I Told You So--But Is Edward F. Cox Listening?

The Wall Street Journal reports the results of a poll done with NBC that finds that support for the Democrats and President Obama has dwindled to below 50%, a larger drop than for previous presidents. "In January despite the recession and financial crisis, voters expressed optimism about the future, the new president enjoyed soaring approval ratings, and congressional leaders promised to swiftly pass his ambitious agenda." But independents are displeased with the Democrats' bungled health reform effort.

Also consider this point:

"public displeasure with Democrats wasn't translating directly into warmth for Republicans. Twenty-eight percent of voters expressed positive feelings about the GOP -- a number that has remained constant through the Democrats' decline over the summer and fall. Only 5% said their feelings toward the Republicans were "very positive."

Slightly more voters, 35%, still feel positive about the Democrats, "a 14% slide from last January." These numbers are difficult to interpret. I'm a Republican, but I don't feel "very" positive about them.

The Republicans are divided between a few different groups: big business socialists (Progressives), social conservatives, and advocates of small government. I am of the last and am only moderately conservative on social issues. A candidate like Mike Huckabee has no appeal for me. He is a Democrat who believes in God. I do not think that God ought to be the chief political issue. Religion is too important for Caesar and America has become great by separating church and state. So Huckabee's religious credentials are unimportant. Nor do I have any interest in the socialist, pro-business wing of the party, represented by George W. Bush and the socialist pro-business press. The more people like Steve Forbes cry for capitalism, the more handouts and Federal Reserve credits they demand. In fact, I dislike the pro-business socialists in the Republican Party as much as I dislike the pro-union socialists in the Democratic Party. I do not care if the people who are stealing from you and me imagine themselves to be business men or workers. They are simply thieves in either case.

Wall Street and ACORN are two kinds of bums. The former has kept the State of New York afloat by sucking the rest of the country dry via the Fed's monetary expansion, while the latter have been sucking New York State dry and driving out our state's honest and hard working element.

In 2008 it was evident to me that Obama was a false messiah in part because he is linked to Wall Street's status quo and in part because he is a pro-SEIU socialist. This unholy alliance is nothing new. I recall a meeting I attended in 1988 with Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres and Victor Gottbaum of the City Clerks Union in New York City. They had their arms around each other like long lost lovers. The alliance of Wall Street and big labor goes back to the National Civic Federation and municipal reform movements of the early twentieth century. Think of Robert Moses, the destructive bureaucratic avatar of New York Times-style Progressivism. His strongest backers were on the one hand big labor and on the other big real estate and Wall Street (except when he tried to build a bridge from Brooklyn Heights to Wall Street and Wall Street was able to stop him, unlike the lower middle income citizens he uprooted in the South Bronx and elsewhere.)

Obama's recent meeting with Wall Street's leadership is one more example of his facile lying. He said to the public that he wanted to insist on a quid pro quo from Wall Street for the preposterous bailout and TARP money, and in private he engaged in a mutual admiration contest. Big labor and big banking unite, and the rest of the economy suffers. The affluent, who own stocks, real estate and other inflatable assets and who work for corporations and government benefit, and the blue collar majority who pay are marginalized as "tea party extremists."

The GOP can easily blow the 2010 election because they insist on the same old failed policies that ignore the interests of the majority, and depend on duping them. Let us not forget that the bailout was George W. Bush's idea, not Obama's. Obama just amplified it. Let us not forget that the latest round of monetary subsidies to Wall Street and the banking industry began with the 2002 economic cycle, certainly not with Bill Clinton, and that Bush was as bad an inflationist as Richard Nixon. The chief difference between the Democrats and the socialist Republicans is that the Republicans super-size the incompetent and corrupt practices of the Democrats.

The Republicans' entrenched support for the status quo is seen in the appointment of Edward F. Cox to the chair of the New York State Republican Party. In 1994 George Pataki was elected in reaction to 12 years of failed tax-and-spend Cuomo policies. He reversed his small government rhetoric within five or six years. He allowed Medicaid to mushroom into a honey pot of corruption. From his bully pulpit he became a cheer leader for Dennis Rivera's Local 1199 union, which has now grown into a one million member strong SEIU union that is like a cancer on New York State's economy, pressing for ever more wasteful and extensive programs.

Three years ago the Republicans lost, and instead of examining the failed strategy of corrupt pandering to special interests, the Republicans have appointed as their state chair a Wall Street wheeler dealer whose only political accomplishments were as an employee of Ralph Nader. The extremists at the New York Times applaud the appointment, but can moderate voters take the Republicans seriously?