really need a Romney but what we'll get is Barney Frank and Chris Dodd creating an even bigger fiasco full of jobs for the unqualified but so politically connected Jamie Goreleck's.
the GOP will continue to plummet in a vortex of lunatic assertions, far-fetched theories, chaos and even the possiblity of reconstituting itself as a precursor to an American Third Reich.
What planet are you posting this from? The sky is blue on this one.
The sky is blue on this one.
That's good to hear. When I look in the distance, I also see blue.
My fear was of a Red sky.
I see the illiterates are out in force, unable to read what I actually wrote:
DaveP: Cthulthu, I ferverently hope that if your hoped-for economic cataclysm hits... Y'know, I actually wrote Maybe the best we can hope for is a political calamity similar to 1993-1994, and a resurgence of smaller-government Republicans in 2010. I was specifically drawing a parallel to Clinton's first term, and how his political disasters ushered in Gingrich and a Republican Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. Nobody wants an economic collapse. You also called me either an Obamaton or an idiot; I would say you are clueless and deluded.
Carl Pham: You know, that sentence reads as if Romney was a job applicant who flopped the interview, and we're sorry for him because his resume says he's really probably a lot better than he came across. Well, although you were trying to be disparaging to my comment, you actually make my point: Romney ran so far away from his record so fast that NOBODY knew what he stood for anymore. I saw his positions in the Republican debates, and compared same with his record. I came away from it seeing a candidate who would say and do anything to get elected. That's Romney's "actual demonstrated character." The campaign is an interview. I've interviewed plenty of people whose resume looks very good, but when you sit down with them, it's obvious that they don't know what they're doing. I don't hire those people, and my record is pretty good.
For philw1776: Romney made the conscious decision to run away from his record as governor, and obscured what you and others seem to think is the "real Romney". I repeat that maybe Romney shouldn't have pandered to the Christian Right. People's actions matter.
I've interviewed plenty of people whose resume looks very good, but when you sit down with them, it's obvious that they don't know what they're doing. I don't hire those people, and my record is pretty good.
Not if you've hired people based more on what they said in the interview than on what the actual facts of their accomplishments said -- which is exactly what happened to Romney. No one doubts his accomplishments. It's how he "came across" in the job interview that, you say, lost him his job.
That's an arguable proposition anyway; I think, as I said, it was the Huckabee fools who thought America was just longing for a born-again preacher-man true-blue social conservative to be President, and rejected Romney because they saw (correctly) that he didn't really believe in their code and -- this is where I think they lost their heads -- forgot that politics is about the art of the possible, and that however half-hearted Romney's embrace of cultural conservatism, he'd be a billion times better in office than Barack Obama, who whole-heartedly loathes their values.
My grandmother used to call this "cutting off your nose to spite your face." You see more of this in, for example, the VC thread provoked by Ilya Somin, where Republicans claim to be voting for Obama to "teach the Republicans a lesson." They'll learn a lesson from McCain's defeat by a wildly liberal Senator, all right. They'll learn that next time they need to run someone to the left of McCain. They're going to learn that cynical populist pandering and class warfare works, and McCain just didn't do it enough to compete with the art form's master. Blech.
Carl, brief aside about interviewing: I don't expect people to, say, derive the Riccati equation during an interview, but if what's on the resume doesn't match what I'm seeing one-on-one, there's a problem.
Back to Romney: You're getting closer but it still seems like you're not seeing my fundamental point about Romney: from what I saw during the Republican campaign (and maybe I missed something - I'm not claiming papal infallibility), I couldn't tell who the real Romney was. The well-respected former governor of Massachusetts? Or the religious right pander-bear, willing to suck up to anybody with a Bible for the nomination? Does Romney himself know? And in the final irony of this story, as soon as McCain sewed up the nomination (and no, I did not vote for him, nor Huckabee - I can't stand the Huckster), he began pandering to the "base" just as badly as Romney did. Would Romney be doing better than McCain? Remember he was widely seen as the original choice of the non-religious Republican establishment that we all know and love.
Agree that spite seldom if ever works for the good of the country - 'minds me of the Chinese proverb "when you're out for revenge, dig two graves." As much as I dislike McCain, I will choose him over the Obamanable One and his thugocracy in a nanosecond. And maybe there are some faint signs that the truth about Obama and Ayers etc. is starting to filter into the electorate. But if the worst happens, maybe some sanity will prevail in the Republicans and a 1994-like renaissance will occur in 2010. Or, maybe not.
Horse still dead - check. Beatings will continue until the morale improves...
Dread One, I see your point, I just don't agree with it. I didn't even bother listening to Romney on the campaign trail. What for? The guy has an enormous record. What he's actually done is far more important than any random crap he spouts in a campaign spot, or in a debate. I assume that stuff is for the ADD idiots who can't be bothered to google his name and read up on his past record. They're perfectly happy to make up their mind based partly on his turn of phrase in a debate and partly on whether they like his haircut that day. Feh.
In the same sense, I have largely not bothered to listen to Obama on the campaign trail. I don't need to. What he's actually done, little as it is, is enough to know the man, as far as he can be known. You can very reasonably assume that anything he says on the campaign trail is bullshit tailored to convince this or that clueless minority of voters.
I mean, what we're talking about is the equivalent of trying to figure out which car suits your needs better by watching car commercials. Who would be so dumb? You read Consumer Reports. You listen to folks who've bought one. You test-drive one yourself.
Sure, I'd like for a man to be able to reach high elective office by just calling it like he sees it, being utterly true to who he is, how he governs, and so forth. That might have been possible in the day when a very small minority of wealthy citizens (who largely knew each other) chose the President. But in an era of Jacksonian democracy, where any fool's vote matters equally with the vote of the most thoughtful and careful political junkie, it's not. Demagoguery is here to stay. Thoughtful people just have to discount and ignore it, from all candidates.