Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Iowa twammed* and other caucus reactions

As previously noted, Taiwanese animations are the future of all mainstream news and consequently a regular feature of this blog. I generally find these NMA Taiwanese News animations to be more succinct, incisive, informative and enlightening than anything in our own media. They also can apparently produce a quality two minute animation in less time than it takes the Dividist to write a crappy four paragraph blog post.

Their coverage of yesterday's Iowa Caucus result:


Do not think too hard about their title for this piece. Really. You do not want to think about it. It's probably just a translation artifact.More reaction from around the sphere:

Erick Erickson
is angry and thinks "Everything You Heard Last Night Was Bull",
"As you wake up this morning, the tea party has failed because it has surrendered itself into the hands of Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich — all of whom would use government to suit allegedly conservative ends, which is not conservative in and of itself. But by God Mitt Romney may now get the political beating everyone has been expecting him to get. Newt Gingrich has nothing left to lose. He can go Newtlear against the guy he sees as having destroyed him. Newt Gingrich can unleash unmitigated hell against MItt Romney and just like the attacks on Newt were true, they’ll all be true about Mitt Romney too...
If I were Perry, I’d wake up tomorrow, say I refuse to surrender the Republican Party into the hands of big government conservatives after all the gains the tea party has made, and then announce I’m firing all my political staffers and communications staffers and ask South Carolina to help me reboot to victory. "
Erick really wants Perry as the GOP standard bearer? Rick Perry? Really?

James Joyner
is also having a problem suspending disbelief and asking "Rick Santorum? Really?":
"With his strong second place finish in Iowa, Rick Santorum now appears to bethe social conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann appear to be dropping out of the race soon, ending the three-way split. Newt Gingrich is pouting about the fact that nobody that knows him likes him and vowing to run a series of negative ads against Romney just for the hell of it. And Ron Paul is hoping to stretch out his latest 15 minutes of fame through New Hampshire."
Matt Welch sees a silver lining and "The Bright Side of Ron Paul's Third-Place Finish":
"Paul fans and supporters of limited government more broadly have many reasons to be cheered by last night's results. Here are seven:1) Paul more than doubled his vote over 2008, while Mitt Romney's stayed exactly the same. Seriously, Romney got 30,000 votes (25 percent of the total) in 2008, then 30,000 votes (25 percent of the total) in 2012. Paul vaulted from 10 percent to 21, from 12,000 votes to 26,000. His message of freedom, limited government, attacking the Federal Reserve, and ending wars foreign and domestic is undeniably on the grow..."
The Dividist agrees with Matt, but our perspective may come closer to that articulated by...

A.J. Strata while sorting through the "Turmoil in Iowa":
"I don’t think Romney would be much better than Obama, because a GOP Congress would be hesitant (or unwilling) to challenge a GOP President and his moderate ways. As if to underscore this concern, it seems McCain is going to come out and endorse Romney this week... Again a GOP Congress using Obama as the epitome of liberal madness over 4 years of investigations into his failures would be educational – and set the stage for a real outsider to run in 2016."
Yup. The most probable outcome for 2012 is that Republicans will take the Senate majority and maintain control of the House majority. Regardless whether it is Republicans or Democrats in control, we know what happens when one party has a majority in both legislative houses and the executive branch – constitutional checks and balances are undermined and the executive branch gets free reign.

Under One Party Democratic rule we saw Democrats abrogate their congressional oversight responsibilities, cave on civil liberties, and delegate war-making authority to Obama (not to mention two trillion dollar of new spending programs in just two bills passed in pure partisan votes in two years).

Under One Party Republican rule we saw Republicans abrogate their congressional oversight responsibilities and give GWB a free pass on an unfunded new entitlement program (Prescription Drug benefit) as well as fail to protect their constitutional war making authority and fiscal responsibilities by permitting two unfunded trilllion dollar, decades long, nation building exercises in the Middle East.

Divided government is ugly and messy but it keeps the problems from spinning completely out of control and can usually be counted on for at least marginal improvements. If it comes down to Romney vs. Obama, the Dividist will vote for Obama to maintain divided government.

*Twammed - To be made the subject of a Taiwanese Animation news story.

3 comments:

Tully said...

The internal revolt in the GOP has begun. The libertarians hate everyone but Paul and Huntsman. The dominionist Christians hate Romney -- being Mormon is reason enough, the damned RINO heathen! And there's a solid moderate contingent that fear and loathe the dominionists (with good reason, IMHO) but get along with the libertarians and fiscons. The latter group is actually showing up at the polls, so there's that to cheer me up.

mw said...

Hmmm - Moderates, Fiscons and libertarians on the the same page? Perhaps that will give Huntsman his day in the sun. I think he is the only Republican Presidential candidate (in or out, declared or undeclared) who has yet to get his 15 minutes on top of the leaderboard. When Santorum falters, maybe he will also get the ABR (Anyone But Romney) vote.

Still, the big question is whether all the GOP factions hate Obama more than they hate the other GOP hopefuls.

Tully said...

On the same page? More like a some real overlap in the Venn diagrams.

Huntsman is out of it. Sorry. Romney is the only GOP candidate that polls over 50% among both mod/lib and conservative Republicans, pulling 59% with both. Huntsman can't seem to break 25% with either.

The Big Q is whether or not the dominionists will hold their noses and vote for Romney, or sit it out. Because that worked SO WELL for them in 2008 with McCain.