This is what I want the party to stand for. If you’ll recall my posts outlining my proposed “Principles of the New Republican Party,” I discussed cultural traditionalism and respect for religious freedom. Here is what I wrote:
- America is a nation built upon not only its government and individual citizens, but also by unifying values which we hold dear. In a modern Republican Party, these values will be affirmed and promoted. No matter who the president is, no matter who is running Congress, and no matter what problems we may be facing, we are proud to be Americans, and that patriotism is one of the highest virtues that the Republican Party can accentuate. Our children should be taught about the wondrous nation that is ours and be encouraged to cherish, protect, and support it through active, engaged citizenship and a commitment to individual betterment.
- The party must affirm its commitment to pro-life principles. The partial-birth abortion ban is a good start, but the battle is nowhere near over. All can agree that abortion is a terrible tragedy and should never be looked at casually, or as merely a form of birth control. Decreasing abortions can be most effectively done right now through (1) combating poverty through sound economic policies and (2) providing effective public education to teenagers about the risks of pregnancy and information about how to obtain contraceptives (with an option for parents to pull a child out of the program). EDIT: At Tommy Boy’s suggestion, I will add (3) opposing all federal funding of abortion.
- The ultimate political goal of the pro-life faction of the party must be the overturn of Roe v. Wade — due to its being bad law — and the subsequent de-federalization of abortion law, so that battles can be fought at a state level, as the Constitution dictates. Both those that are pro-life and those that are pro-choice should be able to agree upon this.
- Multiculturalism and cultural relativism should be emphatically rejected. America is a nation of sound values and morals, and it should not be considered “hateful” or “discriminatory” to assert that we are culturally superior to, say, Syria, China, or Paraguay. Political equality, reason, the democratic method, and traditional Enlightenment values are good things, and the next generation should learn that unequivocally.
- The traditional family, due to the consensus of the American people, must be given top priority without denigrating other family models, including single-parent homes and those fronted by same-sex couples. It should not legally be considered discrimination for adoption agencies to give preference to heterosexual couples. Most importantly, in the end, promoting family values must be about creating a climate that is suitable for children to grow up happily and safely in, so that they may chart their own individual courses with a sound emotional and moral foundation.
- Marriage, being fully ingrained as a legal issue (that is to say: taking the government out of marriage is a pipe dream), is an issue that should, as the Constitution dictates, be taken on a state-by-state basis. The attitudes of Americans toward marriage will manifest themselves in statewide referendums and initiatives.
- America is a nation that both holds respect for religious faith and cherishes pluralism and legal secularism. Both of these values can be affirmed without giving particular bias to one or the other by the government.
- In keeping with strict constructionist judicial values, it should be stated unequivocally that Christmas displays on public property that include religious imagery, performances by public schools’ choruses featuring religious lyrics, Christmas parties by public schools, and anything of the sort are not unconstitutional. Recognizing the religious and cultural makeup of our country is not the same as endorsing Christianity.
- Moments of silence for optional prayer or reflection, as well, should be decided on a district-by-district basis and are not unconstitutional, nor is the phrase ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. Unless there is a specific endorsement of a religious doctrine by a government official or government policy — which should be resisted — it is not a constitutional matter.
- All efforts to block homeschooling should be resisted. The option of educating one’s own child should be the parents’ prerogative. The alternative — the government forcing its own brand of education on the child, with or without the parent’s consent — is a bleak picture.
- At the same time, religion — whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or smaller religious sects — should not be immune from legitimate criticism and inquiry, and religious moderates and nonbelievers should feel welcome in the Republican Party. The overriding theme must be individual choice without interference from others. Respect to both the majority — Christians — and the minority — nonbelievers, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must be given. No set of religious beliefs should be mandated upon another person.
- Churches, mosques, and synagogues should generally be free from taxation: a very tight set of guidelines should be used before determining that a church is acting in a political manner. Preaching against abortion, homosexuality, etc., is not an inherently political matter and should be kept out of the realm of government and instead be discussed in the cultural realm.
That is what I mean by compromise. That is what I want the party to stand for.
So please, never again accuse me of calling for a radical overhaul of the party’s platform or the purging of social conservatives. There is a difference between what I personally believe and what I want the party to stand for. I have already made it abundantly clear that, as a pragmatist, I want the party to stand for certain things. They are not what some of my opponents have accused me of.
Alex proclaims his conservatism, triumphal horns blaring the sweet melody to the men and women below, who’d taken the term for their own. He’ll teach them a new song; one with more pep, and filled with the ringing notes of freedom. Or he’ll plow them down, with a scythe of liberty. It’s good thing we have Alex to separate the wheat from the chaff. Cream of chaff is too gritty for my taste.
No matter that he gets his history almost totally wrong. It’s the thought that counts. And it sure is thoughtful to imagine that conservatism began with Goldwater. Liberty and tragedy, converging in one man who knew the right but couldn’t meet it; who saw the evil and couldn’t stop it. It makes a good popcorn flick too.
Never mind that American conservatism came from British conservatism, which was explicitly monarchial and aristocratic at first, and later rooted in temperance and tradition. Or that liberty in the American conservative framework never meant merely liberty, but rather ordered liberty.
While we’re at it, we might as well forget that the intellectual father of modern American conservatism, William F. Buckley, made his name on a book called God and Man at Yale. These are facts and facts are dreadful.
Ditching tradition sure is freeing; it frees you to reinvent a movement, and reinvent history, according to the lights glowing in your great big brain. Plus, you can use your August tone, which gives your arguments that extra zing. FYI- for next time- the chaff is the husk, not the grain inside. Just sayin’.
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Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com
What do the Jackelope and Alex Knepper’s mythical abortion-loving conservatives have in common? The mass existence of both is a matter based on pure anecdotal evidence. Writes Alex:
Many people who live in urban areas who would otherwise identify as Republicans refuse to because they don’t want to be affiliated with the Religious Right. They hear Mitt Romney say that “freedom requires religion” and Mike Huckabee assert that “God’s Law” as he sees it must be “written into the Constitution.”
Wow! Look at the scientific figure. “Many people.” How many people is many people? A couple dozen? Three hundred and twenty-five? What percentage of urbanites are brave soldiers for the causes of social liberalism. What brave souls choose to pay more taxes and send their kids to inferior schools, and are willing to become recipients of lousy government health care that will put their lives in the hands of the state just because they love partial birth abortion.
Is their a Pro-Choice medal of militancy that we can give them? They loves them abortion so much they’re willing to give up every other issue they view as important.
Now, it may be silly to suggest that such people exist in large number, but that’s exactly what Knepper is suggesting. And the secularists who boasts that rather than basing their political views on religious dogma, they rely on evidence, provide no evidence of the massive amount of people eager to join a Republican Party that was a little less pro-life, a little less religious.
Have these Independents/Democrats who would become Republicans marched on the RNC? If there were a march organized how many people would give a big enough hoot to go? Ten? Twenty? Heck, how many people could you get to march down to your local Republican Party headquarters to demand a change in the platform?
Again, the number can’t be measured. The theory comes from neo-cons who have a socially liberal core upon which they’ve hung a few conservative ideas that may make them hetrodox within the Democratic Party. They arrogantly assume that everyone (or significant millions) think like them, but they can’t muster any numbers to back it up.
When we look at polls, they tell us a very different story:
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll* shows that self-identified pro-life Americans are nearly three times as likely as pro-choice Americans to describe themselves as single-issue voters on abortion. Thirty percent of pro-lifers say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion. This contrasts with only 11% of pro-choicers who say they will only back candidates of a similar mind on abortion.
According to CNN’s Exit Polls, White Born Again Protestants voted for McCain: 73-26%. Everybody else voted for Obama by a margin of 62-36%.
How about Evangelicals split their votes 50-50. Tell me, do you think the, “We’re socially liberal,” or “We’re just federalists” thing is going to bridge 26 point gap across the rest of the country.
Of course, maybe he would prefer we just drop out, given that he has decided that Religious conservatives are Demon hell-spawn and who wants Demon Hell-Spawn in the Republican Party? (Quote: “Reagan made a pact with the devil to bring the Religious Right into the party.”) That the Atheist ends up calling a part of the Republican coalition hell spawn is the humorous note of the day.
Of course, Knepper will insist as he always does that he doesn’t want Religious Conservatives to leave, just for them to compromise everything they hold dear according to his dictates. Of course, if he thinks calling people the spawn of hell is a good political tactic to bring people together, I’d kindly suggest he needs to re-read, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Newt Gingrich is issuing a warning:
(CNN) — Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans don’t figure out a way to shape up.
“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Gingrich said Tuesday. The speech, to a group of students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, was recorded by Springfield TV station KY3.
But Gingrich, bemoaning President Barack Obama’s “monstrosity of a budget,” acknowledged that Republicans are partially to blame for the escalation in federal spending.
“Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year,” he said. “If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months.”
Anger at Congressional Democrats and the handing out of big corporate money hasn’t led to the election of Republicans or even a surge in their popularity. Unfortunately, when it comes to our leaders in Congress and most Statehouses, we have pint-sized leaders for super-sized times.
While I would argue against a third party, I think it’s very well we might see one that could even topple the GOP from existence. This happened to the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada a few years back.
The danger for the GOP is that few of its leaders seem to grasp the times or understand the feelings of constituents. If the GOP doesn’t begin to behave in a serious way that matches the times in which we’ll live. Not only will it be replced, it will deserve to be replaced.
I am not joking. Seriously. I don’t know how I missed this when it was discussed. George Noory, yes, that George Noory… is considering a run for the White House. This might be the greatest moment in American history. Who needs MittHucklin, when you can have J.C. Webster III and his boiling pits of sewage as VP?
I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye. – Barry Goldwater, “Mr. Conservative”
We’re the new liberals of the Republican party. Can you imagine that? – Goldwater to Bob Dole, in 1996
In 1964, Barry Goldwater launched the modern conservative movement. It was a revival of the classical liberal tradition; a new proclamation that liberty was the movement’s goal and the defense of individual freedom was an end in itself. There were several pillars of Goldwater’s conservatism, and they can be accurately described as thus: a robust national defense, opposition to creeping socialism, an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and individual liberty. He famously declared that he was not going to Washington to fix government entitlement programs, but to end them. He asserted that extremism in the defense of liberty was no vice. Thanks to Goldwater, we were given a generation of leaders who followed in the same vein, including, most famously, Ronald Reagan.
Goldwater also so happened to favor abortion rights, medical marijuana, and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He said that all good Christians should give Jerry Falwell a kick in the behind and that the Religious Right was filled with “a bunch of kooks.”
Today, of course, it is highly unlikely that Goldwater would stand a plausible chance at winning the Republican nomination, let alone have the audacity to think that he should even run. The no-compromise Religious Right’s litmus tests cower Republican politicians into submission: even John McCain, who in 2000 rightly denounced Jerry Falwell as an agent of intolerance, groveled at the man’s feet as he prepared to make a second presidential run — and this was after he blamed abortionists, gays, and “pagans” for 9/11. Later on, out of fear of a backlash from the Religious Right, he chose Sarah Palin instead of Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his running mate. Earlier in the cycle, Rudy Giuliani himself accepted the endorsement of Pat Robertson, who concurred with Falwell’s abhorrent statement.
It was never thus. Mainstream conservatism had never been about “writing God’s law into the Constitution,” as Mike Huckabee phrased it, until the 1980′s, when Reagan made a pact with the devil to bring the Religious Right into the party. Although Reagan followed in the Goldwater vein and really didn’t do anything for the Religious Right (he simply didn’t care about their issues), its influence continued to grow, frightening moderates and independents more and more as it forced the party to adapt the hardline on abortion, gay issues, euthanasia, and stem-cell research. The true conservatives in the room — the classical liberals — would say that those issues were state matters and would be done with the matter then and there. Presidential candidates would not be required to take a stand on euthanasia or stem-cell research beyond that, and would certainly not be asked to assert that week-old embryos should have the same legal recognition as a grown man.
Many people who live in urban areas who would otherwise identify as Republicans refuse to because they don’t want to be affiliated with the Religious Right. They hear Mitt Romney say that “freedom requires religion” and Mike Huckabee assert that “God’s Law” as he sees it must be “written into the Constitution.” They hear Sarah Palin denigrate their cities as not being part of the “pro-America part of the country” and denigrate higher education. They see the Religious Right call for federalism when it comes to abortion law and then toss aside federalist principles in the Terri Schiavo case. And then everyone still in the GOP sits around baffled that we’ve gained a reputation as the Stupid Party.
The Religious Right must stop bullying the rest of the party. It must accept compromise, it must accept 80/20 deals, and it must give up losing issues (euthanasia, stem-cell research, and gay marriage). It must stop prioritizing issues that nobody else cares about outside of their niche group. When the priority of the country is the economy, nobody wants to hear you whine about abortion. Moreover, the Constitution must be once again understood by the party as a secular document — so secular, in fact, that it was decried at the time of its inception by religious leaders, thinking it an irreligious document. Not one reference to God or Jesus is in the Constitution. The only time religion is mentioned in the Constitution is to note that the government needs to stay out of it!
So it is time for a Goldwater/Reagan revival. Its prospects are dim — who would lead it? — but it’s what we must do if we are to become the party of the future. We must again stand for individual liberty, federalism, a strong defense, and capitalist values — not a narrow brand of theologically conservative Christianity. The latter is false conservatism and all of its adherents are false conservatives.
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Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com
I decided to promote this interesting quiz to the front page because it seems intelligently designed (heh) and because it may help illustrate both the conservative/libertarian divide and the fact that those of us on the libertine side of that divide still have more in common with conservative judges than with liberal ones. According to the quiz, I am most in agreement with Bush appointees Alito and Roberts, agreeing with Justice Alito 86 percent of the time and with Justice Roberts 80 percent of the time. I agree with Justices Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia between 60 and 70 percent of the time. Justice Stevens and I are in accord only 52 percent of the time, and I agree with the remaining Justices less than half of the time.
Let’s see how you score. If you’ve taken the test and published your results already, feel free to copy them from the previous thread and re-publish them here. My guess is that libertarians will favor Roberts and Alito over Thomas and Scalia, conservatives will favor Scalia and Thomas over Alito and Roberts, and both will favor the four right-of-center Justices, along with Justice Kennedy, over Stevens, Souter, Breyer, and Ginsberg. All of which demonstrates that while we can and will disagree about things philosophical and political, at the end of the day, none of us are going to be particularly happy with President Obama’s eventual Supreme Court nominations.
Though MSNBC’s degenerate former sportscaster is unlikely to point this out, Markos Moulitsas continues to prove he is ‘The Worst Person in the World.’ Here is a Tweet from the great and powerful Kos on the Pittsburgh shootings from this weekend:
When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently, prefer to talk “revolution” and kill cops.
Democratic politicians who continue to accept money from this man’s website or attend his convention should be held to account for these disgusting comments. Hey Barack, is this the ‘new politics’ you promised us?
Imagine if a Conservative had spoken like this about the recent Oakland shootings, where 3 cops were killed by an African-American gunman. Imagine if we said ‘liberals kill cops’, referencing how more than 90% of blacks vote Democrat. Can you imagine how the MSM would cover that? Can you imagine what Olbermann and Matthews and co. would say about Rush Limbaugh if he had said something like this? The hypocrisy is both sickening and overwhelming to say the least.
File this post under the “who will the Democrats tax next” category.
Michigan Democrat John Conyers is proposing rules that could hurt radio stations.
In particular he’s looking at creating a fee for small radio stations starting at a minimum of $5,000 per year. Public radio would only pay $1,000 per year in extra fees.
For large stations the fees could rise to large amounts.
Today radio stations are struggling to stay afloat. Commercial radio stations receive reduced ad revenue. Christian radio stations receive reduced donations. It seems to me that now isn’t the time to start tacking on fees to small radio stations with tiny little operating budgets.
I wonder how many taxes and fees will be put on the books without a discussion during this period of Democratic dominance.
We’ve had several threads going this weekend, so I thought we could use a new open thread. Have at!
For some more perspective on Mark Sanford’s record as governor, Chad Walldorf, Sanford’s former deputy chief of staff and budget director (okay, okay, a biased source) and current chairman of the South Carolina Club for Growth, offers his take:
While some focus on conflicts with the Legislature, the truth is that there have been countless successes under Sanford. The list includes improvements in services (often with less funding) at agencies like Juvenile Justice, Motor Vehicles and Transportation, increased transparency and accountability, lowered taxes, record land conservation and hundreds of millions of additional resources for functions such as K-12 education and health care.
…Massive borrowing under the previous administration saddled the state with the nation’s third-highest debt payments (as a percentage of taxes). Most in Columbia ignored Sanford’s repeated calls to pay outstanding promises and instead chose to grow government at a double-digit clip.
…We face unfunded retirement obligations of over $20 billion (nearly $30,000 debt per taxpayer). Typical politicians ignore these problems in hopes they come to light after they leave office. As evidenced by his latest budget proposal to reduce this debt by $2 billion, Gov. Sanford doesn’t want to pass the buck (or the bill) to our children.
Our state’s situation grew worse last summer when Treasurer Converse Chellis led the effort (over Sanford’s protests) to guarantee billions more in retiree benefits he said would be funded through increased stock market returns. Chellis’ rosy predictions were way off. Our retirement system lost more than a third of its value (nearly $10 billion) in the last year.
Again, even if you disagree with Sanford’s positions and/or policies, you have to give him credit for showing the courage to steadfastly adhere to the principles of fiscal conservatism, even at the expense of public approval and short-term political victories.
In an event that occurred earlier in the week but didn’t receive much attention, John Thune won a rather sizable victory for conservatives and millions of American families:
The Senate today overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 13) that would prohibit a future cap-and-trade initiative aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from causing higher electricity rates and gas prices for U.S. households and businesses.
“The increased utility and fuel costs that would result from cap-and-trade legislation, as proposed by President Obama, would equate to a national sales tax on energy that would affect every family in America,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the amendment’s sponsor, following the 89 to 8 vote on his proposal.
Accomplishments like this, along with Thune’s responsibilities as vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, which include organizing support against the Employee Free Choice Act and other key pieces of legislation, should continue to raise his profile and, consequently, 2012 VP prospects (I, for one, believe public frustration with Washington will limit any chances he has at winning the 2012 nomination).
Lastly, Politico notes that Charlie Crist may encounter significant opposition from within the GOP if he opts to run for a Senate seat in 2010, quite possibly against former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio:
Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is considering running for the Senate whether or not Gov. Charlie Crist ultimately decides to run, according to a source familiar with his thinking.
Rubio, who previously said he would run for governor if Crist jumped in the Senate race, has shifted his thinking since the governor made some decisions that have been met with anger from the party’s conservative base.
…Indeed, a just-released Mason-Dixon poll suggests that, despite Crist’s popularity, he is facing some trouble from his GOP base. The poll showed only 23 percent of Republicans would “definitely” vote for Crist if he ran for the Senate (compare that to the 66 percent of Republicans who would “definitely” support AG Bill McCollum for governor.)
Since announcing his exploratory committee for Senate last month, Rubio has been openly telegraphing his disagreements with the governor. In his exploratory campaign’s video, he criticized “some Republicans here in Florida” – read: Crist – for supporting the expansion of government.
And in a comment on his Facebook page, Rubio accused Crist of “looking for the easy way out” in supporting legislation that would expand gambling in Florida.
Perhaps some people more familiar with Crist and Florida politics can offer their best guesses as to which position Good Time Charlie will seek?
Minutes ago, North Korea fired a missile into the air above Japan:
The multistage rocket hurtled toward the Pacific, reaching Japanese airspace within seven minutes, but no debris appeared to hit its territory, officials in Tokyo said.
…North Korea claims its aim is to send an experimental “Kwangmyongsong-2″ communications satellite into orbit in a peaceful bid to develop its space program.
The U.S., South Korea, Japan and others suspect the launch is a guise for testing the regime’s long-range missile technology — one step toward eventually mounting a nuclear weapon on a missile capable of reaching Alaska and beyond.
…Resisting weeks of pressure to call off the launch, North Korea advised international aviation and maritime authorities last month of the rocket’s flight path.
The first stage of the rocket dropped about 175 miles (280 kilometers) off the western coast of Akita into the waters between Japan and the Korean peninsula. The second stage was aimed for the Pacific at a spot about 790 miles (1,270 kilometers) off Japan’s northeastern coast, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said in Tokyo.
Japan had threatened to shoot down any debris from the rocket if the launch went wrong, and positioned batteries of interceptor missiles on its coast and radar-equipped ships off its northern seas to monitor the launch.
No attempt at interception was made since no debris fell onto its territory, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said in Tokyo, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.
Shortly before the launch, John Bolton commented that the U.S. should consider a military strike if the North Korean missile struck Japan. While none of the missile’s contents did hit Japan, I figured the more hawkish readers of the site would still enjoy reading Bolton’s take:
Bolton, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under former president George W. Bush, said he did not support a pre-emptive strike as it was unclear how serious North Korea’s test would be.
“But if there is a real possibility of this landing in Japan or in any populated area, then we would have to look at it very carefully,” Bolton told AFP.
“The Japanese don’t have the luxury of distance to see whether it’s a grapefruit or a basketball or whatever,” he said, referring to speculation on the size of the North Korean payload.
Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been an outspoken opponent of what he sees as a policy of rewards to North Korea led by State Department negotiators both under Bush and new President Barack Obama.
“I don’t expect much out of this administration. It doesn’t seem to have any plans beyond going to the UN Security Council,” Bolton said.
“If the only thing we have is a Security Council resolution that condemns the launch, it is not going to get very far,” he said.
Bolton said the best way to influence North Korea was to press China — Pyongyang’s top ally — to “rein it in.”
“If China is true to its word — and I believe it is true to its word — it does not want North Korea to collapse and to see a reunification of the Korean peninsula,” Bolton said.
“And so the Chinese, faced with the risk of resolving this through pressure, do not apply any pressure,” he said.
A movie can define a worldview. A movie can show a way of looking at the world that is more effective than dry tomes arguing philosophy.
The Dark Knight has been used to illustrate the worldview of nihilism (through Heath Ledger’s Joker).
I hear Atlas Shrugged might be turned into a movie. That would certainly be an opportunity for the Objectivist worldview to be expressed in a movie (if it hasn’t been already).
I suppose the movie that showcases my worldview would be Chariots of Fire.
If you had to guess what movie do you believe shows your worldview?
What movies do you believe show the conservative worldview?
As a follow-up to my series of posts on Steve Deace and the ARTL, let me congratulate the MSM and Romney supporters for FINALLY acknowledging the Iowa firewall, religious bigotry and emerging civil war within the evangelical right.
Samples:
Stuart Varney of the Fox Business Network (admittedly a biased source) has penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which he reveals that the administration has refused to accept TARP repayments from some banks:
I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn’t much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street’s black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?
My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell ‘em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.
It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration’s thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.
If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash — which was often forced on them in the first place — the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That’s what’s happening right now.
Here’s a true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano (with the names and some details obscured to prevent retaliation). Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.
Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.
Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.
Which brings me to the Pay for Performance Act, just passed by the House. This is an outstanding example of class warfare. I’m an Englishman. We invented class warfare, and I know it when I see it. This legislation allows the administration to dictate pay for anyone working in any company that takes a dime of TARP money. This is a whip with which to thrash the unpopular bankers, a tool to advance the Obama administration’s goal of controlling the financial system.
After 35 years in America, I never thought I would see this. I still can’t quite believe we will sit by as this crisis is used to hand control of our economy over to government. But here we are, on the brink. Clearly, I have been naive.
Of course, the MSM hasn’t paid much attention to his. I guess they don’t care about holding Obama accountable for ignoring an opportunity to act as a responsible steward of tax dollars. Another day, another 340 million dollars…
At the G-20, President Obama embarrassed most of us here at home when he bowed down to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. The funny thing is, the New York Times had a very different view of this breach of protocols when it was someone other than The One.
It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.
Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about? …
Guests invited to a white-tie state dinner at the White House (a Clinton Administration first) were instructed to address the Emperor as “Your Majesty,” not “Your Highness” or, worse, “King.” And in what one Administration aide called “some emperor thing,” an Army general was cautioned that he should not address the Emperor Akihito at all as he escorted him to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.
Got that? The Times scolded Clinton for the mere thought of bowing. Obama practically touches Abdullah’s toes, and the Times remains silent.
As the current sub-prime lending, health care and employment dilemma dominates coverage in our media and with our legislators, a deeper and more dangerous phenomenon is penetrating the moral and economic core of American society.
According to Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005, released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August, 2007, there are approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today).
Think about this statistic for a moment. How can it be healthy for a society, when greater than one out of four children have only one parent (most are single mothers) raising them? During the first years of the Clinton administration, for every 100 children bore, 58 entered a broken family. This represented nearly a 500% increase from 1950, where for every 100 children born, 12 children entered a broken family. Even more disturbing are the economic and social hardships millions of single mothers and their children face (90% of single fathers live above the poverty line).
Both Republican and Democratic legislation has failed to halt the growing numbers of single parent households in the United States. Although both have merit in their arguments, Republicans, with their, “welfare reform and economic growth” solution and Democrats with their preventative, ‘access to birth control and abortion’ policies, continue to recycle old rhetoric, as we step towards creating a fatherless society.
I have searched endlessly to find political leaders who are addressing this issue by proposing new ideas or encouraging new discussions, but in reality our political leaders continue to ignore this crisis. Nothing about pregnancy prevention, new training initiatives, or creating more affordable, free-market child care. Our current leadership is absent, and that includes President Obama, who during his 2007-2008 campaign, could not go more than a day without mentioning his ’19 year old single mother’, has barely even repeated the term, ‘single parent’, since being elected POTUS. Former GOP congresswoman Melissa Hart was engaged on this issue, even sponsoring legislation to expand education and training benefits to single mothers, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested that the state of Michigan should pay pregnant teenagers to take prenatal vitamins and stay healthy so the government avoids expensive costs when babies end up in neonatal intensive care units. Unfortunately, these two Republican leaders are not in a leadership or legislative position to offer solutions to this national crisis.
The question remains, how do we reverse the trend of single family households and how do we lift up those single mothers who live in poverty and cannot provide the same opportunities to their children as most dual-parent households can?
Any ideas?
American television paints a mixed picture of the need for fathers.
However in real life, fathers are an essential part in raising strong, healthy children.
Of course you can find a few strong healthy success stories who had no father figures early in life. You can also find a few trees growing in a desert.
Decades of statistics show that much of America’s poverty, crime, and health issues relate to a marriage gap.
A child raised by a single mother is nine times more likely to be raised in poverty than a child from an intact marriage. Nearly 80 percent of children in long-term poverty live in some type of broken family or with a never-married parent.
With those sorts of statistics it’s clear childhood poverty is really a problem for those without strong two-parent homes. In our nation that usually means that they lack a father.
Boys from single-parent homes are twice as likely to serve time in jail as boys from two-parent homes.
This even extends a bit further. White and Hispanic teens living in households with a co-habiting couple (mother and boyfriend) actually have more behavioral problems than teens in single-parent households.
Crime is actually easily predictable based on the percentage of single-parent homes in a neighborhood.
With all the negative consequences of family breakdown you’d think government would be very careful to not be making things worse.
However this isn’t the case. The welfare state often discourages stable families.
Public schools can’t teach the moral values of family. Perhaps disadvantaged children could be broken out of their single-family cultures by being put into parochial schools that can teach those values.
School choice could be a large element in breaking the chain of bad decisions that have brought on this breakdown of the family. The government can’t instill morals but a good parochial school just might.
Government needs to make sure its policies in regard to low-income housing and other social programs don’t encourage mothers to remain unmarried. It is in our interests to put no hurdles or challenges in front of a woman who wants a healthy strong family.
Beyond the government we need leaders who call out the immature elements of urban culture. A man who cares about his kids will try to make sure he’s in the home raising those kids. He’ll also give the children’s mother some stability and security by marrying her. It’s the immature loser who exploits woman after woman leaving his children without committing to give them the support they need.
While government needs to stop making the problem worse (with welfare policies, public schools and housing programs), our culture needs to rediscover shame/scorn and apply it to men and women who don’t take responsibility for their children’s lives.
Conservatives need not be preachy about their commitment to raising children responsibly. Conservatives should be bold and express our commitment to getting government out of the business of encouraging broken families.
I guess Barack took Rev. Wright seriously about US-KKK-A and all the world’s problems being caused by rich white people?
During a White House meeting last week between President Obama and CEOs of the nation’s top banks:
Obama, for his part, told the bankers: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
“For his part” is a “foghorn leghorn” attempt by the Drive-by reporter to conceal the fact that the most powerful man on Earth is a Chicago thug.
You will notice that Obama’s vile lynching threat was directed at the bankers. Earlier in the story, the unnamed dead-tree writer of the Charlotte Observer’s “Insider: The Charlotte Business Scoop”, recounted that the Queen City’s own Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, obviously joking, told the President:
“Mr. President, I am not going to suck up to Larry and Tim like the rest of these guys,” referring to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council.
The anonymous reporter referred to all this as “plain talk” in the column headline, in an obvious attempt to equate the two statements for obviously, if President Obama had replied to Lewis’ statement immediately with the “pitchforks” comment, the reporter would have said so.
No, Lewis’ statement was not plain talk. It was obviously a joke meant to lighten the atmosphere given that the Administration was probably behind recent false rumors that Lewis was about to resign from BofA.
But Obama’s statement was oh so very plain. Plain for a mobster.
No one can say they weren’t warned of Obama’s chosen pals: indicted felon Tony “Obama house money from friend of Saddam Hussein” Rezko, terrorist Bill “should have bombed America more” Ayers and Jeremiah “G-D America” Wright.
We even parodied Obama’s future presidency after a planet discovered by the USS Enterprise on Star Trek which had discovered a book on the Chicago gangs and organized its whole society around it.
Fact imitates fiction. It has become impossible to parody Democrats anymore.
But this satire ain’t funny. It’s chilling.
Da’ Boss will call out the mob or pitchfork-wielding mobs if you don’t accept his “Piece of the Action.”
Can anyone direct me to a fort to fire upon, or will the Union’s Commander in Chief fire the first shot this time?
Or has it already been fired?
Sound outrageous? I’ll tell you who is outrageous. Barack Hussein Obama, whether its threatening to lynch bank CEOs or denying medical care to babies outside the womb that survive abortions.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report
The topic itself is not one I lose any sleep over. Society is moving towards same sex marriage and, regardless of whether it can be stopped or not, my marriage is going to remain. Besides, I think we have a few things just slightly more important to worry about before this really becomes a central issue to focus on (for instance, combatting terrorists, shrinking gov’t, simplifying the tax code, etc.). What really gets me about the debate is the dishonesty in the arguments, either through willful efforts of manipulation or just plain old lack of understanding of the subject at hand. I’m going to try and clear some of these up for people.
To lift the tone a bit I thought I’d post the text of the Declaration of Independence. This text captured the spirit of American ideals about government while the Constitution enforced the structure of American government.
Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Well, that was quite the reaction! We have IllinoisGuy talking about how the “queers (as they were known back then)” were known to prey on schoolboys. Insinuation? Gays are pedophiles. We have Liz talking about how gays are “selfish” and want to tear down the church. Damarcus Killingworth says it’s all about “gay butt sex.”
Kristofer wrote an article sometime back about the “origins of political homophobia.” He was roundly panned. But was he right?
I recall reading Neal Boortz’ book, Somebody’s Gotta Say It, in which he explained how, whenever he’d say a kind word about gays, people would call in, ranting to him about God and redefining a sacred institution that gays are trying to kill — and he found it very interesting that the passions that the issue provoked were so intense. And he found it very interesting that it was mostly men who would get angry about it. Boortz became curious, so he sought an answer.
I recalled what he found out, and did a little search for it. Here’s what I found:
Professor Henry Adams at the University of Georgia conducted a major study in the 1990s, where he took several groups of men who identified as heterosexual and expressed hostility to gays, and wired them up so the blood flow to their penises could be monitored. He then showed them gay porn — and some 80 percent became aroused. He concluded that since “most homophobes demonstrate significant sexual arousal to homosexual erotic stimuli”, anti-gay hatred is probably “a form of latent homosexuality.”
…
Of course, not all of these hate-mongers are secretly gay. But we know from decades of sexual research that almost everyone — especially as a teenager — has a period when they have omnivorous sexual urges, with attraction to the ‘wrong’ gender cropping up for a while. (Like most gay boys, I had a burst of heterosexual experiences when I was 15 and 16.) The question is: how do you deal with them? If you see this as an interesting, natural part of human experience, they will soon fade from your mind. If you see them as shameful or immoral, they will fester — and you will subconsciously project them outwards, onto the demonic, disgusting fags, who should be punished for tempting you.
More on that study:
Both groups—non-homophobic and homophobic men—showed significant engorgement to the straight and lesbian porn and their subjective ratings of arousal matched their penile plethsymograph measure for these two types of video. However, as predicted, only the homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference in response to the gay male porn: specifically, 26 percent of these homophobic men showed “moderate tumescence” (6-12 mm) to this video and 54 percent showed “definite tumescence” (more than 12 mm). (In contrast, for the non-homophobic men, these percentages were 10 and 24, respectively.) Furthermore, the homophobic men significantly underestimated their degree of sexual arousal to the gay male porn.
So maybe when the anti-gay hard right says that gays may have “certain tendencies toward the same sex,” it’s their duty to God to fight them, they’re talking from experience.
I’ll probably get some angry responses for this. But I’d admonish you to remember Senator Moynihan’s proverb: you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. And the facts are that most men who are hostile toward gays have latent homosexual tendencies.
One past GOP candidate and one possible future candidate both spoke out this week about the success or failure of our current Commander in Chief:
Bobby Jindal:
Speaking to a conference of Republican leaders, Mr. Jindal, a man who many believe has an eye on the White House in 2012, said it is appropriate to hope the president fails if it means the president’s policies will jeopardize the nation’s security and stability.
“My answer to the question is very simple: ‘Do you want the president to fail?’ It depends on what he is trying to do,” Mr. Jindal said.
The popular governor criticized the media and Democrats for trying to stifle debate on some of the president’s most controversial policies by requiring Republicans to support Mr. Obama’s policies or get stung by the establishment.
“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Mr. Jindal said to a crowd of about 1,200. “This is political correctness run amok.”
Mr. Jindal’s criticism came at a time when Republicans are working to regain the credibility the lost over the past two election cycles. The Democrats’ far-reaching taxing and spending policies have created an early Republican resurgence.
“It’s time to declare our time of introspection and navel-gazing officially over,” Mr. Jindal said. “It’s time to get on with the business of charting America’s future. So, as of now, be it hereby resolved that we will focus on America’s future, and on standing up for fiscal sanity, before it is too late.”
Fred Thompson:
Republicans, however, charged Democrats with deliberately trying to make the debate about Mr. Obama, rather than his increasingly unpopular economic policies.
“I want his policies that I believe take us in the wrong direction to fail,” former Republican U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson told CNN yesterday. “If he takes us down the road of tripling our national debt in 10 years and making us vulnerable to higher interest rates and higher inflation, and things of that nature, I want all those policies not to succeed.”
Mr. Thompson stressed Republicans are willing to work with the president, but said he must show some willingness to meet Republicans halfway.
Speaking about cutting the rising costs of entitlement spending, Mr. Thompson said, “If he wants to do that, I will join with him. I’ll do everything I can to make him succeed with regard to that because that’s the whole ball game in terms of our fiscal future in this country.”
Needless to say, I agree with almost all of DaveG’s post. It’s good to see him back on the side of the good guys instead of off pitching a bizarre party of neo-liberal Joe Liebermans.
I’d say one thing though. Look at Pawlenty’s CPAC speech. Did he focus on Sam’s Club Republicanism again, or on the need to attract new voters? Not really. Instead, he pitched a deeply earnest, but somewhat raw, “we need to remember our rights come from the creator” message. Why? Well, because he’s not stupid. Obama will have a colossal political machine even if he becomes unpopular, so the GOP is unlikely to make up much ground in party registration. And of course, if Obama’s unpopular, the voters who are already Republicans are likely to become even more conservative. On the other hand, if Obama remains popular the GOP electorate will also get more conservative, because some of the remaining moderates will have left the party. In other words, the immediate Republican future is on the right, and Tim Pawlenty very much wants to be part of that future.
His Sam’s Club pitch hasn’t yet resonated with conservatives. Until it does, he can’t afford to waste his wholesome evangelical background: it’s another sort of key to conservative hearts. Look for him to test-drive a more expansive cultural message in the coming months. It will be far subtler than the Huckabee sale, and infused with less of the pure “I’m one of you” telepathy that Palin was so famous for. American Exceptionalism might well make an appearance but, it will still be a fundamentally cultural appeal, and I’d caution Republican moderates, like DaveG, against reading too much into that. Your instincts on Pawlenty are essentially right, but political candidates just can’t play “a pox on all your houses”, John McCain-style, and expect to remain viable prospects. When they do, no one wins. Well, except the other party.
I hate lazy thinking, i.e. non-thinking.
Consequently, I rarely use the word “just” when trying to characterize people. Moreover, I loathe the use of vague, substance less words, often employed after the word just, in an attempt to define someone or an event. This is usually the tactic of one that is losing an argument or one that knows they can’t win the argument on substance through logic.
In the courtroom we call it blowing smoke (pictured: Defendant Al Gore testifying in slander case brought against him by my client, The Sun) when someone can’t argue the facts or the law. It is mostly employed by the left in politics, but certainly not exclusively.
Now, to the words “entertain” and “entertainer”, in the context of liberals’ and moderate conservatives’ (or lazy thinkers of all stripes) attempts to diminish the importance of Rush Limbaugh. By the word “entertainer” I assume most people mean one who makes a living in the arts. But when they use the words “just an entertainer”, what I hear is an elitist attempt meant, not primarily to diminish the the entertainer, but, rather, an attempt to elevate themselves and those they consider their intellectual kin in “important” positions in politics.
Yet, some of us with a little distance from the Washington, D.C. Beltway elites understand that the word “just” is more accurately and appropriately employed thusly: Brian Williams is just a teleprompter reader or Senator Voinovich is just a yes/no voter on mostly easy choices in Congress.
Every person is entertained by different things. I am most animated by profound truths delivered in a way that makes it understandable and vivid. Consider a recent conversation (subscription required) between The Doctor of Democracy and a George Mason journalism student assigned to report on Rush Limbaugh to his class:
On Real Journalism
RUSH: We rejoin Andrew in Fairfax, Virginia, who is a journalism student at George Mason University. There’s a textbook that his class has been assigned with a highly critical chapter of me after acknowledging career accomplishments and success, and Andrew has a presentation on this chapter before his class. How much time do you have, by the way, to get this done, Andrew?
CALLER: Well, I’ve put together my presentation, but I don’t present for another two weeks.
RUSH: Okay. Very good. I want to repeat what I said. The first thing I want you to tell them is that they’re in a journalism class. And you are quite unique in one way, and that is, most of the existing journalists in America today — the vast, vast majority, well over 90% — who report on me, never call me, never ask for my reaction to what they are going to report about me. They take it from what I told you: Media Matters or other left-wing “watchdog groups.” Their purpose is not to get it right. Their purpose is to discredit — and it’s not just me. It’s any prominent conservative, because I feel they don’t think they can win a substantive argument. So the way they attack is to try to discredit people who threaten them in the arena of ideas. I clearly represent a threat. You’ve done something as a student that most practicing journalists today do not do. You have called me. You have asked for my reaction to this. You ought to get an A for that alone.
On the individual as the world’s smallest minority
RUSH: But as far as the factual aspects of my presentation on this program, or wherever I speak — as far as whether I make it up or lie about it or whatever — the greatest source for information on my show, the greatest source for proof of what I actually say every day is my website: www.RushLimbaugh.com. On my website, there is a complete and total transcript available for every word I utter. There are links to the news items or stories or reports that I have used to make the statements that I make. Why would I lie all the time when I provide the proof right there for everybody to see? Critics never mention this. The journalists never go to my website. They rely on others who take out of context what I say. The other thing I want you to tell these students is that I am a soul mate of theirs. You and your students — because of your age and your future and where you are in life — you’re very focused on yourselves as individuals, and I am the greatest asset individuals in this country have.
I believe that the smallest minority in the world is the individual, and I believe if you do not respect individual rights, you do not really respect minority rights. The individual is unique. No two people are alike. I resist the tug of popular sentiment. Please quote me: “I resist the tug of popular sentiment to basically conform with movements and ideas that are not based on thought, but rather are based on raw emotion.” I have nothing but a fervent desire for everyone in your class to succeed, to be the absolute best they can be based on how willing they are to work hard, use their passion and the ambition and God-given talent that they have been given. I have no desire for anyone to be held back. I do not see people as men, women, black, white, red, green, orange. I see Americans. I see human beings. I see human beings who, unfortunately, are co-opted into a conformist way of thinking that it is in itself erroneous — such as all the reporting about me and all the opinions of me that have been formed by people who do not listen.
Illustrating absurdity by being absurd: “caller abortions”
RUSH: I believe that all human beings have a yearning spirit to be free, that we are endowed with it. I believe the founding documents. I believe that our existence is owing to a Creator who created us with inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Our Founding Documents, Declaration of Independence mentions these rights. They don’t come from people, they come from God. Life. Somebody has to stand up for life; somebody has to defend it. Now, anybody can go on the radio and say, “I’m pro-life, and those pro-abortionists are wrong!” Big whoop. What I’ve always strived to do, Andrew, is illustrate my opinion. Sometimes… I have a phrase: “illustrating absurdity by being absurd.” So the caller abortion was — and I will admit, it irritated a lot of people. It caused… And the reason why, Andrew, is because it made people confront the reality of their belief. Do you know what the caller abortion was?
CALLER: It was a, I guess a sound bite “with a vacuum sucking sound followed by a bloodcurdling scream.” That’s what it says in the textbook.
RUSH: Yes, it was. See? Okay. That’s in the textbook?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Yes. That’s all that’s in the textbook about it?
CALLER: Um, yes.
RUSH: Yeah. See, that’s…
CALLER: Well, it says whenever you wanted to end the call, that you used the caller abortion.
RUSH: That’s a classic example of how what I do was distorted. That was actually a brilliant illustration of my belief about this. This took about 30 minutes to do, to set up, which also made it great radio. It gave us a lot of time spent listening on the ratings. But basically I wanted to illustrate this, and I looked at my telephone, and I asked the question, “When does a call become a call? Does the call become a call when you dial? Does the call become a call when you connect? Does the call become a call when I answer, the moment of conception? You call me. Your line connects with my receptacle. Bam! I answer the phone. Is that when the call begins?”
So I called the phone company, Andrew, and I asked them, “When does a call begin?”
They said, “What are you talking about?”
I said, “Well, does a call begin? When do you start charging for a call? When that call has life? When is there…? When you start billing for a call, does it happen at the moment the person has dialed it? Does it happen while it’s ringing? Does it happen with a busy signal, which means there’s call control on it? Does it happen when somebody answers?”
And they said, “Well, a call begins when it’s answered. A call takes two people.”
I said, “Thank you.”
So, that was to illustrate: When does life begin? See, I believe it can only begin at conception. When else can it begin? So I wanted to illustrate using the phone, making a phone call. Then I got a bunch of people pretending to be scientists and so forth on the phone to discuss this in great detail. But I said, “Until I decide to answer, that call’s nothing but a blinking light. That call has no life. That call has no meaning. That call has nothing to it until I answer it,” and then what happens? When I answer that call and I don’t want it? What if I’ve made a mistake answering that call? What if it’s a bad call? What if it’s somebody who’s not going to enhance the radio program? What do I do? I didn’t want the call. I took the call. I made a mistake! I went out there and I conceptualized the phone call, and now I’m stuck with a call I don’t want.
Well, I do what we do in the pro-choice movement: I simply abort it and pretend that the call never happened! So I turn on the suction device and I suck the call right out of the phone. That, to me, was brilliant, Andrew. I hope you’re recording this, and I hope you read this to your class. Because everything that’s done here, Andrew — whether it be done with humor or seriousness or with a satire or a parody, everything that’s done here — is designed to make a point. Nothing is done here frivolously. I don’t do anything just to make people mad, because that’s going to happen anyway when you tell anybody what you think.
On allegations of bigotry
By definition, people are going to not… Why do you think Tiger Woods doesn’t tell you what his politics are? Because he wants to sell all of his endorsed equipment to everybody, not just Republicans or Democrats.
But that’s not my business. My business is to tell people what I honestly believe. I love America. The racism and sexism and so forth? Yeah, I came up with the term “feminazi,” to describe the 12 women to whom the most important thing in the world is every abortion possible taking place — and the reason people get mad at that’s ’cause it’s dead-on accurate. As for racism, this is a constant, average, everyday charge the left makes against conservatives trying to fulfill the stereotype that we’re racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes. But the truth about that is you can tell your class this: I look at the majority of the black population in this country and I cry, ’cause I see that they have been conditioned to believe that the Democrat Party and large government programs are going to raise them from the life of bondage they believe that they’re in.
And after 50 years of voting Democrat, after 50 years of complaining about the circumstances they’re in, after receiving all these benefits the Democrats have passed out (AFDC) they’re still complaining. Their lives have been stolen from them. The federal government has become the father; the father has become absent. Single mothers are raising kids in neighborhoods and schools that you would not send yours to. The Democrat Party refuses to close them, and insists that those people still go to those schools while still voting Democrat. I think it’s a shame. I think the federal government and the Democrat Party has destroyed the black family. I love Americans. I love human beings! I want the best for them. I want what’s happened to me to be experienced by every damn person out there, and the people standing in the way are my enemy — and that would have to be liberals in the Democrat Party.
On the comparative offensiveness of Barack Obama’s pro-life stands
RUSH: All right, Andrew, one more point that I want to make for you to include in your presentation to the students on the caller abortions. Your textbook says that critics say I reached a low point with the caller abortion. Let me ask you a simple question. If a fetus is not a human life, why would a caller abortion offend anybody? If a fetus, a human fetus is simply an unviable tissue mass, there could be nothing conceivably upsetting about it. The truth is, it is a baby, and the pro-abort, political pro-abort groups, the NOW gang and other feminist groups, they know it’s a baby, and thus they hate me for exposing their mind-set. But if a fetus isn’t a human being, why would a caller abortion upset anybody?
And finally, Andrew, this. I understand caller abortions are offensive. But then why is President Obama to be praised for his anti-life positions? Do you realize President Obama three times as an Illinois state senator voted for legislation that would allow doctors to kill a baby successfully born during an abortion? Now, what’s really controversial, Andrew? A bit, a vacuum cleaner with callers being sucked off a phone, or an Illinois state senator who’s now president voting three times to allow doctors to kill a baby after it’s born because the mother wanted an abortion? Ask your students to consider that.
Everyone feel entertained? Anyone think that a conservative Presidential candidate that could entertain like that might have a chance to beat any Democrat?
Obviously.
Rush is Right! I wish we had many more “just entertainers.”
[Free audio may? be accessed here. I can't tell since I am a paying member of the website.]
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report
The American CEO is the most innovative, aggressive, compassionate and successful CEO on the planet. American business and and business leaders have transformed the global economy (several times over), and are responsible for creating the economic superpower the United States is today. The American CEO initiated the industrial, technological and service revolutions and are responsible for the wealth, health and the opportunities that each one of us have today.
It appears as if the United States government has decided that our society should transition away from a privately led economy, to a publicly led one. Politico reported the following exchange between the world’s top corporate leaders and President Obama;
“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said (to Obama). Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”
But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”
“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
—-
Race42012 is please to launch;
‘The American CEOs Guide For Moving To Switzerland’
1) Moving personal possessions: Worried about importing your pets, firearms, cars, wine cellar, works of art? This site will assist you with the process. Like Americans, Swiss citizens also enjoy the right to bear arms, invest, collect fine art and wine and drive luxury automobiles.
2) Taxation: Switzerland offer favorable taxation rates to corporations and CEOs. American business has already been on the move, with hundreds leaving the United States for Switzerland, since the Obama-corporate-purge began.
Guido Jud, head of Zug’s tax office, said about 1,200 companies had set up shop there in 2008 — in line with the long-term average, though it is difficult to assess how many of those are foreign companies until they file tax returns.
Swiss cantons are free to set their own tax rates. For example in Zug, corporate tax is about 16 percent but can fall as low as 9.5 percent for companies that do most of their business outside Switzerland. That compares with an average global corporate tax rate of 25.9 percent, according to consultancy KPMG.
The main difference between Switzerland and the rest of Europe are the indirect taxes. For example, the VAT (value added tax) is only 7,6% and 2,6% on groceries, newspapers, medicine and books. The government wants to lower the VAT to 6,1% very soon.
3) Comparisons on the cost of living: One of the reasons many foreign nationals like living in Switzerland are the low levels of taxation compared to most countries. As an example, the gas taxes for one litre are over 25% cheaper than in the UK. Swiss residents pay only SFr 40 ($37) per year to use the highway system. Real estate prices are reasonable and lower than for example in London or Paris.
4) Lifestyle: Switzerland provides one of the most fulfilling lifestyles in the western world. Swiss residency offers exposure to fine arts, premium shopping, unlimited outdoor activities site seeing, elite educational institutions, a high life expectancy and one of europe’s lowest crime rates.
5) Athletics: The American CEO is a major sports enthusiast, so expect to feel at home in the winter sports mecca of Europe. In general, sports are a very important part of life, especially when it can be done outdoors in the fantastic natural surroundings. World sports are also at home in Switzerland with the international Olympic committee in Lausanne (which includes the Olympic museum) and the headquarters of FIFA and other International Federations.
To request further information on Race42012′s ‘The American CEOs Guide For Moving To Switzerland”, please email: apkkib@aol.com
My word… If only Alex held liberals accountable for their transgressions against our democratic system of government with the same vigor in which he takes conservatives to task for their “deviance” from his personal orthodoxy!
No matter how you feel about the issue of Gay Marriage, American Democracy–it’s foundation consisting of the principles of Separation of Powers and Constitutionalism–was greatly harmed by the decision of the Iowa Supreme Court today. Not irreparably perhaps, as the decision will undoubtedly lead to another constitutional amendment initiative. But instead, the decision represents just the latest wound in a death by a thousand cuts.
Alex accuses conservatives of perpetuating the culture war, but has nary a word of admonishment for the Iowa Supreme Court’s act of judicial activism, which is just another broadside in a war that they began and have aggressively waged for four decades.
I actually believe that Alex is correct in his assertion that Gay Marriage is inevitable as people under thirty, by a 2-to-1 margin, support the right of Gays and Lesbians to marry. I can image that in two decades time many of the marriage amendments that we have seen passed recently will be replaced with amendments which state something along the lines of, “the legislature shall make no law which infringes upon the right of two people to marry regardless of gender.”
That day, which Alex and the like long for, will only be delayed by actions such as the those taken today by the Iowa Supreme Court. Societal change that does not emerge organically always comes at great cost and its “victory” is never viewed as legitimate by the defeated. Every time that societal change is dictated by fiat, instead of filtering organically up from “The People”, it serves to harden the hearts of those who opposed the change and, therefore, feel subjugated by its imposition on them.
The day when the voters of this nation democratically elect those who will legalize same-sex marriage via the legislative process will probably come within our lifetimes. And If and when it does, it will signify that the hearts and minds of the people who comprise American Society have changed on this issue. No matter how much those who oppose Gay Marriage will undoubtedly be upset by this change, there will be no doubt that was the will of “The People.”
Until then, it is important that people who call themselves “Conservative” and believe in the foundational principles of American Democracy to oppose the degradation of those values with the same vigor as they work for the victory of position which may conflict with the Republican Base.
Victory, both real and moral, will (and always must) stem from coherence. We are Conservatives after all…
We have recently written of signs that the bloom is coming off the Obama rose.
His popularity has fallen in the polls and disapproval risen, though not in proportion to the fall in 401k plans held even by liberal cable commentators, and certainly not in proportion to the evaporation of approximately 40% of the world’s wealth since his election, and thus, less wealth to spread with each passing day.
Moreover, while we expressed some optimism lately that Blue Dawg and other Democrats were significantly paring down President Obama’s nearly $4 trillion budget, it appears that all but a tiny remnant of Dawgs and Donkeys in the House were neutered yesterday by Obama’s Speaker and Castrator of the House (pictured).
We hold our breathe in hopes the Senate’s dawgs don’t turn yellow (pictured, too cowardly to vote their conscience?) at least with respect to raising energy prices and socializing medicine.
Sadly, though we doubt anyone should waste a breath hoping even the World’s greatest deliberative saucer-cooler will significantly pare back the Dollar destroying $4T juggernaut.
But let us use up some lukewarm air to combat Obama’s hot “spread the wealth” air first famously directed towards the cool air of Joe the Plumber in hopes that analogies to the real story of Thanksgiving and the skulls full of mush in our nation’s colleges and universities, may snap elitist soccer moms and dads out of their Hope for Obama stupors.
First, a story that may or may not be true (doesn’t matter) concerning an economic professor confronted by a class full of Marxists:
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.
Lastly, a story straight out of the annals of American history that proves Obama and Pelosi deserve an “F” as well.
RUSH: From my second bestseller, “See, I Told You So, “”Chapter 6, “Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving.” The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.
On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail [for America]. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!
This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude [to God] grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.
First Compact: From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs led to starvation
Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.
They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the ’60s and ’70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.
Second Compact: Homesteading free market capitalism led to plenty
Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.
That’s right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!
But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.
“The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,” Bradford wrote. “For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.”
Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point?
Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?
“This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Bradford doesn’t sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph’s suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the “seven years of plenty” and the “Earth brought forth in heaps.” (Gen. 41:47)
In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.
Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you’re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.
So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the “Great Puritan Migration.”
Now, you probably haven’t read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don’t think this lesson is still being taught to children — and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it’s not thanks to William Bradford. It’s not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you’ll get the point. The word “God” is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times… If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you’ll get thrown in jail, but that’s what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I’m telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven’t read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I’m happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.
I’ll bet the dawgs that turned blue from the cold Massachusetts winters would instruct Democrats today not to turn yellow in the face of the Obamanation they face lest they want to inherit a green world of sickness and death for the less fortunate and a world of wood stove smog and donkey dung filled streets for the living.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report
Let me begin by pointing out that I am in no way excited by anyone in the Republican field for the race for 2012 and that I am not among the 26 percent of Americans who still feel at home in the Republican Party. I am a proud member of the quarter of Americans who voted for Bush in 2004 but now feel as if they have no party. I’m sure this group consists of both fi-cons and so-cons, both ideologues and pragmatists. There are lots of reasons that folks who used to proudly identify as Republicans are now describing their political affiliation as: “Well, I generally vote Republican, BUT…”
That said, it’s become clear that those of us opposed to Obama’s subtle plans for creeping collectivism and debt as far as the eye can see are in need of a mechanism to oppose those plans. Because we live in a two-party system, the Republican Party is the best defense against the president’s attempts to transform America. Note that I am not opposed to everything the president is doing. I think gays should be able to serve openly in the military. I think marijuana should be legal. I don’t think the president is pro-freedom ENOUGH on these issues. But it’s clear that with a few largely cultural exceptions, the president is very anti-freedom and pro-collectivism.
As I’ve written in the past, though, Americans seem to be separating the president from his policies at this point and rallying around Obama even while less than half of the nation actually approves of what he is doing. This is dangerous, because what we have in Obama is a personality cult that seems to give him a popularity floor in the upper 50s. If that holds until early 2012, there’s probably no way that Republicans can beat Obama. At that point, Republicans need to nominate a presidential candidate who can make a point and pave the groundwork for future party growth and victories.
If, however, Americans do see through the facade by 2012 and the president’s approval rating is under 50 percent, Republicans need to nominate a candidate who can win. Republicans under this scenario need to produce their own David Cameron, who will probably beat Gordon Brown on the other side of the pond for similar reasons.
At this point, I believe that the candidate most capable of giving an embattled Obama a run for his money is Tim Pawlenty. The Minnesota governor is acceptable to every faction of the GOP coalition as well as to both base and center. His social conservatism is quiet and “normal,” i.e., he seems to have the values of a typical middle-aged Midwestern dad, and probably wouldn’t be found slipping attacks on Internet porn into every speech or caught on tape making wacky claims at church. This will be enough to keep the GOP’s socially conservative base happy without scaring off everyone else. But because the main issue three years from now will probably still be economics and the future of the American Dream, T-Paw would be able to present Americans with an alternative to Obama’s version of Elysium on Earth that won’t scare Americans into thinking that Republicans are planning to end their unemployment benefits early or take away their public schools. Further, Pawlenty is extremely likable and is from an extremely electorally important part of the country.
If 2012 comes along and it appears that no Republican can beat Obama, however, there’s no point in wasting GOP talent on an unbeatable opponent. Pawlenty can hang out in the hinterlands until 2016. What’s needed at that point is someone who can do what Goldwater did in 1964 and lay the groundwork for the philosophical future of the Republican Party.
There are lots of candidates who could be nominated to “make a point,” but most would probably be ineffective at it or would make the wrong point. Sarah Palin is a very attractive, charismatic woman. But until she puts forth a cogent, articulate political philosophy, I don’t believe that she would make the necessary point to Americans intent on re-electing the president. Bobby Jindal does great on talk shows and intellectual formats, but he lacks the political skill to connect with the American people on a personal level. Lots of folks would like to see Newt Gingrich tell it like it is, but Newt is not only damaged goods from the 1990s, he’s also currently flirting with donning a full culture warrior jacket that will be as transparent as it is cynical. Romney, like Pawlenty, is a hardball politician and technocrat, the kind of guy you nominate to win and govern, not to make a larger philosophical point. Huckabee, in my view, would make the wrong point.
As someone who believes that the basis for the next Republican Party should be a freedom-based society, the best candidate out of the current roster to “make a point” is probably Mark Sanford. The South Carolina governor has a record of being sort of a saner version of Ron Paul, very much in support of freedom without pissing off social conservatives and minus all the nuttiness about foreign policy. And Sanford has been arguing very strongly against Obama’s economic policies. Sanford would be a real risk in a winnable general election because he would fall too easily into the stereotype of the cold, flinty Republican who wants to take away all of Americans’ entitlements. But in an election against an inevitable, collectivist President Obama, a Sanford nomination would frame the debate as one between a collectivist party and a liberty party, and that could bring a whole slew of liberty-minded people into the Republican Party to infuse it with fresh blood and to bring it away from the precipice of populism.
