TOMC watched the Republicans and says that in last night’s debate, the Republican candidates who seemed to speak from the heart did best, even though their hearts occasionally seemed to be nutty. Mr. Cohen looks at Venezuela and says Hugo Chávez’s grab for socialist-emperor status is grotesque, dangerous and a terrible example for a region that has been consolidating democracy. Here’s TOMC:
Debate time! Once again last night, Republican candidates came together to taunt the viewing public with the reminder that one of them is going to have to be nominated for president.
Smackdown! Prompted by a YouTube question from Ernie of Dyker Heights, the evening instantly took up the immigration issue, allowing the front-runners to demonstrate their ability to pander in such an irritating way that even the panderees would have to be turned off. Mitt Romney accused Rudy Giuliani of running a “sanctuary city” while Rudy accused Mitt of running a “sanctuary mansion,” thanks to the illegal immigrants who were grooming his lawn.
“This whole debate saddens me a little bit,” said John McCain, the only person on the stage who ever made any effort or risked any political capital trying to seriously resolve the issue. Meanwhile Representative Tom Tancredo, who has a campaign ad showing an immigrant in a hoodie sneaking across the border and blowing up a mall, was in ecstasy over the rancor. (“It is great! I am so happy to hear it!”)
There was Mike Huckabee, the new rising star, whose latest TV ad reminds us he is a CHRISTIAN LEADER. Huckabee’s most famous supporter, Chuck Norris, was sitting right there in the second row, a show of support we have yet to see from Oprah or Barbra Streisand. There was no sign, however, of the former governor’s other star supporter, Ric (The Nature Boy) Flair, who I’m sure you all remember from his exciting triumph over Ricky (The Dragon) Steamboat in the 1989 National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight title match.
Huckabee is threatening Mitt Romney in Iowa, home of many evangelical voters, at least a few of whom are expressing concern that if a Mormon president prayed for guidance in a crisis, God might not hear him.
Romney, however, is not going to let you feel sorry about this, gentle reader. Every time you feel the least twinge of sympathy for him, he’s going to start screeching about immigrants again. “That’s not your money. That’s the taxpayers’ money!” he cried when Huckabee explained why he did not want to exclude the children of illegal immigrants in a state scholarship program for top Arkansas high school graduates. “Illegals are not going to get taxpayer-funded breaks.”
“In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did,” Huckabee retorted, winning the moral high ground just before he raced off to denounce the progressive income tax.
Taxing people based on their ability to pay got a brief, sensible defense from McCain, just before he denounced Ron Paul’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. (“We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement.”)
It’s no wonder the Republican voters are veering back and forth, rejecting one candidate after another. Fred Thompson, who was supposed to be likable once upon a time, has gotten so desperate that he submitted a four-minute candidate profile that was composed almost entirely of attacks on Romney and Huckabee. Lately, Thompson has also been busying himself attacking the Fox network for bias against his alleged campaign.
McCain and Huckabee, the candidates who seemed to speak from the heart did best, even though their hearts occasionally seemed to be completely nutty. McCain absolutely dismembered Romney on the question of torture. (Mitt refused to denounce waterboarding because he said he didn’t want the terrorists to know what we were up to.) “It’s in violation of the Geneva Convention … how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me,” he said. Having whipped his opponent good, McCain then turned right around and started refighting Vietnam. (“We never lost a battle … ”)
It was suspenseful, waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the next candidate to go whacky. Rounding out the field was Representative Duncan Hunter, who has — well, he has a grandson who says cute things to his teacher. Hunter appears to have done his hardest campaigning in Florida, which means he has made approximately as many stops over the last six months as a low-energy tourist on a single weekend.
Every sign points to the party nominees being chosen by the first week in February. (If given the choice, would you prefer to see your Christmas stocking filled with a lump of coal or 10 months of Clinton vs. Romney?) But on the Republican side, it’s not hard to imagine the poor voters veering from one to the other. (Him? — Oh, god no. How about — him! No, wait, what were we thinking? )
Maybe they’ll vacillate until the bitter end, leaving it all up to the final primary in South Dakota in June. And that would be great. Finally, instead of allowing a few thousand corn farmers to decide the fate of the nation, we could place the power where it rightfully belongs, with a few thousand wheat farmers.
Here’s Mr. Cohen:
It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase “Viva la muerte!” or “Long live death!” Essentially meaningless, the words captured the cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European Fascism, in its Francoist and other forms.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hates fascists; they are central to his repertoire of insults. But he has not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster his leftist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous banner of “Fatherland, Socialism or Death!”
The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Chávez would no doubt claim Cuban revolutionary, rather than Spanish fascist, roots for it (Fidel Castro also invoked fatherland and finality). The bottom line is this: Latin America’s oil-gilded caudillo is getting serious about ruling for life, just like Franco and Castro.
I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Chávez has already used gushing oil revenue, a pliant judiciary, subservient institutions and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic anti-Americanism to concoct a 21st-century, gulag-free authoritarianism. But even Putin has not contemplated going as far as Chávez now intends to take his “Bolivarian revolution.”
Venezuelans will vote Sunday in a referendum that would remove all limits on presidential re-election, grant Chávez direct control over foreign currency reserves, allow him to censor the media under a state of emergency declarable at his discretion, expand his powers to expropriate private property and create the second formally socialist nation in the Americas alongside Fidel’s.
“The measures amount to a constitutional coup,” said Teodoro Petkoff, who edits an opposition newspaper. Certainly, they would prod Venezuela from an oppressive rule comparable to Mexico’s under its once impregnable Institutional Revolutionary Party toward the dictatorial absolutism of Cuba.
Unlike other votes during Chávez’s nine-year presidency, and unlike the assured victory of Putin’s United Russia Party in voting the same day, the referendum is not a foregone conclusion.
Overcoming inertia, opponents led by students have energized a “No” campaign. A general once close to Chávez has denounced a looming coup d’état. Polls suggest a close outcome.
But awash in petrodollars — oil accounts for about 90 percent of Venezuelan exports — Chávez commands formidable resources. They are centered in the armed forces; a huge nomenklatura scattered across the bureaucracy and newly nationalized industries; the so-called Boliburgesía (Bolivarian bourgeoisie) of traders grown rich working the angles of a corrupt system; and the poor whom Chávez has helped and manipulated.
Certainly, the oil money Chávez has plowed into poor neighborhoods (at the expense of an oil industry suffering chronic underinvestment) has reduced poverty. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America said last year that the extreme poverty rate had fallen to 9.9 percent from 15.9 percent.
But more than spreading socialist ideals, Chávez has spread a form of crony capitalism, dedicated to his greater glory, that has imbued the economy with all the resilience of a house of cards.
Foreign investment has plunged, scared off by nationalizations. A huge disparity between the official and black-market exchange rates has encouraged get-rich-quick schemes for favored “Chávistas” while erecting endless barriers to trade. Price controls on staples have made eggs unavailable. This week, you can’t find chickens. Chávez’s socialism delivers subsidized gasoline and glittering malls but no milk.
Latin America has been here before, with the disastrous import-substitution and highly regulated models of the 1960s and ’70s. Most of the region has moved on, but not Chávez, who trumpets “growth from within,” whatever that is. The World Bank’s recently released “Doing Business 2008,” a ranking of the ease of conducting commerce, places Venezuela 172nd out of 178 countries.
Despite this, the country does huge business with the United States, as its fourth-largest crude oil supplier and a big importer. Chávez’s “socialism” and his chumminess with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do not extend to cutting off the “imperialist empire.” Chávez is too shrewd to sever his lifeline.
A possible conclusion would be that he’s harmless — a wily barracks-bred buffoon whose leftist rhetoric is just a veneer for a petrodollar power play. Perhaps that’s why the United States — and Latin American nations — have been so muted, or silent, before Chávez’s attempted “constitutional coup.” Oil speaks.
But Chávez’s grab for socialist-emperor status is grotesque and dangerous — as Fascism was — a terrible example for a region that has been consolidating democracy. King Juan Carlos of Spain got it right when he recently interrupted Chávez’s trademark verbal diarrhea with a brusque: “Why don’t you just shut up?”
Venezuelans should watch that regal routine on YouTube — it’s even been set to music — and follow suit on Sunday.
