A Victory for Free Stuff

The Glenfiddich ran low Tuesday night. I needed it.

That awful sensation that hit me around 10:15 PM was not the single malt going down badly, it was the realization that Ohio and Florida were narrowly out of reach. I simply could not believe it. By the smallest of margins the most pernicious American president in a generation was winning re-election.

A dreadful economy, a disastrous fiscal record, a stalled legislative agenda and a bungled foreign policy. Yet he still won. I kept screaming at the plasma all night. Are these people crazy? 

In the cold light of dawn I changed my mind: The American electorate isn't crazy. They're just greedy.

The MSM polls were showing a narrow Obama win in the days leading up to November 6th. Polls from right-leaning organization were showing a slight Romney edge that was growing. The difference between the two poll sets was less because of bias that a simple statistical assumption: How high will Obama's turn out be?

Most right-leaning polling organizations assumed that Democratic voters would be less motivated, given the economic disaster and whatnot, to vote back in the President. Conversely Republican leaning voters would be very motivated to remove a dangerous radical from the White House. So Barack Obama won for the pure and simple fact that the Democratic base wanted it more. It sensed, perhaps correctly, that a Romney administration would lead to a curtailing of the scope and scale of government. Like a glutton's defending his lunch they reacted violently to the prospect of fiscal restraint.

More than anything else 2012 has been a victory, albeit a very narrow one, for free stuff.

Given the narrowness of the victory the turnout among the American black population was key. There was never any doubt that Obama would capture the overwhelming majority of that group of voters. The question was whether they would show up at the polls. They did. This is perhaps the gravest of the many tragedies that have and are about to befall America.

American blacks voting for the Democratic Party is like turkeys voting for Christmas. No group of Americans has been so consistently exploited and manipulated by their political leadership. While the Democratic elite, both white and black, send their children to the best private schools, the ordinary black child finds themselves in the worse public schools in the English speaking world. Nearly three generations of union enforced mediocrity and collectivist ideology has left black Americans economically and intellectually helpless. They cling to the Democratic Party and its leaders from ignorant fear of the alternative.

Disproportionately American blacks are unskilled, have unstable family lives and live in areas that are battlegrounds in the violent and pointless Drug Wars. They are the most vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy. The Obama administration has been terrible for American blacks. Unemployment is at crippling highs. The prospect of Obamacare has cost hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs, as employers shift to part-time workers. This blocks one of the few avenues low-skilled American blacks have to improve their economic lot.

Yet out they came. Barack Obama is not culturally an American black. He was raised by and around rich white liberals. Culturally he is a rich white liberal. Racially he is a mulatto and historically would have been shunned by both groups. Caught between these two groups in his youth Obama embraced the ersatz tolerance of post-modern ideology. The multiculturalism that preaches tolerance but practices a racial and ethnic ward heeling that would have impressed Tammany Hall. 

The argument that American blacks voted for Obama because of racial solidarity is correct in only a small way. If merely placing a black person on a Presidential ticket could swing an election then Colin Powell, and perhaps even Condi Rice, would have snapped up the Republican nomination. Yet black Republicans, whatever their accomplishments, are considered to be alien and even a treacherous presence in the black community. The phrase Uncle Tom comes up rather often. 

American blacks vote overwhelming for the Democratic Party. A black President heightened their enthusiasm, probably enough to swing the overall election. A black Republican candidate would not have had that effect. There is already substantial talk about how America is getting "darker" and the Republican Party is failing to respond. This mistakes surface for substance. While strategically placed tokens from the Hispanic, and possibly in some circumstances the black community, could swing the odd local election, it will not matter nationally.

The Republican Party could transform itself into a flawless demographic representation of the American electorate and still fail miserably. This isn't about ethnic outreach. Jason Kenney was able to swing the ethnic vote in the GTA simply by showing up and listening. The problems in America are far deeper.

The Democratic Coalition is comprised of two main flanks:

1) Fairly well off professionals, and even some business people, who are motivated by ideology. The failure of liberal ideas is irrelevant to them since their wealth and skill-set helps mitigate the economic and social fall out. When botched urban planning created burnt ghettos in the 1960s and 1970s, the liberal elite was safely ensconced in the distant suburbs.  

2) The dependent class. The poor are always far more susceptible to the charms of the welfare state than the middle class. When you give out free stuff they, like most human beings, respond to incentives. The American poor are no more naturally "depraved" in this way than their Roman antecedents. While benefiting enormously in material terms, this dependent class are the real victims of welfare statism. Yet they keep voting for it. They know of no other path.

The Republican Party can me-too all this, at which point they will merely aid and abet the destruction of the American Republic. Alternately they can start to attack the weaker of the two flanks. The Democratic Party is likely to nominate another boring white man in 2016. Hilary is getting a little long in the tooth and has the personal charisma of a refrigerator. This will give the Republican Party an opportunity for ideological outreach to blacks and hispanics.

Mere pandering will not work, it will simply come off as being insincere. Bribery will not work because the Democrats can always one-up anything the Republicans offer. Fiscal reckless is not an problem for the Democratic Party, it is these days nearly a fetish. The Republican Party and the conservative movement must explain to blacks and hispanics how the Left is destroying them. It will not be easy. It will likely seem a fool's errand. American demographic trends, however, allow for no other option.

To help explain just how bad the Obama years have been, conservatives in 2016 will have some useful though bleak advantages. At some point in the next four years or so the bond market vigilantes, or the ChiComs, are going to pull the plug on the American spend-a-thon. That would mean a terrible hit to America's global military capacity, and all the likely havoc that will entail, but it will also mean steep cuts to the American welfare state. A stealth default by inflation would simply delay this outcome, not change it.

The never ending parade of free stuff will be ending soon. It will be an object lesson for the ages. America's remarkable capacity for improvisation is about to be tested in way not seen in over seventy years.

Hopefully some of us survive.

 

Comments

[copinacus]

Yes, I think this was the last chance for the U.S. to pull back from the brink. If they think the riots and disturbances in Europe are something wait until they try austerity in the U.S. When they run out of money, which they must, the stealth default by inflation is going to become a hyperinflation.
For me as a fairly advanced senior citizen with a rather modest little retirement nest egg, it will be interesting to see if I'm still around once it becomes good for only a single loaf of bread.
Anyway I'm looking for a comfortable bridge to live under just in case.

[Dennis]

A Romney victory would have sat far better with America's creditors and financial markets. Yesterday's stock market plunge was no accident, even though the MSM tried to write it off as a reactions to problems in Europe. Now that President Obama is firmly in charge, national bankruptcy is baked into the cake.

As to Republican strategy going forward, capturing more of the Hispanic vote is not out of the question. For the most part, Hispanics are a hard working bunch who share many of the same values as American conservatives. As for concerns about mass Hispanic immigration to the U.S., thanks to the Obama economy more Hispanics are leaving the U.S. than are entering it anyway.

[Michael F]

Someone recently wrote on one of these forums that we Canadians would have ring-side seats to America’s self-destruction. Problem is that Canadians typically follow the American example. And now the Americans seem to be following the examples of (not that I’m an historian) the Weimar Republic, Argentina, the USSR – not to forget Imperial Rome then and the Euro cabal today.
It could be that those thousands who are fleeing the disaster to warm and cheap southern countries (Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Uruguay, among many) have an edge on those who opt to remain behind in the chaos, but what will their expatriate future be when the regular monthly supply of retirement dollars tanks?
I am old and limited in mobility and income. Do I follow the lead into expatriatism, or ride out the decline into penury here?

[Cytotoxic]

Impossible! I was told by Frum and other 'moderates' that Romney was totally electable even though he's Republican John Kerry. Principle and ideas are things you amputate so you can be successful like Hudak.

"Problem is that Canadians typically follow the American example."

Canadian conservatives are way ahead of you. They've given everything to Better Hair Bush aka Stephen Harper. And it will end with the same results, and they won't learn a thing.

[copinacus]

On the other hand, if Obama follows the same policies for four more years, Canada, sitting next door just might become heir to the initiative, capital and entrepreneurship of the US as it flees the dead hand of regulatory government and environmental extremism. I mean where else are they going to go? Europe? China?

There's always a silver lining.

[John Chittck]

Nothing the Republicans in the House can do over the next four years will be seen as productive or useful by the mainstream media. The narrative of Republicans blocking "progress" will persist as long as Republicans stay engaged. Given that America is going over the fiscal cliff with or without an essentially futile delaying action which will do nothing to help the politics for the GOP, here's what they should do:

Go home and allow the Democrats to pass all the legislation that they want, disciplined only by their sense of futility as the world walks away from the most fiscally broke entity in the history of the planet. The unemployment numbers will balloon, the creators will go Galt, the currency will plummet or interest rates will surge, the dynamic economy will shrug (making the 47% more like 67%), tax revenue will shrivel despite any increases passed, and either the Democrats discover and embrace fiscal conservatism or they will take the country down, single-handed and own the wreckage, without Republicans to blame. Not the way career politicians like to position themselves for re-election in 2016. It would be worth the price of admission just to watch the Dems eat Harry Reid. I hazard a guess that they would likely eventually have to impeach their own dear leader.

Message to Republicans: Don't get into a fight with pigs. You can't win and if you try you only get dirty. Walk away and save your dignity. You know the drill: beans, bullets and Gold. The nation has earned what comes next.