All of us at this blog have shared thoughts and facts similar to those in Bill Whittle’s latest video.  It’s hard, though, to imagine anyone putting them together as well, as cogently, and with such elegant brevity, as Whittle himself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Obama administration is headed for a big showdown with judicial accountability next year. Let’s look at the dance list thus far:

1. The “Fast and Furious” gunwalker scandal, involving potential collusion from the top of our government to funnel automatic weapons and explosives to drug cartels operating within and actively undermining a friendly government. Democrats lied, people died.

2. Solyndra: potential crony capitalism whereby more-than half a billion dollars of public monies disappeared and remain unaccounted for within a private company, actively supported by Obama administration officials, that went bankrupt. Who benefited? Where did that money go?

3. Lightsquared: a privately held company in which the President of the United States was a shareholder, that potentially benefited from tainted government testimony to implement a technology that may have put our defense systems at great risk.

Something tells me there will be other scandals to surface as well.

Put it all together and the Obama Administration may find itself in a maelstrom next year… just before election time.

As even major media outlets are acknowledging, this reeks of crony capitalism and the “Chicago Way”. Unfortunately, I fear that the details will go over the heads of most Americans, many of whom would prefer to avoid the facts altogether and worry about their personal economic lives.

Here’s my dilemma: if real crimes were committed, there has to be accountability. If not, crony capitalism and 3rd world corruption will become the new norm and, as Bookworm pointed out, we will inevitably evolve into a fascist state. However, to have accountability, we would need impeachment hearings to get out the truth.

The atmospherics for this would be terrible.

I suspect that most Americans are still emotionally and mentally exhausted from the Clinton impeachment hearings. Now, in the midst of a depression (let’s not kid ourselves otherwise) and a world spiraling into a new round of economic disasters and global conflicts, the American electorate would again be subjected to the divisive, gut-wrenching politics of impeachment hearings involving America’s first black president and attorney general.

Whether or not the Obama administration skates or we engage in impeachment hearings, I see either scenario as lose-lose-lose: for the Democrats, for the Republicans and for the country. We would end up at each others throats and it could tear our country apart.

Does anyone else see it differently? If so, please enlighten me, because I find this prospect to be so very depressing…either way.

By now you’ve heard that the President, who’s been sitting on his jobs speech for days, if not weeks (or maybe years), has suddenly announced that he’s going to give it on the same night as a Republican presidential candidate debate that’s been schedule for months.  It’s a tacky gesture, at best (and at worst, come to think of it).  To the extent that Obama wants to address Congress, many are advising Boehner to say, “Sorry, no can do.  Save it for another night.”

Anchoress has a better idea:  given that the President’s speeches haven’t been very inspiring of late, delay the debate for an hour or two, so that it falls immediately after the President’s inevitably divisive, soporific and platitudinous speech.

I think Boehner should say, “by all means, Mr. President; we’re so anxious to hear your jobs plan that we’ll be glad to put off our debate by a few hours. Our candidates should have a chance to hear your ideas, so they can include them within the context of their own ideas about job creation. We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate our stark distinctions.”

That sort of response disarms Obama, who then won’t be able to crow “they don’t care about jobs” and it arms the debate participants, who will be able to go into their debate with Obama’s plans ripe for deconstruction.

This would be an especially good tactic for Perry and Bachmann, both of whom are dynamic speakers.  It will also be good for Romney who, tho’ not dynamic, can speak about economic issues with tremendous authority.  Obama will come off looking not only petty, divisive, soporific and platitudinous, he’ll also look ill-informed, unimaginative and, basically, small.  (I do love my adjectives.)

Ace has an equally good idea, which is to have Boehner say, essentially, “If this is such an important issue, Mr. President, don’t wait.  Give us your speech immediately!”

The one thing the Republicans shouldn’t do is play this squirrely game by Obama’s rules.  As Anchoress says, rightly, “What the GOP needs to remember is that the Democrats no longer govern; they just maneuver, and they do it brilliantly. The GOP needs to learn how to do it.”

Really, when you think about it, it’s kind of a shame that my favorite pundits aren’t Republican tactical advisers.  We can only hope that the Republicans are paying attention to them, even if they’re not paying them for their advice.

Ace has an excellent post up today about the way in which the media invariably frames Democratic and Republican victories:  when Democrats win, Americans are intelligently embracing the Democrat agenda; when Republicans win, Americans are acting irrationally, operating from fear, or failing to understand the virtues of the Democrat agenda.  As Ace says:

I’d be curious to ask a media type — put Anderson Cooper on the spot, say — if he could name a single election in which Republicans won in which he’d say the public embraced Republican policies, and weren’t simply reacting emotionally to a “flawed Democratic candidate” (Kerry, Gore) or a “poor messaging campaign” (the 2010 midterms) or having “a temper tantrum” (the 1994 Republican capture of Congress).

I don’t think they’d confess that even with Reagan, who is long dead and therefore safe for the Democrats to praise. But the media would say the public was simply reacting to the poor economic and foreign policy record of Jimmy Carter, rather than affirmatively choosing the Reaganite policy prescriptions.

Think about it:  in Media Land, it is impossible for a Republican victory to be the product of a principled ideological stand.  Republicans never win.  It’s simply that, sometimes, Democrats lose.  The default setting in Media Land is a Democrat victory.

I actually know a lot about what I call “negative decision making,” since it’s how I ended up becoming a lawyer.  Growing up, I always knew that I was going to get a PhD in history.  My tenure at Berkeley changed that certainty, for several reasons.  First, with a few rare exceptions, the history professors at Berkeley were so dreadful, I simply couldn’t see any virtue in making a history professorship a career goal.  Second, having hated my years at Berkeley, the thought of seven more years in academia left me cold.  Third, in my senior year at Berkeley, rumor had it that there were only four openings for college level history professors in the entire United States.  Paying to study for seven more years, merely so I could end up unemployed, seemed like a pretty poor bargain to me.  I decided then and there to keep history as my hobby (which I’ve done, with pleasure), and cast about for something else to do with my life.

This is where I began the negative decision making.  Having no idea what to do with myself, since the loss of my lifelong dream created a large vacuum in my head, I promptly entered into a passive-aggressive decision-making strategy.  I signed up for a Stanley Kaplan LSAT course.  Understand, though, that while this seems like an affirmative act, I wasn’t actually planning at that time to take the LSAT.  My thinking, instead, went along these lines:  “If I enjoy the LSAT class, maybe I’ll take the test.”

As it happened, I enjoyed the Kaplan class a great deal, as I learned all sorts of interesting test-taking techniques.  So, I signed up for the LSAT itself.  I didn’t have any plans for law school.  Instead, I said to myself, “I’ll take the LSAT test and, maybe, if I do well, I’ll apply to law school.”

Having learned all those cool techniques at Stanley Kaplan, I did very well on my LSATs.  By this time, I was well along the law path, despite the fact that I hadn’t yet decided I wanted to go to law school or be a lawyer.

As you can guess, after the LSATs, my next step was, “I guess I’ll apply to law school.  If I get in, maybe I’ll go.”  I ended up getting accepted to several law schools, most of which I couldn’t afford.  Fortunately, I had the good sense to choose The University of Texas at Austin, which I could afford, and which was a delightful place to be a law student.

I spent the next three years partying, studying, and promising myself that, if I graduated, I’d think about getting a job as a lawyer.  By this time, of course, the career tide was inexorable.  I eventually spent the first four years after my graduation working, quite unhappily, for a couple of prestigious law firms.  Only when I’d reach the nadir of professional misery did I finally take an affirmative stance:  I went into business for myself.  No money, but I’d finally found my way and worked very happily for more two decades.

The point behind my long autobiographical narrative is that I really understand passive, negative decision-making — and I can say with some assurance that this is not what voters routinely do.  Certainly there is a craving for something new (or, more accurately, a desire to escape from the old) every four years, and even more strongly every eight years.  For the most part, though, voters are actively heading towards something.  Having tried Carter-esque malaise and high taxes, they affirmatively seek out Reagan joie de vivre and lower taxes.  Eight years of Clintonesque corruption resulted, not a in a running away from Clinton, but in a running towards the wholesome George Bush.  In 2010, voters weren’t just repulsed by the Democrat spending spree, they were actively seeking politicians who promised to close the checkbook and hide the pen.

My hope — although the American voters have been erratic of late — is that, in 2012, voters, having tired of Obama’s and the Democrats’ profligacy, whining, national security weakness, etc., will not only reject them, but will embrace strong Republican/conservative candidates.  This will not be passive.  Passive behavior would see voters sitting out the election entirely or throwing away votes on useless third party candidates.  2012 will be active:  having learned a very painful lesson since 2006, when the Democrats took over Congress, voters will be ready to embrace, enthusiastically and intelligently, the Republican alternative.  (And don’t tell me this is a pipe dream.  I need my dreams.)

As the primary season heats up, here’s a good question to ask:  If we want to end the primary season with a viable political candidate to face off against Barack Obama, are there limits limits to the nature of the attacks that bloggers launch against the Republican candidates during this primary season?

My take is that it is very important for us to learn as many facts as possible about the candidates, whether we’re learning good things or bad.  However, I’m not yet ready to leap up and castigate any candidate as the devil incarnate.  (Even Ron Paul, whom I would not like to see win, can be challenged through facts, not hyperbolic insults.)

As we learned in 2008, there are no perfect Republican candidates.  Unfortunately, the other lesson we’ve learned in the last 2.5 years is that Obama is a perfectly scary Democrat president/candidate.  This means that, when the Republican primary ends, we need the last Republican candidate still standing to have the strength to face off against Obama.  If we inflict too many wounds against our own people, the primary winner may be so weakened, s/he cannot win the final, presidential battle.  Further, if s/he’s bleeding badly from the ideological wounds we inflict, Independents will shy away, as they will almost certainly be incapable of discerning between the wounds inflicted during internecine conflict from the type of fatal flaws that spell death at the presidential polls.

As of today, I can easily say yucky things about every one of the Republicans now seeking office (especially Ron Paul):

(1) Michele Bachmann has no more executive experience than Obama did at this stage in the game, and we all rightly predicted that he was grossly unprepared for high executive office;

(2) Paul Ryan, should he weigh in, will also lack that experience, plus he’s got a geeky quality that might not play well in the media;

(3) Mitt Romney has the RomneyCare albatross and all the charm (and good looks) of a Ken doll;

(4) Ron Paul takes libertarianism to an inhuman extreme that includes jettisoning the nation of Israel and supporting Iran’s quest for nuclear arms;

(5) Rick Perry tried to strong-arm Gardasil, whether because of fear of cancer, ties with Merck, power lust, or something else, plus he’s kind of smarmy;

(6) Chris Christie, should he weigh in, has sharia ties, offends people with his outspokeness, and will have to fight the fat-taboo that governs in America.

And on and on and on.  (Please note that, with the exception of Ron Paul, who seriously rubs me the wrong way, I can just as easily say a whole lot of good things about the candidates and potential candidates listed above.)

The fact is, nobody makes it very far in political office without chutzpah, arrogance, a touch of insanity, and a whole lot of compromising.  The only people who don’t make mistakes are those who don’t do anything at all.  Being an inert lump doesn’t get one far, especially politically.

My current candidate of choice is the William Buckley candidate — the one who can win.  There is no Churchill on the horizon and even Churchill, a politician I admire with something approaching ferocity, had his disastrous qualities and made horrible decisions that resulted in uncounted deaths.  He was, nevertheless, a leader, and his core values were the right ones, especially during a time when those values were so desperately important to the survival of the Western world.

Let’s definitely get all the facts on the table.  Good, bad, in-between, whatever.  If you have opinions, by all means advance them.  But sheath the long knives.  The last candidate standing has to be in sufficiently good health to take on a sitting president with a war chest that’s reached historic proportions.  Too much blood-letting in the lead-up to the big campaign will leave him (or her) supine and helpless.  (Not to mention that the MSM will happily recycle, only with longer knives, the worst arguments made against the Republican who makes it through the primary gauntlet.)

Having blathered on here, let me say something about conservatives in the main:  As the cheerful, neat, polite Tea Party rallies showed, ours is a surprisingly congenial political party.  While we may disagree with each other, we do so with civility and respect.  Our core values revolve around personal integrity and love for country.  Debate enriches, rather than demeans.  It is within that spirit that conservatives should be analyzing, challenging and supporting the Republican candidates.  If we bring out the long knives now, we run the risk of presenting the nation with a bleeding carcass as the official Republican candidate.

UPDATE:  Rob Miller, at JoshuaPundit, expands on my point.  As always, when I read something I writes, I smack my forehead and think “I wish I’d said that.”

UPDATE II:  The Razor weighs in too.  He opens with the excellent point that we’d better get everything out on the table now, before the MSM does it for us.  I agree with that entirely.  My only suggestion is that our tone should be one of inquiry, not one of long-knives attack.

Stephen Hayward advances a solid argument that Romney has the lock on the nomination.  As I read it, the core of is argument is that Romney is the seasoned Republican campaigner, whose weaknesses have already been thoroughly exposed by a hostile media.  Perry still has ahead, as Hayward says, a comprehensive and public proctological exam.  This will come from both the Left and the Right.  Pamela Geller is already raising a problematic challenge to Perry based upon his being too chummy with sharia.

As you may remember, during the last election, Romney was my candidate of choice at this blog.  The error of Romneycare notwithstanding, I thought he was the best candidate in the pack.  He may still be the best candidate in this pack.  The problem, though, is that all the drilling and training in the world hasn’t made him anything but a boring stump speaker.  He also has the RomneyCare albatross hanging around his neck.  That was a problem in 2008, before ObamaCare.  It’s a disaster in 2011/2012 after ObamaCare.  Lastly, Romney has also been out of the governance loop for quite a while now, which doesn’t give voters any idea about how he’d deal with the present crises.

Perry is, in many ways, Romney’s opposite.  He is a galvanizing speaker who says all the right things.  Subject to a few hiccups, his governing style is small government.  It’s impossible for to imagine Perry advancing “PerryCare.”  And finally, Perry has the Texas economy at his back.  It’s easy to say that, after eight years of Bush, voters don’t want another Texan, but the fact is that Texas’ economic record is overwhelmingly strong in a time when our nation and our other states our bleeding heavily.

Ultimately, Perry’s speech-making skills, his small government approach, and his state’s economic success will probably wipe out Romney’s crown prince advantage.  I say this without regard to either candidate’s actual merits.  In this peculiar election year, practical virtues and political dues paying aside, Perry’s going to have the edge.

By the way, have you noticed that the three who have become the instant Republican frontrunners are all extremely good looking people?  The same media that swooned about the jug-eared Obama’s effeminate moobs (I think they called them pecs) isn’t going to mention this fact, of course, but voters may have a subliminal response to how good any one of these three will look at the first post-election G-8 summit.

UPDATE:  JJ’s on the money when he comments that Bachmann has one big problem — inexperience.  James Taranto makes the same point, one with which I wholeheartedly agree:

The most obvious parallel is in the quantity and quality of their political experience. On Election Day 2008, Obama was nearing the end of his fourth year in the U.S. Senate; 2012 will be Bachmann’s sixth year in the House. Both came to Washington after stints in their state senates, where Obama served eight years and Bachmann six. Although both quickly gained national prominence as opposition spokesmen, neither is about to be mistaken for Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of legislative acumen or accomplishment.

During the 2008 election, much was made of Palin’s inexperience, with the logical counter being that she was running for Vice President, not President.  Here, though, Bachmann is aiming for the top position and, while her values are better than Obama’s, and I think she’s smarter, she is every bit as inexperienced as he is when it comes to the ins and outs of managing a vast government enterprise.

I mentioned last week that House Republicans, in an effort to use social networking better, are running a competition that sees members compete to optimize various social networking media.  My long-time blogfriend Lorie Byrd worked to help Renee Ellmers, a true Tea Partier, get elected, is now working to help her in this contest.

I recognize that this contest has nothing to do with the substantive issues plaguing America and Congress, but there is virtue to having Republicans better able to reach out to voters through new media.  Direct contact with the American voters is just one more way Republican politicians and candidates can by-pass the hostile, old drive-by media.

If you have a Twitter account and would like to help Ellmers, all you need to do is “follow” her here.  She’s currently competing against someone who has almost 5 times as many followers as she does before the contest has even begun, so it would be a fun underdog moment if she could win.

The GOP has recognized that, as much as anything, the next election starts on the new media.  In order to get House GOP members on board with new media, they’ve instituted a contest by which GOP representatives compete for the most YouTube links, twitter friends, etc.  In other words, to win the contest, GOP reps have to get their assistants, employees, friends and followers focused on new media.

My friend Lorie Byrd has worked with Renee Ellmers since the very beginning, so I’m going to ask to check out Renee’s YouTube page.  But really, check out any Rep you want.  The whole point is to facilitate an exciting new media that might get the Grand Old Party back into power.

There’s a fiery debate over whether Republicans won or lost the budget round over discretionary spending.  Good examples of the pros and cons on that debate are Peter Wehner (Boehner did great) and Dick Morris (Boehner was a spaghetti-spined disaster).

What do you think?

Democrats are the friends of big business, Conservatives are the friends of small business. Democrat government inevitably ratchets its way to corruptocracy.

If you don’t agree with this, can we at least agree that Democrats favor highly regulated economies and societies and conservatives don’t?

Let me explain with two examples.

1) The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about how the EPA has decided that milk, because it contains 4% butterfat, should be regulated under the same environmental control standards as petroleum. Consequently, dairy farmers will have to file Federally approve emergency plans on how to deal with “oil spills” and such. Large dairies (some dairies in California milk 10,000 or more cows at a time) will probably be able to comply. Small dairies (goat and sheep milk farms, Vermont dairy producers etc. ) are just out of luck. I happen to know something about the dairy industry – it’s a highly politicized, highly subsidized industry that operates on very thin margins. I’m sure that they will come to an accommodation with the EPA and Federal Government…at a very steep price, politically and $-wise!

2) As it becomes increasingly clear the degree to which Obama Care really is a pig-in-a-poke, there is frantic activity to opt out of it. The numbers of entities that have received waivers from ObamaCare (other than Congress) magically rose from about 200 to 700+ immediately after the SOTU speech. Those entities are large companies and unions on the inside track. The way you get a waiver is to have a lobbyist obtain it on your behalf. Money exchanges hands. Large companies can afford this, small companies…out of luck! If ObamaCare is so great, why the rush by Congress, favored businesses and union to obtain waivers?

Increased regulation is inversely proportional to lobbying activity. The less regulation there is, the less the need to influence government. The more regulation, the more the need to petition the royal aristocracy at a heavy price. The need to petition our government for redress under regulations fostered by our government is a corrupting influence. If you lack influence and can’t make payment, you are out of the equation. Here in Chicagoland, we know all about this. Here is what happens:

Society sediments into three classes: a) an aristocratic Democrat nomenklatura that controls the regulatory and judiciary structures of society; b) a wealthy, economic class that can afford to exchange favors for regulatory exemptions and waivers…at a price; c) a lumpen proletariat, outside of the power structures, imprisoned into forced into regulatory straight-jackets (taxable prey…if you will) that they will never be able to escape unless willing to surrender at the price of their souls. It is this last class that pays the bills for the others. This isn’t new…despite its “progressive” tag, it’s a regression to 19th Century economic “shakedown” realities.

My entire career, I have been a champion of entrepreneurs and small companies. They are vital to our society and economy, as innovators, risk-takers and employers. I would hate to see this glorious period end as we slouch toward third-world corruptocracy.

I know that Democrats mouth have historically mouthed platitudes about looking after the “little guy”. I would like to think that only the truly moronic and armchair philosophers walled into their temples of abstract theory can fail to see how Orwellian and corrupting these platitudes are.

Have we as a nation arrived at a point where we can stop this from happening or is it inevitable? A Jewish relative once remarked that no Jew sleeps without two shoes under his bed stuffed with a roll of cash, in case of a quick getaway. I am starting to understand his point.