Rick Santelli

Sorry, folks. Couldn’t help myself. This column, or at least half of it, originates in the greater SF Bay Area. This team is peaking at just the perfect time. We wish the Giants good fortune in the World Series this week. I hope this doesn’t cost me my American League readers (grin).

Giants closer Brian Wilson.

I’m minded of the similarity of the last-stretch drive of the Patriots of this country to the election, and the Giants’ final run to the World Series. It’s been a story of the Patriot drive to wrest this great nation from impending destruction at the hands of ideologically driven socialists.

Leftist pundits and politicians have been predicting the demise of the Tea Party and Patriot movement practically from the moment that Rick Santelli coined the phrase. Many loosely organized groups of friends and neighbors predated Rick, but it turned out to be the clarion call that went from coast to coast in days, as Americans voiced alarm and anger over a totally unresponsive rogue, runaway government. Every time they said we were finished we grew exponentially. Now they are looking at a nationwide patriot movement numbering a couple of million voters… and counting. People are still flooding to the Conservative banner.

The left doesn’t understand freedom. It’s no more complicated than that. There is some basic personality flaw that must affect all liberals equally. They are the most hateful, miserable creatures alive. Always blaming or looking to blame. Always complaining even when there is no cause for complaint. Slavishly subservient to the secular god of government. Government is liberalism’s be-all and end-all. It’s their shining palace on the hill and their highest aspiration.

I’m positive that Barack Obama never anticipated the spontaneous uprising of American patriotism that he and his Marxist buddies encountered. Barack Obama never bonded with this or any country. As a kid he was knocked from pillar to post, as my grandmother would have said. He never put down roots. His family was liberal and had anti-American feelings. His mentor was a communist party operative who bathed him in the communist doctrine. All of his associations are anti-American and many are Marxists or, like Frank Marshall Davis, an out-and-out communist.

Is it any wonder that Obama just does not get it where freedom is concerned? That’s what is going to defeat him. That’s what is going to defeat his party on November 2.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

… and didn’t like what it found. Conservative writers, myself included, are enamored with the emerging Conservative majority in the country. We observe closely, in awe of seeing a free people exercising their fundamental right to remove from office those they have strongly come to oppose. We are truly witnessing a shift in the fabric of American politics.

Rick Santelli

Rick Santelli of CNBC financial news is the one who is credited with the term Tea Party, but if you check on the net you’ll find about ten pages of folks who claim to have invented it. That’s part of the mystique of the Conservative Patriot Movement.

The Patriot groups have literally sprung up all over the country. That’s one of the things that is just driving the DeMarxists nuts about the Tea Party groups. They just can’t visualize the Patriot Movement. It doesn’t equate… there’s no national movement or leadership. It’s entirely independent from any political party or organization. Leftists just can’t register that one… a popular movement they couldn’t match even in their wildest dreams… and one which has grown with logarithmic abandon.

America took one long look at the socialist assault on our country and made a conscious decision to stop it. As the election rapidly approaches, more DeMarxist weaknesses and vulnerabilities become apparent. Some prognosticators are saying that as many as 100 seats could change hands in the House alone. The Senate looks more vulnerable every day, also.

There are going to be a lot of Tea Parties in the run up to the elections. Get online and find your local group and get out there and support them. Talk to your friends and neighbors about America, the Constitution and Freedom.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

In his FNS interview today, Mitt Romney mentioned his NYT Op-ed from late last year:

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

While it never should have come to this, it's refreshing to hear Republicans talking about letting losers fail.  Between Romney and Dick Cheney, it's almost looking like we can get the GOP away from Bailouts.  To Paraphrase Rick Santelli, Governor Palin are you listening?!?

Soo...I go out tonight to a local bar.  I have several drinks and I'm having a good time.  The drinks are reasonably priced.

Out of nowhere, I notice a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 sitting on the shelf.

Keep in mind: I haven't paid more than $1.50 for any drink to this point.

I ask the bartender: "How much for a shot of Wild Turkey 101?"

Bartender: "$4.50"

Cahnman: "Eh, no thanks."

All of a sudden, the thought hits me: I would TOTALLY buy that shot (and probably still be at the bar instead of coming home and blogging this incident) if they were charging $2.50.

Then it hits me: Supply side economics has repercussions in daily (microeconomic) life.

For those of you who went to public school, let me explain: Price Signals REALLY matter!!!

Given the price of the Wild Turkey 101 shot(s), I chose to come home and blog about the fact that Wild Turkey 101 shots are prohibitively expensive instead of staying at the bar and drinking Wild Turkey 101.

The bar had the opportunity to, quite literally, take another thirty dollars of my money had they NOT overcharged for Wild Turkey 101.  Instead, I'm back home blogging about supply-side (micro)economic incentives.

What does this mean for national economic policy?  It means we should make good things (like Wild Turkey shots) as cheap as possible.

In the words of Rick Santelli: "President Obama, ARE YOU LISTENING?!?"

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

I front-paged Rick Moran's last post not because I agreed with it entirely, but because he raises a very important point about the two-edged sword that is populism. Yes, virtually every successful political movement has used it to turn itself around and reclaim power. But it alone was not enough to get it to the mountaintop. The Rick Santelli rant is a necessary and vital part of what the GOP needs to stand for in the coming months -- giving voice to honest, middle class Americans who, in Bill Clinton's parlance, "worked hard and played by the rules" only to get saddled with the bill for those who didn't. But there's a downside if this card gets overplayed, Rick argues: 

Tapping in to the rage of taxpayers by exploiting their fears then, would almost certainly result in unanticipated problems for the GOP. But beyond that, is this the way the Republicans wish to return to power? The Rovian strategy of using wedge issues to cleave the electorate over gay marriage, abortion, and other social issues got Republicans elected but also sowed the seeds of their own destruction. By the time 2008 rolled around, those wedge issues had lost their potency and there was ample evidence of a backlash by center-right and center-left moderates against the GOP and their perceived intolerance. It was Obama who exploited this backlash by promising to govern based on not what divides us but by what unites us. His “post partisan” message – a campaign gimmick we know now – resonated powerfully with the center who had tired of the back biting and poisonous partisan atmosphere in Washington and longed for “change.”

Rick's prescription is as follows: 

The Republicans can reclaim the “feel-good” mantle by appealing to one of America’s greatest strengths; the ability of our citizens to look to the future with hope. Obama played to that strength during the campaign and is now abandoning it in favor of fear mongering. It’s s delicious political opening that the GOP ignores to its detriment.

I am very sympathetic to this, but we need to remember that political recoveries happen in stages. Barack Obama could not articulate a message of change and hope without the electorate first buying into the notion that Bush had failed. Before 2008 there was 2006, when we lost Congress? Can anyone remember the positive Democratic message in that campaign? There wasn't any. It was pure BDS. Thus, Obama could afford to run on a hopeful message because the Democrats' negative message message was already ingrained in the mind of the American electorate. 

This was the way back for Reagan. By 1980 Americans were fed up with Carter and clientilistic liberalism. And though Reagan had some great oppositionist lines ("Are you better off than you were four years ago?") the fundamental takeaway from his 1980 campaign was one of optimism and restoring America to greatness. 

Every significant party changing Presidential election in the last generation has featured an eventual winner who was less negative than he could have been -- precisely because the negative message had so permeated the electorate that they could afford to be.

Forget Mark Kirk.  Forget Pete Roskam.  Forget Mike Ditka.  Rick Santelli of CNBC is the best candidate we can possibly field for the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

Here's Why.

Update: Apparently, KLo beat me to the punch.  I guess great minds think alike!