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Conservatives Keep Making the Same Mistakes
I have enormous respect for Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff. But he wrote an article today which had several statements with which I disagree. Which is fine, except that these are examples of common mistakes made by conservatives today, in my opinion, so I’m using his article simply as a means of pointing out these recurring errors.
The first recurring error is not made by conservatives, but by the media. And I don’t think it’s an error, it’s just a common technique used to cover for Democrat mistakes. After discussing the significant drop in President Biden’s popularity only eight months into his presidency, the news website FiveThirtyEight listed these possible explanations for his dismal poll numbers: “the decline in Biden’s approval rating was never just about Afghanistan … it was also driven by the resurgent pandemic, dissatisfaction with the economy, or even natural post-honeymoon reversion to a mean that is more realistic in these polarized times.” Of course, when a Republican’s poll numbers drop, it’s because he’s an evil fool with destructive policies. But when a Democrat’s poll numbers drop, it’s, um, complicated.
Ok, fine. But then Mr. Mirengoff made a few points that I really think are common mistakes among conservatives. First of all, he hypothesizes that Mr. Biden won the presidential election by presenting himself as a moderate centrist. With the Democrat party’s surge to the left over the past 10-20 years, I find this unlikely. People know who Democrats are at this point. But regardless, Mr. Mirengoff then hypothesizes that as Mr. Biden continues to govern less like JFK and more like Vladimir Putin, he thinks that American citizens are likely to realize that they’ve made a horrible mistake, and will seek to fix it. When discussing Attorney General Merrick Garland’s infamous memo that told the FBI to view PTA mothers at school board meetings as domestic terrorists, Mr. Mirengoff even used the dreaded “straw that broke the camel’s back” metaphor:
And now, Biden wants federal law enforcement to come down on people who attend school board meetings to vigorously oppose his woke agenda. The Garland Justice Department, led by Biden’s signature “moderate,” wrote the memo ordering this crackdown on America’s parents.
Roger Kimball thinks the Garland memo might well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. He writes:
The reaction to Garland’s memo has been quick and furious. Will this episode be the turning point, the straw that broke the back of President Ice Cream? Coupled with Biden’s response to the harassment of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was followed into a public bathroom and filmed by shouting activists, maybe so.
I don’t understand the “straw that broke the camel’s back” argument. How many of those have we had in the past few decades? “That’s it!!! They crossed a line now! Nobody is going to put up with this!” But then nothing changes. Again. Until the next outrage. And then nothing changes. Again. And on and on and on…
Likewise, I don’t think people vote for Democrats expecting them to be centrists. They know who Democrats are, and they vote for them. Our voters are further left than they have been in the past. And that’s it.
Next, Mr. Mirengoff wrote:
Biden’s other core campaign pitch was that he would “restore” competent governance. It too has been exploded. The Afghanistan debacle played a major role in the explosion, to be sure. But Biden also undermines the claim of competence on almost a daily basis with his rambling inability to speak coherently, remember names, and take questions. If he had performed that way in the debates, he would have lost to Trump.
I see a lot of mistakes in this paragraph.
First of all, describing the Biden administration as incompetent makes sense only from a conservative perspective. From a leftist perspective, they have gotten a lot done. It’s never enough, of course. But it appears to me that The Biden Administration has been very competent at moving our country to the left as fast as possible. This cannot be a shock to those who voted for Biden. People elect Democrats to move our country to the left, and we are moving left very, very quickly.
Next, Mr. Mirengoff blames some of Mr. Biden’s problems on his dementia and even says that if his dementia had been more obvious in his debates with Mr. Trump, Biden would have lost the election. I really don’t think that’s true. I think that if Mr. Biden had died of a stroke three days before the election, he still would have received 81 million votes, or some reasonable number of votes more than whatever Trump got.
I don’t think Mr. Biden’s dementia is an issue. And I don’t think that the last election was about Biden anyway. Our government did not like being led by someone who was not one of them. So our government replaced that person with someone of their own choosing. The news media, the riots, the endless accusations of racism, the impeachments, social media, the FBI, the CDC, the educational establishment, Hollywood, maybe even actual voter fraud, and so on – the left did what it had to do to correct the error that the voters made in 2016. It didn’t matter if Biden was coherent, and it still doesn’t. The left wants a president who is a compliant Democrat – not a belligerent Republican. Now, it’s all better.
After that, Mr. Mirengoff pointed out that Bill Clinton lost popularity early on as well, but became more popular after he moved back to the center a bit. I hear this a lot, and I just can’t imagine Biden doing this. First of all, I don’t think he’s running anything anyway, and he couldn’t change course if he wanted to. Next, despite him planning his next campaign already, I’d be surprised if he ran again. Although he might, I suppose. But he is either a lame duck president right now, or his administration is being run by people other than him. Either way, I don’t think that the example of Bill Clinton is relevant here.
Furthermore, as I mentioned, the American electorate has moved left. Some of that move may be fraudulent, or perhaps it’s not. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s fraudulent or not. Biden won 81 million votes after not campaigning on no ideas, and he has no reason to suspect that his upcoming vote total will have anything to do with what he does or does not do. He thinks he can do whatever he wants. And he’s right.
Suppose he destroys Afghanistan, our economy, and our allies, and a bunch of other stuff – will the news media, Hollywood, the educational establishment, social media, and the government bureaucracies suddenly start to promote Republicans? Of course not. And as long as he has their support, he will win.
He is not going to lose their support, so he figures he can’t lose. He’s probably right.
My respect for Mr. Mirengoff remains unchanged – he’s a brilliant analyst. But I read these same ideas over and over, and I just don’t think there’s any reason to suspect that they might be true.
As I often say, I hope I’m wrong about this.
But I don’t think that President Biden is wrong. He’s correct – he can do whatever he wants. The polls don’t matter.
If the election was tomorrow, President Biden and his 44% approval rating would win 5 million more votes than whoever the Republicans nominate. It doesn’t matter. And he knows it.
Conservatives should recognize this fundamental truth. You can’t fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.
Joe Biden doesn’t matter, and neither does his dementia. Think about it – of the five men pictured in this article, which one had the least impact on the last presidential election? The answer is obvious.
Plus, there is nothing that President Biden can do to suddenly convince voters that he is a leftist – that’s what they voted for anyway. And if they didn’t vote for it, then their opinion doesn’t matter in any case. Biden won’t be tacking to the center, and he probably couldn’t even if he wanted to. Our government just replaced a president they didn’t like with one that they did – that is an earth-moving event, and an extraordinary precedent. That fundamentally changes the relationship between the American citizen and the American government.
Robert Mueller – 2018 Time Person of the Year Runner Up
That’s the position we find ourselves in. We need to find solutions.
Waiting for the mythical ‘moderate voter’ to wake up is not a solution. Waiting for the mythical ‘moderate Democrat politician’ to wake up is not a solution. Waiting for the mythical ‘nonpartisan government bureaucracies’ to wake up is not a solution.
I’m waiting for conservatives to wake up. I hope that’s a solution.
We’ll see.
Or perhaps we won’t.
Published in General
People in those areas – and especially leftists in other parts of the country – think it should be FEMA bringing in the generators etc, which they think somehow makes them “free.” And as if FEMA etc don’t regularly make a total hash of what they’re supposed to be doing.
There is no such thing as a price gouger.
Well, I was thinking of gold, actually. I remember recently seeing women and children panning for gold in Zimbabwe and taking their flakes and dust from the river to a guy sitting at a desk nearby, having their gold weighed out, given cash at the morning rate, and going to the store to buy bread with the money. I know a guy who has a lot of gold in bar form, and says that he can buy anything with a gold bar, like a truck, a field, a house — but he can’t buy bread or beef without over-tipping the clerk.
I would use water catchment from the roof into just a 750 gal. storage container. :)
You’ve got this worked out.
What’s the difference? I would add that I was right about Y2K, except that it didn’t happen. I was right about 0bama declaring national emergency and staying in the White House, or installing Hillary, which almost happened — but didn’t. I was right about the financial collapse of 2015, except that that, um, turned out to be nothing. But I’m right about supply shortages! Except that may track record should be a consolation for those who are concerned because I haven’t technically been right yet. :)
But what do you consider the difference between a prepper and a survivalist? One’s urban and one’s living on a remote farm?
Yeah, total societal collapse was the scenario.
It really doesn’t rain that much here.
Pretty sure it was Neil Boortz who explained it the way I remember. He used a hurricane in his example. Plenty of cases for how higher prices make it worth while for people outside the area to make the effort to come down and end up kick-starting the recovery.
The one that I remember best was hotels and fleeing people. Hotels along the evacuation route have a limited supply and a large demand coming their way. Say the hotels maintain their prices. A father with three kids might think he can get two rooms and keep everyone happy. This deprives another fleeing family a room. If the hotel raises rates, the father will likely get one room, opening a room for someone else.
Also, gas stations don’t set prices based on the value of the gas in the ground but on the expected cost to refill their storage tanks.
I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by not being able to get their medications, too. I mean not at all, not just huge price increases. I know that people who use insulin for example, can’t really stock up all that much. But anyone who takes tablets etc should be working on getting a stockpile too. I wound up “tricking” my doctor, but if your doctor is willing to write you a prescription that allows you to build up an inventory, you should do it.
That basically IS the value of the gas in the ground: what it would cost to replace it.
~40 years ago I was involved with buying a car, and the dealership didn’t offer me enough for my trade-in. I said so, and the salesdude whipped out some junior-college-or-something economics “Well if we won’t pay you more, then it’s not worth more!” Which probably works on a lot of people. I said “But if I won’t sell it to you for that, then it IS worth more!” He had no response.
Back in the ’90s, I stopped to price a SUV at a used car lot. They wouldn’t come down on the price and offered me an insulting trade-in on my current car ($400 IIRC). I just chuckled and left.
A few weeks later, the salesman called to see if I was still interested in the SUV. I asked if he’d come down on the price, and he said, “I came down $400 when you were here.”
“No you didn’t,” I said.
“Sure I did. That’s what I offered for your trade-in.”
I tried to explain to him that if he got my existing car for the $400, he wasn’t coming down on the price of his car. I honestly don’t think I ever got him to understand this.
BTW, I later sold the old car by putting a For Sale sign on it and parking it in front of my house. Sold for $1200 cash (real cash, not a check) in less than a week.
That’s the reason I bought silver instead of gold. How do you cut the gold fine enough to buy a loaf of bread?
Exactly. And there are too many people that don’t understand this.
Yeah, if I were to get into metals I think I’d get a few hundred pounds of old pre-64 US silver. The content is known and it looks familiar as money.
Lol. A few hundred pounds is out of my reach.
Of course, the dealership wanted to give you $400, run it through a car wash and vacuum the seats and floor, then sell it for $2400, probably financed.
And they may have come down more than $400 if you didn’t trade-in at all.
No, I asked them how much without the trade-in, and they wouldn’t budge. I drove by a couple months later and the SUV was still sitting on the lot. They wanted it more than any of their potential customers did, so they got to keep it.
Yep, that’s how it works too.
Maybe they gave too much for it as a trade-in, and nobody was willing to take the loss.
Businesses can be weird that way, especially if the accountants are basically in charge. Long ago I bought a used 286 laptop for like $20, and it needed a new LCD panel. But the replacement LCD panel was still priced at $600 like when the laptop was new. And they wouldn’t discount it. As long as they had the LCD panel in stock, it was a $600 asset on the books. If they sold it for the maybe $20 it was currently worth, they took a $580 “loss.”
Eeehhh. Yeah! Maybe 10 lbs. The price has gone up to nearly $15 per $1 face value, Whew! (And that’s what they’re buying it at, not selling it at.) But yeah, I was once thinking of putting retirement money into silver coins, but then I just said, To heck with it all.
Added: The price to purchase it is slightly more than $20 per $1 face value.
Long-term-storage food might be a better investment, especially if the supply chain stuff keeps up.
You can’t buy food with silver OR gold, if it’s not on the shelf.
Yes. But one thing I’ve found out is that food that won’t spoil over the years will still oxidize in the jar. Don’t know about the can, but I would suspect so.
Just stumbled onto this. The whole left and all of the central bankers know they have screwed up. So step by step they are going to “fix” it by force.
They know they screwed up, so they are just going to force up wages. lol How is this any different from Soviet central planning?
This is the same thing that crazy Biden nominee for the OCC were saying.
This is a short article. Think really hard.
And I also know a guy who has a “liquor still” in his tornado shelter.
I mean the 25-year “survival” stuff, freeze-dried and nitrogen-packed, etc.
Yes, and omarova likes digital currencies, but just those controlled by central banks. I don’t know what they’ll do with Bitcoin et al, but I don’t think BC will be an adequate hedge.
Sounds good. Is it expensive?
The Wise brand tastes pretty good. I need to get more. I don’t have the slightest idea about the value. I think Mountain House is the highest rated.
From what I remember in the past, at least, Mountain House is “camping”/”hiking” food, but not meant for long-term storage like Wise and others.
And yes, it tends to be expensive, but seems like a good idea if you can afford it. Especially if you have at least a spouse, and preferably one or two kids. Since the packages are multiple-serving. They say “80 servings” or whatever, but that might be 8 servings of lasagna in one bag, 8 servings of corn in another bag… Definitely not ideal if you’re “cooking for one.”