United Liberty

With Scott Brown’s impressive win over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts on Tuesday, Republicans are poised to make gains in both the House and Senate in the upcoming mid-term elections. Not to rain on my Republican friends’ parade, but since Tuesday I’ve noticed some over-confidence among GOP ranks. Perhaps some perspective is in order.

We should certainly take Tuesday’s election as a rebuke of the President Barack Obama’s agenda, including his health care “reform” proposal. It came in what was one of the bluer states in the country. Although pundits agree that Coakley was a terrible candidate, it’s naive to deny that Voters aren’t happy with Democrats.

It is, however, important to point out that once you look at poll numbers, they’re not too happy with Republicans either. It seems that Republicans are forgetting that.

In 2006, voters went to the polls and gave Democrats complete control of Congress for the first time since 1993 because Republicans were spending too much money and the war in Iraq had dragged on for six years with no end in sight. It wasn’t because they approved of Democrats.

We saw this again in 2008, only this time the economy was tanking and bailouts became the punchline that led Barack Obama in the White House, despite the fact that he voted for the bailouts (he played the populist anger well).

Republicans want to forget that George W. Bush existed, and that’s understandable. Unfortunately, Republicans forget that they had control of the House and near complete control of the Senate from 2001 to 2007. Whether my Republican friends want to admit it or not, Republican members of Congress were complicit in growing the size and scope of government. Many of these folks are the same people I’ve seen at Tea Party events complaining about Barack Obama.

During his visit on This Week, President Barack Obama told George Stephanopoulos how his critics say he is “talking over every sector of the economy.” Obviously, Obama doesn’t believe he is, but David Boaz points out the nine different sectors of the economy that the government has gotten heavily involved in or is trying to get involved in:

Not every sector. Just

• health care
• energy
• local schools
• banks
• insurance companies
• automobile companies
• compensation at financial firms
• newspapers
• the internet

This president and his Ivy League advisers believe that they know how an economy should develop better than hundreds of millions of market participants spending their own money every day. That is what F. A. Hayek called the “fatal conceit,” the idea that smart people can design a real economy on the basis of their abstract ideas.

The word “nationalization” has put fear and trembling into the American marketplace, and understandably so. It rings of socialism, of the European model, of the Third-Way progressive compromise. It’s the death knell of the American form of free-market capitalism that is the foundational pillar beneath our symbolic hegemony over the rest of the world.

Apparently our current administration and its Congress don’t believe this for a minute, because they haven’t yet caught onto the fact that the word needs more than just denial; it needs replacement.

A poll came out today that should give those who believe in economic freedom a slight bit of hope: The public support for radically socializing the financial system in the name of saving it is dismally low. From Today’s Rassmussen Reports-

All sorts of big government solutions are being proposed to combat the country’s economic troubles, but Americans are clear on one thing: 75% say the federal government should not take over the U.S. banking system.

Only nine percent (9%) think nationalization of America’s banks is a good idea, and 16% are undecided in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Support for nationalization is so weak that almost a super-majority of Democrats are opposed to the idea-

Ron Paul puts the whole matter into perspective, explaining that the whole debate over bailing out the auto industry is really a distraction from the much bigger issue of the huge amounts of debt being run up (with a likely budget deficit of over $1 trillion), and the eventually destruction of the dollar. Dr. Paul offers his predictions of how things are likely to play out. It would do well to pay attention to what he is saying, as he made very accurate predictions one year ago that are playing out right now.

This speech by Ron Paul in the House against the proposed auto industry bailout is delivered with the Congressman’s usual razor-sharp edge to almost devastating effect, putting the whole issue into a larger perspective that is so seldom heard in Washington, or in the press and other media. It really speaks for itself, as little more needs to be said. Were that there were more in Congress like Dr. Paul.

It appears like Neal Boortz, one of the nations top radio talk show hosts, will be voting for Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr because of his disgust for McCain’s campaign and policies.