Mr. Dionne shows off his home office’s “far talking thinger” and “computerizer,” two things conservatives are too stupid to understand.

‘Puter highly recommends the Democrats follow E.J. Dionne’s incandescently brilliant plan to retake the House and hold the presidency and the Senate in 2012.  Mr. Dionne informs us that the Democrats would win, and win big, if only they would full-throatedly and wholeheartedly embrace and defend ginormous, all-encompassing federal government.

Oh, please — PUHLEEZE — Democrats!  Please hear and follow Mr. Dionne’s visionary election strategy. ‘Puter’s one-hundred percent (that’s 100% for our liberal readers) certain that America’s voters are clamoring for a larger, more intrusive government.  After all, Wisconsin voters — loyal progressives all — just voted to recall Gov. Scott Walker for gutting public sector unions’ collective bargaining laws, right?

‘Puter’s favorite part of Mr. Dionne’s columnizing is the following completely and unexaggeratedly accurate statement:

Both Clay and Lincoln battled those who used states’ rights slogans to crimp federal authority and who tried to use the Constitution to handcuff anyone who would use the federal government creatively. Both read the Constitution’s commerce clause as Franklin Roosevelt and progressives who followed him did, as permitting federal action to serve the common good. A belief in government’s constructive capacities is not some recent ultra-liberal invention.

Wowzers, Uncle Gadget.  That’s one tall stack of horseshit we’re going to have to wade through.

Henry Clay did not support unfettered, metastasizing federal government with no limits on power, as Mr. Dionne would have you believe.  Henry Clay supported, surely, a supreme federal government which provided things the states themselves could not. Clay wanted “programs for modernizing the economy, tariffs to protect industry, a national bank, and internal improvements to build canals, ports and railroads.”

‘Puter doubts you’d find too many conservatives or Republicans today in opposition to Mr. Clay’s vision of federal government. Conservatives believe a strong, limited federal government has been and continues to be essential to our national success, emphasis on the limited. Conservatives believe the federal government should provide things states alone or in groups cannot, things like interstate highways, nationally important infrastructure (e.g., communications, power), a comprehensive tariff system and nationwide uniform banking regulations. 

What conservatives don’t want, and what Mr. Dionne insinuates Mr. Clay would support, is an unfettered, FDR-Wilsonian-Obamanic government, one that ignores the Constitution, taking whatever actions its vaunted intellects believe best for the little people.  ‘Puter suspects if GorT took him on another time-traveling field trip to visit Mr. Clay that Mr. Clay would be a huge fan of FDR’s Works Progress Administration, or Wilson’s League of Nations, or Kennedy’s Peace Corps or Obama’s ObamaCare. Mr. Clay might think each program (except ObamaCare, which he would certainly hate) was a good program standing alone, but ‘Puter doubts Mr. Clay would believe that any of the preceding programs was a proper exercise of the federal government’s Constitutional authority.

And President Lincoln? Really, Mr. Dionne? Abraham Lincoln exercised federal power to preserve the union, not to create a cradle to grave welfare system as you would have us believe. Lincoln declared marital law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus (leaving prisoners to rot on only the executive’s say-so), exercising his view of federal power during time of war.  So per Mr. Dionne, we can expect Democrats to support suspension of constitutional rights to impose their will on the country for such currently critical-to-America’s-survival issues as childhood obesity, texting and driving and tooth decay?

Lincoln also prosecuted a scorched-earth Civil War, burning large swaths of Georgia, conscripted Irish immigrants while letting the well-heeled buy out of service and ran an underaged, hairless male prostitution ring on the side.  (Well, maybe not the last one, but ‘Puter’s not putting it past Mr. Dionne to believe the government could run a Sandusky-esque “Rent-A-Minor” ring if doing so advanced in any tangential manner a pet liberal cause.). Is Mr. Dionne arguing that to further pet causes, government may compel citizens to bend to its will? Sadly, probably so.

But back to ‘Puter’s main point. If Mr. Dionne thinks American voters are hankering for a more intrusive, costlier government that provides crap service at high cost, then let’s test his premise.

Let Democrats state their belief that the government is the best, cheapest and most efficient creator creator of jobs and provider of services.

Let Democrats state their belief that taxes should be as high as necessary to fund the government and to coerce compliance with government’s preferred nostrums (e.g., health care mandate, fossil fuel taxes, etc.).

Let Democrats state their belief that Americans “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success” of Big Government.  Or “of liberty.” Whatever. John F. Kennedy is spinning in his grave. (Teddy’s just ordering in “room service,” if you catch ‘Puter’s drift.

It scares the heck out of ‘Puter — and it should scare the heck out of you, too — that Mr. Dionne and his fellow travelers really-and-for-true believe the federal government has no limits on its authority. 

Mr. Dionne’s campaign advice is a one way ticket to permanent minority status for Democrats.  As such, ‘Puter fervently hopes Democrats follow it this election season.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.