Class Warfare: It's Not Just Obama

American left pushing class war buttons hard

To announce an economic program at the University of Chicago is nothing if not making a statement.

In an era in which the failures of Keynesian economics are being paraded for the world to see, announcing an economic program on the historic turf of Hayek is bound to turn some heads.

That alone would have been enough to send Pawlenty's message. But Pawlenty had a serious bone to pick with President Barack Obama, one that is proving to be a defining issue between conservatives and progressives in American politics: simply that Obama seems more interested in playing ideological politics than in solving serious problems.

"President Obama is a champion practitioner of class warfare," Pawlenty declared. "He's spent three years dividing our nation, and fanning the flames of class envy and resentment all across the country to deflect attention from his own failures and the economic hardship they have visited on America."

It's not just Obama who's playing at class warfare in place of actually addressing America's real problems.

Consider Rachel Maddow. Now, it's hard to imagine she could possibly confused about how horrible her show's ratings are when her big "scoop" on Newt Gingrich is that he's on vacation in Grrece.

That, and a credit account at Tiffany's.

Maddow attempts to needle Gingrich over his fiscal conservative positions, essentially questioning why someone fiscally conservative would use credit. She (unshockingly) misses the detail that being fiscally conservative doesn't revolve around whether or not one uses credit, but what one does with that credit.

For example, making purchases on credit and then quickly paying them off is entirely permissable for a fiscal conservative. Continually driving up the credit account, and then conveniently increasing one's own credit limit, is not permissable to anyone with a lick of sense.

No one should be surprised to hear this kind of mendacious tripe from Rachel Maddow. This is, after all, someone who thinks that even the most vacuous drivel is made more compelling as long as it's delivered through a smug grin.

Maddow attempts to justify all of this by appealing to Americans' sense of outrage at hypocrisy. That no actual hypocrisy is actually present doesn't seem to be what Maddow considers a salient detail.

It isn't about "hypocrisy" at all. It's about Maddow pandering to her audience, and stoking the fires of a segment of the American population eager to engage in socially-destructive class warfare.

Barack Obama shouldn't have to carry the "class warrior" distinction all on his own. He's getting plenty of help.

The Internet Says: Newt vs Cain

Although social media has become more prominent than ever before in politics -- in the United States as well as in Canada (where we just had our first "social networking election").

Even so, reliable information about what these trends may mean for politics has been difficult to comeby -- at least until now.

Experian Hitwise has begun to track and analyze website hits in the Republican primary election, and has already uncovered some truly astonishing trends.

For example, Hitwise was able to determine that Donald Trump's announcement that he was dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination closely followed a 49% drop in internet traffic to his Facebook page.

Hitwise Media Director Matt Tatham has implicitly speculated that the public release of President Barack Obama's birth certificate -- the inconceivable preoccupation of Trump's Presidential aspirations -- may have helped mercifully put the final nails in his political coffin.

Other data offered by Hitwise is equally intriguing.

For example, Hitwise data currently suggests that the "Evangelical bump" former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty could have expected has yet to materialize.

If one were to measure according to website hints, it seems that former Speaker of the House and Contract With America innovator Newt Gingrich is getting the most attention. He leads the race for website hits with more than a 65% share. His closest competitor was former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who held just over 22%.

But it would be a mistake to count Cain out just yet. Hits on Cain's website grew fastest, by an astonishing 35%.

Pawlenty, meanwhile, is holding at a paltry 3%.

Then again, it's still fairly early in the Republican primary, with still more than a year to go.

Though the hour hasn't necessarily grown late, there are clear advantages that come with this early traffic, considering that website traffic helped Ron Paul raise $1 million through his political action committee in just 24 hours, it would be tough to underestimate the importance of this traffic.

If Hitwise's figures are an accurate portrayal of how internet traffic is flowing, the race right now is between Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Although Gingrich has a comfortable lead in this regard, Cain could close the gap quickly.

The Follies of Political "Evil"

Sarah Palin invokes accusations of "evil" in health care debate

If Sarah Palin has any intentions of reaching out to moderate Democrats in preparation for what many speculate will be a run for the Presidency in 2012, she certainly hasn't started off on the right foot.

Writing on her Facebook page, Palin denounced Barack Obama's health care plan as "evil".

Alluding to a clause dealing with "advance care planning consultation" that could deal with "living wills" and "termination of life services", Palin seemed to have started out with a rather peculiar interpretation of the clause that led her to speak about the rationing of health care.

"Who will suffer the most when they ration care?" Palin asked rhetorically. "The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," Palin continued.

"Such a system is downright evil," she concluded, noting that this clause could lead to decisions regarding euthanasia being made by "death panels".

the Examiners' Jacksonville Republican Examiner, Patrick McMahon notes that Palin's comments seem to be a rather bizarre way of extending the advantage that Republicans already seem to be enjoying in the health care debate. One thing that can be said for certain about Obama's health care reform package is that it will certainly lead to a drastic change in American taxation culture -- a change that more and more Americans do not seem to want.

Canadian health care is, almost hands-down, a superior model to the current American model. But it doesn't come cheap to Canadians, who can pay up to 30% of their income in taxes.

For the vast majority of Canadians, our health care is worth what we pay for it in taxes. But Americans, who traditionally favour lower taxes, may not share the same opinion.

Appearing on George Stephanopoulos' program on ABC, Newt Gingrich attempted to defend Palin's comments. “Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept,” Gingrich insisted. “You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.”

Of course, what neither Palin nor Gingrich seem to be addressing is the fact that any decision regarding the pursuit of euthanasia would ultimately have to come from either a terminal or unresponsive patient, or from their medical proxies. No government agency could impose euthanasia on any patient. For the simplest reason why, one has to realize that it would be unconstitutional.

Few words exist to describe precisely how threatening it is when politicians attempt to ascribe the label of "evil" to their opponents' policies -- especially policies that, even if potentially unimplementable, are actually quite benign.

Many Americans -- Republican and Democrat alike -- have good cause to be concerned about the cost of health care. The Canadian experience has demonstrated that it's extremely difficult to control the costs of an already-costly system. This is a legitimate concern.

But Barack Obama is not the devil, nor are his health care policies the work of the devil. To describe them as "evil" only serves to unduly stir up moral hysteria.

That is far, far less than what one expects from a statesperson -- especially one who, like Sarah Palin, needs to court moderate Democrats to accomplish that goal.