Samizdata endorses McCain/Palin

OK, not the whole site.  Samizdata is a strongly libertarian site.  One of the contributors, who had supported Hillary Clinton, now endorses McCain/Palin.

 

First: Obama is not Hillary. Not by a long shot. Hillary is a fairly typical opportunist politician who thinks socialist programs have a place in a free society. She is badly mistaken but not a serious threat to America itself.

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Obama is a cipher. He is like a Russian matryoshka doll. Nobody except perhaps his closest associates know what is at the core. The best estimate is to look at his friends and mentors and what their values are. That topic has been thoroughly discussed and some reasonable people place him solidly in a group of hard core totalitarians. If we ignore his promises shifting like smoke on the wind, his closest core group seems to be fired by hatred and revenge against America in general and the US Constitution in particular. Certainly that is what his confidants and advisers (and wife) say in public.

Second: Palin is not Romney or Giuliani or any of the other candidates that looked likely to be on the ticket with McCain. She is the most recognizably small-government, libertarian leaning candidate on a major party ticket certainly since Reagan, I think since Goldwater. She has proven her credibility with the trail of bodies in her wake. I have no doubt that she was offered any amount of inducements to turn a blind eye toward corrupt associates. .... If she ... leaves as big of an imprint on the Senate ... we're in for a good time; buy popcorn. Don't for a minute underestimate her potential to seriously upset the apple cart pork barrel.

Third: The clincher. The economic turmoil boiling right now is not unprecedented. The last time it happened on this scale, the crash started on a Republican president's watch and resulted in the New Deal, schemes for packing the Supreme Court to better destroy Constitutional restraints and, ultimately, in an invitation to fascist and communist governments to have a go at world dominance. Roosevelt needed an amendment to change the court system. Obama doesn't. Also remember, after four years of the worst of the depression's misery, FDR was reelected by a landslide. Why should it be any different with Obama? This crash, which is an inevitable and substantial correction of regulatory market tampering, is coming right at the most critical phase of an election cycle. It could have come earlier or later, but with the Schumeresque assistance of the MSM it is timed perfectly to trigger an anti free market landslide. It places (Republican) President Bush in the role of (Republican) President Hoover. Under an Obama presidency, it is certain not only that the crash will be far worse than it has to be, but that it will be blamed entirely on 'the free market policies of President Bush'. This is absurd in so many ways, but do any of you doubt it? Electing Obama will be taken as a clear message that Hoover/Bush Republican 'free market' policies are at fault and forever discredited.

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Another reason that didn't make my top three is that already 43% of American 'tax payers' pay no taxes. We are getting dangerously close to the point where the people who net more off of government outnumber the people who pay more into it. If we cross that threshold of voters taking versus voters paying, it is a point of no return. It appears certain that we will pass that point early in an Obama administration. Probably before mid-terms. Two years could be too long. It may not matter if the RNC learns its lesson.