Senator Lou Dobbs is not the answer

As I have lamented before, my political party is seen as the party of negatives. If you ask anyone to describe a Republican you are likely to hear what we are against. They are against abortion. They are against gay marriage. They are against gun control. They are against the poor. They are against government-run health care.

Seldom will you hear they are pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-Second Amendment, pro-individual initiative and in favor of affordable and available health insurance. The meanings are the same. The political implications are far different.

So, it is with great chagrin that I read a NewsMax article a few days ago that was serious in its praise of a potential Sarah Palin-Glenn Beck ticket in 2012. Beck, like Rush and Sean, makes his money being critical. In his defense, he was as critical of Bush as he is of Obama. But, being critical is not leadership. It works if you are a Liberal-Democrat in Britain since you will always be in the opposition. It doesn’t work if you want to lead.

I’ll even put aside the experience factor. There isn’t a lot of experience that Barack Obama can put on his resume and look where he is. Plus, we have elected a comedian as a Senator, an actor (and not a great one at that) as Governor of California (two different actors in fact, one who became President of the United States) and a wrestler as Governor of Minnesota.

I cannot, however, put aside the fact that Beck doesn’t have any real policy background or knowledge from what I hear on his show. I will admit he knows more than Rush. That isn’t saying much.

Now, there is a report that Lou Dobbs might run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey. Funny, I never thought of Dobbs as a Republican after his decade of bashing free trade.

According to NewsMax:

Following his resignation as a CNN anchor, New Jersey resident Lou Dobbs is said to be considering a run for the U.S. Senate from the Garden State.
"The veteran anchor — whose strong views on illegal immigration, healthcare and job creation propelled him to the top of the ratings at the cable network — said yesterday he had been approached about getting into politics, but insisted he was still weighing his options," the New York Post reported on Nov. 14.
Dobb announced his departure from "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Nov. 11, reportedly under pressure to tone down his rhetoric as CNN seeks a more centrist position among the cable news channels.
The Senate seat currently held by Democrat Robert Menendez will be up for grabs in 2012. Menendez was appointed to the seat in 2006, when Jon Corzine left the Senate to begin his term as New Jersey governor. Menendez was elected later that year, beating Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr.
A Dobbs run for the Senate "is something that has been talked about, particularly for 2012 against Senator Menendez," said Brigit Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
And Patrick Murray, a polling chief at Monmouth University in New Jersey, told the Post: "Lou Dobbs would certainly be an early front-runner" for the GOP nomination if he ran.
Dobbs would start the campaign with high name recognition, and could be expected to be an effective fund-raiser due to his national prominence, the Post observed.
Dobbs registered as a Republican in Sussex County in 1991, then switched to independent in 2006

As the article says Dobbs’ “strong views on illegal immigration, healthcare and job creation propelled him to the top of the ratings at the cable network.” Those views were that he was AGAINST immigration, off-shoring and the Democratic health care plan. One thing I seldom heard from Dobbs were real solutions as to what he was for.

In the health care debate, there have been few Republican solutions that actually delivered insurance to the uninsurable. Tort reform and cross-state competition won’t do that. Those who spoke of high-risk pools at least were getting to the core issue.

But the thing that makes Dobbs an anti-Republican as far as I am concern is what the article refers to a job creation. The view of Dobbs from the business community when I was active in D.C. was not that he was for creating jobs as much as constructing barriers. He would build walls to keep illegals out and jobs in.

Like others, he made these misguided attacks on companies that ship jobs overseas rather than trying to find ways to make the American market more competitive by ending unnecessary and costly regulation.

Dobbs also fell into the trap of following those who thought they could create jobs at home by making it more costly to do business overseas through higher taxes on U.S. companies operating abroad when the opposite is true. U.S. jobs are created when U.S. companies can create and thrive overseas. The headquarters jobs created are often high-tech and high-paying. All that is accomplished by making it harder to compete abroad is that our foreign competitors win.

If the Republican Party is to get away from being the party that is against things rather than for things, we need to distance the party from right-wing talk radio and right-wing media. Beck is clearly part of that. His “candidacy” however isn’t real. Dobbs’ may be. While Dobbs was not really part of the right-wing media, he did make his bones by being against things and that is reason enough for me to home New Jersey finds a better candidate for United States Senate.