Exchange with Doug Ross Re Minor Parties

In response to my post regarding Phil Orenstein's blog on tea parties legendary blogger Doug Ross writes:

>As Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt have stated on a number of occasions, any attempt at forming a third party would be disastrous: it would simply split the conservative vote when, even united, the job ahead will be monumentally difficult.

We must not and can not endorse the formation of a third party. It represents suicide for the conservative movement. We must instead reshape the Republican Party behind the aegis of Liberty vs. Tyranny.

Best Regards,

Doug Ross
Doug Ross @ Journal

My response:

I disagree with Hewitt and Levin as to the lack of viability of third parties. Third parties do not win but they influence future elections. There have been quite a few examples. One was the Anti-Masonic Party which never won but was instrumental in the formation of the Whig Party, and the Whig Party (a second party) was instrumental in the formation of the Republicans. Another was the Populists, which never won but succeeded in seeing the nomination of William Jennings Bryan. Although Bryan lost in 1896, his ideas were ultimately adopted via Franklin Roosevelt. This pattern also occurred via the Progressive Party in 1912. Although the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt lost, his socialist ideas, which were similar to Bryan's, ultimately won in 1932. Thus, there is typically a multi-step process involving third parties. They do not win but the major parties adopt their ideas.

This multi-step process has to be the case with a within-party insurgency as well. The reason is that there are no Republicans capable of leading a Lockean insurgency, and the party infrastructure is missing. Either way (insurgency or third party) there will have to be a multi-year process. An in-party insurgency will require several election cycles. The Goldwater election of 1964 was an insurgency that paved the way for Reagan in 1980. Similarly, the Bourbon Democrats, the pro-gold conservative Democrats, were around after the Civil War and saw their candidate, Grover Cleveland, win in 1884.

Messers. Levin and Hewittt overstate the distinction between an in-party insurgency and a third party. Either way (insurgency or third party) Lockean Republicans have little chance in the next two presidential cycles.

Additionally, I suspect that any Republican Presidential candidate who is put up to run in '12 will be just another big government type masquerading as a small government type unless there is a radical ideological cleansing of the entire Republican Party now. But I don't see how that could happen. So in a word, the Republicans serious about ideas ought not to think about winning an election in '12. If they do, they will just get more garbage. It is better to work on two things: building a new party and destabilizing the Democrats.

To give you an idea of how bad the Bush administration was, I went to Washington in 2005 to protest the accreditation of the National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), a left wing extremist body that has taken control of accrediting education schools. Rather than abolish the Department of Education, the Bush administration used the DOE as a patronage plum. But who received the patronage? Left wing extremists who supported NCATE---Many of the appointees on the board before which I spoke argued with me in favor of NCATE. So Bush appointed Lockean Republicans' enemies. It was more important to him to be able to do this than to abolish the DOE. That's how incompetent and stupid the incumbent Republicans are.

Do you really think a perpetuation of the current Republican Party is crucial? One of two things must occur in order to change: a third party or a serious insurgency. Otherwise, we will keep running around in circles forever.

Phil Orenstein on the Tea Parties

Phil Orenstein, a seminal blogger and activist who introduced the Academic Bill of Rights to New York State and is active in the Queens (NYC) Republican Party, has written an important blog on the recent "tea parties". I am gratified that hundreds of thousands of Americans have begun to stand up to the collectivism of the Bush-Obama years and have started to reject the failed two-party system. Contrary to multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi's self-serving claim that the tea party participants are wealthy people, I know better and you know better. These are hard working Americans for whom government does not work. It does not work because it oppresses the public; imposes excessive, tyrannical taxes; regulates business to death; creates economic instability via the advice of quack, university-based economists like Paul Krugman; and imposes secular humanist values on those who do not share such views.

Millionairess Pelosi's reaction to the tea parties is indicative. Like any tyrant, Pelosi blames the victims of her tyranny. Imagine if 100,000 people demonstrated against a private firm, say Toyota or Hewlett Packard. Would the managements of those firms say: "Oh these are all millionaires who were put up to it by the competition. Their views do not count." No, only in government, where tyrannical bigots enjoy power without responsibility and do not need to concern themselves with the effects of their decisions are such opinions possible.

Phil notes that hundreds of thousands gathered on April 15 to protest excessive government, taxes and subsidies to incompetent big businesses of which Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Krugman have long been affiliated. These big businesses on the Democratic and Republican Gravy Train do not create value but rather loot the public with the full support of Barack Obama, Republicans and Democrats.

Obama, probably the most divisive president in American history, has achieved the support of Congressional Republicans, who no longer represent their constituents. Obama is a president who has "signed a pork laden stimulus package of $787 billion". Calling this legislation "stimulus" is a joke along the lines of calling the medieval ideology of today's mercantilists "progressive". The Bush-Obama legislation does not help the economy. It transfers wealth from poor to rich. It is the most divisive legislation in American history, signed by the investment bankers' water boy, Barack Obama and his assistant, Millionairess Pelosi.

Orenstein observes that "Days before the Tea Parties, Janet Napolitano released an alarming Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on 'Rightwing Extremism' targeting War Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and ordinary Americans holding conservative viewpoints as potential terrorist suspects." Thus, the divisive Obama administration takes its cues from the early days of Mussolini. It is rather pathetic that Obama's followers think that the nation can unite behind this totalitarian thug and his half witted appointees, tax cheat Timothy Geithner and Black Shirt Wannabe Janet Napolitano.

Phil attacks the opinions of investment banker shill Paul Krugman, who has spent his journalism career saying how he dislikes income inequality but fights as hard as he can to create as much income inequality as possible, specifically through transfers to his former students and Princeton donors on Wall Street. It is Krugman who has worked tirelessly for Ken Lay at Enron and the Ochs Sulzbergers, and who aggressively argues for ever greater subsidies to Goldman Sachs's clients. Then, he suggests that taxes be increased on working people who work two or three jobs and take home $100K.

The Democratic Party has been a cancer on American working people since 1896. The fact that so many are bamboozled by apologists for the super-rich like Krugman and Pelosi is a testimony to the weakness of democracy: You can fool all of the people some of the time.

Phil notes:

"The Tea Party participants utterly reject the Republican Party and its pathetic leadership, in their eyes. Not only do they believe Republicans are part of the problem for the past eight years of big government spending, but also that the McCain campaign purposely threw away the 2008 election...They are even more disgusted with the performance of the GOP today..."

I think this movement will amount to something only if (a) it creates an insurgency within the current Republican Party and throws out all past leadership, from Gingrich on down or (b) it starts a third party. Any association with the past 20 years of Republican leadership is poison. The current Republicans are equal to the Democrats. That is the worst insult I can think of. As Phil points out, the New York Republicans are the worst of all.

Phil's post is excellent and should be read in full here.

GOD BLESS KITCO: KITCO RECANTS HETEROSEXUAL BAN

Howard S. Katz showed me a confidential e-mail from Bart Kitner, president of Kitco, who has invited Katz back to the site as a contributor. Kitco's Daniela Carbone, likely a product of politically correct educational systems, banned Katz from writing for Kitco's gold commentaries for saying on his personal blog that he opposes gay marriage. Katz is a longtime gold investor (dating back to the '60s--I first met him in 1978) and he has a lot to offer in the way of advice about gold and commodity investing. He has beaten the S&P indexes since '99 when he started keeping track. Kitco is a fine gold site and has corrected its inadvertent misstep.

The public outcry in response to my blog and Katz's articles on some of the other gold sites was gratifying. Several of my friends, associates and readers called Kitco, as did several of Katz's readers.

This illustrates the growing power of the Net to confront the gay-dominated easy money community. Homosexual investment bankers will no longer silence gold investors.

As well, this illustrates the potential public power that can be awakened by the "tea parties" that have recently sprung up. I believe that true Americans have lain dormant for too long, seeing their country stolen by rapacious government, special interest looters, big business crooks and homosexual investment bankers who have manipulated the state so that hard working Americans have to pay 50% of their incomes to incompetent government tyrannies.

Ayn Rand on the Future Tyranny of President Barack Hussein Obama

"The 'common good' of a collective--a race, a class, a state--was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by the disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results."

---Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. 1943. From Howard Roark's defense, p. 683, Signet edition.

Ayn Rand herself was an atheist. But let us pray for the freedom of the United States.