Republican Lessons for Election Integrity
By admin
It’s no secret the 2020 election was controversial. Election laws and procedures were thrown out the window in the middle of a pandemic, causing confusion and distrust surrounding the results in several states across the country. As a result, people are paying closer attention to how elections are conducted in their own states. Fortunately, here in South Carolina, we didn’t have the problems that other states had. Mainly because when Democrats brought their nationally orchestrated effort to try and sue their way to victory here, the South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) immediately fought back against those efforts in our state. That’s the first lesson for Republicans: You need to be ready to defend election integrity immediately. No matter what — no matter who gets squeamish about it. Within 24 hours of those suits being filed, we had a plan to intervene and fight back in court. Ultimately, the SCGOP fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won a complete and total victory. As a direct result, our election laws were protected before votes were cast. Unfortunately, other states didn’t do the same, and election laws were cast aside by judges or bureaucrats. In many cases, voting had already started when Republicans in other states began fighting back. That hesitancy cost them dearly. But just because South Carolina didn’t have problems that other states did in 2020, doesn’t mean it couldn’t in the future. So, starting at the beginning of the legislative session after the 2020 election, the SCGOP began working with state legislators to help tighten South Carolina’s election laws to prevent what happened in other states. That brings us to the second lesson: Use the energy that heightened awareness brings to make necessary changes. As a member of the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity Committee, I had a firsthand account to what went right and what went wrong across the country in the 2020 election. Using that information, we created a list of items the SCGOP wanted to see in an election integrity bill for South Carolina. Ultimately, a strong bill passed and was signed into law that included virtually every one of those items. The new law is full of common-sense measures that make it easy to vote but hard to cheat by banning drop boxes, banning ballot harvesting, and banning third-party dark money, like so-called “Zuckerbucks” from Facebook, from being given to local election commissions. Additionally, the law now requires the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number to vote via absentee ballot, and requires a witness to sign, print their name, and provide their address to witness a mail-in absentee ballot. It also requires more thorough and frequent voter-roll cleanups, as well as requiring post-election audits be conducted before a statewide election can be certified. Another critical provision from the law mandates uniformity among counties by placing local election commissions under the authority of the State Election Commission. Requiring uniformity ensures that every vote is being cast and counted under the exact same standards across the state. But before these reforms were signed into law, the SCGOP was working to make them become reality, which brings us to the third lesson for Republicans: When you’re in charge, be in charge. Supporters not only appreciate it, they expect it. When the SCGOP unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Legislature to pass a bill with these reforms, we didn’t stop there. We worked with legislators on specific language, and then equipped our supporters to become grassroots lobbyists to help get it passed. It’s another example of the rule that “elections have consequences.” By electing South Carolina’s biggest Republican majority in more than 140 years in 2020, we were able to pass what several organizations have deemed the most comprehensive and secure election law in the country. Importantly, that’s something Republicans need to keep in mind as we look toward reaping an electoral harvest from a potential red tsunami this November. Our supporters will want us to be in charge and deliver results. It’s one of the “consequences” of winning. We need to be ready and be bold — especially when it comes to defending our elections. Buzzworthy Commentary Grassroots Tips Uncategorized
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Religious Liberty and Republican Opportunity
By admin
The recent battles over religious liberty in Indiana and Arkansas demonstrate an ironic truth: that we are actually debating whether or not you can be forced to violate your faith in a country originally settled by people looking for the freedom to practice their faith. Let that soak in for a minute. The hysteria was truly something to behold. Liberals descended on Indiana and its politicians like flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Protesters stormed the state capital. Reporters ambushed flat-footed politicians and business owners. Corporations pontificated. Democrats huffed and puffed. Social media melted. The source of all the fuss was passage of state-level versions of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, simply mandating that government must have a “compelling interest” to infringe on religion (a higher legal standard), and that it must use the “least restrictive” means possible whenever it does. The federal version was probably the most bi-partisan, (nearly) unanimously passed law in modern American history (435-0 in the House and 97-3 in the Senate) and signed by Bill Clinton no less in 1993. Congress can’t generate that much bipartisan support for a resolution declaring water to be wet, but there it is, in all of its “hate mongering” glory. The liberal claim is that such laws are just a tool to discriminate against gays, but the unavoidable fact is that allowing people of faith to decline to participate in something that violates their faith (like a gay wedding) in a country whose First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion is NOT discrimination. (And just how do you “discriminate” against an activity?) As usual, the liberal hypocrisy was delicious. Democrat Governor Dan Malloy of Connecticut jumped to criticize and join a “boycott Indiana” movement despite having the same law in his own state. Many of the corporations who jeered the loudest do business in countries that not only lack religious freedom, but where women and homosexuals have NO rights whatsoever. The Forces of Intolerance Of course the media knew this, but chose to ignore it. Scalps had to be taken. The forces of “tolerance” now demand that government enforce their views on everyone else, and they eagerly engage in the public-relations lynching of anyone who disagrees. They have no “tolerance” for unconformity. As Pat Buchanan put it years ago, “If we’re going to have tolerance in this country, then there has to be tolerance for the views of the majority”. But it’s truly amazing how far and how quickly things have degenerated. On the issue of gay marriage, we have gone from “just civil unions”, to so-called “marriage equality”, to “you WILL celebrate and serve” and “You will NOT publicly object” Christian businesses are being sought out for legal retribution. Employees and even CEOs have lost their jobs simply because they contributed to referendums calling for the traditional definition of marriage. Individual supporters have even had their home addresses posted online to make organized harassment even easier. It’s all straight out of Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” liberal play-book: “Rule 12 – Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” Sound familiar? They’re working to isolate religious conservatives – particularly evangelical Christians – and marginalize them and make them toxic to others in order to chill public advocacy and philanthropy on their behalf. To make it difficult for them to live their faith and openly operate in polite society or even earn a living. Republican Opportunities You really have to wonder when Democrat leaders will get a little worried about their minions taking this whole anti-religion thing too far, considering the fact that religious Americans have been leaving their party for years (most recently including white Catholics). But if the party whose national delegates booed having a reference to God in their platform in 2012 wants to officially become the anti-religion party, Republicans should help them by reminding pro-faith Americans every chance they get. The point is that religious liberty is an incredible political opportunity for Republicans, if we will learn how to make the most of it. Lesson one is to know how to talk about the issue. And lesson two is to actually talk about it. Often. We need to recognize that liberals have won their major political battles by turning someone into a victim and winning the sympathy of Americans in the political mushy-middle. The media pounces, businesses cringe and politicians cave. It’s a familiar pattern. But now we have the opportunity to turn the tables and use the same tactic to great effect by framing the debate around our own victims. Republicans should remember that polls show a clear majority (over 70% in the latest Rasmussen poll) favoring the rights of Christian business people to live out their faith in the course of their business and not be made to choose between their faith and their livelihood. They should remember that tens of thousands of Americans responded with over $840,000 in less than 48 hours for a small pizzeria when it was threatened by the liberal grievance machine. How many politicians who trip over themselves to chase donors are paying attention? They should remember that religious conservatives are their most loyal supporters, and that the estimated forty to fifty million unregistered and/or nonvoting evangelicals on the sidelines are the largest untapped reservoir in American politics. But they have to be engaged on an emotional level. The Republican platform should continue to stand for traditional values and liberty, and grassroots conservatives should organize to reject the certain coming attempts to water down its support for the traditional definition of marriage. If that happens, we lose. Which is precisely why the liberal media will beat the drum for it next year Elections are about math. They’re about addition and the leverage (or multiplication) you get when your base is fully engaged and truly energized. In 2008 and 2012 that
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Lessons from the Obama Backlash
By admin
Now that Election Day is behind us (unless you live in Louisiana), a few lessons and observations from the Obama backlash… Obama Was the Issue At the risk of demonstrating a keen grasp of the obvious, Obama was THE issue in this campaign. Republican campaigns were like the gun store with the “Salesman of the Year” poster of Obama over the counter. And he was making the cash register ring. Liberals tried to suggest that 2014 was an “election about nothing”, but that’s because it was all about their guy, his agenda and the big government that comes along with it. Obama was such an issue that many Democrat candidates wouldn’t admit to voting for him, or even that they supported him and his policies – to which Obama quickly reminded everyone that, yes they did. Leave it to a narcissist to confirm that it was all about him. The results speak for themselves. Democrats even lost in deep blue states like Maryland and Illinois…a few of the places where Obama actually dared to campaign. In a happy bit or irony, half of the Senate Democrats who voted for Obamacare are now gone. If you accept (as Democrats suggested) that Obama had a mandate for “Hope and Change” after the 2008 election, you have to admit that it’s as gone as a goose in winter now. Republicans Still Need to Define an Agenda In 1994 Republicans successfully nationalized the off-year elections around an issues based agenda. It worked spectacularly. Then in 2010 and now they succeeded simply by “not being Obama”, which tells you something about how popular Obama is with voters. But that won’t be enough in the next election. Democrats will continue to run away from Obama like scalded dogs because his ineptness has given the big government their agenda needs such a bad name that they will eventually need to throw him under the bus. That goes double for the next Democrat presidential nominee. Remember, for liberals, government is never the problem. It is always that someone is just “not doing it right”, or it just needs a little more of your money. The success of their agenda always takes priority, even if that means violating politically correct “ethics” and blaming a guy who happens to be the first black president. The best way to put forward a national governing vision is to start legislating now, not simply sit back and leave defining an agenda up to the next Republican presidential nominee. 2015 offers the GOP the perfect opportunity to use Obama as a foil to define what they are, and what Democrats are by way of their opposition. They need to demonstrate just who the problem is by piling bill after bill on Obama’s desk – including a repeal of Obamacare – and make him have to keep switching veto pens because they run out of ink. Gridlockamageddon is Coming! You think you’ve seen gridlock? You ain’t seen nothing yet baby. You can almost hear it now, the copious wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media and the DC political class about more gridlock and obstruction now that Republicans run both the US House and the Senate. Even in defeat, Harry Reid set the table with his “congratulatory” statement, saying, “The message from voters is clear: they want us to work together”. Really? If voters wanted a Congress that would “work with Obama”, they must need glasses or they would have voted to put Democrats in control. Instead they voted for Republicans who made it quite clear that they opposed Obama, Obamacare and Obamanomics, and would work to rein him in. In other words, they voted for what the media will call obstruction and gridlock. Have you ever noticed that “gridlock” or “obstruction” is usually defined as Republicans not giving Democrats what they want? But if it was gridlock for House Republicans not to work with Senate Democrats and a Democrat President, will it be gridlock for a Democrat President not to work with a Republican House and a Republican Senate? Don’t hold your breath. The gridlock apocalypse is upon us! Good Candidates Matter Much has been made by political establishment types over suggesting that Republicans did well because they kept too many kooky conservatives from being nominated this year. They say the lesson is that when they pick the candidates, Republicans will prevail. But the fact is that good candidates usually do well (or at least better) regardless of the political environment or what they believe. Being a good candidate who can effectively communicate is divorced from “what” is being communicated, (see: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton). Republicans fielded high-quality candidates in most races this year, and it clearly made a difference. But don’t let anyone suggest that conservatives don’t make good candidates. Just look at Joanie Ernst in Iowa, and Ben Sasse in Nebraska, both supported by Tea Party conservatives. (See also: Scott Walker, Tim Scott, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, etc.) It’s just a fact of life that there is large group of people in politics who just want to win, and they and their money gravitate towards quality candidates who look like they can. If conservatives start spending real time focusing on identifying the best candidates to run up and down the ballot in 2016 and start coalescing around them, odds are more of those fence sitters will come along for the ride. Enjoy the win…but start getting ready for the next fight.
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The Thrill is Gone in the Cult of Obama
By admin
Things aren’t fairing so well with the Cult of Obama lately. In fact, if there could be a theme song to Obama’s second term as President, it would have to be B.B. King’s “The thrill is gone”. All the polls are singing in harmony. According to the latest AP poll, Obama has reached his lowest approval rating ever of 40% and his highest disapproval ever of 59%. More important, 57% now say that he can’t manage the government effectively. It’s hard to keep a cult going if people think that you are a lousy leader. On immigration, over 2/3’s of Americans disapprove of how he is handling the issue. In fact, for the first time in a long time more Americans have a favorable view of Republicans on immigration than Democrats, by 29-25% respectively, (a net flip of ten points since May). Obamacare continues to eat at his political fortunes like a cancer. The latest poll from the Kaiser Foundation showed not only the highest level of disapproval for Obamacare, but the highest jump in disapproval in the history of that poll, with 53% now opposing the law, (an increase of eight points since June). It’s a good bet that personal experience and “word of mouth” advertising are killing it. Add this to the businesses that are now getting estimates on next year’s insurance costs, (and about to take action accordingly), and you get nothing but political headwinds for Obamacare (and its authors) as far as the eye can see. Regarding foreign policy, (which has been Obama’s best measure with the public), the AP poll now shows outright majorities of between 57% and 60% disapproving of his handling of the major issues of the day; from Israel’s conflict with Hamas, to Afghanistan, to Russia and the Ukraine and Iraq. Then there is Obama’s latest achievement of presiding over the addition of over seven trillion dollars to the national debt – more than all of our debt from George Washington to Bill Clinton combined, (for a total of over $153,000 per household). Little wonder that the latest NBC News poll shows 76% of Americans believing that their children’s generation will not have things better than they do, up from 60% just prior to the onset of “Hope and Change”. When people are pessimistic about the future, they tend to lose interest in what you have to say. The “Too little, too late” award goes to the respondents of the recent CNN/Gallup poll with 53% saying that they would now vote for Mitt Romney, and only 44% expressing support for Obama. This should leave Democrats a little sweaty over whether voters want to send them to DC to support a guy that most of them now wish that they hadn’t elected in the first place. Most interesting is the flip in support among women, with 52% to 45% now supporting Romney over Obama – almost the inverse of how they voted in 2012, (44% vs. 55% for Obama). Now you know why Democrats keep spending so much time talking about an imaginary Republican “war on women”. Obama has become so politically toxic that even the Obama-endorsed incumbent Democrat Governor of Hawaii (an Obama “home” state) lost his primary 67% to 31% to a challenger that he outspent by more than ten to one. Of course all second term presidencies fall prey to diminished enthusiasm. They get mired in either events, politics, scandal or all of the above, and none ever really make much of a comeback once they take a nosedive. People tend to move on. As George Burns once put it, “you can re-light a cigar, but it’s never the same”. But it’s even worse when your popularity was built on emotion regarding a man rather than ration or reason. When the man ultimately fails (and they always do), what’s left to keep people drinking the Kool-Aid? It’s like an over-inflated market bubble that finally pops. The politics of emotion are always more prone to manipulation, and can climb quicker and easier than anything built on reason, simply because we are emotional creatures – which is exactly why so many politicians resort to it. It’s the political version of the “Dark Side” which, as Yoda pointed out, is “quicker, easier and more seductive”. But it ends in a bad place. The Cult of Hope and Change was all about Obama when it waxed and it’s about him now as it wanes. It’s waning because Americans are now well beyond their “emperor has no clothes” moment. And that’s exactly how a cult collapses; people see the leader for what he really is. “The thrill is gone; the thrill is gone away… You know you done me wrong, and you’ll be sorry someday.” Someday is fast approaching.
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Celebrating Independence and Separation of Powers
By admin
As Americans gather to celebrate Independence Day, it is a good time to take a moment and reflect on the importance of what that independence bought us – that being the freedom to create a government structure that separates power. No matter what your side of the political divide, the fact is that the fortunes of politics will ebb and flow, but in the end it is in everyone’s best interests that political power be divided. More to the point, the very reason that our Constitution separates power is to prevent its arbitrary use. Specifically, executive power, since it resides in one individual. It’s a pretty important thing. We fought a war over it. But lately the news is regularly filled with the latest blustery statements from Obama about how “if Congress doesn’t act”, he will, along with edicts that fail to show any clear constitutional or congressional authority. Obama repeatedly says that he only takes unilateral executive action because “Congress chooses to do nothing”. But choosing to “do nothing” is itself a choice. It means that a large enough group of people wanting to do “something” does not yet exist. In other words, the real problem is that they don’t want to do what Obama wants to do. Therein lies the problem. If a president can re-interpret laws or apply them as he chooses, then what’s the purpose of having laws? What’s the purpose of a pretense of the separation of powers and having a legislative branch to make law? The reality is that lawmaking in a representative republic involves compromise and trade-offs among various factions of society to get a majority to eventually agree on a final product. Otherwise, people see the laws as lacking legitimacy because society has no “buy-in”. Of course the boundaries between executive and legislative power are always in tension, but Obama has come to find the boundaries inconvenient, so he simply ignores them. He wants to take shortcuts. Someone should remind him that he resigned his “law-making” gig several years ago in order to run for his current “faithfully executing the laws” job. The Supreme Court has sent him a few hints, thirteen unanimous ones since 2012 to be exact, the most recent regarding his abuse of presidential recess appointments and his claim that he gets to decide when the US Senate is actually in session. By the way, “unanimous” includes both of the Justices that were appointed by Obama. But there are actually people among us not named Obama who believe that the presidency should be stronger. Believe it or not, the New York Times’ ersatz conservative David Brooks actually suggested that we needed to “make the executive branch more powerful” in order to make the federal government more effective. He claimed that, because our political leaders can’t reach conclusions, we should give more power to the executive branch, since bureaucrats “are more sheltered from the interest groups than congressional officials”; have “more specialized knowledge”; are “removed from excessive partisanship” and would have more latitude to “respond to their own screw-ups”. Oh, really? Anyone even remotely familiar with any news related to the IRS, Obamacare, Solyndra, the Veterans Administration, or any number of other executive branch scandals would know that this is just so much piffle. The problem is not that the President doesn’t have enough power, but that Washington has far too much power – and covets even more. Among the key elements of our political system are stability and predictability. People can have relative certainty about tomorrow being free from capricious radical changes because some bureaucrat woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or decided that he needed to do a favor for a political patron, or create some new political advantage for his president via-a-vi the opposition. But that level of confidence is eroding. The more powerful the presidency becomes – no matter who is president – the higher the stakes will be in every election, along with matching levels of vitriol and odds of radical change and instability. There’s a name for such places. They’re called “banana republics”. Those who want to strengthen the presidency are really just people who are tired of not getting their way through the regular political process. But the fact is that, in order to protect liberty, our political system was intentionally designed to move slow and require broad support to get anything done. It’s a feature, not a bug. Don’t like it? There are plenty of countries with an autocratic El Presidente who will be happy to accommodate. We don’t need to become one of them.
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Lessons from Single Payer Health Care Nirvana
By admin
The last thing that people who want more government control of healthcare need is for people to see the bad things that can happen when the government controls healthcare. But that is precisely the problem that Democrats have now that the skeletons have tumbled out of the VA closet. The scandal suggests that the “death panels” that Democrats said would never happen under Obamacare in fact already exist in government-run VA healthcare. They come in the form of the secret waiting lists that caused the deaths of dozens of veterans, and the bureaucrats who decide who goes on the lists and how long you have to wait. Multiple reports have shown that Obama’s administration knew about the growing problem as far back as 2008, and a recent Washington Post report even documented that one VA Deputy Undersecretary went so far as to send a memo up the chain of command detailing seventeen different methods being used in the VA to cover up long wait times. It will come as no surprise to learn that not one single person has been fired as a result. For a president who finds time to pick up the phone to congratulate the 249th pick of the NFL draft, you would think that he would have found the time in over five years to make a few calls about this. Instead we get the usual rhetoric that Obama “just found out”, that he’s “mad as Hell” and that they are “investigating the problem”. This pattern is usually followed months later by “we’re still investigating”, then even later by, “that’s old news, what are you, a Fox News reporter?”. They are turning on the fog machine because they have a fundamental political problem, given that this is exactly what they want the American health care system to look like, (that being big, government-run, and inescapable for the people who have to use it). Obama himself was quoted telling the labor unions that, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care program”. For those who don’t know better, “single payer” means government-run. You know, like the VA. It is somewhat ironic that the liberals who have spent years pushing abortion “rights”, professing that “nothing should come between a woman and her doctor” are the same folks who dream of a health care system where nothing comes between you and your government, (i.e. your government hospital, your government nurse, your government doctor, your government bureaucracy and your government waiting list). Considering that this scandal comes at a time when polls show that Americans are nearly split on which party they trust more on health care, it presents what is usually referred to as a “teachable moment”. People who haven’t been paying attention to the health care debates in recent years need to see the VA held up as the bright, shining example of everything that liberals want health care to be: total government control, no consumer choice, all government employees, (and the unions and union dues that come with them), a secure, generous budget and no incentive to be efficient and please the customer. Since the media is not going to do that job, it’s up to Republicans. Here are a few tips for conservatives and candidates running for office this year: Hold every failure of the VA up as an example of what Democrats want health care to be Draw a parallel between the VA’s failures and every vote any Democrat has ever cast in favor of greater government control of health care Wrap it around their necks in everything you spend money on Conservatives should make the most out of the opportunity to put Democrats and Obama on the spot to support (or oppose) real reforms that would actually help veterans get access to better care, and create a wedge that would make it easier to reform the rest of the system in the future. Why not move to privatize the VA’s facilities and transform it into a veterans’ healthcare reimbursement agency? Or better yet, let it buy full private insurance coverage for veterans as a group and then let them shop for the best care? Win or lose, it’s an idea that offers something for the victims, and puts Democrats in a bad spot. It’s messaging 101: find the victim, point them out, then tailor your proposals and rhetoric around helping the victim. The ongoing messaging problem for Democrats is that, not only are they selling government, but they are selling the most unpopular kind of government, (i.e., the big, inefficient, one-size-fits-all variety), and the VA scandal reinforces the notions that Americans already have about the inadequacies of big government. Republicans need to help voters get a really good look.
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Free Speech Hypocrisy
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When it comes to free speech and the liberal hypocrisy that surrounds it, last week added two towering examples to an already impressive list. In Washington, DC the Supreme Court held that the current cap on the aggregate amount that any one American can give to political candidates in an election cycle is unconstitutional, (but left in place the $2,600 per candidate limit). The Court continued where it left off in the Citizens United case several years ago in loosening the restrictions on giving and expanding the doctrine that money is indeed “speech”, especially for political purposes. Of course everyone who paid attention in history class (if your school still has that) knows that freedom of political speech was what most concerned the men who wrote and ratified the First Amendment. Liberals and naïve campaign “reform” advocates proceeded to have the requisite conniption fits, claiming that money is not speech, but if that is the case then why do they ask for money to fund their own campaigns? Precisely to get their “speech” heard by more people. If a citizen speaks in the forest without a microphone, a video camera or an ad budget, does he make a noise? The simple fact is that “speaking” can cost money, especially if you want to be heard by a lot of people, or very often. And since the First Amendment doesn’t place any restrictions on how loudly you can speak, or how often, they paying to do so is a Constitutional right. If you can’t spend your own money to say what you want to say, or support someone else who’s saying it for you, then freedom of political speech is a myth. Money may “speak”, but it doesn’t vote. People do that. And the speech that money pays for only works if the message resonates with people and what’s important to them. And since conservatism tends to resonate with a public that is more conservative than liberal, liberals try to limit access to paid media. It’s the primary reason that we have such a complex series of campaign finance laws. This agonizing over “big money” comes at an awkward time in history, as we now have this wonderful invention called the Internet that enables average citizens to better organize, and raise and spend money to have an impact on the political system. Further, it has enabled candidates to be less reliant on the wealthy donors liberals stress about. Just ask Barak Obama. Most of the big money was with Hillary when he first began to run in 2007, but he went on to use the Internet to organize and raise money so well that he became the first presidential candidate to refuse public financing for a general election, since it would have limited how much more he could raise or spend. He knew that he could leverage the Internet to engage hundreds of thousands of small donors, and he did – to the tune of almost eight-hundred million dollars. But I guess that was “good” speech? Also this past week, Brendon Eich, the newly installed CEO of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, was forced to resign after the company was besieged by hypocritical progressives demanding his scalp to intimidate CEOs everywhere into keeping their sympathies (and their money) away from conservative causes. His sin? He contributed $1,000 to the 2008 California Proposition 8 campaign to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Of course this was the very same position held by Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton) in 2008, without which he probably would not have been nominated or elected President. But what’s a little hypocrisy between friends. It’s another example of liberals trying to infiltrate and then purge one of the typical strongholds of conservatism. They are sending corporations the message that CEOs can’t be conservatives (openly) and must publicly genuflect to liberal orthodoxy, or else have their money making enterprises interrupted by liberals who don’t care about money, but power. The hypocrisy is everywhere. On the one hand they have gone to court (as in the Holly Lobby case) claiming corporations “can’t have beliefs”, therefore they can’t have religious rights and policies based on those beliefs like individuals (still) do. Then they claim Mozilla has progressive “beliefs” that their new CEO violated. So which is it? Notice the answer always seems to be whatever stifles conservative opinion. They are all about “tolerance” until they manage to get in charge or get their laws passed, and then they want mandatory compliance, endorsement and punishment of wrong thinking. As Newt Gingrich recently said, it’s the “new fascism”. Free speech be damned.
Read MoreThe Conservative Persecution Complex
By admin
Ronald Reagan once said that Americans spend too much of their time second guessing themselves and their values. Of course he was absolutely right, and a cursory look at the state of our culture underlines that fact. Most of the “second guessing” and criticism of traditional American values comes courtesy of the modern progressive (read “liberal”) movement, its politicians and its cheerleaders in the mainstream media. But does this give conservatives the right to wallow in negativity and act defeated? And just what exactly does it accomplish when they do? Whether it’s talk radio, Fox News or online, you don’t have to pay attention for very long to come across conservatives blaming our problems on someone else. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that you come across far more of that than you do anything that would help advance informed action and make a difference. It’s a conservative persecution complex. We’re far too focused on what our opponents are doing, rather than on what we’re doing, not doing, or need to do. And we’re not getting mad enough at ourselves for not doing more. As Solomon put it, “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.” So, are we bearing rule or under tribute? We don’t have to look any further than the news to figure it out. Trillions in debt, millions of abortions, tax-payer funded abortion, Obamacare mandates, gay marriage, people losing businesses because they refuse to violate their right of religious conscience, etc. The list goes on and on. These things didn’t come about because conservatives were being diligent. There are three institutions in our lives – the family, government and the church, and the extent to which we ignore either of them we have problems. As so many conservatives have ignored politics (the management of government), it’s now intruding on the other institutions; trying to replace and redefine the family, and now attacking the free exercise of religion and conscience. Personnel as they say is policy. But if policy is about personnel, then personnel is about elections – and elections are about who shows up. You can’t elect good people if you don’t show up. You can’t hold those in power accountable if you don’t show up. You can’t influence policy if you don’t show up. And the simple fact is that too many conservatives just don’t show up. There are far more of “us” than there are of “them”. Every poll bears that out. The Gallup poll continues to show that Americans who self-identify as “conservative” are the largest ideological group in the country, and about twice as large as those claiming to be “liberal”. But those numbers only represent potential, not action or results. So many conservatives just don’t get involved at all, and many of those who do get involved get mad and upset when they lose and just quit and go home. The result is that losing the next battle becomes a fait accompli, which leads to more of what made us mad to begin with. It’s a vicious cycle. We have met the enemy, and he is us. It’s a lot easier to find conservatives with opinions than it is to find those who actually get involved. We’re full of opinions, (again, just listen to talk radio). But opinions without actions are like clouds without rain; they eventually just blow over and nothing happens. None of this is to say that everyone needs to become a full-time political activist. But everyone does need to do something. In a county with so much freedom and so many opportunities to get involved, half of our people don’t even do the minimum that they can do in order to keep what we have, let alone reclaim what we’ve lost, (read: vote). As Jefferson put it, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. But that’s only half right. We also have to do something. Our Founding Fathers were people with deep convictions and opinions, and they did something about what they believed. They got involved. Conservatives have to get out of the persecution mentality and into a winning mentality that begins to feed on itself. And that starts with taking action.
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Liberal Bullying and the War on Testosterone
By admin
Every time you turn on the news or open a newspaper anymore you’re treated to updates on America’s latest “crisis”: bullying. From breathless accounts of how someone posted mean stories about someone else on Facebook, or how one kid teased another for being ugly or otherwise different, to national public awareness campaigns complete with websites and taxpayer funding, it’s everywhere. If one didn’t know better it would be easy to think that America’s children have suddenly been infected with some new virus that’s running rampant throughout the population and that doom lies ahead. But like so many other things in our culture today, the definition of what constitutes “bullying” is all over the map and has become entwined with issues as far ranging as weapons and sexual harassment. At one school recently, a seven year old boy was suspended for gnawing his pop-tart into the shape of a gun. At another, a ten year old boy was suspended when a classmate told his teacher that he motioned with his arms as though shooting an imaginary bow and arrow, (so cowboys and Indians is definitely out as approved playground activity). Elsewhere, a six year old boy was suspended for sexual harassment because he kissed a female classmate on the hand. We even have school districts with “mercy rule” policies against bullying in sports, (AKA running up the score), which teaches kids that if you can’t stop the other guy, the government will do it for you. Most recently the bullying crisis even found its way into the NFL, with one player (weighing in a 320 pounds) quitting the Miami Dolphins and blaming it on being “bullied” by a fellow teammate. It’s bad enough that any red-blooded American male would use that as an excuse to quit, much less not feel any shame in admitting it publicly. Increasingly it seems like much of the behavior that’s deemed a problem that needs to be controlled is that which relates to boys, such as being “hyper” or having lots of energy. As for schools, which are increasingly called on to be parental substitutes, the geniuses who run them have decided to cut back on recess – which has pretty well tracked with the rise in supposed cases of “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”. Go figure. And of course those that do still have recess, it is somewhat less testosterone oriented. Games like “tag” and “kickball” are on the outs, and dodge-ball is downright verboten, (as it’s said to be too prone to bullying). Then there’s the twenty year push to put kids (especially boys) on psychotropic drugs because they’re “too hyper”. From Ritilin to Adderall, long-term prescriptions for ADHD related drugs are second only to asthma as the most frequent for kids, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Of course pharmaceutical companies have been right there cashing in. A recent New York Times article reported that they have been “targeting perhaps the most impressionable consumers of all: parents, especially mothers.” This all takes place against the backdrop of a society with fewer intact families – which doubles the likelihood that a child will be given such drugs, according to a study in the Canadian Medial Association Journal. But as Solomon assured us, there’s nothing new under the sun, and since people have been having kids since creation it’s safe to assume that there’s nothing new about kids. Of course that just leaves the environment they’re raised in, but that points an unwelcome finger back at parents, the state of families (and any lack of discipline therein), so we look for scapegoats. We’ve tamped down the testosterone, identified the symptoms of much of childhood as a problem, medicated the kids (introducing them to prescription drug abuse) and now teach them that doing your best to win or anything usually associated with valor and masculinity is undesirable and that they need to calm down and have another pill. This in a nation with a military that recently decided to delay mandating that women in the Marines be required to do three pull-ups in order to qualify for future combat duty. Basically liberals want us to be France when we grow up. In reality it’s liberals who are the bullies. They’re the ones who mandate policies against the realities of childhood to cover for the real problem of failing families. In the meantime, children learn fewer of the lessons that they will need in order to cope with life as adults. But if you’re a big government liberal who looks at citizens as children to be cared for anyway, it’s all good. Life as extended childhood supervised by government is the dream, staffed by the smart people who know better than you do.
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2024’s Wild Ride (so far)
The 2024 presidential campaign has been one for the books, and it’s only halftime. From the political weaponization of courtrooms, and Trump wrapping up the nomination in record time, to Democrats not allowing anyone to run against Biden, and the earliest presidential debate in history, to an assassination attempt and an incumbent presidential campaign withdrawal, it’s been a roller-coaster ride. I feel like I need to put some money down on the Gamecocks to win the national championship in football this year. Stranger things have happened. Trump literally took a bullet for the campaign – and then got up calling on his supporters to “fight!”, instilling Republicans all across the country with a newfound sense of unity and resolve. The Republican party is now as unified as it’s ever been in modern history. I’ve been a state party chairman for almost eight years and have worked in politics for over thirty-five years. I’ll take an enthusiastic voter over just a voter any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Enthusiastic people don’t just vote, they work. They make calls, knock doors, give money and get the guy sitting next to them at church or at work to vote too. As Napoleon once said, “Moral is to the physical as three is to one”. Enthusiasm is a force multiplier. You can’t put a price on it. And who would have thought that Republicans would be financially competitive with Democrats, but here we are, complete with the world’s richest man pledging to invest 45 million per month until Election Day in a third party effort to focus on voter turnout in battleground states. Democrats, on the other hand, proceeded to wet the bed again and again over the course of the year with each new poll showing Biden losing to Trump in both national and battleground states. So much so that they threw him overboard for a candidate that not one single person in America has ever voted for President who actually has lower poll numbers than Joe Biden. No serious person suggests that Kamala Harris would have been the Democrat nominee in any kind of open, competitive political process. She’s a decidedly ungifted politician that had so little success as a presidential candidate that she dropped out of the 2020 Democrat nomination fight before the first vote was cast in Iowa. Since then, the Biden team has largely kept her under wraps, only to see her occasional appearances punctuated by nonsensical “word salads”. But now that the wagons have circled around her, the question is how long does it take for the Democrats with the most to lose to begin howling in despair again, demanding another change in cast. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ message has been blown apart in a hail of hypocrisy. The Party that assured Americans that Trump is a would-be dictator and a threat to democracy, first refused to allow anyone to challenge Biden for the nomination, and then decided that 14 million Democrat votes should be ignored and a “more electable” nominee should be installed. How’s that for protecting democracy? And we haven’t even gotten to the Democrats’ convention in Chicago where they’ll try to make this anti-democratic coronation official. In the same city where they convened in 1968 to replace an unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets were filled with protesters, they’ll convene again this August to replace another unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets will be filled with antisemitic, pro-Hamas protesters. But events aside, the issues on the ground have not changed, and, as the late Lee Atwater loved to say, “Issues win campaigns”. On most every issue that tops the minds of American voters, Republicans have the edge. From illegal immigration and the border, to crime, the economy, housing and inflation, Kamala Harris owns Biden’s record of failure. When people aren’t buying what you’re selling, it doesn’t make much difference who the salesman is or what the ad budget may be. What Biden’s political demise and Harris’ rise represent is the Democrat Party’s final break with working-class Americans. It’s a break that’s been building for years, starting with the Obama Administration, but Biden was the last fig-leaf for the old New Deal Democrat coalition. It’s the “Californiacation” of the Democrat Party: an abandonment of working-class Americans in favor of cultural, bureaucratic and academic elites, complete with the mixed-nuts of the antisemitic and radical woke left, and a common disdain for anything traditional or overtly American. It represents an incredible opportunity for the GOP to demonstrate relevance and win over a new generation of working-class Americans, and to build a winning and enduring political coalition. It’s been a wild ride so far, and who knows where it goes from here. But I think I’d better check those odds on the Gamecocks.
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