How Palin Destroyed the Republican Party

This post might be a bit premature as the official tally has yet to come in. Nevertheless, with a strong 10 point lead over McCain in the latest Gallup poll, I think it is pretty safe to say Obama will likely come out on top. If I am wrong, well this post will clearly be irrelevant. Nevertheless, the past 8 years have put the Republican party in a bit of a bind. Since 1980, the Republican Party has been the party of Ronald Reagan. Following the Watergate scandal, Reagan helped re-legitimize the party, by forging an unholy alliance between Middle American and big business. The Wall St. Republicans were willing to concede social issues to Middle Americans, while the Middle Americans were willing to concede economic issues to the Wall St. Republicans. It must be remembered that as recently as 20 years ago, liberal bastions such as Connecticut and New Jersey were voting Republican in national elections. In many ways, George W. Bush was a natural heir to the party's thrown, with a foot in Connecticut big business and a foot in Texas Born-Again Christianity and Conservatism. In effect, Bush's ascension to power within the Republican ranks was the logical conclusion of Reagan's Unholy Alliance. However, as Bush's presidency floundered between unnecessary wars, growing deficits and more recently, the economic crisis, Bush in many ways tore down the legitimacy of Reagan's ideology, the heart and soul of the Republican Party.

As a result, the Republicans currently find themselves at a crossroads. Despite having the presidency and majorities in the House and Senate as recently as 2004, all of the party insiders from that era seem to have the equivalent of political leprosy. The party's views on foreign policy and economics have been discredited and there seems to be no one ready to step into a leadership position. This was most notable during the primary season, given the lack of quality Republican candidates. Mitt Romney was accused of being a Mormon robot and failed to so well in any of the primaries. Rudy Guliani is well, Rudy Guliani, a New York Paleocon, hated by liberals and Middle Americans alike. Ron Paul was probably the most interesting candidate, although slightly insane, he appealed to Wall St., libertarians and for some reason younger Republicans. At the end of the day McCain, a strong contender in 2000, who had since sold his soul to get elected, was chosen. However, aside from Ron Paul, who will probably always be relegated to the roll of something of a circus freak in national politics, the only contender who seems to have a future on the national stage is Mike Huckabee from Arkansas.

Arguably, Huckabee and Palin are going to be left as the two strongest leaders of the Republican party out of this election, however both pose the greatest threat to the integrity of the Republican party. For years, the Republican Party secured victory after victory by getting poor whites to vote against their interests with big business money. However, in the last election cycle there has been a marked change. Obama secured an enormous fund raising advantage, partially through small donors, but largely through big businesses like Goldman Sachs, turning against the Republicans. It has been documented that Wall St. the historic Republican stronghold is likely to vote for Obama 2 to 1 in this election, even with the relative centrist, pro-free market McCain at the helm. Huckabee and Palin represent a sharp departure from this.

Huckabee and Palin are not Republicans in the broader sense. Rather, they are purely Republicans based on social issues, military and Middle-American nationalism. Despite large support amongst individual voters, Huckabee had a miserable time raising money throughout the primaries, as the wealthier faction of the party turned on his more populist economic principles. Palin on the other hand came off as a joke and an offense to the more educated and centrist factions in the party. While both enjoy large support in the conservative, Born-again Christian base, that is not enough to win outside of the Southern and Plains States. In the end, this direction will only serve to alienate more Centrist voters, especially considering the majority of Americans already have an unfavorable opinion of Palin. At the end of the day, the Bush presidency has discredited the central tenants of the Republican party. As a result, the party has been left without any centrist rising stars from this cycle and threatens stear in a more anlienating direction, thus breaking up Reagan's unholy alliance between Wall St. and Middle America.

To Have and to Have Not

Anyone who's kept up with me over the past few years might have noticed a pretty marked conservative shift in my thinking over the past few years. While in high school and the early part of college, I definitely was leaning pretty strongly in favor of socialism, recently I've begun gravitating more towards libertarianism or neo-liberalism. In Resurrection, Tolstoy makes the observation that people tend to adapt their moral beliefs to justify their profession. A prostitute, he claims, believes that she is performing a most necessary duty for humanity, as men first and foremost need sexual satisfaction. I can't say I've had too many interactions with prostitutes, so I'll just have to trust Tolstoy on this one.

Since getting out of college, I've decided to embark on a career in finance. I chance job offer in Oklahoma got me started down the path, where I found that it's actually a really interesting subject and I am not all that bad at it, despite very little formal training. As a result, finance has become my most recent obsession, taking the place of Russian literature. Naturally, my views on economic policy have shifted a bit as I've learned a bit about it. Living in the remains of "Socialist Paradise" has also made a strong impression on my world view, as every day, I see the legacy of 70 years of socialist rule. In any case, over the past few months, there has been one question that still gnaws at me, probably one of the central questions in defining a person's political outlook: why are some people rich and some people poor?

Before I embarked on my journey to the heart of the financial beast, I generally attributed social inequality to dumb luck. I have met more than my share of rich idiots, who have landed cushy jobs merely through of family connections and massive inheritances to boot. On the other hand, I've met plenty of smart, ambitious people, who for whatever reason will remain poor for the rest of their lives. Take Verkhny Lomov, the Russian village I visited a few weeks back. If you are born in a village with in the middle of nowhere, with no indoor plumbing, limited educational opportunities, odds are you won't be able to rise out of it, no matter how brilliant you are. Even when you think about it, genetic gifts boil down to little more than pure and simple dumb luck. My tag line from that era was, "What separates me from a poor, crippled, Somali orphan? Luck."

However, on the other end of the spectrum, we have to realize that life just isn't fair. One thing that annoys me about American society, as anyone who reads this blog might pick up on, is the tendency for Americans to complain. I mean, really, life in America is not all that hard. It's designed not to be. In the summer of '07, when I was in California, one person who I talked a great deal to was my brother's bitter, 45-year old, unemployed roommate Joe. Joe grew up around Chicago in a working class family. Dropped out of High School and moved out to California on a whim. I guess he worked a bunch of odd jobs and at some point along the way got a GED, except like every other bitter, stupid liberal, he fancied himself to be much smarter and more educated than he really was. All he ever wanted to do was bitch about how the system was fixed. For the first day or two, it was interesting to have a lively debate. It quickly dawned on me, that he spent his life sitting in front of a computer, reading the latest conspiracy theory blog, churning over the same-old, ridiculous ideas. At the end of the day, Joe is 45, unmarried, unemployed, studying at community college and living off student loans. While unquestionably, there may have been some circumstances in his life that made him less likely to succeed in life, he still could've done much more to improve his lot. Really, is it anyone else's fault that he is bitter and miserable or did he just piss away every opportunity he was given?

An Idea that Will Piss Everyone Off, but Just Might Work



As my life has descended into chaos this week, I haven't had much time to update this blog. I hope my dear readers don't mind. I've been meaning to write a big piece in defense of Russia in the financial crisis, but it will probably have to wait til next week. In any case, the markets are up 43% or something this week, so it seems the market has beaten me to the punch.

In any case, the American economy is the really interesting story in the world, right now, of course. As I've been harping upon in a few of my recent posts, the real culprit seems to me to be our current account deficit. We've spent more than we've earned recently. While America is still the world's third largest exporter, behind Germany and China, totaling around $1.15 trillion in 2007, our production is nowhere near enough to make up for our consumption. As I mentioned in a previous piece, the United States' current account deficit stood at $800 billion or 5.8% of GDP over the same period.

The structure of the American economy that has developed over the past few years is largely to blame for our current trade imbalances. In 2007, only 23.2% of the work force was dedicated to agriculture or manufacturing. The remainder was dedicated to management and the service sector, effectively making our consumption more efficient but not helping solve our problems of over-consumption. As I stated in my last piece, unions have been a major part of the problem, as they have driven manufacturing wages up in the country, making production in America uneconomical. Additionally, the United States has undergone a gentrification over the past 40 or so years. Today, many Americans regard blue collar jobs as beneath them and demand extra pay to occupy those positions.

Nevertheless, just south of the border there are hoards of people who are willing to work blue collar jobs for minimal pay, who can't get visas to work in America. If we were to begin employing workers from Latin America under a special visa plan, allowing employers to give them work at below the current minimum wage, we could easily provide a much needed boost to American industry, even providing businesses incentives for moving industries such as textiles and other consumer goods to move back to America. Many will see the plan as inherently racist, but at the end of the day, these people are not American citizens and it is their choice. Besides, race would not be a criteria, merely country of origin and we already employ those restrictions. Ask any Russian how hard it is to get a US visa. Relaxing requirements for these new visas would provide the American economy with much needed, cheap workers in the manufacturing sector, and at the end of the day, it would just legitimize and bring under a legal umbrella a system that already exists.