Steven Hayward asks the question that inevitably follows from Obama’s Roanoke speech, at Power-Line:
So Obama thinks that everyone but the entrepreneur is responsible for his success, with his comment the other day that “If you got [sic] a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.†Good to know that the corollary must be true, namely, that if your business fails (as many small businesses do), it must be somebody else’s fault, too. Can we blame Obama and the government for that, too?
Barack Obama, in a statement to an audience in Roanoke, Virginia, gave one of the all-time classic statements of collectivist denial of individual achievement. He said: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
An English professor I know was moved to quote William Butler Yeats in response to the president.
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Judith A. Klinghoffer read a recent biography of Mitt Romney, The Real Romney, and drew the remarkable conclusion that Mitt Romney is the contemporary equivalent of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy.
I, a 2008 McCain voter, found myself in a position similar to that of Elizabeth Bennett as she was contemplating Fitzwilliam Darcy’s portrait, as a son, husband, father, friend, businessman, governor, “how many people’s happiness were in his guardianship! – How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! – How much of good or evil must be done by him!†Increasingly, I came to realize that the man not only can be trusted but that he did not have “any inappropriate pride†but just enough to make sure he achieves his goals without sacrificing his honor. As in Darcy’s case, by his deeds you shall know him.
James Piereson, in the New Criterion, argues that the era of the New Deal political coalition has finally reached its end, and a new epoch of American politics resting on entirely different bases is struggling to be born. America is ready for a new political realignment.
The conflict today between Democrats and Republicans increasingly pits public sector unions, government employees and contractors, and beneficiaries of government programs against middle-class taxpayers and business interests large and small. In states where public spending is high and public sector unions are strong, as in New York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut, Democrats have gained control; where public sector interests are weak or poorly organized, as in most of the states across the south and southwest, Republicans have the edge. This configuration, when added up across the nation, has produced a series of electoral stand-offs in recent decades between the red and blue states that have been decided by a handful of swing states moving in one direction or the other.
This impasse between the two parties signals the end game for the system of politics that originated in the 1930s and 1940s. As the “regime party,†the Democrats are in the more vulnerable position because they have built their coalition around public spending, public debt, and publicly guaranteed credit, all sources of funds that appear to be reaching their limits. The end game for the New Deal system, and for the Democrats as our “regime party,†will arrive when those limits are reached or passed.
This point will arrive fairly soon for the following reasons: (1) unsustainable debt; (2) public promises that cannot be fulfilled; (3) stagnation and slow growth; and (4) political paralysis. The last point is important because it means that the parties will fail to agree on any preemptive solutions to the above problems until they reach a point of crisis.
Poles refer to an ultra-conservative Lithuanian as an old żubr, “a bison.” This European bison would be pretty close to my idea of an ideal Romney appointee to the court.
Paul Waldman, at the (left-wing) American Prospect, says it’s time to start panicking, libs.
if there’s anything that ought to make you afraid of a Mitt Romney presidency, it’s this. First of all, if Romney wins he will be under enormous pressure to make sure that anyone he appoints will be not just conservative, but extremely conservative. Remember what happened when George W. Bush tried to appoint Harriet Miers: the right wing had a category 5 freak-out, not because they thought Miers was going to be a liberal, but because they couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure that she wouldn’t be a down-the-line Republican ideologue forever more. Unlike Romney, Bush had no particular need to prove to them that he was a real conservative, but the pressure was great enough that he eventually withdrew her nomination and nominated Samuel Alito, who was exactly what they wanted.
And that will be a shadow of the pressure exerted on a President Romney. So when he gets his chance to make an appointment, there is just no way he will do anything other than select someone pre-approved by the Republican base.
, and drew the remarkable conclusion that Mitt Romney is the contemporary equivalent of Jane Austen’s 
