Modern political sickness: gaffephobia

On Morning Joe this morning the pundits were criticizing empty, stale political talk coming from the candidates, with neither candidate taking a risk to be real and soar rhetorically. It's no wonder that politicians at this high level of scrutiny are super-careful regarding what they say. Media has made it a full time sport to catch sentences in isolation and display them 24/7 as gaffes. The media source who catches the biggest gaffe wins, but the candidate who creates the biggest gaffe loses. Obama and Romney have a psychological illness we'll call gaffephobia -- the fear of a gaffe being caught by media that is so big the election is lost.

The only way to prevent this game from causing inane political chatter from monopolizing the campaigns is to not play the game. The way to win an election in the future might be through risk-taking -- just let it rip and let the public know that you are speaking honestly, and if you make a mistake, you'll admit it and move on, but you won't play gotcha-gaffe with the media. The voters who count and can make a difference in who wins or loses, mainly thoughtful voters, will understand and respect the person who's first to be real. But then I'm not a political operative, so what do I know?

How wrong can media, moderates and the Left be?

I call them statists because they all have an undying confidence in government's ability to run the country from culture to economy to foreign relations. They have helped build and sustain a powerful State and they think in terms of State power in relation to all economic problems and social problems. "Statism" is a very appropriate term to describe those in both political parties who have confidence in the efficacy of the State -- with Republican statists thinking their group of government officials can run the ocuntry better than the Democrat statists, and vice versa.

Mitt Romney was a strange mixture as governor of Mass. -- he's a capitalist who understands the market, but he lacked the ideology to understand the system of capitalism and how it must have freedom to avoid the perversion of State capitalism, a soft form of fascism. Romney was a practical CEO and he dealt with government as found it with the statists in place, and he was given an assignment to "fix" healthcare, thus, he came up with Romneycare. This is how many, fine people who choose to run for office fall into the statist trap. If they aren't people of ideas, like Reagan became later in his life, they assume a pragmatic stance of getting the job done, and all the career statists are eager to help them get things done.

Now that the Information Age has put forth the ideas that will define us as a nation going forward, Romney has heard what he did wrong before, and, so far, he appears to have responded to the call for limits and liberty. I think Ron Paul has had a positive influence on Romney, forcing Romney to think more deeply about political philosophy. Romney will never be a philosopher, but he can become someone who understands the power of the private sector and the need for government to stop intervening in the economy and meddling abroad.

Media, moderates and the Left have all tried to sabotage Romney's candidacy, and it's mainly because Romney doesn't fit into the political world. They see Romney as a good businessman, but they see him as a risk when it comes to depending on a President to play the political game. Romney can reject the political players as ignorant of economics and this scares the statists. Santorum would be a good political, statist player -- he understands the political game. Romney doesn't want to play the political game, and he's learned from his pragmatic bout with healthcare and career statists in Massachusetts. Romney did the best job he could with what he had to work with, but Romney now sees that universal healthcare for America run by government will destroy the nation. The Left misled the country about the cost of Obamacare, as did the media and moderates -- many of them choosing to remain silent as the bill was passed.

The media, moderates and the Left have been wrong about a lot of important things, mainly to do with economics, and now they are still pretending Romney might stumble, but Romney is ahead in Wisconsin, and it's over -- Romney is the nominee. Romney can't articulate what I've just written, but anyone who is not stuck on partisan stupidity will see that Romney can help empower the private sector and allow economic growth -- we have to prevent another four years of statism -- we have to.

Obama humor

As I wrote earlier, the political class has become entertaining, especially at the top. Today Obama was talking about his decision to take Super Pac money after condemning it, and he said it's impossible to get the message out now without lots and lots of money.

This coming from someone on tv every single day. I've never seen it be so easy for a President to get his message out, and it doesn't cost him anything. The Left has become so arrogantly dishonest it hits me sometimes, and, at first, I'm stunned, then, I can only laugh. 

ooooooooooo, can Santorum win?

The political class is all a'flitter that Santorum might win one today. What will that mean? Oh, it surely means Romney is on the ropes and Santorum is on his way to upsetting Romney's inevitability.

How much longer is this nonsense going to continue? I'm still waiting for the surprise announcement that Mitch Daniels is entering the race. If the players and public would only behave like the media have planned, this wouldn't be so boring.

When the ruling class loses control

What makes media so especially pathetic is that the pundits, hosts and various talking heads are not very informed or particularly bright. Some cable news shows will have experts on to give their analyses of current issues, but it's usually accompanied with a partisan spin which reduces the IQ of smart people a good 15 or so points. For the most part, media is filled with uninformed opinionators programmed to repeat over and over buzz words, talking points and outright lies.

I don't know how many little panel discussions I've seen lately discussing "negative ads" or "attack ads" as if they are evil. The ads they use as examples are basically revelations of a candidate's positions or flip flops on previous positions. Primaries are intended to get the candidates' true positions out to the public and make comparisons between the candidates running. Of course candidate A is going to distinguish herself from candidate B. Otherwise, we would see and hear every candidate putting a positive spin on their campaign with no rebuttals. Then there's all the condemnation of Super PAC ads.

Super PACs are criticized because "big money" influences the results. The idea behind criticism of Super PACs is that wealthy business interests can buy a race and purchase influence on matters the business interests can profit off. There's a surefire way to reduce the influence of businesses on politics -- limit government power to favor some businesses over others. Government created the feeding trough, and the unlimited power of government puts it in the position of making or breaking a company or an industry. Is it surprising that companies and industries attempt to influence government decisions when these decisions can determine who succeeds and who fails? Ever since competition was shifted from a relatively free market to Washington DC, businesses have been forced to protect their interests. Some unscrupulous companies lobby politicians to actively seek special favors and advantages so they don't have to compete in the market.

If companies are prohibited from contributing to campaigns, or bullied by having to report their contributions and identify themselves, then media and the political class will have undue influence on the outcomes of elections, and businesses' ability to protect their interests will be weakened. Limit government's ability to intervene in the economy and these problems will go away.

More and more people are realizing that corruption and cronyism are rampant in government, and the people are demanding representatives do something about it. Candidates for president who are running ads showing some of the other candidates' past crony relationships are providing a public service. The more information we get the better. Media no longer controls the message -- therefore media and the political class no longer control elections. 2012 is going to be a very different election year. Information is power.