On To Mordor!

The Wall Street Journal recently printed an opinion piece which was widely quoted comparing the Republican freshmen who stood against the kick-the-can approach to government spending to Hobbits on a quest to destroy Mordor…well, okay; I’ll accept that as an apt analogy and will happily embrace it.  While no one I know has been happy with what we have seen in DC these past weeks (months, years) the silver lining is that a clear choice has been presented to us for the future of the country.  First, let me identify the protagonists in the battle for the soul of the greatest country on earth.

From left to right on the political spectrum we have what I call the Uber-Progressives (UP’s), the RepubliCrats (RC’s) and the Tea Partiers (TP’s).  The vision the UP’s present to us is global socialism.  Under their America (well, let’s say america as we are greatly diminished in their vision) our courts are subservient to international courts, our government is subservient to international bodies such as the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. and nationalism is a dirty word…as is faith in God although they are making a great effort to disguise this fact. The RepubliCrats comprise the RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only) and the Blue Dogs of the Democrat party (an endangered species).  The RC’s are the business as usual kick-the-can politicians who talk out of both sides of their mouths and whose primary focus seems to be pleasing the oligarchs who finance their campaign in order to cement their re-election bids and possibly retire with a cozy lobbying position or a spot at one of the many think tanks or foundations which sprout like fungi all around our once-great nation.  The TP’s are a bit harder to pigeonhole as they are intentionally leaderless although there are plenty of folks picking up their baton and trying to jump in front of the parade.  They have no formal organization and a diverse set of objectives.  But generally their objective is smaller government, less spending and fiscal sanity.

The ultra-partisanship which has defined the debate seems to be a surprise to the pundits, which leads me to ask what planet they have been living on these past few years.  The 2010 elections did a great job of eliminating a great swath of RepubliCrats, leaving us with mostly the extremes on both sides of the aisle, setting up the situation in which we now find ourselves.  President Obama’s talking point has been that while we voted for divided government, we did not vote for dysfunctional government and while I agree with the sentiment I think this rancorous debate has at least succeeded in bringing to the attention of the American Zombies (the vast majority of the country who can tell you the name of every hunk on the Bachelorette or every Nascar driver but couldn’t pick their Senator or the Vice-President of the United States out of a line-up…where they desperately need to be imho) the dire straits the fiscal malfeasance of our so-called leaders has placed us in.  The partisan divide is largely regional with the UP’s hailing from the coasts and a few large cities here in flyover country and the TP’s pretty much everywhere else.  Our founders faced the same issue and presciently built a solution into the Constitution in the Tenth Amendment if we would only utilize it.

Of course if there were not so many obfuscations and outright lies being slung about the debate would not be quite so rancorous, but that would mean Americans would be allowed to weigh in based on facts rather than fiction. The biggest lie is that we have a deadline of August 2^nd and the world will end if they don’t ram something up our rear ends before that date as they did with TARP and the rest of the bailouts (which went a long way toward putting us where we are in the first place).  For starters, the chance of a forced default is zero.  A default is when we miss payments on a debt.  The interest on the debt is currently about 30 billion a month, while incoming revenues exceed 200 billion.  Simple math tells us that the impending default is a non-starter unless Pres. Obama and Little Timmy Geitner just choose to spitefully commit economic suicide.  On the other hand, lopping 40% of government spending overnight really would be a disaster and likely cause rioting in the streets and economic collapse as 47 million Americans didn’t receive the food stamps on which they sadly depend or all Section 8 housing payments are denied landlords, snowballing into another banking crisis.  So the TP’s are doing their fair share of deception as well. Scaring senior citizens that they may not receive their checks is possibly the most odious of the lies.  There is plenty of money in the Treasury Bills “owned by” the Social Security trust fund…the seniors checks are not dependent on borrowing money from the Chinese, the Saudi’s or Pimco and it is unconscionable for this meme to be perpetuated.  But you don’t have much success in leveling with Americans if your objective is to ram something where they don’t want it inserted…but bend over because they’ve been watching American Idol when they possibly should have been reading the Economist.

So here we are and if the Republican establishment fails in their bid to foist another RepubliCrat like McCain (or Huntsman or Romney) on us we will have a distinct choice in 2012.  Fortunately, if we choose to return to governance by virtue of a Constitutional Republic the solutions are in place…the 10^th Amendment reins in the federal government and allows regional differences to remain regional vice allowing a minority of UP’s to impose their will on an unwilling populace and possibly averting a bloody uprising which now seems we may be heading toward.  I don’t have much love for Rick Santorum but I agree with him that this is the most important election since 1860.  So let’s wake the Zombies if we can because it’s time to pay attention and make our choice with clear-eyed determination. As for me, I’m off to Mordor…we’ve a 14.3 trillion dollar ring to destroy before it destroys us all.