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Via Gerard Van Der Luen at the great American Digest Blog, comes the story of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, an Indian spiritualist who has managed to convince some four hundred men to castrate themselves.
Rumor has it that, following the vote on funding for the President's immigration bill, his mission accomplished, Mr. Singh will soon be leaving his current job as a motivational speaker for Congressional Republicans.
Who didn't watch with amusement yesterday as Republicans refused to vote for Boehner's bill to make permanent the Bush era tax cuts for all Americans earning less than $1 million per year. It would seem that the Keystone Cops are alive and well in the Republican wing of Congress. As Gerard van der Luen of American Digest is wont to say, "Republicans, they thirst for death."
Republicans have precisely zero leverage on tax rates. Come January 1, all of the Bush era tax cuts expire and all the tax rates will go up automatically - and quite unfairly, Republicans will get the blame. Moreover, the centerpiece of Obama's tax plan was to raise tax rates on "the rich." It is time to give the people what they voted for. If four years of gross economic incompetency wasn't enough to convince the electorate, well, let's let them have the next four years good and hard indeed. Obviously, more lessons are needed.
In this instance, Republicans prepared to die on the hill of stopping higher taxes is much like Picket's charge - a suicidal act that did nothing beyond sealing the doom of Lee's Army of the Potomac. One of the first rules of warfare - don't reinforce failure, reinforce success - or at least where you have the greatest likelihood of success.
Where House Republicans hold absolute power is on spending. Give Obama whatever tax increase he wants, but then shut down the government over the budget ceiling. Moreover, refuse to pass anything but a life support budget until all sides agree on - and pass into law - a grand bargain that in real terms, sans the usual accounting gimmicks, will decrease the debt by 25% over the next four years.
Debt is where the real issue lies. Sure, Obama's tax increases will hurt the economy - but they won't kill it. Our continued accumulation of debt will. Between Obama's world record profligate spending and Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke, who is keeping our printing presses spinning at a record pace, they are placing our nation in mortal peril. Obama and Bernanke are setting the stage for runaway inflation and the devaluation of the dollar. That is where Republicans need to draw the line in the sand - this far, and no further.
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Before President Obama called Rep. Paul Ryan's budget "thinly-veiled social Darwinism" last week, I must confess, I had never heard of "social" Darwinism. Jonah Goldberg has stepped into the breech to explain the history of the term. Apparently, it is part of the lexicon used by the left to tar the "robber barons":
. . . Merle Curti in The Growth of American Thought argued that Social Darwinism “admirably suited the needs of the great captains of industry, who were crushing the little fellows when these vainly tried to compete with them.” Henry Steel Commager wrote in The American Mind that “Darwin and Spencer exercised such sovereignty over America as George III had never enjoyed.” And of course Robert Reich has said that Social Darwinism “offered a perfect moral justification for America’s Gilded Age, when robber barons controlled much of American industry, the gap between the rich and poor turned into a chasm, urban slums festered, and politicians were bought off by the wealthy. . . . The modern Conservative Movement has embraced Social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism.”
The only problem: None of this is true either. Yes, Andrew Carnegie was a follower of Herbert Spencer and lots of people referenced “natural law” (though rarely as a reference to Darwinian evolution). But for the most part the captains of industry couldn’t care less about this stuff. As Robert Bannister and Irwin Wylie (and more recently Princeton intellectual historian Thomas Leonard) have painstakingly documented, the captains of industry in the 19th century were not particularly influenced by, or even aware of, Darwin and Spencer. This shouldn’t surprise anybody. “Gilded Age businessmen were not sufficiently bookish, or sufficiently well educated, to keep up with the changing world of ideas,” writes Wylie. “As late as 1900, 84 percent of the businessmen listed in Who’s Who in America had not been educated beyond high school.”
Overwhelmingly, businessmen of the period were influenced by Christianity first, classical economics second, self-help inspirational nostrums a distant third, and egghead notions about biology almost not at all. Cornelius Vanderbilt read one book in his entire life. It was Pilgrim’s Progress. And he didn’t get to it until he was past the age of 70. “If I had learned education,” Vanderbilt famously quipped, “I would not have had time to learn anything else.”
Also, it’s worth noting that the so-called red-in-tooth-and-claw Gilded Age was a time of massive, historic economic growth. It was when America overtook Britain as the economic powerhouse of the globe. That’s one reason the left has always hated it. When Europe was boldly embracing socialism, America was proving that capitalism was better at generating wealth and lifting people out of poverty. Moreover, as anybody who’s been in a library, hospital, university, or concert hall bearing the name of Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, et al, can attest, the “Robber Barons” didn’t remotely believe in letting the little guy fend for himself or that wealth was a reflection of either moral superiority or evolutionary “fitness.” Even the one real Spencerist in the bunch, Andrew Carnegie, believed that “the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry—no idol more debasing than the worship of money.” He believed that the man who “dies rich dies disgraced” and himself died one of the most famously generous philanthropists in the world.
One reason the term “Social Darwinism” caught on with progressives was that it served to divert attention from the sins of “reform Darwinism”—i.e., the progressive passion for eugenics. The progressives advocated aggressive statist intervention to improve the genetic stock of the country, while the alleged Social Darwinists championed laissez-faire and private charity and—gasp—reproductive freedom. Moreover, the term Social Darwinism, which in Europe was used to justify nationalist and racist theories of the Hitlerian variety, was the perfect label for playing guilt-by-association in America. Ever since Hofstadter’s book, liberals have used the term to accuse conservatives of desperately wanting to return to a past that never was.
On April 4, Mitt Romney had his turn in front of the newspapermen. “The president came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making—and criticized policies no one is proposing. It’s one of his favorite strategies—setting up straw men to distract from his record.”
One suspects that even Romney had no idea how right he was.
And for a bit more clarity, here is the great economist, Milton Friedman, discussing the place of the "robber barons" in our economic history:
"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there."
Mitt Romney, CNN Interview, 1 February 2012
As Mark Levin asked on his show the other day, does Romney have a clue about capitalism? I would add, does he have a clue about the failure of the welfare state, the plight of those caught in generational poverty, or for that matter, the role of Democrats in insuring that nothing is done about it?
My gravest concern about Romney's electability is that the left is going to be able to successfully portray him as a combination Dr. Evil / Gordon Gecko / Robber barron in what is going to be a take no prisoners bout of class warfare. And if they do, Obama may well win. After all, if nothing else, Romney's campaign has taught us how saturation negative ads can indeed work to destroy one's opponent, irrespective of fairness or accuracy.
What Romney said in the quote above is beyond tin ear. It not only plays right into the left's class warfare meme, it just shows almost a complete failure to grasp the plight of America. The left will make a huge deal out of this. The right should also, as we are getting very close to making this man our nominee for President.
What a conservative candidate should have said:
President Obama's economy has driven millions of people into poverty and threatens to drive many more there unless we turn things around. History tells us with 100% certainty that the way to do that is through capitalism and wealth creation.
And yet, President Obama answer to all of this is to punish wealth creation out of "fairness." That language is also found in the history books. It is the language of class warfare, of socialism, and of economic ruin. Obama's appeal to "fairness" falsely appeals to our sense of justice. Inevitably, it will cripple our nation and make life that much harder for our declining middle class.
President Obama thinks he can tax and regulate us to prosperity. He thinks that he can do better than capitalism by pouring billions into creating new markets out of whole cloth with huge government mandates. President Obama's idea of capitalism is crony capitalism, where he, not the marketplace, picks the winners and losers. It is great if you are a crony of the President - but it hurts every other person in this country. No nation on earth has ever succeeded with the economic policies this President embraces.
But even beyond that, the welfare and entitlement society are driving our nation into bankruptcy. As to the welfare state, it has utterly failed the many poor in our society who are caught in generational cycles of poverty. It is a tragedy and a travesty that fifty years on from the start of the welfare state, 25% of the black population is still living below the poverty line. But we know how to stop that cycle. Education is the key. To paraphrase Juan Williams, the most important thing we can do for the perennial poor is to allow their children to receive precisely the same level of quality education that President Obama's children receive.
Sasha and Malia are receiving the very finest education available in a private school in Washinton D.C. Yet one of the first acts of President Obama was to end a program that gave the poor children of Washington, D.C. the opportunity to get that same education as his children. Instead, President Obama consigned the DC's poor to the worst public educational system in America. He did that because the Teacher's Unions - the economic foundation of the Democrat Party and the single biggest impediment to improving education in America - complained.
Unfortunately, if you vote for President Obama, if you are poor or, for that matter, for many in the middle class, your children will never get that opportunity that Sasha and Malia Obama have. There is no excuse for any child born of this country to be forced into a substandard education. Unfortunately, that cycle will never end under President Obama and the Democrats, because they value the dollars they get from the Teachers' unions more than they care about the generational poor in this country.
We really are at an absolutely critical point in our nation's history. Progressivism has built up in our machinery of state to levels that have worked fundamental change to our nation and that threaten to drag us down into bankruptcy and societal failure. Wholesale fundamental changes need to occur to clean out the machinery before it becomes irrevocably broken. Our educational system desperately needs to be overhauled. The out of control regulatory bureaucracies need to be systemically altered to restore democratic control. The EPA should never be able to regulate carbon without an affirmative vote of Congress. HHS should never be able to force Christians to fund acts that directly violate their religion's core beleifs without an affirmative vote of Congress. The FCC should never be able to unilaterally exercise control over the internet without an affirmative vote of Congress. The methods by which the left funnels hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to left wing organizations needs to end. Unions need to be brought to heel. No person in America should be forced to pay dues to a union simply so that they can get a job in a particular industry. The greens' keys to the courthouse, where decisions are made that should only be made by Congress, needs to end. The left's war on our military needs to end before we become so weakened that other nation's are willing to become adventurous. And then there are the entitlement programs that have us on the knife's edge of ruin.
I look at all of the above and ask myself, will Romney make any of those changes? Does he have a vision for America that addresses any of these fundamental issues? I don't think so. At best, I think that he will tinker around the margins for most of them. Villagers With Torches has a very good post up answering the question similarly. But each primary voter really needs to look at it and answer that question for themselves. Romney would be better for America than Obama, true, but is he, at this critical moment, the best choice that Republicans can make?
Allen West is one of the Republican party's most important national assets. He is deeply conservative, highly articulate, very intelligent, intellectually honest and a darling of the Tea Party movement. That he is also black gives extra weight to his highly critical commentary on the racial politics of the left. He is, by every account, a rising star in the Republican Party with national prominence. For all of these reasons, Rep. West is at the very top of the DNC's hit list of seats to challenge in 2012.
I know the world Allen West grew up in. He was a twenty year soldier - and their is no greater melting pot than the U.S. Army. It is a true meritocracy. It is an environment where the color of one's skin is meaningless. I can well imagine that LTC West was as horrified as I by the reality of the racial politics of the left when he was forced out of the service and into the civilian world. For those who don't know, LTC West's career ended in Iraq when he received intelligence that he and members of his unit were being targeted for assassination by several Iraqis. He captured one of the plotters and fired off his weapon to induce the detainee to discuss the plot. That ended the LTC's career. When asked if he would have done it again if the same scenario presented itself, West was unapologetic, stating, "[i]f it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can." That is a soldier.
At any rate, Rep. West is a treasure of a Republican Party desperately in need of men and women like him. And yet, it appears that the Florida Republican Party, led by a Romney supporter, Will Weatherford, is going to sacrifice Rep. West as part of the redistricting process:
One of Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesmen was Florida Representative Will Weatherford, and during the course of his remarks in the “Spin Room”, he shed a very dim light on the ongoing redistricting process in the Florida Legislature. Over the past several weeks, many Republicans have voiced their disappointment towards the Republican legislature after the release of the preliminary redistricting maps. Much of the ire concerns the proposed boundaries of Congressman Allen West’s 22nd Congressional District that would be redrawn to include far more registered Democrats.
West’s congressional district inexplicably sheds the most Republican electoral support, in comparison to all other incumbent Republican and Democrat Congressman. A few weeks back we quoted an unnamed legislator saying that, “Allen West was screwed”, a statement which was originally made about made five months before the proposed maps were made public, leading insiders to believe that the fix was in against Allen West. But in light of Weatherford’s comment, it is increasingly clear that this is a fait accompli. (Read more- Allen West is Screwed)
According to Weatherford, those preliminary maps will not change- at the most, any additional changes would be minimal, and those changes would not make any appreciable difference from the preliminary maps. In addition, Weatherford stated that a deal was struck between him, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and Senator Don Gaetz to finalize these maps and push them through as soon as possible. Weatherford also said that the proposed maps are in legal compliance with both the Voting Rights Act and Amendment 6.
So based on Weatherford’s comments, the 22nd Congressional District is now very much in play for the Democrat Party, and West is at an even larger disadvantage than he was previously- it will be a very difficult and expensive seat for Republicans to defend.
The only reasonable explanation for this is that the Florida Republican hierarchy has cut a deal with Democrats as part of the redistricting process. As the Shark Tank opined here:
So why would the “most conservative legislature” in Florida’s history look the other way as West’s congressional district lines are re-drawn? Is the fix really in to knock Allen West out of Congress? About five months ago, a very high ranking member of the Florida legislature gave me a very disturbing prediction regarding redistricting- “Allen West is screwed.” Take note that comment was made five months ago, long before the proposed maps were made public.
So are the poobahs in the Florida legislature really gunning to oust Allen West? Was a backroom deal made with the Democrat members of the legislature to put West’s seat into play in order to protect the other congressional seats that would favor any future runs for Congress by existing members of the Florida Legislature? The deals were struck, and the maps drawn behind closed doors.
It wouldn’t surprise us if this were the case. There is no love lost between the Florida legislature and Congressman Allen West, who has proven to be the anti-Republican establishment congressman. Back in the 2008 election cycle when West unsuccessfully ran for Congress, Republicans in the legislature did not support West. Former indicted Republican Party of Florida Boss Jim Greer and Governor Charlie Crist stayed out of the race until the very end, even after West’s Republican primary race was over.
Crist endorsed West four days prior to the general election, and Greer showed his support by writing West a personal check of $500 several weeks before the general election. This was also the case during the 2010 election cycle as state legislators sat on their hands, much like they did with Senator Marco Rubio. The Rubio saga is well documented, as the backdoor dirty deals and threats weighed heavy on the Rubio for Senate campaign against Crist.
In 2010, Will Weatherford, who is the current State House Redistricting Chairman, also supported Crist over Rubio before Crist left the GOP and ran as an Independent.
You may ask yourself why would the Florida GOP legislature not protect one of the most respected and beloved congressman in Washington D.C.? Could the reasons be as simple as sheer arrogance and self-political preservation by the Tallahassee elites?
There is rot at the heart of the Republican Party that I never knew existed until the start of the 2012 campaign season. What the Republican's are doing in Florida to Allen West is simply unforgivable. Weatherford and the Florida Republican Party needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms for this act.
You cannot fix these problems without talking about them," he said during a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). "And I look at what's happening in Washington, D.C., right now and I'm worried. I'm worried."
Obama is not talking about entitlements because he is waiting for the Republicans, Christie said, "And our new bold Republicans in the House of Representatives ... are not talking about it because they are waiting for him to talk about it.
"Whatever game that is being played down here, is irresponsible, it's dangerous."Gov. Chris Christie, Speech at AEI, 16 Feb. 2011
Chris Christie came to Washington to speak at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) today and lambasted those on both sides of the aisle for a lack of leadership. Given the fiscal Sword of Damocles hanging over our collective heads and Obama's complete absence of leadership, there is nothing that steadies the resolve at the moment so much as some good Christie porn. Below are the AEI videos posted so far on the speech. I will add more as they become available.
He will never be mistaken for Jimmy Stewart, but his impact on our national psyche promises to be much more far reaching. What will it take to get this guy to run for national office. What is his weakness? For Obama, just put him in front of a mirror. If you want to influence Berlusconi, it apparently takes a 17 year old Moroccan girl. It is much the same apparently for either Bill or Hillary. But for Christie - I don't know, maybe a lifetime supply of meatloaf? C'mon, we need to come up with something.
According to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, the Republican Party is the "anti-science party." His damning evidence:
THE ANTI-SCIENCE PARTY.... This segment . . . helps reinforce much of what's wrong with the state of critical thinking in the Republican Party.
"Real Time" host Bill Maher asked Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) a fairly straightforward question: "Do you believe in evolution?" Kingston not only rejected the foundation of modern biology, he explained it this way: "I believe I came from God, not from a monkey." He added, "If it happened over millions and millions of years, there should be lots of fossil evidence."
Seriously, that's what he said. . . .
Let's pause to appreciate the fact that it's the 21st century -- and Jack Kingston is a 10-term congressman who helps oversee federal funding on the Food and Drug Administration. . . .
In the larger context, there's a renewed push underway for the United States to value and appreciate science in the 21st century -- our future depends on it. And while this push is underway, Republican leaders are more comfortable walking a bridge to the 18th century.
What an embarrassment.
As a threshold matter, the deeply disingenuous Benen extrapolates that since there is one Republican congressman who believes in creationism, then all Republicans are anti-science. Talk about your non-sequiturs. That would be like me extrapolating that since Benen is such an intellectually dishonest donkey's ass, that all on the far left are likewise intellectually dishonest donkeys' asses. While I happen to believe that they are, it does not follow from the single example of Benen.
And while I happen to disagree with creationism or reading the bible too literally, so what. Belief in creationism versus the big bang theory and/or evolution - the latter both embraced by Catholicism and many Christians - has no practical effect on 99.99% of modern science. Embracing either position does not establish whether a person - or an entire group of people - is "anti-science" except in the far left fantasy of Benen.
One clear litmus test to divide the science embracers from the "anti-science" folk is whether a person embraces the "scientific method." The lynchpin of the scientific method is that the scientist postulating results must "document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them."
All of that said, one place where the science/anti-science divide is of absolutely critical importantance is in regards to the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The entire theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is built on mountains of "results" that have never been verified because, in the AGW world, it is not the custom to share the information necessary to verify the results.
Left wing researchers and institutions have made an art form out of excusing their refusal to provide such information and their justifications for refusing to respond to FOIA requests (See here, here, here, here, here). They do not practice the scientific method. Instead of allowing for replicability, they demand that we accept "peer review" as the gold standard for the reliabiilty of their results. But peer review itself, which does not involve replication, is anything but a standard of reliability. That is doubly true in the AGW world, where the Climategate e-mails provided clear evidence of bias and deliberate tampering with the "peer review" process by a small clique at the top of the AGW pecking order In short, AGW proponents, including Obama's EPA, are demanding that we accept their unverified theory on faith. That is the very definition of "anti-science."
One of the most shining examples of this comes out of NASA and the GISS. James Hansen, who oversees our temperature records, has spent years making unexplained adjustments to our historical temperature records, yet he has never made public the raw numbers, nor his calculations or justifications for making changes. And there are significant issues with even the most basic question of how NASA is measuring our temperatures to begin with. Moreover, Hansen's changes have been anything but uniform, with older temperatures being adjusted downward and more recent temperatures upward. So when Hansen announces that 2010 is the hottest year on record, he is not just asking us to take his assertion on faith, he is making a joke.
Now, interestingly enough, Benen is himself a true believer in AGW, as evinced by this supremely snarky article of two years ago, wherein he takes Palin to task for daring to question AGW theory:
I can appreciate Palin being embarrassed about her beliefs now; she's obviously well outside the scientific mainstream. . . .
But Palin's record is Palin's record, and the fact remains that she's so far out there, she's rejected the connection between global warming and human activity. Indeed, she's done so more than once. This not only tells us something important about Palin's understanding of public policy, it also tells us a great deal about how she perceives and considers evidence that runs counter to her ideology
So, Mr. Benen, since you are asking us to take the theory of global warming on faith when all we ask for is honest, replicable science, tell me again, who is it here that is anti-science? "What an embarrassment" indeed.
Republicans took 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in the 2010 election. That occurred because the majority of Americans were mad as hell - mad at the direction Obama was leading the country; mad at the way the left was thuggishly going about its business; and mad at the left's disregard of America's core principals. The majority of Americans voiced that anger in the lead-up to the 2010 election, and they were motivated by that anger to vote the Democrats to the most devastating defeat of either party in nearly a century.
Make no mistake, today's calls for "civility" from the left are nothing more than a call to curb the momentum of the right and to blunt their disagreement with the left's agenda. It is the last gasp of the left's recent effort to delegitimize conservatives with a blood libel - that the right's passioned disagreement with the left's agenda led to the mass murder in Arizona. And the only reason that effort failed was because virtually everyone on the right side of the aisle stood up and called "Bull S***!!!!!"
The right's problem over the past decade has been far too much "civility" whilst the left has daily used scurrilous ad hominem attacks to delegitimize the right. Obama, in just the past three months, has referred to conservatives as "hostage takers" and "enemies" of Hispanics. Rep. Clyburn has spent the past year calling the Tea Party movement "racist" and, most recently, described Sarah Palin as attractive but stupid. How's that for civility?
Where were the calls for civility when the far left was calling Bush a liar and comparing him to Hitler, or when they were calling Cheney the second coming of Satan? What about when the left were willing to do or say anything to undermine the war in Iraq and our nation's national security for their own political gain?
If the left wants civility, they should start with their own house. Knock off all the ad hominem attacks, apologize for the grotesque attempt to tar the right with a blood libel, and admit that their effort was undertaken without a shred of evidence. They should further come clean that the aim of this attack was not to improve civil discourse - charging your opponents with complicity in murder is not not conducive to that end - but was aimed at delegitimizing conservative speech. Until then:
And here is my prediction. Any new found "civility" on the left will not last more then nine days - which is when Obama will take the podium to give the State of the Union speech. You can rest assured he will make ad hominem attacks against the right. The guy is a child of the far left - and that's what the far left does. Intellectual honesty and a desire for robust debate on the issues are far from their strong suits. It's just that, up until a few days ago, their rhetorical paradigm usually worked.
Update: Don Surber expresses similar thoughts, as does I Own The World and Nice Deb.
Related: This on the intersection of left wing civility and logic (H/T Legal Insurrection)
When will our Congresscritters on the right figure out that their messaging is absolutely broken. They may be on the side of the angels, but as long as the left dominates the MSM, they have to work three times harder to get their message out.
Specifically what I am referring to was the left's gambit of having the CBO send a letter on day one of the 112th Congress asserting that repeal of the monstrosity of Obamacare would add $270 billion to the deficit.
Here is reality:
Ryan said this afternoon at the National Press Club that the only reason a Congressional Budget Office letter claims the national health care law will reduce the deficit--i.e. bring in more revenue through tax hikes and Medicare cuts than it spends on Obamacare--is because "the books have been severely cooked"--not by the CBO but by the Democrats who wrote the bill.
"CBO has to score what you put in front of them," Ryan explained. "And if you put a bill in front of them that ignores the discretionary cost of the $115 billion you need to spend to run this new Obamacare program, that double counts the Medicare savings, that double counts the CLASS Act revenue, that double counts the Social Security revenue, that does not count the "Doc Fix"--you add all that stuff up, net it out, we're talking about a $701 billion hole--deficit."
"So if you actually do real accounting, get away the smoke-and-mirrors, get away the budget gimmicks, this thing is a huge deficit-increaser. . . .
That's great. But if the general public doesn't hear it, it is useless. Every Republican in Congress should be jumping up and down on camera calling the left lying sob's for having CBO write this piece of fantasy and trying to sell it to the American people. Otherwise, what will happen is what I just watched a few minutes ago - on Studio B no less - where the story was Republicans pusshing ahead with an attempt to repeal Obamacare even though the CBO will add $270 billion to the deficit. End of story. Absolutely f*** incompetent idiots.
Over the past few weeks, I have been harping on the fact that the traditional national paradigm has disappeared. Americans recognize that we are on an unsustainable path and that the bill for decades of free lunches is now due. Americans only require some national leadership. The days when Democrats could demagouge entitlements are over. We see it in NJ with Chris Christie. Paul Ryan is trying to do the same thing at the national level. The problem is that our Congressional Republicans don't get it and are still too craven to act. Dick Armey articulated that thought on Meet The Press yesterday:
In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" over the weekend, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey issued a warning that Republicans risk being targeted by the Tea Party if they don't get with the program when it comes to signing onto fiscally conservative policy. . . .
"The difference between being on -- a co-sponsor with Ryan and not is a thing called courage," explained the prominent conservative voice. "So we're saying to the Republican Party , you know, 'Get some courage to stand up for the things that are right for this country. Don't stand there and, and, and hide from the issue because you're afraid of the politics.'"
Armey went to underscore his bottom line: "The issue of public policy that governs the future of my children is more important than your politics, and if you can't see that, we'll replace you." . . .
Several days ago, I wrote that Social Security is a corrupt Ponzi scheme that needs to be turned into a national 401k system. Moreover, this is not 2005. America recognizes that our whole entitlement system and debt spending needs to be radically altered. It is why November is going to be a wave election. But while America gets it, neither Democrats, who are again demagouging the issue of Social Security, nor Republicans, who are cowering in fear of the demagogouery, get it. Two very good posts today, one from No Oil For Pacifists and a second from Another Black Conservative, touch on those issues.
This from No Oil For Pacifists:
Finally, page 14 summarizes the Social Security "gap": "Over the infinite horizon, the shortfall (unfunded obligation) amounts to $16.1 trillion in present value."
Conclusion: I'm not saying there's no risk associated with stocks and bonds. But at least you own them--you have no right to Social Security benefits, which can be changed or eliminated by future legislation. And would you invest in a corporation that admits it will lose money within five years and run out of capital just over 20 years later? Even a mediocre stock market may be better.
Simply put, Social Security is unsustainable. So, which is more prudent? Or the Ponzi Scheme? Which is the greater gamble?
(links omitted)
And Another Black Conservative takes note of what can be deduced from Chris Christie's ever increasing popularity in bluest of blue New Jersey:
If Chris Christie can make the hard choices in a blue state like New Jersey and not suffer from it, then national Republicans need not worry about making the hard choices when they take control of Congress. The American people have pretty much figured out that the bill for decades of reckless spending has come due. They are pretty much ready to take the harsh medicine needed to put our financial house in order. All that is required is a dose of honesty from Washington and change in the national narrative.
Amen
There was an election in my small neck of the southern backwoods the other day. It is a purplish area that leans mildly to the right. We have perennially had Democrats on our county commission, and the occasional Democrat mayor. And the Democrats on our Commission have not done a bad job. I have been generally pleased with the local government.
Usually, in local elections, once when gets elected to the commission, its is a virtual certainty that they will retain the seat for a long time, at least unless they do something stupid and end up on the scandal sheet in the local dinosaur media. Even in tough times, incumbents have a very strong advantage.
Not this year. Republicans just swept the field. They won the mayor's spot and unseated the three Democrat incumbents on the county commission. One of those unseated was in my very small District, where we elected a black Republican to unseat a multi-term Democratic incumbent.
The people in my county are on the warpath. They are hunting anyone with a D next to their name. There is no doubt in my mind that this was not so much a local election as it was a referendum on our national political leadership. This of course does not mean anything for the rest of America, but I will be surprised if this does not play out similarly on a nation-wide scale come November. The Dems have every right to be scared.
Obama's latest - a recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid. Do you think there might be a reason to vet this doctor on how he intends to run those organizations? Listen for yourself.
Once again, Obama has appointed a radical left wing ideologue to a position of significant importance to our country. Moreover, Obama completely bypassed Constitutionaly mandated hearings to do so by recess appointment. Obama justified his recess appointment of this doctor in a speech yesterday on the grounds of Republican obstructionism:
"It's unfortunate that at a time when our nation is facing enormous challenges, many in Congress have decided to delay critical nominations for political purposes. . . These recess appointments will allow three extremely qualified candidates to get to work on behalf of the American people right away."
This should have brought all Republicans running out of the woodwork to set the record straight in no uncertain terms. It did not.
The Constituion provides, at Art. II, Sec. II that the President "shall have Power . . . [to] nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . all . . . Officers of the United States . . ." The Constitution further provides that the "President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." This power to make recess appointments was important prior to the era of mass transportation as Congress could be out of session for months at a time. Today, it seemingly exists to act as an end run around Congress. The most controversial use of the authority during the Bush Administration was Bush's appointment of John Bolton as UN ambassador. But even that appointment occurred only after Senate hearings.
What our Thug In Chief has done is skip the entire process of having hearings, let alone seeking the advice and consent of the Senate. The reason he did so had nothing at all to do with Republican obstructionism. This from ABC correspondent Jake Tapper:
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., echoed the president's suggestion, saying that “Republican lockstep stalling of Don’s nomination was a case study in cynicism and one awful example of how not to govern.”
But Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination.
Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.
“The nomination hasn’t been held up by Republicans in Congress and to say otherwise is misleading,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which would have held Berwick’s hearing.
Ummm, no, Sen. Grassley, it is not "misleading." It is a "damned bald faced lie to the American people, not to mention a cynical abuse of the power of recess appointments." Do please get your terminology correct as it is important that Americans understand precisely what is occurring. To continue from Mr. Tapper:
Grassley said that he “requested that a hearing take place two weeks ago, before this recess.”
Berwick’s nomination was sent to the Senate in April, and his hearing had not been scheduled because he was participating in the “standard vetting process,” a Democratic aide on the Senate Finance Committee told ABC News.
But speaking not for attribution, Democratic officials say that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., nor Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, were eager for an ugly confirmation fight four months before the midterm elections. . . .
And there you have it. Our Thug In Chief and his fellow Congressional thugs did not want to have unpleasant questions asked of Dr. Berwick or about Obamacare. That is not Republican obstructionism. That is not remotely a legitimate use of the recess appointment authority. It is an incredibly cynical end run around Congress justified on a gross, bald faced lie to America.
Besides Sen. Grassley, responses to Obama's thuggery have come from Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnel and Democratic Senator Max Baucus:
Echoing Republicans, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Wednesday blasted the Obama administration for sidestepping Congress to install Donald Berwick atop the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
"Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee — and answered," Baucus said in a statement.
Berwick had not been vetted by the Finance panel, nor had Baucus scheduled a hearing to examine the nominee.
Baucus's office did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Baucus is the first Democrat to criticize the recess appointment, which Republicans have blasted.
“As if shoving a trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn't enough, apparently the Obama administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the American people yet again by recess-appointing one of the most prominent advocates of rationed healthcare to implement their national plan," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement.
McConnell criticized Democrats for not holding a confirmation hearing for Berwick, and suggested the party was trying to avoid tough questions about the healthcare reform law.
"Democrats haven't scheduled so much as a committee hearing for Donald Berwick, but the mere possibility of allowing the American people the opportunity to hear what he intends to do with their healthcare is evidently reason enough for this administration to sneak him through without public scrutiny." . . .
Our Congressional Republicans simply don't understand how to communicate. Honesty and emotion - so long as it is justifiable and honest - are key to effective communications. While you should never overstate your case, understating is equally as harmful. So while McConnel's response is factually accurate, it lacks both the simple honesty and emotion to make it memorable and newsworthy. What should have happened is that McConnel, Grassley, and all Congressional Republicans should have held a news conference where their spokesman, with anger and contempt dripping from each word, should have said that "Obama is lying to America and he is a thug who is shredding the Constitution." Then an explanation should have followed.
I understand the desire to be tactful and respectful of the President. But respect is earned - and if there is a single Republican in office who, at this point, thinks that Obama has done anything worthy of their respect, they have to be drunk or on medication. If Obama is obviously lying to America - as he is in this case - then he must be called out on it in no uncertain terms. Likewise, if he is abusing his power - as he is in this case - that also must be made clear to America. Otherwise Obama controls the narrative and, as Lincoln famously said, "you can fool all of the people some of the time." There is no excuse for Obama fooling anyone on these facts.
The single most unifying issue among Republicans, Tea Partiers and Independents is that Obamacare must be repealed. According to a recent Rasmussen poll:
Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide favor repeal of the recently passed health care law, including 49% who Strongly Favor repeal.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 36% oppose repeal. That figure includes 24% who are Strongly Opposed....
Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans and 65% of voters not affiliated with either major party favor repeal; 56% of Democrats oppose it.
So one would assume that any Republican lawmaker with the smallest iota of sense would fully support efforts to repeal this monstrosity. Think again:
Although they’ve called repeatedly for repeal of the Democrats’ new health reform law, some senior Senate Republicans have not endorsed a bill that would actually do it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), GOP Conference Chair Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Conference Vice Chair Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have all argued that the reforms — passed in March without Republican support — will hike costs and erode services, and therefore should be scrapped. Yet they haven’t signed on to their party’s repeal proposal.
That bill — just nine words long — has been endorsed by other party leaders, including Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the minority whip, and John Cornyn (Texas), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
That McConnell, Alexander and Murkowski haven’t done the same, some experts say, could erode the Republicans’ election-year message that the Democrats’ health reforms will do more harm than good. . . .
I am racking my brain in an attempt to think of any logical reason the Republican Party leadership would fail to support the single most popular cause in America since canned beer. The only thing that I can come up with is that perhaps they want a bill that does not merely repeal Obamacare, but that offers a sensible and cost effective alternative. If that is in fact their desire - and I am really, really praying it is - then maintaining a cone of silence and refusing to explain their reticence only makes the Republican Party look uncoordinated, ineffective and as far removed from the type of leadership America wants and needs as the Democrats now in control of Washington. These Republicans are deeply in need of an invitation to the next Tea Party rally.
A joke the other night that was vintage Leno:
Last week, President Obama gave a speech in New York City about his plan to reform these rules on Wall Street, you know? And one embarrassing moment. When the head of Goldman Sachs was going through security, he was asked to empty his pockets and five Republican senators fell out.
It was also vintage bull patties. The Democrat Party long ago became the party of the wealthy. And it is also the party of Wall St. The reality is that Goldman Sachs was the second largest contributer to Obama's election campaign. And billionaire hedge fund manager, John Paulson, the man at the center of the SEC complaint against Goldman Sachs, also appears to have favored Democrats with his largesse. He gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in June, qualifying him as a major Democratic donor. Leno's joke, though quite funny, was playing to a narrative, not reality.
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.
We The Government indeed. Cartoonist Michael Ramirez is certainly one of the most perceptive individuals of our generation. The only thing he missed was the signature block, with Obama's name written in the size of John Hancock's.
Is there anyone on the right who does not realize we are in a zero sum ideological war in America today? It is not only against the progressive left in Congress, but equally against a MSM in the pocket of the progressive left. For instance, this today from MSNBC:
[I]n a week when Democrats are celebrating the passage of a historic piece of legislation, Republicans find themselves again being portrayed as the party of no, associated with being on the losing side of an often acrid debate and failing to offer a persuasive alternative agenda.
The party of "No?" You have got to be kidding me. Republicans were virtually shut out of the health care negotiations. They made attempt after attempt to influence health care legislation, only to be rebuffed.
If you want to see a "party of no," take a look at the left. When Bush attempted to fix a Social Security system clearly destined to fail, changing it from a ponzi scheme to essentially a personally owned, government administered 401k, the Democrats utterly refused to engage in any sort of dialogue or to offer any alternative plans. Everytime someone says the party of no, we should be replaying:
There is your party of "NO."
And this bit about "failing to offer a persuasive alternative agenda" is almost as offensive. Rep. Paul Ryan did precisely that in his "roadmap" for America, posted on line in November. So ignored was it by the MSM that three days before the "healthcare summit" in February, Obama and Gibbs were quoted as calling on Republicans to post something online. It was outrageous.
But it also makes my point - that Republicans are utterly failing at communications. The three biggest things Republicans can do to help their chances are, one, to develop a far more effective communications apparatus, recognizing that the MSM is, but for Fox and the Wall St. Journal, an ideological enemy that will do them no favors. The second thing they need to do is to challenge major misstatements or spin in the press, pointing out the bias and hypocrisy of the press itself. The press likes to pretend to objectivity, so they may not like it, but they will have to run the criticism. Three, stop worrying about decorum and start accurately expressing emotion. If the President is lying to the American people - then damn it, use the word "lie," use it with passion, and then explain why. The left operates to a large degree on pure emotion while the right is far more restrained in expressing it. That has to change if the right is ever going to get its message across and make it stick with the electorate on a visceral level. I am not arguing for adopting the pure emotion and intellectual dishonesty that are the hallmark of today's progressive left, but rather marrying intellectual honesty with emotion.
It is not enough to stop the progressives at this point - to have a static trench warfare, to use military terminology. This is a new Cold War. And as were their socialist progenitors, our modern progressives must be fully delegitimized, defeated and sent to the dustbin of history.
Update: Having looked at Doug Ross's blog, perhaps it would be better to call this a newly hot war - as a civil war graveyard tells us that Democrats have been at war with our country for a very long time.
Welcome: Smart Girl Politics readers.
The title of this post comes from Powerline, where John Hinderaker attempts to describe the steaming pile of vacuous, disingenous, melodramatic hyperbole that is the NYT's Frank Rich. The theme of Rich's most recent column is "Joe Stack = Tea Party = mudrder = Republican" with a lot of very warm cow patties thrown in. It is so over the top that it moved John to do a full scale fisking. If there is a moral to this story, its don't piss off John. This is about the best fisking that does not conern Andrew Sullivan that I've seen to date. Here is the Rich column, and here is John's reply. Enjoy.
From respected Democrat strategist Charlie Cook - enjoy:
There is little more grotesque in its complete ignorance of history than listening to a left wing ideologue wax disingenuously on race in America. Today, its Howard Fineman telling us why Harry Reid - whom I defended below - should be forgiven for his "light skinned, negro dialect" comments on Obama:
Republicans don’t want to engage in a long, drawn-out discussion of who’s more committed to equality in this society, and who has done more politically for the African-American community in the last, oh, say, 40 years or so, because that’s an argument and a discussion Republicans are going to really look bad in, and they don’t want to continue it. Yes, Harry Reid made a very unfortunate remark, and, yes, it’s troublesome, but if you attempt to put the Republican party next to the Democratic party, it’s not only African-Americans who are going to look with the Democratic party with favor on questions of race relations but everybody else in the society pretty much, too.
What an utterly scurrilous man. Republicans would love a dialogue on race and equality. I personally have been screaming about it for years. The far left that controlls all aspects of the Democrat Party today is committed to anything but equality. To the contrary, what they practice is a form of paternalistic racism and what they seek is to use permanent victim class status to achieve political power. It is time once again to trot out a piece I wrote a year ago on the history of race and equality in America, updated with some information pointed out by a reader, O' Bloody Hell.
. . . Here are some facts, some of which you might not be aware:
- The Republican Party - the party of Abraham Lincoln - was borne in 1854 out of opposition to slavery.
- The party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan was, as Jeffrey Lord points out in an article at the WSJ, the Democratic Party. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is the only living member of the Senate who was once a member of the KKK.
- The 13th (abolishing slavery), 14th (due process for all citizens) and 15th (voting rights cannot be restriced on the basis of race) Amendments to the Constitution were enacted by Republicans over Democratic opposition.
- The NAACP was founded in 1909 by three white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats.
- The 1940 Republican Party Platform included the following:We pledge that our American citizens of Negro descent shall be given a square deal in the economic and political life of this nation. Discrimination in the civil service, the army, navy, and all other branches of the Government must cease. To enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness universal suffrage must be made effective for the Negro citizen. Mob violence shocks the conscience of the nation and legislation to curb this evil should be enacted.
- In fairness, it was the Democrat Harry Truman who, by Executive Order 9981 issued in 1948, desegregated the military. That was a truly major development. My own belief is that the military has been the single greatest driving force of integration in this land for over half a century.
- It was Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former Republican Governor of California appointed to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, also a Republican, who managed to convince the other eight justices to agree to a unanimous decision in the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education. That case was brought by the NAACP. The Court held segregation in schools unconstitutional. The fact that it was a unanimous decision that overturned precedent made it clear that no aspect of segregation would henceforth be considered constitutional.
- Republican President Ike Eisenhower played additional important roles in furthering equality in America. He "proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed those acts into law. They constituted the first significant civil rights acts since the 1870s." Moreover, when the Democratic Governor of Arkansas refused to integrate schools in what became known as the "Little Rock Nine" incident, "Eisenhower placed the Arkansas National Guard under Federal control and sent Army troops to escort nine black students into an all-white public school."
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by JFK - but it was passed with massive Republican support (over 80%) in Congress and over fierce opposition from Democrats who made repeated attempts at filibuster. Indeed, 80% of the vote opposing the Civil Rights Act came from Democrats. Women were added to the Act as a protected class by a Democrat who thought it would be a poison pill, killing the legislation. To the contrary, the Congress passed the Act without any attempt to remove the provision.
- Martin Luther King Jr. was the most well known and pivotal Civil Rights activist ever produced in America. His most famous speech, "I Had A Dream," was an eloquent and stirring call for equality. Rev. King was a Republican.
- "Bull" Connor was a Democrat.
. . . Nothing that I say here is to suggest that racism and sexism could not be found in the Republican party or among conservatives at any point in American history. But if you take any period in history and draw a line at the midpoint of racist and sexist attitudes, you would find far more Republicans than Democrats on the lesser side of that line. And you would find a much greater willingness on the part of Republicans, relative to the time, to effectuate equality. That was as true in 1865 as in 1965 - and in 2008.
Sometime about 1968, the far left movement emerged as a major wing of the Democratic Party. This far left wing hijacked the civil rights movement and made it, ostensibly, the raison d'etre of their wing. Gradually, the far left has grown until it is now the dominant force in Democratic politics. . . .
The far left fundamentally altered the nature of the Civil Rights movement when they claimed it as their own. They imprinted the movement with identity politics, grossly distorting the movement's goal of a level playing field for all Americans and creating in its stead a Marxist world of permanent victimized classes entitled to special treatment. The far left has been the driver of reverse racism and sexism for the past half century. That is why it is no surprise that, with the emergence of a far left candidate for the highest office in the nation, Rev. Jeremiah Wright should also arise at his side and into the public eye preaching a vile racism and separatism most Americans thought long dead in this country. Nor is it any surprise that the MSM, many of whom are of the far left, should collectively yawn at Obama's twenty year association with Wright. Wright is anything but an anamoly. To the contrary, he is a progeny of the politics of the far left.
The far left did not merely hijack the civil rights movement, they also wrote over a century of American history, turning it on its head. That is whyBob Herbert[Howard Fineman], quoted above, is able to wax so eloquently while spouting the most horrendous of deceits. The far left managed to paint the conservative movement and the Republican Party as the prime repositories of racism and sexism. The far left has long held themselves out as the true party of equality. They have done so falsely as, by its very nature, identity politics cements inequality. Beyond that truism, the far left has for decades played the race and gender cards to counter any criticism of their policies, to forestall any reasoned debate and to demonize those who stand opposed to them. They continue to do so through this very day.
For example, Obama has attempted repeatedly to play the race card so as to delegitimize criticism of his policies. And today we have the Governor of New York calling the McCain camp racist for belittling the executive experience one could expect to be gleaned from the position of "community organizer." Apparently, according to Gov. David Patterson, "repeated use of the words 'community organizer' is Republican code for 'black'." What Gov. Patterson is doing is the well worn trick of taking any criticism of something pertaining to one of the victim class and recasting it as an illegitimate attack on the victim class itself. These tactics, which the left has used with incredible effectiveness in the past, have done incalculable harm to our nation over the decades. . . .
Mr. Fineman, it is not that the right does not want to debate this issue. The truth is you and your ilk will never willingly engage in such a debate. I can assure you, any number of us on the right would jump at the opportunity to have such a debate. The right has the facts, you have labels and a rewrite of history that will not stand up to the least of scrutiny. You are not the heirs to MLK, and little to anything for which the left has stood for over the past several decades can be called equality.
