Tom’s Big Picture

How can we have hope for a civilization that tolerates this? Our boys fight and die overseas to counter the “Islamo-fascists”, but our own governments refuse to delouse the home front. The threat of terrorism is overplayed to support the expansion of government, as the most obvious solution is to ask our Muslim guests to leave our countries.

There is no historical precedent for any Muslim to live in the US or Britain.  If it’s worth fighting a war over, then why not kick them out and send them home?

Why are American and British boys dying in Iraq while our governments allow mosques to be built in our major cities? It’s a scam and a farce using the good-natured nationalism of our people (and their blood and treasure) to accomplish neoconservative foreign policy objectives while doing nothing to solve the rot at home.

Meanwhile, old ladies and blonde girls are getting frisked at the airport by the lowest denominator GED-qualified affirmative action beneficiaries, all because we can’t admit that the 300-year Enlightenment experiment called “the brotherhood of man” is an obvious failure.

New Orleans mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin and crony checking out and enjoying their new arms shipment, like Third World dictators:

And a Bill Clinton-class political tactician.  This man is mesmerizing to watch.  He’s an ess-oh-bee as well, but at least he’s our ess-oh-bee, right?  The South continues to produce the world’s best bs’ers, from lawyers to politicians to novelists:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdsnpucXq6I

Whereas McCain and Giuliani are truly scary, Huck would be another Dubya-class mediocrity.  Go Huckabee!

It frustrates me that God seems to give out these gifts of charisma and political skill to completely mediocre leaders (the naturalist-Calvinist in me points out that those who possess these gifts are so successful at manipulating their fellow human beings at early ages that no real character development ever takes place, leaving a well-spoken sociopath with no core principles).

Ron Paul is the best of the bunch as a man, but doesn’t exactly have the communication skill of a master like Huckabee.  I sympathize with Paul, having at many times experienced the frustration of too many ideas pouring out of the brain too fast, which end up as abbreviated and punctuated statements rather than persuasive speech.  Hopefully these homeschool kids and their classical curriculums with capstones in rhetoric can fill the statesman gap.  Emotion, not data, moves the voter.

So Republicans are set to nominate the second-worst candidate of the entire initial field.

Given the degeneracy of our country, it’s hard to tell if such an outcome reflects God’s grace or God’s judgment.

Apparently Rick Warren likes the Von Mises Institute, the intellectual fountainhead of Ron Paul-style constitutionalism:

www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019116.html

Ok, if Pastor Rick endorses Paul I’ll delete all my negative posts about Warren and Saddleback.  My blog for my country!

Two stats for you from the exit polls. The first: among people who thought the economy was “poor”, Paul tied for first with McCain. So Paul may not be too little too late, but rather too much too soon for much of the electorate. The problem with a waiting strategy is that the demographic situation continues to worsen, making the probability of a patriot President less likely while it makes the solutions required to fix the country more painful and disruptive.

Another stat: among people who disapprove of the Iraq War, McCain still won! This is the guy the neoconservatives like the most besides Rudy, yet somehow Republican primary voters think he’s the guy they should support if they oppose the war! The guy who wants to occupy Iraq for 100 years!

Apparently voters can’t even fill in the right box to reflect their own stated political opinions.
The charts are below from CNN:

I enjoy seeing people who sell out their civilization getting sold out themselves by the very people they betrayed us for. Witness Hillary’s latest poll result from South Carolina:

Bill Clinton has made regular stops in South Carolina all year, arguing that only his wife has the experience to be president and reminding voters, sometimes by his mere presence, that many black Democrats fondly consider him to have been the nation’s first black president. He spoke at an NAACP convention earlier in the year, at a black sorority in Charleston on the eve of Oprah’s visit, and in Orangeburg on Monday.

Mr. Obama has eaten into the Clinton lead. The latest surveys show a dead heat, with black voters steadily migrating toward him. In a new CBS News/New York Times poll, Mr. Obama leads 35 percent to 34 percent but 52-27 among blacks. A new Rasmussen survey shows half of black voters support Mr. Obama and just 28 percent Mrs. Clinton. A month earlier they were running even.

Hillary and Bill have worked their entire life for these people. Obama has nothing in common with black voters: his mother is white and his father (who abandoned him at birth) was an East African Muslim. American blacks are West African Christians (East Africans and West Africans are approximately as different as a Frenchman and a Russian)! Yet their racism overcomes them in their support for Obama: “better a black man with no experience, no accomplishments and nothing in common with me than white people like the Clintons, who have spent their whole lives working on behalf of my people.”

And since Obama is unelectable (Hillary could possibly deliver Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia and Louisiana, solidifying a win, whereas Obama will lose the entire South in the general election; never mind his race, his middle name is friggin’ Hussein), they are also choosing to harm their party for the sake of gratifying their racism.

This reminds me of an incident from 2004 in the Texas Legislature. Tom DeLay was using a loophole in redistricting rules to draw new Congressional districts for Texas to squeeze out more Democrats. He needed a super-majority to get it done. Here’s how he did it: he promised the minority members of the Legislature that while the Democratic prescence in Congress would shrink, he would draw the districts such that more blacks and Hispanics would occupy the remaining spots.

You see, blacks and Hispanic legislators were so racist that they cooperated with DeLay to hurt their own party in order to get more of their people in office. DeLay’s victims in the push were middle-aged white Democrats, liberals who had spent their entire life undermining their own civilization for the benefit of these minority groups. Yet, when push came to shove, the minorities threw them to the wolves to get more of their own into power.

This is exactly the message the white liberal enablers need to hear. Many of them harbor fantasies that, once the demographic destruction of our country is complete, they will be remembered as heroes and visionaries who fought the “bigots”. They believe they and their children will hold coveted “intellectual” roles in the new multicultural Babylon America. They need to know that their fate, in the long run (if demographics trends continue), is everyone else’s: being envied, then hated, then oppressed and eventually chased out of their house with a machete, Zimbabwe-style.

He’s against anchor babies:

washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080108/NATION/311698216/1001

But he’s also for them:

http://corner.nationalreview.com

Ron Paul, for all his libertarian autism on the national question, does support an amendment to end birthright citizenship.

Paul disappointed but is still in the game. Iowa has a poor track record of predicting the nominee.

That said, Huckabee does look unstoppable from a neutral point of view. The “flyover” part of this country is so tired of being marginalized that they’ll nominate a bad conservative from Arkansas (who at least seems to be mostly decent in his personal life and shares their Christian faith) over bad conservatives from Massachusetts. And it is with a bit of sporting regional pride that I say this, as nobody makes better politicians than the South. When the fake conservatives fight, ain’t nobody gonna out-fake a southern-fried good-old-boy like Huckabee. He was born in that there briar patch!

And I can’t help but smile at Rudy Giuliani’s butt-whooping in the Heartland. Paul has saved us from the cross-dressing criminal at a minimum.

My gut in the first debate told me Huckabee was the best political tactician: I actually cringed a few times when watching Paul in the first debate. Unfortunately for Paul, most of the populace votes with their gut, not based on researching the policy positions of the candidates. If Paul does not succeed, the most interesting question is this analogy- Goldwater:Reagan::Paul: [?] . The Paul Revolution is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon already.

I think Peggy Noonan does a good job at explaining Huckabee, similar to my analysis of his Christmas ad. Mix equal parts cultural alienation from the elites, social gospel-lite and millions of Christians with their heads full of doctrinal mush and Huckabee is what comes out:

Something new begins on the Republican side, too.

Everyone said Mike Huckabee was a big dope to leave Iowa Wednesday to fly to L.A. to be on Jay Leno, but did you see him on that thing? He got off a perfect line on why he’s doing well against Romney: “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off.” The studio audience loved him. And you know, in Iowa they watch “The Tonight Show” too.

Mr. Huckabee likes to head-fake people into thinking he’s Gomer Pyle, but he’s more like the barefoot boy of the green room. He’s more James Carville than Jim Nabors.

What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he’s an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools’ squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don’t admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don’t need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues–taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia–and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican, and as I have read their letters, I have felt nothing but respect.

But there are two problems. One is that while the presidency, as an office, can actually make real changes in the areas of economic and foreign policy, the federal government has a limited ability to change the culture of America. That is something conservatives used to know. Second, I’m sorry to say it is my sense that Mr. Huckabee is not so much leading a movement as riding a wave. One senses he brilliantly discerned and pursued an underserved part of the voting demographic, and went for it. Clever fellow. To me, the tipoff was “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Of course, I think the cultural alienation and populism are valid concerns of an increasingly marginalized majority in the country. And Huck’s social-gospel-lite does appeal to the little old ladies who vote in Republican primaries, soft-hearted folks who can’t comprehend the harmful consequences of unregulated state-funded charity. As a Baptist preacher, he’s got more experience than anybody with that demographic.

The Day of Reckoning for the Ron Paul Revolution has come.

At first, they dismissed us.

Then they ridiculed us.

Then we outraised them in money, setting an all-time record for grassroots fundraising.

Now they fear us.  Even the belly of the neoconservative beast, the Wall Street Journal, once dismissing Paul, is now hedging its bets, preparing its readers for the possibility of a Paul victory.

All of the hope and labor and sweat and tears of the last year has come to this.  The time is now.

It is time to win where it counts, in the coming voting over the next six weeks, particularly the imminent contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.  This may all be over by Valentine’s Day.

But instead of a pep talk, I am writing this to give a warning.

For months we have complained of biased polls showing Dr. Paul with single-digit support among “likely” voters.  This has not shaken our faith because it conflicts with what we see with our own eyes.

We see the bumper stickers and yard signs for Dr. Paul.

We see the enthusiasm of our local meetup groups.

We see the overwhelming victories of Dr. Paul in straw polls, online polls or almost any forum requiring a modicum of active effort to participate.

But there is something yet missing from this reasoning.  The polls, though biased, do measure one thing.  They measure the opinions of people with a history of voting.  And that, frankly, scares me for our Revolution.

In my experience in local politics, I have found one thing to be true: voters are voters and non-voters are non-voters, and never do the two meet.  Despite hours of effort and thousands of dollars, there seems to be nothing in heaven and earth than can motivate the non-voter to vote.

The statistics are grim.  In one campaign I managed, people who voted infrequently, despite being contacted personally by the campaign and even agreeing to vote for my candidate, were only 15% as likely to show up and vote as someone with a solid voter history.

So in some sense the polls are accurate.  They are a snapshot of where Dr. Paul stands among those who’ve voted and are likely to vote again.  Which means the test of our Revolution has come: for Dr. Paul to win, something must change.

What must change is that the conviction of our hearts and the desire of our souls to begin the political redemption of this country must exceed our apathy.

No matter how much you’ve read and watched about Dr. Paul or how much you’ve given to him, none of that does a bit of good unless you, yes you, your physical person shows up and votes.

If you don’t, nothing happens.  Either this Revolution permanently destroys the statistical models of the pollsters by bringing millions of new voters they never guessed would show up or WE LOSE.

Dr. Paul is 72 years old.  Though he’s in excellent health, he can’t run again.  There’s no one else like him in a comparable office or with a comparable following.

And the momentum we have right now is a gift, a precious gift of a once-in-a-generation coincidence (for those who believe in coincidences, though I certainly do not!) that has left no heir apparent to the nomination and has cleared the path to victory if we will only reach out and take it.

This is the time and this is the hour to save our country.

Show up and vote.  Get as many people as you can to do the same, or else watch this great country run into the ground by Tweedledee or Tweedledum (for it matters not which is elected!) as you spend the rest of your days in painful contemplation of something that almost was and might have been.

This is either the turning of the tide or the last death throes of the Old Republic.

The choice, for better or for worse, is yours and yours alone.