This piece is dead on. It also shows some signs of hope that Mittens will eventually be eliminated. He is not that far off from Paws in policies. Mittens is the defender of the “business as usual” crowd this election. That will have limited millage with the current GOP electorate.
Hmm.
A thread posted earlier (and defended throughout) by a Lazlo in PA is highly critical of a certain Republican candidate for president. Yet this piece is "dead on."
I'm wondering if there might be two Lazlos in PA, as this piece is suggesting that the winning candidate will need to change course to be more in harmony with the mood of the nation, that the old style of offering subsidies to an ever-larger portion of the American people is no longer possible as governments at all levels sink further into the debt abyss.
Specifically, he warns Romney that he "will have to offer, like any Republican candidate serious about claiming the nomination, a fundamental departure from the miasma of convention that clings to the Republican brand."
Now, it would appear that as of last Friday there are just two in the field of candidates who might approximate the author's ideal as an alternative to business as usual in the GOP.
One is Michelle Bachmann.
Can you name the other from the prescription offered?
In foreign policy, end our indefinite military garrisons, increase our ability to poke hard with a sharp stick at key moments and help our cornerstone allies in Europe and Asia better assert a constant regional presence. On criminal justice, legalize soft drugs, clean up the appeals and capital punishment process, overhaul our corrupt (and corrupting) prison system, and reform and reintegrate felons. On border issues, permit brief stays for true migrant workers, and demand an immediate choice between citizenship and deportation for resident illegal immigrants without criminal records. On social issues, embrace the Tenth Amendment, and work to defeat and reverse judges who don’t just legislate from the bench but philosophize. And on the defining issue of our time — subsidy and entitlement spending writ large — begin the urgent task of painstakingly unraveling the cocoon of incentives, payoffs, behavioral modifications, and socioeconomic engineering that has forced well-off, middle-class, working-class, and poor Americans to choose between greater prosperity and greater independence. There’s no reason a Republican candidate can’t embrace these or similar positions. They amount to a post-establishmentarian vision of governance that steps outside the box created by misleading categories like “extreme” on the one hand and “centrist” on the other. And they sharply rebuke the sitting president. Does any Republican approach? For now, it’s difficult to answer yes. But the contours of a satisfactory alternative to establishment drift are easy to recognize.
They sharply rebuke his immediate predecessor as well, I might add.