Pundits are busily grinding axes today on the stone of yesterday’s off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey and upstate New York. Pundits always do. The reader can decide whether the following interpretation too grinds an axe.
A large fraction of Republicans in the commentariat are letting their despair at having lost legislative and executive control to the Democrats fuel their worst fears.
Barack Obama, soon to be 44th president, has been remarkably surefooted during the present executive transition period, nor has he given us any new reason to suspect that his administration might handle its role in our economy incompetently. Politically, looking ahead, among other smooth moves, Mr. Obama subtly reminds us that the Crash of 2008 happened on George W. Bush’s watch.
Is Roland Burris of Illinois entitled to take the seat the U.S. Senate has denied him today?
The short answer is, no. For a longer answer, well, let’s untangle this.
Paul Gottfried writes,
I for one shared McCain’s relief that Obama won….
Let us be at peace. We have dodged a great disaster. John McCain has lost.
Lift your heads up, conservatives! The sun has set on a dark day. The clouds break. The stars gleam out. Barack Obama may be a wolf in the night, but, even if he is, too many of us still ring the fire. This wolf cannot well strike our camp.
We have no need now to devise intricate solutions to our nation’s problems. Let the Democrats bear that burden a while. Opposition is liberating. We can oppose.
We mean to survive. We will not let our children be dispossessed by gradual decay of demography. Surely we can unite our people, the traditional American people, behind this simple proposition.
How, exactly, do we mean to survive? Never mind that! We do not yet agree on that point. That discussion is poisonous. Worse, under the present circumstance, it is pointless. In opposition, we are not required to propose. We need only oppose.
Opposition is liberating.
Our cause is just. By standing our honest ground about our campfire, we shall compel our foes to show their bodies in the firelight, or to hang back slinking impotently in the darkness, or to confess the plain justice of our cause and to join our side.
The left have made a fateful blunder this week. They have accepted the staff of power too soon, before their numbers were adequate, before their plans were ripe. Let us not by foolish squabbling among ourselves permit them to escape the consequences of their mistake.
Make them own it. Make them rue the day.
For the day comes.
HJH
Barack Obama, the man from nowhere, has been voted and will be elected 44th president of the United States.
Mr. Obama does not merit the honor. As Americans, we wish him well nonetheless.
Wishes however are to be tempered with a sober dose of reality. Unless Mr. Obama turns out to be considerably more cautious—literally, in this context, more conservative—than we have reason to believe likely, his expanded Congressional majorities are going to get him into political trouble, fast; for, unlike Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Obama has inherited no economy robust enough to abuse in the socialist way he would like. A healthy national future simply cannot be built upon Mr. Obama’s principles. Mr. Obama and his Democrats can try. Oh, they will try. And they will fail, all too soon.
The American left have made a crucial error in 2008. They have peaked prematurely. John McCain, if elected, would very likely have played the role of a bellicose Herbert Hoover, leaving a chastened Democratic party in a far stronger, more enduring position by 2012—except that George W. Bush had bizarrely spoiled the script by preceding McCain’s Hoover by a Woodrow Wilson rather than a Calvin Coolidge. As such, Democrats have bit too early upon their chance.
Aye, those shifty Democrats: they’ve taken the bait. Now events will reel them in.
As for us Republicans, in penance may we find political grace.
Howard J. Harrison
The Economic Nationalist
So here we stand, on the verge of election again. Our badly abused yet still magnificent Constitution authorizes and condones that solemn popular act November 4 which—we have every reason to believe—will order the 43rd peaceful change of power in U.S. history.
This evening’s debate had no clear winner. John McCain said nothing especially important or memorable. For his part, Barack Obama did not even try to do so. Under the circumstance, since it is not the blog’s style to offer tactical advice to candidates, The Economic Nationalist sees little point in presuming upon the reader’s attention to remark further upon the matter. (The comment roll however is open below in case any reader should nonetheless wish to remark.)
The Economic Nationalist has been persuaded that a Barack Obama presidency would directly result in a large number of U.S. abortions that would not otherwise have occurred, and furthermore that Mr. Obama knows that it would do so. Unlike Mr. Obama’s opponent John McCain, The Economic Nationalist is not impervious to new information. It withdraws its endorsement of Mr. Obama forthwith.
Pathetically, this writer shall now vote Chuck Baldwin.
HJH