Jim Webb and George Allen: Reagan Light and Dark.

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/29/10

I received an invitation to celebrate the new Tea Party victory with some old line conservatives, naming Dick Armey and former Virginia governor George Allen, who might be considered Vengeance Demons from the Reagan period. At the beginning of the Tea Party I warned against this and so encouraged the wise, the joyful and the competent to join and some of them, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry did. Because the Tea Party could save America or it could destroy it.

Allen’s was one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in the history of Virginia and possibly in the history of America. That Virginians want him back now as senator in such numbers suggests that in spite of some positive steps toward self reliance by some state legislators generally in the Midwest, the mainstream, at least in Virginia, wants only revenge.

Why would Virginians in the first place want a California knucklehead in cowboy boots (in Virginia?) whose only claim to legitimacy is that his father was a famous football coach? Because he, like Gingrich, Armey and W. Bush, is counterpoint to a whole group of other Yankee interlopers in the South and Texas who had already come to speak on the South’s behalf; the innocent liberals and naive culture priests who inevitably follow in the wake of the conqueror. They arrived to removed all pictures of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall from the alumni halls and make sure there was not a Dixie battle flag in sight on the county square. The price of this reverse engineering of the South’s ancient memory could now be high: The price could be George Allen, not only as the new senator from Virginia, but as President elect in 2016. Because as one commentator at The Hill says, Allen only wants to be President.

The Confederate flag and the symbols of the antebellum South are often used by us Yanks to compare the South and Texas to Nazi Germany. But it is a metaphor of convenience. (That is, propaganda.) The invasion of the South does not organically match with Eisenhower’s invasion of Germany in 1944. It better compares with Napolean’s invasion of Germany and Russia in 1803. And there, as Napolean freed Europe’s slaves, we, the New Yorkers, freed our own on the Southern plantations. Napolean’s aftermath would bring resentment and bitterness and the inevitable and predictable countervailing project that was Bismarck, with war to follow for 100 years. And that could very well be George Allen as President in 2016; an American Bismarck, seeking vengeance.

Our future hinges on the elections of 2012. The Kennedy instinct is spent, the mission accomplished. The era is over and a new era rises and it could go anywhere. If Huck, Rick or Sarah do not metabolize the good energies of Tea Party in 2012, the malevolent energies will take us by 2016.

And that could be a job for Jim Webb. In the current climate I do not see him holding his Senate seat. It will likely go to Allen.

Webb worked for Reagan and Allen is a Reagan Ranch Presidential Scholar. Like the children of Abraham, one walks in the light and one in the shadow. If Webb loses ahead to Allen he must considered it his warrior’s fate and destiny to run again against him, perhaps in single combat warfare for higher office. Because maybe then only he can save the South and the rest of us too; maybe he will be the last man standing to save America.

Mr. Kafka goes to Washington: TSA’s groping is torture

The TSA’s Kafkaesque groin groping and full-porn scanning, championed by Obama’s lackluster Cheney, Joe Biden, enters the realm of dominance, intimidation and sexual threat and knowledge that goes to the core of total government control: totalitarianism. It is the sickly sister to torture; Drusilla, the undead - torture without the physical pain but with the humiliation and psychological disturbance and depersonalization and total dominance that is the essence of torture. It is the work of a government lost and disoriented like that in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”; a government sensing in a panic that its time in history is passing and it has lost control.

The purpose of torture in war, like rape, is total psychological dominance. When the Bush administration instigated this egregious policy during the invasion of Iraq, Americans, and Congress in particular, barely raised a peep. We had become a nation of zombies. The Bush administration understood that we Americans, and Congress in particular, had failed the test of citizenship and they would be allowed a free hand over there, and over here. America had no courage to stop them.

It was because of these actions by Bush and Cheney that state sovereignty solutions first began to arise in New Hampshire and Vermont. Today USA Today reports on a USA Today/Gallup Poll that finds just about as many Americans want Tea Party-backed members of Congress to take the lead in setting policy during the next year as choose President Obama. Tea Party will now bring an antidote to the zombie jamboree that is two-party politics under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

Great days ahead for conservatives. What would Don Draper do?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/20/10

One of my more interesting life assignments was to ride to the airport with William F. Buckley, Jr. to keep him entertained. Conversation touched on state sovereignty on a variety of issues to whether or not Russia would be better off with a tsar (Buckley said yes). Soaring, fearless and graceful he was, and without his omniscient overview, conservatism has become stratified and intellectually timid. There is stress now among traditional conservatives about the new energy that is the Tea Party but there should not be. In terms ad man Don Draper might have used decades back, yes, the new Volkswagen bug has arrived on the streets of America. Yes, it is disturbing. Yes, it will change America. The elderly Bert Coopers might have a hard time adjusting. But the Republicans already have the account. This burgeoning, young conservative movement today has Old Temple v. New Temple features virtually identical to those which Jack Kennedy, scorned by Eleanor Roosevelt and the liberal Protestant gentry, faced in 1960. The franchise ran for 50 years.

The egregious groping behavior of the TSA will trigger now a psychological change in the mainstream of America unprecedented in this country. What started with the Tea Party will spread by degree to every non-zombie who flies over the holidays; that is, anyone with a pulse. Because as Mike Huckabee said to Judge Andrew Napolitano on his “Freedom Watch” show the other night, The Tea Party is the most important political movement in America in his lifetime. Now it will metabolize to a greater realm.

The zombie craze today suggests that America has become a soulless horde, just as it suggested when the craze first appeared in the late 1950s. Then it was prelude to a vast cultural awakening just ahead and it will be this time again. So the new conservative Congress should not be considered the equivalence of 1994, when America reacted to the incompetence of the Clintons in the health care debacle and the Clintons in general and returned power in the Congress to Republicans. What did the Republicans have going forward into 1996? Bob Dole, the weakest and least attractive Republican to run for high office in post war. But what do the Democrats face in 2012? Possibly the most dynamic, competent and creative group since post war: Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Huckabee, Rick Perry, Mike Pence, Chris Christie and expanding the paradigm to an entirely new realm of state sovereignty and Austrian economics, possibly Ron Paul and potentially Joe Miller of Alaska. The rising, creative vision of the century ahead could well open at the 2012 Republican convention.

The Hapsburgian elders still pitch Jeb Bush and his mother today joins the haunted bipartisan chorus which sings: “Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more! Go away, go away and please don’t slam the door . . . (slam!).”

But I think I still see Sarah Palin upon the stair. She wasn’t there again today.

Sarah Palin v. the bipartisan Anti-Palin coalition

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/18/10

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski is the champion that establishment Republicans like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, George H. W. Bush and Karen Hughes as a proxy for W. hoped for when they backed Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson as their champion against Rick Perry, who had only Sarah Palin’s support in the Texas governor’s primary. Why would they do such a thing when it was clear that Perry would win big? Because they saw Sarah Palin as an existential threat to their vision of America. It was said here in the first hours of Palin’s appearance that she would find city vs. country bipartisan opposition exactly like that which Andrew Jackson found in 1831. One like that which send such a shutter to the refined colonials of the East that Adams and Jefferson would forget their long contempt for one another. That moment has come today as liberal columnist Gail Collins, the doyenne of eloi sensibility at our nation’s flagship newspaper, declares Murkowski to be the official Anti-Palin. As she writes today, “All of these developments make the Senate results in Alaska important for those Americans who find sunshine in any day that goes badly for the former Republican vice presidential candidate.”

Close enough to this: “I had never any doubts of the stability of our institutions, till the subject given to Andrew Jackson in 1824 for President of the United States,” wrote Jefferson. “- a man who in every situation he has filled, either civil or military, has made it a rule to DISOBEY ORDERS and SUBSTITUTE HIS OWN WILL FOR LAW.” (His caps.)

We are at a major turning in America similar to that of the 1830s when the rural frontier out by the Mississippi was coming into its own. It would not be welcome back east. It must demand its place at the table and Jackson demanded and took it. A situation well suggested again today in liberal titles like “What’s wrong with Kansas?” a few years back and the title yesterday from Huffington Post, “What’s the matter with Alaska?” By which we mean what is wrong with the parts of America that are not NY, Washington, D.C., Chapel Hill, LA and occasional other pockets like Jefferson’s own Charlottesville today.

But it is a good day for Sarah Palin when opposition targets you as public enemy: it frames them as the anti-karma; the dark wing. The darkest moment so far in this shadow coalition of the willing was when the eastern liberal establishment became the coat carriers of the South’s rural antebellum, conservative establishment last spring, standing in sullen and accommodating silence as it rose again in South Carolina to destroy the life and family of Nikki Haley, soon to be inaugurated as the first young, female, dark-skinned governor of this former slave state. She was only saved from the political equivalence of blood on the tracks when Mitt Romney came to her aid. And Sarah Palin.

Probably the most mature and steady hand here is Mitt Romney. He is the champion of the Bipartisan Anti-Palins (BAPs), crusty old Cheneys now hand-in-hand in anti-Palinism with eastern liberals, but he has consistently come to Palin’s support and he hovers above them. And Sarah Palin hovers above them as well.

More Joe Miller: We are at a sea change.

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/16/10

As Israelis increasingly come to understand, American leadership at the top can no longer be taken seriously. Last week would bring a paen to his beloved friend beautifully displayed on the op-ed pages of the NYT by a former American President, hoping to “finish Rabin’s work” – not sure what he means by that - the better to help out the missus in corralling those pesky bearded Jews in furry hats to fit into his “global initiative.” This week it is announced that the same American president will be doing a cameo in “Hangover 2.” Hey, Bud. Let's party! And so, in Israel, a Tea Party arises. For exactly the same reasons it arose in the United States.

“Is there life after America?” Moshe Feiglin, a religious Jew who wants to turn the “State of Jews” into a “Jewish state” asks. Feiglin needs to meet fellow soldier Joe Miller. I believe they would find kinship.

My article yesterday for The Hill, “Joe Miller for President,” hit a nerve. I’ve been following the evolution of the so-called Tea Party movement since day one: Full disclosure: I was one of the ones who instigated it in northern New England. There is a basic anthropology which enters into movements like this to bring only one or two distinguished individuals to the fore. Such an original movement starts with a folksy people’s revival “from the earth” like the Tea Party; then there will be an elegant “La Passionara”; a heroic anima spirit, like Sarah Palin; then a Trickster like Glenn Beck who will rise quickly and wake people up, then fade away. Then the one archetypal figure rises out to be the leader. That I believe will be Joe Miller.

Lisa Murkowski is a perfect foil for Miller and this new and growing movement. When Ron Paul ran parallel to the traditional Republicans in 2008, he changed the substance of conservatism considerably; probably forever. In two years we are no longer on the Marx v. Keynes matrixes which dominated all of last century. We are now Keynes v. Hayek and into a new century. A completely new paradigm is upon us.

Joe could and should be the catalyst to this new movement. Because this is about states and regions. It is about economy and debt and responsibility. And it is about governors, not senators. From a leadership point of view it is about reeducating governors to understand that they are and were intended to be the primary leaders in America. And after 200 years of conquest and conditioning, it is FAR MORE IMPORTANT FOR GOVERNORS TO LEARN TO WEILD POWER than for senators and the executive to LEARN TO YIELD POWER. This is the new ethic; the new paradigm.

Tea party is passion and it has reached its limit in the U.S. and so has Senatorial discord and discussion. This is an issue for the states. We need now to enter a new level of engagement and governors should lead the way. History swirls around one individual when a movement rises. He is what W.J. Cash called, the historic figure that embodies the archetype of change: “the man in the center.” That would be Joe Miller. Good for soldiers. Good for America. And in Israel, rising now in a parallel event to this, it could well be Moshe Feiglin.

Joe Miller for President

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/14/10

Before Eliot Spitzer went all Rachel Maddow on him last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry was saying that he saw the future of America rising with the governors, not the President or Congress. But apoplexy set in with the host before Perry could advance his thesis. He did manage to get out the radically old idea that the states should be allowed to manage their own social security. Unquestionably he is right. But what is more important in this election cycle than whether old school conservatives or new school win the Congressional debate on earmarks is whether or not the 600-plus newly elected conservatives in the states will find a working model for Perry’s thesis. Like all theses, to become reality this one needs a place to begin and an avatar. The place should be Alaska and the avatar should be Joe Miller of Alaska. Miller should bring these ideas forward, possibly as a third party; a federalist party candidate for President in 2012. The scorn poured upon Sarah Palin by MSM had a reverse effect; it raised her to national prominence. The strange and unlikely Murkowski contention has done the same for Miller.

There are a lot of things that have happened these past two years that Americans find interesting but don’t quite understand, as we have been conditioned since kindergarten by other explanations which are reinforced daily. Like how the 17th Amendment, passed in 1913, makes any difference in our lives. It takes some explication and some explanation. Judge Andrew Napolitano well explains how it took power from the states and gave it to central government, why it is unconstitutional, and why it made presidents like Clinton, W. Bush and Obama grand imperial celestial potentates of the world and universe. What is the end result of this gargantuan, globalist delusion (The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein’s excellent phrase, “dysfunctional co-dependency”) in the practical and material factors of governance of states and individuals and in human freedom and development? We become a vulnerable and dependent prey species. A penguin horde in a sea of hungry predators.

Judge Napolitano’s Fox Business show “Freedom Watch,” explains to millions today what only a few of us were talking about in small, fussy Libertarian journals just two years ago. It may be seen as a barometer of American temperament that his show goes after the election from a Saturday morning special to five nights a week prime time. This new movement has gone beyond Beck’s rants and mall rallies. Thoughtful and committed people are interested. But it takes responsible new people to lead the way to new thinking and visualization. Perry, Judge Napolitano and Palin form a context, and with Miller as action man, a quaternity: A trail leading to the future.

The Murkowski/Miller conflict is a classic struggle of Old Temple v. New Temple; the old, with witch doctors and shamans in attendance, hoping against hope to prevent the awakening of a new generation. It happens every generation. It never works. The old – Lisa Murkowski, Nancy Pelosi - become icons of intransigence; like Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards, embarrassing residue of time past that won’t let go. We experienced this in the Sixties. We experience it again today.

Sarah Palin is Mama Grizzly of this new movement and Rick Perry is Papa Bear. But there is not now a potentially more effective leader and advocate for the new directions than Joe Miller, and not a better Petri dish for this new experiment in self reliance and self determination than Alaska.

Crossing Eliza’s river again

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/12/11

Every beginning is an ending and if we understand them we can think for ourselves. Over time, history recalls only the beginnings and endings. So it is with joy and enthusiasm we should welcome the day-by-day series about the Civil War on the op-ed pages of The New York Times. It begins to tell us who we are and who we can never be; that our world did not start with Bob Dylan and end with Don Draper. It started at Cemetery Ridge. That we are not Europeans no matter how much we in the northeast might strive to be, and we can never be that. That we are made of the earth of this earth and the blood shed here. And without that blood we would not be who we are today and who we are going to be tomorrow.

We enter today a period of consolidation; a time of finding strength within ourselves, within our borders and within our own institutions. We have moved out for a long time and now we move back. I was struck by this contrast on a visit to a small and venerable college in Maine which once held America’s fate. Was told there that the student today could study the anthropology and evolution of Bart Simpson. There is nothing wrong with that; it is important to notice in the first season of Mad Man that a Jewish woman gives Don, the ad man, a talisman; a set of cuff links with Medieval Knights – as the daughter of the rabbi opened the gates to God for Ivanhoe, Don would share the fate of the Templar. Don Draper is us and so is Bart Simpson.

But before there was Don and Bart and Bob, there was Joshua Chamberlain of Maine. The modern world and modernism in general can be attributed to Chamberlain. The modern world began when the industrializing northern states challenged the agrarian Southern states for dominance. It was only at Cemetery Ridge that it became clear that the north would win and New York would dominate the continent and the world ahead in every possible way. In only became clear at a place in Pennsylvania called Little Round Top where Chamberlain held off advancing Confederate troops with guns, knives and stones when they ran out of ammunition. That was near the beginning.

Years back at another college in the South, I had daily morning conversations with a friend who in his 80s was finishing a book on race in America (Tom Gossett's "Race: The History of an idea in America" Oxford Press). He talked about how the image of Eliza, in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom's Cabin” published in 1852, escaping to freedom with her baby in arms by crossing a river, jumping across on ice floes. It became a global phenomenon and the image was reprinted everywhere, even in tsarist Russia where it was reproduced on cigar wrappers. Eliza’s crossing represented a shift in consciousness, not only in America, but everywhere and the modern world can be seen to start from this archetypal crossing. This was the beginning and everything since; the Comanche wars, the awakening of Asia to Western capitalism, the destruction of European civilization in 1941, the Vietnam war and Bart Simpson, crossed the river then.

Everything until yesterday, when President Barack Obama met with G 20 leaders in South Korea. The river ice broke up again. It is the end of the period begun by Eliza’s crossing and the beginning now of something else.

Is Mystery Missile the new Sputnik?

An image of what appears to be the trail of a large missile launched from beneath the sea 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles appeared on the California TV screens last night. But the Pentagon said it had “no clue” who fired it.

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."

Trying to figure out “what it is” Robert Ellsworth, former secretary of defense, told reporter Marcella Lee it could be an ICBM from a submarine to demonstrate mainly to Asia that we could do that, accompanying President Obama’s trip to the East. He said that was done in the Atlantic to demonstrate America’s power to the Soviets when there was the Soviet Union but he doesn’t believe it was ever done over the Pacific. Just speculating, he said.

For more than a decade now, the Pentagon has been conceptualizing the same Cold War containment paradigms to China as it had with the U.S.S.R. But there is no indication that this missile, if it is a missile, is American. The Chinese are masters of political symbolism and learn strategy from the predictability of our own approaches: It is Sun Tzu 101. If, b y tomorrow morning, the Pentagon is coming up with the “usual suspects” of UFO lore – swamp gas, “weather balloon,” vapor trail, it is not one of ours.

India should say no.

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/9/10

That President Obama wants to put India on the Security Council of the UN is no surprise. The Pentagon has been planning an Indian military alliance against China since China started getting big. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, suggested throwing France off and putting India on, the better to advance our invasion of Iraq. But India, if it wants to retain the enlightened character of its tradition; a tradition which brought the world not only Buddhism and mathematics, but practically everything else in between, should do what Marlon Brando did in 1972 when he was offered an Academy Award. Turn it down.

Or at least wait until Thursday, when the so-called G-20 meets. Germany will take the initiative, China and Russia will apply pressure. India should decide then if it wants to join the century rising or be America’s new side meat, taking the place of France.

Probably there are a million of so kids today who wouldn’t mind being drafted in a war against China, as it was when the feds interrupted my high-low-jack game with my young Mafia friends in 1965 to pull us into the army. I was sent to northern Thailand, which was like being sent to paradise. India sounds even more fun. But America made chooses then by taking bad advice. We make choices now out of desperation and are guided by nostalgia. The Democrats especially long for the days of the draft and war in Europe when common Americans from Brooklyn, Tobaccoville and Fall River danced in a circle holding hands in the streets of Paris; we will always have Paris.

Or not. We are not even sure today that we will always have New York. As historianTony Judt writes about my old neighborhood in NY this week in the NYTs, NY, Jewish or goyim, is past its peak and the “American age” is in decline. But Paris? “Who now would deliberately reconstruct their city — as the Romanians did in Bucharest in the late 19th century — to become ‘the Paris of the East,’ complete with grand boulevards like the Calea Victoria?” No question. Today, Sarko is Angela’s bitch.

By the time Judt got there, most of the art people had already moved to Williamsburg across the river. And if New York is dead, someone forgot to tell Eli Manning, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Charlie Gasparino. But he describes Derrida’s America, not Toby Keith’s.

Still, Thursday’s G-20 gathering is key to the rising paradigm of “post America.” It is a trend in academia today but America’s great man, Ambassador George Kennan, the father of “containment”, first fired a warning. In one of his last books, “Around the Cragged Hill,” (1994) he described a new America which might be described as a United Nations of America:

“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would be if our country, while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government, were to be decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.” He might be regarded as the first Tea Partier.

This could be a better America then the last. At the end of his life Kennan also took to the idea of a Council of Elders which resembles what used to be a Senate. Picture one from each region; a council of 12. Suppose, before the world war ahead in the East, which Anglo/America has been building to since 1834, the American potentate would have to get permission, or not, from 12 regional governors before she turned to the Congress of Easter Peeps for its rubber stamp. And suppose they were people like Virginia Senator Jim Webb for the South, Governor Rick Perry for Texas and Joe Miller for Alaska.

Visualize that.

Requiem for the Tea Party - draft

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/8/10

Whether or not Lisa Murkowski manages to rage against reality as successfully as South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond, who last won a write-in contest, it is Joe Miller who has pointed the way to the millennium. He holds a lantern in the cold Alaskan twilight, but most of the rest of the Tea Party was co-opted the moment it started being called a Tea Party. The original ideas hatched and awakened simultaneously in 37 states after NH state rep Dan Itse proposed a Jeffersonian states-rights defense against federal overreach. But it might have been better had he never done that Glenn Beck interview. A maturing framework for this will, as Texas Governor Rick Perry said, take Governors, not Congress or a President. Like Alaska’s Sean Parnell, Virginia’s Bob McConnell, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Iowa’s Terry Branstad. Visualize a new America, one rising from the center. But it will take longer.

Change will be driven by economics, not speeches, particularly the dawning realization that the well off agrarian states in the center of the country are now being asked to support the welfare states on the edge. The NY times asks, “Can NY and CA be saved?” Not with the recidivist politicos they just elected. Look to John Thune and Kristi Noem of South Dakota; look to Joe Miller in the longer term; they would be better governors. Look to South Dakota and Alaska as rising karma and NY and CA as receding. But for now, consider Tea Party only a harbinger, like the nullification crisis of 1832, and a warning.

Miller brings to the political process the animal spirits of a MacKenzie River husky, the kind that is half wolf. While the new Congress will be the familiar fad diet, possibly with the always popular government shutdown number thrown in; get thin quick, then get fat again. It is inherent in the process – the abstraction - of detached, centralized government. A “30-year-plan”? Are you kidding? We can’t see beyond Tuesday and we borrow to get to Tuesday. We have become like Konrad Lorenz’s trained geese who blindly follow anyone who taps their shell, then become compelled to gluttony when they lose the bearings of their natural lives. By losing our first attachment to state, to region, to the place we belong on the earth, we lose our relationship with the earth itself: Like Lorenz’s geese we lose our Mother.

Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center was there at the beginning. In September, he gave a speech in Fort Worth, Texas, and said there are a few core beliefs that guide him in everything he does. They should be retrieved from the detritus of the Tea Party, perhaps as an anthem. They are:

1. Rights are not “granted” to us by the government – they are ours by our very nature, by our birthright.

2. ALL just political authority is derived from the people – and government exists solely with our consent!

3. We the people of the several states created the federal government – not the other way around!

4. The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people to the federal government in the Constitution – and nothing more.

5. The People of each State have the sole and exclusive right and power to govern themselves in all areas not delegated to their government.

6. A Government without limits IS A TYRANNY!

7. When Congress enacts laws and regulations that are not made in Pursuance of the powers enumerated in the Constitution, the People are not bound to obey them.

Requiem for the Tea Party: Michael Boldin’s Seven Truths

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/8/10

The thinking of the Tea Party was co-opted the moment it started being called a Tea Party. But the original ideas hatched and awakened simultaneously in 37 states after NH state rep Dan Itse proposed a Jeffersonian states-rights defense against federal overreach. Might have been better had he never done that Glenn Beck interview. A maturing framework for this will, as Texas Governor Rick Perry said, take Governors, not Congressmen. And it will take longer. Philosophically it is simple. You have to be a Texan before you can be an America. You have to be a New Englander before you can be an American. But we lose our earthly bearings and proportions when we detach from our place, and live exclusively in the abstraction. We hover over ourselves as if in a UFO. Now China begins with the UFO delusions. But Israel begins to finds itself again on its piece of earth. Germany as well.

Change will be driven by economics, not speeches, particularly the dawning realization that the well off agrarian states in the center of the country are now being asked to support the welfare states on the edge. The NY times asks, “Can NY and CA be saved?” Not with the recidivist politicos they just elected. Look to John Thune and Kristi Noem of South Dakota, look to Alaska’s Joe Miller long term; they would be better governors. Look to South Dakota and Alaska as rising karma and NY and CA as receding. But for now, consider Tea Party only a harbinger, like the nullification crisis of 1832, and a warning.

The new Congress will be the familiar fad diet; get thin quick, then get fat again – and the people will get fat again (they are fat already) and the cars will get bigger again. It is inherent in the process – the abstraction - of detached, centralized government. Central government is training wheels. It should be considered useful for peoples and cultures just being born, like the U.S.A. or those dying, like the U.S.S.R. Apparently it is not yet time for them to come off here. A “30-year-plan”? Are you kidding? We can’t see beyond Tuesday and we borrow to get to Tuesday. Because we have lost our earth bearings. We have no sense of place. We have no ability to return to ourselves and to know ourselves fully by the end of our lives. We are like Konrad Lorenz’s trained geese who blindly follow anyone who taps their shell, then become compelled to gluttony when they lose the bearings of their natural lives. By losing our first attachment to state, to region, to the place we belong on the earth, we lose our relationship with the earth itself: Like Lorenz’s geese we lose our Mother.

Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center was there at the beginning. In September, he gave a speech in Fort Worth, Texas, and said there are a few core beliefs that guide him in everything he does. They should be retrieved from the detritus of the Tea Party, perhaps as an anthem. They are:

1. Rights are not “granted” to us by the government – they are ours by our very nature, by our birthright.

2. ALL just political authority is derived from the people – and government exists solely with our consent!

3. We the people of the several states created the federal government – not the other way around!

4. The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people to the federal government in the Constitution – and nothing more.

5. The People of each State have the sole and exclusive right and power to govern themselves in all areas not delegated to their government.

6. A Government without limits IS A TYRANNY!

7. When Congress enacts laws and regulations that are not made in Pursuance of the powers enumerated in the Constitution, the People are not bound to obey them.

Who’s afraid of Eliot Spitzer? Perry berated.

In newly reelected Rick Perry’s first TV interview, he was given the same rough treatment Rand Paul was when he was berated by Rachel Maddow and as Sarah Palin was when she was attacked and mocked b y Tina Fey, David Letterman, Katie Couric and vast others. Welcome to the realm of the winged monkeys. It was a telling moment: The thing they instinctively feared in Sarah Palin and Rand Paul they find again now in Rick Perry. But it is much worse this time. This time it is real. Rick Perry is a master. Everything the Tea Party said and did these last two years takes shape and form in Perry’s reelection.

The new commentary show which teams up former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer with the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker has been called mediocrity incarnate. They had to teach Spitzer to smile, and it doesn’t work. Smiling brings out his dark side. He looks like someone just told him a dirty joke. It is also said that he is only there, propped up by the obsequious Parker, as rehabilitation.

Spitzer got his “Ekk! A mouse!” moment when Perry said he would like to see the states compete and that is what was intended by the Founding Fathers. He said with combined entitlements of $106 trillion his children, now in their 20s, no longer expect to social security to be there when they retire. Perry said he would like to have a national conversation on social security and state competition but Spitzer badgered him relentlessly on pointless details.

Spitzer’s antagonism, like Maddow’s with Rand Paul and the others with Palin, was visceral. When he started at Perry it was clear that this discussion could go no farther. Maybe Spitzer didn’t like Perry’s cowboy boots which say, “Come and take it.”

There is potentially a cage fight growing here with Palin and Perry vs. Parker and Spitzer. A converged Democrat (Spitzer)/Republican (Parker) team joined forces to fight new thinking and new people; old temple against new. Parker legitimized attacks on Palin when she wrote for the high brow National Review on Sept. 26, 2008, that Palin was “ . . . an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.” Spitzer left the governor’s chair in New York, a state that knows no shame, in personal disgrace and with an economic situation that led one WSJ reporter to call it “the worse government in the world.”

The key moment in this contention was Perry’s Republican primary last spring when the Republican traditionalists including George H.W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Karen Hughes as proxy for George W. Bush and others lined up in opposition to Perry. Perry had only Palin for support but won in a landslide. But why would such a distinguished line of Republicans risk reputation by lining up in support of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson who was sure to lose? To establish a beachhead.

Now Democrats and Republicans tag team Perry. But who’s afraid of Eliot Spitzer?

What will Ron and Rand Paul do now?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/4/10

On the David Asman show last night Ron Paul was asked what plans he and son Rand had for the new term. He said they had talked about entering legislation together in the Senate and the House on the first day. Half joking, Ron Paul said his son suggested legislation to “end the Fed.”

I think it was St. Paul or maybe Kurt Cobain who said, “There is no such thing as a joke.” They might think of doing just that. Certainly it would not pass, but it would set a benchmark allowing them to graph progress from now into the future.

It would also begin to explain Austrian economics to Congress, to everyone, and it would also establish a beach head for reality-based Tea Party. As Ralph Nader has been saying, within the Tea Party there are the committed and conscientious and the horde that follows. Every movement is like this and this is the beginning of a new movement. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell correctly says, “turn the ship around,” but McConnell did not in any way turn this ship around. Ron Paul began the turn around.

And they are beginning to panic on Wall St. The federal government has been tied to Wall St. since Alexander Hamilton. This why perhaps, rumors abound that Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, will start a new party.

But as Harry Wilson was defeated in New York’s State Comptroller Race and NY has defaulted to a “first family” governorship – a spiraling descent in political sensibility to the days of the Hapsburgs and the unHoly Roman Empire - NY may have already reached the point of no return.

What’s next? The rise of the heartland.

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/3/10

My New Hampshire governor, Democrat John Lynch, won a landslide victory here in a historic 4th term. He ran on a positive business model that echoed that of Virginia senator and former Virginia governor Mark Warner‘s when he was voted one of the best governors in America in a Wall Street survey. Lynch, last man standing on this creative approach, should be considered the most successful Democratic governor and a candidate for the 2012 presidential race if President Obama bows out. The Lynch/Warner business model should be the new Democratic template. But for now the Democrats’ future is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann at the news desk giggling at Michele Bachmann. And the future is Michelle Bachmann. And the future is the slow realization that Sarah Palin is a real part of American life and will continue to be. The question today is who will be her running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney or Texas governor Rick Perry?

The best bet for America right now is the fierce spirit of the north woods that is Sarah and Todd Palin. This free and feral spirit awakens America but it should be packaged. This could be a job for Mitt Romney. This is what he does and does better than most anyone. Palin told Neil Cavuto on Monday night that she did not vote for Romney in the 2008 primary but she apparently thought well of him. She might consider now what has happened since she appeared on the scene – partly because of her and partly because of the Tea Party and mainly because of a convergence of the two. John McCain was a great team mate for her in 2008. But Romney could be her best choice for VP in sustaining her spirit in 2012 and beyond.

The unique genius of Romney could be seen at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Utah in 2002. It was a great show featuring Robbie Robertson of Woodstock fame – The Band – and a crowd of Native American women singing chants and Indian blessings to the participants. It was a magical Ice Follies-like drama featuring the White Buffalo of Native American folk lore which ushers in the Age of Aquarius. What I found most impressive was that straight-as-a-gate Romney seemed to find the creativity in this to be empowering. It seemed to be his job and his gift to package and organize this wild spirit. America needs the heartland empowerment and awakening brought by Palin. She is Jacksonian, she is Emersonian, she is wolf spirit of the forest and daughter of Goldwater and Reagan. That power may need the containment and organization of Romney. Together they/we have a new vision of America and a workable program to sustain it.

The crusty old conservatives pay homage now to the Tea Party but they hope to hobble it and draw it back to the old ways. They are frightened by The Others and intimidated by Palin. But Romney can see the beauty in things that are not his own. That is a rare gift for anyone.

Advice for newly reelected Texas Governor Rick Perry: Sorel snow pacs and duofold underwear. Pay the extra dollar. You will need these when you visit New Hampshire.

Whistling past the Democrats

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/2/10

The Democrats are now disassembling like a Brad Childress crazy train. They were given a choice back leading into 2008 with two clearly outlined paths. The one from Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.” The other by Democratic strategists Steve Jardin and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders in their book “Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run ‘em Out.” Quite obviously they followed the Schaller path. Jardin and Saunders warned that ignoring the South and the heartland was immoral and would have catastrophic consequences for the Democratic Party. It has done worse than that. Today, Democratic analyst and commentator Pat Caddell calls the situation in the heartland “prerevolutionary.”

The Democrats lose today because they followed orthodoxy and a tradition in opposition to their own new thinking. A warning to the Republicans. And possibly because of listening to the radio; NPR – which, since rise of the Car Talk guys, has turned the liberal mind and imagination to pablum. Gone today are Steffens and Ida Tarbell, gone Arthur Koestler and Alfred Kazin. Even Norman Mailer. Welcome Lady Gaga and Bono.

Leading to 2008 Marcos Moulitsas of Daily Kos promoted Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia, General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, and Jim Webb, novelist/warrior/senator from Virginia and cried from the heart: Will these Clinton-era people ever leave the room? But the Democrats turned to Hillary, although her ranking among young people at DKos hovered between 4% and zero. Then they blocked Hillary with Obama. They had a great opportunity with Mark Warner, Wesley Clark and Jim Webb to begin and build. But they ignored – despised, many of them – the heartland and Dixie and these three are from the South. That is why they are screwed now: Already the race card is used to define loss. The instinct is to recall Hillary again. Institutionally, that is today all they are capable of. But they listen for moral advice from stand up comics and professional wrestlers, no? Obama could begin to restore this: Bring Webb into the Cabinet. Maybe replace Biden with him.

Beneath the cries and whispers today is coming the slow realization that Sarah Palin is a real part of life and will continue to be. This happened before with Ronald Reagan. But the Jacksonian spirit that is Sarah Palin and Tea Party actually started with the Democrats and with Jim Webb. Their defaulting again to Hillary and even Howard Dean which was escapist the first time could this time destroy the party. And the Democrats have become effete. Webb, Warner and Clark are not. This is where they could begin again. But they must make a pledge: Adults now. No more rock stars.