![\"\"](\"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/JudeWanniski1.jpg\" "\\"JudeWanniski\\"")
<\/a>Jude Wanniski<\/p><\/div>\n
As one of the earliest and most passionate promoters of what would be called “supply-side economics”, Jude would speak to anyone who would listen.\u00a0 Indeed, in the lead up to the Iraq war, where he was beating the drums<\/a> about former weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s reports that we would not find any weapons of mass destruction, his unorthodox views cost him friendships.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jude was ignored, and the Bush presidency became tarred with the events of the Iraq War.\u00a0 This\u00a0 served to greatly knock Bush’s focus off of what should have been the nail in the coffin for big government. \u00a0 It set the stage for a wordsmith like Obama to sweep into power, promising utopia on earth, created by government. \u00a0 It seemed like the limited-government movement would be back by a generation or more.\u00a0\u00a0 Or so we thought…<\/p>\n The first chapter of Wanniski’s 1978 masterwork, “The Way The World Works”<\/a>, describes Wanniski’s “Political Model” and opens with this summary:<\/p>\n “The political model holds that the electorate is wiser than any of its component parts.<\/em><\/p>\n Barack Obama, as he continues to provoke and escalate what could virtually be called a cold Civil War, ignores Wanniski’s sage observations to his steady demise.\u00a0 Rather than stepping back and acknowledging that Scott Brown’s recent win in Massachusetts’ special election for the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat is but the latest attempt of the voters to say “No!” to his overreaching agenda, he instead doubles down and promises an even stronger fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n When Wanniski talks of emigration, it is easy to think of places like Mexico, from which thousands of citizens try to flee each month.\u00a0\u00a0 But it should be just as easy to think of California, or New York, or Michigan, all laboratories of big government and all reaping the failures of the policies they have sown.\u00a0\u00a0 To now have the voters of Massachusetts emigrate en masse from their tradition of sending a Democrat to the Senate, a seat held by over fifty years<\/em> by a Kennedy, is nothing short of cataclysmic from a Democratic pollster’s vantage point. \u00a0 The volume of this message to Obama should cause more hearing damage than Spinal Tap’s amps cranked up to eleven.<\/p>\n As for Wanniski’s talk of revolution, one only needs to look to the followers of Ron Paul<\/a> and the morphing of Come November, we’ll learn whether or not Congress has swung far enough to override a Presidential veto on a Wanniski-style supply-side tax cut. \u00a0 Simply allowing the Bush supply-side tax cuts to become permanent, rather than expire at year’s end, would substitute nicely. \u00a0\u00a0 In the meantime, Obama would do well to head Wanniski’s even larger message:\u00a0\u00a0 that no matter how smart of an administrative team he tries to assemble and maintain, it is no match for the collective wisdom of the electorate.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If he realized the latter, he would drop his populist class-warfare and instead pursue an agenda of individual empowerment, rooted in personal liberty. \u00a0 Doing so might be his only hope for winning a second term, possibly against Scott Brown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On August 30, 2005, the world lost a great mind, that of Jude Wanniski. As one of the earliest and most passionate promoters of what would be called “supply-side economics”, Jude would speak to anyone who would listen.\u00a0 Indeed, in the lead up to the Iraq war, where he was beating the drums about former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/TheWayTheWorldWorks1-197x300.jpg\" "\\"TheWayTheWorldWorks\\"")
<\/a>Civilization progresses in a political dimension through the ability of politicians to read the desires of the electorate.\u00a0 Neither the press corps nor other “opinion leaders” influence the electorate, except in the sense of broadcasting the political menu.\u00a0 Their influence instead bears on the politicians, who look to opinion leaders for help in ascertaining the wishes of the electorate.\u00a0 The decline of a nation state or political unit is a sign of repeated failure of the political class to read the wishes of the electorate.\u00a0 Emigration is a sure sign of relative political failure.\u00a0 At the extreme, the electorate resorts to revolution, thereby adjusting the political framework and raising to power a new political class better able to read the desires of the electorate.\u00a0 Modern nation states have built into their political frameworks various safety values that can bring about urgent corrections in the avoidance of violent revolution or war.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/ron_paul_revolution.jpg\" "\\"ron_paul_revolution\\"")
<\/a>that into the Tea Party movement.\u00a0\u00a0 Now referred to as “astro-turf” at the peril of the accuser’s reputation, after shocking swings of the voting pendulum in Virginia, New Jersey, Westchester County New York and now Massachusetts, it should be clear that this is one Party that is going to give a wicked hangover to resolute defenders of Big Government.<\/p>\n