Category: Republicans

It is something we have been saying all along, and, apparently, so has the President

oldjeffersonianLeave a comment

The decision handed down yesterday in Florida upped the ante in the high-stakes poker game of national healthcare legislation.  For those curious, or those who haven’t read the news since Saturday, you can find the Reuters story here.  My moment of impish glee came when I saw that the Presiding Judge nailed the mandate to the ground and drove a stake through its heart (something, you should note, you won’t find in the Reuters story).  He then went on to validate his approach by quoting  possibly the most damning of experts on the matter, the President himself, if ever so briefly.

Speaking in 2008, the President said, on the subject of healthcare mandates, “if a mandate was the solution, we can try to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a home”.  Short, yes.  Simple, yes.  Erred in quoting…eh, not even close.  Back in the hay days of 2008, when the wet behind the ears Senator from Illinois was aiming to take on the, then, most powerful family of Democrats at the time (i.e. the Clintons) a major separation point between the to-be President and the to-be Secretary of State was that Clinton’s healthcare proposal included the now infamous mandate.  The lack of a mandate in one of the heaviest points of contention would open Obama to the moderates, along with several other middle-of-the-road stances, and eventually win him both the Democratic ticket and the Presidency.

So, now, here we sit, nearly a year has gone by, as of Saturday 722 waivers have been handed out to companies and it appears that the SEIU is getting more than their fair share when compared against the rest of the businesses out there.  The Medicare program’s head actuary is saying that the ‘savings’ from the healthcare bill are unsustainable and may, in the long run, cost taxpayers upwards of $311 billion over the next eight years.

Mind you, this is still a battle over health care.  Democrats are still firing on all cylinders saying we will be able to take care of everyone while the 535 members of congress can’t balance a budget, Republicans lay down useless legislation that will never pass, but is a token gesture to their ‘hardcore’ constituents so they can come back in 2-6 years and say, while shrugging their shoulders, “we tried”.  We have a congressman who spent 16 years in the House of representatives and the last ten in the Senate but can’t remember that the three branches of the government are the executive, legislative, and judicial rather than just a motley crew of folks getting together to hammer out legislation.  Least we forget, that we are barreling northwards of $14 trillion dollars and borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar spent, and the apparent champion of the cause to battle this titanic financial monstrosity is a congresswoman who has the gall to call herself tea party, but tags a big “R” next to her name come campaign season and around big donors.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are only a few of the “issues” we have to deal with, and, tragically, all those propogating those “issues” are running the show.

Back from mission impossible

oldjeffersonianLeave a comment

With the elections ending on the second, a delightful show involving the comedian Daniel Tosh on the fourth, and several papers rushing up upon me, I have returned to the blog that I started some time back.  To whom it may concern, the absence was not in vain, and, in truth, I should have kept efforts to update while working on a campaign for the last seven  months, but due to agreements, contracts, and the peering eye of the opposition I chose not to.

That’s right, I worked a campaign.

Not one of those “I volunteered, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and went to rallies” volunteering, no.  Paid work as an assistant policy director and a very, very brief stint as the assistant campaign manager.  There are several things I have learned my first dance in the arena, and I would love to share them here with those who happen to stop by:

1) If you’re going to get paid, get paid a livable wage.  The amount I ended up getting paid wouldn’t cover the bills, gas, food, and miscellaneous expenses.  If I didn’t have the Montgomery G.I. Bill on the side, I would have collapsed under the weight of credit card debt long ago.  Even with the G.I. Bill, I’m looking up at broke, but it was a job.

2) Long hours are part of the job.  From morning policy meetings, to a daily schedule ten hours deep in events, and a closing brief at the end of the day plus any research or writing you may need to do afterwords, it is a long running job.  Many nights I was up until two to three am working on policy papers, researching topics that would be of interest and digging up news bits and facts that would be used to pepper speeches and give the candidate an air of being on top of things.  The candidate also requested a ‘intelligence brief’ similar to what the President of the United States gets every morning, so I scavenged through the news sites and major government agencies looking for tidbits.  I composed an e-mail that went out to the body of the campaign, and let them know what I thought would be the most pressing things in the minds of the voters for that day.  To be honest, this was the best part of the job for me.  I’m an information junkie, so asking me to research and formulate responses and policy positions based on the ever shifting sands of the political world was a challenge I met with a certain level of joy.

3) Know your candidate.  The short version of how I got into the position I did is that the candidate I ended up working for was not the guy I started out supporting.  I hopped on board because my first candidate was supporting the newcomer and my work with him had impressed him enough to invite me to join the new campaign.  A lot of people put faith in the candidate and after six months of campaigning the results were disastrous.  There were positions that the candidate held that I did not agree with him on but could live with (the whole ‘each has their own opinion and no one is going to agree 100% of the time).  What I could not tolerate was that a large amount of what was being given to the candidate by the policy director, campaign manager, and myself was tossed aside with every speech.  Time and time again we heard fluff and inspiration when the constituents were asking for facts and answers as to how the candidate was going to address the issue, how we as Republicans were going to solve the current ills of society, and drive the economy to recovery.  We had mulled this over for days, put up what we believed was a convincing and through plan to our candidate, and even if it was wrong, at least it was something.  At least it was an idea.  The candidate never, not once, mentioned it in his speeches.  Instead it was more fluff and empty ‘inspiration’.  After talking to a few people who had known him in another district I found out he was an empty shirt who exited their congressional contest well in advance.  His track record was littered with faux pas and failures.  I was working with damaged goods, and those are salvageable if the candidate is willing to listen.

I have more to say about the ups and downs, but it gets personal, and I do not want that out in the air.  The campaign failed not because of the effort, but because the candidate refused to see the writing on the wall.  Some final actions by the last of the campaign directors effectively ostracized the political party whose banner we were running under by implying that the lack of financial support equated to racism from a state, if not national, political organization.  I tendered my resignation shortly thereafter.  I would not work for an organization that was going to play that at the end.  I had not worked for months to try to build a legitimate campaign, to create an engine for intelligent and informed dialogue on topics rather than scary commercials, and then to watch it go down in flames because the end was in sight, they knew they had lost and the candidate and campaign manager chose to try to throw someone else under the bus for their failures rather than man up and take the required beating that comes from a poorly run campaign.  I was not privy to the decision-making processes in the last month.  My association with one of the prior campaign managers put a black mark on me and while they still asked for information and assistance, I had been locked away from conversations for fear that I would leak them back to her or the republican party.  That was an honest fear of theirs.  That the party they were running under would get wind of what they were doing or saying.

It was not a good campaign.  It was not a healthy time for me, but it was a learning experience.  I’ve made connections, and now experienced the electorial process from both ends of the spectrum, as observer to direct participant in the campaign system.  I am now working with elements of the Republican party and look forward to expanding my level of knowledge, and taking another shot at working for a candidate in a congressional race.  I know there were somethings I did wrong, and I will man up to those, but after all the mess I am still here and looking forward to the new cycle of elections to come.  This time, I might even write about it.

J.P.

Ron Paul is a terrifying, horrible, evil man…until we need him, even then he’s still terrifying

oldjeffersonianLeave a comment

It was rather surreal to find out that after the solid ribbing that Rep. Paul (R-TX) received in the last Presidential election from the likes of the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups that his clout with them would have dropped into the abyss of political obscurity.  Somehow, logic apparently got it very, very wrong:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/20/conservatives.meeting/index.html?section=cnn_latest

If someone had asked in 2008 if Paul would have been the forerunner for the Republican party’s return to power, most of us would have scoffed at the notion that a representative with such radical views (albeit somewhat appealing) on economics, spending, and general reduction in the size of the federal government would even be considered.  Especially after The drumming the Republican party took in 2008, the odd duck out, who placed consistently in the top three candidates during the primaries, is now the forerunner for those tired, those mildly poor, and those with enough time on their hands to go out and protest government spending.  To be fair to those Tea Party members, I concur with them on issues like a reduction in government spending, in looking at the policies that led to a surplus in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s.  I would love to see the government file legislation that is in tune with the Constitution and have serious debates about the quality rather than quantity of legislative documents that roll out of the halls of congress.  On those subjects we agree, and I’d be fine with Rep. Paul in those regards.

However, Rep. Paul is a staunch isolationist, and, to be frank, in this day and age, that won’t fly.  Hell, it hasn’t flown since 1945.  The United States, for better or worse, is the current superpower of the world.  Political Scientists accept this notion, and it is the basis for an understanding of how the gears spin in international circles.  One of the definitions of a superpower is that in events that occur half way around the world, we are directly or, most of the time, indirectly impacted by those results.  It is the price that comes with our prolific and immense economic and political base.  Isolationism will do jack-all for us.  He has called for leaving both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to better protect state sovereignty in a day and age where state sovereignty is a paper tiger hiding monstrosities like genocide in Sudan.  Do we need to give up our rights to acquiesce to an international body, no.  Will either of these organizations ever ask us to give up something that we hold dear to our Republic, hell no.  The United States pays for 22 percent of the UN’s annual budget, ringing in at $458.3 million in 2008.  I, like many others and quite a few fans of Rep. Paul, am not a tremendous fan of the UN.  The process is lumbering, slow, painfully convoluted, and rife with the potential for corruption.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was talking about the House or Representatives or Senate at length, but I digress.  In their massive approach, and nearly universal representation, they gain a legitimacy that is, largely, unquestionable.  Laws that passed by the US government are not ignored out of pure spite or conjecture, and if they are, there are penalties.  The same goes for the UN.  Follow their rules, or sanctions will fall.

We jest of strongly worded letters from Ban Ki-Moon to Sudan, Iran, or Myanmar, but in all due honesty, the men and women of the UN are doing what they can with what they have.  Same goes for NATO.  Isolationism doesn’t work because of the interconnected nature of the world today.  Without some sort of standardized international community in which to address issues, the big will continuously screw over the small, the violent will oppress those who have fewer firearms, and the world would be, generally, a giant mess…moreso than it is now.

It is noted that the international issue is not the only place where Rep. Paul and I differ, however, it is painfully obvious that my Libertarian beliefs will be challenged at great lengths should he continue to gain popularity amongst the Tea Party goers.

In closing, it is particularly odd to me that the Libertarians, and by proxy the constitutionalists and median Republicans, were for the longest time shoved aside. The message is similar, there are hooks that keep us from joining the party en mass.  They’re not doing any better at bringing us in.  Rather, the ‘big tent’ philosophy that ‘failed’ the Republican Party in 2008 was a sham at best.  You were in the big tent if you agreed with the big tent.  Right now, the big tent includes populist ideas amongst those who think Obama isn’t an American citizen, those who think he is Islamic and trying to torpedo this nation, and those who vow that obstructionism and a grinding halt to any legislative progress is considered advancement, not of the people of this nation, but of a political agenda.  It is not a party of ideas, of new notions, or suggestions and creativity, but of chalk-white, stark terror.  Fear seems key, and for a short time, fear works.  Men and women can only be afraid for so long, then, when the other contemptible shoe never falls, the fear abates, the anger boils out, and you are left with a political body that, instead of having a legislative history to stand on, has a thin layer of ideas held up by a bilious gas.  Ladies and gentlemen of the right.  Welcome to the first political bubble of the 21st century.  I can’t wait to see this one burst.