Why 539,000 people losing their jobs may not be good news.

Obama’s phony cuts.

A whale of government waste. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

Where Obama cuts budget: funds for slain police officers. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Obama strongarms Chrysler’s creditors. (Hat Tip: Wizbang Blog.)

Obama strongarms California.(Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Likely will follow with CEOs.  (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Massachusetts presents welfare cars.  (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Frivolous complaint against Sarah Palin dismissed.

Obama’s new military commissions a lot like Bush’s old commissions.

Pelosi knew and that’s not all.

Obama seeks to make Israel give up nuclear arsenal. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)\

Conyers backs off on ACORN probe. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

Obama backs away from homosexual groups.

1000 people show up to oppose tax increases in Tucson. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

America’s reading gender gap.  (Hat Tip: Education Watch.)

Paying teachers not to teach.

Second Amendment update.

Anti-Catholic gay rights activists appointed to President’s faith council.

Happy Islam Day.

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I responded to a piece by a John Hawkins on Pajamas Media on conservative civility

PJM columnist John Hawkins’ advice to conservatives to be as nasty as liberals is like Sean Connery’s “Chicago way” speech in The Untouchables applied to American politics: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”

But is the “Chicago way” the right way for conservatives? Certainly, conservatives need to re-evaluate their tactics in light of Democratic behavior. That Democrats will engage in obstruction of Republican judicial nominees, while Republicans will let Democratic nominees sail through is absurd. In my home state of Idaho, a local was critical of Republicans talking about challenging first-term Congressman Walt Minnick (D-ID) and urged them to wait until 2010, even though Minnick was on record as a candidate who criticized former Congressman Bill Sali back in January of 2007, the year Minnick raised more than $400,000.

When conservatives do things like this, they’re acting like British troops trying to form into straight lines while their enemies take positions behind rocks and trees to pick them off like flies. They’re denying reality and have failed to acknowledge that the battle lines have shifted. However, I think Hawkins’ thesis for conservative nastiness is wrong for several reasons:

1) Conservatives are not liberals

I’ll counter Hawkins’ martial arts analogy with a sports analogy of my own. A baseball team with several players that regularly hit home runs can get players on base, not worry about base running, and win with a strategy of “pitching, defense, and the three-run homer.” This same strategy won’t work if a team has decent speed and only one or two players that are reliable long-ball hitters. Baseball strategy is always going to be dependent on the team you have to play with. You can’t expect singles hitters to consistently deliver three-run homers, so you have to work it another way.

Culturally, conservatives are unable to play the same game as liberals, because we do not possess the same mentality. I would argue that conservatives have a greater sense of respect for authority, rules of civility, and fundamental order within society. This is so ingrained that in Boise, when social conservatives felt the need to practice civil disobedience over the removal of a Ten Commandments monument, it was arranged in advance with the police that only a small number of people would be arrested and they would go quietly. There was a strong feeling among Ten Commandments supporters that they didn’t want to give the police officers a hard time, because the police were only doing their job and enforcing the actions of a boneheaded city council.

Hawkins responded with a piece of his own that didn’t leave me a whole to respond to in  an actual PJM response. Hawkins doesn’t prove that his tactics will work, only arguing that conservatives should do them because the liberals are due it.

 Hawkins of North Carolina questions the tactics of the Ten Commandments:

It’s fascinating that Mr. Graham picks that example, not only because it was a failure, but also because of the obvious contrast that has so often been drawn between Christian and Muslim protests. Christians are mocked and laughed at with impunity in this country because most Christians don’t have the backbone to stand up for their faith. Maybe the truth hurts, but I suspect there are few Christians reading this who’d disagree. On the other hand, Muslims are treated with the utmost respect here in the U.S. and across the world. Part of that’s because there is a fear that if you insult Muslims, one of them might kill you. However, even if that weren’t the case, Muslims would be treated with much more respect because they take grave offense when someone insults their religion. If Christians felt the same way, 90% of black Americans would be voting for Republicans instead of Democrats, Barack Obama wouldn’t be invited to speak at Notre Dame, and that Ten Commandments monument would be sitting in that Boise park today.

I’d also add that sometimes, regrettably, the only way to preserve “respect for authority, rules of civility, and fundamental order within society” is to give the people who are ruining those things a taste of their own medicine.

So, let me agree in part with Hawkins, that if Christians had cared in large enough numbers about the issue, there would have been a different outcome politically. We had hundreds involved, but there are tens of thousands of Christians who didn’t care and indeed who in order to make themselves look good attacked those who supported the Ten Commandments.

However, what if the 100 people who had volunteered to be arrested all lied down on the ground and made their bodies go limp, would that have stopped police? It would have delayed them, but the monument would have still gone out.  We needed Christians to care to the point that there were political consequences for the Mayor and Council, not for hundreds to obstruct police.

If this were an effective tactic, abortion would have ended during the Operation Rescue situation. While, it can be argued that Operation Rescue’s tactics were moral as a response to abortion with non-violent civil disobedience, they did not end abortion.

Hawkins also disagrees with my statement on trained protestors:

Really? The 18-year-old college students blocking conservatives from speaking at campuses are trained Alinsky radicals? I’m not so sure that’s correct. Moreover, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea to “never go outside the expertise of your people.”

I’d say many of them are, though probably more like the 21-year old ring-leaders. Generally, you’ll hear certain things at protests that people have been taught to do, like the screaming/chanting person who stands up like a priest during vespers.

Chanter: I say union, you say rocks. Union.

Crowd: Rocks

Chanter: Union!

Crowd: Rocks!

Going along with my point of conservatives looking silly in this regard, imagine this:

Chanter: I say Captain Gains Taxes and you say, “suck.”  Capital Gains Taxes.

Crowd: Suck.

Chanter: Captain Gains Taxes.

Crowd: Suck.

I rest my case on the poser point.

Moreover, the Right is slowly but surely narrowing the media gap. For example, WorldNetDaily — which Mr. Graham disparagingly mentions — gets more traffic than the Associated Press and the top seven conservative talk radio hosts alone reach more than 60 million people a week combined.

My point is that the stories on journalists are more likely to play in a conservative echo chamber and not get out to the general public. Conservatives are narrowing the media gap, but with the exception of Fox News, the only people who are being reached are conservatives. Therefore to expect to get great play in the mainstream of society by exposing Maureen Dowd is silly. Ain’t happening.

We can’t handle the truth. (Hat Tip: Brody File.)

Obama plays the madman card. (Hat Tip: Wizbang Blog.)

Arlen Specter plays death of Jack Kemp for political advantage. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Arlen Specter’s misleading website.  (Hat Tip: Right Wing News.)

A Democrat for Coleman. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.) 

Congress ends up funding Washington, DC’s other zoo.  (Hat Tip: Campaign Spot.)

The Government what it’s doing is a waste of time. 

Obama makes up jobs numbers.  (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

No bid contact corruption for Congressman’s nephew at the Pentagon. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.) 

Union election fraud in Chicago.  (Hat Tip: Labor Pains.)

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We’ve had a lively dialogue on the frontpage over this issue, and I know it’s probably wearing thin. But I feel compelled to respond to Alex’s first post of the day.

Before I do that, let me state this. Specter is our opponent. It is the duty of all good Republicans to do what they can to see Arlen Specter not re-elected and to take this Senate seat back for the Republicans. Those who are right now making a political martyr out of Senator Specter are doing a disservice to the Republican Party. The debate over Specter-Toomey ended yesterday. The job of Republicans now is to defeat Arlen Specter.

Alex asks:

1. Why are you celebrating Specter’s defection while championing Norm Coleman, who was ranked just as moderate as Specter in the National Journal’s 2007 rankings?

3. Which party does Arlen Specter belong in? Is he a DINO now? You praise Ben Nelson as being a reasonable Democrat. Is Arlen Specter a reasonable Democrat?

5. Tom Coburn once told me that he would not have welcomed Joe Lieberman into the party if he had wanted to switch. Do you agree?

The first question makes a poor assumption. It assumes that all that matters is the 2007 National Journal ratings. Specter has an entire career of screwing conservatives. Take a look at American Conservative Union Ratings and you’ll see that Norm Coleman has a career ACU rating of 68.83% v. 44.47% for Specter. In addition, while Coleman may be a moderate, he does share common cause with many conservatives on  the pro-life issues as well as other key conservative points. Coleman may have disappointed conservatives from time to time, but he hasn’t turned annoying conservatives into performance art as Senator Specter has.

With regards to Senator Specter, I would consider a Democrat capable of being reasoned with. The same category I’d place Senator Nelson and Senator Lieberman in. That doesn’t mean that I’d want either of these three gentlemen in the Republican Party. I’d like there to be people on the other side who I can genuinely respect as capable reasonable human beings and not just a party of shrill left-wing Zombies.  So I would agree with Dr. Coburn.

2. Are you aware that the ladies from Maine got more cut from the stimulus bill than any of the efforts of the likes of Jim DeMint?

And it’s still far too big. Once one begins talking about these hundreds of billions dollar bills, it really doesn’t matter. One might as well say, “Thanks to the ladies from Maine, they only shot you ten times rather than twelve times.” Great, but I’m still dead.

4. Do you agree with Jim DeMint when he says that he’d rather have a party of 30 senators who all think like him than a majority party with people like Arlen Specter in it? How, then, do you intend to pass conservative legislation?

Actually, DeMint didn’t says Senators who all thought like him, but rather, “”I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.”

I wouldnt’ agree with DeMint that far, because in that situation you lose 70-30. I’d like there to be 30 Senators like Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, 22 like my Senators Jim Risch and Michael Crapo who are not always right but most of the time get it right and their hearts are in the right place, seven like Norm Coleman and George Voinovich who are squishy on some issues but can win their seats, and two like the ladies from Maine who we only keep around because we couldn’t possibly get anyone more conservative.

John Hawkins has a pretty good piece on this I’d reccomend:

The majority of Republican voters are conservative and we provide most of the money, the volunteers, the ideas, the energy, and the enthusiasm. We conservatives are involved with politics because we have principles and ideals we believe in deeply and want to see them implemented.

Cutting to the chase, we conservatives feel deeply betrayed by what has happened over the last 8 years. The GOP managed to get control of all three branches of government and other than a couple of great Supreme Court Justices, the Right has very little to show for it.

We suffered through Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers, the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, the GOP trying to force amnesty and open borders on the country, growing deficits, increasing government, a GOP sponsored takeover of banks, a President who refused to defend himself or conservatism publicly, and a “Republican elite” in DC who often seemed to hold their biggest supporters in contempt.

Let me give you a comparable example:

Imagine you’re the owner of a small business and you have a problem employee (the Republican Party). He shows up late. He takes two hour lunches. He won’t do his work. He makes fun of you to the other employees. It gets so bad that it affects your business and you start to lose money, but unfortunately, with the job market in your area, replacing him would be almost impossible.

Now, after a few months of this, how much patience are you going to have with this guy when you ask him why he isn’t doing what you told him to do? Zero, right?

Well, that’s where conservatives are with the Republican Party. We’re not interested in excuses. Exhortations to “be reasonable” aren’t going to work. After eight years of being sneered at by arrogant incompetents who owe their jobs to us, we’re not really in the mood for compromise.

Which brings us to the moderates in the GOP. Make no mistake about it, the GOP needs moderate voters and moderate politicians. We cannot expect a hard core conservative to win a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 2. We can’t expect a Republican senator from Vermont or California to be as conservative as a Republican senator from Oklahoma or Georgia. Yes, people like this can make conservatives pull their hair out at times, but it’s impossible for us to have a majority or get things done without them.

However, the flip side to this is that moderates are not the majority of Republicans, they’re not ideologically coherent as a group, and they simply don’t bring enough manpower, money, or energy to the table to drive a successful political party. What that means is moderates have to be the Robin to our Batman. Conservatives, who have stronger beliefs, more numbers, and just bring so much more to the Party are not going to happily fall in line over the long haul in a moderate Republican Party.

Indeed, if moderates want to win and have seats, conservatives need to be happy at the results of the people they elected and you need a thriving conservative movement that’s actually accomplishing something worthwhile. If that’s happening, you don’t have huge challenges to moderates.

On moderates, I would probably also have a narrower of moderates in most cases, somebody in the Al D’Amato/Norm Coleman range (60-80%) rather than people like Specter.  And folks like Snowe and Collins can be tolerated only if that’s the best we can get.

In addition, I think there are some things that can generate some worthy pariah status. Speaking of which, Senator Olympia Snowe writes in the New York Times:

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

OF course, Snowe quotes this to argue, “Hey, lay off on Collins and me like Reagan said.” It seems Senator Snowe hasn’t bothered to read the actual quote. It’d have some validity if Pat Toomey’s primary reason for a primary challenge to Specter was abortion, but it wasn’t. Voters began to call Specter “Benedict Arlen” when he voted for a $787 billion stimulus package that he, Snow, and Collins could have killed. This was the final straw for Pennsylvania conservative.

How can you claim to be for “restrained government spending” when you support $787 billion monstrosity that’s primary function is to be a Christmas tree for every liberal interest under the sun. This betrayal came in exchange for parochial Maine and Pennsylvania pork, unconcerned with the national interests. Don’t claim defense under any quotes about “restraining government spending” after voting for Obama’s stimulus.

Member of President Obama’s Economic Advisory board: China had better stimulus.

Feinstein ca$hes in.  (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

The hopelessly corrupt John Murtha.  (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)

Lack of responsibility: woman sues McDonalds for being beaten up by a homeless man.

Palin opens legal defense fund.

Save the DC Voucher program: Yes, we can.

Obama’s MADD Highway pick. (Hat Tip: Stop the ACLU.)

Napalitano: Illegal Immigration isn’t a crime.

Card Check fraud in Ohio. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

 Teacher’s Unions v. Charter Schools. (Hat Tip: Education Watch.)

Second Amendment update from Gun Watch.

Obama ’s ultra-pro abortion Secretary of HHS vetoes a late term abortion bill

Tennessee Planned Parenthood tries to coach a 14 year old to lie to get an abortion.  

Study shows abortion side effects.

A Christian Democratic State Senator holds the line on same sex marriage.  (Hat Tip: Wizbang Blog.)

Community college calls out day of silence as propoganda tactic. (Hat Tip: Right Mind.)

Christians need to wake-up to the dangers of hate crimes bills.

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Podcast Show Notes

NRSC supports Specter.  (Hat Tip: Townhall.)

Covering up Jesus at Georgetown.

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The President who knew nothing while hundreds of thousands marched.

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Janet Napalitano defends outrageous broadside against conservatives that has a chilling impact on free speech. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)’

Chairman of Homeland Security Committee dumbfounded by “right wing extremist” report. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

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This post is a response to a wide variety of statements that have been made about the Tea Party as well as responses to my column.

Conservatives in the Tea Party movement should be happy, they’ve reached Gandhi’s Stage Two of non-Violent Activism:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Currently, conservatives are being mocked. Andrew Sullivan calls the tea parties a Temper Tantrum. The far left, well versed in the language of perversity, is even tagging the conservatives with teh term “tea bag” which it views as a private obscene joke. Note to Conservatives, don’t use “tea bag” in reference to anything.

Then on Idaho’s most popular blog, I found the following statement from a a liberal blogger, who wrote:

“ They are quaking at boogeyman. Were the Dem’s really this bad about Bush, seeing evil in every word and breath? Secondly, I think our forefathers would be a little ashamed. They protested actual oppression – this political stunt is simply a weak form of parody.”

Actually, no. There’s no comparison between Democrats under Bush and Republicans under Obama.

When we start writing screenplays and novels about assassinating the President, and when the assassination of the President becomes fodder for conservative talk show hosts skits, then you can start thinking about making comparisons.

The left attacked the President’s daughters. We had commenters on major blogs calling for the French Revolution, which ended in the bloody death of thousands, and we had Idaho liberal bloggers cheering it on.

We had people hoping not that Bush’s tax cuts failed, but that American soldiers would be defeated abroad to prove their defeatist theories about in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Another question I’ve gotten out there is, “Where were you people during the Bush Administration?”  “There was a high deficit back then.”  I wonder whether people who say that were reading my blog and other conservative blogs that went after the pork barrelers in Congress. There was Porkbusters, there was Senator Tom Coburn and Rep. Jeff Flake who have been consistent on this for years.

Many conservatives did do something about the overspending: Passive aggressive behavior. They stopped giving money to the party, they stopped working for the party, and in many cases stopped voting for the party. This didn’t work out so well.

Even beyond that, Obama represents an acceleration of everything. The Congressional Budget Office claims the deficit over the next ten years will be $9.6 trillion, President Obama swears on a stack of Bibles it’ll only be $7.3 trillion.  Either way, it’s huge, way beyond the Bush years.

Take on top of this that President Obama is proposing major changes that will devastate our health care, increase the costs of energy for every household with cap and trade. It’s as if under President Bush, we were going downhill at 35 MPH, and now we’ve very quickly sped up to 105 MPH.

And then there’s an arrogant and haughty attitude from the Administration has eroded his public good will in record breaking time. According to Rasmussen,  On Inauguration Day, the hard-core strongly disapprove number for the President was 16%, it is now 32%, nearly as many as Strongly Approve of the President’s performance.

And now we get the Department of Homeland Security Report on right wing extremism, which unlike reports on left wing extremists which name  specific groups and incidents to specifically identify which groups are problematic such as the Animal Liberation Front, President Obama’s Homeland Security Department couldn’t be bothered with such details.

Instead, they issued a report that tarred most opponents of the Obama Administration as potential terrorists, including our returned veterans. The DHS report seems to take a, “Tar them all and let God” sort them out approach.

This is illustrative of the Obama bait and switch, and how the problems that will lead to come out to Tea Parties did not begin under Obama, but he is making them worse every day.

The Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey has a piece on legislator’s plans being disrupted by the length of this session which will become the second longest on record as of this Friday.

One of the more ironic parts of the piece is that Dick Sagness who is only filling in for Senator Edward Malepeai (D-28). So did the fill-in Senator consider designating a fill-in for him?

Writes Chris at the Unequivocal Notion:

“Idaho’s part-time Legislature isn’t even capable of showing up for their part time work, but they sure don’t mind collecting their per diem when they bail on Idahoans and go on vacation mid-session. Unfortunately, Idaho Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans.  Here’s an idea, if you can’t be there, then don’t run for office.”

I understand the sentiment and to a degree I share it. Certainly,  Idaho legislators shouldn’t go gallavanting off at will, but I think that to be fair, this is a part-time job that legislators legitimately expected to end two weeks ago. How much of their calendar should legislators have to clear? The whole month of April? In most years, that would be overkill.  I think no one expected that anyone would want to continue to meet in the Old Ada County Courthouse for this long. The accomodations are awful.

Most Legislators are making a huge sacrifice to be in session at all. They spend months campaigning for a job that pays $16,000 a year plus per Diem. They expect three month long sessions and then done so they can return home, relax, and earn money to support their legislating habit. Is there a solution? I think the ultimate answer is to require legislators to stay in session,  but have the law reimburse them for cancellation fees at hotels and on airlines for events that occur after April 8th. Of course, this type of solution won’t be implemented because it could be played to the political detriment of legislators and its not populist enough to make it a s a citizen’s initiative.