{"id":8270,"date":"2011-01-12T17:10:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T22:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8270"},"modified":"2011-01-12T18:34:54","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T23:34:54","slug":"setting-the-beltway-establishment-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8270\/setting-the-beltway-establishment-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting the Beltway Establishment on Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For all of the good that came out of the 2010 midterm elections, the biggest disappointment had to be the fact that Peter Schiff &#8212; CEO of Europe Pacific Capital and a devout student of Austrian economics &#8212; lost in the Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut.<\/p>\n<p>For a taste of Schiff&#8217;s particular brand of straight talk (which would make John McCain soil himself) one need look no further than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2011\/jan\/11\/stuart-rothenberg-and-the-arrogance-of-honesty\/?page=1\" target=\"_blank\">a piece he authored in today&#8217;s Washington Times<\/a>, wherein he excoriates the entire Beltway establishment and uses political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg as a metaphor for everything that&#8217;s wrong with the political class. The piece begs to read in its entirety, but here&#8217;s one particularly fine excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This is how the game works in big-time politics: A potential candidate hires a polling firm to create a strategically written and scientifically executed poll to discover the buzzwords and simple campaign themes that &#8220;resonate&#8221; among voters. Consultants then boil down the poll results to a few &#8220;winning&#8221; message points and strategies. At that point, the modern candidate simply hammers away again and again at those sound bites. Winners are those who stay &#8220;on message&#8221; while knocking their opponents &#8220;off message.&#8221; It is of little consequence to the professionals that this process produces the kind of vacuous, unprincipled leaders who have brought our country to the doorstep of economic ruin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If the American people are really tired of business as usual, they could do a lot worse than to summon Peter Schiff to Capitol Hill. Here&#8217;s to hoping he gives the Senate another look in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For all of the good that came out of the 2010 midterm elections, the biggest disappointment had to be the fact that Peter Schiff &#8212; CEO of Europe Pacific Capital and a devout student of Austrian economics &#8212; lost in the Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut. For a taste of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2267,2034,2268,1290,721,674,2266,178],"class_list":["post-8270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2010-election","tag-2012-election","tag-austrian-economics","tag-connecticut","tag-john-mccain","tag-peter-schiff","tag-stuart-rothenberg","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8273,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions\/8273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}