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Special Report
Enlightened Bribery
All the greats, from Lincoln to Obama, do it, according to the chattering class.
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul,” said the English writer George Bernard Shaw. Mitt Romney would agree. His post-election analysis of Obama’s success at bribing voters ran along the same lines. “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney told disappointed donors last week.
Desperate to appear piously contrite and malleable in the eyes of voters, Republicans pounced on Romney’s remark, calling it “insulting” and “stupid.” The same Republicans who backed Romney on “electability” grounds now treat him as a hopelessly impolitic embarrassment to the party.
But in working themselves up into a lather over his remark, they didn’t refute it. Their truth-defying pandering is far more troubling than Romney’s comment. Obama obviously did collect votes by promising free contraceptives, forgiven loans, food stamps, and so on. If the Republicans plan to recover from defeat by imitating Obama and joining him in a bribery contest, they don’t deserve to win, and they won’t win. Given the choice between two demagogic parties, the American people will choose the one that is better at it, the Democrats.
Defeated Republicans, who seek to get back into the good graces of the people through flattery and pandering, sound as pathetic as the 19th-century French politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. Asked where the people were headed, he replied, “I do not know, but I am their leader, so I must follow them.”
If that’s the GOP’s idea of leadership, it won’t be of much use to the country once it does get back into power. Two parties seeking to win elections on the same false principles will just hasten America’s collapse.
The national GOP should take a look at California to see what happens to a party that abandons principle for power: it ends up with neither. Oblivion, not resurgence, is the legacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s moderate GOP.
At a time when our political discourse needs if anything to widen, the chattering class demands it narrow. The parties must grow ever closer together. “Compromise” is the mark of “mature” politicians. “Cooperation” is what’s needed now. All this prattle ignores that America’s deepest problems bear bipartisan fingerprints. America’s trillions of dollars in debt and mushrooming entitlement crisis are nothing if not monuments to bipartisanship. The drive to narrow the debate and reduce differences between the parties contributes to a culture in which these problems will never be solved. Both parties, under this culture, compete for empty wins as they lose a country.
Obama practices enlightened bribery, as members of the dominant elite see it, and they exhort Republicans to do the same. Dirty politics is fashionable again, as evident in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. The movie casts Lincoln as a briber who used patronage jobs to win votes for the Thirteenth Amendment. The movie glories in compromise and low practical politics — none of which is meant to diminish the audience’s respect for Lincoln or his Congressional allies. On the contrary, they are all the greater for it. The movie’s dunces are the pols who refuse to compromise. The movie, based on a Doris Kearns Goodwin book, is designed to be “relevant” to modern audiences, which is to say it flatters modern liberals who consider themselves moral giants even as they use scummy means to get what they want. Instead of rising to Lincoln’s level, liberals prefer to bring him down to theirs. He apparently, judging by this movie, was just like their other corner-cutting heroes: FDR, LBJ, JFK, and now Obama. Why isn’t Goodwin as charmed by Nixon’s low tactics?
Obama recently enjoyed a private screening of the movie and no doubt identified with its hero. The more shallow and ignoble America’s pols become, the more they fancy themselves Lincolnian. Were Lincoln alive today, he would find the level of demagoguery in American politics unfathomable and the quality of compromise degrading and myopic. Only liberals could kid themselves into seeing Obama’s politics of bribery and envy as a new birth of freedom.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (79) | Leave a comment
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Pecos Pete| 11.20.12 @ 6:48AM
Enlightened bribery? $4 trillion in new debt in 4 years sounds more like rape to me.
Moderate republicans get the fickle finger of fate ... you know ... the middle finger? Moderate republicans should compromise and simply join the democrat party, but then they would have to compete with the other pigs. Much better, they believe, to have their own trough and pig sty.
Jack in Wi| 11.20.12 @ 7:52AM
Lincoln was a big government liberal. He did use bribery, blackmail, bullying to get his way. He gqave alot of stuff away like to the railroads, the homestead act, land grant colleges . He ripped the Constitution to shredds with his handling of civil rights. He imprisoned thousands of people with no trail of charge. He closed up numerous newspapers in the north and put their editors in jail. He gave the country the first income tax and draft. The Democrats are the party of Abortion Homosexuality, endless war for Israel, big bloated government, and sky high taxes. The Republicans do best when they run as the Peace and Prosperity Party of small, efficient government. Romney ran as Obama light. That is why he lost. Give the people some reason to vote for your candidate. Romney got less votes tn McCain. He was a rotten candidate who wasted a billion dollars and said nothing.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 8:06AM
Lincoln-basher and an anti-semite. You're batting a -1000 already Jack.
JimP| 11.20.12 @ 2:49PM
Jack's correct about Lincoln. Telling it like it was isn't bashing. Also, I want to see the Israelis stomp all the terrorist groups around them to dust, just in case you may start thinking disliking Lincoln for what he actually was equates with anti-semitism. Israel forever!
Jack in Wi| 11.20.12 @ 4:35PM
Vern: The Democrats are the party of endless war and welfare for Israel. One such party is enough. After all the Zionists give the Democrats at least 3 quarters of their votes and give the Democrats the majority of their campaign funds. The Republicans get nothing for backing the extreme racist regime in Israel. Far better to keep our distance and like Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and old man Bush. Did the fact that Nixon bailed out the Israeli's in 1973 did him no good as the Jews led the whole Watergate campaign to destroy him. We get nothing but bad news from supporting Israel. Let the Democrats be their party. Because they are their party.
As for Lincoln, he was a tyrant who ran roughshod over the Constitution and other laws. He was the inspiration to other Shredders of the law like Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, Bush Jr. and the worst of them all Obama.
Bill8472| 11.20.12 @ 9:42AM
You give Lincoln too much credit for power. The Homestead Act was a law passed by Congress. So was the legislation for land-grant colleges. Yes, Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus for those arrested for Confederate sympathies, he did that all right and got drawn up short by the Supreme Court. I don't know about closing down newspapers, maybe he did. The draft was a law passed by Congress. I don't know about the income tax, but revenue-raising is the province of Congress, not the President.
So nearly all of your reasons for calling Lincoln a "big government liberal" are off the mark.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 9:51AM
Lincoln was facing an insurrection. The Supreme Court shot him down only AFTER they were safe; otherwise, Judge Taney would have presided over a newly formed Confederate Supreme Court.
C Smith | 11.20.12 @ 10:33AM
"Lincoln was facing an insurrection."
You mean state's rights?
Before returning, my brother and I sometimes visited a mass grave on the Forest side. One of my father’s early memories was of an honor guard firing a volley in remembrance of Twenty-Six Confederate soldiers. And of he and his brother, oblivious to the significance of the occasion, gleefully running to pick up shell casings. Pearl Harbor and Buna all too soon altered that innocence.
In recent years, a second monument appeared revealing a truth long latent in that trench. The day after the battle, by order of Colonel John McNeil, fifteen captives were tried, convicted, and shot where the old Wabash Depot once stood. And on the third day, Colonel Frisby McCullough was court-martialed on contrived charges, found guilty, sentenced to be shot, and with the apparent consent of McNeil, “paraded up and down the streets of Kirksville amid the jeers and shouts of joy of the Federals.” However, at his request as an officer, he was given one concession, to conduct his own execution: “What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!” However, his executioners failed to comply. And as a second volley was being prepared, he continued from the ground: “May God forgive you this barbarous murder.”
http://to-my-children.blogspot.....f-may.html
Quartermaster| 11.20.12 @ 12:17PM
The Cofeds did not commit insurrection and it is beclowns to you to even accept that BS. They tried to peacefully secede from a voluntary Union. It was Lincoln that committed insurection through his lawlessness. He ignored the law and the courts. Taney fully expected to be arrested by Lincoln. The court was far from "safe."
Lincoln was a lawless crony capitalist doing the bidding of his new England coporate handlers. As a result, he engaged in a war of imperial conquest. That's not "Lincoln bashing." It's simply a neutral objective fact.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:39PM
As I remember it, it was The South that Fired On a U.S. Fort, and then bringing an Army to Fight General John Kerry McClellan.
Maybe I need to get a hold of one of those Jefferson Davis History Books.
ncatty| 11.20.12 @ 2:01PM
QM, why didn't the South peaceably test the issue in Court. After all, the same Court had ruled in favor of the South in the Dred Scott decision, so they had a good shot.
Occam's Tool| 11.20.12 @ 5:46PM
Lincoln's responsibility was to the Country that he was President of, and the Constitution. There is no mechanism for secession in the Constitution. The Confederation was a more loose organization of States; it did not work. Thence was developed the need for the Constitution. RCV, do tell me if I'm screwing this one up. I defer to your knowledge of Constitutional law.
Lincoln carried out his Oath. And a good thing, too. Read Harry Turtledove's "How Few Remain" for an idea of what we would have been like if we had lost. As usual, TLP is correct.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 6:25PM
Whaaaaaaaaaaat?
You're deferring to a Guy who voted for a guy that Shits on the Constitution every chance he gets, for his Authority on The Constitution?
Ask him if it's The President's JOB to Enforce ALL OF THE LAWS on the books, like OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS.
Ask him if it's The President's JOB to decide when the Senate is in Session, and when it is not, when it comes to Reccess Appointments.
Ask him if it's The President's JOB to Run Guns to Mexican Drug Cartels, in an effort to Killas many people as he could, so as to push New Gun Regulations.
Ask him about FORGING DOCUMENTS to a Federal Judge, and then, when that failed, to Implement an ILLEGAL Drilling Moratorium, after that Judge DENIED him, TWICE.
Ask him if The President can Wage an Illegal War against Libya, with ZERO CONSULTATION with Congress, in Violation of HIS OWN PARTY's Holy Grail - The War Powers Act.
I'm just sayin!
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 6:34PM
I still Love ya.
I'm just trying to open your eyes to exactly Who, and What, RCV is.
Suzyqpie| 11.21.12 @ 9:26AM
Correct TLP, selective enforcement of the rule of law is an abdication of the rule of law. Exactly where we are today. The Constitution for 0bama is a smorgasbord, pick the parts that serve you agenda, ignore the ones that don't. We are in the process of establishing a very dangerous precedent.
Occam's Tool| 11.21.12 @ 5:08PM
Oh, Great One: RCV has his uses as a Constitutional lawyer. He knows this technically. As for his blindness regarding the Worst President since James Buchanan:well, he lives in CA, and will feel the horror soon enough. You don't and I don't. Have pity upon his foolishness. I do.
RCV| 11.26.12 @ 3:39PM
You got it right, Occam.
Occam's Tool| 11.20.12 @ 5:42PM
Lincoln was focused on one thing: saving the Union. He did that. All else was secondary to him.
Obama is focused on destroying what makes America great, and bringing in the rise of Islamic darkness---"all that is not forbidden is allowed." Everything else is negotiable.
The fact that one man is generally reputed as great, and the other one will be generally reputed as an incompetent, is due to what their goals are, not the means they used.
Homesteading and Land Grants were farsighted approaches to developing land in areas that might have remained undeveloped for a long time. I fail to see the problem with Texas A&M or Ohio State being developed, as both gave us many great defenders of our country, the greatest being my hero, Curtis LeMay.
Bob K| 11.20.12 @ 7:54PM
Ignore Jack.
He always brings up something off topic and everybody jumps on it.
Occasionally, like a blind pig, he will find an acorn. Ignore that too.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:29PM
95% of political speech is lie.
Joellen| 11.20.12 @ 7:08AM
Pecos Pete - you said it so perfectly, "simply join the democrat party, .......". If the republican party compromises and sacrifices the core values of the party, they will have no party. Democrats are NOT ever going to join the republican party - it aint happening (that's for Ralph Novely - or however you spell his name - who thinks my english aint to good). True constitutional conservative Republicans are not going to abandon their core principals and there would simply be no reason to vote if we have on our ticket a Megan McCain or Joe Scarsboro in the future. The Republicans need to wake up and get their back bone back. Get a Allen West, or Scott Walker to be the leader, and display over and over why we need a strong Republican party.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:44PM
Compromising with Obama, would be akin to Making a Deal with the Devil.
Or, with Jefferson Davis, on Slavery.
Maybe if we just had a little Communism, a little Statism, and Showed a little more Tolerance in the face of a Benevolent Dictatorship?
What's the harm in that?
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:31PM
TLP: Where is America’s Pinochet now that we need him?
Stephie| 11.20.12 @ 7:12AM
And what Romney said was the truth. But then the truth doesn't play well in politics.
On either side.
Von Mises Jr| 11.20.12 @ 7:22AM
A gaffe in politics is when someone inadvertently tells the truth.
Politicians and fools can lie to themselves and each other, but truth and reality always win out. Many will be learning reality over the next year with terrorism wracking the Middle East and perhaps beyond, fiscal cliff and debt ceilings pouring cold water on financial fantasy, and unraveling health care and financial markets that were supposed to be solved according to the politicians and stupid party with ObamaCare and Dodd Frank. But markets find truth even if it sometimes takes a while.
Grzmlyk| 11.20.12 @ 9:31AM
VMJr., the cocoon of false consciousness in which America has ensconced itself - the gossamer of lies, wishful thinking, hubris and ignorance - preclude the truth from coming out.
Markets are about truth - this is one reason liberals hate markets. Look at recent polls: Americans blame capitalism for today's problems - as if the free market had anything to do with this travesty.
And when terrorism wracks the Middle East, when the Russian Bear awakens, when the fiscal cliff and debt ceilings become realities, when Obamacare unravels, when finanical markets go into death convulsions, when rising interest rates put America out of business and end the Ponzi Scheme - all of which will most certainly happen - Americans will blame free markets; you and me; the producers; the individual thinkers.
Count on it. Remember Mencken's observation: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Our education/entertainment/science/law complex has spawned a populace of greedy, self gratification-seeking zombies.
We have entered the intellectual dark ages, a world in which myth, witchcraft, black magic and voodoo reign supreme - which, in turn, merely provide a smoke screen for utterly corrupt Democrat plutocrats. But these pagan anti-intellectual memes have names like "Arab Spring" and "reset" and "Climate Change" and "Green energy" and "Social Justice" and "paying your fair share" and "diversity" and "Keynesianism."
Von Mises Jr| 11.20.12 @ 10:50AM
Truth is about to occur in the markets and in the entitlement state, and many are going to be shocked.
Social Security has an IOU for $2.5T that Peter Schiff likens to writing yourself a million dollar check and bragging you are a millionaire. Receipts last year were $637B and outlays $733B. That means seniors are already living off an EBT card and the pantry is empty.
There are these people referred to as the "Bond Vigilantes." Bill Gross from PIMCO has been abandoning the bond market for the last year or more: http://www.reuters.com/article.....020110309.
We are printing money with QE3 since the Chinese and others know our bonds are simply expensive toilet paper.
There is an article at American Thinker today by Monty Perelin "Economic Disintegration is Almost Here" that lists the announced layoffs and bankruptcies pending for January with the fiscal cliff and taxmeggedon.
When your last resort is to print $40B per month to buy CDO's and CMO's (Sub-prime mortgages) that are more like used toilet paper, it is going to get messy (please excuse the metaphor and mental picture).
But the only consolation is that debt crisis and depressions do not affect everyone the same. If you have property with low debt, gold and silver, guns and ammo, as well as food; you are a hell of a lot better off than a scumbag like Perp with a non-functioning EBT card and a jacket from the Salvation Army.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:50PM
The Markets are about THE TRUTH?
If that were True?
The Dow would be about 500.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:32PM
The GD Republicans can't even repeal LBJ's Great [sic] Society.
benny havens| 11.20.12 @ 7:51AM
If the Republican establishment thinks that they can compete with President Santa Clause, they are truly out of touch with reality. That includes Newt Gingrich, William Kristol and Carl Rove.
The reason Romney lost is because he didn’t make the case that a free market capitalist system is the best way to remove people from poverty. It offers more opportunities, more self-reliance and more liberty.
Handing out free healthcare, food stamps, I-phones, contraceptives and welfare checks will not reduce poverty. It perpetuates it.
If you lefties think this is insulting, then ask yourself this. Why did the group that makes less then $30K per year make up 63% of the votes for Obama?
Did they vote for higher unemployment? Do you think they voted for increasing the national debt? Was it for more regulation on business? Did they vote for more chaos in the Mid-East? Maybe the votes were for lower home values. Because that is what Obama gave us in his first four years.
The answer is no. They voted for the guy who said that they would get something for nothing, and the cost would be passed on to the rich.
benny havens| 11.20.12 @ 7:52AM
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose financial policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
Alexis De Tocqueville.
The Avenger| 11.20.12 @ 8:12AM
Alexis De Tocqueville Should be required reading
for all the little lemmings that populate our schools. Instead when they pick an author named Al for required reading they pick the dumba** Al Gore.
Russel| 11.20.12 @ 9:47AM
Exactly , and he observed the obvious before our illustrious senators decided to buy votes with ( correct if wrong ) the 17th ammendment . That freed them from the reins of state supervision . Go forth young politician and promise . You'll still be in congress long after our Founders have turned in their graves . Just as W.E. Williams has astutely stated countless times - a politician who promises to follow the Constitution to the letter , and not rob from one and give to another , couldn't possibly get elected .
Grzmlyk| 11.20.12 @ 9:43AM
Sadly, Benny, today's poverty class lives better than kings did just 100 years ago. There's not a whole lot of incentive to advance.
Americans do not want opportunity. They do not want self-reliance. They do not want liberty.
They want to be kept in an incubator their entire lives sucking on the teat of the Leviathan. Those who don't have figured out how to make money off of those who do. And there are many who just want to see America go down the tubes and be replaced by a one-world government - the communist apotheosis.
You are right - the GOP will never win at this game - unless we take Krauthammer's, Kristol's, Rove's, Jindahl's and Romney's advice: Become Democrats. One party, one happy family.
Just avert your eyes from the slaves who will be forced to support the lazy masses.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:53PM
If your third paragraph is even Close to being the Truth?
And it is.
Then your Fourth Paragraph is Moot.
Daniel| 11.20.12 @ 8:00AM
"Were Lincoln alive today, he would find the level of demagoguery in American politics unfathomable and the quality of compromise degrading and myopic"
Are you serious?
If there is any American politician who exemplifies crassness, hypocrisy, dictatorial tendencies, and yes-tyranny, it was A. Lincoln. I'm sure that Obama has studies Lincoln's life and tactics and envies his ability to say one thing and do another. I'm sure he envies Lincoln's contempt for the constitution, the rule of law, and the people he was sworn to serve. I'm sure Obama envies Lincoln's ability to jail all opponents (whether congressmen or newspaper editors), to terrorize civilians who oppose his rule, and his remarkable ability to reward his patrons with lucrative government contracts.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 8:08AM
Foolishness. Lincoln was the exact opposite of modern liberals like Obama. He actually believed in the Constitution, unlike Progressives and Confederates.
Quartermaster| 11.20.12 @ 12:22PM
BS. Lincoln violated teh constitution at every turn. Up to and including his invasion of the South. Lincoln was every bit as lawless as Zer0 is. Obama is a direct spiritual descendant of Lincoln. Without Lincoln there would be no Obama. Lincoln set loose the unitary "federal" state that we are saddled with now.
All you are doing is demonstrating your own ignorance and pretending to be a conservative. Lincoln was the first progressive president, put up by a progressive party.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:57PM
Again.
As I recall, it was The South who Fired the First Shots.
You sound like a Muslim, complaining that Israel is Shooting Back.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:36PM
Humans are imperfect and the Civil War ended slavery an institution that should have been abolished by 1789.
Occam's Tool| 11.20.12 @ 5:50PM
His comment about the comments like QM made is that he did not expect the country to become addicted to emetics in time of peace. And, indeed it did not. We did not have a formal permanent income tax until the Progressive Movement rammed one through in 1913.
Lincoln was fighting a war in the middle of great technological change. And his job was to preserve the Government the Constitution made, one which allowed NO SECESSION. None.
And to think that Britain and France and Germany would leave the small states of the North American continent alone after the split is ridiculous. And the South would have split.
RCV| 11.26.12 @ 3:41PM
Your comments on Lincoln are so perceptive, Occam.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 8:11AM
Lincoln was certainly a horse-trader as were all politicians during the 1800s. There is no need to turn Lincoln into Jesus in order to appreciate his greatness (as Harry Jaffa as warned).
I must say, however, that I've read a lot of Lincoln or Lincoln-related books but Doris Kearns Goodwin's is the only one I ever gave away -- it was that boring. I hope the film is better than the book.
Quartermaster| 11.20.12 @ 12:23PM
Jaffa has been repeatedly fisked for his Lincoln worship. Jaffa is simply a hack masquerading as a historian.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 6:48PM
Have you read his books? Your evaluation of Jaffa is misdirected in the extreme.
Hardcard| 11.20.12 @ 8:18AM
D.K.G. work is not her own she majored in plagerism and her husband swore to it.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 12:58PM
I thought she majored in Hiding LBJ's Salami?
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:39PM
Some women have an ugly man fetish.
Cobalt| 11.20.12 @ 8:51AM
"Why should this woman vote for a party that will cut taxes she does not pay, but reduce benefits she does receive?"
"Mitt Wasn't All Wrong About 'Gifts'
By Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.humanevents.com/201.....out-gifts/
Pepe LaPue| 11.20.12 @ 9:05AM
To Benny Haven. I don't disagree with anything you said except you have some figures wrong. The fact is that those voters who make $30,000 or less a year make up only 20% of the total votes . Of those 63% voted for O. By my calcs that makes about 17M votes went to O from this class. Just enough to put him over the edge (aside from all the free "stuff' he offered). We Rep have to work on this if we want to take our country back.
TLP| 11.20.12 @ 1:03PM
We offered them Jobs, and a chance to be Men and Women who could stand on their own two feet, again, and Provide for their Families THEMSELVES, beholden to No-one.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
But then, I'M A MAN.
Occam's Tool| 11.20.12 @ 5:51PM
Yes, Tim, you certainly are. These people annoy.
Bill8472| 11.20.12 @ 9:37AM
How much did Lincoln actually have to do with the passage of the 13th Amendment?
I thought that the 13th Amendment was passed by Congress, via the sponsorship of the Radical Republicans (who took advantage of the fewer numbers of Democrats in Congress, the Demos being in favor of the institution and the secession of the slaveowning states), and that Lincoln had little to do with it.
Maybe I'm wrong.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.20.12 @ 9:56AM
He had a lot to do with getting it passed, but it was ultimately up to the states, who passed it on December 18, 1865. Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14, 1865, eight months earlier.
Quartermaster| 11.20.12 @ 12:25PM
The 13th amendment was shoved down Lincoln's throat. He opposed it strongly.
Since Congress passes proposed amendments, then sends them to the states, all Lincoln could do is jawbone.
ncatty| 11.20.12 @ 10:07AM
Lincoln faced the immediate and ultimate issue of national survival. His lens was the Declaration of Independence. We argue over health care and social security. Our lens is personal aggrandizement. There is no comparison.
Quartermaster| 11.20.12 @ 12:28PM
Please! The North would have survived southern secession. The 7 states of the deep south seceded a bit before Lincoln was inaugurated. the upper south did not secede until Lincoln made his call for troops. There had been no violence to that point and Lincoln could have left things alone, withdrawn the troops from Sumter and nothing else would have happened. The deep south, by itself, was not economically viable and would have remained mired in its own antbellum attitudes while the rest advanced. Instead, Lincoln made his call for troops to engage in an illegal war and the upper south went too.
ncatty| 11.20.12 @ 1:37PM
Are you in favor of modern-day secession?
Louis Jenkins| 11.20.12 @ 11:10AM
Ah yes, the movie Lincoln had to be written in some how. A truly sad movie, except it did have a happy ending.
Who Knows?| 11.20.12 @ 11:36AM
You can’t bribe reality.
Gravity exists.
The chicken, Obama, will not only come DOWN to roost, but he will be roasted by any people who survive the coming disaster.
Deservedly so.
fmm| 11.20.12 @ 12:15PM
Romney was not only right on his gifts comments but with his 47% comment as well. The situation in California shows this clearly where they just voted to increase the state income tax on themselves to an astounding 13.3%. The breakdown of voters is: only 37% of the voting public actually works in CA (counting all people with the exception of state workers) and only 50% of those make enough to pay taxes. Therefore, only 18% of CA's population pay the taxes which support the state government; the other 82% voted to make them pay more. The nation is not far behind.
JD| 11.20.12 @ 12:28PM
What Democrats have done with startling success is to convince voters that the main reason for voting against a given candidate is that the candidate has the support of some other group of Americans that we are being told to hate. Be it business, the rich, white people, or even Christians, increasingly it is not policy, but rather the support of "bad people" that is the primary reason given for opposing a candidate.
This is the essence of Democratic divisiveness. The people whose endorsement is considered a bad thing by Democrats are all Americans. In many cases, they're the people who keep America running. Yet in this bizarro-world, 60 million voters think that the most important factor in an election should be to vote against the people who comprise the engine of our economy.
Understand this evil. It's not a bad policy that's cited as the main reason for hating a candidate. It's that he dares to receive support from the "wrong" people. What a dangerous evil this is!
Paul McGrath| 11.20.12 @ 1:26PM
Bingo. Listen to the riff raff yammer about how the Republican Party is "white," and how it has abandoned minorities, and how so many black and brown faces were at the Democratic convention, etc. And of course, ignore Condoleeza, Mia Love, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Susan Martinez. They don't count.
Identity politics. This has been going on for a long time. As Jeff Lord and Ann Coulter have proved, the Democrats thrive on racial politics. They can't survive without it.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:51PM
They don't count because they are not of the New Left.
JFGalt| 11.20.12 @ 4:03PM
This highlights the whole problem with the republican party. Massive hypocrasy. They are committed to governance without any principles like the deomcrats and until they come out with a true conservative standing then we are doomed to governance by democrats. Romney was right about the 47%. He should have never backed off of it but instead he should have shown it the light of day. Same thing here.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 11.20.12 @ 5:10PM
It is not as if we (as conservatives) don't want to give people free stuff. We do. We want to give people the freedoms guaranteed to the people and the states in the Constitution.
Unfortunately, a slight majority chose free Obamaphones instead.
Marc Jeric| 11.20.12 @ 5:21PM
Now that Obama will be in a position to appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber-stamp his evasions of the law and usurpations of power, this country may be unrecognizable in a few years as the America that once led the world in freedom, as well as in many other things.
Barack Obama’s boast, on the eve of the election of 2008 — “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” — can now be carried out, without fear of ever having to face the voters again.
This “transforming” project extends far beyond fundamental internal institutions, or even the polarization and corruption of the people themselves, with goodies handed out in exchange for their surrendering their birthright of freedom.
Obama will now also have more “flexibility,” as he told Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, to transform the international order, where he has long shown that he thinks America has too much power and influence. A nuclear Iran can change that. Forever.
Have you noticed how many of our enemies in other countries have been rooting for Obama? You or your children may yet have reason to recall that as a bitter memory of a warning sign ignored on Election Day in 2012.
He could have added that Romney brought a feather to the fight, while Obama brought a machine gun.
JD| 11.20.12 @ 7:09PM
It does not matter whether the Supreme Court rubber-stamps or not. Obama violates laws he does not like, and no enforcement body stops him.
The only thing meaningful is who has the hearts and minds of the people, and right now a lot of terrible lies hold that position.
Ralph Novy| 11.21.12 @ 1:23AM
You're a lying, racist piece of crap.
Period.
Go hang yourself!
... oh, but not before writing explanatory, apologetic notes to your children about why you've been a nasty, abusive, inadequate parent!
Duh.
Otherwise...........
Climb on board the S.S. Humanitania, be nice, and shut the hell up!
Cobalt| 11.20.12 @ 5:49PM
"He could have added that Romney brought a feather to the fight, while Obama brought a machine gun."
....and the news media, which will continue to wage war against us in future elections.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:49PM
Cobalt: Romney is the "Gentry" that didn't argue with the New Left radicals in the street and college campuses like I did. He is just unaware of what must be fought and where. David Horowitz would be a better strategist and manager for a conservative to run in 2016. Instead of those idiot policy wonks that worked for Nixon and Bush.
Ralph Novy| 11.21.12 @ 1:30AM
David Horowitz is about as nasty a racist punk-ass bitch as it gets.
Should've been strangled by his own seatbelt years ago.
Have any doubt? Ask Mel Brooks.
Rhoetus| 11.20.12 @ 10:55PM
George: Thanks for the review. I just finished reading "Killing Lincoln". Now I will wait to see the Lincoln movie what it's available on DVD. Ms. Goodwin is just another troll.
Ralph Novy| 11.21.12 @ 1:16AM
How broad-minded, Rhoetus.
The world -- i.e, probably your backyard in Connecticut -- awaits you and yours. Expend yourselves!
Rhoetus| 11.21.12 @ 9:43PM
Mr. Novy: 1. I've never been guilty for even visiting Connecticut. I've been active in politics for 48 years and the nation is still on the road to hell. 3. Learning to read is not enough- most just parrot someone else's talking points. 4. Sarcasm is so much fun.
Ralph Novy| 11.21.12 @ 1:02AM
What foul hypocrisy!
Nary a whit true about it.
Nary a whit true in those who make the allegations.
These are small people who seem to think they can become bigger only by making others smaller.
By doing so, they make themselves even smaller.
Over time, this will be recognized.
But it DOES take time.
Sigh.
Ralph Novy| 11.21.12 @ 1:42AM
What a smarmy, smiley visage you present, eh, Neumayr?
For the sake of whatever children you might have, I'll say: "Stop! Don't be a clueless, dickless asshole! Do you care -- at ALL --- what your children, grandchildren -- think of you? Are you really stupid enough to think that all they'll care about is how much "money" you'll pass on down to them?:
You know what?
... you ignorant, arrogant, thoughtless little shits........
Welcome to "GUILLOTINE WORLD."
Oh, you'll love it. It'll end all your suffering over such things as which broach to wear at the next grande balle or how to discuss the "White Man's Burden" at the next Paris salon thing."
obadiah| 11.21.12 @ 3:20PM
Under Citizens United, the right to bribery is constitutionally protected, at least if you're a corporation. Obama's gifts to voters are tiny compared to government gifts to bribing corporations given eagerly by republicans and democrats in competition with each other. Gifts to banks, oil companies, insurers, weapons manufacturers, mpaa, pharma, sugar, corn: the list is endless.
Rhoetus| 11.21.12 @ 9:46PM
Corporations lobby as a means of self-defense least the Omnipotent State regulate them into servitude and tax them into liquidation.