Colin Powell, Fried Chicken and Your Mortgage

Colin Powell’s anti-Rush invective, to the  giddy delight of totally objective and unbiased Fareed Zakaria, is much discussed at this point. Rush and others have expounded on the naked stupidity of characterizing the Republican party as lurching to the right.

Less celebrated is the profound misunderstanding inherent in Powell’s ideas which betray a thinly veiled liberal mind.  Powell asserts that in order to appeal to liberals, the Republican party must stop listening to Rush, and it goes without saying, all others of his ilk.

What Powell clearly does not understand as a liberal, inexplicably pretending to be a conservative,  is that in the market economy of ideas, supply meets demand; this is in contrast to the centrally planned economy of ideas which liberals fantasize where ideas are handed down to workers from the central committee.

Rush, Medved, Hewitt and Hannity have millions more patrons than Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews because they meet demand not create it. Sarah Palin did not push the party to the right in the waning days of the campaign. Conservatives reacted to seeing an actual conservative on the stage. You can put all the conservative talkers in the gulag and there will be new ones tomorrow.  Legislate them off the AM dial and they will move to the satellite.

Governor Paterson’s suggested beverage tax in New York, proves the point about the liberal desire to over-reach. The proposed tax revives the nagging discussion about how Americans have become obese victims of fast food advertising and a complete lack of regulation controlling our ability to eat unrestricted quantities of pizza and donuts. Only the government can save us from our own gluttony?

Consider the efficacy of intrusive and regulations in the mortgage market. In order to ensure that no hapless borrowers are victimized while getting a home loan, the process includes about 3,000 impenetrable documents your lawyer couldn’t read in a  week. Thanks to this shield of regulation, only half of your neighbors now claim they were the victims of mortgage fraud and bad mortgages are sinking our economy.

Principles made the Republican party great; limited government, lower taxes and a strong national defense. Many Americans still understand their power. If they are now a minority so be it. Powell describes these principles as our “baser instincts.”  If only the party of Lincoln could could elevate their thinking to something truly noble and extra-constitutional  like dictating the American diet, we would really be on the road to recovery.