Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Seduction By Subsidy
As of today, the significant contenders for the presidential nominations of their respective parties are Mrs. Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, Mitt Romney, and John McCain. All of them are unsatisfactory by your Curmudgeon's standards. All of them are devoid of principles, willing to say and do whatever they think will get them the presidency. All of them have records in office that suggest that their allegiance is to the government rather than to the people or, sad to say, the Constitution of the United States.
And one of them will be president come January 20, 2009.
On the way to the Oval Office, the eventual winner will make many promises to many groups. That's coalition politics in the 21st Century: the assembly of a 51% majority by pandering to activist groups and other sorts of identifiable voting blocs. And of course, to keep those groups behind him for his re-election run four years hence, the victor will have to deliver on some fraction of his promises...at the expense of those to whom he promised nothing,
Brace youselves, Gentle Readers. There'll be a new explosion of federal subsidies and privileges come 2009. Your pocketbook is at risk. Your freedom, too.
Your Curmudgeon doesn't have a lot to say this evening. He's massively disheartened by the failures of the Thompson and Giuliani campaigns. No one else in the race has been even approximately candid with the electorate. No one else is likely to feel any allegiance to any subset of Constitutional principles. From here to the finish line, it will be a race to the bottom: who can pander most effectively to the largest and best-heeled groups. Unions. Professional associations. Environmentalists. Single-issue associations. Chambers of commerce.
The great challenge for freedom-loving Americans in our time is as it was: to find a countermeasure to the special-interest dynamic that has destroyed limited Constitutional government and put every self-supporting, self-respecting one of us at the mercy of the activists. Your Curmudgeon has no ideas he hasn't had for a decade. The activists have grown exponentially more rapacious as time has passed, and the trend shows no sign of decelerating. We need a breakthrough, and we need it pretty damned quick.
Pray.
