Assumed being the key word. All evidence to date points to the GOP as trying to swallow up the liberty movement so the party can destroy it. I hope and pray that I am wrong. If liberty-loving Ohioans are very watchful of their state and federal representatives, and put intense pressure upon them to reduce the size and cost of government, well and good. But if we don't, we will find ourselves two years from now being as unhappy with the Republicans as we were two years ago, and as we just were this year with the Democrats.
On a related note, I was extremely disappointed with the number of votes captured by Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates. While I did not expect any to win, I thought they would poll closer to 10%, setting them up for some victories in 2012. That clearly did not happen. They need some media (with many times more readership than The Ohio Republic) that will publicize their campaigns, and explain to the public why their views should prevail. They clearly won't get it from the existing newspapers and broadcasters -- and until such media do appear, nothing will improve for them. Sorry, it's just hard reality.
Meanwhile, we have to spring a few traps, like this one, described by Buttonwood at The Economist:
The Fed's Wednesday announcement on QE [quantitative easing -- the purchase of U.S. government debt, which is equivalent to printing money] is probably more market significant. There seems little doubt that some QE will be announced but there is room for uncertainty about how much. You can take your pick from today's data—weak numbers on personal incomes and a strong purchasing managers' index—and argue for a little QE or a lot.
I have argued before that QE might not work, given that bond yields are already low and banks are flush with cash. So it seems likely that the markets will be disappointed, however big the QE programme.
But there is also a nice irony at work. The tea party is opposed to massive government spending and bailouts. But QE is a way for the central bank to finance that government spending and to pump money into the banking sector. So on the day that the tea partiers may be celebrating, an unelected central bank will be carrying out a programme, probably totalling several hundred billion dollars, that will cut against everything the partiers stand for.
1 comment:
Harold:
I too was extremely disappointed, particularly in the Owens campaign. I read the Dispatch continuously and there was hardly a mention. The Plain Dealer did a better job, but not much.
I am disappointed with the LPO; I thought they should have done a better job getting out the publicity. The websites were disjointed and did not provide a daily stream of information. I think in the next race the LPO need to focus on the local races and forget the state. We need county commissioners, and local state reps who are Libertarian. They also need to target a specific area and establish a strong hold there, quite possibly in an area were there are actual conservatives who are disenfranchised by the ORP.
Speaking of disenfranchised, the LPO needs to watch the ORP, Kasich, Taylor, DeWhine, Husted, and Mandel through a microscope and they go statist, even in the slightest way, start hammering them. Any deviation needs to be exposed. But the exposure tools (media) need to be put into place because it’s fairly apparent we can count on the state MSM.
Concerning the Ohio Tea Party I think the whole movement is smoke and mirrors. While there may be a few liberty oriented conservatives and libertarian in the mix, the majority of these folks are just your vanilla Republican statist. They were being run directly from the ORP and liberty oriented folks didn’t stand a chance. Who in there right mind would vote for DeWhine, yet these stupid sheeple did! Unbelievably stupid.
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