Republicans, Immigration, The Constitution, & Is It Time For A Third Party Yet?

President Obama, with his Immigration plans, has brought us to the point of a Constitutional crisis. He is unilaterally making new law with his plan to give millions of illegal aliens social security numbers, and work permits, and apparently, retroactively available Earned Income Tax credits. (It's hard to buy loyalty without taxpayer cash, of course). Regardless of the policy, whether one thinks it right or wrong, it is the President's unilateral act that must be the focus.

The Presidents immigration plan is not "executive discretion," its legislation that, per Art. 1 Sec. of our Constitution, only Congress has the authority to authorize. It is a textbook act of tyranny of the kind over which we fought a Revolution. If this is allowed to stand, it will be the single most corrosive act taken in oppression of our "liberties" since our founding. And as a practical matter, it is an act that threatens long term repercussions for our economy and politics.

Fortunately for this nation, we just elected the largest Republican House majority in a century and gave Republicans a comfortable majority in the Senate. Surely, they will act decisively to check this act of tyranny. They have full control of the public purse. And yet . . . within the past few days, the House and Senate have passed bills fully funding Obama's immigration orders. The roll call for the House vote is here. It was House Speaker Boehner's choice to bring a clean bill to a vote, and the vote succeeded 257 to 167, with 75 Republicans voting for approval.

This has been a supreme act of treachery and cowardice by the Republican leadership and by all who supported these votes.

The Republican Party can no longer be relied upon to protect the Constitution or the interests of this nation. We must now rely on the Courts to correct this obscenity, but given the partisan and compliant nature of our Courts, that is a forlorn hope indeed.

It is time to support a third party. It is the last remaining peaceful alternative.

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Godfather II & Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC): 'Where Is My Bribe?'

This one broken by CNN no less. There really is some common ground between the right and the left - and this is one piece of that common ground:



Think back to the scene from Godfather II where a young Vito Corleone is approached by NYC's then Godfather, Don Fanucci, who asks Vito nicely for "just enough" money to "wet my beak." The only difference between the Don and the Congresswoman is that he asked for his bribe money in Italian. Could this be any more corrupt?

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Reinventing The Broken Wheel

What is it about the far left that they never learn from their mistakes (nor do they admit them, for that matter). And what is about the right that they are unable to point out any of this to the nation.

The biggest scandal of our lifetime is the subprime crisis that led to our economic meltdown - and from which we have yet to recover. I have maintained for years now that there should have been a miles long line of bankers, bond rating agency managers, Wall St. types, Fannie and Freddie managers and others who should have been prosecuted over our economic meltdown. When these people colluded to bundle and then rate subprime bonds with a AAA rating, that was pure fraud. Yet there has not been a single related criminal prosecution brought under the Obama administration. That itself is a scandal.

Worse, Fannie and Freddie, the two institutions at the heart of our meltdown, have not been privatized. To the contrary, under Obama, they are now not merely true government wards, but they are right back in the middle of the housing market - insuring 90% of all new mortgages. Worse yet, they are not merely back in the middle of the sub-prime market, they own it entirely - which is to say it is backed by the full faith and credit of every taxpayer in the nation.

Then to top it all off, over the past several days, both houses of Congress have released the results of ethics investigations holding no one in Congress liable for their acceptance of below market rate mortgages from Countrywide - a private mortgage company joined at the hip with Fannie and Freddie and that lobbied to keep the subprime lending going full speed ahead - at least until the company itself went bankrupt.

All aspects of this scandal are being swept under the rug, with no effort being made to diagnose the problems, nor to hold those liable where appropriate. As John Fund writes at NRO:

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi used an old Jedi mind trick on Stormtroopers to deflect them from their real quarry: “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” It worked.

It looks as if another mind trick, well known in the Congress — delay and deflection — will now work to make Americans forget one of the biggest scandals of our time: the housing collapse that triggered the 2008 financial meltdown we are still suffering from. We shouldn’t just gaze over the fiscal cliff everyone else is scrutinizing; we should also examine the droids who helped set in motion our current economic mess.

To cure the problems, you first have to diagnose them - and that has yet to happen in America. Under Obama administration, it never will.

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The Oncoming Constitutional Storm

The next debt ceiling vote should be interesting indeed. If Republicans have any cajones at all, they are going to demand real spending reductions from Obama and the left as a prerequisite to raising the debt ceiling. And if they hold firm, Obama will no doubt claim authority under the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. It will be a Constitutional storm.

My suggestion for Republicans at the next debt ceiling talks, after giving Obama all of the tax increases he wants, would be to demand a plan that will reduce the budget deficit by 25%, about $4 trillion, by the end of Obama's term. Obama had previously promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term - that would have been about $5 trillion - and indeed, he has called the accumulation of debt unpatriotic. It is time for the right to hold the line on spending by the left. That is the cliff we need to dive over.

So does Obama have the authority to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling? Short answer - hell no. Long answer:

Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution rests sole authority for our government to borrow money in the Congress. Specifically:

The Congress shall have Power To . . . borrow money on the credit of the United States.

And indeed, Congressional approval of a debt ceiling increase is required by law at 31 U.S.C. § 3101 and 3101A. All of that said, the people urging Obama to ignore these crystal clear provisions claim that the President has the authority, under the 14th Amendment, to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally. Specifically, they cite to the 14th Amendment's Public Debt clause:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.

That provision was meant to keep Congress from unilaterally discharging our nation's debts in a sort of pseudo bankruptcy. It does not apply to debts not yet incurred, and indeed, our government takes in more than enough money each month to cover existing debt. As John Malcom at NRO explains:

The president’s defenders argue that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the United States will immediately start defaulting on its debts, an outcome that the Public Debt Clause deems impermissible. To avoid default, they contend, President Obama could raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval. But this argument is dead wrong.

When the 14th Amendment was passed, Senator Benjamin “Bluff” Wade of Ohio, a proponent, set forth the rationale: “I believe that to do this will give great confidence to capitalists and will be of incalculable pecuniary benefit to the United States, for I have no doubt that every man who has property in the public funds will feel safer when he sees that the national debt is withdrawn from the power of a Congress to repudiate it and placed under the guardianship of the Constitution.”

In 1935, in Perry v. United States, the Supreme Court observed that the Public Debt Clause confirmed the “fundamental principle” that Congress may not “alter or destroy” debts already incurred. However, even if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling and additional borrowing is curtailed, the federal government’s revenues are more than enough to satisfy current debt payments and enable it to avoid a default.

Meanwhile, the Constitution clearly provides that borrowing money requires congressional action. In Article I, Section 8, Congress is granted the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” As Andrew Grossman of the Heritage Foundation has explained, the power of the purse — including the authority to tax, spend, and borrow — is clearly legislative, according to the Constitution. Nothing in the Public Debt Clause takes this power away from Congress and assigns it to the president.

President Obama has no more unilateral power to issue new debt on the credit of the United States than he has to unilaterally raise taxes, sell off government assets, or make expenditures that have not been enacted by Congress.

Moreover, the Public Debt Clause refers to public debt that has been “authorized by law.” The debt ceiling is established by statute (31 U.S.C. 3101 and 3101A). If President Obama were to issue an executive order purporting to enable the federal government to borrow more money, thereby incurring public debt in excess of the statutory debt limit, any debt so incurred would not be “authorized by law.” It would, in fact, be contrary to law.

Obama has been running the U.S. as a tyranny, bypassing Congress and assuming powers clearly not authorized by the Constitution. Eric Cantor gives a great roll-up of the examples in his essay, The Imperial Presidency and I have complained bitterly about several aspects of this in a post here. The final straw will be if Obama attempts to claim unilateral power to raise the debt ceiling. This will be a Constitutional crisis. House Republicans should shut down the government if he attempts to do this. And in a rational world, this would be the basis for impeachment.

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The War On Religion: Mark Steyn, Ron Paul & Congress

Mark Steyn weighs in on modern Christmas traditions, the fear of even religious institutions to proclaim their faith out of fear of litigation, and what it all means:

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions:

The sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular "holiday" tree.

The ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman.

The familiar strains of every hack columnist's "war on Christmas" column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing "Winter Wonderland" ...

This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the "holiday" display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia — because, let's face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — and he's hanging lifeless in the town square."

Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? Christians intolerant of the First Amendment (as some have suggested)? Or perhaps a passing Saudi? . . . .

Across the fruitcaked plain in California, the city of Santa Monica allocated permits for "holiday" displays at Palisades Park by means of lottery. Eighteen of the 21 slots went to atheists — for example, the slogan "37 million Americans know a myth when they see one" over portraits of Jesus, Santa, and Satan.

. . . Perhaps Santa Monica should adopt a less theocratic moniker and change its name to Satan Monica, as its interpretation of the separation of church and state seems to have evolved into expressions of public contempt for large numbers of the citizenry augmented by the traumatizing of their children.

Boy, I can't wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan. Or does that set their hearts a-flutter quite as much?

One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is devoted to forestalling litigation. What's less understandable is the faintheartedness of explicitly Christian institutions. . . .

When an explicitly Catholic institution thinks the meaning of Christmas is "tenderness for the past, vapid generalities for the present, evasive abstractions for the future," it's pretty much over. Suffering no such urge to self-abasement, Muslim students at the Catholic University of America in Washington recently filed a complaint over the lack of Islamic prayer rooms on the campus. They find it offensive to have to pray surrounded by Christian symbols such as crucifixes and paintings of distinguished theologians.

True, this thought might have occurred to them before they applied to an institution called "Catholic University." On the other hand, it's surely not unreasonable for them to have expected Catholic University to muster no more than the nominal rump Christianity of that Catholic college in New England. Why wouldn't you demand Muslim prayer rooms?

As much as belligerent atheists, belligerent Muslims reckon that a decade or so hence "Catholic colleges" will be Catholic mainly in the sense that Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is still a cathedral: that's to say, it's a museum, a heritage site for where once was a believing church. And who could object to the embalming of our inheritance?

Christmas is all about "tenderness for the past," right? When Christian college administrators are sending out cards saying "We believe in nothing", why wouldn't you take them at their word?

Which brings us back in this season of joy to the Republican presidential debates, the European debt crisis and all the other fun stuff. The crisis afflicting the West is not primarily one of unsustainable debt and spending. These are mere symptoms of a deeper identity crisis.

It is not necessary to be a believing Christian to be unnerved by the ease and speed with which we have cast off our inheritance and trampled it into the dust. When American municipalities are proudly displaying the execution of skeleton Santas and giant Satans on public property, it may just be a heartening exercise of the First Amendment, it may be a trivial example of the narcissism of moral frivolity.

Or it could be a sign that eventually societies become too stupid to survive. The fellows building the post-western world figure they know which it is.

And then there is this worthy essay on the topic from Ron Paul in 2003.

As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it's hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn't feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and those who don't celebrate it overwhelmingly accept and respect our nation's Christmas traditions, a certain shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.

This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel's Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month, firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody.

Most noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation's history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people's allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation's Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

The war on religion is perhaps best captured this year by the fact that our elected Representatives in Congress have been advised by the Congressional Franking Comission that they cannot send out greeting cards to constituents on the Congressional dime that say "Merry Christmas."

The Supreme Court has so moved us from the true meaning of the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause that every one of the Founders - even the deist Thomas Jefferson - would be horrified at what has become of Christianity in the public sphere today. It is a travesty that is having a profound and lasting effect on our nation - and none of it is good. For a much more in depth explanation, please see the speech of James Buckley here.

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The START Debacle - Stupidity, Cupidity & Duplicity

Could there be a more jaw dropping display of the stupidity of our Congresscritters or the cupidity and, possibly, duplicity of Obama then what we see occurring with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Obama demanded this treaty be passed during the lame duck session of Congress ostensibly because it was urgently needed to keep tabs on Russian nuclear arms. He only succeeded in getting this through Congress by explicitly stating, in an 18 Dec. letter to Congress:

The New START treaty places no limitations on the development or deployment of our missile defense programs.

The Senate then ratified the treated. Now, two weeks later, Russia is telling us that they consider our missile defense limited by the Treaty:

The preamble sets a link between strategic offensive arms and defensive arms. . . .

The Russian lawmakers insist that all the chapters of the treaty including the preamble are legally binding, which is a common norm of international law.

Un-believable.

Here is the background. The START Treaty is solely concerned with offensive nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Nonetheless, in the treaty negotiated by Obama, the preamble mentions Missile Defense - something of critical strategic importance to the U.S. and an object of significant opposition from Russia. The U.S. withdrew from an ABM Treaty with Russia in 2001 so that we could fully develop a missile defense shield. With ever growing threats from nuclear proliferation, it would be an act of strategic insanity for the U.S. to now agree to forgo its work on the missile defense shield. And indeed, it is absolutely clear that even the Democrat dominated 111th Congress would never agree to such an act - which is why Obama had to stipulate that the treaty would not in any way hinder our missle defense programs. In respect of all of that, there was no possible justification to include mention of missile defense in the START Treaty.

Nonetheless, Obama's negotiating team agreed to include the following in the preamble of the START Treaty:

Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties . . .

It had to be utterly obvious to anyone with a brain cell that the only reason to include mention of the "interrelationship" of "strategic defensive arms" in the START Treaty was because Russia was bound and determined that it be an operative part of the treaty. It would seem that there are only two possibile explanations as to why Obama would have agreed to allow that provision into the START Treaty:

1. Obama had his negotiators agree under the table to limit further development of our missile defense. Couple that with lying to Congress and the American people and what you have is an act that makes Nixon's actions in Watergate seem like a case of jaywalking; or

2. Obama is really so grossly incompetent and so out of his depth that he actually could not see that Russia was demanding this language in the treaty because they wanted to limit our missile defense.

Inquiring minds want to know which it is.

It is important to note that Obama refused to release to Congress the START negotiating documents that would have clarified this central issue. There was no reason not to release those documents. It is time to ready the subpoenas.

However this falls out, this is just an incredible debacle for all parties concerned. The stupidity of Congress for passing the START Treaty despite the language in the preamble was a jaw droppingly stupid act, irrespective of the assurance of Obama.

The cupidity of Obama to pass this treaty at all costs and irrespective of its fatal flaws seems near akin to the destructive obsession exhibited by Captain Ahab. In the end, Obama has gained nothing towards the goal of legitimizing his quest for a nuclear free world (a dangerous fantasy in and of itself) and, at the very least, sets in stone the perception that he is grossly incompetent in foreign affairs.

Lastly, the duplicity here, if it exists, which at least seems plausible at the moment, could fatally endanger Obama's administration. If his negotiators agreed to under the table deals to limit our ballistic missile defense and Obama then knowingly lied about that to Congress and the American people, then this is serious indeed.

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Putting The Popularity Of Our Government In Context

(H/T Instapundit)

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The Buck Stops Where?

Since Democrats gained control of the entire Congress, our national debt has gone from $200 billion to $1.8 trillion and now is on a rapid upward trajectory. These same Democrats have added the mother of all entitlement programs with Obamacare - and that as Social Security is forecast to explode in the near future. So when Erskine Bowles, the Co-Chair of Obama's Budget Commission, makes a public appearance and states that our debt is a "cancer" that will "destroy the country from within," can there be any other response than "No kidding, Sherlock?"

The Constitution charges Congress with taxing and spending authority and the President with the power to approve or veto their appropriations; the Constitution makes no provisions for a Budget Commission. The budget commission was created by Obama so that he and the Pelosi-Reid Congress could shirk their Constitutional duties and try to disclaim responsibility for increasing taxation. Truman was famed for saying "the buck stops here." Obama and the Democratic Congress are demonstrating the polar opposite mindset. They are passing the buck as fast as their fat little fingers can move it. Is it any wonder that the Washington Post reports today:

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

I said two years ago that this joker would leave us pining for the good old days of the merely incompetent Jimmy Carter. I am feeling more and more prescient by the day.

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And This Will Fix Our Financial Problem?

As I look at the financial "reforms" proposed by Obama, it appears that there is precious little in the way of reform that is actually meant to address the issues raised by our financial crisis. My first question in that regard is how can Obama reform the financial system if we have not identified the problems at issue. Obama has established a commission to determine the causes of our financial break down. He wants reforms passed this summer, but the commission won't be reporting until the winter. So how the hell can he push through financial reforms months before that commission has completed its work and issued its report? Obama's push for financial reform before the commission issues its report makes a mockery of both.

Beyond that question, all of my issues with Obama's proposed financial reform are substantive. One, we know that much of the problem with the subprime mortgages came about because sub-prime loans were being bundled and given AAA ratings. This should be a central focus of financial reform, yet how that happened has been perhaps the most studiously ignored issue of the entire sub-prime mess. Indeed, the degree to which it has been ignored is making my spidey senses go tingling off the charts. On its face it appears that there has been massive fraud - and fraud that deeply implicates Fannie Mae. Moreover, having heard Barney Frank within the past year pressure Fannie Mae to upgrade the rating for certain loans, I really wonder whether this issue might not implicate some of our elected representatives also.

Two, it appears that our financial crisis came about one step removed from the sub-prime crisis. Besides apparent fraud in the bundling of tranches, you had derivatives designed to spread the risk - normally a good thing - but you also had recently enacted mark to market accounting rules that required institutions to show the value of their mortgaged backed securities as zero when the market for mortgages froze. Of course the value of the securities was not zero, but this rule caused untold chaos for those firms holding many securities - and it was what nearly froze the international credit market. Yet I see nothing being done to address those rare situations when mark to market becomes punitive and fails to give an accurate measure of the value of the securities being held.

Three, I supported the bailout of our financial institutions last year in light of the unique circumstances and the threat to credit - a meltdown that might have caused a true depression. That said, under anything short of such a unique set of circumstances, we should be not bailing out any financial institution. For capitalism to work, corporations need to be allowed to fail - whether they be AIG or GM. Yet Obama's proposed regulations give the government unlimited power to take over and bail out financial institutions and even establishes a slush fun to support such acts.

Four, Fannie and Freddie need to be completely privatized and put out of the reach of Congressional control. No one can argue that it was the demonic intersection of Fannie and Democrats that lay at the heart of our current fiscal woes. Yet they have now been, for all practical purposes, completely nationalized by the Obama administration.

Five, it was social engineering of credit qualifications that led directly to our current fiscal woes. Any financial reform should make color blind lending standards mandatory. Yet Obama proposes to put racially charged lending standards back into the front and center of our financial industry. That is anything but reform.

Six, someone needs to explain how heavily taxing banks and their profits will do anything to protect the banks customers, improve efficiency, or do anything other than further feed the trough at which at which our voracious socialist governments feed. Yet that is what is being proposed by the IMF:

Tough proposals to cut the world's biggest banks down to size by taxing their profits and pay were outlined by the International Monetary Fund tonight in an attempt to spare taxpayers another massive public bailout of the financial sector.

In measures more stringent than Wall Street and the City had expected, the fund called for the introduction of a twin-track approach to the three-year banking crisis that would both force firms to pay for any future support packages and raise new taxes on their profits and remuneration. . . .

Those are the issues I see. Michael Barone, writing at The Examiner amplifies several of them:

. . . The Dodd bill, however, has it trumped. Its provisions promise to give us one episode of Gangster Government after another.

At the top of the list is the $50 billion fund that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. could use to pay off creditors of firms identified as systematically risky, i.e., "too big to fail."

"The Dodd bill," Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman writes, "has unlimited executive bailout authority. That's something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn't dare ask for."

Politically connected creditors would have every reason to assume they'd get favorable treatment. The Dodd bill specifically authorizes the FDIC to treat "creditors similarly situated" differently.

Second, as former Bush administration economist Larry Lindsey points out, the Dodd bill gives the Treasury and the FDIC authority to grant an unlimited number of loan guarantees to "too big to fail" firms. Chief executive officers might want to have receipts for their contributions to Sen. Charles Schumer and the Obama campaign in hand when they apply.

Lindsey ticks off other special favors. "Labor gets 'proxy access' to bring its agenda items before shareholders as well as annual 'say on pay' for executives. Consumer activists get a brand-new agency funded directly out of the seniorage the Fed earns. No oversight by the Federal Reserve Board or by Congress on how the money is spent."

Then there are carve-out provisions provided for particular interests. "Obtaining a carve-out isn't rocket science," one Republican K Street lobbyist told the Huffington Post. "Just give Chairman Dodd and Chuck Schumer a s--tload of money."

The Obama Democrats portray the Dodd bill as a brave attempt to clamp tougher regulation on Wall Street. They know that polls show that voters strongly reject just about all their programs to expand the size and scope of government, with the conspicuous exception of financial regulation.

Republicans have been accurately attacking the Dodd bill for authorizing bailouts of big Wall Street firms and giving them unfair advantages over small competitors. They might want to add that it authorizes Gangster Government -- the channeling of vast sums from the politically unprotected to the politically connected.

That can boomerang even against the latter. Goldman Sachs employees gave nearly $1 million to the Obama campaign and $4.5 million to Democrats in 2008. That didn't prevent the Goldman from being shoved under the SEC bus. Gangster Government may look good to those currently in favor, but, as some of Al Capone's confederates found out, that status is not permanent, and there is always more room under the bus.

Ultimately, I see no reason to think that the financial reforms proposed by Obama will do a single thing to improve our economy. What a surprise, eh?

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A Tale Of Two Conservative Parties: Part 2 - The US

As I wrote in a companion post below:

At a time when the left has swung the pendulum hard to the left in both the UK and the US, at a time when the electorate of both US and UK appears poised for a massive move to the right, the "conservative" parties - the Tories in the UK, the Republicans in the U.S. - seem far from up to the task. When we need Churchill and Reagan, we instead have leaders in the mold of Clement Attlee and Herbert Hoover. The problem is particularly acute in the UK.

In the post below, I address the problems of the UK and its "conservative party." By comparison, our problems in the U.S. are not as dire as those of Britain's, largely because our democracy is much more representative than is their's. Yet in some ways, our problems are not dissimilar. In both countries, the left has pushed our nation's so far to the left that the economies and the very fabric of our societies are threatened. Further, today, neither in the UK nor in the U.S. is there a sufficiently strong leader on the right to stem the tide. For the UK, four weeks from their next election, that fact is disastrous. For we in the U.S., it is not yet at that point given that we are about two years out from having to decide who will be the Republican nominee. Yet the problems that they will face will be every bit as daunting as those faced in the UK:

- Between massive deficit spending and out of control entitlement programs, our economy is approaching a potentially existential crisis:

The U.S. government has $12.5 trillion of funded debt, almost 90% of last year’s GDP. That is a critical level according to Reinhart and Rogoff based on their 800-year study of sovereign bankruptcies. Serious, funded debt is not the major problem. Unfunded entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) are. These are estimated to be $106 trillion.

And still Obama continues a world record spending spree.

- the left wars on business (non-union businesses, at least) and the profit motive. Given the Obama plan to let many of the Bush era tax cuts expire and given the murmurings about a VAT tax, it appears that Obama's next grand act will be an attempt to tax us into prosperity.

- the war on business has resulted in persistent and staggering unemployment in America. "The U-6 unemployment number . . . is at 17.5%, within 0.5% of its all-time high. This figure includes discouraged workers who've stopped looking, marginally attached workers, and workers that are forced to work part-time because full-time jobs are not available."

- the enactment of Obamacare portends to only worsen our fiscal crisis while doing nothing to alleviate the severe crises posed by are already existing entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare, Medicade and S-CHIP to name but a few.

- Public sector unions, only allowed in America since the days of JFK, are a toxin in America. They have perverse incentives to push for bigger government and higher taxes and they operate unchecked by market forces. They degrade performance in every aspect of the government where they exist and are a particular problem in education. The average public sector union worker now makes significantly more than their private sector counterparts - and they are destroying state and local economies with massive unfunded pension liabilities.

- Regulatory burdens, particularly in the area of environmentalism where the left has handed the keys to the courthouse to the radical greens, with untold costs to our economy. Moreover, in a move that bypasses Congressional refusal to enact cap and trade, the EPA recently announced that they will begin regulating carbon - in what portends to be a significant cost to our economy.

- Proposed regulatory changes to our financial structure that will place significantly greater racially charged lending standards on our financial institutions, despite the fact that this same degradation of lending standards led in large part to our current financial meltdown.

- The removing of any caps on the liability that will be underwritten by the U.S. government from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

- The left continues to feed the race baiting industry beyond long after we passed any rational justification. It is time to bring an end to affirmative action as well as any and all use of the disparate impact theory to punish entities for racism despite no evidence of any act of racism. It should be noted that Obama wants to expand the disparate impact theory as part of the new financial regulations.

- our Courts are regularly legislating from the bench, reinterpreting Constitutional provisions in a manner far outside of the original intent of the drafters to bypass the ballot box on contentious social issues, ripping at the fabric of our nation. We could really use a Constitutional Amendment on this issue to provide some guidance to the Courts on how to execute their Article III duties.

All of the above are simply domestic problems - and the last two our my own issues that are not as pressing as the rest, but that do need to be addressed as part of a radical reorientation of our domestic polity. None of this even begins to touch upon the problems Obama and the left are causing in foreign policy.

Whoever is to tackle all of these problems in a decisive manner will have to be highly intelligent, articulate, and sufficiently driven by internalized conservative idealism to withstand the type of massive assault in the left wing MSM that will come with applying conservative solutions to the above problems - many of which will of necessity mean reorienting America away from the left wing path it has been on since at least FDR. Moreover, we are going to need a reorientation that has as its absolute focus the growth of businesses of all size - we are in a hole where the only answer to both our deficit and our undemployment problem is to grow ourselves out of both. Do we have a leader that strong on the horizon to accomplish all of these things?

Perhaps we do. I think New Gingrich fits that bill. I would also watch closely Paul Ryan and Chris Christie. I think all others are a level below these three in intellect, if not also in the intestinal fortitude needed to lead the type of radical reorientation our nation needs to survive, let alone to remain as first among equals.

Newt Gingrich - He is an absolutely brilliant man and a highly articulate speaker. Compliments of the MSM smear machine in the 1990's, many in the left and center have negative views of Gingrich, though it is doubtful those general views are today sufficiently strongly held to disqualify him from making a run. Of all the potential candidates, I would think him most qualified and the most likely to be able to address the many problems of our country itemized above.

Paul Ryan - I do not know enough about him yet to put a gold star next to his name, but his performance during the televised dog and pony shows with Obama have shown him to be articulate and in possession of a first class intellect. It is also notable that he is the only one, of all the Republicans in Congress, to actually publish an alternative to Obamacare. He is one to further evaluate.

Chris Christie - This man impresses ever more on a daily basis. He faces many of the problems in governing New Jersey that our nation faces on a grander scale. He is demonstrating daily a strong intellect and an even more impressive hard as nails approach to the problems of New Jersey. If he succeeds in turning around New Jersey in any cognizant fashion, he will definitely be a person to watch - if not in the 2012 election, then in 2016 and beyond. He has already demonstrated the combativeness and cajones necessary to push through the radical reorientation our country needs and he, unlike George Bush and much of the Republican Party, has also shown a willingness to push back hard against the smears of the left.

Then there are the lessers and the long shots:

Sarah Palin - as much as I like her, I don't see her as sufficiently rounded to make a run for the Presidency. I think her decision to give up her governership not even half way through her term was fatal to a bid for 2012. Perhaps in 2016 she might have a chance.

Mitt Romney - His claim to fame was his economic smarts. But the simple fact is that he designed Obamacare for Massachusetts. Either his economic smarts are vastly over-rated or this man is an incredibly cynical political opportunist. Regardless which, we can afford neither in office beyond 2012, and thus I won't be pulling a lever for him under any circumstances.

Mike Huckabee - his foreign policy views were what turned me against him during the last primary and nothing since has occurred since that would lead me to believe that he has gained strength in that area. That said, I do like his Fox shows.

Ron Paul - I would vote for Obama before I would vote for Paul. He really is a few McNuggets short of a Happy Meal.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty - I do not know enough about him at this point to make a decision on Pawlenty. I have heard him speak a few times and have not walked away with either a positive or negative impression. Perhaps that itself says all that needs to be said.

We will see who rises to the top over the next year. The other critical issue will be gaining conservatives in sufficient numbers in Congress. At any point in my lifetime, I would not have thought that possible. But today, given the path to the far left Obama is pushing us and the strength of the Tea Party movement - I now think it very possible.

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Sen. Jim DeMint's Christmas Gift To America

The procedural rules of Congress are nothing if not byzantine - and thus are the they a double edged sword to be exploited by both sides. And it may just be that Sen. Jim "Santa" DeMint, exploiting the rules, has put a present under the tree of every American. He has put a huge monkey wrench into Harry Reid's bum's rush of our country towards national suicide health care. This from Red State:

When Senator DeMint engineered, and Republican Leader McConnell actually objected to the appointment of the conferees, he was really handing the ball off to the left wingers — progressives if you will — and now they have their shot to either hold their own clan members who are against the Senate compromises and force them to vote No, or have their policy demands be ignored and take the crumbs from Senator Nelson’s and Senator Lieberman’s table.

Now, because of the Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely (see below) — then the Senate ObamaCare bill must be amended on the House floor to gain the votes they need to pass it on the House floor. And because of Senator DeMint’s objection to the appointment of the conferees, there will be no conference, or conference report.

If the House amends the Senate bill, they then have to send the amended bill back to the Senate — where all the 60 vote margin cloture votes still apply — cloture on the motion to proceed, and cloture to end the filibuster and cloture on any amendment.

Do I believe that this objection to the appointment of the conferees will kill ObamaCare? Yes, if the progressives or those 64 House Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment do not roll over and play dead.

This monkey wrench may explain why the White House is putting out the word that it wants the health care bill to pass the House after the State of the Union, in February.

You all can decide whether the DeMint objection could be the kiss of death to ObamaCare, but I offer the following to convince you that it is . . .

Do read the rest of the post. This ought to make for a brighter Christmas Day.

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And He Isn't A Rhino

This from the Politico:

POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican. . . .

Griffith’s party switch comes on the eve of a pivotal congressional health care vote and will send a jolt through a Democratic House Caucus that has already been unnerved by the recent retirements of a handful of members who, like Griffith, hail from districts that offer prime pickup opportunities for the GOP in 2010.

The switch represents a coup for the House Republican leadership, which had been courting Griffith since he publicly criticized the Democratic leadership in the wake of raucous town halls during the summer.

Griffith, who captured the seat in a close 2008 open seat contest, will become the first Republican to hold the historically Democratic, Huntsville-based district. A radiation oncologist who founded a cancer treatment center, Griffith plans to blast the Democratic health care bill as a prime reason for his decision to switch parties—and is expected to cite his medical background as his authority on the subject.

While the timing of his announcement was unexpected, Griffith’s party switch will not come as a surprise to those familiar with his voting record, which is one of the most conservative among Democrats.

He has bucked the Democratic leadership on nearly all of its major domestic initiatives, including the stimulus package, health care legislation, the cap-and trade energy bill and financial regulatory reform.

He was one of only 11 House Democrats to vote against the stimulus. . . .

This appears to be a move motivated more by ideology than concern for reelection, though the latter no doubt played some role. And obviously this Congressman has some strongly held beliefs that put him squarely on the conservative side of Republicans. His move to the Republican party is good news indeed. And as a bonus, it was heartening to hear this, also from Politico:

Griffith now has $619,000 in the bank to run as a Republican, a total boosted by contributions from several of the Democratic Party’s more liberal leaders. The political action committee of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer donated $10,000 to Griffith’s reelection this year, and even Pelosi chipped in $4,000 — prior to Griffith's August remarks

Heh. Welcome to your new home, Sir.

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Informed Votes

What we expect from Congress is that legislators are fully informed on the legislation upon which they vote and that, prior to the vote, the legislation is given a full and fair hearing. Never to my knowledge has legislation so often been rammed through as it has been in this Congress, with none of the legislators fully informed and the process specifically designed to circumvent debate. It is what one would expect to see in a banana republic. It is an atrocity, though some of the criticism for legislators goes off afield when it comes to calls for legislators to read every line of every piece of legislation being proposed.

Obama said that he wanted to remake America. He has attempted to do so by bypassing the processes built into our system to insure Democracy works. It worked with the stimulus. It has worked in the House with cap and trade. Obama tried mightily to do this with socialized medicine and a vast overhaul/expansion of financial regulation. But the electorate are pushing back - which we damn well should, since this violates the very spirit of our democratic form of government. That said, criticism goes afield when it calls for the legislators to "read every line" of every piece of legislation.

Democrats, instead of addressing the substance of this problem, are focusing on the narrow issue of "reading every line." There is no better example of that than Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH), a congressman who voted for Obama's stimulus and cap and trade. There can be little if any doubt that he voted for those bills without being aware of all that was in them. No one who voted for those bills did. Yet he tries to obfuscate his responsibility for those fundamental failings by shifting the issue:

Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02) believes reading every bill in Congress “would slow down the business of Congress to a crawl and it would be hard to get done what needs to be done.”

Members of Congress who don’t read the bills they are voting on “is not necessarily the major problem with the way Congress functions,” he said.

Hodes, who is the sole Democratic candidate in the race to replace the retiring New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, made the remarks during a recent editorial board meeting with the Nashua Telegraph.

“Hodes said it’s not realistic to expect members of Congress to read every bill word-for-word, as Congress took more than 2,000 votes in the session that ended in December,” the paper reports. . . .

Congress - and Hodes - should be vilified for their votes on stimulus and cap and trade. It violates every tenet of our democracy. We have every right to demand legislators understand what it is for which they are being asked to vote. But on the very narrow issue of "reading every line," Hodes has a point. It does not matter how an individual Congressman gets his knowledge of a bill, it only matters that they have the knowledge and they don't vote for legislation that has not been given a full and fair hearing. Those on the right and left who are rightly angered at what they see happening under Obama need to tighten their criticism - otherwise, people like Hodes and the other hundreds of his cronies that violated our democratic tenets will escape their responsibility.

(H/T Hot Air)

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Just What Is In Their Job Description?

When we vote for someone to go to the U.S. Congress, we expect them to read bills before they vote on them. But the Democrats have apparently redlined that from the job description of our Representatives.

CNS is reporting that they asked the No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer, "whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire [health care] bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote." Apparently, he found that humorous:

"House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

. . . In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said

Hoyer went on to state that staff's review bills, but the truth with this administration, as we've seen with cap and trade and the stimulus, is that bills are being pushed through with major midnight changes and not a single Congressman aware of what was in the entire bills prior to the vote. Reid and Pelosi rushing votes is a deliberate tactic designed to limit debate and prevent opposition from coalescing. It is a complete end around principles of democracy. I wish we had this one on YouTube.

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Dems, Democracy & Oil

Energy is at the top of issues facting America today. There are two competing visions of how to approach this problem. As the Washington Post asks today, why not debate the issue and have a vote on it? Wouldn't that be both the democratic and ethical way to handle this problem in a democracy? But then again, who ever accused our current crop of far left Democrats holding the reigns of power of either embracing democracy or placing ethical concerns over partisan ones.
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This from the Washington Post:

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There's a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won't be hearing it in the House of Representatives -- certainly, you won't find lawmakers voting on it -- anytime soon.

Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? "What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy," she said yesterday when asked that very question. "What we're saying is, 'Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.' . . . It is the economic life of America's families, and to suggest that drilling offshore is going to make a difference to them paycheck to paycheck now is a frivolous contention. The president has even admitted that. So what we're saying is, 'What can we do that is constructive?' "

If there is an explanation buried in there about why that makes offshore drilling off-limits for a vote, we missed it. Ms. Pelosi is correct that drilling is no panacea for the nation's energy woes. The short-term effect of lifting the moratorium, if there were any, would be minimal. That doesn't mean the country shouldn't consider expanded drilling as one of many alternatives. There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling -- environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?

When they took the majority, House Democrats proclaimed that "bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the Minority the right to offer its alternatives." Why not on drilling?

. . . If drilling opponents really have the better of this argument, why are they so worried about letting it come to a vote?

Read the entire article.

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Two Very Different Congresses

Heh

One country's Congress is torn by division, unable to pass major legislation, and highly unpopular. The other country's has come together to pass several major pieces of legislation and is today highly popular. Roll tape:



Gateway Pundit has the rest of the story and more.

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Oil Prices - Its Big Congress, Not Big Oil

I wrote in a post below that the big domesitc issue for Republians between now and November should be the price of gas, and laid out the basic facts in a seperate post here. Republicans need to end every speech between now and November with the words "drill and the prices will go down, vote Democrat and the prices go up - because they won't let us drill." Today, Mackubin Thomas Owens drives the point home that the villian at the pump is not big Oil, its big Congress:
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This today from Mr. Owens writing in the WSJ:

Gasoline prices are through the roof and Americans are angry. Someone must be to blame and the obvious villain is "Big Oil" with its alleged ability to gouge consumers and achieve unconscionable, "windfall" profits. Congress is in a vile mood, and has dragged oil industry executives before its committees for show trials, issuing predictable threats of punishment, e.g. a "windfall profits tax."

But if there is a villain in all of this, it is Congress itself. That venerable body has made it impossible for U.S. producers of crude oil to tap significant domestic reserves of oil and gas, and it has foreclosed economically viable alternative sources of energy in favor of unfeasible alternatives such as wind and solar. In addition, Congress has slapped substantial taxes on gasoline. Indeed, as oil industry executives reiterated in their appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 21, 15% of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits.

To understand the depth of congressional complicity in the high price of gasoline, one must understand that crude oil prices explain 97% of the variation in the pretax price of gasoline. That price, which has risen to record levels, is set by the intersection of supply and demand. On the one hand, world-wide demand has accelerated mainly due to the rapid growth of China and India.

On the other hand, supply has been curtailed by the cartel-like behavior of foreign national oil companies, which control nearly 80% of world petroleum reserves. Faced with little competition in the production of crude oil, the members of this cartel benefit from keeping the commodity in the ground, confident that increasing demand will make it more valuable in the future. Despite its pious denunciations of the behavior of U.S. investor-owned oil companies (IOCs), Congress by its actions over the years has ensured the economic viability of the national oil company cartel.

It has done so by preventing the exploitation by IOCs of reserves available in nonpark federal lands in the West, Alaska and under the waters off our coasts. These areas hold an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas – enough to meet the needs of the 60 million American homes fueled by natural gas for over a century. They also hold an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years.

This doesn't even include substantial oil shale resources economically recoverable at oil prices substantially lower than those prevailing today. . . .

If Congress really cared about the economic well-being of American citizens, it would stop fulminating against IOCs and reverse current policies that discourage, indeed prohibit, the production of domestic oil and natural gas. Even the announcement that Congress was opening the way for domestic production would lead to downward pressure on oil prices.

. . . As in the 1970s, U.S. energy policies have essentially restricted the exploitation of domestic sources of energy. Curtailed supplies have combined with rapid, world-wide energy demand to increase the price of oil and other sources of energy. This provides leverage to foreign producers and threatens U.S. energy security. Freeing up domestic energy resources will do today what President Reagan's decision to deregulate oil prices in 1981 did then: cause oil prices to fall, thereby enhancing U.S. energy security.

Read the entire article.

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A Humor Break

Thanks to Michael Ramierez for pointing out the increasingly obvious parallels between would-be President Obama and our own national train-wreck, Jimmy Carter.

And speaking of Carter, TNOY has the top 9 tag lines for the former President. My favorite, "If only I could have talked to Hitler." The only difference between Carter and Borah was that Borah displayed a bit more common sense. Also at TNOY, they have an exclusive on new Congressional legislation to repeal the law of gravity. Evidently, the Congress is absolutely giddy over their success in repealing the law of supply and demand as it pertains to oil and gas and are now ready for an even more ambitious project.

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Petraeus, Odierno, Iraq and Iran

Secretary of Defense Gates announced yesterday that General David Petraeus, currently the Commander of all Multi-National Forces in Iraq, has been nominated for the position of Centcom Commander with authority over our military in Iraq, Afghanistan and the larger Middle East. LTG Odierno has been nominated to take over the MNF-I Command Petraeus is vacating. These nominations have important political implications and may signal a willingness to begin to take on Iran and its proxy war.

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This from the Washington Post:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the public face of the war effort there, became President Bush's nominee yesterday to supervise U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia as head of Central Command, putting him in position to oversee American strategy in Iraq for years to come.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who worked closely with Petraeus as the No. 2 commander in Iraq until two months ago, was nominated to receive a fourth star and to take Petraeus's current job as the leader of Multi-National Force-Iraq. . . .

Read the article. Clearly Petraeus and Odierno are both emininently qualified duo for promotion to these positions based on their proven track record of success in Iraq.

This also means that new round of Congressional committee hearings will be scheduled in May or June to approve these nominations. This will put the issues of Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda and Afghanistan back squarely in the public consciousness to compete with the marathon Democratic nomination battle.

Lastly, and most importantly, it may well signal a hardening of our position against Iran. Both Petraeus and Odierno are vocal about Iran's proxy war. I wrote earlier that our next move should be a limited attack against Iran's Qods force and related assets on Iranian soil both as a necessary step for self defense and to put the threat of force clearly back on the table as to Iran's sprint towards a nuclear arsenal.

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Earmarks & Tin Ears

Congressional earmarks are perhaps the most emblamatic symbol of corruption and out of control spending by our government. Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has taken a clear and fiscally conservative stand against earmarks, promising not to sign a single bill with earmarks. Republicans lost the 2006 election in large measure because of their profligate spending and embrace of earmarks. So how idiotic is it that our Republican caucus is now going to break with McCain on his call for ending earmarks?

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Some things make you step back and wonder just how out of touch our leadership is in Washington. In both the House and the Senate, the Republican leadership talks about fiscal responsibility, but their actions tell another story entirely - one that suggests that they are fitting comfortably into their role as a minority party. This a few weeks ago from Instapundit on the problems in the House:

House Minority Leader John Boehner and his colleagues among the GOP leadership shanked one this week on the earmarks issue. A GOP slot opened up on the House Appropriations Committee, which signs off on the pet projects of lawmakers. If Boehner and company were serious about ending the earmark culture, which has badly undermined the credibility of Congress, they had a perfect man to fill the vacancy: Jeff Flake of Arizona. He has introduced more amendments to strike earmarks than any other member of the House, and putting him on the appropriations panel would have shown that the GOP was no longer just talking about earmark reform. Instead, Boehner and company settled on Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama.

Read the post here. Rep. Bonner is highly porcine. And in the Republican Senate, things are worse. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - himself a heavy feeder at the earmark trough - is providing something far less than stellar leadership on this issue. This from the Hill explains the situation:

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) may return to Capitol Hill this month to support an amendment imposing a one-year ban on earmarks, a move that could set up a divisive clash within the GOP caucus.

McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has long broken with most of Congress, including the Senate Republican leadership, in seeking an end to the practice of inserting line items in spending bills for parochial projects. . . .

“I absolutely would support such an amendment – and abolish [earmarks] altogether,” McCain said, according to the Red State blog. “As I’ve said, I will veto any earmark project that comes across my desk.”

McCain is highlighting his opposition to earmarks as a way to appease conservatives skeptical of his candidacy because of other issues, such as his support for a legalization program for illegal immigrants and campaign finance restrictions and his initial opposition to President Bush’s tax cuts. On the stump, he has criticized his Democratic opponents, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), for individually securing almost $4 million and $100 million, respectively, for pet projects in the fiscal 2008 spending legislation enacted in December.

McCain, who secured no pet projects in the recent spending law, calls them a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“I really can’t tell you, traveling and campaigning now for many months, how dispirited the Bridge to Nowhere or earmark and pork-barrel spending was to our Republican base,” he said on this week's conference call. “We lost in 2006 not because of Iraq but because spending got out of control.”

. . . A McConnell aide said the Republican leader probably wouldn’t take a position on the DeMint measure until after the GOP task force issues its recommendations. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, McConnell secured $126 million in individual earmarks in the recently enacted spending law; his deputy and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl earmarked $2 million; the third-ranking Senate Republican leader, Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), inserted $6 million individually; GOP Policy Chairwoman Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) racked up almost $42 million in projects; and Conference Vice Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) got $14 million.

If McCain returns and lobbies his members to support an amendment that the leadership opposes, it could test rank-and-file members to support either their nominee or their Senate leaders.

“McCain is a Senate reformer who’s locked horns with our leadership for years,” a GOP aide said. “But now he’s our nominee and the old bulls will have to decide if their pork is more important than our party’s future.”

Read the article here. As Bluegrass Roots puts it:

So Mitch McConnell has a choice: (1) continue his campaign strategy of bragging about how how pork and government waste he can bring to KY in order to secure support for himself, or (2) go with "conservative" principles and end earmarks for the sake of John McCain and the Republican Party.

But when it comes to Mitch McConnell, one thing should be certain: the only thing he cares about is himself and his own power. McConnell does not have any principle and will do whatever is necessary for himself. So, as the GOP aide said in the story, Mitch indeed will have to "decide if (his) pork is more important than (his) party’s future."

Don't hold your breath folks, I can tell you how this story ends.

Read the post here. If Republicans succeed in recapturing either the Senate, the House, or the Presidency, it will be on the strength of John McCain's national security credentials and his very principled position to reform our government. It will be over the kicking and screaming of our current tin-eared Congressional Republican leadership. This really will be a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party. As Ed Morrisey states:

A vote for fiscal responsibility will put McCain in conflict with the GOP? The party won’t back McCain on earmarks, even though his improbable come-from-behind victory for the party’s nomination shows exactly how seriously the Republican voters take fiscal responsibility, transparency, and accountability?

This shows the deafness that comes from living within the Beltway for too long. If the Republicans didn’t lose in 2006 because of Iraq, nor because of profligate spending, nor because of corruption generated from the nexus of political contributions and earmarking, exactly why do these geniuses think they’re in the minority? Misaligned stars in the firmament? Not only did the voters send a message on corruption, they had it delivered by FedEx with two signatures and a return receipt. Yet the survivors of 2006 somehow think that fiscal responsibility doesn’t matter.

Read the post here. This tin ear among our Congressional Republican leadership is setting up a battle that they cannot possibly win in the long run and that can only do untold damage to the conservative cause.

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