Meet the Press included discussions of or with two winning Senate candidates: Rand Paul (R-TN), who declined an invitation to appear, and Joe Sestak (D-PA).
I am not sure who is handling Rand Paul's campaign, but he has been reeling from a series of gaffes, principally including the unforced errors of discussing the philosophic merits of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and then criticizing Obama's bellicose rhetoric on BP, which is responsible for one of the greatest oil spill disasters in American history. There are some legitimate points Paul is raising, but from a standpoint of practical politics, it would be difficult to see how he could handle things more ineptly; I'm not sure, though, that turning down an opportunity to appear on the most prestigious talk show and set the record straight was in his best interests. I do realize, of course, Dick Gregory would want to probe exactly how limited government and where he stands on each and every federal domestic program and relevant repeals, over and beyond ObamaCare, not to mention his and his father's more restrained view on military and foreign policy.
I have already outlined in my own posts many of these issues. For example, I think Obama's public statements on the BP disaster have been superficial and disingenuous. We have been drilling oil offshore safely for decades in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. We have to go back 20 years to get back to the Exxon Valdez, which was a tanker, not a rig failure. Obama can speak all he wants of "cozy" relationships between Big Oil and the Department of Interior, but he totally lacks credibility on the issue. The fact is there was a federal plan of action to purchase fire booms against the risk of a spill over 15 years ago, and the federal government, given its mandate to protect the coastline from disasters, failed to execute in a responsive, proactive, preventive manner. And you have to wonder if whatever contingency planning took into effect deeper depths complicating manual containment of mechanical failure, exactly the kind of problem we are seeing with the Deepwater Horizon.
Obama can try to argue that there were shortcuts in approval mechanisms, but given the experimental nature of containing the spill, it is very clear neither the company nor the federal government adequately addressed the complications of containment at great depth. In other words, BP and the federal government could have followed all specified steps in their procedures, but there were clear defects in contingency planning on both sides. Obama's scapegoating of BP officials and government bureaucrats wasn't constructive. That's the point that Rand Paul should have gotten across. It is absurd to believe that BP wanted an accident resulting in several deaths and, at minimum, tens in millions in costs. The fact that Obama and his environmentalist allies will try to exploit the accident to stave off domestic exploration and production, further raising the dependency of the American economy on unstable, unreliable foreign sources of energy supplies, not to mention the inevitably inflationary trade deficit, tells us all we need to know. Calling it, as Rand Paul does, "un-American", is unduly provocative. I'm sure that Obama doesn't see a lot of difference between my describing his rhetoric as disingenuous versus Paul's calling it "un-American"; however, the "un-American" label raises a value judgment that most Democrats are always accusing the GOP of doing--questioning their patriotism. I don't question Obama's patriotism (although his apology tour and initial denials of American exceptionalism are troubling); I am criticizing his vacillating leadership, refusal to acknowledge responsibility (i.e., Bush bashing), inexperience and numerous failures in judgment.
In terms of 'limited government' I've previously discussed my point of view:
I am a believer of limited government; what does this mean? In part, I'm referring to limiting government to a few core competencies, including national finance, international relations, economic affairs, social services, logistics and resource management, public safety and justice. Generally speaking, I prefer to limit government micromanagement of industry but that doesn't mean the elimination of regulation...Government can promote policy goals by ensuring fair competition and cost sharing, resource sharing and sustainability, and transparent information, and limiting adverse human and ecological impact.As for discussions of laws in general, I think Rand Paul would have been well-advised to push on the failure of government to consider economic impact (as well as ecological impact) of laws. We do not suffer from a lack of laws but from dubious relevance, cost efficiency, and effectiveness of an increasingly complex and unmanageable legal framework, which obfuscates and undermines individual responsibility; a key example is a convoluted tax revenue infrastructure which significantly contributes to moral hazard and the law of unintended consequences.
If I was Rand Paul, I would work to set expectations, noting that rollbacks of major legislation are unlikely given Obama's veto authority. What a coalition of conservative legislators can attempt to do is deprive Obama of budget funds to grow the government bureaucracy. In the meanwhile, Rand Paul could champion government process reform to streamline government operations and regulatory authorities.
Joe Sestak (D-PA) is trying to milk his primary victory over Specter and the senior senator's backing from Obama for populist reasons, trying to define his GOP opponent, Toomey, as a Wall Street insider. Sestak did not do a good job under Gregory's questions separating himself from Obama's spending record. For obvious reasons, he refused to criticize Obama's domestic spending initiatives, all of which he himself voted for. He vaguely referenced being for "effective spending", which obviously implies being against unspecified "ineffective" spending. He made a minor point of objecting to certain military spending which could have helped some businesses in his district.
Sestak's cultivated image of being the underdog who defeated the Obama-backed party machinery won't go very far; it basically serves his own political ambitions, not the well-being of Pennsylvania constituents. It all boils down to the fact that Sestak has voted for an additional $3T in national debt to sponsor Obama's first 2 years as President. The bottom line is that Sestak is an incumbent Democratic lawmaker heading into a change election. If I was Toomey, I would largely ignore red meat politics; none of the conservatives are going to vote for Sestak, and they are highly motivated, with or without red meat. Toomey needs to capture the independents and the moderates; in particular, he needs to point out that it is important for a check on the balance of power against the drunken sailor spending of Sestak and Obama, that we can't afford for the US to become another Greece.
Oops! Palin Did It Again...
Any faithful reader of my blog knows I'm not one of Sarah Palin's fans. Sarah does have her moments; I felt her recent take on the Highland Parks High girls' basketball team, whose trip to Arizona later this year was cancelled over the new immigration law, was particularly relevant given her own past experience as a star player for her own high school basketball team. But Palin's assertion on Fox News Sunday that Obama is in the pocket of Big Oil is clearly over the top.
Palin's inference, based on BP's past contributions to the Obama campaign, is untenable. As I pointed out in my April 3 post, Obama only released a tiny fraction of available coastal areas which the Congress made available in 2008 after $150 barrels of oil. The slow reaction to the spill simply reflects bad management.
Political Cartoon
Matt Davies spoofs Vietnam(-era) veteran US Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal (D-CN).
Quote of the Day
A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.
Heywood Broun
Musical Interlude: The AFI Music Top 100 (continued)
#29. "Born to be Wild"
#30. "Stormy Weather"
#31. "Theme From New York, New York"
#32. "I Got Rhythm"
