http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-10-2008/0004752837&EDATE=

I'm not sure if they got the idea to say that from this blog, but it's not unfathomable since Mark Steyn linked to my blog on the eve of Super Tuesday. Thanks Mark!

if McCain wins the nomination. And I mean metaphorical blood. A McCain win with Huckabee participating as a spoiler will rend the conservative coalition in three parts, all of them angry at each other (particularly the losing parts). Of course the pundits will try to rally conservatives behind McCain, but it will be useless. Turnout among conservatives will be depressed in the general election and the Democrats and many of the independents who voted for McCain in the primary will abandon him. He’ll lose by a landslide. Republicans will lose both the Senate and the House for a Democratic monopoly. All of this will only increase rancor among conservatives.

 

If they were logical, they’d pull together and defeat the Democrats in the general election, but a McCain victory over Romney, and an Obama victory over hillary will demonstrate that Americans on both sides aren’t voting with their minds, but with their hearts. While logic would inspire conservatives to rally behind McCain, emotion will drive them to only recriminations and anger.

 

This was conservatives’ last chance. For demographic reasons I outline in the previous post, conservatism is doomed on the 40-year scale. The only chance was for a really good conservative leader to be elected and make a Reaganesque impression on the country that would delay the liberal fate. If Romney is defeated tomorrow, that will not happen, and tomorrow will live in infamy as a monumental defeat for conservatism.

I put this under campaigns and elections, but it's far bigger than that. I think the conservative movement is in serious trouble for the medium term. I have believed this for a long time, but it is only the recent events that inspire me to write it on this blog. First I'll discuss the long term.

First, demography is poised to destroy conservatism in a devastating triple threat. The baby boomers will start retiring, and will probably shift a little to the left in the process. Second, Mexican immigrants will most likely end up being pretty leftist. Finally, years of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism. It is ultimately these three factors that threaten to sink conservatism for at least a couple decades.

Recent debates about the future of the Republican party only highlight this problem. Note that there is tremendous support among many conservatives for "moderate" positions, while the Democratic movement has actually shifted left. This is ultimately a reflection of a leftward lurch in the American populous.

By their fruits ye shall know them, and conservatism will survive in the long term because of its inherent superiority but those fruits will not bear fruit in America for 20 years. The only thing that might discourage a significant leftward shift for America is the bad fruits of leftism that may increasingly be harvested in Europe. In this sense, Europe could return the favor America did in liberating it from Nazism and Communism.

David Brooks Wrote an intersting Column in the NYT on Tuesday: link

I think he is totally wrong. I’m sick and tired of all the talk that the Republicans are doomed in the presidential race. I bet they’ll be routed in congress but that Romney will win the presidency. Why? To put it simply, Hillary is viewed as a harpy, and Obama is a naïve and experienceless kid. While the electorate hasn’t shown signs that they’d sink him for that, I think they will. I think that competence will be a major issue in the presidential election. The people will “date” the exciting candidate, but in the end, they’ll marry someone less risky. That desire for competent leader will work heavily in Romney’s favor.

 

As for Brooks’ suggestion that the electorate leans left. That may be true, but the independents will take a smart, competent leader over a left-leaning, but dislikeable candidate like Hillary or Obama. Furthermore the only specific things Brooks cites are minor issues: If the electorate values authenticity so much why did Gore and Kerry almost win the election? As for the Hispanic vote, Brooks isn’t accounting for the anti-illegal immigration vote, which will at least cancel the Hispanic hostility out. Finally, Brooks overstates the disadnantage Romney has due to the allegedly left-leaning electorate: The Democrats may outdemocrat Romney on healthcare, but he will present and excellent and more conservative alternative. Voters support Democrat approaches to corruption by double digit margins? What’s he talking about? Same goes for Iraq. As for economy, that’s the only issue he’s probably right on, Still, I think as a transcendentally good businessman and manager, Romney will easily neutralize this issue unless the economy absolutely tanks.

The defensive position that conservatives take on the debates on poverty makes them sitting ducks. Conservatives need to take an offensive stance on this issue, or our defeat is sure. The current debate is structured as follows:

    Liberals: "We should take more money from the rich to provide for the poor."
    Conservatives: "No we shouldn't, and here are the reasons:"

While those reasons are numerous and well thought out, the very structure of this argument ensures that conservatives will lose the battle to prevent a moderate socialist system from dominating America's future. Most people, liberals, moderates, and undecided's alike have hear:

    "Liberals: "We should take more money from the rich to provide for the poor."
    Conservatives: "No we shouldn't, and blah blah blah blah:"

Every "no we shouldn't" is another touchdown for liberalism. Conservatives need to take the initiative from the liberals and stop playing a defensive game. It is this defensive game that makes conservatives looking like anti-poor curmudgeons. Conservatives should stop merely answering liberal initiatives and should spend their energy advancing their own initiative. What is their initiative? It is to do everything possible to encourage the most fruitful heirarchy of aid for the poor. Conservatives need to articulate at every opportunity that the proper order of responsibility for helping the poor is as follows:

1. The poor themselves.
2. Their immediate families.
3. Their extended families.
4. Their religions, other people's religions, or private charity in general.
5. Their local governments.
6. National government.

Inasmuch as conservatives keep saying "no" to liberal plans to help the poor, no matter how misbegotten those plans are, they are handing victories to socialism. They must aggressively promote their own plans to succeed.

I had to pick a topic, so I chose 2nd ammendment, but my comment is much broader than that.

I suspect that in general, tragedies make for bad policies. The quintessential example is the Reichstag fire, but I can think of several other examples. Katrina brought about a boatload of idiotic policies. Mass shootings frequently bring calls for heavy-handedness. Liberals probably believe a lot of post 9/11 policies are bad policies born of a tragedy.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/TomDeLay/2007/04/11/tom_delays_action_points_if_the_left_takes_imus,_we%e2%80%99ll_take_rosie

Rosie shouldn't be fired from "The View" due to pressure from conservatives. If she's to be fired at all, it should be because her employers find her a liability. If they do not currently find her a liability, right-wingers can help to make her a liability, not by clamoring for her removal, but by getting the word out about the idiocy of her commentary. When delay calls upon right-wingers to use the same bully-tactics of the left, he is calling for us to abandon the better world we seek. That better world includes freedom of speech with the marketplace of ideas as the only arbiter of that speech. We should instead work to show the idiocy of people like Rosie, i.e., beat her in the realm of ideas, not in roundabout underhanded ways.

I, like many of you, would like to have a true conservative in the White House. But I'd rather have a slightly liberal conservatie than an all-out liberal liberal. The central problem with Gingrich is that he has an unshakeable image as a partisan conservative. The very reason we like him is the very reason he would lose a general election. While I don't think we have as much reason to be gloomy as the MSM is saying we do in this coming presidential election, it will be a tough, tough fight. This, quite frankly, is the problem with any other of the people we like so much, like Brownback, Huckabee, Tancredo, and possibly Thompson. Perhaps George Will is right, and if we keep insisting on an obvious and committed conservative, we'll end up with Hillary or Obama in the Whitehouse.

I am cautiously thinking Romney should be it. He's either a moderate conservative (likely), a committed conservative (unlikely), or liberal pretending to be conservative (highly unlikely). The question isn't whether he flip-flops. Wise men flip flop according to their interests. The question is whether he's lying to us outright. I doubt it.

Just a thought. I think he's got a good chance of it, on either ticket. If the Democrat candidate asked him to be vice president, it could be a formidable team in the general election. Same thing goes for the Republican scenario.

I think the conventional wisdom, that the Democrats have a major advantage going into this presidential race, is nonsense. It's as nonsensical and fantastical as the "mandate" they got out of the last election. It was par for course on the six-year itch. Voters will be less likely to entertain a "throw the bums out" approach to the presidential election, and will do more research on the candidates. What will they find? They'll find that Obama is an empty suit that talks pretty, and they'll shrink from electing him. They'll find that Hillary is passe, harpyish,  and unlikeable. A strong Republican candidate, and we have a few, would bury either of these two without media help. And with media help, they'll still win by a comfortable margin.

 

The Mormon Prophet will turn 97 this June. He is one of the most well-respected and well-loved Mormon leaders of all time, among both Mormons and non-Mormons. His death and funeral would be a major international media event that would increase good will toward Mormons through the United States. It may come at a time when Romney is in the thick of an election battle, and could be a benefit to his campaign.

The subsequent appointment of Hinkley’s successor, Thomas Monson, to the presidency of the church may likewise give favorable press to both Mormons and the Romney campaign. This is because Monson is well known for his support for humanitarian causes throughout the world and his elevation to the presidency, or his actions therein, may also increase goodwill toward Mormons.

 

I've made several predictions that are closer to fulfillment, and I wanted to write them down before they are completely fulfilled. If they aren't, what the heck, I have a passion for going out on a limb with my predictions and bets.

The first prediction I made was that Obama would never be president. This was very early 2005 when a friend asked me if I thought he would be president, and I emphatically said he wouldn't. My reasoning then was that he was black and inexperienced. With my current knowledge I'll add that he is far left and is an empty suit.

More recently, as people have kept talking about how McCain is so popular and blah blah blah, I've said over and over that "he hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell" and I've maintained that stance for many moths now.

I've long thought that Romney would be president. Mainly because I thought that he was the best candidate. Of the republicans, once Allen went down, he was the best choice for conservatives. Giuliani? Condollezza? McCain? It's a dismall state for conservatives, and I just think (and hope) that Romney is the most conservative, because it's obvious that none of the other contenders are conserative enough for me or the conservative base. On top of that he's got a million other electable traits. Now early on, when nobody knows him, of course he's going to lose in polls, but he'll benefit greatly from people getting to know him, unlike the other candidates. Giuliani is great if you don't think too much about it, or you don't learn too much about him. And McCain has never had a chance for 2008. Hillary would be buried by Romney without media help (and I'm not sure whether she'll get it or not), and Obama is an empty shell. It's a romantic idea to give the presidency to Obama, but stack him against Romney and he's a midget in every category needed to win the presidency except blackness. And even blackness will help him with some people, hurt him with others, working out to be not a very big advantage.

I strongly suspect that the truth is not that poverty causes crime, but that modern attitudes toward poverty feed a sense of entitlement and victimhood, which rots the character and causes crime.

A society that could prove this is nowhere to be found, for in all places stricken by proverty, there is a deafening chorus of liberals preaching entitlement and victimhood to the poor.  Perhaps a study could be done of the tendency to crime of poor, but conservative people.

Liberals have won half the battle by framing human behavior as a "Nurture vs. Nature" debate. Only a liberal would describe it that way. An undergirding notion of modern liberalism is that human beings are simply cogs in a great machine. Free will is diminished, to the liberal mind, in favor of a science-inspired notion that humans are, like molecules randomly colliding in space, purely mechanistic. The conservative emphasizes that individual choice does indeed have a large effect on the outcome of our lives. If one is who one is because of "nurture." Well, it was the parent's fault. It was the crappy neighborhood; it was the bad school they went to. They never had someone who would reach down and pull them out of the muck On the other hand, if it's "nature," it's inborn. You're born gay. That's who you are. You're born incomptetent. You're born stupid. You're born athletic. You're smart because of your genes. This too depreciates the role of individual choice in determining people's lives. Conservatives who believe in the importance of free will as opposed to a mechanistic mind should point out that both of these points of view depreciate free will and lead people to make excuses for their behavior and failures. 

Prager is dead wrong on insisting that Keith Ellison should swear on the Bible. The point is not to honor the Bible. The point is to take an oath that one takes seriously. If Ellison believes the Koran is holy and the Bible is not, I would insist that he swear on the book he believes to represent the word of God. This will increase the probability that he will take the oath seriously.