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Mark Levin and the Establishment

Thursday, March 10th, 2022

Why does Levin sound like the establishment on Ukraine?

I really didn’t see this coming. I was on my way home from another day of work on Wednesday as Levin’s show began.  As he began talking about the events in Ukraine, it came to that moment when he said that he’d be having Lindsey Graham on in his third hour to discuss the Senator’s notion that Putin needs to be taken out, an idea with which Levin heartily agrees.  As I listened to him go on about his disdain for “nationalist-populists” and so on, before too much time had passed, a thought formed in my mind that I simply couldn’t escape.  At first, I thought, and may even have said aloud in answer to the radio: “Mark, you sound just like the establishment against which you always rail.” A commercial came on as I pondered that thought a little longer, and then it struck me.  It’s not that Mark Levin merely sounds like the establishment.  He is the establishment, or at least its errand-boy, perhaps unwittingly.

Do I think Mark Levin is deep within the DC establishment?  No.  On the other hand, he’s in their circle, perhaps loosely, and he’s put himself in a position through which they will attempt to exploit him, and thereby, his audience.  When he speaks, millions listen attentively.  They listen because he offers a view from inside politics, as a former chief of staff to an Attorney General of the United States.  Though his connections into the mechanisms of state are dated and most will have long since retired, that doesn’t mean the existing establishment hasn’t cultivated a connection to him through which they hope to propagandized and manipulate his audience.

Do you need proof?  Every time the Republican establishment needs something from him, he gives it, with few exceptions.  They know there will be some times and some areas of policy on which he will be unapproachable, but they know when election time rolls around, for the most part, they can count on him to carry their water.  He helped give us a whole string of Senators under the vague umbrella of the Tea Party movement, but most of them went on to betray us in varying degrees.  In 2020, he brought his audience Lindsey freaking Graham.  He pushed Lindsey for re-election.  He should have given him a strong kick in the ass and run him off.  Instead, Levin played the good soldier and brought Graham on his show, and while you could almost hear part of Levin holding his nose, he did it nevertheless.  In 2016, when Ted Cruz needed a “constitutional expert” to vouch for his eligibility to run for President, he went immediately to Levin.  In what I regard to be the biggest single betrayal of his audience in the whole of his career on the radio, he cobbled together some nonsensical explanation that “Natural Born Citizen” was “just a citizen.”  It was embarrassingly infantile and nonsensical, and it took a long time for me to get over it.  I had been researching the issue(and continued to for some time before publishing my article) when Levin made this pronouncement, and knew him to be full of piss and wind on the issue that day.

I knew then that Levin would bend things to support his own agenda, and that while it wasn’t perfectly aligned with the establishment, it was nevertheless amenable to them in some instances.  What happens to Levin seems to be that he’s so invested in winning that he’ll make friends with alleged enemies if he thinks it will help him advance his cause, but the problem with this approach is that often, it’s self-defeating, not only to Levin, but also to his audience. As another example, he’s friends with Senator Mike Lee, (R-UT,) a guy who makes many good arguments, but unfortunately also is the Senator from Google.  He’s thoroughly compromised by the funds and lobbying that rolls in the door from that company.  Levin won’t tell you about that. He’s protective of Lee on that issue. It’s as though it doesn’t exist.

Another good example is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA,) another establishment stooge and first-rate swampster. Levin brought this stooge to you in 2020 also, just as he did Speaker Paul Ryan(R-WI) in previous election years. On Wednesday evening, Levin bashed McCarthy, after mentioning he was seemingly interested in coming on the show an longer.  Of course not, Mark, he got what he needed from you in 2020, pre-election. Check back in with him this coming Fall!  Ryan is the definition of a swampster, a Republican who’s married into a thoroughgoing Democrat family(and his sister-in-law is the Biden SCOTUS-pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson,) and who spent as little time in Wisconsin as was humanly possible.  In that respect, Ryan was a good deal like another swampster Levin brought you on his show when she was seeking election to the house: Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney(R-WY) spends even less time in Wyoming than Ryan spent in Wisconsin.  Do you see how the Republican establishment exploits him?  How is this possible for an alleged Tea Party guy, a constitutionalist?

I don’t believe Mark Levin is a part of the DC UniParty, but his orbit crosses theirs, whether he’ll admit it or not.  He makes mention from time to time on-air about how they reach out to him, and want to come on the show, but most of the time, if an election is tight, and he thinks he can help a little, he’ll bring them on.  It’s what it is.  Is he an evil guy?  No. Absolutely not.  The problem is that when you get into bed with these people, it’s hard to get away.  I also wouldn’t say he provides strictly establishmentarian propaganda.  He does provide much very good content, but I’m afraid that very often, too many of the wrong people have his ear.  He gets “insider” information from some people who are truly swampy.  How do I know?  I hear it on air.  I can tell what sorts of people within the bureaucracy or in the Congress have his ear. For Pete’s sake, he brought John Bolton(!) to Donald Trump.  He admitted on-air that Bolton had lobbied him strongly to get in on the NSA job with Trump.  Bolton was a catastrophe who spent his whole time in that job undermining Trump’s foreign policy agenda.  Levin admits it now, belatedly.  If I were Trump, I’d never listen seriously to another recommendation from Levin on personnel.  Ever.  Thinking about it, maybe neither should you.

Now Levin is taking information from the same crowd with respect to Ukraine.  He can see the Democrats are a catastrophe, but he can’t see that the information he’s being passed comes from the same sort of corrupt sources that brought Trump a recommendation of John Bolton via Mark Levin.  He remarked the other day that some fan had asked him in public whether he believed anything about it, because the media is so corrupt.  Levin explained to his audience that he’d told the man that the whole of the International Press isn’t corrupt too.  You see, he doesn’t see it.  The politicization of media hasn’t stopped at the water’s edge, any more than politics itself has stopped there.  Levin seems to be having a weird kind of “bromance” with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but the problem is that much of that upon which Levin bases his admiration for Zelenskiy has been debunked.  It turns out that Zelenskiy may be just as corrupt as his predecessor, if not quite as wealthy. He’s tied-in with Ihor Kolomoisky, another corrupt Ukrainian oligarch. Somehow, these facts escape Levin, or he’s not mentioning them because of his admiration for the Ukrainian president.  Either way, it’s a dangerous lack of perspective.

Levin has always had his strawmen and his foils.  Lately, he’s been concentrating on the “nationalist-populists,” decrying them as Putinophiles, or something in that vein.  I actually hate when he does this.  Name names, for Heaven’s sake!  In the case of “nationalist-populist,” I’m pretty certain he means Steve Bannon of WarRoom fame.  There seems to be real heartburn there, and Bannon, for his part, doesn’t help when he tosses out phrases like “Neocon” because it seems to trigger Levin’s antisemitism alarms.  Levin needs to get a grip.  Virtually nobody who uses the term “Neocon” means anything to do with Jews, and most of them won’t even know the relationship between “Neocons” and Jews in the purely historical sense.  It’s much like “establishment” in the sense that you might not be able to name an actual “neocon,” but you can identify their policies in action and advocacy when you see them, and while the original description “neocon” may have applied specifically to a particular group of Jews, it’s been clear for some time that their basic set of military and foreign policy issues have been adopted by a wider group of interventionist Republicans, many of whom are clearly not Jews.

It’s maddening. Levin is so close to the truth about Ukraine, but he’s being strung-along by his emotions, his admiration for Zelenskiy, and his cold-war-hardened hatred for all things Russia, particularly Putin. When you add to it what’s being pumped-out in the mainstream narratives, even by Republicans, especially swampsters, he just can’t shake it loose.  I’m afraid that until Levin overcomes these demons, he’s simply incapable of bringing you full and sensible information on Ukraine, and that’s simply the most disappointing development in media in a long, long while.

At the end of his show, in the last hour, Levin had Graham on his show to talk about taking out Putin.  If you listen, you can hear Lindsey Graham ingratiate himself to Levin with the slobbering remarks near the end of his appearance.  One could almost hear Levin’s heart melt.  I could vomit.

Here’s the full podcast(The Graham interview begins at the 1:28:55 mark):


Oh, and Mark? Ronald Reagan never once called for taking-out Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko or Gorbachev. He knew that the last thing a nuclear-armed country run by a totalitarian government needs is any sort of instability of that sort.  Do you think the people who would take out Putin would be any more stable or less dangerous to the United States?  No.  Reagan knew better than nonsensical ideas like that. You should be ashamed of yourself for associating such a foolish idea with the temperament and wisdom of Ronald Reagan.

 

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Posted in DC UniParty, Featured, GOP Establishment, Mark Levin, News, Talk Radio, Ukraine, War Room | 1 Comment »

Dirty Politics in Texas and Jeb’s Revenge on Trump

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022

Will Jeb have the last laugh At Texans’ Expense?

Texas is a state with Open Primaries. The rules are that we don’t register by party, and despite some efforts to change it, in election after election, RINOs exploit it to their benefit. Tuesday was the Texas Primary, and one race in particular raised my eyebrows. Incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton received forty-two percent of the vote, with George P. Bush finishing second. This means there will be a run-off in May, the winner of which will move on to the General Election in November.  There’s been one candidate that Democrats and RINOs alike have been attacking like crazy, for years, since he started in office as Attorney General. It’s been non-stop with Democrats and their RINO henchmen cooking up charges and phony scandals to attack Ken Paxton since he first ran.  He wasn’t supposed to get in to begin with, but when he managed to get into the office, he actually did some very good things, and has been a fairly conservative AG.  The establishment RINOs have other plans, and his name is George P. Bush. Yes, son of Governor Bush. No, not the Texas Governor, Bush, who went on to be President, but the other Governor Bush, JEB, who was governor of Florida and failed miserably in his campaign for the presidency in 2016.  Somebody needs to tell President Trump, and somebody needs to get him the message: George P. Bush is the plant the RINOs will use to at least temporarily turn Texas “Blue” as they tried to do in 2020. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what we’ve seen executed in the Texas Primary is the first big step in Jeb’s Revenge.

They knew they wouldn’t beat Paxton in a primary-day head-to-head race with George P. Bush.  Ken Paxton is far too well-liked among conservatives in Texas, and he’s actually taken a number of steps none of the Bush-o-philes in Austin would ever have done.  His filing of one suit after the next against the Federal government on issues of immigration, and his post-election attempted suit against Pennsylvania, joined by more than twenty other states, was a daring and bold move if John Roberts hadn’t owed his manhood to the DC establishment.  No, if they were going to defeat Paxton, they’d need to use a well-tested strategy that works well and best in an Open Primary state like Texas.  They would try to split the Paxton vote by entering a couple of people who’ve circled the establishment drain, stealthily, who they could use to attack and weaken Paxton while clearing the way for Bush.

Eva Guzman, part of the Abbott wing of the Texas Bush-o-phile establishment, was the first to be injected, in June of 2021. She resigned her seat on the Texas Supreme Court in order to do so, offering no explanation for her sudden resignation at the time.  Within a week, she had filed paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission signifying her intent to seek the office of Texas Attorney General.  Louie Gohmert’s last minute entry(November 2021) into the race was the tip that polling had shown insiders that Eva Guzman would not, on her own, be enough to force the run-off. Gohmert is thought by many to be a solid conservative, but the former judge owed favors. Certain people needed Paxton removed as an obstacle to George P. Bush’s expected ascension to governor.

This gave George P. Bush a couple of advantages. In the first place, he could let the other two challengers play hammer, pounding on Paxton, particularly Louie Gohmert, who falsely showed himself on his campaign page with President Trump, indicating to the uninitiated and uninformed that he had the support of the former President.  That’s dirty, because of course, Paxton had secured President Trump’s endorsement months before.  Here’s Gohmert’s deceptive, corrupt use of President Trump’s image in likeness overlaid with “Louie Gohmert for Texas Attorney General” logos:

This is the video you would be greeted with upon surfing over to Gohmert’s website.  This is disgusting. I wonder if the former President is aware of how unscrupulous Gohmert has been in misrepresenting himself in this way.  This was frankly the thing that has caused me to lose all respect for Gohmert. He’s clearly portraying himself on this website as though he had Trump’s endorsement for the office of AG, which is a deception. Gohmert also ran nasty attack ads against Paxton, while accusing Paxton of running attack ads I’ve never seen.

I feel terribly for the Texans who were cheated of their votes by Guzman, Gohmert and Bush by this strategy, but it’s not over.  You see, despite receiving the most votes in the Primary, Attorney General Ken Paxton will now face a run-off with George P. Bush, and it’s a clean slate. Now it’s a winner-take-all affair. Bush, who didn’t need to spend too much campaign cash, since he had the two fakers doing his dirty work, will be flush with cash, and of course, the Bush machine can generate more cash in Texas than anybody else.  This will now become the political version of a smash-and-grab, and they will now use all available dirty tricks to overcome Paxton.  This is how the establishment RINOs play their dirty smash-mouth politics.  They used two also-rans to bloody-up Paxton with the sole purpose of making it easier for George P.

This is CRITICAL for Donald Trump, however, because if George P. Bush becomes Texas Attorney General, who will next face re-election in 2026 along with all the top state-wide offices, guess who he will be in a position, along with Abbott, to sabotage in 2024?  Yes, that’s right.  For the Trump Train, this is a five-alarm fire. In 2020, Abbott could afford to sabotage Trump because he wasn’t up that year. None of the state-wide office holders were. So it would be easy to help rig the election for Democrat Joe Biden because for Abbott, he had nothing at stake. People like to talk about Trump’s four-dimensional chess and all that nonsense, but he’d better master the board in Texas quickly, or they’re going to submarine his ass in 2024. Why wouldn’t they?  Wouldn’t Jeb’s son delight in betraying Trump?  You bet.

In the longer run, it’s setting the stage for George P. Bush to become Abbott’s replacement before he goes off to run for President in 2028 or 2032. That’s the game, and if my fellow Texans want to be drilled in this way, stick around. The Bush family will lay a pipeline for you again, and it won’t involve any kind of lubricant Texans might have thought to expect.  This is the beginning of the next Bush Bum’s Rush to power. Paxton is to be their first victim, but he won’t be their last.  Donald Trump is the next target, should he run as many now expect in 2024. From the AG’s seat, Bush will be able to create havoc for Trump in the Presidential race.  Texans need to wake up before the Bush wing of the establishment runs over them again, just as they did in 1988 and afterward, tossing aside all the Reagan folk who’d been so strong in Texas, to be replaced by BushCo folk who will sing by the family hymnal.

I also expect some interference from Washington DC. Don’t be surprised when the crime family’s influence is used to wave around some cobbled-together BS story about Paxton come a week or two before the run-off, just in time to take hold, but too late to be debunked. They have friends everywhere, as they’ve shown, and while they got clobbered by Trump in 2016, they’ve learned now, and they know how to rig things.  Texans had better wake up and smell the coffee, or soon, they’ll be smelling Bush family BS again, maybe for decades to come. If George P. were to run for President in 2032, you won’t be rid of them until 2040! How long are you willing to let one family of sell-outs dominate your state and your country?

For my part, if George P. Bush manages to beat Paxton in the run-off, I will work my back-side off to defeat him in November, even if I have to get out and spend my evenings planting lawn-signs for the Democrats. It’s time for the Bush family dynasty to end, for good this time. We’re America, not Britain, and we don’t do royalty by birth.

As a related side-note, there are a few steps Republicans can take to stop these shenanigans. For one, we need a state constitutional amendment prohibiting any candidate in Texas from appearing in the same election cycle for more than one office. The more important measure is that we must convert Texas to a closed-primary state.  People should be required to choose a party and register as such to vote in a party primary. It’s like having a private club, but letting the public choose its officers. It’s preposterous, and nobody in their right mind would accept these terms in any other circumstance.  In Texas, once you’ve voted in the primary, you’re bound to that party’s ballot for any subsequent run-off.  Therefore, if you vote as a Democrat in the primary, you can’t go vote in a Republican run-off two months later.  The trick, however, is this: If YOU DIDN’T vote in the general primary for either party, you’re still eligible to vote in the run-off.

Does a voter have to vote in the general primary election in order to vote in a primary runoff election?

No. Section 11.001 of the Texas Election Code prescribes the specific qualifications necessary in order to vote in a Texas election. There is no requirement to have previously voted in the general primary election in order to participate in the subsequent primary runoff election. Therefore, if a qualified voter did not vote in the general primary election, they are still eligible to vote in the primary runoff election.

In this way, any number of actual Democrats who did not vote in Tuesday’s primary can show up and vote in the May run-off as Republicans. What this means is obvious, and it’s the reason Texas Republican voters had better wake up to how they’ve been played.  You must get this system under control, because it’s rigged for RINOs to defeat your conservative candidates every time if they have the resources to play the game. As long as they can manage to finish in the top two, the RINO can make it a one-on-one race letting the also-rans do damage to the chief opponent. That’s how the establishment has rigged this game in Texas, and if you don’t get with the program, in May, they’re going to steamroll you with another Bush, putting the Bush clan in the position to stymie Trump again in 2024.  Politics is a dirty, dirty, long game. The Bush family knows how to play it well. When he ran for Land Commissioner four years ago, I could see this coming.  I knew AG would be his next play. George P. Bush hasn’t even been practicing law. He wants to be your AG, so he can step up, and up.  That’s the Bush family plan. You’re the pawns. Ken Paxton is to be their first check-box on their hit parade.

Trump is next. They’re going to hit him in 2024 like you’ve never seen. They want to prevent him from having any influence over the future of the Republican Party.  What if he picks a VP with future prospects?  Wouldn’t that foul their plans? It just might, and so to avoid that possibility, they’re going to strike first with a well-positioned Texas AG who’s going to exact his low-energy father’s revenge. Hell, Jeb might run himself, in 2024. He’s just that arrogant, and if his son controls the AG’s office in Texas, imagine if Trump finds himself denied ballot access in the Lone Star State? The script almost writes itself.

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Posted in #ElectionCoup2024, Bannon's War Room, Bush Clan, Conservatism, Election 2022, Election 2024, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, RINO Alert, Texas, Texas Politics, video | Comments Closed

MAGA 2021: Choosing the Road Ahead

Thursday, January 21st, 2021

Victory is the only choice

There is a time for choosing, and I’m going to lay it all out. The Republican party has done, as my friend and long time commenter “The Unit” asserts: Hit the eject button, rather than squeeze the trigger. This is why we nominated Trump to begin with: Spineless, ineffective, weaselly Republicans who would rather assume the position and take it rather than fight. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what we have in our Republican Party, and like so many of you, I am inclined to simply wash my hands of them and let the Republican Party burn. It would be so satisfying. It would be wonderful to spit in their eyes and walk the Hell away. Who among us would not love to give Mitch McConnell the old double-barreled middle finger and tell him to shove off? While that would all be very satisfying, the satisfaction wouldn’t last as we will see the disaster these people will make of our country. That’s unacceptable, and while a third party is very enticing, there are problems with that approach. Let’s think very carefully about what we do next, make our decisions in the full knowledge of the costs, and then go do it. Talk is cheap, but the time for action has come. Let us choose our course knowing what offers any hope of success, and what is doomed to failure or worse. It’s our country, and it’s our party, so let us decide its disposition.  The 2022 primaries begin today.

The first option is the easiest of all: We can do nothing, but simply walk away in frustration and despair. That is the road to serfdom of a sort for which fools like AOC and Ilhan Omar only dare to dream. That road is littered with the wreckage of our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren. It will end with our country in squalor and destitute slavery to the Chinese Communist Party and their “elite” pet American politicians.  I find that to be a grotesquely unacceptable course. I will not be driven from politics. I will not be driven from the public square. I will not let these psychopathic lunatics turn my country into grist for their communist mill of death. I will not become another conforming slave, unwilling to state my opinions and principles to the knowing of the world. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. Neither should you.

The second option is to cast off the Republican Party, abandoning it to the losers and RINOs and NeverTrumpers. The idea would be to start a new party, a patriot party, a MAGA party, or some such thing that we could decide. That sounds great, but it’s been tried, and it never works. Why not? The answer is simple, and most of you already know it: The system is thoroughly rigged to make sure a third party will fail. First, the laws are established to favor the existing two parties. At the local, state, and federal levels, obstacles are placed in the way of new parties and non-party independent candidates that make it very difficult, in some cases virtually impossible, to circumvent the existing two-party oligopoly. While I would love to see that changed, the truth is that it will never be changed from outside the two-party system. They have it all stitched-up quite tightly, and they know it. That’s why they don’t mind when we get angry and go off in search of a third party. They know we can’t get around them in any significant way. Ross Perot discovered this with his ill-fated Reform Party. This is why Trump ran as a Republican, and not as a third-party candidate. His successes should be our guide, but so should his failures, and there were several. Dan Bongino did a great job explaining this in his reference to the ill-fated but much-recalled Bull Moose Party of Teddy Roosevelt. Here it is, from Rumble(Fast-forward to the 57:00 mark to get to the point directly):

The third option is perhaps the most difficult, but it’s also the only plausible way to accomplish what we actually want. It will require something to which many of us are not accustomed, and I am going to tell you the truth about it whether or not you wish to know it. The most probable method to achieve our desire is to create a new party within the Republican Party, but in a way that permits us to take over the machinery of the party from top to bottom. This is going to be difficult, butd if you actually want to do it, we’re going to have to get off our asses and do more than go to rallies. It’s going to require that we do what the Tea Party did, times ten. We’re going to need to start at the bottom, develop candidates, and take control of the party from the bottom, moving upward. What Trump did was a decapitation attack on the party, and it worked, but the problem is that he didn’t build the organization he needed to take it over from the bottom up. Getting people to rallies is great, because it get voters to polls, but that doesn’t give you control of the party at the local and state levels, which is where elections are won and lost.

Let me explain: Why did Trump lose* in 2020? They stole it. How did they steal it? Well, they used all the ordinary methods, but they got away with it. How did they get away with it? In the seven to ten locations most critical to their steal, they took control of the election law and machinery. They exploited weak, weaselly Republicans, like the Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania, the Governors and Secretaries of State in Arizona and Georgia, and a whole string of weak-kneed Republicans in the affected states. They also owned the States’ courts, either with outright leftists, or with a combination of leftists and  RINO Republicans. The biggest key to this election theft was not just pallets of ballots, and suitcases of ballots, but the legal chicanery that permitted them to occur. The mail-in fraud was the biggest part of their theft, using the lack of signature verification, the curing of ballots, and all the rest of the rigged laws and dicta. This permitted them to simply rubber-stamp fraudulent ballots in a massive way. Having a few well-placed dirtbags in Republican drag was indispensable. Mitch McConnell assisted the steal, as did any number of other establishment Republicans. They wanted Trump gone. Without loyal Trumpists at the local-level and state-level providing a safeguard of the law, there was no backstop. Yes, he got more legitimate votes than Joe Biden, but as you know too well by now, the issue comes down to Stalin’s line about who counts the vote rather than who casts them. In this case, however, it came down to the more fundamental question about under which conditions ballots could be cast and subsequently counted and validated. Yes, of course they stole this election, and it’s as plain as the nose on your face, but left without the ability to prove it, the audit trail having been effectively(or in some cases literally) erased, there is no remaining way to prove it in a timeframe that won’t make the argument all but moot. It was almost the perfect crime, inasmuch as while it might be able to be proven in some substantial instances at this late date, do you think there’s any way to reverse the election after the new President is inaugurated?

The only way this is ever fixed, if ever, is to seize control of one of the parties and reform it from the bottom up. Part of me, the vengeful part, wants almost to go after the Democrat Party, take it over, and wreck it, and turn it into our party. Can you imagine a Democrat party in which AOC is an outcast? Can you imagine a Democrat Party in which the likes of Chuck Schumer is a marginalized nutjob who can’t win a primary? Wouldn’t that be glorious? Okay, enough of the fantasy. Time to get back to work. Let’s start this way, if you’re serious. I want you to find out who runs the Republican Party in your county. I want you to find out who is on their committees. I want you to show up at the next meeting. Sit quietly and watch what goes on. Learn how they operate. Get together with others. Wear some item of significance to show others of like mind who you are. Become insurgents at the local level, and take over the local party. To do this is not easy, but it’s also not impossible. Once you do this, begin cultivating local candidates, and start working toward putting forward State Representatives and Senators. Take over city councils and school boards. Take over the State Party. Take over the legislature. Rid yourselves of RINO governors. While you’re at it, work to reform laws so that third parties can get a start, so that if your progeny ever find themselves in a similar situation, they have a path to a viable third party. I want you to notice that in just four years, the Tea Party was able to field candidates and drive the agenda of the Republican Party. The problem is that they permitted themselves to be isolated and ultimately marginalized. If you tackle this, in order to avoid that kind of separation, you’ll need to avoid the labels the establishment folk and media will try to assign you. You need to insist, since it’s true, that you represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. In fact, that ought to be your label, if you take one at all: We are the mainstream Republicans. Full stop. It’s our party, and we own it, fund it, and supply the vast majority of the votes for its candidates. It’s time for us to run it.

The problem we face is that the existing two parties are thoroughly corrupt. They’ve formed a sort of oligopoly in which you can do business with one, or the other, but you must pick one or suffer the consequences. While you’re working to wrest control of local and state party organs, keep an eye on the Federal stooges. They’ll be up to no good, looking to consort with the left any chance they get. Why? Because that’s how they maintain their power in DC. That’s how they get along. That’s how they keep getting re-elected. We need to purge these RINOs from the party. We need to impel these people to fight to the degree we can, because we’re in for one Hell of a couple of terms. We’re going to need to start now. The primaries will already be going for Congressional and State elections this time next year. We need to be thinking now about the primaries in 2021. This is a good first opportunity to test our mettle.  You can walk away in dejection and despair, or you can stand to fight.  If you stand to fight, you must decide whether you will vest your efforts in an almost hopelessly implausible effort to create a third political party, or whether you will simply take over the machinery that already exists. I’ve given this a great deal of thought, and although part of me screams that we’ve been here before, and it’s hard, the truth is that forming another party and making it electorally viable on the Presidential stage is not something likely to be achieved in my lifetime.  I have always voted Republican, and I’ve always funded its causes and candidates. That makes me an owner in this enterprise, and I fully intend to exercise my rightful control. I fervently hope you will join me. It’s time for you non-party independents to join in too. The truth is that you voted with us for the same reasons, and that means you tend to share our values. It’s time now to stand for them, before we lose it all.

MAGA!

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Election 2022, Featured, GOP Establishment, MAGA, News, Politics, Primary 2021, Republican Party | 2 Comments »

Supine GOP Sabotaging President

Friday, February 8th, 2019

Who’s Watching His Back?

One of the things I have learned to hold in utter contempt is the slack-jawed, sycophantic, preternatural losers in the Republican Party.  In the main, they populate Washington DC, whether in government, media, or the political consultancy, although one can find them in state capitals around the country too.  These people don’t seek victory so much as extensions to their hold on influence and power.  In one sense, they’re part of the deep state, or at least functionally serve as an extension of it, but what one learns about them by careful observation is that they don’t care to win, at least not in the way their outside-the-beltway Republican brethren would understand victory.  When Trump talks about “winning,” all they see is danger, and wherever they see controversy, they are sure to seek cover elsewhere.  They’re not of us.  They’re weak.  They’re spineless.  They’re sneaky and vindictive.  They see President Trump’s State of the Union address as further evidence that the man is un-presidential.  Like the Democrats, they believe that Donald J. Trump must go.  From their perspective, flat on their backs and looking up at the world of real humans, there’s no reason to fight.  They think it’s nice down there on the ground, slithering around on their bellies while begging for crumbs from the globalist left.  To maintain their positions as deep-state bottom-feeders, they’re only to happy to participate in the sabotage of this President.

I was listening to the excellent but unusual opening to the most recent segment published by my friend Mr. L, of Mr. L’s Tavern.(You really should listen, as it’s a hoot).  I laughed heartily at the depiction.  What he portrayed in his opening is something I know all too well.  It’s almost precisely the same interaction I’ve had when I receive calls from the NRCC or Senator Cornyn’s campaign, or the campaign of my own House representative, or other political fund-raising efforts of the GOP and its political affiliates. These days, some of them use robo-call recordings that are fairly sophisticated, and it’s easy to be fooled by the best of them.  Occasionally, they’re still using actual human callers, for whom I always feel pity.  Imagine having to call to beg for contributions for my own Senator, John Cornyn(R-TX.) Imagine having to read a script laden with boilerplate schlock that is designed to offend as few people as possible, while saying precisely nothing of worth, and simultaneously promising to do everything and nothing for everyone and no-one all in three or four sentences.  They don’t have any but canned responses, and they can’t really answer for the party machine that pays for their service, but they’re obliged to listen to almost anything you might say so long as you refrain from terroristic threats or outright verbal abuse.  Whether anything you say is ever passed back to their masters remains doubtful, because I have been unable to convince them to cease.

Yes, yes, I strongly tend to vote for Republicans, and yes, I show up on election days.  Yes, I regularly give to political campaigns and politically-aligned causes in small sums that I can afford, (which isn’t much,) but none of this implies that I’m going to accept the GOP sing-song blindly, or that I’m going to donate to a party that undermines me, or the agenda items of our President when I happen to support them.  Mr. L’s point is not lost on me, because that’s what these jerks in Washington DC actually expect: I should remain supine as they walk over me just as they do for the Democrats!  Like Mr. L, I have no interest in funding a party that does not share my values.  These DC Republicans actually oppose a wall, and they oppose immigration enforcement, so that anything they say to the contrary is just part of the show they perform as the means by which they intend to bilk you and me of our cash.

It’s precisely as though when we expressed that we want Trump, and we want him because he promised to secure our border and build a wall, even if it means declaring an emergency, they preferred to believe that we hadn’t meant it.  Their beltway bubble gas-lighters have told them that we, you and I, out in “flyover country” are just having a temper tantrum, just like back in 2010.  Certainly, you remember the Tea Party.  Just as in those days, they don’t believe we’re serious, and don’t believe we can’t be steered onto some other course.  They belittle us and bully us, but still expect us to pay for it all.  Can you imagine the unmitigated chutzpah it must take to believe such a thing?  In their view, we should pay for the party and volunteer for the role of the butt of all the jokes at the party besides.  All this they expect, so that perhaps their DC masters will occasionally grant the favor of letting them to rise to their knees.

Meanwhile, our president is fighting like Hell to uphold his promises.  Some have said “well, he’s only trying to uphold his promises for the naked politics of the matter, but he doesn’t really care about a wall.”  When people make statements like this, do they believe they’re going to obtain some sort of Kreskin-like command of their audience’s attention?  Do they believe they’re saying something unknown to their audiences?  Of course it’s politics.  Whether Donald J. Trump believes in a wall himself or not, even if it’s “only naked politics” that drives him to keep his promise, I say “GOOD! GREAT! FINALLY!”

One of the biggest scams in politics is the presupposition that the best and most mature politicians are those who will disregard the will of the electorate, ignoring the people who elected them in order to carry out the policy preferences of… who, exactly?  The wizards of smart?  The brilliance of lobbyists?  The interests of the global corporatists, or the corporate globalists?  Media moguls or their sock-puppets?  You see, it’s always portrayed as the evidence of wisdom, and a sign of maturity, and we, who elected the politician, we are supposed to simply nod in affirmation and agree: “Yes, we voted for this politician to do something completely different, but now that you’ve shown us the error of our preferences, we will continue to support this politician.”  Really?  When people try to convince you of this thesis, you’re right to reject them as con-artists.

In Washington DC now, they’re back on their heels for a few moments.  President Trump’s State of the Union address was well-received throughout the country with as many as eight in ten viewers approving his address, and as many as three of four approving of his immigration ideas.  That’s a stunningly good performance, but the media mavens were quick to remind that these were only “flash polls” taken in the immediate reaction to the speech, (and therefore will not represent the longer-term view of the people after the media has had a week or two in which to propagandize them into a different impression.)

This is an unpleasant circumstance for the DC-beltway crowd and their globalist masters.  They aren’t accustomed to being told “no,” and particularly not by the voters, for Heaven’s sake.  They are out to wreck Trump, and this is why as Mr. L pointed out, some forty-odd Republicans quit the House last Fall: They don’t support his presidency, and they’re not going to be participants in furthering his(meaning our) agenda.  Why would a relatively young man like Paul Ryan give up the House Speaker-ship so easily?  Why would the collection of them, nearly all of them RINOs, simply retire?  They also announced their retirements relatively late in the cycle, with the clear intent of making it more difficult on Republicans who might seek to fill their vacant seats.

In the Senate, the sabotage will be more direct.  This chamber-full of gargantuan egos is populated by people who think the sun rises and sets at their bidding.  People like Mitt Romney(R-UT,) embittered over his 2012 defeat, seems intent on replacing John McCain as a perpetual thorn in Donald Trump’s side, and just like the deceased Arizona senator, a constant pain in our asses to boot.  When you add the list of usual suspects in the GOP to the Democrat Caucus of Doom, it’s easy to see how Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-KY-the state, not the lubricant) will be able to torment the President any time he wishes.

As Mr. L also pointed out, since the State of the Union, suddenly, there has erupted talk of a “deal.” In the deal there will exist numerous poison pills that the surrender caucus of the GOP in both Houses will happily accept, knowing that they will damage President Trump with his base.  There will be DACA extensions, and Amnesty, and and every conceivable manner of betrayal of his base, desperately hoping to tempt the president to accept the deal, while simultaneously wishing to bash him over the head with it if he signs.  What they cannot permit is that he would declare an emergency, fully unleashing the power of Article II of our Constitution and securing our border with guards and barriers(or walls) and electronics and soldiers and alligator-infested moats along with the Army and the Border Patrol and ICE carrying out interior enforcement.  They’re most terrified that he’ll actually secure the border and then follow up with a deportation binge.  That won’t be permitted, if the supine GOP saboteurs have anything at all to do with it.

I’m afraid that Mr. L’s over-arching point is quite correct: These corrupt bastards who run the GOP in Washington DC don’t want Trump(or us) to win. They’re sick of him winning, and the reaction to his State of the Union address suggests that he’s made his case to the American people.  This is why suddenly, they’re talking deal, but stubbornly, they are going to insist on poisoning it.  The President should not accept such a deal, because it’s precisely the sort of failure we’ll understand as a betrayal.  I think President Trump understands this, and if my suspicion is correct, they’re going to offer some ridiculous deal, knowing that it will wreck him.  If they do, he must remain resolved, explain to the American people why the deal is worthless, and then declare the emergency to build the wall and secure our nation. At that point, he should take on the chore with a ruthless zeal, too.  It’s the only thing the weasels in Washington DC understand, and it’s the only way our interests, that three in four people who agreed on Tuesday with his immigration prescriptions are ever going to get it done their way.

I can only offer the following unsolicited advice for our Commander-in-Chief:  Mr. President, let them make their phony offer, and then shove it up their… noses with an emergency declaration of your own.  You have the power for extraordinary circumstances, but if the ongoing and perpetual reordering of our nation by invasion isn’t an emergency, I can’t conceive of what is.  Do it.  Declare that emergency to build the wall and virtually grab those saboteurs by their…whatevers.  It’s the reason we elected you.

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Posted in Donald Trump, Featured, GOP Establishment, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, News, Politics | 3 Comments »

GOP Says “FU”

Friday, March 18th, 2016

its-our-party-we-can-do-do-what-we-want_ftThe GOP establishment isn’t going quietly. In fact, they’re building their booby trap for those who would oust them from dominance in the upcoming elections, and those who have to date deprived them of viable candidates in the Republican primary season.  I have here stated that I’m not a big fan of Donald Trump, and that I have serious misgivings about all of the Republican candidates.  What you should know is that as much as I may not like Donald Trump’s behavior and antics, I vastly prefer him to the crooked DC UniParty that includes both Democrat and Republican establishments.  What we’ve learned today is that in order to interrupt the natural, normal primary process as the GOP establishment had already rigged it, they will use the continuing candidacy of a mail carrier’s son to foist on the party a nominee like Paul Ryan, or another establishment Republican, through the contested convention process, should neither Trump nor Cruz obtain the necessary 1,237 delegates.  If that doesn’t disgust you quite enough, and it isn’t clear enough to you how, as a voter for any candidate in the GOP primary, you’re being screwed, there’s this bit of news:  Orin Hatch(R-UT) is already aboard with the Obama nomination of  leftist radical Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the United States.   Perpetual sell-outs Jeff Flake, Kelly Ayotte, and Susan Collins have already expressed interest in meeting with Garland.  You need to understand how you’re being betrayed by the GOP establishment.

This is their parting gift.  If they can’t win in the regular primary process, they’re going to make your votes meaningless.  If that still doesn’t permit them to maintain power, and if they’re unable to stop Trump directly, they will support Hillary.  Assuming somehow that doesn’t materialize, and Trump has such a groundswell of support in the Fall that they’re unable to sufficiently damage him in order to elect Hillary, they are setting up their parting gift: If they believe they’re about to be ousted anyway, they are going to shove a leftist Supreme Court justice down our throats to wreck the country for decades, if not forever.  One way or another, they’re going to have their revenge, like the petulant children of Bill Clinton’s administration who stole all the “W” keys from keyboards throughout the executive departments of our government, the difference being that this will be substantially more damaging, and it will be done with far more malice.  Speaking of malice for Republican voters, watch the following video (H/T Sundance @ the ConservativeTreehouse), and listen closely just beyond the three minute mark:

That’s right, it’s THEIR party, and they’ll nominate who they damned well please.  For those who don’t quite understand this, let me explain it this way: Delegates select the nominee. Voters participate in a process by which delegates are selected, but this is where the voter’s legal say in the process ends. As a practical matter, it is true that the party selects the nominee through its delegates.  If no candidate obtains 1,237 delegates(one more than half) then the delegates who are required to support the candidate to whom they were originally allocated in the first vote become unbound in any successive votes, meaning they can cross over and vote for another candidate.  This is essentially a “contested convention” by party rules, and at present, unless something shifts wildly, it’s going to be very difficult for any of the candidates to get to the 1,237 delegates required.  What Curly Haugland is explaining in this video is that which we already know: It’s THEIR party.  They make the rules, and they determine the process, which means that they alone really possess the ability to select the party’s nominee.  They can make changes to the rules almost at will.

Haugland isn’t lying. Haugland is simply stating the facts. What voters must now realize is what many people have been explaining for decades, but that nobody seems willing to acknowledge: The whole primary process is a farce.  In the Democrat party, it is dominated by “Super Delegates” who basically are able to obviate the will of the voters at their whim.  Witness how Bernie Sanders can win the popular vote in a given state, but always loses in the delegate count. In the 1970s, the Democrats created the “Super Delegates” in the wake of George McGovern’s candidacy, because they never wanted such an apparent leftist to be the nominee of their party again. It’s the Democrat establishment’s version of “Screw-the-vote,” and it’s in clear evidence in 2016 in the race between Clinton and Sanders.

On the Republican side, a different methodology is used to obtain the same kind of result.  A myriad of candidates are inserted into the campaign to split and shape the results.  As they lose their utility in shaping the race, they’re withdrawn from the process.  This is why John Kasich remains in this race today, because he’s going to effectively siphon-off just enough delegates to make sure neither of the other two can obtain 1,237 delegates.  This will put the GOP establishment in the position of being able to negotiate with the candidates at the convention, probably even throughout the period between the last primary in early June, and the convention’s start in July.  By then, the delegate counts will be firmly known, and the deal-making will begin in earnest.  We will eventually discover who had been the better deal-maker, or if a deal had been reached at all, once the voting begins at the convention.  I would not be surprised to see a Trump-Kasich ticket emerge, with Kasich being the establishment’s lever in the supposed presidency of Donald Trump.

Whatever the case, you can bet that the GOP establishment will use a “contested convention” to set their hooks deeply into Donald Trump’s backside if he is to become the nominee.  The same is true if they were to instead broker a deal with Ted Cruz.  The basic idea here is that they will obtain certain policy concessions for the DC UniParty that will undermine whomever they ultimately decide to support in this process.  You can bet that this is where some form of “amnesty” will sneak in over the threshold, and you can expect to be thoroughly betrayed on this issue.  Whether it’s some sort of “touch-back amnesty” as Trump has previously suggested, or a “legalize-in-place-without-path-to-citizenship” as Cruz has previously advocated, you can bet the hooks will be set firmly.

The party establishments are firmly in control of their parties, and I detest the misleading comments of those who will tell you now that the “GOP establishment is dead.”  Nothing could be further from the truth, and they will never yield power in their party.  At best, they’re in hiding.  Should voters become so incensed at the process that they decide to form a new party, abandoning the GOP altogether, the GOP establishment will simply switch and work to co-opt the new party.  There is a vast political class of consultants, analysts, propagandists, public-relations pushers, and pollsters who cannot live without this process.  They’d be out of a job.  They are the folks most threatened by the two remaining Republican candidates, because either is likely to wipe out a good deal of this nonsense if they are able to obtain the nomination and win the presidency.

The Republican Party’s establishment is able to say “FU” to the voters and make it stick, certainly for now, and probably for as long as the Republican Party remains in existence. They control far too much of the process to ever be truly defeated on their own home turf.  Even Ronald Reagan discovered this as he found through the course of his presidency that he was being consistently opposed and undermined not just by Democrats like Ted Kennedy, but also from within his own administration through the establishment cronies tied to his Vice President.  If either Trump or Cruz manages to make a deal to get the nomination at a “contested convention,” you should know that exactly the same sort of thing will be in the offing, because the establishment isn’t giving up their power without a serious knock-down, drag-out fight.  We should be realistic about the betrayals that will attend any deal-making, and it’s why we must never forget that when they assert that it’s THEIR party, they aren’t lying.  It’s just that in most cases, they’re just as soon not point it out.  We should be prepared to exert our influence, to the degree we have any, with the candidate who they ultimately nominate, because the deal-making of the DC establishment is never in our favor. Never.

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Posted in Election 2016, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Video | 2 Comments »

The Marginalization of American Conservatism

Wednesday, March 16th, 2016

conservatism_the_real_thing_ftThis is an issue that should concern all those who are fervent conservatives, and it’s one we must now confront as we near the end of the primary season of 2016.  In this election cycle, the predictable outcome seems more inevitable than ever, but one can’t ignore how the current GOP front-runner has at times scorned conservatism.  Much like the long-established practice of the blue-blood Republicans, what has happened in this election is that conservatism has become increasingly isolated from the remainder of the Republican party, and from the electorate at large.  This isn’t a pleasant reality for conservatives, but it is nevertheless true.  So long as we permit this to occur, we will never see the sort of electoral outcomes we would prefer, never mind the the realization of  substantive policy results for which we’ve been fierce advocates.  We have some terrible choices before us, but in advance of us making them, we must come to understand how we’ve arrived in our current predicament.  If we’re ever to return this nation to a constitutional path, we must do first by adhering to it ourselves, and we must be willing to accept our own role in our political misfortunes.  The truth is somewhat difficult to accept, but there it lies, nevertheless, awaiting the summoning our courage to confront it.  Conservatism is increasingly marginalized precisely because we have permitted its dilution and diminution through the acceptance of too many compromises of principles, and too many instances in which we were willing to form an ideological “big tent.”  There’s nothing wrong with building temporary alliances with others, but if conservatism doesn’t stake out its ideological limits, and defend its ideological boundaries, it will continue to be marginalized within the broader general electorate.

When George W. Bush ran for the office of President of the United States in 2000, not a few Texans had significant concerns.  Many who had observed his performance here in Texas took the time to try to warn the party at large that he was not really a conservative.  Bush tried to ply conservatives with a new formulation, calling himself a “compassionate conservative.”  There were a few problems with this that some of us at the time recognized, and one of them was in the implicit denigration of conservatism generally:  Conservatism is compassionate.  We need no such adjectives.  We need no such descriptors.  We need no such modifiers on what conservatism offers to its adherents.  Conservatism is the most compassionate ideology in existence, but by accepting the adjective offered by George W. Bush, we made what was tantamount to an admission that conservatism wasn’t inherently compassionate.

What conservatives across the nation soon discovered was the fact that “compassionate conservatism” meant “big-government Republican.” On issue after issue, from defense, to security, to education, to Medicare, or bank bail-outs, there was no issue in which the answer of George W. Bush would be anything other than the expansion of government and the increase of our national debt at the expense of generations as yet unborn.  It is true that Obama has essentially doubled the national debt, but we must in all honesty admit that the same can be said of George W. Bush.  The Bush “compassion” came at the expense of conservatism, and at the expense of our generations of Americans as yet unborn.  Nevertheless, we permitted Bush to fly the flag of a highly adulterated “conservatism” without respect to what the long-run affects on our movement would be.  Most of the conservative media spent much of the eight years of the Bush presidency, and much time well beyond their end, defending the ludicrous policies and positions of a conservative who wasn’t.

We’re seeing some of the same thing in the current election year.  Donald Trump talks about “common-sense” conservatism. I have exactly as many problems with this adjective tacked as a prefix to conservatism as I did to the term “compassionate.”  In fact, over time, there are or have been “Tea Party conservatives,” “reform conservatives,” “constitutional conservatives,” and “moderate conservatives,” but I think all these adjectives placed in series with “conservatism” simply dilute the meaning.  These modifiers also act as a disguise for that which is not conservatism.  Herein lies the problem for we conservatives, because I believe conservatism is inherently compassionate, wholly common-sense in its construction, and entirely committed to constitutional principles.  In other words, to attach any prefix to “conservatism” is to dilute and pollute the concept, or strictly to permit the purveyor to pose as a conservative while not adhering to all or part of the broader concept of conservatism.

The other effect of these bastardized versions of “conservatism” is that when people traveling under those phony banners continue to assert their hyphenated-conservatism, the natural result is that conservatism takes the blame for all the failures of those folk who are not conservative. For an example, consider again the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush, this time in the context of the creation of the Transportation Security Administration(TSA,) and how he created a huge bureaucracy that increased the costs of government, but now, one-and-one-half decades later, we have another costly bureaucracy that fails to meet the security testing thrown at it just as badly or in many cases in worse fashion than the airlines-owned or airport-owned security that the TSA replaced. Again, another big-government solution that has failed, cost untold billions of dollars, and conservatives and conservatism are now permanently saddled with the blame, in large measure because a putative “conservative” enacted it.

This is the problem with letting others define “conservatism,” or letting non-conservatives decide who is or who isn’t a conservative.  “Conservatism” has become so generic and muddied at this point that it’s nearly impossible for us to in the first instance, exclude those who are not actual conservatives, and in the second instance, disclaim ownership of statist programs and policies enacted in the name of conservatism.  This is a gargantuan problem we face, and it helps explain why Donald Trump can make the point that “conservatives haven’t accomplished anything,” or that “conservatives are part of the problem.”  I think it’s time to heed the warning made explicit by this entire fiasco: We must make distinct our principles from the tawdry mix of self-contradictory, expediency-based lack of principle in the broader Republican party.

I don’t pretend to know the solution in this matter, but it’s one we conservatives must address. We’re being marginalized by virtue of a popular media meme, one that gains through our own passive associations with big-government Republicans, permitting them to shelter among us, gain our support, or in some cases, enjoy our defense of conservatism when they undertake less-than-conservative policies and programs.  This happens at all levels of government, but nowhere is it more damning and punishing than at the federal level.  Let us review briefly: In the aftermath of the 1998 mid-terms, the anti-Newt forces prevailed and essentially pushed him out of leadership.  Since that date, the Republican party, in various times controlling the House, the Senate, or the Presidency(and for some period, all three) have accomplished virtually nothing, but have frequently contributed to the statist cause.  The litany of issues and instances in which the Republican party has effectively aided and abetted Democrats in ruining our republic is gargantuan both in number and in consequence. We can no longer, not even once more, permit this to happen in the name of, or under the cover of another misappropriation of the title “conservatism.”

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Posted in Conservatism, Constitution, DC UniParty, Election 2016, Featured, GOP Establishment, Politics, TrumpUnism | 1 Comment »

Donald Trump’s “Nuclear Option”

Friday, March 4th, 2016

trump_nuke_gop_ftI would warn the stupid, vile Republican Party establishment to be careful about fooling around with the convention in Cleveland this Summer as the means by which to substitute one of their own for Donald Trump, should he remain the front-runner, and should he fail to obtain 1237 delegates or the eight-state majority-delegate needed to win the nomination.  I cannot deny that whatever else I may think about this race or Mr. Trump’s candidacy, I am enjoying the fact that the Republican establishment is now trotting-out, in full-on panic mode, failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the desperate hope that they can derail Mr. Trump.  The GOP establishment ought to take care in trying to rig a “contested convention” that includes tricks and deceit that will not only wreck the GOP’s presidential aspirations, but also will leave Donald Trump in the motivated position to deploy his nuclear option.

What could Trump do?  I urge Republicans on Capitol Hill to be wary of playing games with the nomination process. All four-hundred-thirty-five House seats are up for re-election in November, as are one-third of the one-hundred Senate seats.  While Trump certainly couldn’t possibly deploy a field of opponents for all the Republicans, particularly at that late date, there is something he could easily accomplishment that would rapidly wreck the GOP establishment’s day.

Mr. Trump’s supporters are very loyal, and while they may not be quite large enough to gain him all 1237 delegates needed to secure the nomination outright, they are more than large enough to swing Congressional elections by fifteen or twenty percent.  His supporters are angry, and they are right to be, as are all who have become disgusted by the feckless GOP.  If the GOP establishment tampers or tinkers with this nomination process, his coalition of independents, conservative blue-collar Democrats, and not a few fed-up conservative-to-moderate Republicans may make a complete wreckage of the Fall’s Congressional elections, and will easily help defeat the Republican’s Presidential nominee.

The Republican Party would deserve  it.  Trump is playing by the rules, at least to date, and those elected/former officials in the GOP who have said they won’t support Trump if he’s nominated have already provoked that response.  If they try to manipulate the nomination process in Cleveland, dismissing a Trump nomination if he obtains more delegates than any other candidate, but not the whole 1237 needed, his supporters may rage against the GOP machine, but if Trump joined the campaign trail against the GOP in September, October, and November, the GOP stands a strong chance of losing both Houses of Congress along with the White House and the Supreme Court.

This is Trump’s “nuclear option.” If the party tries to cheat him, I think he might rightly attempt to blow the party to tiny pieces, and at that point, I must admit that my sense of justice would convince me to help him.  One way or another, the GOP establishment needs to die.  If they arm Trump with the righteous sword of a vengeful  justice, they will have earned it.

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Posted in Donald Trump, Election 2016, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, TrumpUnism | 4 Comments »

Unequivocal Decision Point – No Advice Needed or Solicited from GOP Establishment

Thursday, March 3rd, 2016

romney_ug_ftI recognize that for many, 2016 has been the most confusing, confounding primary season in memory.  One of the things that I’ve always and forever detested is the Republican Establishment. Long time readers will know this has been the case.  In my most recent previous post, Stupor Tuesday, I explained why this race is now down to two men.  Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are the only viable campaigns remaining in 2016.  I have often stated in various places, both here and on Facebook and Twitter, that I don’t feel entirely comfortable with either of these candidates.  Let me state this clearly, and let me make it clear to all my readers, because whatever my issue-wise sympathies, the moment either of these candidates links up with the GOP establishment, or I am able to discern that either has linked-up with the party bosses, I will immediately support the other candidate in a all-out way.  I said yesterday on Twitter, half jokingly, the following:

You know how we conservatives are always miffed at GOPe for expecting us to join them, while they never join us? How stubborn are they?

In truth, I hope they’re stubborn as Hell. I hope they stubbornly stick to their guns and completely and utterly destroy the GOP as we’ve known it.  Their decades of intransigence, selling out the country with horrible trade deals to increase their personal treasuries and to extend their political influence while simultaneously ruining the country by giving away our sovereign power and our right to national self-determination has been a process that is absolutely despicable to me, and ought to be anathema to all Americans.  I don’t hate much in this world, in the true sense of the word, but the GOP establishment is one entity on this planet that collectively deserves all the contempt I can muster.  The fact of the matter is that the GOP establishment with all its gamesmanship aimed at subverting genuine, conscientious, sincere conservative activists to their purposes is simply an abomination.  I am not willing to side with the GOP establishment for the sake of one more election, under any circumstance. I am not willing to have them join with me because I know that will simply be their key to the front door through which they will slowly smuggle their agenda.

Today, Mitt Romney presented his statement on this election.  Let me make this clear: I don’t care what Romney says. Romney was a loser, and he was no friend to conservatives, and honestly, I don’t think he was a friend to our country’s future.  Trump says “he choked,” but I think it was worse than that. I think the GOP establishment wanted Obama to stay in office for a second term, so they could blame Obama and the Democrats for all of the statism and cronyism they’ve been perpetrating against us these last four years. Truly.  I think the GOP establishment in Washington DC has been sand-bagging the last four years and doing Obama’s bidding because it is what they and their wealthy donors, like the US Chamber of [Crony]Commerce have demanded. They tried to put the GangOf8 “Screw America Amnesty Bill” over on us, and they used Democrats to anchor a voting majority, and factually did so in the Senate.  In the House, under Boehner and Ryan, the party bosses have used a voting bloc comprised of a majority of Democrats and the RINO contingent to pass continuing resolutions, and other legislation that simply perpetuates the problem, with McConnell backing that effort in the Senate with the same strategy.  It’s disgusting. The GOP establishment is reprehensible, but now they want to pervert and twist the 2016 primary season more than they’ve already done. To the degree this is now a two-man race comprised of two “outsider” candidates, it is wholly due to the mismanagement and sedition of the Republican Party bosses, and an intractable DC establishment that hates conservatives, generally governing with contempt for them.

Let me explain something to you, my loyal readers who have hung in there over the years, particularly the last couple, when you had every reason to suspect I might never return: I love my country, as do you. As a young man, I spent much of my youth manning the defense of Europe from the Soviet Bloc when the matter was still very much in doubt, and our national security was very much at risk. I returned home when George H.W. Bush was taking the reins and making massive cuts to our defense infrastructure as part of a supposed “peace dividend,” a policy continued by his successor, Bill Clinton. What I discovered upon my return was that in my half-decade absence from my country, while serving as its instrument abroad, Ronald Reagan’s hopeful, courageous America was being replaced by a shrinking, tepid, but allegedly “kinder and gentler” America, suffering in the aftermath of a recession brought about in part by a broken “read my lips” promise.

Conservatism had seemed to be on the ascendancy throughout Reagan’s time in office, and many of us assumed, wrongly, that George Bush the elder would merely continue Reagan’s programs and policies. It was not the case.  It was he who caused the loss to Clinton in 1992, and it was in the same way that his son’s mismanagement of the government early in this century led to Barack Obama. I view the era from January 1989 through present as one unbroken string of Bush governance. Neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney put up much of a fight, the difference between them being that John McCain at least had a running mate in the person of Sarah Palin who did not want to stand down, and who did not want to yield. That’s the truth.

Over the last seven years, since Obama’s first term commenced in 2009, when Republicans had the power to fight, they laid down. We sent them help in 2010. In 2011, they failed us, and if you go back to the older posts on this site, you will see detailed in those posts the budget battles of 2011, and how the Republicans in the House under the leadership of John Boehner repeatedly failed us.  In 2012, we sent more help. There were some efforts, but then there were also those we had sent who betrayed us, such as Marco Rubio, among lesser lights.  In 2014, again, we sent more help, and no longer could Boehner claim “one-half of one-third of the government” as his excuse. Instead, in vote after vote, they engineered Obama legislative victories using a few hands-full of safe Republican RINOs in combination with almost all of the Democrats to give Obama whatever in Hell’s name he demanded.

Betrayed! That’s where we’ve been, and with few exceptions, that’s where we are. Now we sit in 2016 in the middle of the primary season, and again, the GOP establishment is trying to rig things, but failing that, if they don’t get a nominee acceptable to them, they are going to spike this election. Bill Kristol of WeeklyStandard fame has said he’d consider Hillary rather than voting for Trump. He’s an establishment hack, and if he wants to support Hillary, so be it, let him, but then let him leave also the Republican party, never to return. If the Republican party establishment does anything other than to support the nominee of the party to its fullest capacity, the Republican party will be killed-off in the aftermath.  Millions upon millions of long-time Republicans, conservatives, and undoubtedly, others in the broader Republican coalition will see to it.  We’ve had it with the GOP establishment.  It’s not their party any longer, and if we need to pry it from their [politically]”cold dead hands,” we will. The time of the DC Democrat/Republican uni-party is at an end, one way or another, and if it means the GOP must die to be reborn, so be it. If we must kill the GOP to rid ourselves of the DC establishment virus that infects the body of the Republican party, I stand ready to assist. If this election is lost due to the DC establishment malingering or sabotage, woe will become their constant companion, because we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt where the lines are drawn, and who is screwing whom.

In media, FoxNews is in trouble, and they know it. Ailes is reportedly apoplectic at the disclosure of his secret meeting with Rubio and other GangOf8 shills. The network’s ratings are in full-scale collapse, because they’ve been so pro-establishment for so long that given their wholesale marketing of Rubio, their audience has had enough.  They’re turning off FoxNews.  They’re fleeing the establishment mouthpieces.  It had gotten so bad that it’s become a running joke on Twitter, Facebook, and in the blogosphere that “No matter where Rubio finishes, He won, HE WON!”  Even Hannity is being openly mocked on Twitter. It’s been brutal for the semi-conservatives who have been carrying Rubio’s water on-air on FoxNews.

Based on all we now know, let me offer some advice to the two remaining viable candidates:

To both men, run from Mitt Romney. He’s a plague. Defeat is his constant companion, because his base of support is a uni-party establishment that many of the people in the Republican party have grown to hate. Run away from entanglements with the DC establishment. Such associations label a candidate as a doomed loser and a probable sell-out.  Flee like Lott, and don’t look back, lest you turn to a pillar of salt. We, the sane and patriotic people in the Republican party wish only to burn the establishment down. Don’t get caught in the flames. Others will.

To Donald Trump: Expand on the manner in which you presented yourself on the evening of your Super Tuesday wins. You will earn more credibility in the eyes of voters if you remain calm, cool, and Presidential. Stop scaring people with your rhetoric that seems even mildly threatening, specifically with respect to Americans(criminals notwithstanding.) Don’t threaten our constitutional protections, and please do more to explain the details of your programs and proposals. You terrify conservatives in many respects, because we don’t see many signs that you’re rooted in principle. The rank-and-file conservatives in the Republican party try very hard to live by principles as the guiding lights for their mortal lives. If you want to gain our support, particularly if you win the nomination, and wish not to have us sit out this election, you’ve got to begin engaging the issues from a principled position more frequently.  The whole discussion of healthcare is a good example of how you’ve horrified conservatives, many of whom believe you are in favor of something akin to single-payer healthcare.  That’s a euphemism for socialized medicine, and it’s a terrible failure providing rationing of even diagnostic and preventative care that leads to greater mortality rates for diseases that have much higher survival rates here in the US. I use this as an example, but the point is clear: Principles move conservatives; vague banter and platitudes will not. Take the US Constitution to heart, and conservatives may listen. Your press conference Tuesday was a good start in the right direction. Expand on that.

To Ted Cruz: You must run, in fact, flee in great haste, from all things establishment, and all things globalist in intent or origin.  Many conservatives fear that your history provides evidence of a too-close coziness with the Bush family, and while we understand that nobody in Republican politics in Texas over the last four decades can go far without knowing and relating in some manner to the Bush family, your connections to them could easily serve as an albatross around your neck in this election. Jealously guard American sovereignty, and prevent its usurpation by foreign powers and interests who do not hold the interests of the American people at heart. You have taken the position of reversing yourself on the TPP, but you must extend that opposition. The truth is that their can be no such thing as “free trade” with a people who are virtually enslaved.  We did not trade with the Soviet Union. We refused them, as we were right to do because we should never give the moral sanction of the veil of “free trade” to their human rights abuses.  China is no different, as their tanks in Tiananmen Square demonstrated, and their program of compulsory abortions proves.  Mexico is a cesspool run by an oligarchy that keeps its people in destitution. The American people are quite beyond tired of having a government represent interests other than those of the whole body of the American people in these deals, and no longer have confidence in our elected officials to do right by the American people. We need your unambiguous statement that you will pursue the interests of the American people, as the American people see them, but not as the establishment in DC decides they must be.

To both men, you must be faithful to your pledge to support the nominee of the Republican Party, and you must avoid entanglements with the GOP establishment at all costs. You must be and remain your own men, subservient to no hidden interests.  This, the American people can trust.  This, the American people will appreciate and respect.  If you do these things, the American people will be able to decide between you in earnest, without excessive rancor or discontent.  Unifying the party at the conclusion of this contest will be infinitely easier if the two of you set this example for those who are your supporters.  The Republican Party establishment will undoubtedly undertake tricks. Trotting out Mitt Romney is their desperate appeal for relevance and control.  They may even line up to endorse one or the other of you.  You must avoid connection with the party establishment at all cost.  We, the broad base of conservatism, view the establishment as the source of so many of our laments, losses, and general discontent over these last three decades, starting with the amnesty deal of 1986.

May the best man win, and win without the assistance, cooperation or coordination of the GOP establishment.

 

 

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Trump Hammers Cruz as “Maniac” But Looks The Part Himself

Tuesday, December 15th, 2015
Angry or Manic?

Angry or Manic?

Donald Trump had one heck of a weekend. First, he questioned Ted Cruz’s “evangelical” credentials, and went to great lengths to attack him on ethanol subsidies, pandering to Iowa voters.  As if this wasn’t enough, he actually asserted that Cruz was a maniac in the Senate, firmly ceding his own “outsider” credentials. Is this attack by Trump going to succeed, or is it, as Mark Levin said on the air Monday evening, a foolish move?  FoxNews is eating it up, because they hate both men.  To them, Trump is a maniac, but so is Ted Cruz.  They are considered “maniacs” by the FoxNews establishment crowd for different specific reasons, and I think it’s instructive to understand why this difference matters.  He even went on to join in a leftist attack on Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the few justices fighting to uphold the constitution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ahQ-BPFOiY

When Trump goes to great lengths to say “Cuba isn’t known for its evangelicals,” he’s taking a rather bigoted view of Cuba. Many Cuban exiles resumed their faith in full fervor after successfully leaving Cuba, and in fact, it was their faith, at least in part, that caused them to flee.  More, Trump has never been a friend to evangelicals, so what’s with the petty attack on Cruz on this basis?  Score one for Trump’s religious and ethnic bigotry.  Not only did he make [faulty] assumptions about Cubans and evangelicals, but he also made an assumption that this would play to Iowans.

Trump went on to point out to Iowans that Cruz opposed the ethanol subsidy.  I have news for you: Virtually everybody outside the corn-growing states oppose the ethanol subsidies, because frankly, it’s driving up the cost of food and fuel, as well as making a wreck of gasoline-burning power equipment, from automobiles to lawn-mowers to outboard motors. Even many within corn-growing states oppose the subsidies, because they have to pour this diluted gasoline in their cars and shop at grocery stores where every item that has corn as an input, from corn chips to corn-fed beef is inflating in price due to the use of corn in the production of ethanol.  This was a purely cynical attack intended to take advantage of Iowans by pandering to something peculiarly interesting to them.

What’s most disconcerting about Trump’s little rampage this past weekend is that the attacks he launched on Cruz were launched squarely from a leftward point of view.  I even observed Brit Hume, a notorious establishment shill, going on to attack Cruz on this basis, intimating that Iowans have a short time to discover the reason so many in the Senate don’t like Ted Cruz.  I don’t need Brit Hume to tell me, because I already know. It’s the same reason I supported Cruz in his Senate run against Texas RINO David Dewhurst, and also why people like Senators Lindsey Graham(R-NC) and John McCain(R-AZ) can’t stand Cruz: He’s willing to fight. They’re not.

The odd thing is that this may well backfire on Donald Trump, because up until now, he’s been running as an “outsider.” This series of attacks plays directly into the hands of the GOP establishment. Cruz has been no friend to the GOP establishment, and Iowans know it.  I’m not sure that Trump hasn’t sabotaged himself here, because his attacks on Cruz sound suspiciously similar to the attacks launch against Cruz by the DC insiders.  In so doing, Trump is eating into one of his few distinct virtues: He’s been the quintessential outsider,  at least until now, but with the latest series of attacks on Cruz from the left, he may be unintentionally ceding that ground to Cruz.  If so, Trump may come to lament this last weekend.  His attack on Antonin Scalia is perhaps the worst outlier of the weekend, because while one might rationalize his attacks on Cruz as just part of the political fight, but the attack on Scalia by going along with Jake Tapper was pure folly.  Scalia has been a leading light for constitutional conservatives for years, and this scurrilous attack on him by Trump is perhaps a bridge too far.  This speaks more to Trump’s own maniacal nature than to anything one might say about either Antonin Scalia or Ted Cruz.

As a purely political matter, Cruz ought to avoid being drawn into a knock-down, drag-out with Trump, because that’s where Trump excels.  Cruz is best in well-reasoned, well-controlled discourses when the tempo of the exchange supports close examination.  If Trump has any inkling of the misstep he may have taken over the weekend, he’ll reverse course on some of this as quick as he can.  Discerning conservatives and independents will notice that Trump really yielded some of his claim to being an outsider this weekend, and this may well cost Trump mightily.  If one considers that among the ‘outsiders,’ (Trump, Cruz, Carson, Fiorina) constitute nearly seventy percent of the support from Republican primary voters, Trump ought to think and think hard about yielding his position as outsider so easily.   The notion that Cruz is looked upon in a negative light by most of his Senate colleagues is not a bad thing, particularly in the vast expanse of the electorate between the coasts.  From the point of view of most Americans, most of the Senate is comprised of detestable Washington DC insiders who hold the American people in contempt.

The Republican candidates are scheduled to debate Tuesday night in Las Vegas.  It will be interesting to see whether Trump squanders his lead by continuing this line of attack, or whether he thinks better of it and resorts to more rational arguments that might appeal to conservatives.  To date, his one peculiar virtue had been his take-no-prisoners style of assault on the GOP establishment, but if he isn’t careful, he may well blow it.  The GOP establishment is only too happy to see Trump going after Cruz, and this could well be his undoing with the Republican base.

 

 

 

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Posted in Donald Trump, Election 2016, Featured, GOP Establishment, Politics, Ted Cruz, TrumpUnism | 5 Comments »

Why I Like Donald Trump

Saturday, December 12th, 2015
Hamming it up

Hamming it up

I like the mockery Donald Trump has been making of a goodly portion of the establishment of the Republican Party.  They deserve it.  I love the fact that he’s driving the media berserk.  After ten minutes of watching almost any news network on TV, one is left with the impression that Donald Trump is somewhere between evil genius and outright loon.  Trump is a shrewd media manipulator, but I still don’t know anything concrete about what he believes.  I can’t identify a consistent ideology much beyond “what will get me the most press right now.”  Still, despite all his philosophical and ideological shortcomings, one can’t help but love to watch the way he drives the Washington DC, insider cartel absolutely crazy. Despite the gnashing of teeth from within the Beltway, the American people are eating it up, with each episode gaining him ground.  I understand it.  America is looking for a leader like George C. Scott’s portrayal of General George S. Patton: No nonsense, a bit of bravado, and an unambiguous statement of the goal, without worrying about who may be offended.  How many times have conservatives lamented the lack of bluntness?  Still, this cannot be the sole criteria by which we choose our president, any more than a sunny disposition can be the sole criteria for choosing one’s doctor.  We need much more.

Trump’s entire campaign seems to hang on the catch-phrase “making America great again.” That’s all well and good, and I very much enjoy that process, like most conservatives, but I’m not sure I understand what Donald Trump thinks made America great in the first place.  Listening to him, there’s no evidence that he’s for any reduction in the size and cost of government, yet I believe part of what made America great was economic freedom, and it has been only in the progressive, statist era that America’s true greatness reached its apogee and began again to wane.   I’m not sure Mr. Trump sees it quite that way.  The problem is that by reducing everything to a slogan about “making America great again,” I’ve not heard too many specific details, and the few I’ve heard thus far are less than inspiring.  For instance, Mr. Trump is for a single-payer healthcare system!  If there is anything that has helped America to begin losing its standing and financial stability in the world, it is the increasing socialization of our medical care and insurance schemes since the late 1960s.  More. the dependency-creating welfare-state of which a single-payer system would be an integral unit is part of what is destroying America’s greatness, so I don’t understand Trump’s logical [in]consistency.

In point of fact, Trump is not conservative, but then most Republicans claiming that label don’t really deserve to wear it.  Jeb Bush said famously “I used to be a conservative,” but Rubio, Christie, Kasich and a lengthy list of the others are not conservatives either.  In fact, I think the closest things to genuine conservatives we have in this race for the nomination are senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  Huckaby and Santorum might make legitimate claims to a fair piece of social conservatism, but in terms of economics and finance, I don’t believe either of them is overwhelmingly conservative by accounting of their actual political records.  Dr. Ben Carson is a brilliant, amiable man, who I like very much, but who also probably isn’t ready to be President of the United States.  The point is that we can’t throw out Trump for his lack of conservatism unless we’re also willing to discard Rubio, Christie, Kasich, Huckaby, Santorum, Lindsey Graham(who I would not support for dog catcher in Tumbleweed, Arizona,)  or Carly Fiorina, none of whom are particularly conservative, or worse, are simply establishment hacks. For my part, I’m willing to discard them, and indeed, I’m will also to discard Trump because what I’ve discovered is that Mr. Trump simply hasn’t formulated what I would consider to be a self-consistent plan that exhibits any detailed understanding of how to “make America great again.”  Of course, that doesn’t make him any worse than the laundry-list of folks noted above, but it should give pause to those who are rushing off to support him.

I like Trump’s energy.  I wish it were more focused.  I like his general notion about “making America great again,” because I believe it’s something that could be accomplished, but I haven’t seen any evidence that he has a plan to accomplish it in any plausible manner.  I like that he comes up with short-run, topical slogans, because that’s always easy for voters to digest and understand, but I detest the fact that he seems to stop at the slogan-formulation stage, and never brings any substantive plans along by which these slogans are to be realized.  In short, he’s a lot of huff and puff, but no stuff.  There’s no there there.

On the other hand, Trump has staked out a number of positions I consider to be abominable.  The single-payer healthcare business he supported through the 90s is among them, but I’ve also noted with chagrin that Trump supports the Supreme Court decision in Kelo, in which eminent domain was used to condemn homes and property for use in commercial developments.  His general disrespect for private property rights and his use of government to take what he wants ought to serve as a cautionary note to anyone who considers supporting him for President. Remember this:

These are just two highlights among a lengthy list of deficiencies.  Still, it is entertaining to watch the Republican establishment and its slate of candidates from Jeb to Marco lose their minds over Trump.  Trump may entertain me, and I truly enjoy watching the likes of Jeb Bush lose his cool, and to watch the entire Democrat Party membership go crazy, calling him “Hitler” and so on.  Perhaps they should call him “FDR” instead. Franklin Roosevelt interred Japanese for the duration of the war, most of them US citizens!  Watching the media, especially FoxNews, obsessing over Trump makes me laugh.  Megyn Kelly’s semi-pseudo-exasperation over the media’s obsession(and eye-rolling, on-air confessions of the same at her own network) tickle me pink.  Her assault on Trump:

Megyn asks Donald about his Republican credentials:

The GOP establishment’s media harpy is hilarious when she loses her mind over Trump.  Trump apparently agrees:

Of course, FoxNews acts as a megaphone for the establishment wing of the GOP:

My point, lost in the haze of Donald Trump’s bombast, is that while he is highly entertaining to watch, and while I heartily enjoy seeing the DC beltway cartel lose their minds over his politically-incorrect remarks and comments, I don’t believe he has the philosophical consistency for which I’m looking in a President, and I also don’t believe his overall record on areas of significance are in any way in accord with conservative thought. His views on eminent domain are in accord with the Supreme Court, but in the current context, that means they’re anathema to traditional Americans principles and values.

Still, a conservative must take a certain amount of pleasure in the GOP establishment having been driven to plotting over measures to stave off a Trump nomination by setting aside any Trump electoral success through the use of a brokered convention.  That anybody drives the party “blue-bloods” to this level of terror is absolutely a fascinating occasion I wholly endorse…but I still can’t vote for him.

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GOP Mafia Produces Cochran Win in Mississippi

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

Haley’s Helot

There really is something deeply wrong with the GOP establishment, and as nearly all conservatives have always suspected, it’s this: Despite all of the GOP establishment’s haughty talk about moderation, they are willing to do anything, no matter how repulsive, to achieve their political ends in order to maintain power.  In Mississippi, Thad Cochran held onto his seat by the slimmest of margins over conservative Chris McDaniels.  Had there not been a laundry list of out-of-state, center-left interests pouring money in on Cochran’s behalf, this race would have come out differently, but what I want dispirited conservatives to know is that despite the loss, you won.  It might be hard to see at the moment, but there’s really something to be said for your accomplishments in this race.  The truth is now plain to see, and for those who doubted it before, the veil should now be thoroughly lifted:  The GOP establishment is comprised of a mafia-like element that will use any tactic necessary to keep its scumbags in office, and in this election, it was revealed in full, but this was only possible because conservatives pushed them to the brink.

Thad Cochran has been in political office nearly all of my life.  Now he faces an election for a seventh term, and if he succeeds, he will have served in the US Senate for forty-two years by the time the new term expires.  This is despicable.  What makes it all the more disgusting is the manner of his primary victory.  He did not win on the strength of his record, which is sorely lacking.  He did not win on the merits of his legislative proposals.  He did not win because Republicans in his state favor him.  He did not win even because Republican voters though McDaniels was an inferior candidate.  No, he won on the strength of contributions from his center-left connections, shady endorsements, and because his campaign’s proxies illegally urged Democrats to cross over and vote for him in the Republican primary.  They gave “walking-around money” to would-be Democrat voters, and they basically called McDaniels and the TEA Party “racists” who were out to get Barack Obama. Take a look at this flier, circulated prior to the primary run-off(H/T John Fund at NRO):

Despicable Cochran flier that circulated days before the run-off

Let me say this clearly.  Thad Cochran is a scumbag, and that he would employ such an outrageous tactic merely speaks to his unfitness for office.  Were I a Mississippi conservative, there is no way I would vote to re-elect this dirtball.  Instead, I would vote for the Democrat.  You might ask: “But Mark, if the Democrat is elected, we might not retake the Senate,” to which I must respond with a question: “We?”  Who comprises any “we” in any of this?  It is not Republicans and conservatives.  It is not TEA Party and constitutionalists.  The only “we” who will run the Senate, even if the Republicans win a majority in 2014 is the GOP establishment mafia.  I’d like Mississippi conservatives to think about that.

Haley Barbour and his extended gang, including Michael Bloomberg, Karl Rove, the Chamber of Commerce, a Facebook executive, and a legion of GOP establishment thugs were willing to use ginned-up Democrat support to steal this seat away from Mississippi conservatives.  Mississippi conservatives and TEA Party activists should know that there can be no restoration of the constitutional government they hope to promote so long as a gang of criminal cronies own their Senator.  The worst of it may have been the last-minute use of a sickening tactic of soliciting Democrats to support Cochran even if they would not vote for him in the Fall.

Listen to the following recording for a sample of what establishment Republicans(!) did to secure victory:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpp6cYZrrcs]

This call went out to black Democrats to get them to vote in the Republican primary.

This is the establishment of the Republican Party.  They’re every bit the statist, mafia-like dirtbags the Democrats are, and as you can see, they will work with Democrats whenever necessary to maintain their grip on power.   What is my suggestion to the conservatives and TEA Party folk in Mississippi?  Either run McDaniels as an independent in November, or simply go out to support the Democrat.  Yes, I actually suggest supporting the Democrat, because since Cochran is willing to invite Democrats into the primary campaign, Mississippi conservatives should turn the table on him and give him a dose of his own medicine.  Yes, this means the Democrat will sit in office for six years, but to quote Hillary Clinton, “what difference does it make?”  You now have a six-term RINO running for a seventh term who is firmly in Haley Barbour’s and Karl Rove’s pocket.  This November, for much the same reasons, I am voting for anybody but the RINO liar John Cornyn(R-TX.)  If we’re going to take our country back, we’ll first need to surrender a few things, and in this case, it means giving up the illusion of a Republican-led Senate that wouldn’t be the least bit conservative anyway.

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Posted in Activism, Congress, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, RINO Alert, Senate Races, Tea Party, Tokyo Rove | 3 Comments »

IRS Scandal Follow-up: The Show Must Go On

Sunday, June 22nd, 2014

…But nobody actually asked Koskinen about the Sonasoft contract. Wonder why?

On Saturday, it was revealed that the IRS has been contracting with Sonasoft for the back-up of emails since 2005, and indeed, looking at Sonasoft’s clients list, listed there is the Internal Revenue Service.  Adding to my list of things about which the Republicans should seek testimony (if they’re serious,) the specific details of the performance requirements of this contract must now be considered.  Undoubtedly, in soliciting bids for back-ups, there must have been a policy for back-ups the bidder must have been prepared to fulfill.  These details would have been dominated by a records retention schedule that would have been designed to comply with statutory minimums. In any event, such a contract would have been carefully vetted for specific performance requirements, the methodology by which performance could be verified, and the chain of responsibility for those on the government side of the contract to make sure performance was fulfilled, or to seek remediation if the requirements were not met.  There would be a schedule of audits of the performance, and there should be no excuse for pretending somebody hadn’t known their specific duties, on either side of the contract. Here’s the point: We very likely have an organized criminal conspiracy, and if the Republicans don’t begin to immediately turn over rocks to find the culprits, the evidence will be destroyed, but that may be precisely what the GOP leadership wants.

People continue to question whether I’ve entered the realm of “tinfoil-hat-wearing” conspiracy kooks, because I doubt the seriousness of the intent of the House Republican leadership in pursuing this scandal.  After all, they ask, why would the Republicans seek to cover the scandal?  Let’s be blunt, shall we?  As long as this scandal has been going on without serious investigation, how much evidence has been destroyed in the interim?  It is true that if there is a cover-up, there will always be some evidence of that, because it’s impossible to completely cover the tracks of what has been done.  Permitting a delay of the investigation would allow the culprits to destroy the evidence so that any crimes perpetrated in the original scandal would be hard to substantiate to the satisfaction of a jury, or an impeachment proceeding, even if the evidence of a cover-up would be harder to conceal.  In the end, however, let us imagine that there had been a few Republicans who had wanted to hammer the TEA Party, like John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell.  They’ve said as much in open contempt for the TEA Party.  By permitting the administration and its lackeys to destroy evidence, the evidence of their own complicity would be hidden too, and all that would remain are the allegations and evidence of a cover-up of something, in which the Republican leadership would not be implicated.  After all, they’ve been conducting an investigation, right?

If this sounds too conspiratorial to you, consider that these are the same people who invented voting for a thing before voting against it.  John Cornyn had no problem voting for cloture on the Senate Amnesty bill last year before coming home to Texas to tell voters he had voted against the final bill, which he had.  He repeated the procedure at the time of the government shutdown last October, again voting to bring the bill for a vote, so that he could vote against it thereby claiming “conservative credentials” all the while have enabled the bill to see the light of day in the first place.  They bank on we voters remaining largely ignorant of their scandalous manipulations, so that a less-than-vigorous investigation wouldn’t provide much of a surprise. By the way, and by way of evidence of the establishment’s thesis in operation, John Cornyn won his primary by pretending to be a conservative while relying on the longterm detachment and ignorance of voters.  Still, roughly forty percent of the Republican electorate in Texas was able to see through his nonsense, but not enough to replace him as our Senator.

My point to you is this: It may be too late to salvage the data, because this has been left withering on the vine for much too long.  The list of particulars I provided yesterday should have been exercised more than two years ago, and it should have been done with vigor.  If there is no active complicity by Republican leadership, there is at least gross incompetence verging on the criminally negligent.  Are we to believe that none of the people in leadership had any idea, and that none of their staff had any idea how to approach such a scandal?  Are we to believe they had no access to any person with sufficient technical understanding who would have apprised them of the sort of things that would need to have been done to “disappear” such data?  Are we to believe that those who were conducting the preliminary investigations on behalf of House committees could not imagine to immediately contact people specializing in data recovery?  Why has it taken until yesterday to discover that the IRS had contracted with Sonasoft?  What were these investigators investigating?  Didn’t they look at the IT expenditures and contracts of the IRS for clues?  You see, once you consider all of this, it’s easier to understand how an observer could reasonably conclude that the Republicans didn’t want to investigate, and having been forced into it by public pressure, have done a half-hearted job of it.

How can we be nearly three years into this investigation, and we’re only now finding there had been a back-up company contracted?  I will not be surprised to learn that the IRS contract with Sonasoft required them to hold emails for a period of only three years, so that by now, Lois Lerner’s emails have fallen off the archive due to age.  A serious investigation would have immediately discovered the existence of a contract with Sonasoft, and those records could have been pulled three years ago.  What will we get as a result?  At best, some underlings who were a part of the cover-up will be burned, but the chain of command to the top will be obfuscated, and then we will get some dog-and-pony IRS Reform bill that will require the agency from this date forward to maintain all emails for ten years, or some such thing.  Then it will all go away, and the original participants in the scandal of targeting TEA Party groups and their members will be forgotten, and life will go on in Washington DC, with we being the only victims, now poorer and less free, and deprived of justice.

The questions I’ve posed over the last thirty-six hours are the sort I would expect of a serious investigation.  To date, we’ve had a lot of finger-waggling by Republicans asking questions of witnesses, but we’ve gotten no meat from these bones.  Certainly, it does not help that we have a Department of Justice that is led by a crook and crony, and it does not help that the media covers everything up on behalf of this administration, but if the Republicans had been serious about getting to the bottom of this scandal, they would have taken significantly more exhaustive steps by now, but to date, all they’ve done is generate ominous soundbites that tend to feed the red-meat aspects of politics, yet have resulted in no arrests, no indictments, and no justice.  In three years?  This scandal is well on its way to becoming a cold case, and that’s just how Washington DC likes it.

Update: The Daily Caller reports that the IRS cancelled its Sonasoft contract only weeks after Lois Lerner’s hard-drive “crash.”

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Posted in Activism, Barack Obama, Congress, Featured, GOP Establishment, IRS Scandal, News, Politics, Tea Party | 5 Comments »

John Boehner’s Dog and Pony Show

Saturday, June 21st, 2014

On Friday, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives continued its wholly political, and ultimately theatrical investigation of the IRS Tea Party-targeting scandal.  Chairman Dave Camp’s(R-MI) committee brought current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen before the committee to testify as to the loss of Lois Lerner’s emails, among other misdeeds.  You may argue that Paul Ryan(R-WI) was very aggressive in his examination of the witness, but that entire exchange was mere political theater that will evince nothing at the end of the investigation.  Had the Republicans in Congress the first inclination to get to the bottom of this scandal, they would begin by taking the following series of steps:

  1.  Bring before the committee the entire IT staff that supports the IRS, particularly its executives.
  2. Audit the purchase records and replacement schedule of equipment used to support Lois Lerner’s computer usage. Congress should want to know how old her computer had been when the hard disk “died.”
  3. Require IT staff managers to testify as to the method of email archiving, email storage, email backups, and the entire email system used by the IRS.
  4. Seek a federal court order requiring the production of all existing equipment that is currently, or has ever been in use by the IRS in storing email,over the period of the last six years, including particularly SAN devices and servers.
  5. Seek a federal court order requiring the immediate production of all backup media on which IRS files and email may have been copied.
  6. Form a select committee with broad investigatory powers to pursue the entirety of this affair, particularly with an eye toward fraud, destruction of government records and data, as well as political influences brought to bear on the IRS from any branch of government or outside interest groups.
  7. Bring in experts to audit access records for servers and storage devices to discover when anybody interacted with the equipment in question. These devices and servers maintain extensive logs of the commands issued from administrators. Knowing who did what will be a key to cracking this case. The government may well have logging servers to which all events are reported.

For those of you who are less than technically inclined, I will be glad to explain to you why this whole “lost hard drive” claim is a dodge, and for those who may have less than a strong understanding of the politics, I’ll be glad to explain to you how I know the Republicans are playing a game for show, but do not want the truth to come out.

As an information systems professional, who works with storage systems, backup systems, networks, servers, and workstations every day, and who works with the applications and databases which is the purpose of all of that lovely, grotesquely expensive equipment, let me tell you a few things you won’t read in the media.  You might even take a moment to learn a bit more about your own computer.

First, the email system the IRS uses is almost certainly an IMAP or MAPI variant.  This means that on the most basic level, emails are not stored on the client, except as a temporarily cached copy.  Deleting it may cause the email to appear deleted for that user, but the mail archiving functionality will maintain a copy for a period as prescribed by policy, usually determined in applicable statutes and regulations. Most corporate and government environments will not even permit users to store mail in local folders(email folders solely on your local computer) unless they are first archived in the email archiving system, which is generally part of the same overall system. Nevertheless, examining the event viewer in Windows will offer some insight into what may or may not have been done on a given workstation or server. Linux and other operating systems have similar logging facilities.  (If you have Windows, you can get an idea by going to your Control Panel, then to Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. You will be surprised what you can learn about your computer’s routine operations.)

In the second place, the number of servers used for an email system to support an organization the size of the IRS must be quite large.  It undoubtedly consists of multiple servers, at multiple server farms, in a redundant scheme of some sort intended to prevent the loss of data.  You, the taxpayer, has spent billions upon billions since the advent of email to provide these facilities for our federal bureaucracy.

Third, since email storage in such an environment is bound to be monumental in scale, there are undoubtedly many storage blades of some form, probably Storage Area Networks(SANs) to handle the storage needs of the mail system servers.  These are also geographically dispersed for reasons of data security, and what you should know about these technologies is that if your Storage Administrators are doing their jobs, there is virtually no credible fashion in which data of this sort could be lost simply because somebody’s office computer’s hard disk died.

To put it in context, consider one of the leading manufacturer’s systems.  Called an ISE2, it’s made by X-IO and it can contain two datapacs that contain what are essentially a stack of hard disks that are effectively “self-healing,” and in common usage, contain more than fourteen terabytes of data in each datapac.  By design, such a device already creates a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks(RAID) by virtue of its design, permitting the administrator to choose either RAID 1(mirroring) or RAID 5(a form of quasi-mirroring).  The way these devices are used is to create storage volumes in the datapacs and attach those volumes to servers.  They can be swapped in and out, and they can be mirrored as individual entities across other devices.  The servers in question see these volumes as hard-drives, and in effect, they function in precisely that manner.    I would be stunned to find that the US Federal government is not using such an arrangement, whomever the vendor, and there are many.  Chances are high that wherever the server farm is that operates the IRS email system, there are likely to be many SAN units, or other storage containers that have similar functionality.

Putting of all of this into simplest terms, the series of failures that would be required to disappear Lois Lerner’s emails, along with those of six other IRS executives, is an astonishing string of virtual impossibilities and displays of incompetence and malfeasance that should result in the ouster of every IT manager supporting the IRS.  It’s not that I don’t believe there are incompetents working in government, or that I don’t believe there are some slothful folk administering systems for the IRS, but that the totality of this loss of data represents a complete failure at virtually every level and every step of the organization.  Even in a clunky, bureaucratic, top-heavy organization like the IRS, there are still some competent people who keep it working despite all the obstacles placed in their way. The manner in which their storage systems and server farms are designed tends to preclude the chance that something so seemingly innocuous as the loss of one person’s email(or seven) is even a remote possibility.

Knowing how such systems work, and knowing that the government spends more money on the core computing technology than any entity on the planet, their claim to have lost the email due to a hard drive failure on a client machine is an absolute farce.  To claim even that no data was recoverable on that hard drive is pretty hard to believe too, since I’ve seen data recovered from hard disks that have been in computers essentially destroyed by fires.  In fact, given the nature of the data I have handled over the course of my computing career, it is common that when a computer reaches the end of its service life, organizations resell the computers but strip the hard drives out of them for mechanical destruction so that no data may be recovered from them. (In many cases, this involves drilling holes through the platters, using a cutting torch, or other methodology designed to destroy the actual storage media in the drive, which is generally very hard metal platters.)

All of that doesn’t matter in the least, however, as the servers and archive servers and storage devices in the systems are apt to have contained one or more(probably many more) copies of the target emails. Then there are backup tapes or other backup devices. No, ladies and gentlemen, if the administration’s hacks like Mr. Koskinen come forward to tell you in smug tones that the data was irretrievably lost, they are lying.  It may have been irretrievably destroyed, but that would require a conspiracy because no one computer technician could possibly have access to all the relevant systems in an organization so large.

The technician who was responsible for maintaining and repairing Lois Lerner’s computer is not the same technician who administers the email system.  That administrator is not the same person who operates and maintains the bulk data storage containers, nor is that the same person who operates all backups and certainly not the same person who maintains and administers the network on which all of this computing takes place.  It’s not plausible in an organization the size of the IRS.  In many cases, data is duplicated and moved off-site for disaster recovery purposes.  No, if this data is unrecoverable, it is because it was ordered to be placed in that state.  Knowing this, and knowing what would be entailed in literally destroying any trace of these emails, I can only conclude that this administration is lying, and is an active participant in a criminal conspiracy and cover-up of crimes that would tend to place Lerner and her superiors in jeopardy of long jail terms, and this president in the direct path of impeachment proceedings.

At the beginning of this article, I explained to you that I believed that the claim about the emails being “lost” is nonsense, and a lie.  I hope I’ve managed to illuminate a few of the reasons why you should not believe such claims, but I also contended that you should not believe that the Republicans are very serious about uncovering the truth, despite their harrumphing to the contrary.   You see, if the Republicans in Congress were serious about all of this, they would issue subpoenas to the entire IT staff.  They would drag them in, one at a time, starting at the top, and working their way down to the lowest technician.  They would have questions, specific technical questions, prepared for them by people like me, or actually those rare birds who designed such systems, and they would begin the grilling.  Under oath.  Somebody would crack.  A lie of this sort cannot be hidden if there is a consistent and tireless effort to uncover it.

The problem may be that to uncover Lois Lerner’s email would reveal something no Representative in that committee hearing room wants you to know:  Lerner may have been receiving emails from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill urging audits and investigations into Tea Party groups.  The IRS was used in this instance to quell a peaceful, political uprising by making the formation of a group so painful and problematic as to frustrate into capitulation all but the most insistent and persistent persons.  The Republicans tried first to co-opt the Tea Party phenomenon, making it their own, but when they found they were unable to control the myriad of organizations springing to life around the country, their next motive was to destroy it because they posed a serious challenge to the orthodoxy of establishment power in Washington DC.  Most Republicans in Washington DC want the Tea Party buried, some of them more fervently even than the Democrats.

If the Republicans in the House cannot muster a select committee to look into this and other matters of extreme government corruption, it is only because they do no want the truth discovered.  If they will not bring an endless string of witnesses to testify as to their role in the email “losses” and the system design of the email and data facilities of the IRS, then they don’t want an answer.  Paul Ryan and others can put on one Hell of a show in the committee room, but the truth is that saying “I don’t believe you” in an exchange with an IRS commissioner isn’t going to turn over many stones.  If you want the truth, you bring in the subject matter experts and responsible parties, and you grill them and continue to remind them of their oaths.  At some point, some junior flunky intern who was told to ditch a hard disk in the Potomac is going to squeal, because he doesn’t want to go to prison.  Then you bring back the person who gave him that order, and then the person who issued that order from higher on the food chain.   Work your way down to get them on the record, until somebody cracks, and then work your way back up, exposing lies until the scheme is revealed in full.

If the Congress won’t do this, they’re not serious about the matter.  It suggests strongly that they don’t want the truth revealed any more than the administration.  There are plenty of smart people on Capitol Hill, and they have plenty of contacts who understand such systems and could provide technical advice both in the formation of questions and in the manner by which to challenge the credibility of the answers.  Those behind this atrocious abuse of government power must be held accountable and jailed for their crimes.  Make no mistake about it: Grievous crimes were committed both as a part of the targeting, as well as during this extended cover-up.  If the Republicans now fail to uncover those crimes and see this investigatory process through to a just ending, you can be sure that they hadn’t wanted the truth to be discovered, because their fingerprints are all over this too.

 

 

 

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Posted in Activism, Barack Obama, Featured, GOP Establishment, IRS Scandal, News, Politics, Taxes, Tea Party | 11 Comments »

House Leadership Plotting GOP Defeat

Sunday, April 27th, 2014

Welcome Aboard!

They intend to shove an immigration bill through the House this summer.  They’re aiming for August, with the intention of pushing this through while the nation is busy with summer vacations and the return of  its children to school. It’s diabolical to the degree that I now believe John Boehner and Eric Cantor are simply wolves wearing wool. Years ago, I asked my readers to consider whether Obama was merely incompetent, or instead a malevolent actor who was following a script of purposeful destruction.  Now I ask you to consider: Can this be coincidental?  Can the efforts of House Republican leadership to shove amnesty down our throats be the result of simple incompetence, or is it the result of a malevolent takeover of the Republican Party in Washington DC by people who are effectively in league with the Democrats and their nonstop neo-socio-fascist push?  Now, even a Washington Post article questions the foolishness of an immigration bill from a Republican perspective, so that we must ask ourselves: How do we defeat the Republican leadership without removing the majority conservative caucus from power?

According to the article, precisely what I have suspected is likely to come true: With a vast number of new citizens who will mostly be Democrats, Texas (and several others) may well turn from “red states” to “blue states. From the article:

“If many of the Hispanic non-citizens across the country became voting eligible citizens through immigration reform, some of those states become much more interesting politically. Take Texas, where only 22 percent of voters were Hispanic, but they make up 37 percent of the total population of the state. The pattern is similar in Arizona, where 17 percent of voters were Hispanic but they accounted for 29 percent of the total population. “

This shouldn’t be difficult to translate into political ramifications: Republicans won’t be able to win in Texas, Arizona, and any number of border states, no longer being Republican strongholds, and instead at best becoming slightly purple-tinted blue states.

Under that regime, it will be impossible to elect a Republican, never mind a conservative, to the presidency, and it will become increasingly impossible to elect a conservative House, much less a Senate.  This will be the end of any and all hope to stop the growth of the Federal Government, and it will mean diminishing liberty and prosperity for all Americans.

We’re taught by polite society not to question peoples’ motives, and to avoid guessing at them, but one can scarcely look at the current Republican leadership without asking this question repeatedly: “Why?”

It would be easy enough to believe that they’re merely incompetent simpletons, reacting precipitously to what they see as a demographic inevitability, but as the Washington Post article reveals, they will simply speed up the process, making no ground against the actual problem.  Indeed, they will almost certainly seal their own fate.  One thing we must acknowledge from the outset is that they are not conservatives.  Neither Boehner nor Cantor; McCarthy nor McMorris Rodgers; McConnell nor Cornyn; none of these Republicans in leadership in Congress are conservatives in any measurable sense.  They are all party hacks, and they are all leading actual conservatives to utter disaster.  I do not believe it is possible to conclude that they are accidental actors who simply don’t know any better.  Indeed, the coordination of their efforts on other matters, like the debt ceiling, and like the budget negotiations suggests to me that rather than being a “loyal opposition,” they are indeed colluding with Democrats to advance the neo-socio-fascist agenda.

After all, when Democrats in the house in 2010 “deemed the bill passed,” enacting Obama-care, a law with vast new taxing authority, who among the “Republican leadership” protested the fact that all bills levying taxes must originate in the House?  Where were they?  Boehner put on a show of choked-up, crying  but resolute resistance, yet that “resistance” has turned out to be all howl but no fangs, expressed in pointless show-votes of repeal, but never implemented in an actual showdown with the Senate and White House.  Is this leadership committed to turning aside rampant statism?

No, ladies and gentlemen, this leadership is worse than any Neville Chamberlain.  These are Quislings, all of them, and the singular question that falls to us is how to defeat them without yielding the republic.  How can we topple these sell-outs without discharging the actual conservatives from a functioning majority in the House?  We are at a crossroads, when we can neither suffer the treacherous leadership of this bunch any longer, nor can we permit ourselves to lose the House.  Both circumstances are disasters, and yet we know that left in charge, these people(and several others, including Ryan in the House and McCain in the Senate) will happily march the Republican Party off an electoral cliff, while simultaneously wrecking the country at large.

I do not hold with others who believe we can make a difference by quietly going about the job of voting.  I think the time is coming when we will need to be in their faces, all day, every day.  Whether it is driven by old-fashioned corruption, or instead by actual ideological concordance with the left, we can no longer tolerate a leadership that is clearly marching us over a cliff.  We can ask why it is that House chairmen, all Republicans, will not demand a select committee to investigate Benghazi, or the IRS scandal, or any other corrupt and criminal action of this administration, but I think the answer is clear: Those now in leadership in the House are captured-by-extortion, bought-and-paid, or deep-cover operatives for the progressive left. If we do not throw off the yoke they’re placing across our shoulders, and soon, we will be forced to bear it until the death of our once-thriving civilization.

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Posted in Activism, Amnesty, Congress, Cry-Baby Boehner, Featured, GOP Establishment, Hall of Shame, News, Politics | 5 Comments »

Independence Party Makes Inroads in UK

Sunday, January 5th, 2014

Same thing, only different…

It’s been nearly two decades since it was established, but the U.K.’s Independence Party(UKIP) isn’t going away, and indeed, it has begun to make inroads, particularly at the local level.  The larger reason for this opportunity may be that the establishment Tory party, long considered the UK’s “conservatives,” have abandoned conservative policies in favor of progressive ideas.  If that sounds familiar to you, it should, because in many respects, our own Republican party, long-portrayed in media as virtually synonymous with “conservative” has been behaving like liberals.  Of course, the Tories in the UK have always been more slanted to the left than had been our Republicans, but lately, they’ve all but abandoned any pretense to conservative thought.  As this has happened, it has had a curious effect on the Independence Party, swelling its ranks lately and giving it a real foothold in local elections.  UKIP seems to understand this is a fight over the long run, and not a battle to be won in an election cycle or two.  Their leader, Nigel Farage, made clear in an interview with Foxnews what is the UKIP’s aim:

“We want to take back our country, we want to take back our government, and we want to take back our birthright,”

If this sounds familiar to Tea Party activists, it should.  Just like the Republicans here, the Tories have begun to fully embrace National Healthcare, and all sorts of left-wing ideals, including liberal immigration policies, and the whole slate of liberal policy preferences advocated and advanced by their Labor Party. the U.K.’s equivalent to our own Democrats.  The largest strategic difference between the Tea Party and the UKIP is that rather than seeking to influence the Tories, the Independence Party is in direct competition with them.  They are not trying to work on the party from within, but instead making a full frontal assault on the establishment “Conservatives.” While not precisely like the Tea Party in all respects, in terms of a movement, it is quite similar in its grass-roots orientation.

Naturally, they are dismissed as “racists” and “kooks” and all sorts of demeaning labels by both the traditional parties, but that isn’t stopping them from moving ahead.  Dishonest labels only work so long, as does the attempt to define the whole of the party by the bombastic or outrageous statements of a few individuals within it. More, the UKIP has focused on an issue that seems to a majority of voters across party lines: Membership in the EU.  UKIP opposes it while both Labor and the Tories favor it, despite the fact that a clear majority of the populace stands in favor of withdrawing from the EU.  With this on the table in 2014, UKIP stands to make further inroads as the only party pushing in the same direction as the populace.

This is in many respects like the arguments on two issues we face domestically. The first is Obama-care, and the second is immigration.  In both cases, the US population is opposed by strong majorities to any sort of amnesty and continuance of the health-care law.  While there are still some Republicans who are opposed to amnesty, and a few more in favor of repeal of Obama-care, the fact remains that a large number of Republicans in both houses of Congress are in favor of an amnesty deal, and distinguishing by their votes, have been only too willing to fund and thereby continue Obama-care.

If UKIP manages to pull off some electoral victories, it may offer a hint to Tea Party activists in the US: It may be time to put up its own slate of candidates, completely independent of the Republicans, and it may be time to formally register as a political party.  The sorts of clear issues in which the American people are at odds with both major political parties may be reaching a climax, at which one party or the other must disappear.  This is what happened to the Whigs one and one-half centuries ago, and it may be the end in store for the Republicans if Tea Party activists can get their act together.  Like more and more voters in Britain, Americans may discover that they have no need of both a conservative party and a fake conservative party. If this comes to be the case in the U.K., it  may evince hope for a resurgence of the Tea Party, perhaps under a new banner independent in all respects of the Republican Party.

It may be time for the Tea Party to take that leap.

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Posted in Activism, Featured, Healthcare, Immigration, News, Obamacare, Politics, Tea Party | 5 Comments »

Unelected, Unaccountable, but Unrelenting: The Failed GOP Consultancy

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

Great & Powerful Turdblossom

It seems like a day doesn’t elapse without catching a glimpse of Karl Rove and his whiteboards on FoxNews.  From the sounds of things, you might come to think he’s in charge of something at the GOP.  Unfortunately, while he holds no official office, he’s always working on behalf of his patrons in the party, and he serves the interests of the surrender-monkey wing of the Republican party.  Steve Schmidt, the architect of McCain’s loss in 2008, is another example of the sort of consultant with which DC Republicans seem to surround themselves.  Schmidt is still bitter over his 2008 defeat, and he blames much of it on Sarah Palin.  The truth is that she was the only good thing about the ticket, and exit-polling demonstrated quite clearly at the time that McCain would have done far worse without her on the ticket.  It was Schmidt’s bright idea to have McCain suspend his campaign, and that was precisely the root of the collapse in McCain’s support.  Looking to blame his own strategic failings on somebody – anybody – Schmidt is still on the Palin-hater bandwagon because to regain any credibility in his profession, he must shift blame to somebody else.  These consultants are one of the biggest problems grass-roots conservatives face because they tend to turn candidates against their base, and wonder why they lose.

In an epic rant for Politico, McCain adviser and professional boot-licker Steve Schmidt claimed to feel “deep regret” for helping to fuel the creation of a “freak show” wing of the GOP.  By “freak show” wing, he means you and I.  He means real conservatives.  He is referencing those who rose under the general label of “Tea Party.”  Most of all, in singling out somebody that personifies what he termed “asininity,” he means Sarah Palin.  Said Schmidt:

“For the last couple of years, we’ve had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party. Tossing out terms like RINO saying we’re going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party,” Schmidt said. “We’ve lost five U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles. And fundamentally we need Republicans, whether they’re running for president, whether they’re in the leadership of the Congress, to stand up against a lot of this asininity.”

“You finally you saw it with Ted Cruz. Maybe he was the one that who’s got a bridge too far,” Schmidt said. “Maybe we’ll start seeing our elected leaders stop being intimidated by this nonsense, have the nerve, have the guts to stand up and … to fight to take conservatism’s good name back from the freak show that’s been running wild for four years and that I have deep regret in my part, certainly, in initiating.”

Psssst. Hey Steve! We should purge you from the party, since there seems to be no other way to have you shut up and go away.  Massive failure doesn’t seem to convince you.  Frankly, the reason Republicans lose elections is because they listen to jerks like Schmidt who view actual conservatives as the problem.  You see, Schmidt doesn’t recognize actual conservatism, but instead views “conservatism” as a label to be shifted onto his clients who in no way match the meaning of the term.  If one wishes to see this at work, consider only the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004.   Here, you had Rove positioning Bush as a “compassionate conservative,” when it was evident(or should have been) that Bush wasn’t conservative, and that he would wreck actual conservatism by the false association.  In 2006, when Republicans lost the Congress, it was on the basis of this bastardized notion of conservatism.  The Republicans lost control of Congress because under Bush, they were spending just like big-spending Democrats.  It had been consultants like Schmidt and Rove who led the GOP to that and subsequent defeats.

If you want to know what constitutes a real freak-show in the Republican party, it is the unparalleled spectacle of hucksters in the consultancy class attempting to pass off moderates as conservatives.  It is the inglorious pinnacle of asininity to pretend now that John McCain is conservative, and even more galling to pretend that his policy positions represent conservative principles, and yet con-men like Schmidt labor endlessly to carry out that fraud.  When McCain was up for re-election in 2010, you may remember that the McCain camp had no problem soliciting the help of Sarah Palin, but now they betray her with this nonsense about “freak show” and alleged “asininity.”  McCain might have been beat in the 2010 primaries without her, but does that fact earn even the smallest bit of respect from a hateful little troll like Schmidt?  No.   You see, in his book, it’s all about him.  Admitting that Sarah Palin did more to boost either McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, or his 2010 Senatorial re-election campaign would be to admit that Schmidt is entirely useless, never mind the candidate in question.

The fact of the matter is that Schmidt and those in the consultancy class like Rove, who infamously once claimed that Palin’s endorsement wasn’t “worth snot” don’t have any credibility.  For all their alleged gifts and talents as political analysts, advisers, and consultants, they don’t seem to have produced results to scale of their fame.  Bush barely managed to prevail over Al Gore in 2000, relying on the electoral college, and in 2004, what should have been a walk-over victory was uncomfortably close against John Kerry, a man who should never be let near the oval office.  Worse, under the guidance of Rove, in 2006, Republicans lost the Congress, permitting Barack Obama to have both Houses in 2009.   We wouldn’t even be talking about Obama-care had the Republicans not joined Democrats in spending like drunks in support of the George W. Bush spending priorities, which had been massive.

It was the participation of Republicans like McCain in the Amnesty kerfuffle of 2007 that helped keep the Republicans in the wilderness too, another great idea from the consultancy wing of the party.  How did that work out for us?  Democrats kept control of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid made sure we’d have Obama-care so we could learn what was in it.  We’re learning, and the real lesson we conservatives must take is that these professional beltway consultants and advisers are leading us off a cliff.

There’s no way around it.  If we listen to the likes of Schmidt or Rove, we’re taking advice from people who don’t have our interests at heart.  They’re profiteers on the political process, and they ply their trade by linguistic manipulations.  It’s no surprising that they work hardest to protect their own images, and will stab anybody in the back in order to preserve their own reputations.  In the end, they’re only accountable inasmuch as their political patrons are held accountable.  They aren’t elected, and they never pay the price for shafting the American people.  They are insulated from our direct anger as voters, and they always seem to move on to new patrons if their existing ones fall out of favor with voters.  As long as they’re setting the direction of the Republican party, one shouldn’t expect that the GOP will be friendly to actual conservatives.  They don’t care about our principles, as they pursue profit and power at our expense.  If the last decade has taught us anything, it should be that it is we who are forced to pay for their failures.  Noticing that fact will brand you as part of a “freak show.”

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Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Sarah Palin, Tokyo Rove | 2 Comments »

The Vichy Republicans: Cornyn, McConnell Undermining Cruz

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013

Surrender: What they do best

A report came to light on Tuesday morning from Breitbart.com detailing the maneuvers being used by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to fully fund Obama-care.  John Cornyn(R-TX) serves as minority whip, and in that capacity, he is helping McConnell in an effort to undermine the efforts of Ted Cruz(R-TX).  This instance demonstrates perfectly the sort of back-stabbing that goes on in Republican leadership in Washington DC.  While Cruz fights to stop the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obama-care, his colleague and fellow Republican from Texas is working against him.  In 2014, when Cornyn comes up for re-election in the Lone Star state, I will support nearly any primary challenger.  Texans can’t afford six more years of fake conservatism.  Cornyn also supports the immigration reform bill, and on other issues important to conservatives, he’s been either invisible or in opposition.  Cornyn is no conservative, and it’s time we Texans brought him home.  We mustn’t let the Vichy Republicans run the GOP any longer, because they undermine the work of real conservatives, who are actively working to forestall the disaster that is Obama-care.

When one observes such behavior from a self-proclaimed conservative like Cornyn, it’s easy to understand why conservatism continues to take a beating.  We permit people like Cornyn to represent us, but the truth is that he’s another Washington elitist who has no regard for his fellow Texans.  In fact, during his tenure in the Senate, Cornyn has worked against conservatives on a number of issues, and his attitude has reflected a certain contempt for grass-roots conservatives.  Meanwhile, Cruz is fighting.   We conservatives like those who will fight for our principles, and in this case, while McConnell and Cornyn follow the advice of Karl Rove, Cruz is out front along with Mike Lee(R-UT) fighting to stop a national catastrophe.

At stake is the future of the country.  If Obama-care is permitted to be fully implemented, we will have in place one more massive entitlement program that will bankrupt the country.  It’s already driving businesses to curtail hours, and to avoid hiring full-time employees.  It will have tax consequences that are far outside the bounds of what most Americans had expected, and it will crush economic activity in general.  It’s already happening, even before the program has been fully implemented.  If we don’t find a way to slay this dragon, we will lose the country.

I would urge my readers, particularly my fellow Texans, to call their senators and demand that Obama-care be de-funded.  At this late date, it is the last thing that can be done short of full repeal.  Disclosed yesterday, a Pew Research poll shows that the “blame” for any government shutdown will go equally to Republicans and Democrats, so there’s no need to fear any of this.  If anything, this should buttress arguments of conservatives who assert that fighting this law is a winning issue for Republicans.  In 1995, during that infamous shutdown, Republicans were overwhelmingly blamed, however it should also be noted that they gained two seats in the Senate in 1996., losing two in the House, but hanging onto their majority for the first time in more than one-half century.

As Sarah Palin explained in an op-ed on Sunday, Cruz is “over the target” on Obama-care, and it should be a matter of “bombs-away.” The American people don’t want this law, and Democrat talking points aside, it is as weak a proposition as ever.  People are seeing their insurance premiums skyrocket, they’re watching their physicians retire out of exasperation, and they’re losing their jobs, or seeing their hours cut.  Even the unions aren’t very happy, because Obama-care is a job-destroyer.

The tricksters of the GOP establishment are trying to sabotage the efforts of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.  Mitch McConnell is the sorriest example of a Republican leader we’ve had in the Senate for some time, and now he’s playing parliamentary games in order to prevent Cruz from succeeding while still giving Republicans a chance to make a symbolic vote against Obama-care.  It’s time we put an end to this nonsense.  McConnell and his sidekick Cornyn are attempting to pull the wool over our eyes.  These “Vichy Republicans” are the bane of conservatism, and given what Obama-care will do to the country, surely of all Americans.  Call your senators.  Call every Senator.  De-funding Obama-care isn’t a game.  It’s life or death for millions of Americans, their jobs, and the country at large.

Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

If you are a Texan, you can call this rattlesnake and let him know we’ve got his number: John Cornyn (202) 224-2934  If you want to take a crack at Vichy Republican Leader McConnell, here’s his number: (202) 224-2541

 

 

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Posted in Election 2014, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Obamacare, Politics, Sarah Palin | 4 Comments »

Time for Conservatives to “Go Rogue” on Amnesty Advocates

Monday, August 5th, 2013

Our Only Option

Enough is enough. Readers will surely remember how in the summer of 2010, we nearly stopped Obama-care with great turn-out at town-hall events at which we grilled members (of both parties) on the matter of the “Affordable Care Act.”  Members of the House and Senate rose each morning to find new Youtube videos of their colleagues being outed as fools and charlatans.  Since then, many have gone to a system of tele-Townhalls in order to avoid such spectacles, but that shouldn’t stop us.  We need to know where these fence-sitters on immigration will be holding their town-hall events, and we need to know even where amnesty’s open supporters will be taking questions from constituents, even if it’s on the streets going in and out of meeting locations.  We need to show up in order to make a fuss.  No violence.  No foul language.  We’re polite people, but we shouldn’t be push-overs.  Just ask the damning questions and demand answers:

“Given that this legislation is likely to create 20-30 million new US citizens over the next decade, and given that seven in nine new immigrants register and vote Democrat, how do you propose that Republicans will ever have even a chance at future electoral victory?”

“Why do you insist on pretending that the House immigration bill now working its way through committees will be anything other than a Trojan horse for the treasonous Gang-of-Eight bill that has passed the Senate?”

“Do you think we’re stupid?”

“What do you expect this bill will do to the American people?”

“Why would you go along with what is essentially a treason against the American worker?”

“What are you being offered or promised to support this treason?”

“If letting in 12-30 million people predominately from Mexico and points South will be good for the American economy, why isn’t their remaining in place good for the economies of their countries of origin?”

“Teen unemployment is over fifty percent this summer.  Unemployment among African Americans is at stunningly high levels.  How does infusing the economy with 12-30 million mostly low-skill workers assist our unemployed fellow-Americans who are struggling to make ends meet?”

“Why does Congress and this President together refuse to enforce the laws on the books today?”

“Why does the compassion and concern of members of Congress extend to illegal immigrants, but not to US Citizens?”

“Can you comment on the political influence of large corporations and unions in pushing this immigration bill?  The US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO joining forces to help craft the Senate bill can’t possibly be good for America(ns.) What is your position on that bill? I ask, because it seems that House efforts are aimed at passing something so the Senate bill can be substituted in its entirety in conference.”

“Is it true that any House bill that passes could be essentially replaced by House-Senate conferees with the Gang-of-Eight bill?  Yes or no?”

“What is your position on the so-called “Hastert rule?” Do you believe Speaker Boehner will apply that rule to any immigration conference bill? What is likely to happen if he doesn’t?”

I’m sure you can come up with your own, but the simple fact is that these people need to be held to answer for this mess. We know what they’re trying to do, and it’s time we put a stop to it.

If you know where your Congressman is holding a town hall meeting, please post it in comments.  This will help other readers get to the meetings.  I will create a posting with as many of them as readers provide.  We need maximum participation.  What we will need to succeed on this and other issues is to put these men and women who we’ve elected to represent us on the spot.  They need to be able to explain their positions on immigration reform, but more, on the process by which the process will come to a vote.  They need most of all to explain how any House bill won’t become a Trojan horse for the Senate bill.

The truth is that they won’t be able to explain it away, so we must hold their feet to the fire on this issue by demanding they answer the hard questions.

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Posted in Activism, Amnesty, Congress, Featured, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Politics, Tea Party | 3 Comments »

GOP Preparing to Fool Constituents on Immigration

Sunday, August 4th, 2013

Obama’s Three House Stooges

Now that we’re in August, a time when Congress goes on recess, returning home to hear from their constituents, we grass-roots conservatives have an opportunity.  Somewhere near you, members will probably hold a few town hall meetings.  You need to be there.  Leadership has coached them on the issues of immigration and funding Obama-care, but for the sake of argument, let us prioritize a bit.  The Republican leadership wants to push a bill through the House that will be a head-fake on immigration.  It will promise all sorts of seemingly nifty gimmicks on border control, but you need not be fooled: This is about passing some bill, any bill at all, so that in conference with the Senate, they can shove the Gang-of-Tr8ors bill down our throats.  Our answer to them in their town hall meetings must be plain and simple:  No bill!  Any bill they pass in the House will merely become a vehicle for a Senate bill that will grant amnesty.  They don’t really give a damn about border security, or doing anything about the millions of illegals who have ignored our laws already.  We must stop this process cold, but we must not permit ourselves to be bought-off with phony promises that will never be kept.  When the opportunity arises to tell you House members what you think, don’t miss it, and let them know you will not be fooled.  Your only answer on immigration must be: “Kill the bill.”

They really do believe we are stupid.  Our less-engaged fellow Americans give them plenty of reason to believe this, since they’re often completely distracted by other things, but that’s where we come in.  We must let our fellow citizens know that the two parties in Washington DC are conspiring against them in order to manipulate them into a position in which it appears as though they have supported the laws Congress wishes to enact.  In order to help you understand what lies ahead in the coming weeks, I’ve drawn the process as a flow-chart.  (Click it to see full-size version.)

How they’ll push the bill…

The simple fact is that the bulk of the Republican party in Washington DC wants this bill.  They are doing the bidding of big business, but also the progressive wing of the party that is for all intents and purposes a fifth-column, stealth-mode gaggle of shills for the larger leftist-progressive movement that dominates DC, and the entire media establishment.  These are the elites in the Republican party, and they hate your guts.  In order to trick you, they are preparing to put on a show that will involve pretending to gather your opinions, while hoping you’ll be too busy or distracted to offer them.  They will go through this recess and take up the bill that has been working its way through committees in the House, and move to pass it before or immediately after the Labor Day weekend.  Once passed, the bill will go to conference, and all these promises of border security and combating illegal immigration will be scrapped in favor of the Senate version.  Then it will go back to both chambers for a final vote, where mostly Democrats will support the bill in both Houses.  There is only one way for the American people to win: We must kill any House bill on immigration, even if we are compelled to heckle our own members at town-hall meetings.  This must be defeated.

I cannot repeat this point often enough: The final bill will be passed with a majority of Democrats supporting it.  That’s right, this entire process is being rigged so that it can be passed with only a couple hands-full of Republicans supporting it.  They only need a few RINOs in the Senate, and in the House, they will only need a couple-dozen Republicans of the RINO wing of the party.  The key is to push some bill through the House so they can get it to conference.  Once that’s accomplished, the RINOs can and will do whatever they please. We have discussed ad nauseum all the reasons the “immigration reforms” being pushed by the DC establishment is horrible for the country, but the most important consideration for you is this:  It’s their attempt to permanently negate the conservative wing of the party.  Once they herd 30 million new immigrants into the voting booths, it won’t matter what you think about anything.

This means that our only hope of saving the country begins and ends with the defeat of any immigration bill brought up in the House of representatives. There is no other way around it, and no other way we can expect to bring this plot of the DC statists to an end.  We need maximum participation at such town-hall meetings as Republicans may hold in the coming weeks, and we need to be fearless, loud, and clear: On the issue of immigration, the only acceptable answer is “Kill the Bill.” If we permit them to fool us, we will have missed our last opportunity to begin the process of saving the republic. Any House immigration bill must die.

Spread the word: Kill the bill, or let it kill the republic.

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Posted in Activism, Amnesty, Congress, Featured, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, News, Politics | 5 Comments »

Confronting Our Worst Fears About the GOP

Friday, August 2nd, 2013
sweet sixteen dress

Peas in a Pod

It should come as no surprise to conservatives that we’re being shafted on virtually every issue by some gang-of-eight or other assembly of Republicans who simply will not stand up to the Democrats.  Normally, I don’t spend much time guessing at their motives, instead tending to examine the results of their positions. I don’t necessarily assume that our GOP establishment opponents are evil, but merely misguided.  This view has been changing, because the more closely I examine their positions, the more baffled I become by any logical standard of measurement.  The problem is that discovering their motive has become increasingly important to the prospect of defeating them.  If we understood what it is that they’re after, we might find it somewhat easier to beat them or make them irrelevant. Sadly, I have begun to conclude that my worst fears may be true.  The GOP’s establishment wing clearly runs the show, leading us to perpetual defeat. It is time to ask ourselves why by considering the issues on which they’ve abandoned conservatism.

My first question must go to folks like Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan(R-WI) on the issue of immigration reform: “Are you stupid?” I know this will seem a bit blunt to some people, but it’s a sincere question.  The Senate Gang-of-Tr8ors bill offers to create between twelve and thirty million new citizens over the coming decade.  We already know that the overwhelming majority of them will be Latinos of Mexican origin, and that their tendency is to vote for the Democrats by a seven-to-two ratio or worse, once they become eligible.  What sort of complete and utter moron must one be to believe this could in any way redound to the benefit of the Republican party, conservatism, or even our nation’s future?  Given the stance of Ryan and his cohorts, we are left to conclude that there can be only two things driving their position.  Either they are among the most pathetically irrational and moronic persons, or they must know what will happen and wish to gain that result.  There are no alternatives.

On the issue of the budget, the establishment Republicans insist that we must support Paul Ryan’s pathetic, tinkering attempt at reform, even though it establishes no concrete foundation of reform, instead promising to reduce the rate of growth of the deficit, but not arresting it entirely, never mind addressing the mounting debt.  More, when you call members of the House or Senate to demand an explanation as to how the official National Debt count has been stuck for two months running, despite the fact that the government is taking on more debt, none of the Republican members seem all too interested in finding an explanation.  Once again, we are confronted with the question: Are these people simply oblivious?  Why aren’t they screaming at the top of their lungs? Here you have an administration that is exceeding the statutory debt limit by billions of dollars, and in order to disguise it, they’ve stopped the debt clock. Other than the frozen clock, they’ve continued business as usual.  What good is a sequestration of funds?  What good is a debt limit fight if the guys who must engage have already surrendered?  Do you believe for one moment that Paul Ryan or the rest of the RINO phalanx in Washington DC is unaware?  Do you believe they are so incompetent as to miss the significance of these Treasury Department actions?  It is either true that they are so incompetent that we must for the good of the nation replace them, or they are willing to let Obama do what he’s doing, in which case we must be rid of them for the same reason.

I have said many times that it doesn’t really matter whether they’re simply foolish or guilty of collusion, but I’ve come to change my view on this.  One can’t forgive negligence born of incompetence, but one must punish willful misdeeds more harshly as a warning to other would-be scoff-laws.  It’s a matter of intent.  Are the establishment Republicans in Washington DC, under the “leadership” of John Boehner(R-OH,) Mitch McConnell(R-OH,) and all the other big-government Republicans simply guilty of foolishness and incompetence, or is their behavior evidence of malice?  This is the ugly question we must ask ourselves, because we may choose one or the other alternative postulate, but never both.

It’s now clear to me that the Republican party as expressed by its “leaders” in Washington DC is in open collusion with the Democrats and President Obama.  There is no other way to explain their willingness to go along, knowing what the results will be.  On Benghazi, they help the Democrats obfuscate, and on the IRS scandal, they gum up the works, but on legislative matters of significance, they are lending an assist to Democrats: On immigration, the budget and debt ceiling, the funding of Obama-care, and a range of somewhat less significant issues at the moment, they are not merely capitulating, but assisting the Democrats.  They must be either the largest collection of stupid people in any government on the planet, or they intend the results their efforts are obtaining.  It cannot be both.

A conservative must now ask with pointed clarity: Does it matter if John Boehner or some lunatic Democrat wins his seat in 2014?  Does it matter in the least if Lamar Alexander or some Tennessee Democrat wins that Senate seat in 2014?  The answer is yes:  The prospective Democrat in either case is at least being honest about his or her  intentions, in the main, at least to the degree that by running as Democrats, we voters may make an accurate guess about what sort of legislation will result.  This cannot be said of the RINOs in the GOP.  By running as Republicans, there has been at least the implicit idea that such candidates will oppose statism, but that simply hasn’t been the case. If ever there had been a time in American history when the willingness of voters to be true to themselves was the most critical aspect of their political activism and engagement, now must be that time.  We must admit in the open what we have long suspected: The establishment wing of the GOP consists of traitors to every value and ideal we hold sacred, because they are in open collusion with those who are actively seeking the destruction of our country.

Make no mistake about it: They want the destruction too.

 

 

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Posted in Activism, Budget, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, Idiotic Politicians, Immigration, News, Obama, Politics | 17 Comments »

President Obama’s Absurd Distraction

Saturday, July 20th, 2013

Pay Attention to ME!

On Friday, President Obama provided an outlandish distraction intended to restart the media circus over the verdict in the Zimmerman trial.  It was contrived, planned, and perfectly concocted to capture the nation’s attention.  Obama plays the narcissist when he needs controversy, so it’s not particularly surprising to see him step into this role, don the virtual hoodie, and proclaim that he is Trayvon, or that Trayvon is him, or whatever crass proclamation he was attempting to make.  It succeeded to the extent that from the moment he made this infantile, ludicrous statement, few in media have talked about anything else.  The Zimmerman trial story had been losing ground as the lead story all week, so that the nation had begun to return its attention to more pressing matters like the IRS scandal, and immigration, all of which had begun to resurface as the furor over Zimmerman was subsiding.  With this fatuous remark, Obama again succeeded.  It was Friday.  By now, it’s well-known that this administration always puts out any bad news on Friday.  Which bad news was this constructed to hide?  Which government action was this intended to conceal? When Obama pulls a stunt like this, we should be reading  the back pages and sections of our newspapers, or scanning deep down the columns on Drudge, because this was purely a stunt, and so far, it’s working.

Like most of you, I am a busy person.  This week has seen me work an insane number of hours, so that any thoughts about blogging died in exhaustion as my head finally met the pillow at the ends of my days.  That is the nature of my work, and the chief reason for my absences from this blog.  In that environment, I have occasions to hear news while I work, but not watch it, or read it, so that it comes in snatches as snatch can.  At the top and bottom of each hour, there is a small segment of news on radio, so that when I hear that the President’s remark is consuming almost all the available time but for a traffic report, I know he’s succeeding in grabbing all the attention of the nation.  In this sense, since most conservatives work, and since that means that most of them listen to the radio for some portion of their news, what Obama accomplished on Friday was to squeeze out all the room for any other news.  He “sucked out all the oxygen,” as some would prefer to say.  Let me now take the time to offer you a little more, now that you have breathing room to discover a sample of what the President may be hiding with this distraction.

Consider the embarrassing spectacle the President doesn’t want you to consider, as the city of Detroit files bankruptcy only 8 months after he took campaign trail credit for having saved it.  It’s gotten so bad in the Detroit area that suburbs are now talking about building a wall to keep people from the crime-ridden city from easily invading their own communities.   State officials in Michigan are now arguing over whether it is even constitutional for the city to file for bankruptcy protection.  While this may not be enough by itself to justify the President’s unseemly distraction circus, it certainly adds to the picture.  There are worse things he seeks to hide.

Maybe Obama wants to give a little cover to his golfing partner, John Boehner, who is now pushing the House version of the bill to include the “Dream Act” so as to legalize the children of illegal immigrants who brought their whole family into the US “in the shadows.”  After all, that’s the apparent purpose of Beohner and establishment Republicans in Congress: To act as a fifth column for the Democrats.  While we’re watching Obama make an ass of himself on television, they’re still trying to figure out how to shove immigration reform down our throat.  “Watch this hand…ignore the other…”  Also in the House, the Republicans are fighting among themselves about the Agriculture bill and therefore, the food-stamps budget. Once again, establishment Republicans don’t want to cut very deeply, while conservatives want to make substantial cuts to the overgrown program.

It is also possible that Obama wanted to draw your attention away from the colossal disaster that is Obama-care.  On Friday, lost in the coverage of his remarks is the injunction issued by a federal court against the enforcement of the contraception mandate against Hobby Lobby.

On immigration, it’s clear that Republican members of the Gang-of-Tr8ors didn’t know that their bill permits people to forge up to two passports without legal jeopardy.  First Rubio.  Then Juan McRino. These two RINO hacks should be embarrassed, but they’re not.  After all, the whole nation’s attention has shifted to the foolish remarks of a carnival barker of a President.

Of course, maybe the President wants you to ignore this story of an embarrassing voter registration in Washington DC, not because it is his, but because it’s a valid voter registration in the District of Columbia, using the name with which he registered for school in Indonesia as a child, with the address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as the registrant’s address. It’s not so much that this registration has all that much to do with the President himself, but that it’s one further indication of why we need voter ID.  It exposes the degree to which vote fraud is prevalent in our major cities, and throughout the country.  Being the beneficiary of such fraud in most cases, I doubt he wants to talk about this.

With all the scandals over the IRS, Benghazi, and one-hundred lesser issues, and with the looming embarrassment of the crisis that will be Obama-care’s implementation, never mind the attempt by Obama and the Democrat’s fifth column in the Congress to put “immigration reform” over on the American people, there is little doubt that President Obama wants to talk about something… anything… else. One could look at market and economic news for more reasons to change the subject.  One analyst is predicting “Dow 5000,” and as frightening as that may seem, consider that the rate of jobs growth has continued to slow.

With all of this and more going on in domestic news, it’s clear that the President has ever reason to want to change the subject, or keep us focused on highly emotional, divisive topics.  It’s part of his governing philosophy to keep us running in circles while he pulls the virtual hoodie over his head.  It’s what he does, and all the scoundrels in government around the country, but particularly in Washington DC love it, because while we’re watching his circus act, we’re not looking at them.

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Posted in Activism, Barack Obama, Distractions, Featured, Leftist Cabal, Media, News | 7 Comments »

Beating Back the Progressive Republicans With Their Own Bludgeon

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

A New Kind of Tea Party

There has been a great deal of discussion over the last week concerning the remarks made by Governor Palin in answer to a question from Josh Painter, regarding the possibility of a new party to supplant the GOP.  As Steve Deace covers in his own cost/benefit analysis of the idea, there are a few practical considerations to leaving the Republican Party that make for a gargantuan series of problems, including effectively surrendering the whole governance of the country to the Democrats in the short run.  As Deace also explains quite effectively,  if we don’t change the direction of the country, it won’t matter much because with the current supine and tepid leadership of the GOP, we have arrived already in that effective condition.  What opposition to the Obama agenda do conservatives see from the GOP?  There has been little evident among establishment Republicans, often behaving more like collaborators than opponents.  This conflict has been a long time in coming, but I believe we must face it squarely or surrender to  statism.  If we are going to conquer our political foes, we must clean up our own house, refusing to abandon it to the slumlords of the GOP establishment.  For once, let us do the unexpected, turning tables on them: We must build a party within the Party as the means by which to take it over, but this time, for keeps.

Ever since the days of the progressive era, there has been a class of Republicans the members of which don’t hold republican ideals.  Their manner of coming to dominate the GOP was a form of stealthy infiltration and guile.  They looked like conservatives, and they used many of the appropriate conservative buzzwords in speeches and articles, so that it was somewhat harder to recognize them.  They gained influence by building their own parallel mechanisms within the Republican Party, all aimed at supplanting conservative ideology and philosophy with their own.  Cronies were inserted all up and down the Republican totem pole, giving them vast power with which to override any conservative sentiments.  Time after time, they managed to keep conservatives out, and the few times they failed, they almost always managed to sabotage them somehow.  When Barry Goldwater(R-AZ) sought the Republican nomination in 1964, they submarined him, the Rockefeller Republicans withdrawing virtually all support, barely managing to pretend they would support Barry Goldwater.

In 1980, the same crowd finally lost another round of the RNC nomination fight, having nearly lost it four years earlier.  Ronald Reagan wasn’t getting much establishment support early on, even immediately after the nominating convention, but when they saw that the train was going to leave the station without them, they hurried to climb aboard, pointing to moderate VP choice George HW Bush as the thing that made Reagan “tolerable.”  The truth is, they saw Reagan as a plausible vehicle to install their own people at the highest levels of government, for later use, but also as a way to confound and steer the Reagan administration.  America would have its first conservative president in generations, but the establishment Republicans were going to use every bit of influence they could to turn it to their advantage. They did this as they always do, establishing their own chain of cooperation and control within the Reagan administration.  The amnesty bill of 1986 was probably the greatest evidence of their scheming, a bill that contributed to the loss of Republican control of the Senate that year by depressing conservative turnout, much as what happened in 2006 when Republicans lost the Congress after that year’s amnesty attempt.

We conservatives should take a few lessons from this, and I believe if we’re attentive to the details, it will be easier to understand what must be done and how we must do it.  Others have written extensively about how to carry out a virtual overthrow inside the Republican Party, so I won’t expend too much of your time on that.  Instead, I wish to talk about the character of what you must do.  What we need is a party within the party.  Rather than trying to become our own free-standing party, a solution we already know will take many years and even decades to complete, let us create a subset of the Republican Party and we can call it the “Freedom Faction.” Freedom of association being what it is, I’m sure the Republican Party won’t mind if some of its members are simultaneously members of another group over which they have no control.  Well, perhaps they will not mind too much, but if they do, to devil with them. They’re who we mean to defeat firstly.

This is what the Tea Parties has been, with the singular distinction that they were not officially a subset of the Republican Party, and did not seek to be.  This has permitted them independence of action and advocacy, which is a critical thing common-sense conservatives need, but it is also a detriment inasmuch as it is more difficult for them to guide the direction of the GOP.  In fact, most of us who are most desperately frustrated with the direction of the Republican Party are precisely the Tea Party folk, meaning many can merely adopt the “Freedom Faction” and move in.  My point is that despite all that has been said about the Tea Party, many of them soldier on in spite of the way they’ve been treated by Democrats and Republicans alike.  The left likes to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” so since they consider Tea Partiers “terrorists,” let us instead be freedom-fighters.  That’s what we really are, and that’s what our movement must embrace. We’re small “r” republicans who constitute the Freedom Faction of the Republican Party.  It was always our party, despite the RINOs and the establishment hacks, and it can still be our party if we simply act to take it back, but to do so, we’ll need to build a party within the party so that as insurgents, we can place our own in the places of influence.

The Republican Party is willing to except Democrats in open primary states to help them select establishment nominees, and since they haven’t demonstrated the will to stop that, I doubt they’ll muster the sentiment to stop us, although we do pose the larger threat.  What do my small “r” republican readers think?  Is it time to build our Freedom Faction and use it as a platform from which to recapture our party? It will take discipline, teamwork, and a broad coordination, all things of which we are capable, but which are are somewhat alien to our general dispositions. We are demonstrably an independent lot.  The establishment will know something is afoot, and they will try to thwart us, but we have an advantage demonstrated by Romney’s miserable election day ground-game: We’re more agile and fluid, while they are grinding cogs in a hopelessly malfunctioning machine.  They won’t want us.  They don’t have a choice.  Will they show their true colors and banish us from the party?  Not likely. Will they try to control, infiltrate and sabotage us?  Absolutely.  Will they send Karl “Tokyo” Rove to attack us? I can’t wait.

If a party is free to makes its own rules, it seems to me that a party within a party should be able to do the same.  The establishment Republicans never seemed to have a problem setting up rules and procedures to their liking, or rigging conventions four years in advance.  Of course, I’ve never built a party before, though I may have a few useful ideas. Nevertheless, to bring this to fruition will take more than one anonymous curmudgeon on a blog site.  If you’re interested, let me know at freedom-faction@markamerica.com. I’d love to read your ideas! Some of you have decades of experience in local political activism, so that your wisdom will be needed by younger activists who wish to establish a Freedom Faction.  If we hope to take control of  the Republican Party, while avoiding the daunting problems of simply abandoning it for a new party, I think building an explicit faction within the party is a great idea.  After all, that’s what the establishment, RINO Republicans have been doing to us for ages.  Is it not time to turn tables?

The DC insiders say the Tea Party is dead, but I don’t believe that.  I think they’re about to run into a “Tea Party” the  likes of which they’ve never imagined, and it may just be out to clean up Washington DC with a vengeance.

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Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Tea Party, Tokyo Rove | 3 Comments »

How Much Did Establishment Republicans Know About IRS Targeting?

Friday, June 28th, 2013

Remember This?

Given their clear penchant for betraying conservatives, and given the half-fast approach they have taken to the investigation into the IRS Tea Party-targeting scandal, and also considering the apparent reluctance of some House Republicans to seek a special prosecutor on this and related matters, I have begun to wonder if perhaps our Republicans in Washington DC are “un-indicted co-conspirators” in this IRS scandal too.  We already know that Republicans have been aware since early 2012, and perhaps a good deal sooner, but one must wonder how much they knew.  They have happily trotted-out a number of requests sent to the IRS by Democrats asking for audits of Tea Party groups, but I wonder what would be revealed if IRS correspondence with Republican members is scrutinized at some future date.  Would we find that Republicans, particularly of the Tea Party-averse establishment stripe would suddenly materialize before us?  Back in July 2011, I may have been more right than I had dared to suspect when I wrote about the bi-partisan war against the Tea Party.

It became fairly clear in the aftermath of the 2010 mid-term elections that something wasn’t quite right.  In the Spring and Summer of 2011, Tea Parties began to raise Hell even with wavering Republican members over the debt ceiling issue.  It was at this time that the split between the conservative base of the party and the establishment intelligentsia began to widen.  This is purely speculative, but I wonder if we shouldn’t insist on finding out who on the Republican side might have had a hand in the effort to quell the Tea Party.  After all, among Washington DC and establishment Republicans, there is no feeling of unity with the Tea Party, in purpose or motive, and in many cases, it would be fair to say there is some substantial enmity.   Why didn’t Darrell Issa(R-CA) throw up some sort of red flag in 2012 when the Treasury Department informed him of the problem in 2012?  More, as it turns out, Issa specifically requested that the audit be limited to IRS groups, even though there were others acknowledged to be on the so-called BOLO(Be On Look-Out) lists.  Why narrow it?  Could it be that there was far more targeting going on, perhaps directed from both sides of the aisle?

Again, while I have no direct evidence to support such an allegation, we do know with certainty that the initial foray by the House into the matter of Tea Party-targeting by the IRS was tepid, and slow in coming.  We also know there exists scant love for Tea Partiers on Capitol Hill.  Could it be that these same treacherous Republicans who have conspired to destroy the country by amnesty for illegal immigrants might also have taken part in this effort at targeting the Tea Party?  Time will tell, but if you assume the GOP establishment in Washington DC wouldn’t resort to such tactics, you may be in for a shock.  I surely hope that a special prosecutor is brought on, despite the fact that I have my doubts about any willingness on the part of the Obama administration or the Holder Justice Department to diligently investigate anything, but because I know that is and has been impossible to trust Beltway Republicans, I’d just as soon learn the truth if they had a hand in it.  Some may complain that I don’t have anything like a bullet-proof case, but the problem is that we conservatives can no longer trust the GOP in Washington, so we mustn’t take anything for granted.

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Posted in Activism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Tea Party | 7 Comments »

Again I Ask: Why Don’t Repblicans Fear Their Party’s Base?

Friday, June 28th, 2013

A Toast to Lenin

We have discussed this here before, and I have previously shared with you my conclusion: Republicans may not fear their party’s base because they may be less than earnest members of the Republican party.  It may be that as soon as they can hand the House back to the Democrats in 2014, we may witness a sea change as many of the people you’ve come to think of as RINOs jump ship to become Democrats simply so they can be a part of the majority again.  In Washington DC, there is only one effective party, and it is the party of big government.  Do not be surprised when this pack of traitors defects from the GOP at the first substantially favorable opportunity.  Do not expect party loyalty, because their only loyalty is to their own political hides, and do not be surprised to discover that this amnesty bill vote in the Senate had been about their future prospects as Democrats.  The fundamental principle I believe is driving the Republican leadership is best described and encapsulated in the following quote, as coincidentally posted today by long-time reader “The Unit:”

“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

If this suggestion seems impossible or “conspiratorial” to you, remember that these are people who have just voted on a bill that will flush the entire country into a sewer, and that they did so despite widespread disapproval by conservatives, but also the American people in general.  The only party in which their positions on this bill could meet with something approaching a majority’s approval is the Democrat Party.  They aren’t even particularly worried about being challenged in a Republican primary because many of them intend to switch parties and run as incumbent Democrats if their support in the Republican party grows too weak or the party’s influence wanes dramatically, as is the likely result of the immigration bill.

One shouldn’t wonder when a putative Republican leader like Boehner adopts the tactics and strategems of the left.  Whatever the motive driving them, whether as the result of extortion or through willing collusion, the Republican leadership in Washington DC has participated in the wrecking of this country as surely as any leftist, but in order to have you tolerate it, their voting base must be convinced that they are diligently working to oppose the left.  If only they are able to make it look like they’ve put up a “valiant effort,” you will likely be convinced to let them remain in office.  If you do happen to lose patience with them, posing a serious primary threat, they may simply change parties in order to maintain their offices.

Do you suppose the conservatives in John Boehner’s district feel any better about the impending immigration disaster than do you?  Certainly not.  They feel as betrayed as do you, but their voices will be muted if their only choice in November of 2014 is between Boehner and an open leftist.  This is the manner in which we are being controlled.  This is why I continue to contend that only by wrecking the GOP and building a new party without any of the same old sell-outs will we be able to retake this nation, restoring it to a constitutional, representative republic.

It’s not as though my proposition is without precedent.  In 1995, following the overwhelming ouster of Democrats in both houses of Congress, there was a sea change through which thousands of elected Democrats across the country simply switched away from the Democrats to the newly ascendant Republicans.  Who among us would contend that these people, or their successors would not change parties if they thought it to be in their own best political interests?  They are politicians, after all, and we’ve seen scant evidence that there exists any real difference among them.  Yes, there are a rare few exceptions, but they merely prove the rule.  The primary motivation of most politicians is to retain power, and if they need to jump from one party to the other, and then back again, they have shown that they are willing and able.  Ask yourself:

Do they ignore your wishes because…

  • They are crooks on the take?
  • They are being blackmailed?
  • They are Democrats in Republican clothing?

One or more of these must be the underlying motive.  No person is so stupid as would be required to support such legislation as the immigration bill that is so obviously an act of suicide for Republicans, particularly conservatives. It will have immense negative repercussions for the nation as a whole, but for the conservative movement particularly.  If this is so, let us assume that the establishment wing of the Republican Party is acting on the basis of an ulterior motive.  It’s simply stretches the limits of credulity to believe that they don’t understand where this is leading, whatever they may say publicly.  If this is the state of the GOP, then I must strenuously work to destroy it before it can destroy us, if it hasn’t already.

Whatever Amnesty they inflict on this country through this bill, if we are unable to stop them, we must offer them no amnesty in 2014, 2016, and 2018.  None of them.  If it costs us the House, so be it.  If it means we lose ground in the Senate, so be it, but by the end of 2014, we must clean House, and we must endure all the difficulties that will come with it.  If we can’t primary them out, we must simply vote them out on election day, even if it means yielding the seats to open Democrats.  Staunch Republicans may recoil at the suggestion, but I must remind Republicans in the most strenuous terms that Barack Obama has succeeded in furthering his agenda precisely because Republicans of the establishment stripe have willfully delivered the country into his hands.

You see, just as it no longer matters whether Obama’s destruction of the US is a result of incompetence or malevolence, it also irrelevant whether the GOP establishment in Washington DC(or anywhere else) is rigging our defeat because they are simply inept, or deviously treasonous.  The result is the same in either case: Conservatives lose, and America is destroyed without a fight.  For those who would argue that Republicans leaders simply cannot be traitors to their party, or to the country, I would remind the purveyors of such arguments that we have been deceived and betrayed many times before, although admittedly neither on such a scale, nor with such catastrophic results.  Whether by design and intention or unhappy accident, we must proceed now as though it were the plan of our alleged “leaders.” Some will conclude that I had possessed no evidence for such a charge, but my retort will be simply that the proof is witnessed in the predictable results.

What conservatives must now ask of themselves is whether we can afford to wait any longer for the final betrayal.  How long will leadership of the party string us along if we do not challenge their direction, their “leadership,” and their motives?  You can see the results. Since Republicans took over control of the House in the midterms of 2010, we have added more than three trillion dollars in new debt, and despite the sound and fury over the debt ceiling and the “sequester,” the growth of government remains virtually unlimited.  All the while, bit by miserable bit, our liberties are being stripped away, and all the while, the GOP establishment poses as our protectors and guarantors of our liberties.  A simple review of the last three years demonstrates convincingly that they are and have been nothing of the kind.

It is with a deep sense of foreboding that I give voice to that which I have suspected for quite some time, but let me assure you that if my conclusion about the real nature of our alleged “leadership” in Washington DC is even approximately correct, you must know that what you’ve seen heretofore will have been merely a sampling of the betrayals in the offing.  It’s going to be up to we conservatives to save this country if it is to be saved at all, but we cannot do so with blinders obstructing our peripheral vision.  We must be able to look around and see clearly who it is that we must defeat, because not all of our worst enemies stand in open aggression on the other side of the battle lines.  Many are among us, and would happily deliver us to our antagonists precisely because while claiming kinship to us, they are merely saboteurs leading us into disaster.  John Boehner is one of these, but there are many others, and we must begin to either strip them of influence or be prepared to abandon the party to them.  Only in so doing will we defeat the left, because for the moment, our alleged “leaders” in Washington DC are merely agents of statism in our midst.

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Posted in Activism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics | 5 Comments »

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