PLEASE NOTE: Please excuse the delay in the release of this edition, this has been Solid Principles’ most ambitious project to date, and has taken 2 months in the making.
Solid Principles Podcast: Episode 33
United States Plus One – The Prospect of Puerto Rico as the 51st State: When HR.2499, the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2010 passed the House 223 – 169, it barely gathered a whimper of press.
The prospect of America gaining a new state would normally be newsworthy, yet H.R.2499 missed out. Meanwhile, decade old perceptions of Democratic gerrymandering, and opinions based on the 93 and 98 failed plebiscites re-surfaced.
This 78 Minute Audio Documentary speaks with the participants themselves, and uncovers the story of what could become the most debated plebiscite in American history.
The Democratic National Committee is seeking “Macaca” moments. The party today is opening a website, www.accountabilityproject.com, designed to recruit and display embarrassing audio and video of Republican candidates, as well as information about their schedules and copies of their mailers.
Campaigns have long made videotapes of each other, using “trackers” who follow the opposition from event to event. It was a young tracker who shot the video footage of then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) that wound up sinking his campaign.
The DNC hopes campaigns and journalists will use the footage in ads and news coverage. The site targets both 2010 candidates and 2012 hopefuls.
“[R]egular citizens can upload video or audio they’ve captured at pubic campaign events, and they can upload event information for upcoming campaign appearances by Republican candidates so others can attend and hold Republicans accountable of they don’t tell the truth.,” a DNC official said. “Unlike YouTube where you can only upload video, … users can download high quality videos from the site for clipping and using for their own projects (web videos, ads, etc).”
A DNC official said the party will screen the video “for inappropriate content, authenticity, etc. We don’t want people trying to make something out of something that didn’t happen by splicing the video — we want good raw footage of authentic moments on the trail.”
The site will be launched Tuesday with a mass e-mail from DNC Research Director Shauna Daly, with the subject line, “The Accountability Project: Hold Republicans accountable.” Here’s the text of her e-mail:
Friend —
In 2006, at a campaign event in Breaks, a small town in southwest Virginia, then-Senator George Allen used an offensive slur, “Macaca,” to refer to an employee of his opponent. Luckily, it was caught on camera.
The incident sparked a large swing in the polls, helped Democrat Jim Webb get elected, and, ultimately, played a crucial role in Democrats taking back the senate in 2006.
It was just one moment. Who knows what else is being said when the cameras aren’t running?
We don’t — but I sure wish we did.
That’s where the new “Accountability Project” comes in. It’s a platform for citizens to document Republican candidates and their public statements at local events, as well as their campaign tactics. The Accountability Project allows you to submit videos, recordings, and other items for publication online, so that candidates see that there’s a cost to their dishonesty — and so that everyday citizens can see what their Republican candidates for office are saying.
Interested in being a part of it? Check out The Accountability Project here: www.accountabilityproject.com
The American people deserve an honest debate — and far too often, candidates try to make misleading attacks and false claims under the radar.
This project seeks to shine a light on those practices, and you have a crucial role to play in making it happen.
There are several ways in which folks can participate:
— If you have anything that can record video — from a cell phone to a video camera — you can go to public events and record what candidates say.
— If you receive any sort of mailings or literature from candidates, you can post them online for all to see.
— And if you hear of any upcoming public events for Republican candidates in your area, you can let everyone know, so that other concerned citizens can get out there.
This project will enable folks to keep track of Republican candidates running for every office, up and down the ballot.
Please help fight back against Republicans’ shadowy tactics — participate in The Accountability Project:
California Rep. Darrell Issa has told GOP he plans to double size of his committee.
HERSHEY, Pa.— Rep. Darrell Issa, the conservative firebrand whose specialty is lobbing corruption allegations at the Obama White House, is making plans to hire dozens of subpoena-wielding investigators if Republicans win the House this fall.
The California Republican’s daily denunciations draw cheers from partisans and bookings from cable TV producers. He even bought his own earphone for live shots. But his bombastic style and attention-seeking investigations draw eye rolls from other quarters. Now, he’s making clear he won’t be so easy to shrug off if he becomes chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2011.
Issa has told Republican leadership that if he becomes chairman, he wants to roughly double his staff from 40 to between 70 and 80. And he is not subtle about what that means for President Barack Obama.
At a recent speech to Pennsylvania Republicans here, he boasted about what would happen if the GOP wins 39 seats, and he gets the power to subpoena.
“That will make all the difference in the world,” he told 400 applauding party members during a dinner at the chocolate-themed Hershey Lodge. “I won’t use it to have corporate America live in fear that we’re going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing.”
In other words, Issa wants to be to the Obama administration what Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) was to the Clinton administration — a subpoena machine in search of White House scandals.
[Editor's Note: Rep. Issa is not going to have to "search" very hard. With this administration, finding a scandal will be like noticing there's an elephant in the living room.]
Even if Republicans don’t take the House, Issa has other ambitions. Those close to him say he is eyeing a potential run for a leadership post, even though he’s a two-time loser for Republican policy chairman.
Issa also is trying to build his national brand, traveling to Pennsylvania for a summer Republican meeting. He basked in praise for his role in creating “Job-gate,” a mini scandal that forced the White House to admit that former President Bill Clinton tried to coax Rep. Joe Sestak out of the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania by offering him an unpaid job.
After calling the White House “corrupt” and Obama’s presidency “failed,” Issa reiterated his claims that — despite a contrary assessment from most experts — the administration violated federal law with the Sestak imbroglio.
He also mentioned e-mail from White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina to Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff about three possible administration jobs as the administration apparently tried to steer him away from a primary challenge against Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.
If Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney decide to run for president in 2012, they’ll have some powerful friends in the early states that are key to winning the GOP nomination.
Mike Huckabee? Not so much.
All of it is part of the presidential election fallout from Tuesday’s primaries in Iowa and South Carolina, two states so pivotal in the GOP nomination process that even their off-year state elections are carefully examined for their relevance to the next presidential race.
Both Palin and Romney backed the first-place finishers in the high-profile governors races in the two states—former GOP Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa and state Rep. Nikki Haley in South Carolina—endorsements that are likely to pay dividends in the event either Republican runs for president in 2012.
Huckabee, on the other hand, bet on the wrong horses—he used his political action committee to invest heavily in the losing campaigns of businessman Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in South Carolina, two candidates who finished some distance behind on Tuesday.
Branstad’s victory and Haley’s first-place finish—she’ll face Rep. Gresham Barrett in a June 22 runoff—represent a subtle but possibly important shift in the conservative grassroots, which powered Huckabee in 2008 to an improbable win in Iowa and a strong second place showing in South Carolina. Romney, meanwhile, finished a disappointing second in Iowa in 2008 despite spending considerable time and money to build a commanding organizational lead in the traditional kick-off state.
The most obvious signals Tuesday were that GOP voters who showed up in South Carolina are comfortable with a woman heading the statewide ticket—Haley would be the state’s first female governor, if elected—and that Iowa Republicans preferred a more moderate conservative over a harder right Christian conservative.
For Palin, who is already popular with conservative activists in Iowa and South Carolina, her support for the GOP nominees—who serve as the de facto party leaders in the two states—means she now has important allies in exactly the right places for 2012.
“I think those endorsements help Palin more than they actually help the candidates themselves,” said GOP strategist John Feehery. “She now has friends for life and she has created the perception that she has her finger on the pulse of the Republican Party, which gives her more credibility as the party spokesperson.”
Perhaps of more consequence for a potential Palin presidential bid, the former Alaska governor now has access to a network of staffers and activists with recent winning experience in winning contested statewide races.
SALT LAKE CITY — It’s on. The first incumbent of the 2010 election year crashed and burned Saturday, and there’s ample cause for alarm for officeholders everywhere.
There was no personal scandal, no whiff of corruption, no silver bullet here.
Republican Sen. Robert Bennett was one of the most powerful and likable members of the Senate, he diligently protected Utah’s interests from his post in GOP leadership and he funneled millions of dollars back to his state as an appropriator.
But Utah Republicans didn’t care. In fact, that’s exactly why they tossed him out Saturday in a humbling second ballot vote at the state party convention.
The circumstances surrounding his downfall were unique to Utah with its state convention process, yet there was an unmistakable message to incumbents on both sides of the aisle: This is no ordinary year, and the ordinary, time-honored methods of winning votes may not be enough.
For Republicans who are measuring the drapes in anticipation of reclaiming power, Bennett’s loss should be sobering. If the anti-Washington and tea party winds keep blowing this strong, some of them could be measuring their own political graves.
To one degree or another, all the national polls reflect the deep-seated unrest. The congressional job disapproval rating registered 72 percent when Gallup measured it last month. In a late April Washington Post/ABC News poll, 57 percent said they were “inclined to look around for someone else to vote for,” compared to just 32 percent who said they were inclined to re-elect their representative. Those results are slightly worse than on the eve of the 1994 election, when the same poll found 56 percent would look around and 37 percent would vote to re-elect.
California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina voiced support Friday for Arizona’s new immigration law even as she deplored a “racist tone” that’s developed in some corners of her party over the highly charged issue.
The former Hewlett Packard CEO said the law’s passage stemmed from Washington’s failure to address the problem of illegal immigration through stricter border enforcement and a practical temporary worker program.
But when asked in an interview with POLITICO if Republicans needed to make any changes in their approach to the growing Hispanic community, Fiorina replied, “There has been a very unfortunate racist tone that has emerged in a lot of the discussion about immigration and that’s inexcusable. We must be a country that welcomes legal immigrants to this country. We must be a country that recognizes that we have industries like agriculture that have depended on temporary migrant labor for generations.”
Fiorina, who trails former Rep. Tom Campbell in polling ahead of the June 8 GOP primary, accused Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Obama administration of using passage of the controversial Arizona law to change the subject.
“The Democrats want to use immigration as a wedge issue for the Hispanic community. Barbara Boxer, in particular, has taken the Hispanic constituency for granted, for many, many years,” she said.
The Arizona measure, which has led to nationwide protests and boycotts, directs law enforcement to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if there is reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally.
“When somebody finds 11 people in a car, four of them in the trunk and has probable cause that something is being smuggled across the border, I think it’s a reasonable question,” said Fiorina.
If you had anyone who violated a drug law, and had the person in custody in a state jail, nobody would blink if you turn them over [to federal authorities] … but immigration is treated differently for reasons that are inexplicable.
I asked the Arizona delegation years ago [if they wanted to construct a border fence] and they told me they want to have a friendly border. Now they have one. Massive numbers of criminal aliens, smuggling of people and narcotics are coming across the border.
This issue seems to be creating a divide within your own party, does that hurt Republicans?
I think you can see that, but there’s one in the Democratic Party, too. They’re now understanding that (the argument that immigrants do) jobs that Americans don’t want to do no longer washes.
Believe me, this is not a Republican-Democrat issue, although most of the open border crowd are in the Democratic Party. There are folks – especially in the work force who have lost their jobs to folks who have come here illegally – in both parties who are very concerned about this.
What do you think about the boycott of Arizona and Arizona business that’s being proposed in response to this new law?
That will not be a movement that’s embraced by the majority of Americans throughout the country.
The fact that there are left-wing groups out there who urge boycott of Arizona on the basis that they want to cooperate with the federal government on enforcement of existing laws is remarkable. If the state of Arizona said, “We’re going to hand over those with drug violations to the feds,” that would produce a yawn from other cities in the United States or an attaboy. The idea that [Arizona] said we’re going to follow the law … and that brings rebuke from some left-wing groups says more about those left-wing groups than it does about America.
What we need is not reform, it’s enforcement. The major sticking point is that we haven’t had enforcement … that’s the one action that the open border crowd refuses to embrace. The national discussion on immigration is comparable to a discussion on whether the speed limit should be 55 or 70 while we’re doing 100 and there’s no highway patrol to speak of.
Efforts by Democrats to reform how the nation’s financial companies are regulated received a third consecutive setback Wednesday after Republicans voted unanimously against allowing debate on the banking bill by the full Senate.
The effort to begin debate failed by a vote of 56-42. Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska sided with the Republican filibuster. Democrats needed 60 senators to vote “aye” for the bill to move ahead. Talks between top leaders on the banking commmittee continued. According to The Wall Street Journal, a deal was near on one aspect — how to deal with large failing banks. But other sticking points remain.
The reposted article below was sent to Solid Principles by a reader who is very active in Conservative causes. The article ties closely into a theme we have written about in the past. We believe that the Republican Party is the natural home for conservative blacks and Hispanics and that when we are successful in recruiting these two voting blocs into the Party, electoral success will follow.
The Democrat Party has fostered the illusion for the last 40 plus years that they are the champions of minorities when in reality their tax and spend policies (with some Republican help) have come dangerously close to bankrupting this country. IMHO, the Democrat Party has thrown minorities some crumbs from their banquet table. The cycle of dependency and despair has left many members of the black and Hispanic communities with the idea that their only hope is to continue to vote a straight Democrat ticket in the misguided assumption that somehow the future will be better than the past. It won’t. It won’t because their system is designed to institutionalize failure.
We conservatives think we have a better idea. What if we throw the Democrats into the streets this November, repeal Obamacare, drive a stake through the heart of Cap & Tax, secure our southern border, cut taxes, streamline the ham fisted regulations that are stangling businesses and create a pro-growth, pro-business atmosphere that will lead to a rising GDP that benefits ALL AMERICANS, regardles of their skin color or ethnicity.
We’ve tried Obama’s dreary Corporate Fascism for the last 15 months and we see where that leads. Somewhere most Americans don’t want to go to.
So this November, if conservative and center-right Americans of all races join together and vote the anti-free market, anti-business, budget-busting Dems out of office, we can begin the process of repairing the damage that Obama and his Congressional enablers have done to this country.
~~John Cronin~~
Left Insults Black Americans
By: Sharon Sebastian
Black Americans should be outraged. The affront by the liberal-left against American citizens who are black is reaching new heights. The pattern is obvious. When liberal Democrats cannot debate or win a policy argument, they play their last vestige of hope – the race-card. Today, the political stakes are so high for some Democrats that they are willing to divide us as a nation and as a people.
When there is panic in the liberal ranks, like clockwork, the ginning-up of racial dissention soon follows. In an effort to counter a growing national support for the Tea Party, Democrats are slandering patriotic Americans as “racists.” Black Americans should be outraged that once again liberals are portraying them as being an easily agitated “bundle of emotions” without brains enough to see through the left’s political manipulation. For decades, liberals have conveyed the message that American Blacks are driven by emotion, not intelligence and can be flicked on-and-off like a switch just by throwing around the term racist.
Since the Democrats seek to avoid rational thought, some should be offered up. What the liberal-left does not want you to know is that more and more people of color are identifying with the Tea Party movement along with most Americans. The devastating truth for race-baiters is that the Tea Party is against higher taxes for people “of all color,” the Tea Party is against uncontrolled government spending that hurts all American families, and the Tea Party wants to protect and preserve the Constitutional rights and freedoms for all people of all color in this country. That is not racist. That is American. It is the liberal-left that insults our citizens who are black. It is the liberal-agitators who are the racists. One need only look at Detroit for the Progressive’s heartbreak of empty liberal promises.
In the book, Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, it is revealed that all people are equal as human beings and that modern science today declares that we are all ONE RACE – THE HUMAN RACE. The book reveals that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution falsely portrays black people as less evolved, sub-par humans in need of oversight. History shows that evolution has long been used as a Marxist-Socialist-Progressive tool by elitist leaders to demean and control what they consider to be the lesser masses. It is the race-baiting and agitating liberals today who portray people of color as functioning on emotion without the mental capacity or intelligence to see through the political manipulation, Today’s elitist liberals would make Darwin’s own elitists, racists, Marxists, Socialists, and eugenicists PROUD.
Progressive Democrats are on a power trip. One that will bring hardship to every family regardless of color. When the American middle class – which is today diverse with people of color – suffers under government constraints and taxation, then our less fortunate will endure the greater pain. Taxation is color-blind. Loss of Constitutional rights and freedoms is color-blind. Socialism, which some blacks are calling the “new slavery,” is color-blind.
All Americans who want to understand the mind-set of the Socialist/Marxist/God-and- Constitution ignoring policies coming out of Washington today – that will crush people of all color – should read Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. In a show of leadership, I call on Barack Obama to step-up and denounce the heightened race-baiting and agitating by liberal hate-mongerers who are labeling the honest dissent of patriotic citizens as racism. If he does not do so, it will be very telling about this man who is President of the United States of America.
Sharon Sebastian (http://www.DarwinsRacists.com) is an author, writer and contributor for various forms of media including broadcast, print and online websites. Her second book, Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, addresses the global “evolution vs. creation” debate highlighting both the impact of Social Darwinism on America’s culture today and its influence on current policy coming out of Washington.
Tea party activists are divided roughly into two camps, according to a new POLITICO/TargetPoint poll: one that’s libertarian-minded and largely indifferent to hot-button values issues and another that’s culturally conservative and equally concerned about social and fiscal issues.
The survey, an exit poll conducted Thursday by Edison Research at the massive Tax Day protest on the National Mall, found that the attendees were largely hostile to President Barack Obama and the national Democratic Party — three-quarters believe the president “is pursuing a socialist agenda.”
Yet they aren’t enamored of the Republican Party as an alternative. Overall, three out of four tea party attendees said they were “scared about the direction” of the country and “want to send a message to both political parties.”
The results, however, suggest a distinct fault line that runs through the tea party activist base, characterized by two wings led by the politicians who ranked highest when respondents were asked who “best exemplifies the goals of the tea party movement” — former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former GOP presidential candidate.
Palin, who topped the list with 15 percent, speaks for the 43 percent of those polled expressing the distinctly conservative view that government does too much, while also saying that it needs to promote traditional values.
Paul’s thinking is reflected by an almost identical 42 percent who said government does too much but should not try to promote any particular set of values — the hallmarks of libertarians. He came in second to Palin with 12 percent.
When asked to choose from a list of candidates for president in 2012, Palin and Paul also finished one-two — with Palin at 15 percent and Paul at 14 percent.
For you non-technical market observers, this is what the Dow Jones Industrial Averages look like in chart form. This is the type of price action that stock traders and investors dream about.
Over the course of the last couple of weeks we have been hearing more and more chatter among the same people who have just rammed through a bill that ultimately will destroy the best health care delivery system in the world, that they will next train their sights on the much maligned Wall Street investment banks, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Because of a persistent class envy in this country, these banks are the companies that a sizable minority of American love to hate. The cynical and tax hungry Democrats know this and so they have come to the conclusion that they will be an easy target for their next pirate raid.
Rather than create wealth themselves, by risking their own hard-won capital, working 80 hour weeks and pouring over annual reports, Barron’s, IBD, the Wall Street Journal and other financial documents, the class warfare plutocrats in Washington find it much more pleasant to delegate such tiresome activities to the “fat cats” of Wall Street and then craft another bill that will confiscate their wealth and transfer it to their willing enablers in the electorate. So is this a great country, or what?
The truth of the matter is that many of the investors in this country are not “fat cats” at all, but rather your next door neighbor who owns a couple of mutual funds that have just recovered most, but not all of the lost ground caused by the Sept. 2008 crash. They are elderly widows who depend on the dividends from their local electric utility to help make ends meet on Social Security. So when the craven and ham-fisted Congressional Democrats aim at the “fat cats,” they hit Middle America and I hope it goes without saying that many people in that segment of the population are not in a position to take any more hits at the moment.
Hopefully the Pubbies will use exactly the same strategy they used to try to stop Obamacare and remain not the just the Party of No, but even the Party of Hell No!
Now that Rasmussen shows that, yes, Americans really do want Obamacare to be repealed, one hopes that Republicans will shelve their pessimism and advance this crucial and winning agenda with confidence. But now is also the time for the GOP to make sure that its slogan is clarifying, rather than obscuring its goal.
Rasmussen shows that Americans support repeal by a whopping 20 percentage points (58 to 38 percent), with 50 percent of Americans “strongly” favoring repeal and less than a third (32 percent) strongly opposing it. Even before the release of this poll, most Republicans — especially such members as Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Mike Pence, Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Steve King, and House Minority Leader John Boehner — seemed to be strongly on board with the repeal message. But there has been a surprising amount of confusion in the press corps about the GOP’s actual goal.
Plainly, most Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, and then replace it with real reform. Yet, judging by the reaction in the press, this message is not being captured very well by the slogans that have been advanced. CBS News writes, “Right-wing members of the Republican party continue to push for a full repeal of the Democrats’ new package of health care reforms, even as GOP leaders have blunted their message to one of “repeal and replace.” I doubt that most Republicans who use “repeal and replace” think that they are blunting or watering down the message, but that’s what CBS News thinks.
The Hill writes, “[Rep. Steve] King told The Hill…that he intends to press his leadership to sign on to a call for a full repeal. In the days following the enactment of Obama’s sweeping healthcare reform measure, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) agreed to pursue a ‘repeal and replace’ strategy as lawmakers headed home for the Easter recess. That has frustrated King and other conservatives. ‘Sell the repeal idea. We can debate the replace idea. That’s what I would like to see our leadership do,’ King said.” Again, “repeal and replace” would seem to require repeal, but it doesn’t seem to have come across that way to The Hill. (Rep. Boehner, who’s clearly a conservative, has since removed any doubt about his intentions, emphasizing that “repealing this bill has to be our No. 1 priority.”)
If Republicans’ slogans are causing confusion among prominent reporters, and presumably among many other Americans, it’s important to fine tune the rhetoric to clarify the goal. These appear to be the leading options for describing the GOP’s agenda in response to Obamacare, with one man’s two cents on each:
Below is a brief excerpt from today’s WSJ Print Edition that I wanted to post to tie into a post of mine from several days ago. I said that any Obama proposal on offshore drilling must be put under a microscope to see if any of the details have any nasty surprises and….SURPRISE, SUPRISE!! here they are.
~~John Cronin~~
….yesterday’s proposal had the net effect of puting some 13 billion barrels of oil and 41 trillion cu. ft. of gas under lock and key, in return for blessing a few leases already underway. It is a measure of today’s environmental extremism that even these minor steps were denounced as betrayals. “Is this President Obama’s clean energy plan or [Sarah] Palin’s……campaign?’ said Greenpeace. Give Obama credit at least for resisting these anit-drilling absolutists.
The larger politics here is that Mr. Obama is hoping these drilling bits will sway Republicans to vote for his “comprehensive energy and climate bill”—AKA cap and tax. So even as the Administration allows more homegrown oil exploration, it still wants to raise the price of carbon energy so ethanol, wind and the like have a chance to be competitive. With yesterday’s small favors, Republican who make that trade would be selling themselves cheap.
Republicans may not repeal the health-care bill, but they should repeal the Democrats.
By: Daniel Henninger
All day Sunday and into the night, Republican House Members tilted at the Democratic Party’s mammoth health-care windmill. Amid the Stupaks and Neugebauers, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan finally told the chamber the truth. This debate wasn’t just about doctors and insurance, he said. “This is ultimately about what kind of country we are going to be in the 21st century.”
Signing the bill into law Tuesday Mr. Obama also stepped away from his windmill to say something real: “Today we are affirming . . . a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself, that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations.”
Indisputably correct. The U.S. has produced generations of upward strivers and competitors. Since 1950 til now, 82 of 150 Nobel laureates in medicine have been from the U.S. With enactment of this law, the U.S. will throttle down. Rather than spend our energies this century competing straight up with rising Asia for economic primacy, we’ll work to pay for the fat but happy social-welfare state of the last century.
Or maybe not.
Spring renewal and baseball’s new season are upon us, so let’s quote the optimism of Yogi: It isn’t over until it’s over. I thought 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday night in Washington was the Republican Party’s finest hour in a long time. When the voting stopped, the screen said the number of Republicans voting for Mr. Obama’s bill was zero. Not one. Nobody.
Pristine opposition is being spun as a Republican liability. It looks to me like a Republican resurrection. The party hasn’t yet discovered what it should be, but this clearly was a party discovering what it cannot be.
Put it this way: If you produce a bill that Olympia Snowe of Maine cannot vote for, you have not produced legislation “for the generations.” You have not even produced legislation that is liberal. You have produced legislation from the left. You have produced once-in-a-lifetime legislation that no Republican from any constituency across America could vote for.
Finally, we are achieving real political definition.
The Democrats are now the party of the state. The 20th century hybrid version of the Democratic Party, which included private-sector industrial unions and Wall Street liberals, is being abandoned by its leadership as unwanted and increasingly unnecessary.
Senate Republicans have suceeded in forcing Democrats to send the health reform reconciliation bill back to the House for another vote, after Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin ruled early Thursday morning that two minor provisions violated the chamber’s rules and couldn’t be included in the final bill.
Democrats believe the provisions — technical changes to language about Pell Grants for low-income students – are so minor that they don’t threaten to derail the reconciliation package, which includes a series of fixes to the reform bill that has already been signed into law by President Barack Obama.
But clearly Democrats are anxious to put the health care voting behind them – given the painful history of the past year of close votes and near-death experiences on the bill – and want nothing to pop up now that could give them headaches.
It’s also possible that Republicans can force more changes to the bill when the Senate reconvenes at 9:45 a.m., with a vote on the bill scheduled for 2 p.m. It wasn’t clear early Thursday morning when the House would vote, but both chambers are anxious to wrap up business to get out of town for the two-week Easter recess.
All told, 16 lines of text will be removed from the 153-page bill to strip the Pell Grant language, Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley told reporters as business on the Senate floor wrapped up early Thursday morning.
The House has already passed the reconciliation bill, on Sunday night when it approved the landmark health reform measure. But since the House and Senate must pass identical versions of the reconciliation bill to put the fixes into law, the reconciliation piece must go back to the House for a second vote.
And the reconciliation bill includes several provisions that are must-haves for House members, including eliminating the Cornhusker Kickback and other state-specific deals and putting off a tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans until 2018.
“We are confident the House will quickly pass the bill with these minor changes,” Manley said Thursday morning.
Republicans from both chambers are working to rally opposition in the House and lodge procedural challenges in the Senate that could tie up the Democrats’ health care overhaul.
GOP leaders said Thursday they believe they were gaining ground in their campaign to raise doubts about the bill and to persuade undecided Democrats to vote against it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he hoped concerns about the bill would help stall the legislation in the House.
“Our plan is for it not to come to the Senate,” McConnell said after leaving a meeting on the House floor. “Our plan is for it to be defeated here in the House in the next few days.”
“The American people want no part of it. So they can tweak this thing and tweak it, but still it’s a trillion dollars they’re going to spend,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, referring to a new Congressional Budget Office analysis setting a price tag of $940 billion over 10 years.
Boehner urged voters to complain to Democrats: “They need to yell a little louder.”
Participants compared the meeting of the two GOP caucuses to a football rally. “Somebody said this was the final goal-line stand,” said Sen Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
“It was a call to action and a celebration of our unity on the side of the American people,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
One of the most animated presentations was by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., President Obama’s rival in the 2008 presidential race.
“We love the fight. And it’s one that’s worth fighting. We don’t know what’s going on with the Democrats. Our assumption was that he [Obama] would have the votes. He delayed his trip. But we don’t have any inside information. We’ll just keep up the fight,” McCain said.
Below is brief excerpt from Politico’s ” The Huddle”, commenting on Obama’s health care bill quandry. Since he can’t close the sale on this over priced clunker, he has resorted to the saleman’s “desperation close”…..”trust me.”
~~John Cronin~~
POTUS KNOWS THE PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORECARD
The president’s making the full sales pitch to Democratic members of Congress and “instructing aides to address every question or concern Democratic lawmakers possibly can raise,” according to AP’s Chuck Babington.
“Some answers, however, rely more on faith than fact. Confronting party unrest on his left and right, Obama is calling for political courage, citing historic opportunities and essentially saying ‘trust me’ in areas inherently murky, uncertain and out of his control. The process for getting health care legislation through Congress is tough enough already, and Republicans are determined to derail it.”
GOP SEES CAMPAIGN EDGE
POLITICO’s Morning Score snags a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee’s deputy executive director Johnny DeStefano that instructs GOP hopefuls to tie their opponents to unpopular provisions in the bill.
“Candidates should be aware that although the Senate health care bill – the bill currently being pushed by Democrat leaders – is not the same as last fall’s $1.2 trillion health care takeover passed by the House, it is no less egregious. In addition to the broad political toxicity of the Democrats’ health care agenda, a vote for this bill opens an entirely new line of attack on House Democrats. By supporting this bill, your opponent would go on record in support of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and every other backroom deal cut to sneak the legislation through the Senate.”
I wanted to repost this article from the British paper The Telegraph.Co.Uk because I thought it was an interesting take on our political situation from a European point of view. I am most assuredly not endorsing the opinion that our next American President be white, short, bald or any other physical characteristic.
Competent? Oh, yes. Conservative? Please.
~~John Cronin~~
As the glamour of Barack Obama fades, Americans are likely to turn to entirely different presidential candidates next time, argues Toby Harnden in Washington.
Toby Harnden’s American Way
You could call it the revenge of the ugly white guys. After electing a handsome sleek, biracial – and untested – man as President last time, Americans may well be ready for something entirely different in 2012.
Remember that you heard it here first: make way for the short, pudgy, balding white fellow who’s been there and got the scars – and the results – to prove it. In many respects, Barack Obama was the ultimate candidate for the television age. He looked fantastic and sounded wonderful. He soared above politics and made people feel better about themselves.
Ability to get things done? Track record? Such petty considerations seemed beside the point in 2008 for Obama was the very culmination of history. It was almost as if the then Senator for Illinois symbolised the end of politics, the point at which the perfect candidate drew a line under grubby partisanship.
Now, Americans have woken up from that dream and are living with the hangover. Neither history nor politics ended when Obama’s ascended to the Oval Office. The recession is biting, unemployment is still hovering just below 10 per cent, the deficit is soaring and there is still gridlock in Washington.
Having elected two Senators as President and Vice-President for the first time since 1960, Americans are likely to look once again towards the more traditional stable for commanders-in-chief – the governor’s mansions.
As the Republican challengers to Obama begin to prepare the ground for their 2012 runs, two hitherto unlikely potential candidates are gaining support among party insiders.
Before Obama, neither would have had a prayer. Mitch Daniels, described by the “Washington Post” as Indiana’s “diminutive governor” sports what looks suspiciously like a combover.
He’s the kind of geek who seemed straight from central casting as head of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush when I interviewed him in 2001.
In what Americans for some unfathomable reason refer to as “the Hoosier state”, Daniels has been a quiet star, securing bipartisan support for a Healthy Indiana programme Indiana that provides health insurance for blue collar workers, cutting property taxes and turning an $800 billion deficit into a surplus.Daniels remarked to Ross Douthat of the New York Times that “I’ve never seen a president of the United States when I look in the mirror” (which instantly sets himself apart from all 100 Senators). Douthat duly noted that Daniels would be the baldest President since Dwight Eisenhower, who left office in 1961.
Haley Barbour has more hair than Daniels but isn’t much taller and if elected would be the most portly president since William Howard Taft, who occupied the White House from 1909 to 1913.
The Mississippi governor has a certain rumpled panache and Southern charm. I first bumped into him in a casino in his home state – where he later came to personify executive competence as he dealt masterfully with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while neighbouring Louisiana lurched towards catastrophe.
Barbour – who has a political brain second to none – has always been dismissed as a possible presidential contender. That’s partly because he has the perfect face for radio but also because he was a big-time lobbyist in Washington whose firm represented the tobacco industry.
But while Obama sanctimoniously instituted grand new rules to ban lobbyists from his administration and then immediately granted himself exceptions, at least with Barbour is up front about things. So could he really have a tilt at the White House? The door is ajar. “If you see me losing 40 pounds that means I’m either running or have cancer,” he quipped a fortnight ago..
All this could be a problem for the likes of Mitt Romney – a.k.a.
“Matinee Mitt” - the buff, chiselled-jawed hunk who has not stopped running for President full-time since he lost out in 2008. And for Sarah Palin, who would be a celebrity candidate seeking to oust a celebrity president if she was pitted against Obama.
It might even make John McCain, who used to describe himself as “older than dirt, more scars than Frankenstein” when he was running against Obama, wonder whether he should resurrect that combover from the 1980s and have another go next time.I’m not going to predict who’ll succeed Obama. But I’ll wager it will be someone whiter, shorter, uglier, fatter and balder who won’t be able to deliver half as good a speech as the current commander-in-chief can.
I received this article from an email feed that I receive from the FEDERAL WAY CONSERVATIVE. Jonathan Gardner wrote pretty much the same article that I would have written, with the exception of my adding that Romney’s endorsement of McCain is not the end of Western Civilization as some Romney supporters seem to feel, but rather it is very savvy political strategy, designed to win the next Presidential election.
For those of us who espouse a “Big Tent” Republican Party that can regularly win elections, Romney’s endorsement of McCain is a move that follows in Reagan’s footsteps. Stay true to your core beliefs, but don’t throw anybody out of the tent that can help to convert conservative ideas into practical policy.
The way I see it, Romney had no choice but to endorse McCain.
Why?
McCain leads a large chunk, indeed, a majority of the Republican Party. After all, he won the primary in 2008. This is no minor feat, no matter what your political persuasion is.
If Romney did anything but endorse McCain, he would have said to McCain’s supporters, “I don’t like you, and I don’t need you to win in 2012.”
With the endorsement, he is paying due respects to the majority of the Republican Party, and telling McCain, “I promise to ensure that your people will not be shut out of the new Republican Party.”
This is important. The Republican Party is bigger than the conservative movement. It’s bigger than McCain and Romney and Palin and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and pretty much anything you can name. The Republican Party is a coalition of various political factions, each of whom share a lot but disagree on a lot as well. They’ve all chosen, for one reason or another, to be an influential part of the platform. If you are going to take control of such an organization, which the presidential nominee in 2012 must, you have to make it clear that you aren’t going to drive anyone away from the party even though you are going to move your own agenda forward as much as possible.
Right now, the “old guard” of the Republican Party, call them the “Rockefeller Republicans” or whatever you want, feels like they are going to be shut out by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ron Paul and the Tea Party movement. There is a very real fear here. There is a real possibility of alienating them and losing a good chunk of the vote. Ronald Reagan was a master at politics, and he made sure that no one left the Republican Party. Mitt Romney must do the same. That means he must reach across the aisle that divides the Republican Party and lift up McCain in his hour of need, even if it means giving a cold shoulder to the new movements.
Think of it this way. Could Ronald Reagan have united the Republican Party behind himself if he didn’t pay his due respects to President Ford? Of course not.
If McCain loses the primary despite Palin’s and Romney’s support, at least then he can throw his weight behind the winning candidate, along with everyone else. McCain might not be into it, but McCain’s people might.
Rush is fine calling Romney to the carpet on this. In fact, it’s a good thing that Romney is being excoriated by the new Republican Party over this. It’s good because if Romney can then turn around and take control of their part of the party, then he can show that he is able to moderate both sides of the aisle and make them both feel welcome.
This is what political leadership is about. This is the true art of statecraft. We have come to believe that being a leader means being Conan the Barbarian—brutally destroying anything in your path to obtain the things you want. That’s what Obama is trying to do, and have you noticed? It’s not working.
The art of political leadership is the art of getting people to line up behind you because you offer them something they need and because they trust you. It’s the art of persuading people that what you want is what they want, that by uniting together under a common cause they can do more than if we were divided and set at opposition to each other.
If Mitt Romney is going to be president, which I believe he will be, he is going to have to unify the entire country at the expense of some, but definitely not most, democrats, and perhaps a tiny number of liberal republicans. He has to make sure he has a super-majority behind his efforts or they will all fail as Obama is.
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