Let’s face it. The GOP is the Party of Rectitude. The Democrats are the Party of Fun.
Until we turn this confounded situation around, conservatives are going to lose a lot more elections than we need to.
The GOP needs, deserves, and by jingo should have, its own Lady Gagas and Katy Perrys and their attendant desirable Little Monster and Russell Brand constituencies. Because power without fun is just a … College Republicans convention. Uh oh.
The American People are going to have to get a lot more desperate to date (not to mention marry) a nagging shrew — Us Republicans — in preference to a sweet natured, fun-loving, little shady lady, the Dems. And … don’t give me that “but which will make a better mother for our children?” The flibbertigibbet, the will-o-the-whisp, the clown, Maria, beat the snobby Baroness in that department too. Remember?
Even Jesus Himself ended up giving his praise to Mary, who, in one of the most intimate moments recorded in four gospels, perfumed Jesus with a whole pound of expensive Spikenard, worth a year’s wages — using her hair to wipe his feet. And who bitchslapped her around for such extravagance? Judas Iscariot, that’s who. Republicans, representing Evangelicals, church-going Catholics, and other Religiously Serious Types, might just take it to heart that it’s otnay-ootay-artsmay to get crosswise, so to speak, with Mr. Big. Maybe it is time for the GOP to align with its Mary faction rather than its Judas faction? (Just say’n.)
What is to be done? Well — how embarrassing is this? Turns out that the Republican Party’s Conservative Trademark Core Values are far more conducive to Partying Hearty than that of our Liberal Rivals. Why? Lots of reasons. Here’s just one.
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Nobody, but nobody, has ever put economic policy better than … Tallulah Bankhead. This siren of the silver screen (and, ironically, daughter of 47th House Speaker William Brockman Bankhead) said all there is to say about economic policy: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. And Honey, rich is better.”
Memo to the GOP presidential hopefuls. We are all Tallulians Now: It is more fun to be rich. Just get with it. End of memo.
Yes, while Liberals give lip service (you should pardon the expression) to rocking out, we actually have the patent on this Pursuit of Happiness stuff. And not (or, anyway, not only) the free-loving libertarian wing of the conservative movement, with its weird if intermittently cute obsession with legalizing drugs (and prostitution) which sunk the Gary Johnson campaign. No, real Conservatives get getting rich in a way that Liberals do not. Liberals, who do in fact throw much better parties than we do, are just clueless about generating wealth either on an individual or societal basis. We actually know. But rather than celebrating ourselves for this, turn ourselves into ants righteously lecturing the grasshoppers.
Is the GOP erecting monumental statues to Tallulah? Are our presidential candidates out there evangelizing Tallulahnomics? No! Michele Bachman told the media that she brought von Mises for beach reading. At that very moment her poll standings started to nosedive, never to recover. (Human Action weighs 30 pounds, and that’s the eBook version. There is a word for this: ballast. No disrespect, Ludwig! You Da Big Dog! Just … say’n….)
Go to any libertarian cocktail party to experience the pure stupefaction of hearing Hayek compared to Mises, pitted against Schumpeter and contrasted with Friedman. (OK, maybe not parties thrown by Nick Gillespie or Virginia Postrel, both of whom have suave. But as for the rest of you, you know it’s true.) As publisher Steve Forbes wittily observes, if you get set between two bores on a transcontinental flight just start explaining monetary policy. They immediately, outbored, will leave you alone for the remainder of the trip.
Parcbenchers! It doesn’t have to be this way. Three of the 4 top polling presidential candidates have each, in their diffident (hi Mr. Speaker!), inept (hi Godfather!), and righteous (hi Dr. Paul!) way have endorsed the gold standard. Add the goldsters poll standings together and they swamp the total of the gold-agnostic Gov. Romney. Pollster Scott Rasmussen compellingly has shown that the gold standard, properly presented, is immensely popular and pollster Kelly Ann Conway has conducted polls for American Principles in Action (with which this writer professionally is associated) which show that it can move a lot of votes in the critical early primaries.
Why? Because normal people, i.e. voters, none of whom have the GOP elected officials apparently met recently, intuitively sense that the gold standard is a road to prosperity. Tallulahnomics First Axiom? “Honey, rich is better.” Prosperity is fun! Being out of work and sponging off your parents, or working the taps at Starbucks and living in some indoor equivalent of Zuccotti Park, is, let’s face it, a drag.
Reams of absolutely stupefying statistics prove decisively that the gold standard generates jobs — good jobs, great jobs, by the millions — faster, under current circumstances, than adjusting any other available economic parameter. The Chinese vernacular nickname for America translates into “the golden land,” and there’s a reason that our international image was one of a land whose streets were paved with gold. Back when the gold standard was in effect….
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So the GOP has it easy. It just needs to do what the voters want, politically, and what history and mountains of economic data demonstrate is excellent policy and adopt the gold standard rather than explain it. And one other thing. The GOP has to get a grip on its propensity to make everything, especially monetary policy, into a stupifyingly boring lecture on Rectitude. Gold is both righteous and … fun!
Look, GOP. We mere voters want to make a lots of money and those of us who were stupid enough to neglect to run for office are more than happy to do it by working for a living instead. We voters really, really — trust me on this — don’t want you to explain to us how the gold standard works, why it will save the euro, how it will equilibrize the balance of payments current accounts deficits, or do any of those things.
We hire people to fill out our 1040 forms, not because we can’t but because they are boring and slightly daunting. This is a republic, not a democracy. We hired you, our elected officials, to handle the boring daunting stuff. (You, in return, hired a bunch of bureaucrats, called executive branch agencies, and delegated it and we don’t really blame you for that — so long as we don’t have to do it or even listen to you talking about it.)
Don’t explain it. We already get it. Gold means great jobs. You want us to put you in power? Stop with all the Pretense of Rectitude, please, we get enough of, ick, that from President Obama. We get the joke, which is on us, that stimulus doesn’t create many jobs, rather it saddles us with a lot of debt we will have to sweat off. We get that members of the elite nomenklatura like Paul Krugman are putting lipstick on a pig. We don’t want to kiss a pig, lipstick or not, really, we’re less stupid than you think. So … can we just skip the lectures and get down to vibrant job creation via the gold standard?
We (not including Republican office seekers) are all Tallulians now. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Honey, rich is better.” You’re our only hope. Gold is fun. Your daddy’s GOP doesn’t understand fun. So come on in, take it over, and rock out.
Onward to gold!
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