Tag Archives: political parties

Let’s Be Careful Out There

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Hillary Clinton, according to The Daily Caller, worries. The woman who just lately sat in the Secretary of State’s chair said this in response to a question about who, after herself, was the most viable woman presidential candidate of either party:

Whoever runs has to recognize that the American political system is probably the most difficult, even brutal, in the world.

The Washington Post‘s congressional reporter Ed O’Keefe had this thought about Clinton’s thought:

Would Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto agree?

And that’s just a couple of women. Does anyone thing Golda Meir had an easy time of it? Margaret Thatcher?

How about the male side of political systems: Leon Trotsky, perhaps, or Joseph Stalin after him? Or Lin Biao? Maybe Pol Pot’s nameless competitors? Is northern Korea’s political system a stroll in the park? Was eastern Germany’s? And so on.

This delicacy is resident in the woman who would sit in the President’s chair.

Hmm….

There Is No Clear Picture

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…because of two things: all politics is local (that Evil Democrat Tip O’Neill was right about that), and this is a party that actually lives its Big Tent philosophy, even if it can’t communicate worth a hoot.

The trigger for this is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R, VA) loss in Virginia’s primary last Tuesday and all the journalistic hand-wringing (in their finest Marlon Brando fashion) about the deep meaning that.

David Payne, Senior Vice President for Vox Global, a public affairs and strategic communications consulting agency, is on the right track, though:

It’s way too soon to tell. You have establishment candidates winning and Tea Party candidates winning. How do you generalize? But it seems very obvious to me that different things are happening in different places.

That different things, different places bit is the local politics bit. Keep in mind that Cantor lost because of his stance on immigration and “amnesty,” while just two states away, Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) easily won his primary after having actually voted for immigration and “amnesty.” But that’s the Big Tent bit.

Contrary to the hand-wringing, which is of little practical value beyond being a mechanism for peddling a story (another local (if only to his editor) effect), Cantor’s loss is illustrative of a great strength of the Republican Party, and a benefit to it that would seem to match, if not outweigh, the loss of Cantor’s experience and ability to talk honestly with both establishment and conservative Republicans.

Last things first: David Brat’s win, and especially if he wins again in the fall (as seems likely), is another impetus pulling the party to the right. Certainly the party can go too far, but today, despite its win in 2010 as confirmed by 2012, the party is still a bit too far to the Left.

The larger demonstration of the value of Brat’s win, though, is the Big Tent bit. One party brags about its representing the people, about its being all about democracy, but it reaches its “consensus” secretively, behind closed doors, and with the application of its famed party discipline. The Republican Party lives is democracy beliefs, its limited government beliefs, it view that Americans speak for themselves and that the Party does not speak for them. There’s room for only one kind of Democrat in the Democratic Party; there’s room for all kinds of Republicans in the Republican Party.

Oh, that limited government bit I brought up late? Refer to Speaker John Boehner’s (R, OH) style of governance of the House of Representatives. He and his fellow senior House leaders, far from being unable to impose discipline on a raucous conservative section of their House members, deliberately stepped back from that sort of leadership. They have actively sought out the opinions of the conservative members, Tea Party members, et al. as they form legislation. And they began it in 2011 with their conservative-developed policy of posting proposed legislation publicly for a period of time so that all Congressmen—especially including Democrat Congressmen—and all Americans—including Liberal Americans—could see the proposals and get onto their Representatives before the votes were cast.

There is no clear picture of the meaning of Cantor’s loss/Brat’s victory to pundits. But the meaning really is quite clear. And it’s encouraging.

“Green” Energy Loans Have Consequences

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Fisker Automotive—the US electric car company that failed to repay roughly $139 million in federal loans [out of an original loan total of $192 million] before going bankrupt—is now owned by a Chinese company eager to unleash its cut-rate acquisition on the American auto industry.

The company’s assets were acquired earlier this year by China’s biggest auto parts supplier, Wanxiang Group, for $149.2 million in a US bankruptcy auction.

And

Wanxiang acquired A123 Systems [Fisker’s battery supplier] in a 2012 bankruptcy sale, after the company failed to repay millions to the same federal loan program that helped Fisker.

And

[Wanxiang] plans to produce the vehicles in Finland

Despite that wonderful record—which includes two failures in its five loans before the program was suspended—DoE intends to restart the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program that was responsible for those losses. But it’s all good:

The department said it revised the application processes for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program to speed up reviews, and is reaching out to manufacturers of auto parts and components to participate.

Yet this will allow for even more slip-shod DoE “vetting.” And now they’re actively pushing more loans? See here for how well suited the Federal government is for managing business programs.

And never mind that the Obama administration’s DoE “green” energy loan program is such a success that that American electric car company that defaulted (some might say welched) on a DoE energy loan is now a People’s Republic of China electric car company.

Sort of like the bailout of a couple of failed American car companies was so successful that one of them is now an Italian car company.

Bergdahl and Deal Making

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Power Line‘s Paul Mirengoff made a number of points about the Obama “exchange;” I’ll add just a couple.

…President Obama was motivated less by a desire to bring back this particular prisoner than by a desire to make a deal—almost any deal—with the Taliban. Obama himself tipped his hand when, in announcing the deal, he said it could “open the door for broader discussions [with the Taliban] about the future of [Afghanistan] by building confidence.”

Mirengoff added

But who doubted that deals can be made with the Taliban? A deal can be made with anyone if it is one-sided enough.

Indeed. And after initially (or so Obama’s minions claim) holding out for a grand bargain,

A senior administration official said “we didn’t achieve as much as we would have liked, but neither [did we achieve] nothing.” Instead, “we have created precedent and a basis that might well provide an opening in the future,” he asserted.

Well, no, you didn’t. A precedent in this venue requires that both parties to agree that it is one or that one party has the power to enforce its terms in later efforts. This isn’t an American superior court where precedence has force regardless of agreement (you’d think a Constitutional scholar like our President would understand that). On the other hand, the Taliban did set a very critical precedent. They’ve demonstrated that they have the power to enforce their precedential terms onto this administration at will.

And this: only a partisan hack could think trading five four-star generals for a single sergeant is a good deal. Or a community organizer out of his depth.

An Illustration

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…of why government is unsuited to run what are essentially business operations.

Not to keep picking on Obamacare, but this program really is a poster child for why government can’t do this sort of thing. All year long, the Federal government has been trying to revamp its failed ObamaMart, euphemistically known as Healthcare.gov. Here’s the status of that effort.

  • ObamaMart still is transitioning to new government contractors to manage basic functions. This transition has been going on since the first of the year. They’re not even stable yet on what companies have been hired to do the work.
  • Some back-end functions, including a system to automate payments to insurers, are running behind schedule—still. These functions were supposed to be fully operational last October 1, at the initial deployment of ObamaMart. The revamp can’t get this right, either.
  • [N]ew versions of some functions still will need to be tested with insurers before open enrollment begins 15 Nov. Actual testing is a new wrinkle. Welcome to be sure, but even though CDS has said that ObamaMart was never seriously tested the first time, apparently CDS still is only testing some parts—spot checking.
  • [The] exchange for small businesses, delayed by technical problems last year…will “launch” without some functions.
  • [T]he system to funnel subsidy payments to plan providers for the benefit of plan purchasers (remember that back end?), originally supposed to be ready for the launch in October, then later set for completion by mid-March, is now scheduled to be fully operational in 2015—well after the enrollment period for purchasing 2015 plans has closed.

These highlights demonstrate a terrible performance, by an entity that has no concept of the cost of money and that has none of the performance incentives that a competitive environment in a free market economy provides.