Supposedly Romney, the creator of Romneycare, the medical system that inspired Obamacare, is the GOP’s best hope for defeating Obama. So the mainstream media unanimously tells us.
Probably true, but there seems little point to such a “victory”.
At CPAC, Presidential Candidate Romneycare upbraids Obama for high unemployment, and all the press, the same press that worships Obama, the same press that goes weak at the knees at the sight of the great Obamessiah, cheers Presidential Candidate Romneycare to an echo. Suddenly the press, who whom any truth about the great Obamessiah used to be the most vicious and depraved racism, thinks it is wonderfully inspiring for Presidential Candidate Romneycare to blame the great Obamessiah for unemployment.
So what would Presidential Candidate Romneycare have done about unemployment that differs from what Obama did? Somehow he neglects to tell us.
You can tell who has the real power by whose job is permanent, and who can lose his job. The public servants cannot lose their jobs. Politicians are competing to be the Public Relations department of the permanent government. This was most evident in the pitch made to CPAC by would-be Presidential Candidate Grinch: Gingrich calls for eliminating EPA, expanding domestic energy production
But, of course, he does not propose to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. He proposes to convert it into an agency that focuses on “science, technology, markets and incentives.”
Not that there is any danger of a presidential candidate Grinch. The Republican Party hates him for endorsing Scozzafava, from which act of treachery he can never recover, and the permanent government fears he is not sufficiently enthusiastic in his support for the permanent government. Of the available enemies of the Republican Party, the permanent government has clearly and unambiguously decided it wants Presidential Candidate Romneycare, the Republican President that could best defend the most recent big expansion of government, Obamacare.
But suppose the universally despised Grinch, hated by both left and right, somehow got to implement his plan: Trouble is that the Environmental Protection Agency is composed entirely of anti capitalism environmentalist activists who think factories are simply sinful in themselves, that destroying jobs, any jobs, is an act of Godliness. The Environmental Protection Agency is jobs for the lefty boys. Leftist activists got rewarded with permanent government jobs. You cannot remake it into a pro market organization. You have to shut down lefty government organizations, and if righty government organizations are to be created, they have to be created from scratch with jobs for the rightists. The fact that Grinch proposes conversion, rather than abolition, tells us that a President Grinch would be handing out even more jobs for the left wing boys, not jobs for the right wing boys, more rewards for left wing activists in the revolving door between government and activism.
If the president was the boss, or the president and congress was the boss, he could lay off agencies that were not performing, or were not going along with his agenda, the way Chief Executive Officer, or Chief Executive Officer and the Board of a company can, and frequently does, lay off divisions that are not performing, or are merely not part of the Chief Executive Officer’s vision of what the company should be doing.
That this never happens, cannot happen, is just unthinkable, no matter how dreadfully an agency screws up, tells us who has the real power.
What would happen if the public elected officials that actually tried to exercise power?
President Reagan is often praised for overthrowing the Soviet Union, or contributing substantially to the overthrow of the Soviet Union, but most of what he did to overthrow the Soviet Union was moral pressure, threats, and inspiration, and much of what he actually did militarily to bleed the Soviet Union, to tie it down in more wars than it could afford, thereby depriving it of the power to intimidate its subjects, was illegal, and very nearly got him impeached, even though foreign policy is generally regarded as the one area where a president is actually allowed to do stuff. His efforts to change things internally, to put an end to unpopular and expensive federal bureaucracies , simply had no effect, and if there was any danger of them having effect, then, since he was damn near impeached for attempting to implement the policy he was elected on against the Soviet Union, he surely would have been impeached had he implemented the internal policy he was elected on, of cutting unpopular government expenditures.