Gay Marriage Update Before the 2012 Election and the Second Presidential Debate

This is going to be another one of those posts where I do multiple things.  First, we will look at key gay marriage votes this season.  Second, we will have a look at the second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

We have four key votes on gay marriage this season.  There are votes to legalize gay marriage in Maryland, Maine, and Washington states and there will be a vote to ban gay marriage in Minnesota.  As I’ve previously detailed, the gay marriage movement is 0 for 32 in votes about the issue in the past 15 years.  I think that zero is going to go away this time around, which would be a monumental victory because, to this point, it has only been through the courts and legislative process that gay marriage supporters have managed to achieve victories. 

Given the 0-32 record, it’s easy to argue that this time will be no different and history will repeat itself, but I disagree.  All the supporters need is one victory to erase the zero.  Anything beyond that would be a bonus.  A clean sweep for either supporters or opponents is possible, but highly unlikely, in my view.  My prediction is 2-2, with Washington and Maryland going decisively to the supporters, but Minnesota and Maine going narrowly to the opponents.  Let’s see how right or wrong those predictions turn out to be. 

And we are onto the second Obama-Romney debate.  I found this to be a very difficult debate to watch and score for several reasons.  The main reason involves the moderator, Candy Crowley.  Simply put, I’ve never seen such a poor job moderating a debate.  Why was her performance so terrible? 

First, the role of a moderator in a town hall debate is little more than that of a timekeeper and announcer of the name of the person asking the next question.  It is not the moderator’s role in a town hall debate to ask questions of the candidates.  That is the role of the person the moderator announces and only that person at that moment.  Crowley violated this repeatedly. 

Even more inappropriate than that was Crowley’s actions during the Libya question in which she failed to act as an impartial moderator.  She involved herself in the debate by explicitly stating that Obama was correct and Romney was wrong on the Rose Garden speech.  It was literally a real-time fact check and this is absolutely unacceptable conduct by a moderator during a debate.  The intervention was bad enough, but number two is that she was factually incorrect.  Additionally, though I’ll admit I did not keep track of time on each question, I will say that the Libya question felt very rushed and was clearly something that Obama wanted to avoid like the plague.  With Crowley’s intervention, he was largely able to do so as she managed to create a distraction and take up time.  This was truly deplorable conduct on her part and I truly hope she is never allowed to moderate a debate ever again due to this miscarriage of justice.

I think Crowley’s antics, both on the Libya question and her repeated follow-up questions, clearly stacked the deck against Romney to such a degree that objective scoring of this debate is extremely difficult to do.  I’m still going to try, though. 

Regardless of the moderator, Obama had a much stronger and aggressive performance this time around than last time.  He was also clearly the beneficiary of lowered expectations given the previous debate.  Romney’s performance was not as strong as the first outing, but was not terrible by any means.  He got visibly flustered toward the end, but his final answer was very solid and he managed to use that to regain composure.  I must say I was impressed by the ability of both candidates to pivot the assault rifle question into discussions of culture.  This was masterfully done by both candidates and makes perfect sense, seeing as how Romney’s gun record isn’t strong enough for the GOP base and Obama’s anti-gun record isn’t strong enough for the Democrat base.

Given Obama’s lowered expectations, Romney’s elevated expectations and momentum surge, plus the deck being stacked so heavily against Romney by the moderator, I can absolutely see why the initial reaction and consensus were that Obama won.  It is noteworthy that such a significant portion of the viewer base still believes Romney won in spite of it all.  I can’t fault people for thinking that because, given the tailwinds Obama had going for him, Obama should have decisively won that debate.  Realistically, I can’t fault anyone for saying Obama won this debate, either.

However, I reject that conclusion that Obama won.  My view is this debate is a pyrrhic victory for Obama, which I suppose means I ultimately see it as a victory for Romney.  What this debate did is it provided powerful and high-profile evidence to bolster the (compelling) case that the liberal media is pulling out all the stops to help Obama win.  This is important because the criticism that the liberal media (correctly) levies against the conservative media for bias is effectively nullified.

This controversial second debate definitely sets the stage for an interesting third debate on Monday.  I'll actually watch that one live, but refrain from live commentary.  I find it too hard to focus. 

A Vice Presidential and Senate Debate

I want to look at two things in this post.  One is the debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (no Libertarian candidate…imagine my surprise).  The other is the debate for the Connecticut senate seat between Linda McMahon and Chris Murphy.

I didn’t watch either debate live and thus wasn’t on Twitter.  Instead, I watched football, as the Steelers lost on a last-second field goal to the Titans.  To be perfectly honest, the football game was better even though my team lost. 

Biden-Ryan was still an interesting debate.  In the first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the general consensus was that Romney clearly won (maybe or maybe not decisively depending on who you ask, but Romney was generally the clear consensus winner).  Romney was clearly the more energized and aggressive in that debate.  Obama was too passive, plain and simple.

When we fast forward to this debate, you see Biden was the one who came out energized and aggressive while Ryan was more passive.  The moderator had even less control in this debate than last time.  The Democrats were clearly demanding energy from their guy and Biden did deliver that.  Biden spent a bit too much time laughing, snickering, and grinning like a Cheshire cat for my taste.  The GOP was simply looking to maintain the momentum. 

So, who won?  Really, I think it was a draw in that both candidates did what they had to do.  However, if I had to pick a winner, I would say Ryan won overall because my vibe was that he was handling Biden’s energy better than Obama handled Romney’s.  Obama seemed to wilt during the first debate, but Ryan didn’t really wilt for the most part.  I also don’t think expectations were set very high for Ryan (nor were they very high for Romney), so he exceeded expectations in my opinion.  The GOP appears to have maintained their momentum, as well. 

That said, Biden put in a much stronger performance than Obama did in his first debate and I think he succeeded in igniting a spark within the Democrats’ base.  He didn’t lose clearly (and/or decisively depending on who you ask) like Obama did.  I think Biden may even have exceeded expectations.  My call of a draw looks reasonable given the divide about who actually won.  I don’t see people from the left saying their guy lost like I did after the first debate, and I don’t see people from the right saying their guy lost, either. 

I’m seeing more states shifting toward Romney in polls than toward Obama.  Some states that were leaning for Obama are becoming toss-ups and some that were toss-ups are now leaning toward Romney.  I don’t see much movement in the other direction in the swing states.  I still see Obama having the inside track for the win, but Romney is closing the gap considerably and quickly.  This is shaping up to be another close one like 2000 or 2004 rather than the decisive win Obama had in 2008. 

And we’ll move onto the McMahon-Murphy debate.  This was their second debate.  I missed the first one, probably also because of football.  I’m an American guy and I have my priorities. :-p To me, this was a nasty debate to watch.  Both candidates went negative early and stayed negative throughout most of the debate.  Neither candidate really went into much substantive policy discussion, so if you were looking to learn about their actual positions, you were probably very disappointed.  They were also very repetitive in their attacks on each other.  If the first was anything like the second, I didn’t miss anything of value.  If the third is anything like the second, I’ll probably skip it.  There was just no value in watching it.  I’ve never seen a worse debate, to be honest.  I’m glad it was only an hour.

Next up is the second Obama-Romney debate, which is Tuesday.  I’ll watch it live, but will refrain from tweeting and such during the debate.  I find it too difficult to focus on the debate when I do.

The Nobel Peace Prize Goes To…The European Union?!

The European Union (EU) was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  I thought this was a joke at first, but I was wrong and they actually got one.  I also didn’t think that the Nobel Committee could make a worse mistake than when they awarded Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize in late 2009.  I was wrong again. 

I don’t want to make this post too much about Obama’s prize, but it is important to briefly look at it before we discuss the EU’s prize.  Realistically speaking, I thought Obama’s prize was a huge mistake to begin with, as it was for little more than big promises and dazzling rhetoric rather than actual results given that it was awarded less than a year into his first (and hopefully only) term.  In other words, it was little different than Obama’s actual election and the committee, like the American people, got caught up in Obamania.  Even three years later, I think the case for giving him the prize is virtually nonexistent, but this is out of scope here. 

Basically, Obama was awarded the prize for promises and rhetoric, but little real action, either positive or negative.  Even diehard Obama supporters agree on this.  As I said above, the question of whether or not he deserves it now three years later is irrelevant here.  I contend that the EU’s award is a greater lapse in judgment because, though it was also awarded given a colossal amount of promises and rhetoric (even more than Obama), it was awarded even knowing how drastically the negative action outweighs the positive action.  Thus, the EU deserves it even less than Obama did.  Let’s explore why this is such a huge mistake by the committee.

One need only look at the sorry state of Europe to see why this prize is not deserved.  Europe has soaring unemployment, soaring debts and deficits, stagnant or negative growth, riots and poverty all through the continent (“advancement of peace and reconciliation,” indeed), and so on.  It’s hard to decide which is in worse shape between Ireland and Greece, both of which are well on their ways to becoming failed states.  Spain is not far behind.  Portugal and Italy aren’t as far along as Spain, but are facing similar issues.  Additionally, I think France is the big fiscal powder keg waiting for a spark that nobody is watching.  There are movements toward secession involving various sections of Spain, Italy, and Belgium.  Efforts to address these problems have all fallen short.  Yes, Europe has had several consistently uncompetitive economies and dysfunctional governments like Greece, but that alone doesn’t explain why Europe is such a mess right now.

Fundamentally speaking, none of these economic and fiscal symptoms can be solved until Europe addresses the real underlying root cause of the problem, namely their flawed currency structure.  The Euro, in its present form, is a failed currency.  Do not let anybody tell you otherwise.  In a nutshell, the problem is they sought economic and fiscal unity via a common currency without political unity, the logic being that fiscal unity would lead to political unity.  That logic has proven disastrously flawed.

The only way the crisis in Europe will be solved is to fix their currency structure, which can be done in exactly one of two ways.  Either Europe can become more integrated to become a United States of Europe with a stronger, centralized European-level government or they can revert to the pre-Euro state of affairs with a European Union, but each country returns to its own currency and no common currency exists.  I previously compared the US and EU here. 

How can you justify giving a prize to this dysfunctional collective known as the EU?  Why should the EU be rewarded for making one of the greatest policy blunders of the modern era by creating the Euro? 

On a side note, leave it to the Europeans to blame the US for their dysfunctional currency union.  Thorbørn Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, had this to say in a supreme display of pure ignorance, arrogance, and intellectual dishonesty.  Per the WSJ:

“We don't have a position on how to solve the economic crisis, but we believe it will be important to solve it and that European unity can be kept so that Europe can move forward. There are many things to say about the economic crisis—where it originated, for instance. Actually, it started in the U.S. and all of us had to deal with it."

 

It’s not the fault of the US that the European banks had even greater leverage than ours had.  The US was not responsible for various European governments running their economies into the ground.  Most importantly, the US had no role in Europe deciding to form a completely dysfunctional currency and political structure.  Also, this was a nice display of blaming somebody else for your problems and offering no solutions.  What a joke.

Here’s the bottom line.  The committee, having done tremendous damage to its credibility by awarding Obama a prize, has done even more harm to its already-damaged credibility by awarding a prize to the EU.  It should be rewarding positive results, not promising rhetoric, not performance without results, and certainly not negative results.  The committee also needs to recognize that, though other parties do bear some responsibility, Europe’s present crisis is mostly a self-inflicted problem that they continue to perpetuate and exacerbate with half-hearted “solutions”. 

Links:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578051960191363312.html

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/09/09greenwire-obama-wins-nobel-prize-in-part-for-confronting-55250.html?pagewanted=all

http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/comparing-eu-and-us.html

A Libertarian Argument for Voting for Romney and the First Presidential Debate

I’d like to do two things with this post.  First, I’ll present one of the better arguments I’ve seen for why Libertarians should vote for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.  Second, I’ll look briefly at the debate earlier this week.

The argument for why Libertarians should vote for Romney can be found here.  It’s a very short, but very insightful read.  The basic premise of Ted Frank’s argument is that, if Obama is reelected, he will be able to appoint a successor to Kennedy and/or Scalia on the Supreme Court, who are both in their late 70’s and likeliest to leave the court.  The author argues that if that happens, then it is game over the for the Libertarian movement because of the present composition of the court.  Per Frank:

·         “There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the First Amendment does not bar Congress from regulating political speech against incumbents.

·         There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the Second Amendment does not create any individual rights against the government.

·         There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the Commerce Clause creates no constraint on Congress's regulatory powers.

·         There are likely at least four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the government can choose to discriminate on the basis of race if "diversity" is at issue.”

I view these as very legitimate concerns, as we’ve already seen these come to fruition with opinions held by Obama’s two appointees, who are among the justices mentioned above.  The 5-4 rulings that are upholding personal rights would consistently morph into 5-4 (or worse) rulings cutting those rights down.  Remember, these are lifetime appointments.

One natural counter to this argument is that Romney has already held up Bork and Roberts as examples of the kinds of justices he would nominate.  Frank is not concerned about this, but I see it as an important counterpoint.  The problem here is that Bork, and Roberts to a degree at times, are advocates of Supreme Court deference to the will of the elected majority.  Here’s the thing, though.  The Supreme Court was designed to uphold the Constitution and as a check against the tyranny of the majority over the minority.  In other words, it has to be able to make unpopular rulings to honor the principles of the Constitution that defend the rights of the people against the power of the government. 

While another Roberts could not be counted on as a reliable vote as Scalia or Thomas at checking government power, one of them would be more reliable at doing so than another Obama appointee based on everyone’s rulings to this point.  Kennedy is a wild-card on a lot of rulings and Scalia consistently limits government power.  Roberts still generally limits government power, but is much more of a wild-card in the wake of his Obamacare ruling.  The Obama appointees consistently uphold government power over the people.  There is no reason for us to expect Obama to change his philosophy in future appointees. 

So, here’s the bottom line on Frank’s argument.  I think it’s a very compelling case that Libertarian-minded voters should seriously consider in swing states (I’ll explore why I single out swing state voters in a future post).  The importance of the Supreme Court is highly underappreciated.  I understand that a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, but I also think Obama appointees replacing Kennedy and/or Scalia on the Supreme Court would present an existential threat to the Libertarian movement.  Conceding the battle against the two-party monopoly in 2012 in the swing states to allow the war continues into the future may indeed be the best course of action here.  I don’t like the idea, but life is full of choices, some without appeal. 

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the debate because you’ve no doubt heard a lot about it already and I’ve already gone on for a while, but here are my impressions.  Expectations for Romney were set very low by just about everyone, myself included.  Romney was overall the clear winner and surprised a lot of people.  He stormed out the gate and caught Obama off-guard, putting Obama into a hole that he was never quite able to get out of.  Obama managed to prevent the debate from turning into a total landslide, but he clearly lost.  On an absolute basis, Romney performed very well, but his performance looks even better when viewed in a relative context to both expectations and Obama’s performance. 

All that said, the impact of Romney’s debate victory has been dampened considerably with the news of a drop in U3 unemployment under 8%.  Note that U6 did not change, but that’s not what’s getting headlines.  I will be very interested to see how the future revisions come in, as I expect large and negative revisions…after the election.  We also saw an increase in food stamp recipients after the market close on Friday (when nobody was paying attention), which was decidedly less friendly to the Obama case.  The Obama camp did a masterful job of using the press as a tool and highlighting the good while downplaying the bad.  This should be no surprise.

There’s still a month to go to the election with two more presidential debates, a vice-presidential debate, numerous economic data releases, and a lot of global tension.  The race is tight and it should be a wild one. 

Links:

http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2012/10/the-libertarian-case-for-romney.php