C-SPAN: ‘The Contenders- Ross Perot Preview’

Source:CSPAN– Political historian Carl Cannon.

“C-SPAN continues its series “The Contenders” LIVE on Friday, December 9 at 8:00 p.m. ET with Ross Perot. In this clip, Presidential Historian Richard Norton Smith, Goucher College History Professor Jean Baker and Washington Editor of Real Clear Politics Carl Cannon discuss Perot. More information on the series can be found here:CSPAN.”

From CSPAN

Ross Perot not that he ever had a real shot at being elected President of the United States, but his style of politics and what he believed in and the people he represents and spoke for, represents how Independent, Center-Right political candidates can get elected in America.

And I put Ross Perot on the Center-Right in American politics because he is a true fiscal Conservative who believes in fiscal responsibility, not running up debt and deficits, as well as being a national security, as well as deficit hawk.

Ross Perot believes in limited government and that everything that government does has to be limited to what we need it to do, not what we want it to do. And that all government including entitlement programs have to be efficient and affordable. But someone who was tolerant to moderate on social issues. Who didn’t push those issues and didn’t believe the Federal Government should be involved in them in most cases and would probably leave the states to deal with them.

Perot was sort of an Eisenhower or Ford Republican whose philosophy was based around accountability. And limiting government to doing the things that we need it to do and do those things well. Who represents roughly forty percent of the country and how people of this mindset could do well in the future especially if they put together one party that represents this whole movement.

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on WordPress.

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on Blogger.

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Reform Party USA: ‘Core Principles of the Reform Party’

Source:Reform Party USA– the official logo of RPUSA.

Source:The New Democrat

“We, the members of the Reform Party, commit ourselves to reform our political system. Together we will work to re-establish trust in our government by electing ethical officials, dedicated to fiscal responsibility and political accountability.”

From Reform Party USA

I hope the title of this post is long enough, otherwise the hell with it. But I agree with the notion of this blog post from the Reform Party that governing simply shouldn’t be about compromise. That even with a divided government with two parties that do not like each other (which is putting it very mildly) and certainly do not trust each other that both sides at the end of the business day still have a responsibility to not only govern, but to govern well.

And in divided government like today that means taking the best from both sides and putting into a package that works. And throwing out the garbage from both sides instead of just splitting the difference on each key issue. As if that is governing even when trying to go half way on each issue may not and in most cases does not result in a good end result.

There are plenty of examples going back to the early 1980s when the Federal Government became very partisan with a new Conservative President in Ronald Reagan, with a Conservative Republican Senate. To go with a Progressive Democratic House where they managed to govern very well with divided Congress’s.

It is not so much the art of the compromise that should try to be reached. But the art of the consensus. What do both sides want and on a lot of key issues both sides tend to have the same end goals. And after that has been established now where are both sides, what would each side do if they were completely in charge. In other words: what is the opening offer from both sides so we know where both side is. And after that has been established you look to the common ground.

You find that and you put that in the final package and then after that you look for victories from both sides. The good from each side and put their ideas alone on certain key issues. For example the 1996 Welfare to Work Law is a perfect example. Republicans wanted time limits and work requirements in the new Welfare system. Democrats wanted job training, education, and childcare for people on Welfare. What happened is both sides won and the final bill had job training, education, childcare, time limits and job requirements.

You take the good from both sides and throw out the things that probably wouldn’t work. Or that both sides simply can’t live with. Meaning both sides get their victories, but do not get everything they are looking for. Instead of just splitting the difference and running for the middle on the key issues. And that is how you get good government in a divided government.

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KKD: Civil Rights at The 1960 Republican National Convention

Source:KKD– President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican, Texas) at the 1960 Republican National Convention.

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on WordPress.

“Now that the 2008 Republican National Convention has concluded, I thought I would go back into my old film clips & kinescopes to give everyone a sample of what old-time politics was like 48 years ago!
The 1960 Republican National Convention was held from July 25 – 28th, 1960 in Chicago, IL at the International Ampitheatre. Vice President Richard Nixon nearly had the nomination sewed up but he still had two contenders: NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Civil Rights was in the forefront and Rev Martin Luther King was in Chicago for the event. We also briefly see former President Herbert Hoover as he addresses the Convention. (An expanded view of his comments is seen in an earlier upload of mine.)
As the Convention continues, we’ll see Gov. Rockefeller withdraw from the race and into Day Three with an address from the President, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Part Two is posted which contains a statement by Barry Goldwater and finally Richard Nixon as he accepts the nomination.
July 1960”

Source:KKD

Nelson Rockefeller, was a politician without a national political party in the 1960s and 70s, because he was an Right-Progressive (Center-Right Progressive) in a party that was moving right on economic policy. And Republicans were moving far away from progressive programs. Especially ones that were centralized at the Federal level. And we’re looking for politicians that were in favor shrinking the Federal Government and decentralizing power at the Federal level and giving more power to the states and individuals.

Nelson, was essentially a Theodore Roosevelt Progressive Republican, but who was also a Federalist and someone who believed in public infrastructure, public education, aid to the poor, but who was also a Federalist and wanted these social investments run at the state and local levels. Who was also a big believer in a strong defense and law enforcement and tough law enforcement, as well as equal rights.

Nelson was Progressive on economic policy and equal rights and even national defense. Who was able to win as a Republican, because he was a Northeastern Republican that had a strong Progressive faction, even into the 1960s.

And this debate or discussion about civil rights in the Republican Party in 1960s, is the perfect example of what type of party they were back then. You had the Progressive-Federalists, led by Nelson and others, but you also had a growing Conservative-Libertarian wing, led by Senator Barry Goldwater and other Republicans in Congress. That were strong economic Conservatives and didn’t want big government in people’s personal lives either. But we’re such believers in property rights that they believed that individuals had the right to deny service people even based on race. And Vice President Richard Nixon, trying to please both factions.

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President Ronald Reagan: On Taxes, Spending & Debt

Source:Ronald Reagan Foundation– President Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, California) 1981-89

Ronald Reagan: “The problem isn’t that the people are taxed too little, the government spends too much.”

I wish that President Reagan had taken his own advice as President. And maybe he wouldn’t have run the debt so high with his supply side, borrow and spend, defense buildup at all costs, except for paying for it. Except other then borrowing money from other countries to pay for it.

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Larry King: U.S. Representative Ron Paul- ‘Can A Modern Day Ross Perot Win The White House?’

Source:Larry King– former U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas) talking to longtime talk show host Larry King.

“Will voter frustration with ‘party politics’ create a wave of support for a modern day Ross Perot? Former presidential candidate Ron Paul tells Larry why it’s so difficult for a third party to succeed.”

From Larry King

I think the main reason why Independent presidential campaigns have failed and have barely won even on state when they’ve run, even the well-funded candidates like Ross Perot in 1992 and 96, or John Anderson in 1992, has to do with party infrastructure. And in the Independents case of even the Reform Party’s case, no party infrastructure.

If you are raising money not just to keep your national presidential campaign going, but money to get ballot access or get in TV debates or just to get on TV, you are digging yourself a bigger hole anytime you try to do anything. The main advantage that the Democrats and Republicans have over even the Center-Right Independents like the Ross Perot’s, has to do with party infrastructure.

The Democrats and Republicans are already on every ballot that they run for office for. Unlike the third-party candidates whether they’re Far-Left like with the Green Party or Libertarian-Right with the Libertarian Party or Center-Right like with the Reform Party candidates, who are not just struggling to keep their campaigns going and stay in business, but then have to raise a lot more money just to try to get ballot access or get into the debates or get on TV at all.

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Senator Rand Paul: ‘Foreign Relations Hearing on The Crisis in Egypt’

Source:Senator Rand Paul– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) at the Foreign Relations Committee.

“Sen. Rand Paul at Foreign Relations Hearing on the Crisis in Egypt – 7/25/13”

From Senator Rand Paul

At risk of being in need of a head examination (as early as tomorrow) I completely agree with everything that Senator Rand Paul said here about Egypt and our giving foreign aid to authoritarian regimes and dictators.

I have a theory that it’s not the individual freedom that Arabs and Middle Easterners, including in Egypt hate about America, including the freedom that our women and minorities have here, but it’s the fact that we literally subsidize with American tax dollars the dictators in those countries.

I’m not saying your average Egyptian and anyone else in Arabia is a freedom-loving person, because I don’t think we can know that. And I know the counter-argument from the other side from internationalists and hawks arguing that if we don’t subsidize these dictators, those regimes will fall because they won’t have the money and other resources to stay in power because they’re unpopular and will be replaced by a regime that’s even worst and less cooperative with America and would subsidize terrorists that want to hit America.

But the reason why we get the terrorism that we do, is American taxpayers by force from their government, subsidize these unpopular Arab dictators and their regimes. So how does that make us safer?

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Glenn Hubbard: ‘Top Romney Adviser Calls for Third Party’

Source:Glenn Hubbard– is a Republican economic and political advisor.

“Buried deep inside “Balance,” his illuminating new book on the history of the decline of great powers, Glenn Hubbard, Mitt Romney’s top economic adviser and the dean of Columbia Business School, says we need a third political party to shake things up and get the debate the country needs.
I wish I could say Hubbard is a tortured soul driven by Romney’s disappointing campaign to seek a better way. That would be a dramatic story, but it’s not true. Hubbard is loyal to Romney and proud of many of the campaigns’s proposals. The soft-spoken dean is more green eyeshades than bomb-thrower. But Hubbard is also convinced that the two party “duopoly” is failing the country. Sometimes our subversives show up in shades of gray.

Hubbard’s and co-author Tim Kane’s book is a chronicle of the institutional and political stagnation that has led great polities from ancient Rome to contemporary California to squander their position and eventually fall. But tucked away amid these historical case studies is a surprisingly fresh vision from a top Romney insider as to what’s needed to spare the United States the same fate.

For starters, Hubbard thinks the difference between our political parties is exaggerated, saying “the contrast is cartoonish.” He and Kane continue:

“Most liberals recognize the vitality of the private sector, not the state, as the foundation of prosperity. And most conservatives believe in the modern federal role in our economy — for the central bank’s authority, for programs that fight poverty at the federal level, for national security, and even for social security . . . The budget proposal crafted by . . . Romney . . . envisions a federal level of expenditures equal to one-fifth of gross domestic product. That spending level is not far away from the level under President Obama of one-fourth of GDP.” (Italics mine).”

From Glenn Hubbard 

If you look at the Republican Party pre-1980 or so, it was not just the Center-Right party in America, but perhaps the biggest and most important Center-Right political party anywhere in the developed world, or at least western world. It was a Center-Right conservative party, with a Center-Right progressive faction in it with people like Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, Richard Nixon, and yes George H.W. Bush. Progressive Republicans were the left-wing of the Republican Party, but to the right of most Democrats and on the Center-Right side of the American political spectrum.

The Republican Party pre-Ronald Reagan or so is basically what the Reform Party tried to become in the 1990s, Americans who were interested in economic and fiscal policy, not social issues. The emergence of the Christian-Right and right-wing populists in the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s, and 1990s to the point that they almost completely changed the makeup of the Republican Party, has completely changed the Republican Party. Republicans use to own fiscal responsibility, economic freedom, criminal justice, crime, and national security issues.

Now the Republican Party is a party that’s divided on most of the issues that they use to dominate Democrats on between what’s left of the Center-Right of the Republican Party and the new dominant populist, Christian-Right-Wing of America, that’s made their home in the 21st Century Republican Party, that’s now a populist party that’s willing to fight to the death on cultural issues and not as much interested in economic and foreign policy anymore.

Glenn Hubbard represents what’s left of the old Republican Party and apparently isn’t very comfortable with what they’re now and I guess he wants his old party back, even if that means going independent and trying to replace what’s called the Republican Party today, with a new Center-Right party.

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New York Magazine: Jonathan Chait- ‘Why Rand Paul Distrusts Democracy’

Source:New York Magazine– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky

“The most unusual and interesting line in Julia Ioffe’s highly interesting profile of Rand Paul is Paul’s confession, “I’m not a firm believer in democracy. It gave us Jim Crow.” Of course, that’s an awfully strange way to condemn Jim Crow, which arose in the distinctly undemocratic Apartheid South (it was no coincidence that the dismantling of Jim Crow and the granting of democratic rights to African-Americans happened simultaneously). But it’s not just a gaffe or another historical misrepresentation — rather, it’s an authentic clue into an ideology Paul has been busily concealing as he has ascended into mainstream politics.”

Read the rest at New York Magazine

“Rand Paul: Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Spreading Democracy Throughout the World’ is a Failed Policy. Support a Constitutional Republic and Limited Government.”

From Vision Liberty

Just to respond to Senator Rand Paul’s speech about democracy and you can take Jonathan Chait’s speech about him for whatever you believe it’s worth:

Senator Paul was essentially arguing that you don’t want a democracy, but you want a republic. Well, how are the leaders of this republic supposed to get hired and get the jobs to govern for us and stay in power? Most, if not the entire developed world has one form of a democratic system or another and a lot of those countries are also republics. Just look at America or Germany, France, Italy, Poland, etc.

If Senator Paul were to say something like: “Oh, I believe in democracy and want the people to elect their leaders.” Then he is essentially saying that he believes in democracy as well.

There are all types of democracies, as well as republics. What hyper-partisans like the Rand Paul’s of the world don’t bother to mention, is that all of the republics in the developed world are democracies. Republican is not a form of government and neither is democratic.

There are authoritarian republics like in Russia and in the Middle East. China in the Far East. And you have democratic republics like in America and in Europe. The question is if you are a republic, what kind of republic are you: democratic or authoritarian? And a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran which is not part of the developed, first word, they’re both democratic and authoritarian. They elect their leaders, but their personal freedom and individual rights are fairly limited. The same thing with Turkey.

And to talk about Senator Paul’s comments about Jim Crow: what he didn’t bother to mention (and yes, I think he knows better) is that the Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow 50-100 years ago, were right-wing Neo-Confederate Democrats. When Rand Paul ran for the Senate in 2010, he was rumored to be a Neo-Confederate Republican, partially because he opposes the civil rights laws of the 1960s. So I don’t think this is a subject and debate that Senator Paul seriously wants to get into with just half the truth, because he could get seriously boomeranged on this.

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The Fiscal Times: Liz Peak: ‘Margaret Thatcher Was Right: A Dependent Society Will Fail’

Source:The Fiscal Times– Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Conservative, United Kingdom) and President Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, United States) and that’s all I know about this photo.

“The Bitch is Dead,” read the banner paraded through the streets of London yesterday – proof that hatred of Margaret Thatcher lives on, even in death. Of all the extraordinary accomplishments of Britain’s only female prime minister, surely her outsized and continuing impact on the nation’s psyche is one of the most remarkable. Hardly a contemporary British story is written or West End play produced – witness Billy Elliott or even the comic One Man, Two Guvnors – that doesn’t slam the former leader. “Thatcherism” in some quarters is as loathed as “McCarthyism” in the U.S. ”

Source:The Fiscal Times 

The biggest thing that Margaret Thatcher did to the United Kingdom and her biggest legacy in a positive sense, is that she moved a socialist state both politically and economically and from a country where the government was expected to take care of everyone and meet its basic needs and even run a lot of its companies and industries for them, to a country where people were expected to take care of themselves.

Call it Welfare Reform of the 1980s (UK style) where people who are physically and mentally able, but were collecting public assistance (as Americans call it) to financially support themselves and weren’t working at all, now were expected and required to work. And at least working for welfare benefits that they were receiving.

Britain became a country where people learned how to take care of themselves and how to meet their basic needs. Where everyone had access to a quality education so they would have the skills that they would need so they could take care of themselves. And not have to need public assistance just in order to survive and pay their bills.

Prime Minister Thatcher transformed a dependent society (in Britain) with a welfare state that’s there to take care of everyone, to a British Opportunity Society and Free Society (in their terms) where Brits were expected to finish school and get a good job. So they could support themselves and their families. And not just live off of the welfare state simply, because they lost their job, or lacked the skills to get themselves a good job.

Margaret Thatcher wanted to create a freer society where the people would have the freedom to take care of themselves, because they would have the opportunity to get themselves the skills in order to do so. And have a good job that allows for them to be able to pay their own bills and not be so dependent on government to take care of them.

British Socialists who were in power before in Britain under the Socialist State of the Labour Party, people weren’t expected to work and too many cases even run businesses and create business’s. Because the national government ran so much of the British economy. And people who were unemployed, or perhaps didn’t have any real work experience weren’t expected to do much if anything for themselves. Because the welfare state would take care of them. That’s the difference between Thatcher Conservatives and Socialists.

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on WordPress.

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