Romney
In 2008, when John McCain somehow won the Republican primary*, I took solace in the fact that “at least he’s not Mitt Romney.” Mitt Romney struck me, in 2008, as nothing but a republican John Kerry: a very rich, unprincipled, political collectivist from Massachusetts who will do and say anything to get elected. Both had the remarkable ability to take 3 sides of one issue — and not for any legitimate reason or new information as Kerry tried to claim towards the end of the ’08 election. Both were hopelessly “out of touch” with most Americans, and the sole appeal of both seemed to be that they simply were not the incumbent president. Hell, they even look somewhat alike! Stephen Colbert mocked some of the similarities, quipping that “Kerry and Romney hail from completely different pages of a thesaurus.”
*I have yet to talk to a single person that voted for McCain, and to this day have no idea how he won.
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Apparently I was not the only person to make this observation, as I found this image while searching for pictures of the two
At any rate, I believe I was correct in dismissing Romney in ’08 as being sleazy — even by a politician’s standards. At best, he has made vague, lukewarm statements about reducing deficits and lowering taxes, but nothing substantial or meaningful. Worse, he has hinted that he would increase our foreign aggression and he’s said he will not dismantle the budgetary behemoths that are social security and medicare. Considering that, together, our foreign military empire, social security, and medicare account for roughly 80% of our spending, talking about cutting deficits without addressing those three items is completely insane. We currently have a 40% deficit, maiming that even if we entirely and immediately stopped social security and cut our military to 25% of its current size, we would barely balance our books. It is mathematically impossible to balance our budgets without addressing at least two out of those three items in a significant way. I do not mean “tweaking”, I do not mean “overhauling”, I mean fully reducing or eliminating. Trying to balance the budget without such action would be akin to a person with 3 Porsches in the driveway cutting coupons to try to balance his checkbook — it’s simply not effective. Mitt Romney seems like he’s smart enough to know this, which leads me to the conclusion that he is pandering to the recipients of these programs to win votes. All this brings me to his VP candidate, Paul Ryan, who is guilty of the same (and worse).
Paul Ryan
Paul Ryan achieved national prominence during the budget crisis when he proposed an “extreme, radical” budget that neither balanced the budget nor meaningfully cut spending. His budget technically balanced in something like 26 years and only under the most fairweather conditions and optimistic projections imaginable — since we all know that it’s reasonable to plan for only sunny-day scenarios for two and a half decades. Amazingly, Republicans touted him as some innovative, fiscally responsible leader and democrats similarly dismissed his budget that made “radical” cuts, despite the plan barely touching medicare or any other government programs. Like Romney, Ryan claims to be serious about closing the budget gap but again without touching the “big 3″. He is, therefore, not serious or not paying attention to the numbers — neither of which is encouraging.
The most frustrating thing about Ryan, however, is his supposed love affair with Ayn Rand. One thing people always misunderstand about Ayn Rand is that the basis of her ideas is rationality. She held reason up as the single greatest human faculty and all of her philosophical and political endpoints originate from reason. As such, Ayn Rand was openly hostile to religion and faith in general (in addition to her hatred of overbearing government), making her an interesting role model for a self-labeled devout Christian such as Paul Ryan. When it comes to political beliefs, he similarly breaks with Rand in an extreme manner. His support of large government programs, of the income tax, and of myriad forms of government interference in people’s lives are hardly rational or individualistic stances. Some may argue that he tries to reduce some of these, but his effort is far too little. Like Romney, I believe he makes token attempts at free market reforms to appease voters and not for any true philosophical reasons — this in stark contrast to Rand, who only drew free market conclusions based on philosophy. Of course, Democrats who view his timid budget as “extreme” have now equated Paul Ryan with Ayn Rand, further muddying the waters about someone they already misunderstood. Like the corporatists and rent-seekers that give actual capitalists a bad name by their bad behavior and manipulation of free markets, Paul Ryan is making people think he actually supports free markets and small government based on a consistent moral philosophy, when in fact he is doing nothing of the sort. Update: Krista sent me this article on Ryan’s recent recanting of his support for Ayn Rand.
The final nail in the coffin is Paul Ryan’s actions, in 2008. Here is a video of Ryan blatantly telling congress that he is abandoning his “principles” in the name of political expediency and urging them to vote for TARP along with him. Abandoning principles for political expediency means they were never principles to begin with. Here is sniveling in front of congress and showing that he is, at best, a fairweather friend of free markets and, at worse, a dangerous collectivist:
Election 2012
As usual, the choice in this election (at least for president) is largely meaningless. Both candidates support the income tax, both support foreign wars, both support welfare and entitlement programs, both support the war on drugs, both support intrusions on state’s rights, and both generally support a large, powerful federal government with a few minor disagreements about what spheres said government will control. As usual, the best choice instead comes from a third party, this time in the form of Libertarian Gary Johnson. This election is different, however, as Johnson is consistently polling above 5%. If he can achieve 5% of the vote in the general election, the next election cycle will be the friendliest yet to freedom as ballot and debate access rules for the Libertarian party will be greatly loosened. The current two party duopoly blocks third parties by requiring very high thresholds for ballot access and excluding third parties from debates. If Johnson can get 5%, he will significantly diminish their stranglehold on the country and people will be forced to recognize that the two parties are simply two flavors of the same collectivist philosophy.
So, what to do for the presidential vote? I have always — and will always — vote my conscience, political expediency be damned. I voted for Badnark in 2004, Voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 primary, and then abstained from voting in the 2008 general election because Bob Barr struck me as an extremely sleazy politician dabbling with libertarianism because he thought it was up and coming. I’ve only ever voted for Libertarians or libertarians running as Republicans. I will, therefore, be voting for Johnson.
However, I know many people voting for Romney based on that tired argument that he is the lesser of two evils. First, I think that’s highly debatable: Romney’s foreign and domestic policy would likely be worse than Obama’s in terms of expense (wars aren’t free) and social issues like gay rights. The argument is often made that Romney will disable Obamacare, but that is extremely unlikely as the democrats will narrowly maintain control of the senate and will block any such action. The real best-case scenario of this election is actually gridlock and the prospect of only four more years of Obama compared to eight of Romney. The republicans are set to maintain control of the house and close the gap in the senate, meaning that very little will get done in congress, which is fantastic for us (remember the 90s?!). An Obama presidency therefore sets us up for four years of sweet, sweet gridlock. Additionally, an Obama win sets the stage for someone like Rand Paul to run in 2016, which will not happen if Romney wins.
Some have made the argument that we should choose Romney because he will be appointing a significant number of federal judges and possibly a supreme court justice or two. Is this really relevant? Have we already forgotten who appointed John Roberts, who led the majority in the Obamacare decision? The truth is that Romney has no understanding (or, at least, no care) about the meaning of the constitution and we cannot therefore expect that he will be any better in appointing judges than Obama. While it’s tempting to give in to the fear-mongering and vote for the lesser of two evils, there is no evidence that Romney is actual the lesser in this case — nevermind that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
Overall, it looks like Obama will probably win and that’s not the worst thing based on how the other branches of government will shake out. Additionally, there are some very awesome ballot measures going on all over the country: three states are set to fully legalize marijuana and California is voting to abolish the death penalty and to start dismantling the medieval three-strikes rules. Here in Florida we’ll be voting to set caps on government spending AND property taxes to avoid another situation like 2008 when the housing market collapsed, people lost money, and government still held out its grubby paws for more money. All in all, this should be a pretty exciting election night outside of the typical “douche vs. turd” presidential politics.