What do candidates’ plans actually mean?
Commenter “JuliB” remarks:
Trump offers a poorly thought out idea [on how to make Mexico pay], then people analyze it and discuss it. Other people call it like they see it ”“ ”˜he’s just mouthing off, and it means nothing’. This smaller group knows for sure that it would just be a starting point, and would evolve into something completely different if elected. Or even next week ”“ who knows.
But the same thing happens with the serious candidates. They make these promises/stated intentions, put up policy opinions on their website, then get elected and things evolve into something different.
Trump’s campaign is an entertaining parody of our system.
If I were conspiracy minded, I would say that the global elite is bringing bread and circuses to our election and governing.
Interesting idea. However, although it is certainly true that candidates “get elected and things evolve into something different,” that doesn’t make it worthless to try to analyze the proposals they make as candidates. That’s because—unless candidates are flat-out lying, and lying knowingly, about their intentions—their proposals are indicators of their frame of mind, their political philosophy, and also of how the candidates (and/or their advisors) think.
For example, if the proposal is unworkable and preposterous in its face, or something you don’t even think is desirable if it could be implemented, then that tells you that you don’t want to vote for that candidate if there’s a better alternative. Policy statements are indications of what a candidate would like to do in an ideal world, whether he or she could actually accomplish these goals or not.
And even if the stated plans of a candidate are a flat-out lie on the part of that candidate, they also tell us who the candidate thinks is his/her constituency—what type of person the candidate is trying to appeal to, and what the candidate thinks that voter would like to hear.
I don’t think there’s a monolithic “global elite” conspiratorially plotting all of this. I do think there are people in power who want to keep power and who sometimes work together to do so. I think this is inevitable; it’s part of the nature of power and of human beings, and it’s one of the reasons I consider small government conservatism the best way to temper the tendency. A lot of people in power are corrupt, and whether they start out that way or not, being in power for any length of time encourages corruption by putting more temptations their way. A certain amount of cynicism about government and government leaders is most definitely appropriate, but not so much that we lose sight of the need to evaluate what they say and do and mean to do, as well as that all-important thing called character.
“That’s because–unless candidates are flat-out lying, and lying knowingly, about their intentions–their proposals are indicators of their frame of mind, their political philosophy, and also of how the candidates (and/or their advisors) think.”
While technically accurate, lets examine that in the light of common sense. ALL of the candidates are flat out lying.
Clinton is a congenital liar determined to replace another congenital liar.
Sanders is old enough to know better, so at best he’s lying to himself, and lying about issues on such a fundamental level that it amounts to willful denial, which is most definitely a form of lying.
Trump is in an equal level of denial because otherwise he’d have to acknowledge that he hasn’t a clue as to how to accomplish his promises.
Finally, our hero Ted Cruz who has to know that if elected, he will be opposed by the elite of both parties, the entire mass media, most of the judiciary and by more than half the American public. Which means that a President Cruz will be limited to constitutionally valid executive actions. Which while highly useful, will in and of themselves, prove insufficient to righting our ship of State.
The problem is not Obama or Clinton or Sanders or Trump. It is not a corrupt Congress and mass media and traitorous academia. Those are symptoms.
The problem is an electorate that in the aggregate, wishes to have one of those three pathetic excuses for a candidate assume the Presidency.
And that is why America has a date with the harshest of realities.
You refer to “character”; what have you witnessed among your liberal pals that demonstrate character beyond narcisstic self adulation? Why would you even think that character means anything today for 90 % of the US population?
GB,
You are correct to note that a majority wants to have cake, eat cake, and have future generations pay for the cake. IOW free cake for eternity. There will be a day of reckoning. Meanwhile, I want a president Cruz to gain the helm and attempt to change course. It is most likely a futile gesture, but what is there to lose?
Skepticism is warranted, cynicism is not. Cynics build nothing, and they don’t save countries. At best, they’re good for some witty remarks.
GB is certainly in a cynical frame of mind.
I emphatically do not believe that all candidates are flat out liars. As you said Neo, what they say indicates their intentions. Intentions frequently collide with reality, and changing circumstance. Now, most adults understand that politics does not end with an election; and politics–with a small d–are always a matter of compromise.
I do not believe that GHW Bush was flat-out lying when he made the statement, “no new taxes”; even though it eventually came to haunt him. Events and questionable input from trusted advisors over-rode the intent; to his regret. I do not think that his son intended to be a war time President. I happen to take his “Compassionate Conservative” mantra at face value; i.e., government must have limits, but in the modern age must also provide a safety net. Society and humanity demand it. Those of us who were born in the depression, and grew up with the effects still in evidence and with the stories fresh in the telling, understand that logic. That does not make us less conservative. That does not mean that we do not get frustrated with the players and the process. Still, we are mindful that the crucial question is where the limits on government should be drawn; and the answer in a complex, intertwined society is not nearly as clear-cut as some would have us believe.
Here is a telling quote from the great conservative politician Otto Von Bismarck: “Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.”
I feel famous!
I judge candidates (and then office holders) on my 2 single issues – other things, while important in a sense, come nowhere near my top two. So I don’t get upset even if they go against much of what they said while campaigning. Yes – things change when they get in office (to a certain extent), as Mike Tyson said ‘everyone has a plan until the first punch’.
This was quite obvious to me wrt/Obama and closing Gitmo, ending war, etc. Of course, there’s so much going on in the military/foreign arena not discussed that if I didn’t read Belmont Club, I’d have no clue.
Back to Obama – I figured he would change his actions to reflect reality once he got into office – but how disillusioned are the youth that flocked to vote for him?
“It is most likely a futile gesture, but what is there to lose?” parker
I entirely agree.
Matt_SE,
What did I state that was untrue? Reality can be denied, by declaring it to be ‘cynicism’ but the nature of the situation remains. Surrender to the left is NOT an option and that is a sentiment that the cynic can never agree with… “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” Sun Tzu
Oldflyer,
I did declare all the candidates to be flat-out liars. But I then qualified Sanders and Cruz as partial liars. Of the two, I plainly indicated Sander’s self-delusion to be the more egregious. Cruz has to know, perhaps better than anyone, of the entrenched forces he faces. Perhaps he has a viable plan for how to triumph over those forces. I have yet to learn of it however and until I do, I cannot but reach the conclusion that his strategy is to fight those forces and somehow find a way to overcome them. I’m doubtful since hope is a prayer, not a strategy but I certainly support that effort.
This is where I’m coming from: “if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” Sun Tzu [my emphasis]
Facing the truth of our situation is not cynicism but the first step toward mastery of the situation.
GB,
A vast majority, including the neoneocon flock, who are well above average on the bell curve, are not well schooled on the ever precarious global (and national) fiscal thin ice we all trend upon. In their defense, it is a complex issue and the prevailing conventional (talking head) wisdom whispers and often shouts that all is well. Perhaps you expect too much of people. After all, most do not want to listen to Cassandra. There be monsters out there beyond the borders of the map.
I hear you, I and my extended family have been prepping for nearly 3 decades. Yet I am of a mind to hang on and give the ‘system’ a chance. We can always retreat to our well prepared strong hold. I am optimistic until I am totally pesimisstic. 😉
In an interview today Trump professed an admiration for Ayn Rand. I don’t have a clue what it means, but must think that he identified with and emulated Orren Boyle rather than Hank Rearden. Of course just because someone reads a book doesn’t mean much. I had to read Ulysses by James Joyce and didn’t get a damn thing out of it – except to learn that great authors write one sentence paragraphs that can take up the better part of a page.
Oldflyer:
“I do not think that [President HW Bush’s] son intended to be a war time President.”
“IR-realist critics of the decision for OIF often hold up President HW Bush’s decision to suspend the Gulf War short of regime change as an apples-to-apples contrast between a wise father and his foolish son. … [However] the contrast between the decision to suspend the Gulf War and the decision to resume the Gulf War with OIF isn’t apples to apples. The difference is more like apples to apple pie – President HW Bush’s decisions with Iraq in 1991 locked in the road to Operation Iraqi Freedom.“
GB
Crus is already on record as to how he expects to proceed.
1) Attain office.
2) Use the Oval Office to launch an activist campaign to
a) repeal 0bamacare
b) eliminate the IRS because it’s so transparently gamed by the corporates and the elites.
c) Enact tariffs and VAT — which are much harder to game — and which entail far less manpower to calculate.
d) dis-establish // unfund countless “progressive” money troughs.
3) Rescind Barry’s EO and EM from the first.
4) Actively suppress ISIS
5) Enforce immigration law — for real
a) sanction sanctuary cities — no block grants
b) e-verify
c) terminate welfare for illegal aliens
&&&&&&&&
Denmark has woken up.
Open Borders nix the Welfare State.
Immigrant Muslims will be perpetual dependants upon welfare to the end of time.
The exceptions to the rule can be found — but they are most exceptional.
Across Saudi Arabia essentially ALL Saudi positions are Welfare slots. Muslim culture is NOT to work. That’s for their slaves.
They see themselves as sex machines and warriors.
Sandbox versions of the Samurai ethos that blocked all cultural advance in Japan for centuries.
The parallels Shintoism to Islamism are almost perfect.
Shintoism died — virtually overnight — with the RUPTURE in their Shinto-world view.
Something happened that their ‘manual’ proclaimed utterly impossible.
It was not their military battlefield losses — it was the psychological blow of seeing the Emperor made man.
To utterly destroy Islam one must not defeat Muslims with blood. They crave death.
Instead, one must rupture their creed’s world-view, core essentials.
One must do something that REQUIRES Allah to descend from the heavens to intervene.
When Allah does not show up — the ethos implodes.
We see the same dynamic with cults predicting the end of the world. They implode when life merely goes on.
Quite so, Blert. Although no objection from me to some collateral body count when it’s done.
In the mean time I’ll just quietly sit here turning blue waiting for Neo’s column on the happenings in Colorado.
Cruz’s “Abolish the IRS” surely ranks somewhat higher on the fantasy (or lying) scale than Trump’s “Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.” I can imagine that the federal government might (i) dramatically strengthen border security, including additional structures sufficient to qualify as building a wall and (ii) impose changes in the tax treatment of overseas remittances sufficient to arguably qualify as making Mexico pay for it. There is no possibility of abolishing the IRS: who would administer and collect a VAT? At most, one might rename the IRS.
There are differences among the various candidates, but none of them is particularly honest. So that should not be a factor in deciding how to vote.
NeoNeoCon: I don’t think there’s a monolithic “global elite” conspiratorially plotting all of this.
thats cause its in the open and you dont do the research behind such, and ignore the things that you would use to conclude such. and add the impossible monolithic word to it as it doesnt exist unless chinese communists and russians work together, etc.
in fact when people who are part of it, change sides, and become changers like you, you ignore what they reveal!!!!!!!!! you dont pay attention to things that reveal things, and you refuse to accept the nefarious people and that they can organize over 100 years of actions, despite having seen or visited gothic cathedrals that take longer to make. you even ignore congressional testimony
so if you cherry pick, no your not going to believe what you dont want to believe, wont accept, etc.
“In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops”” “Right now they are in the highest places in the Church”
and what kind of pope do we have now (since the soviets tried to assasinate one, replacing them by controlling the vote works better, dont you think)? sounds like kiril and the socialist world federation of churches… a facet of what you dont believe.
one thing you dont get about how it works is that its about influence, not about direct control.
In 1953, she testified before the US Senate about widespread Party infiltration of labor unions and other institutions. On March 11, 1953, The New York Times ran a front page article entitled “Bella Dodd Asserts Reds Got Presidential Advisory Posts.” The article reported that Dodd “swore before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee today that Communists had got into many legislative offices of Congress and into a number of groups advising the President of the United States.
1954 that Bella Dodd “…warned yesterday that the ‘materialistic philosophy,’ [i.e., dialectical materialism ] which she said was now guiding public education, would eventually demoralize the nation.”
she told ya what was going to happen 50 years later.
so did yru bezmenov, mitrhokhin, jan sejna, A Goliytsin, and about 40 or 50 more… some of them admitting they were part of said plan…
and here are her creds:
Dodd was an organizer for the CPUSA from 1932—1948, and from 1944 to ’48 sat on the CPUSA’s National Council. She also served as head of the New York State Teachers Union. She was expelled from the CPUSA in 1949
ALL IGNORED, and ignored here over and over.
we are programmed to ignore it… we fear what would happen to our reputation for not being politically correct and saying what we are supposed to say.
tons and tons of stuff… from the testimony of erin pizzy as to who took over the womens movement before she and her kids had to flee england or be murdered.
[edited for length by n-n]
y81
Cruz expects to lobby the nation to repeal the Income Tax amendment.
“Repeal the IRS” is salesmanship — branding — of the concept of getting the IRS out of our personal lives. Obviously some organ will remain to collect the VAT, excise taxes, tariffs.
With the advent of social media and digital commerce this is now an essential for a democratic republic to continue.
&&&&&&
Tariffs in a fiat world are necessary for the economic health of the nation — as fiat currency can be — and is — gamed to replaced tariff walls.
At least with a tariff you can aim your policy to this or that nation.
Fiat currency wars bounce all over the globe.
As the central ‘Atlas’ of the global structure, America can’t game its own currency without causing chaos.
The one thing Cruz has said he wants to do is to eliminate or reduce some government agencies, and if those are the ones funded by the discretionary parts of the budget, he can do exactly that. The big test that’s coming, that some President must force, is to determine if the Executive Branch is required to spend all the money that the Legislature budgets. There are parts of the budget that are mandatory, determined by the Constitution specifically, that the Executive will have to spend, but just because the Congress allocates $X billion for the Department of Education, is the President required to spend all of that? I don’t think that’s come up before, and it should.
The all lie, all the time.
Their policy positions are only significant as signals to the various “tribes” that make up the electorate. People choose candidates based on tribal affiliation.
I won’t go so far as to say policies are unimportant, but imho the candidate’s character and basic motivations are more important because in the end, their 4-8 years in office will as often as not present them with events and challenges no one dreamed of during the election campaign, or at least no one understood their significance. How the Pres responds to those challenges is what is really important.
By that standard, all 5 remaining major party candidates fail miserably, and I will predict that no matter which one eventually wins, we are in for another very rocky 4 years with poor leadership, befuddled by events.
blert:
“2) Use the Oval Office to launch an activist campaign”
He can try, but a sufficient competitive “activist campaign” goes to conservatives collectively to produce, not the GOP, not even a Republican president, to produce.
You’re correct that compatible politicians in office need a full-spectrum social activist movement to properly condition the political ecosystem in order to set the context that allows them to make a difference from their lane in government.
However, conservatives collectively, not the GOP, not even a Republican president, are responsible for reforming America’s social cultural/political context via head-on competition throughout the arena. Yet, except for a briefly hopeful burst with the Tea Party, conservatives have heretofore consistently failed to do their part with a sufficient competitive social activist movement and instead passed the buck and blamed the GOP for conservatives’ negligence.
If conservatives’ plan is to elect Cruz president but once again pass the buck to the GOP to “launch an activist campaign”, then they will lose again in the activist game.
For President Cruz to make a difference, conservatives must commit collectively, fully, zealously, and permanently to a social activist movement ASAP – as in time machine. They’re late, but since the activist game never ends, better late than never.
I find it funnier since we talked about how the lid, became the sid, and there was the weather underground, and how they made bombs, and then how they robbed to create a race war, and then eventually put their person into the white house… and that person is now doing what? and you dont think that there is anything to something like this that has over 100 years of such operations?
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) was a socialist student organization active from 1905—1921. It attracted many prominent intellectuals and writers and acted as an unofficial student wing of the Socialist Party of America. The Society sponsored lecture tours, magazines, seminars and discussion circles all over the US aimed at propagating socialist ideas among America’s college population. The group expanded into a philosophy in the 1920s that did not focus exclusively, or even primarily on college students. To symbolize the shift in emphasis, the group changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy in 1921.
League being a symbol of their communist connection
The League for Industrial Democracy (LID) formerly the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, came into being in 1921 when members decided it was time to change the group’s name to become more inclusive, but also to reflect a new organizational perspective
after all their educational work happened and other organizations which had similar wolves taking over the thing and wearing the skins of the originals, it died and was revived by student social activism (As was the same in china leading up to MAO)
Its campus presence waned until the Great Depression of the 1930s led to an increase in radical student activism. The collegiate section was reorganized into an autonomous Student League for Industrial Democracy in 1933.
This merged with the Communist National Student League in 1935 to create the popular front American Student Union. LID activity on campus remained somewhat dormant until 1946, when the Student League for Industrial Democracy was reconstituted.
since they wanted to hide their communist conspiracy roots they cut off the term LEAGUE, which fooled everyone, including neo (we had an argument in the past that she didnt believe thats what it stood for)
The American Student Union (ASU) was a national left-wing organization of college students of the 1930s, best remembered for its protest activities against militarism. Founded by a 1935 merger of Communist and Socialist student organizations, the ASU was affiliated with the American Youth Congress.
but they merged… after they were investigaged for following the soviet party line and so on, like the CPUSA which we now know WAS Active in coordinating this and hundreds of other organizations… and steering donations around to fund them with the adversaries own money.
The Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) of 1946 to 1959 was the second incarnation of the League for Industrial Democracy’s student group. It changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society on January 1, 1960, and severed its connection to the LID in 1965.
[edited for length by n-n]
Let me know if you want a tour of the open historical rabbit hole you ignore… stay away from the idiot sites that exist and are funded to get you to ignore open history, and just pay attention to the facts and people.
its the kind of thing that would BLOW you away if you just cracked the right book or started at wiki and went from link to link to link…
dont expect the newspapers to let you in on it, those are pretty much all owned and run by either wealthy magnates, their families or one of six companies whose leaders push adjendas based on the meetings they had in the early part of last century to collude and do this to the public (for their own good of course)
let me know if you want to go down the rabbit hole of history and detail some of these historical figures, organizations, and such you dont know about, or may only know in passing if at all.
it will surely wake many up and surprise most.
🙂
Artfldgr:
I believe you misunderstood my point about conspiracies.
There are most definitely global movements conspiratorially plotting all sorts of things. The far left is one of them that is very influential (and has been for a long, long time); there are others.
What I was referring to when I wrote “all of this” in this particular post was the candidates (especially the GOP candidates in this election—including Trump) saying what their goals are and perhaps not following through. That is what I say is not a conspiracy by a global elite, which is what “JuliB” has been insinuating.