Wednesday, November 05, 2008

If you've come here to gloat .../with updates

Well, then you've come to the wrong place. For a variety of reasons.

First, and foremost, I'm saving you from yourself. Any assholish comments made will magically disappear, because Baracky's Hope and Change™ for America doesn't need your classless comments polluting this day.

Second, and listen closely, McCain wasn't my man. Sure, he was NotObama, which was a good enough reason to vote for him, but overall he was a rather poor choice. He didn't really espouse the tenets of classical liberalism which I've come to love. And, if you need a definition of Classical Liberalism I'll find it for you.

A McCain presidency would have probably been bad news for republicans. He would have had NO support, and the derangement from the left would have continued. Possibly to epic proportions if Teh One had been defeated.

I'm going to say this only once, and it's only because the left is so unhinged that I have to type it at all, but I did NOT oppose Obama because he was black. Oceancat/Meya - your comments accusing me of racism will be deleted, so spare us both. I could go on and on about which views of his with which I disagree, but we'll have plenty of time for that later.

But, Obama ran as a moderate. So, I expect my taxes are going to go down as he promised, right? And he's going to be bipartisan, right? He's gonna reach across that isle. He's going to heal America. Oprah said there is no red and blue anymore, we're all purple. Well ...alllright. I'm HYPED! Plus, the whole world loves us now, so we've got that going for us. This is a day of victory for all of us!

I've been looking around what others have to say, and thought I'd share:

Lileks:

I’m off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their “Question Authority” bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people.
Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong - and I hope for more of the former, obviously - he’s my President now, dammit, and I’m not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.
More to come, of course, but let’s not spoil the moment.


Byron York:

How many times did you hear that voters believed this was the most important presidential election of their lifetime, and therefore that turnout would be through the roof? Voters waiting in line for hours. Huge numbers of early and absentee ballots. Unprecedented get-out-the-vote operations. Well, as I add the totals on CNN's election website now, it looks like about 117.6 million votes have been counted so far — which is less, I believe, than in 2004. There are still votes left to be tallied, but I think it's safe to say that there wasn't a historic leap in turnout this time around. After all the hype, what was the reason for that? (H/T Seth Liebsohn)


John Derbyshire:
I'm sour about the GOP too. What did it all get us, those 8 years of pandering and spending? If GWB had turned his face against new entitlements, closed the borders, deported the illegals, held the line on calls to loosen mortgage-lending standards, starved the Department of Education, and declined those invitations to mosque functions, would the GOP be in any worse shape now?

What won this election was the packaging skills of David Axelrod, the swooning complicity of the media, the ruthless opportunism of Barack Obama, and the unprincipled thuggishness of his supporters.

What lost this election was the cloth-eared cluelessness of George W. Bush, the timid squeamishness of John McCain, and the deep lack of interest in conservative principles among Republican primary voters.

Sour? You bet I’m sour. Where was conservatism in this election? Where was restraint in government? Where was national sovereignty? Where was liberty? Where was self-support? And where are those things now? Where are they headed this next four years? Down the toilet, that’s where. Pah!


Lord news I've been in agreement with Derbyshire for a while, but he knocked that one out of the park.

Novak:

Obama won the Democratic primaries by getting to the left of Sen. Hillary Clinton and all the others on foreign policy. The most activist part of the Democratic party is its most passionate left wing. Winning their hearts, Obama then gradually moved toward the center—making his views on the war in Iraq barely distinguishable in practical fact from those of Senator McCain. In any case, the foreign-policy issues that dominated the primary season dropped speedily out of sight, as it began to become clear that violence was dropping very quickly in Iraq, and something like “normalcy” came ever closer. The press virtually stopped covering Iraq. (Their passion had been to humiliate Bush; and when things turned better, they seemed no longer interested.)

Does the victory of the Left in 2008 mean that President Obama will try to make the United States more like a Euro-socialist nation? All the signs he has given us of where his heart really lies suggest that he will try to do that, within some rather severe limits. In particular, he will surely try to rush through a program of U.S. government-run and -managed health care. But under President Clinton, Hillary Clinton came to grief trying to do that.

The United States is a large nation, with an extraordinarily diverse range of populations, regions, climates, and cultural habits. Imagine trying to run one single continental health-care system that embraces Germany and Portugal, Scandinavia and Greece, and Albania through Belgium. That image suggests how difficult it will be to run one single health-care system from Washington, from Maine and Florida out through Alaska and Arizona, and everything in between. The United States is more culturally unified than Europe. But it is far from uniformly so.

Besides, Americans do not much respect the government-run programs that are now in place. Rather than rely on the inefficient Post Office, for important matters Americans prefer to pay a little more for the reliability, good manners, and good spirit of private carriers such as FedEx and United Parcel Service. Service is so much better and more cheerful in the business sector than in the government sector.


It will be interesting to see whether or not the far left continues with it's drumbeat against Iraq if Obama merely continues along the same path established by Bush. Of course, I am prepared for Obama to take credit for any success that may be achieved there.

Saving the BEST for last, the master Den Beste comes out of hiding to comment:

The main reason this will be a "coming of age" moment is that now Obama and the Democrats have to put up or shut up. Obama got elected by making himself a blank slate, with vapid promises about "hope" and "change" -- but now he actually has to do something. Now he has to reveal his true agenda. And with the Democrats also having a majority in both chambers of Congress, now the Democrats really have to lead. And they're not going to do a very good job of it. It's going to be amusing to watch.

And the people who fell for the demagoguery will learn an invaluable lesson.


But, you HAVE HAVE HAVE to read the whole thing. And here's another link.

More Updates:

This is just plain creepy.