The Economic Nationalist

Barack Obama and his motley Congressional Democratic majority of resentful nonwhite ethnics and graying, 1968-style liberals have met such political troubles as few Republicans would have dreamed one year ago, though the Economic Nationalist is pleased not to be surprised. Events are now in the saddle, so to speak, as foretold here. The horse has the bit in its teeth.

Joe Guzzardi said from the start that the 111th Congress would never be able to pass a major immigration amnesty. Mr. Guzzardi’s forecast looks righter and righter. If so, this is very good news.

Things are looking up. Rested and tanned after a blessedly enforced political vacation, the Republican party is back in a semblance of fighting trim, and its members in Congress, though not yet exactly receptive to a Buchananite, neoconservative, alternative Right world view, do seem less actively hostile to such a world view than in recent memory. This is especially true of younger members who, though variously flawed, represent a significant improvement over the older generation of Republican Congressmen they will gradually supplant. The bad news is that, though the Republican party is better, the Democratic is much worse, whereas our Republic is safe when she enjoys two good, patriotic national parties. One such party however is preferable to none.

(There remain those conservatives, among them friends of this blog, who believe that even the Republican party is good for nothing. I have already explained how strongly I feel that their belief stands on a fundamental misconception of the kind of thing a national party is but, for readers new to the Economic Nationalist, consider: a good dog barks at visitors after nightfall, runs on and tears up the lawn, and slobbers on its water dish, even when such caninity is inconvenient to the dog’s master. A good dog behaves as a dog, just as a good national party behaves as a national party. It is no use to wish a national party to be something it was never meant to be, something no national party ever has been; and it is even less use to compare a national party, by its very nature a power-seeking coalition of significantly divergent interests, against a boutique party like the Constitution party which, though honorable and worthy of respect, simply is not the same kind of thing a national party is. A survey of the center-right national parties of the Western world reveals how fundamentally sound, how relatively good our Republican party truly is, now that Republicans are rid of the bad leadership of George W. Bush and John McCain. That political parties in a democratic republic are, by their very nature, generally somewhat wretched hardly indicts America’s specific, fairly excellent Republican party. It tends to indict the very principle of democracy, rather—a principle the United States, being what they are, probably cannot escape. We work with what we have. But I digress.)

What nervous Republicans misunderstood in 2008, and indeed what this writer misunderstood as recently as 2004, was that the only way out was through, so to speak. The Republican revolution of 1994 having failed, Democrats were bound to get their shot at mismanaging the Republic. Democratic mismanagement is bad for the United States, of course, but if inevitable then sooner was better than later. Either John Kerry or Barack Obama would have sufficed to lead the inevitable Democratic mismanagement, putting an end to the all-too evitable Republican mismanagement under the well meaning but inflexible, incompetent George W. Bush. The only way out was through.

The real danger is that, when we Republicans return a Republican to the White House, we might choose the wrong Republican again. Traditional America might not survive another such mistake; we have run out of room for error. Fortunately, the clearly leading Republicans, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (and even Sarah Palin if you like) are each much preferable to any candidate the party has nominated to the presidency since Reagan. A return to Reagan would be ideal, but Reagan is dead, Romney is rock-solid (I should explain why in a later article) and Huckabee, though sometimes worrisome, is at least an intelligent, perceptive man who actually grasps the issue of economic nationalism. We stand well going into 2010 and 2012. And, indeed, who would have thought it? The year 2010 has arrived already.

In the meantime, given the sorry circumstance of 2008, the Obama administration is working out beautifully thus far for American patriots, better than even this writer had hoped. The danger was that Mr. Obama would swamp us with an immigration amnesty but he seems barely interested in immigration. Mr. Obama seems interested rather in doing every other stupid political thing he can think of to do. How he and his Democrats have turned the health-care issue, a sure winner for 2009 Democrats, into a political loser will remain a textbook-example of political incompetence for years to come, but turn it into a loser they seem indeed to have done.

Ironically, voters seem inclined to punish rather than to reward Mr. Obama even for the one important thing he has done right, namely, to save General Motors. Remarkably few Republicans seem to grasp the fundamental importance of having saved General Motors, which is why when their party returns to power it will, obliviously, do the right thing at the right time for entirely the wrong reason: it will privatize General Motors again, and America will be strong back in the auto business.

There is still a God in heaven Who blesseth the United States of America, undeserving though they have become. The signs are there to see for those who will. The story of America is not over, yet.

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Few readers will wonder why the Economic Nationalist has published little lately, but a brief account might be given those few. There are at least three reasons for the relative quiet. First, the Economic Nationalist’s eponymous issue, economic nationalism, has slumbered; the issue will stir again, but maybe not this year. Second, national media now echo themes the Economic Nationalist discovered a year or two ago: it seems thus unnecessary to belabor such themes at the moment. Third, the major issue of the moment, Democratic health-care reform, is a subject of broad, vigorous debate across the news media, a debate to which I lack the knowledge meaningfully to add, except to state that I am fairly persuaded by that which has become the conventional Republican position on the issue. When events provoke it, the Economic Nationalist will wake again.

In the meantime, for something completely different but maybe of even deeper importance in the long term, I have turned to writing a slow article or two on Aristotle. If I can only work the article or articles into pleasing forms it or they should prove edifying, but the articles’ publication lies days, weeks or months away, if indeed ever. We shall see.

More later.

HJH

Events proceed almost too regularly to be believed. Pat Buchanan writes,

By misinterpreting his mandate, [Barack] Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not—unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party—that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.

Mr. Buchanan correctly perceives what the Economic Nationalist forecast four months earlier, that the principal obstacle to Republican coherence had been dogged, misplaced party loyalty to unworthy leaders George W. Bush and John McCain, that the Republican party badly needed a spell in opposition to rest and refit.

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Strapped in, Barack Obama at the wheel, you and I are in for a wild ride, aren’t we? This ride is going to knock us about a bit but, in the end, we will come out all right.

The mistake Mr. Obama and his allies have made was in failing to let John McCain, like Herbert Hoover, idle the car of state four more years at the filling station. Only four more years: then they just might have had enough political fuel to drive us all full speed together up the mountain and over the cliff. As it is, they could not wait, and Mr. Obama has taken the wheel and pulled too soon out of the station. This car’s half-filled tank is consequently destined to run dry, leaving Mr. Obama to walk the last mile to the cliff alone in his own shoes.

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