The Dangerous Good Old Boys of the GOP

My latest Pajamas Media piece is up.

Since the election, the debate has raged. Who is responsible for the 2008 election debacle and the defeat of the Republican Party?

So far this question has centered on various groups’ attempts to reenact the scapegoat scene from Leviticus and cast all the sins of the Republican Party onto cultural conservatives and release their concerns into the wilderness.

The battle has been as entertaining as it has been misguided and pointless. Is there a war between economic conservatives and social conservatives? As someone actively involved in both social and fiscal issues, I’ve seen a lot of crossover between the two sides in terms of people who show up. This crossover is quite common. A leading economic conservative group, Club for Growth, often backed the same candidates as socially conservative groups like National Right to Life, Government Is Not God-PAC, and Focus on the Family Action. Newt Gingrich has begun to go around with slides showing that the most socially conservative members of Congress were also the most fiscally conservative.

I’m going to suggest an alternate conclusion. I’m going to reject the conventional wisdom that the election was lost because of the party grassroots and go out on a limb and suggest that maybe the problem is not the party’s activists. Perhaps (and I know this is shocking) the people who led the party over the cliff are the ones to blame.

The GOP doesn’t have a religious problem, a gay rights problem, or an abortion problem. It fundamentally has a good old boy problem. Let us tell the story of a primary, and we don’t have to name names, because the story is the same across the country.

Read the rest here.

Frequently Mouthed Anti-Tea Party Talking Points

There are many anti-tea party talking points going on out there, let me go ahead and tackle a few:

Talking Point: Obama has only been in office 86 days.  How can you protest him? He hasn’t been in office long enough to have even done any damage.

A: Under Obama’s watch we’ve seen a $797 billion Stimulus bill that’s a Pork-filled Christmas Tree to the left. In addition, his budget has come out and scorers at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office say it will run up $9.6 Trillion in National Debt over 10 years.

TP: You idiots! Obama hasn’t raised your taxes! He hasn’t even raised taxes on the top 5%, you cretins! He’s cut your taxes.

A: I noticed the extra money on my pay stub and will send it to Republican causes.

In all seriousness, Senate Democrats are suggesting that Obama’s meager $12 a week tax cut be axed after 2010. In addition, Obama has already raised taxes on tobacco in order to pay for his S-Chip expansion. This hits working and middle income folks the hardest, as they make up the largest percent of smokers. Of course, it will be noted that they could and perhaps should quit, but you better pray they don’t because then your whole SCHIP program collapses like a house of cards if they do.

In addition, Obama’s proposals are full of expenses to the average American worker. His Cap and Trade deal will cost thousands to the average U.S. family in higher utilities.  More importantly, is the future taxes Obama is bringing on us through his reckless and unprecedented deficit spending that will increase future taxes exponentially, as well as devaluing our currency through incessant inflation.This will shrink the value of everyone’s savings and retirement.

Plus, on top of that, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) is talking about implementing higher taxes next year, rather than in 2011. Either way, when higher taxes are implemented it will have the effect of driving investment and capital out of the country. Do you think we can handle that?

TP: Oh yeah, where were all you deficit hawks during the Bush Administration?

A:  As someone who personally spent 40 minutes scraping the Bush/Cheney 2004 Bumper Sticker off the back of my car-Shut up!

Conservatives were plenty ticked off under Bush. That’s why you had groups like Club for Growth challenging big spending Congressmen. You had the Porkbusters effort. Perhaps, the more common response though was a passive aggressive one. Republican campaign funds dried up, conservative voters didn’t show up at the polls in 2006, or to a large degree in 2008 either.

Of course, there were some people who chose to forget deficit spending during the Bush years. They usually defended this by stating we were in a War and pointed to the fact that deficits were at a sustainable level of under 3% of GDP, Obama’s deficits are in a much higher range that most economists say are completely unsustainable.

TP: Oh yeah, if you weren’t happy with Bush, why did most of you guys vote Republican?

A: Well, a lot of people did stay home or give “Blue Dog” Democrats who talked  like Republicans a chance to govern. The vast majority of these Blue Dogs turned out to be lapdogs that went along with the President’s irresponsible spending programs.

Others did stay home, but for those who voted for Republican, either: 1) they supported someone who was doing good work in Washington or 2) voted Republican because they had a sense of how bad the Democrats would do if given the chance.

TP: Hey Genius, I don’t see you raising any solutions.

A:

• Abolish the IRS, the Payroll Tax, the Corporate Income Tax, and implement the Fair Tax. You’ll immediately alleviate the economy of a more than $300 billion compliance burden. You’ll also bring back foreign investment to the county.
• Apply term limits to members of Congress. I suppose we could quibble on the details, but my guts says 2 Consecutive Terms for Senators, 4 for House Members.
• Implement a line item veto to allow the President to veto wasteful government spending.
• Pass a Balanced Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

TP: Ha! There are way too many Democrats in Congress for you to get any of that passed.

A: Not for long.

TP: Oh come on, America is laughing at you. Yesterday was the day conservatism died and the Republican Party ceased being a serious contender for winning elections.

A: The left is laughing, but America isn’t. Americans are concerned about this Administration’s run-away spending.  If you find an example of a political movement that suffered doomsday as a result of hundreds of thousands marching for its causes, please let me know.

Why I’m Attending a Tea Party

My latest Pajamas Media piece is up and I have to say of all the pieces I’ve written, it is probably among those that I’m the most proud of:

I’ve taken time off from work on April 15 to be at my local tea party. As the tea parties occur, the media will offer their spin on why people are there.

Large events like this are remarkable. In some ways, they’re comparable to baseball games, where you’ll find some people with an agenda aside from the game. If the media applied the same coverage to baseball games that it applies to tea parties, it would assume that, if someone gets through security and streaks across the field nude, most of the crowd are closet nudists.

Of course, most just want to see the game and have no interest in the streaker. Similarly, the streaker has no interest in the baseball game. He simply wants to streak nude in front of a large audience.

Like our baseball streaker, some at the tea parties will have their own agendas that have little or nothing to do with the cause for which most people are going to attend. Most would rather not be defined by the proverbial streaker, and I’m no exception. I’m not going to the tea party to make the case that President Obama is a Muslim born in Indonesia, to advocate secession from the union, or to explain how America’s problems are the direct results of actions by members of the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m not going as a Republican; I’m going as an American.

My party has let the country down with its massive overspending, corrupt career politicians, and willingness to play business as usual when it’s not called for. As much as I’m not a fan of the Obama administration, if he’s replaced in 2012 by a feckless Republican president with a feckless Republican Congress that believes only its own re-election, our country will be no better for it.

Read the whole thing here.

A Look at the States Ahead

Super Tuesday does not end it on the GOP side, although John McCain is clearly favored, he’s also more than 450 delegates off the required 1191. So what’s ahead for McCain, Huckabee, and Romney? Let’s take a look:

February 9th:

Louisiana Primary-20 Delegates

After this past Tuesday, Huckabee should be able to win here given the victory by uncommitted pro-life in Caucuses earlier this month. However, in order to have more than a symbolic victory, he needs to win 50% of the vote, otherwise this goes to the State Convention as to who the delegates will go for, which I think is the likely outcome.

Kansas Caucus: 39 Delegates:

This is a state you could argue for any candidate to win. First of all McCain has the endorsement of Senior Senator Sam Brownback as well as Kansas Political Icon Bob Dole.

On the other hand, this is a Caucus, and outside of Iowa, Mitt Romney has won those.

Finally, this is a hotbed of Evangelical Pro-Life activism unlike hardly any other state, and therefore could be Huck’s.

Whoever wins, it’s important to note, it’s Winner Take all by Congressional District and Winner Take all for the at-large delegates.

Washington: 18 Delegates

This won’t be very exciting as we won’t know who actually won delegates. Washington has a two step process. The first is similar to the Wyoming Conventions held in January where delegates are awarded without any requirement as to who they’ll be voting for at the Convention. Given the helter skelter nature of Washington, we may not know for Days who won Delegates out of this Caucus. Strong bet would be on Romney to have this one covered. But don’t count Huckabee out, Washington went for Pat Robertson in 1988.

February 12th

District of Columbia-19
Maryland-37
Virginia-63

All these states are winner take all. It’s hard to see how McCain doesn’t take them. DC and Maryland are fairly liberal (i.e. John McCain Republicans through and through) that they’ll go for him easily. Virginia is perhaps the most pro-establishment state in the South, again favor McCain.

February 19:

Washington Primary-19 Delegates

The second part of Washington’s delegate selection process is an election for the national convention. Winner of the State will get 10 delegates, 1 for each Congressional District. Romney or Huck could take 1 delegate around the Spokane area, but I see this overall going to McCain.

Wisconsin Primary-40 Delegates

If Mitt Romney wants a test case for staying in this race, Wisconsin could be it. Similar to other states he’s won in the Mid-West, it fundamentally would make sense to focus on Wisconsin comeback before trying to sink money into an Ohio or Texas bid later on. The State is winner take all for at large delegates with 24 delegates allotted by Congressional district, so John McCain also will win some.

February 23-Virgin Islands-9
February 24-Puerto Rico-23
March 1-American Samoa-9

These territorial caucuses and primaries usually go overwhelmingly to the frontrunner if there’s a vote (Bob Dole got more than 90% in Puerto Rico in 1996) or are uncommitted until the convention.

March 4th:

Ohio-88 Delegates
Texas-140 Delegates
Rhode Island-20 Delegates
Vermont-14 Delegates

Liberal Rhode Island and Vermont should easily go to John McCain with their 34 delegates. Ohio is another matter. If Mitt Romney were to win in Wisconsin, he could legitimately establish himself as the candidate of the Upper Midwest and end up taking Oahio. The Statewide winner gets 31 delegates, and 3 each are up for grabs in Ohio’s Congressional districts. Mike Huckabee could pick up a few districts in the Southern Part of the State and it shouldn’t be forgotten that the state has a powerful religious conservative movement.

Texas is another matter. It features an open primary followed by a closed party caucuses to actually choose delegates, so no one’s going to grab all 140. This has to be considered Huckabee’s must-win state at this point. The campaign has done a lot with little money. Texas is a huge state both geographically and in terms of population. A win, even a narrow one establishes him as a national political force.

March 4th is the soonest that John McCain can clinch the nomination (unless Mitt drops out and throws his delegate to McCain). While he has to favored to do this eventually, if a Stop McCain movement gathers steam and someone other than McCain begins to pick up delegates, this could go far longer than any recent nominating processing. After March 4th, Mississippi votes on March 11th and then we get to April 23rd with Pennsylvania’s primary.

I’ll post another analysis of upcoming states after March 4th if necessary.

President McCain

Republican voters are trending towards John McCain in recent primaries. What would John McCain do as President? Many of his supporters are ignorant of his record, or overlooking it. This column will project what a John McCain presidency would look like. If you still vote for him after reading this, the pain that comes on this country will be on your own head:

Social Issues: John McCain will appoint liberal judges to the federal bench. He will make the defense of his unconstitutional campaign finance law a priority. Those judges who will rule for that unconstitutional abomination are very unlikely to see the error of Roe v. Wade as that requires a strict constructionist judicial philosophy, which those who support McCain-Feingold would not have.

John McCain would fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The McCain Administration, by doing so, would not relieve suffering, as recent advances have been able to develop embyronic stem cells without destroying human life, but would rather lead to ennobling abortion as a way for women to take an unwanted pregnancy, get an abortion, and use the stem cells to help those suffering from various diseases. McCain would turn abortion into a noble choice.

Economic Issues: John McCain can be expected to increase the payroll tax as part of a social security fix. He will do nothing to reform our out-of-control federal tax system.

He will rightly strain the gnat of pork barrel spending, only to swallow the camel of overly excessive environmental regulation. Even now, Americans are suffering with higher gas prices, and consequently higher prices on everything, in part because of John McCain’s refusal to support drilling in ANWR.

This would deepen as McCain would implement environmental proposals similar to Kyoto with the support of a Democratic Congress. This would further increase the price of energy and fuel for all Americans, and raise prices on everything else.

Sovereignty: John McCain has no respect for America’s sovereignty. This shows most prominently in his support for illegal immigrant amnesty, but will show in other areas as well, such as his backing of the Law of the Sea Treaty and the International Criminal Court.

American sovereignty will retract under John McCain Administration in the name of expanding the powers of International organizations that have already failed us.

Havoc on the Republican Party: John McCain will take a wrecking ball to the Republican Party.

Republicans will lose seats under McCain as Republicans loss seats under Eisenhower (the president most similar to McCain), beginning with McCain’s own Senate seat, which will be filled by the Democratic Governor of that state. With McCain’s policies appealing more to liberal and moderate voters than conservatives, many McCain voters will continually elect Democrats to Congress. If McCain were to serve two terms, by the time he ended his tenure, Republicans would certainly have less than forty senate seats and less than 175 House Seats.

In addition to this, his amnesty for illegal aliens will lead to a host of new Democratic voters, as immigrants tend to be with the party of bigger government that provides more services until they move up to the middle class. If John McCain is President, the 109^th Congress may be the last time in our lifetimes we ever see a Republican Majority in Congress.

These are a few of the likely consequences if John McCain is elected President. If Republicans love liberty, they will band together to stop this man. If they do not, John McCain is someone they richly deserve.

South Carolina Round Table

Podcast Show Notes

South Carolina/Nevada aftermath roundtable with Adam Graham joined by David Oatney, John McJunkin, Fabian Story, Warner Todd Huston, and Ken Marrero.

Click here to download, click here to add this podcast to your Itunes.

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In the Wilderness

Conservatives must steel themselves to prepare for hard times ahead.

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Mitt Romney Is Our New Inevitable Frontrunner

Based on last night’s results and the comments of Bryan at Hot Air, I’m pleased to Mitt Romney, the new inevitable frontrunner of the week. Succeeding prior inevitable frontrunners Mike Huckabee and John McCain. This is despite no one having won 2 primaries in a row yet. But it was a good sized victory, therefore Mitt Romney is going to inevitably be the GOP nominee, unless someone else wins South Carolina. In that case, we’ll have a new inevitable frontrunner.

O.G. Readless

A book industry report shows on average that conservatives read less books than liberals:

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

Former Liberal Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) who seems to forget that she’s supposed to be a book publishing professional has a partisan solution:

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,'” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

 Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress’ most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

I guess that would explain the inexplicable popularity of Glenn Greenwald. Apparently, his writing not tedium, it’s “peeling the onion.”

Of course, it could be that liberals are more likely to be sexual libertines who read trashy romance novels and erotica in great abundance, or are more likely to go out and buy whatever the heck Oprah tells them to purchase. This seem equally plausible. It should also be pointed out that this is the year of Atheist-affirming Best-sellers and that liberals are far more likely to be Atheists this may have something to do with it. 

Perhaps, the issue in regards to political topics is that Conservatives and Liberals alike have plenty of resources online. Less books being purchased should be a concern for book publishers, and Ms. Schroeder’s client should expect that she do something rather than try and score cheap partisan points on the issue.

Bush at Peace

I’ve had my fair degree of disagreements with President Bush but still had to admit that I found this conclusion by a professor to be off-base:

You don’t get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker,” said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. “This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can’t tell you which.”

I might suggest another alternative. Maybe, it’s Bush’s faith.  Hard to believe, but Christianity has never placed a great value on panic, more on peace, more on confidence in your relationship. The emphasis is always that God is the ultimate judge, not the fickle opinions of the populace.

 Perhaps, that understanding is behind Bush’s relative peace in the midst of figurative and literal  wars.

No One Can Escape…

The e-mail list of Jim Gilmore, but Cat will try. (By the way, did I mention she didn’t sign up for it in the first place.)

Our Long National Nightmare Is Over

The commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence brings to a close an utterly absurd chapter in American political history: a scandal few understood and few cared about goes wimpering into the night, the sole legal casualty under court-imposed supervised release with a $250,000 fine that will be repaid by a legal defense fund.

In the end, it was the right thing to do. Now, our country can move on to the next insepid little scandal that’ll break over some obscure nonsense.

We Love New Americans

Don Surber reports that Lee Greenwood will be doing a concert at Disney World at the 4th of July that will feature 1000 new legal immigrants taking the citizenship oath. Don writes:

And God bless those legal immigrants. They went through the paperwork. They studied hard. Many had to learn a new language. They showed a commitment to a nation that most of us take for granted.

The naturalized citizen is often the most patriotic and the most loyal to America — the person who cherishes our freedoms because in many cases, that person knew fewer freedoms in his native land.

This issue is fundamentally about the rule of law, not a hatred of Hispanics or immigrants in general as extremists on the other other side allege.

The Messianic Obama?

I get most disturbed about Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) when I read some of the comments of his supporters. One stood out to me in E-mails that were sent to David Brody of CBN:

“I’m supporting Senator Obama’s candidacy because of difference reasons. I don’t agree with everything he says, I don’t agree with everything my parents say. There are “some” Christian leaders that divide us by saying the Demorcats don’t care about Evangelical issues. This is true. I glad he said “some.” Senator Obama is truly chosen for a time such as this.”

So now Obama’s the chosen one? Kind of disturbing rhetoric from a not elected, not nominated candidatee. I’d also say that I don’t agree with everything my parents say either. However, my parents never advocated live birth abortion in which the abortionists are allowed to kill the child outside the womb. Or is opposing that too divisive?

A Charmed Life

Okay, so Fred Thompson is garnering praise from his ex-girlfriends and is on good terms with them all? I don’t know if that qualifies him to be President, but it does qualify him to write relationship books. Think of him as like Dr. Phil, only bald and with a Southern accent-er wait, Dr. Phil is bald and has a Southern accent-never mind. (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)