Go, Art, go!

For many a petty king ere Arthur came
Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the land;
And still from time to time the heathen host
Swarmed overseas, and harried what was left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less, till Arthur came.

— The Coming of Arthur, by Tennyson

No one ever “wasted the land” as much as Orange County’s Red County Republicans. Their latest petty attack [Note: as of 8:28 a.m., July 22, that post no longer is up] on local libertarian activists is against Art Pedroza, editor of the Orange Juice blog (which gets the color of this county right).

The anonymous “Orange Juice Watch” blogger — why can’t he reveal his name? — attacks Art for Art’s private business. Then Mr. Anonymous Chicken attacks local businessman Tony Bushala.

Who said Red Countyites were pro-business? They’re anti-business, just like their beloved ex-President Bush, who said last January, 8 days before he left office:

I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles when I was told … the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression. [But] we’ve taken extraordinary measures to deal with frozen credit markets [that] have helped thaw the credit market.

Bush was talking about his massive bailout of Wall Street, with Main Street getting the tab. The bailout, of course, didn’t work, any more than Obama’s copycat bailout has. But Wall Street sure did well, especially Goldman Sachs, the company formerly headed by Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson.

This report noted:

Goldman posted the richest quarterly profit in its 140-year history and, to the envy of its rivals, announced it had earmarked $11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers.

Goldman Sachs and the Republican bigshots got the gold mine, the rest of America got the shaft.

Reagan’s Way

Ronald Reagan won two landslides by putting together a coalition of disparate groups: Cold Warriors, free marketeers, family values types, and others.

The Red Countyites think they can win by alienating the Ron Paul movement and other libertarians and paleoconservatives, such as Art, Tony, Steven Greenhut, and myself.

They think they can win with the Neocon philosophy of imperialism-until-bankruptcy that jammed us into the economic collapse we’re in now.

Ron Paul is the new Reagan

The Red Countyites irrationally hate Ron Paul, who actually was a key element of the winning Reagan coalition.

Look back to the 2007-08 presidential race. Remember anything memorable said by any candicate except Ron Paul?

And guess what? He just got every Republican in the House to co-sponsor his audit-the-Fed bill, H.R. 1207.

As Alan Bartlett, a libertarian within the Republican Party, keeps telling Republicans, they have to bring libertarians into the fold to win. But they won’t.

They say they’re in the mold of Reagan. But I knew Dutch Reagan. I supported him in 1968 when I was 13, and in every primary and general election after that. Red Countyites, you’re no followers of Ronald Reagan.

But if you want to be like him, first, stop attacking local businessmen. Second, Call for what Reagan did after the Marines were blown up in Lebanon: Pull American troops out of the Middle East.