Another Republican mistake

Of course it should surprise no one that the Senate Republicans (both the leadership and the rank-and-file) screwed up in the matter of nominating a replacement for our dear departed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  They should not have announced their belief that President B.O. should leave the nomination to his successor, whoever that may be.  Truth be told, they have no legal or Constitutional footing to make such a demand.  Of course Mullah Obama can nominate someone.  That doesn't mean that a Republican Senate is under ANY obligation to approve the nominee. They are under no obligation to treat the nominee with any more courtesy than Robert Bork and Charles Pickering received from the Democrats.

What the Republicans should have said was nothing.  This of course is a lost art these days, so an acceptable alternative would have sounded like "We will treat any nominee with the same scrupulous objectivity with which our Democratic colleagues have treated past candidates nominated by Republican presidents."

And we all know what THAT would mean...

Quick thoughts on the Progressive leading the GOP Presidential nomination race

David Brooks of the New York, Same Old Agenda Times has threatened (offered?) to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected President.  It's a tempting offer, David, but I still must oppose the American Sukarno.



The Republicans have long had specific reasons for opposing and in some cases loathing our liberal Democrat opponents.  Some examples:

We despised Ted Kennedy not only because of his politics, but also because of his supreme selfishness and his having been an inherited wealth brat.

We detested both Clintons not only for their politics, but for their rampant greed and dishonesty.  (Yes, that includes Chelsea.)

We loathe Barack Insane Obama for many of his beliefs and actions, his betrayals and his Constitution-defiance, but also largely because of his Jupiter-sized ego.

All of these loathsome traits are also perfect descriptors of Donald Trump.



Matt Walsh makes a good point.  (Actually, a great many of them.)  Donald Trump is a man who is willing to slander Megyn Kelly on Twitter until 4:00 AM after she dares to not genuflect in his presence, but is unable to face her again in a debate setting.  We're supposed to believe he could face down Vlad the Impaler Putin and his ilk?  Really?



When precisely did Ted Cruz become "the establishment"?  Also, who could be more establishment than a politically connected multi-millionaire who cheerfully admits his history of buying off politicians of both parties and his penchant for abusing the eminent domain power to steal the homes of widows and other "ordinary people" in order to enrich himself?



For my entire life I have bristled at hearing my Republican Party derided as "the Stupid Party".  If we really nominate this foul-mouthed petulant demagogue who has spent a lifetime opposing everything we believe in, we will deserve the epithet.

Test week for liberals, etc.

I wake today to the news that two more police officers (AKA the people who make civilization possible, as Charles Barkley pointed out) have been murdered by thugs, this time in Mississippi.  This poses a test for President Obama and new Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

Can B.O. come right out and say this is wrong, murder is never justified, and STOP KILLING THE POLICE?  This time, can he avoid the usual boilerplate about "the problems of the black community" and "distrust of the police"?  He needs to stop condemning the police before the police start resigning because they feel that the authorities who should be on their side are on the other.

As for the new AG, can Lynch come right out and say that this incident is a horrific crime against those we depend on to keep us safe from criminals?  Can she call for the prosecution of the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law?  Can she rise to the dream of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and judge the perpetrators "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"?



Peter Schweitzer's new book "Clinton Cash" has caused quite a furor and reminded us of the rampant, fantastic corruption of the Clinton Crime Syndicate.  I wish these people would just go away and leave us alone, but obviously that's not going to happen.  Anyway, Bill Clinton, aka the sleaziest liar in the history of American politics, made a television appearance that was disgraceful even by his sleazy standards.  As Charles Krauthammer mentioned on FoxNews Special Report, every word was false.  Every word.  Many of the lies he told are verifiable, meaning they are lies about facts which can be proven positively.

The challenge is to the so-called mainstream media - can they label the lies as lies this time?  The whole reason Billy Jeff Horndog doesn't even bother nodding toward the truth while shoveling his manure is because the media has let him get away with lying (sometimes under oath) for so long.  This time, can they behave as truth-seeking journalists and point out the lies?  Peter Schweitzer, like any prominent conservative writer, documents his allegation thoroughly.  He knows he'll be accused of making things up, so he gives references.  Schweitzer is not making things up; the Clintons (don't forget Hilliary's involved, too) are lying, as they have their entire lives.

Will the alphabet-soup media (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc) label the lies of the Clintons this once?

I shouldn't bet the mortgage on it.

Illegal Immigration and the Free Market

Well, der Fuhrer has spoken. Heeding the voices of those who did not vote, Barack Obama is going to pursue his agenda by extra-Constitutional means. He's not even as scrupulous as Adolf Hitler was, since Hitler got an Emergency Powers decree through the Reichstag in 1933 before he started ruling Germany by edict. The most imminent threat to the nation (besides Obamaism itself) is B.O.'s threat to sign an executive order “fixing” our immigration policy in much the same way a veterinarian fixes a male dog.

At this point in B.O.'s Presidency, I feel silly pointing out that he has no Constitutional authority to do what he is threatening to do. The legislative power under the Constitution is granted solely to the legislative branch, meaning the Senate and the House of Representatives. The executive is charged with seeing that the laws be “faithfully executed”. All of them; not the ones that the President or Attorney General likes.

The great imposture in this is B.O.'s declaration that he is forced to act because Congress has not. To believe that, you have to believe that every session of Congress is a tabula rasa, with no laws carried over from previous session. Do you see any evidence of that?

Every immigration law passed by Congress and not subsequently repealed is still in effect. Congress has acted – repeatedly. Sometimes wisely, more often recently foolishly and against the will of the people, but they have acted, and it is blatant mendacity to claim otherwise.

That is not to say that the people are not demanding change. They are – it's just that the people are vehemently against the change that President B.O. is threatening. They want illegal immiration stopped at the border; they want the sleazy “catch and release” policy of giving illegal immigrants the freedom to melt into society afer apprehension stopped, and they want someone to stop businesses and individuals form knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

We are told ad nauseum that the illegals are here “doing jobs Americans just won't do”. What too few people understand is that their presence keeps the market from providing the remedy to the wage imbalance. These jobs are not jobs American citizens won't do; they are currently jobs that Americans won't do for the wages currently offered.

Anyone who know elementary economics knows that a labor glut forces wages down. Conversely, a shortage of labor drives wages up, as employers compete to obtain the labor they need for the work they need to have performed. By constantly importing what will inevitably be cheap labor, the pro open borders/amnesty crowd is preventing the market from functioning.

Imagine there are no illegal immigrants (it's easy if you try). The number of rich people who need their lawns manicured and their pools cleaned will not decline. There will still be tables to be waited, dishes to be bussed and washed, etc. In a labor market not flooded with illegal immigrants, the equation swings toward the worker. If rich liberals like Barbara Streisand and Nancy Pelosi want people trimming their grass, they will have to offer a wage that labor is willing to accept, or they can practice swinging a machete. That's how the free market works!

Minimum wage laws make the situation worse. By attempting to force wages up while illegal immigration forces them down, you encourage “off the books” hiring. Otherwise you find yourself legally bound to provide wages and benefits above what the labor itself is worth. Meanwhile jobs for American citizens evaporate, discouraged people drop out of the labor force, and welfare and disability rolls swell, ballooning the debt.

In the old days, people enering the United States had to confirm that they would not become “a public charge” (a useful phrase we need to revive). Now we find our government (if we can still call it ours) importing welfare cases, criminals, and almost certainly terrorists as well.

We seem to have reached a situation where it is easier for people to take up permanent residency in our country illegally than it is to move here legally. This is unacceptable.

The citizens of this nation are now demanding that the government closes the border first, and they are opposed to amnesty for lawbreakers who entered this country illegally, in effect cutting in front of the good people who have been willing to enter the country legally. They are correct to do so.

Please let's not let arrogance defeat us again, conservatives

I wrote the following before the 2012 election.  What I feared largely came to pass.  When trying to save our country via election, the first goal must be not defeating ourselves.  Some of the below is a bit dated, but most is not.  I would be grateful if you read this if you're considering not voting for your moderate Republican.  Thank you, and let's save America this Tuesday!

Just when I thought the Right was getting its act together, I received a link from Libertarian Tony linking to a ludicrous article claiming that it would in the long run be unfortunate if Mitt Romney wins on Tuesday.  It called Mitt Romney "an empty suit", and it called to mind what I can't stand about some on the right.  Some on the Right seem to be perfectly ignorant of the role of political parties, and are arrogantly prepared to let the country go to hell rather than "compromise their principles".  They claim that they are being "true to their principles", and that they and they alone get to define words like "Republican" and "conservative.  I had hoped that this sort of pretentious foolishness had at least decided to take this election off, since throwing B.O. and his socialist commissars out of power is THE issue of the day.  I guess it's like Count Dracula, though -- nothing seems to kill it permanently.  For people who claim to know history, it's amazing how ignorant they are of the history and purpose of party politics in America.  They also seem to be unable to discern differences in degree when actions superficially seem similar.  It's as if someone is asserting that since murder and parents spanking their children are both acts of violence, and murders are executed, child-spanking parents should be executed, too.  Wearily, like a retired knight, I buckle on the armor of historic knowledge and drawing the sword of logic, I re-enter the fray of conservative/libertarian debate.  Let's try this again...

Political Parties are Formed to Enable People with Similar Interests to Obtain Their Common Goals

The fact is that we are all members of minorities in our political beliefs.  I believe and identify myself as a Reaganite conservative, my sisters identify themselves as moderates in that they have some views that are conservative and some which are liberal, my friend Libertarian Tony calls himself a libertarian conservative.  Since none of these sets of principles represent the views of even 20% of the electorate, what are we to do.  If we refuse the possibility of co-operating with those who do not agree with us on everything, we will obtain nothing! 

For lessons in this, we can consider the history of the Republican Party.

The Republican Party was born when the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act forced slavery and the expansion thereof into the territories became the most prominent issue before the American people.  It split the parties of the time.  The most immediate victims of this party-splitting were the Whigs, who essentially split into the two wings they had managed to hold more or less together before 1852, the anti-slavery ("Conscience Whigs") and the pro-slavery ("Cotton Whigs").  When Kansas-Nebraska and "Bleeding Kansas" forced Americans to choose between competing visions -- a future of slavery expansion South, West, and perhaps even North (the Dred Scott decision would add that dimension to the dilemma in early 1857), or a future of free soil and free men, the Whigs discovered that they did not have any common principles strong enough to hold their party together under the strains of the time.

The new Republican Party formed itself with surprising speed from the fragments of the Whig Party, but it had a rival.  The American Party, founded on prejudice against foreigners and Catholics, sprouted like the weeds among the wheat in the Biblical parable.  This party had a brief period of frightening success, winning elections in several states and running Millard Fillmore as their Presidential candidate in 1856.  Viewed from the perspective of today, one sees similarities with the Nazi movement in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.  However, like Dolly the Sheep, the American Party (derisively dubbed the "Know-Nothing Party" by Horace Greeley because its members were instructed to reply "I know nothing" to any inquiries regarding its operations or membership) was born with genetic defects that prevented it from enduring.  It survives in memory today as an oddity, along with such short-lived "anti-" parties as the Anti-Masonic Party and the "Dixiecrats".

There were those who believed that the Republican Party had no better chance of survival than the Know-Nothings.  The anti-slavery Whigs had had among them supporters of low-tariffs and high-tariffs (known at the time as protectionists), adherents of many faiths, including mainline Protestants, Catholics (largely Irish), pacifist Quakers, puritanical New Englanders, and anti-slavery, anti-clergy European immigrants (largely refugees of the failed European revolutions of the late 1840s).  Even the anti-slavery opinions had some splits between the immediate uncompensated abolitionists, the compensated abolitionists (who preferred payments to those deprived of their "property"), the gradual abolition through territorial restrictionists, the colonizers (who wanted to free the slaves and establish them in their own country in Africa -- Liberia), and so on.  As the late scholar William Lee Miller described it, the Republican Party at its birth "was one of the great sausages of American politics". 

However, the Republicans had two great advantages over their K-N rivals.  One was that they had a positive program -- free men, free labor, free soil.  The other was that they had canny political leaders in their ranks -- men like Thurlow Weed of New York (forgotten today, he was one of the great political organizers of the 19th century), Andrew Curtain of Pennsylvania, John A. Andrew and Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts, John Sherman of Ohio, and a lanky, recently-returned-to-politics lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.  (Of all of the unforeseen consequences of Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, perhaps the most important was that it pulled Lincoln back into politics.)  These men realized that if their fledgling party was to survive, they would have to pull together as a team to battle the established Democrats, who in fact were beginning to show some fissures in their own facade.  They understood what political parties are formed to do.  Many of our right-wing fellows do not.

The leaders who chose to concentrate on what united them and to set aside what might divide them paid off handsomely in just their second Presidential election, as Abraham Lincoln (himself a compromise choice as nominee) was elected the 16th President of  the United States.  He only received 38% of the popular vote (somewhat misleading, as Lincoln ballots were not even offered in several southern states), but the other 62% were split between three candidates.  The Democrats had suffered a fatal split at their conventions (they convened two of them in 1860) between the traditional Democrats headed by Stephen Douglas of Illinois (who proclaimed that it did not matter to him whether slavery was voted up or down),  and the radical pro-slavery Democrats led by men like Jefferson Davis and William L. Yancey (for whom nothing but slavery endorsement and extension would serve).  The former group nominated their obvious leader, Stephen Douglas, while the latter nominated Kentuckian Vice President John Breckenridge.  The fourth party called themselves the Constitutional Union Party, and they nominated dignified elders John Bell and Edward Everett.  They were running in an election marked more by passion than dignity, however, and they finished third in the Electoral College and fourth in the popular vote.  With the opposition fragmented, Lincoln won an easy majority in the EC, with 180 votes against 123 for his three rivals.

Put simply, the Republican Party stayed united and won.  The Democrats fragmented and lost.

Fast-forward to 1912.  This time it was the Republicans who split suicidally between the regular Republican nominee and incumbent President William Howard Taft and the mercurial, charismatic former President, Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt.  The factional split allowed Democrat nominee Woodrow Wilson to win the election with just 41.8% of the vote. Many students of history (including this one) trace the growth of leviathan big government (and the consequent shrinking of personal liberty) to the election of Wilson. Republican failure to unite behind one candidate made this disaster possible. United we stand...

Now we can look at another in which lack of unity cost the Republican Party dearly, the election of 1964. The conservatives took advantage of the failure of the liberal wing of the party to unite behind one candidate to nominate their chosen favorite, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. In a display of suicidal poor sportsmanship, the liberal conventioneers tried to deprive Goldwater of the nomination by uniting (belatedly) behind Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania. Failing in this, they actually booed Goldwater when he came to the stage to accept the nomination. It's not really credible to argue that this disharmony cost Goldwater the presidency. As Richard Nixon realized, after the trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the American people were not going to reject the man they saw as Kennedy's legatee, Lyndon Johnson. However, it almost certainly cost them seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Given that they were already in the minority in both houses, this was a setback they could ill afford. Interestingly, the aftermath of the 1964 Republican debacle proved the political party-building skills of former Vice President Richard Nixon, who worked tirelessly to repair the rift between the wings of the party and was largely responsible for the Republican recovery in the mid-term elections of 1966. Nixon, who emerged blameless for the 1964 split (having worked tirelessly for Goldwater's candidacy that year), criss-crossed the country throughout the 1966 campaign season working for Republican candidates regardless of faction. The Republicans made a remarkable recovery in 1966, picking up 47 House seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate. It also gave Nixon the title of chief uniter of the Republican ranks, and put him on the inside track to the 1968 nomination (and eventually the Presidency).

(I pause here to mention that if you want to annoy a Democrat (and who doesn't?), remind them that Richard Nixon received more popular votes in his five nationwide elections than Franklin Roosevelt did in his. Few people remember that Franklin Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920, when Democrat James Cox was summarily flattened by perhaps the most unjustly maligned President in American history, Warren G. Harding.)

Forward to 1976 and the beginning of the Reagan Republican Revolution. After Reagan, former successful two-term Governor of California (remind Democrats of that, too), lost by a whisker at the 1976 Republican Convention, he accepted nominee Gerald Ford's characteristically gracious offer to address the convention. After making a speech urging Republicans to unify behind their nominees, he then went to work campaigning for Ford and Robert Dole. Just two years after Watergate, the Republicans came close to holding onto the White House. Reagan's efforts at party unification would be rewarded in1980, when he would attain the nomination, the Presidency , and then greatness, in that order. After Ronald Reagan won the nomination, let us remember, he immediately started the work of uniting the party behind his candidacy by choosing moderate Republican George Bush as his running mate. The moderate Republicans and the soon-to-be-called Reagan Republicans pulled together, and the party ticket won going away, to the great benefit of the country. United we stand...

Now let us look at 2008, when John McCain, moderate Senator from Arizona (full circle!) took advantage of fragmented conservative opposition to win the Republican nomination, despite conservative 11^th hour efforts to unite behind former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. (Had you forgotten that little fact about the 2008 primary campaign?) Despite McCain's Reaganesque gesture of choosing conservative darling Sarah Palin, conservative Governor of Alaska, many conservative/libertarian Republicans sulked Achilles-like in their tents, allowing an undistinguished junior Senator from (eventually) Illinois named Barack Hussein Obama to cruise to an easy, largely media-driven victory. Admittedly the McCain campaign was at times amazingly incompetent, but a united party might have won another couple of Senate races, and maybe even more seats won in the House. I believe that the conservative/libertarian sit-down strike of 2008 gave us Obamacare less than two years later.

“...divided we fall.”

Now we have lockstep supporters of an incredibly unpopular and power-abusing President trying desperately to run away from their voting records and incredibly, some conservatives and libertarian Republicans once again want to form a circular firing squad. This is literally insane. For any would-be Republican Achilles who wants to sit out this election, I propose a challenge. It has two parts:

Go to the positions page of whatever moderate Republican wants your vote this time around. See how much you disagree with. I'll bet it's less than you think.

Now check out the issues page of your Democrat candidate.  See how much of that you agree with. Compare the scores.

There is only one way to save our country on Tuesday. That is to elect as many Republicans as humanly possible to every office we can vote on. The more Republicans we elect, the more conservatives we will have, since the conservative office-holding Democrat has been extinct for years now. I think the last moderate Democratic Senator was John Breaux of Louisiana, and he retired. A year or two ago, I received a scorecard from the eminently respectable Heritage Foundation, the premier conservative think tank in the country. It rated every Senator and Representative by the percentage of conservative votes they cast in roll call votes. I discovered that the median Republican rating was 74% conservative. The median Democrat rating was 14%. No difference between the parties?  (This has changed a point or two since 2012.  The Republicans graded slightly more conservative, the Democrats more liberal.)

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and the Bible (alternately), in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow conservatives, and not in ours, is the momentous issue of socialist defeat or ascendency. Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. Will freedom be betrayed because of a stiff-necked generation of its friends? We will indeed nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of Earth.

As the great RR advised us years ago, this is indeed “a time for choosing”.

Pelosi clears the air of (one) Democrat falsehood

When I watched Democrat Minority Leader Nazi Pelosi tell the assembled media that if the House Republicans were going to pass their bill, she declared that they would have to pass it with 100% Republican votes, to me the key was that she declared it.  Apparently she was admitting that every Democrat in the House of Representatives represent not their district, not their constituents, but the House Democratic leadership.  No dissenters allowed.  No votes against the will of the commissars.  Zero!

If Americans knew how to listen to politicians, this would end the congressional careers of every Congressman in a "red district".  It is clear in my district, where long-term misRepresentative Louise Slaughter (the woman who wears formaldehyde as make-up) doesn't even bother attending town meetings and only appears in tightly controlled forums where her staff has the right to choose the questions that she will condescend to answer.

Just remember, you "my Democrat is okay" voters.  Barack Obama, Dead Man Talking Reid, Nazi Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, et al didn't become Democratic leaders by accident.  Their fellow Democrats voted them into leadership positions, including "your Democrat".

Think about that.