Is the Republican National Committee just “stupid” as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) implied last week, or just hell bent on business as usual, ignoring the minority vote til’ the next century? Either way, the same people who insisted Mitt Romney be anointed the GOP 2012 presidential nominee are the same people now in charge of the party’s image makeover and recruiting voters of “color” to the party: Yes, middle aged and old white men. And all signs point to the fact that we’re heading for the same underperforming results unless we change directions fast.
Nearly three months after the election, what we see coming from the RNC is lip service to minority outreach. A Republican source who is familiar with the committee’s inner workings told me there are still no blacks working at the RNC other than in administrative positions and only one Hispanic person working the RNC political department.
Maybe that’s why the outreach plan includes the Martin Luther King Jr. video, the RNC released Jan. 21, King’s holiday and Inauguration day, in which Priebus looked uncomfortable talking about King’s legacy. In the three minute video, Priebus is surrounded by four people, two of which are minorities, who never speak but look like hostages held against their will. Does the RNC like its minorities silent with no voice or influence?
Adding insult to pandering insult, during the RNC’s winter meeting held in Charlotte in January, it approved a resolution to commemorate the achievements of black Republican Frederick Douglass. This is the RNC’s idea of outreach to black voters: a resolution and a video!
Priebus says he wants to spend time doing “extensive research” on why the GOP lost in 2012 and learn ways they can grow the GOP tent beyond white voters. In the press release announcing the initiative, the RNC proclaimed “The Growth and Opportunity Project is co-chaired by five prominent Republican leaders.” But there lies the problem.
Oddly enough, the five people Priebus appointed are part of the GOP establishment; do not bring a fresh perspective. The committee includes: Henry Barbour National Committeeman from Mississippi (nephew of longtime Republican Haley Barbour); Zori Fonalledas, National Committeewoman from Puerto Rico; Glenn McCall, National Committeeman from South Carolina; Sally Bradshaw, Veteran senior strategist in Florida and national politics; Ari Fleischer, Former White House Press Secretary (under George W. Bush, this part was omitted from the press release)
What’s striking about this makeover gang of five is there are only two people of color. How can we seriously have increase our standing with minorities if the committee designed for outreach isn’t majority minority?
It’s doesn’t require a brain surgeon to figure out what the Republican Party needs to do to win. Nor does the RNC need to spend months navel gazing, hosting conference calls and meetings to hear from the same people they’ve been hearing from.
What the RNC needs to do is to start building meaningful relationships with Asians, blacks and Hispanics, take the conservative message outside of its comfort zone of the suburbs into the cities, particularly inner cities. It’s really not hard to do, if you are serious about “growing” and winning.
The RNC needs to take the conservative message to all Americans. We need to ask Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) how she got 26 percent of the black vote in 2006. We need to ask Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) how he won 26 percent of the black vote in 2008 or what Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ strategy was to win 20 percent of the black vote in 2008. How about the RNC hosting forums in cities across the country or at colleges, particularly historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), featuring young, diverse Republicans talking about why they are conservative?
Priebus needs to give a mandate to all state chairmen and committee members to tell their local parties to make it a priority to recruit more minority members to the over 3,000 local Republican chapters. Now is time for the GOP to literally take its message to the street. The party will only get more diverse through grassroots outreach.
Meanwhile, while the RNC is contemplating the next phase of its life, perhaps it should reexamine its rules for membership to the RNC. Currently, each state or territory has a state chairman and a committeeman and committeewoman. As David A. Bositis wrote in “Blacks & the 2012 Republican National Convention, “at least one third of the members of the RNC are women by quota.” But there are no quotas for minorities. I think the RNC should either have quotas for all or quotas for none.
The RNC also needs to do a much better job identifying and supporting minority and women candidates. Not just monetary support but strategic support to help them win.
Ultimately, the GOP won’t begin to shed its “white only image” if it continues to use mostly white spokespeople talking about conservative values. Chanel recently hired Brad Pitt to be appear in its Chanel No. 5 perfume ads because Brad makes anything sexy and Chanel wants more women to buy its perfume.
If the RNC wants more minorities to buy its message, it should use spokespeople who look more like Sarasota Springs, Utah Mayor Mia Love, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senators Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz and less like Ari Fleisher and Henry Barbour. It’s time for RNC make conservatism sexy because “stupid” has got to go.
I have to admit that when Obama “won” re-election I became more depressed than Madonna’s audience was when they were forced to watch her strip the other night. For God’s sake, Madonna, put some material on that mess, material girl. I guess she’s going to follow Cher’s path and torture us with her exhibitionism ‘til she takes the big dirt nap. Like a virgin? Yeah … right. More like a sturgeon. Hang it up, Madge … you’re scaring the children. Anyway, back to my post-election depression.
As I was saying, giddy I was not that Obama secured a second term via Fieldworks, entitlement mooks and the sponge-brained propaganda swillers of the ludicrous Left … but he did. And for that I must concede that if there is a God and this God is defined by the contents of the sacred Scripture, then this God must be really ticked off at the U.S. because He allowed, in His sovereignty, for us to be saddled with four more years of an administration that blows worse than Hurricane Sandy.
Yep, for those who take their cue from the Bible, you must have noticed that anytime God wanted to wake His wayward nation the heck up because they were belligerently ignoring His statutes, He usually appointed a crappy leader who brought their nation down to Chinatown through bad dictates.
Sure, God sometimes plagued His contumacious people with frogs or hemorrhoids or let enemy nations batter them unmercifully, but on many occasions He simply let them be governed by a daft king, some Moronosaurus Rex who ignored God’s ways and led Israel into a moral and economic ditch. That’s right. You heard me. God allowed it to happen. Not El Diablo, but God.
Personally, I don’t know why God hasn’t whooshed us completely off the map by now. I do know that if He doesn’t kick our backside for us showing Him our backside that—forgive me Lord—He owes Sodom and Gomorrah a big apology.
So, what can we do? Here are five musts that’ll get us on a decent footing with our compass pointing true north again.
Before we go on whining and moaning about the Left’s wantonness, we’d better make dang certain that our house is in order, eh Church Lady?
We might want to recommit our lives to God and our God-honoring founding docs and not give any wannabe leader who does not hold our Constitution in the highest esteem, on the left or right, our hearts and votes. Duh.
All the Pollyanna Christians out there who voted for this anti-biblical mess, you should be ashamed and hit yourself in the head with a sledgehammer. Repeatedly.
Lather, rinse and repeat steps one through four.
Look, the only hope I hold out for America is that God, at the end of the day, is extremely merciful. And therein lies my solitary confidence because we deserve to get our clock cleaned for how we’ve behaved and not receive a second chance.
In my obnoxious opinion I believe He’s going to allow us to sweat it for a few more years just to be certain that our repentance isn’t specious and our commitment to His governance is steadfast. I think that He thinks we’re full of it and truly don’t want to go His way, and the only way to ferret us out is to see if we’ll stick with His program over time or if we will simply cave in and bow and kiss the ring of stale statism.
And that, my friend, is a story that’s yet to be told.
Check out my latest video on how Allen West got scammed by Obama’s Fieldworks.
President Obama is so wrapped up in being Obama, he can’t see that not having a plan for the next for years is a problem when you’re running for re-election. During the final debate on foreign policy, Obama oozed with revisionist history of his record and added a theatrical element to his delivery, glaring at hole through Romney. Meant to be intimidating I’m sure, Romney responded to Obama’s stares and interruptions with calm and confidence, leaving Romney looking like the only adult in the room, as someone commented to me.
Romney described the debate and Obama’s re-election campaign well: “Attacking me is not an agenda.” Throughout the 90 minutes, Obama resorted to his worn out, false attacks on Romney: tax cuts for the rich, Bain Capital shipping jobs to China and so on and so on.
When Romney cautioned the Navy is the smallest since 1917, Obama mocked Romney like a bullying teenager. “We also have fewer horses and bayonets, than in 1916 said Obama, so the question isn’t a game of battleship, it’s what are our capabilities.” Uhmm, for the past four years, Obama seems to have been handling foreign policy like it’s a game, without focus. Who sunk America’s foreign policy?
If anyone looked like he had a “reckless” foreign policy that was “all over the map,” it was President Obama. As Romney pointed out time and time during the debate, America isn’t safer under Obama’s presidency. “We can’t kill our way out of this mess,” referring to the killing of Osama bin Laden, which Obama seems to think defines a foreign policy strategy.
One of Romney’s strongest moments was his exchange with Obama over Israel and the threat of a nuclear Iran. Obama declared the relationship between America and Israel has never been stronger and Israel is our greatest ally in the region. I’m sure this was news to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who all but pleaded with Obama to take a stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions with the threat of military action yet Obama refuses.
In scathing clarity, Romney pointed out not only is Iran four years closer to building a nuclear weapon, Obama has never visited Israel. “You went to middle East, flew to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey Iraq and you skipped Israel and they noticed you skipped Israel.” Romney added that the relationship with Israel is so strained that 38 Democrat Senators sent Obama a letter telling him he needs to repair tensions with our greatest ally in the Middle East.
From the beginning of his presidency, Romney noted Obama said “he would meet with the world’s worst actors Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong Il,” and couldn’t wait to give a speech to the Muslim world in Egypt, apologizing for America.
What would Romney do differently? He would go after the bad guys, as he said, but also show American leadership abroad with a comprehensive strategy that doesn’t abdicate decision making to the United Nations, particularly Russia and China. Among other things, Romney would stand with Israel and tighten sanctions on Iran and demonstrate unequivocally there will be consequences if Iran doesn’t end its nuclear ambitions.
After two years of witnessing President Assad butcher 30,000 Syrians and take no action, Obama declared in the debate “Syria must determine its own future” and said he was “confident Assad’s days are numbered.” Romney, on the other hand, called the crisis “a humanitarian disaster” and said while he doesn’t want to engage America in another war, we have to “take leadership.” If elected president, Romney said he would work with our allies and arm the insurgents to topple Assad because Syria is the only partner Iran has in the region and is arming Assad to gain strategic control in the Middle East.
In the face of his failed record, Obama retreated back to domestic policy and talked about the critical importance of “nation building here at home.” Of course this is code for more spending. I thought the $800 billion stimulus was supposed to build up our nation again. He like Romney pointed out America can’t be strong abroad if it’s fiscal house isn’t in order but in contrast to Romney’s plan to create 12 million jobs, Obama offered no plan.
Instead Obama sang the same tune, declaring America can reduce its deficit by asking the wealthy to pay more to fund more investments at home. Raising taxes and continuing to spend while making no cuts to government won’t reduce our $16 trillion debt.
Obama also said he wants “to hire more teachers in math and science.” Taking this all in like the older, wiser uncle, Romney simply responded, “we have to grow the economy and it’s not going to happen by just hiring teachers.” Or rather creating more union jobs. As he did successfully in the two previous debates, Romney reminded voters again of the obvious, Obama’s plan “hasn’t worked.”
Closing out the ball game, Romney ended with this. “I'm going to make sure that we get people off of food stamps, not by cutting the program, but by getting them good jobs,” he said. Romney promised to take responsibility as president and “work with” Americans “to get the country back. “
In Contrast, Obama closed with more of the same, government spending and debt but curiously added “I always listen to your voices.” This is ironic thing to say because Obama never listened to the American people. In 2009, Americans wanted jobs but Obama gave us what he wanted Obamacare.
The problem with Obama is his narcissism gets in the way of him doing his job. The “rise of the oceans didn’t slow and our planet didn’t begin to heal,” as Obama arrogantly predicted his election would produce in his victory speech. A fiscally conservative Democrat told me the day after the debate Obama blew a great opportunity being elected the first black President. After so much ego over the past four years, America needs humility of leadership. America needs Mitt Romney.
President Obama is doing exactly what he decried in 2008: making a big election about small things, talking about Big Bird, binders, and bayonets. It's clear President Obama can't defend his record and he's flat out of ideas to get our economy going.
A new poll from Wenzel Strategies shows Rep. Todd Akin leading incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill in the race for the Senate seat in Missouri.
It’s big news that Akin is still alive and kicking despite being abandoned by the national Republican Party leadership.
Akin, who refused to succumb to pressure from his own party leadership to get out of the race after poorly expressing himself in an interview on the issue of rape and abortion, has been left to his own resources and friends to raise funds.
According to the just published fundraising report for the last quarter, going through September, McCaskill outraised him almost four to one.
Yet, it’s still a race.
This contest captures the stark contrasts that delineate the most fundamental, rawest political currents of the country today.
On one side, we have McCaskill mouthing every predictable liberal position on all issues. You wouldn’t really even need her if you could operate a Senate seat off your iPad with an app called “liberal.”
Meet every challenge with more government. Spend, tax, regulate, subsidize, abort.
Meanwhile, in Akin we have a conservative who actually believes that the blessings of freedom depend on traditional values, limited government and personal responsibility. This opens him to caricature from liberals and provokes fear in establishment politicians.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in its recent endorsement of McCaskill, “Todd Akin…comes out of the new incarnation of the Missouri Republican Party, the one based on peddling simplistic solutions to fearful “values voters.”
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that for the years 2006 through 2010, 26 percent of the population of St. Louis, which is almost half black, lived below the poverty line.
It doesn’t seem to phase the Post-Dispatch that poverty in their own city persists at levels 60 percent above the national rate. They are more concerned about a conservative getting elected, who might actually try to do things differently.
Whereas insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results, doing things differently – like freeing up poor parents to send their kids to church schools and promoting politically incorrect traditional values – is for liberals and the Post-Dispatch editors simplistic.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, black unemployment in St Louis in 2011 was 14.9 percent, the ninth highest black employment rate of metropolitan areas in the country.
In 2010, the graduation rate in St Louis public schools, according to the school district, was 60 percent.
In Education Week’s recently published ranking of public school systems nationwide, Missouri is rated number 41 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.
These bleak statistics are not new. This has been going on for years.
In St. Louis, and in the nation’s largest urban areas, we see all the same chronic and persistent pathologies.
Poverty, hopeless urban schools, and chronically high unemployment among minorities are becoming a way of life in our country. What really should be provoking fear is not that there are committed conservatives who want genuine change but that Americans are becoming resigned that real change is not possible.
The McCaskill vs. Akin faceoff is really about what is happening in the country nationwide.
Maybe in the best of times views from different political parties can be about splitting hairs. But in times like this, we’re talking about being at a crossroads and recognizing that our problems exist at the core of how we choose to see the world and define our lives.
According to the latest Gallup poll, only 3 of 10 Americans are satisfied with how things are going.
The fact that a persistent, principled and uncompromising conservative like Todd Akin can keep his candidacy viable under such challenging circumstances shows there’s a healthy constituency of Americans who understand that what is wrong is we’ve lost our principles and values.
Can there be political bubbles like financial bubbles?
Financial bubbles, inflated by hopes and dreams, burst when reality negates any possibility that those hopes and dreams will be realized. At that point, sky high stock or bond or real estate prices come crashing down to earth.
Can the same thing happen in politics? Can a skilled politician, who has become popular with soaring rhetoric and promises, deflate when it starts becoming clear that he is not going to deliver?
Of course, I am thinking about our president.
Mitt Romney demonstrated in the first presidential debate that the considerable gap between President Obama’s rhetoric and his performance makes him a vulnerable candidate.
Yet, the president’s bubble is far from bursting.
Romney, in the debate, was aggressive but deferential toward Obama. He was deferential because, despite the poor state of the country after almost four years of the Obama administration, Barack Obama is still a popular president.
Recent polling shows his approval remains around 50 percent. At similar stages in the presidencies of the last two presidents voted out after one term, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, their popularity ratings were in the thirties.
What accounts for Barack Obama’s Teflon? How is it that, after almost four years of terrible economic results – high unemployment, sluggish growth, huge deficits and mounting national debt – that Obama’s persona is not more tarnished?
Shouldn’t today’s economic facts on the ground be sufficient to puncture the Obama bubble?
One part of the answer to this puzzle is the changing demographics of the country.
The United States today is a nation that is much less white, much less married, and less traditional than it once was. These are growing trends and each reflects in at least some large part constituencies with values supportive of Obama’s world view - activist government and moral relativism.
What was once the exception to the rule in America – not being white, not being married, not having traditional views on family, sex, and abortion – is now becoming the rule. And these constituencies are becoming sufficiently large to elect a president.
National Journal released a poll right before the debate showing Obama and Romney dead even nationwide – 47 percent each – among likely voters.
The poll shows Obama’s white support at just 38 percent.
Obama was elected in 2008 with 43 percent of the white vote. It appears that he could be re-elected with even less.
In Gallup’s polling of last week, Obama’s approval among white voters stood at 39 percent.
He gets 38 percent approval among those who attend church weekly compared to 55 percent among those who attend church seldom or never.
And his approval among married voters is 40 percent compared to 57 percent among those not married.
According to data compiled by the Tax Foundation, the large majority of those now filing tax returns in the U.S. are single. In 1960, 65 percent of all tax filers were married and 35 percent single. In 2010 it’s reversed - 61 percent of filers were single and 39 percent married.
When Barack Obama pushes for taxing the rich, he’s not just pitting those with the highest incomes against everyone else. He’s pitting married against singles. Eight of ten tax filers in the top twenty percent of earners are married. The majority of middle income and below filers are single.
It’s really a cultural divide, one you can be sure that Barack Obama is very aware of, that is keeping his bubble inflated.
The fact that Obama’s support is still this strong despite his terrible record sends a clear warning to those looking for a new birth of American freedom.
Romney and Ryan should consider taking these constituencies on directly – blacks, Hispanics, singles – explaining why America’s future hinges on shutting down the government plantation.
The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971 to advocate on behalf of black Americans and hold lawmakers and the President of the United States accountable for policies adversely impacting blacks. The CBC is often referred to as the “conscience of the Congress.”
Considering the caucus’ history, it’s shocking CBC Chairman Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver admitted to the Root the CBC has been reluctant to criticize President Obama because he’s black. Never mind black unemployment under Obama for the past three years has been nearly double the national average and hit a record high of 16% in 2011. Black unemployment hasn’t been that high since 1984. I guess Cleaver also isn’t concerned black wealth has also plummeted under Obama. According to Pew Research Center, the average black family’s wealth is about $5,600 compared with $113,000 for whites.
According to Cleaver, “pride” about the president’s blackness trumps any concerns over current 14% black unemployment for members of the CBC. Cleaver said “if we had a white president we'd be marching around the White House.”
As the CBC celebrates their annual
Legislative Conference this week in DC, it’s more than insulting that Rep. Cleaver can chuckle about the CBC giving Obama a pass on accountability for his failed agenda with blacks and all Americans. Cleaver’s glib reaction is particularly disturbing when you consider in 1970 the Democratic Select Committee, which later became the CBC, was outraged by President Richard Nixon’s refusal to meet with them. Nixon’s snub appeared to be the impetus for group’s name change a year later.
In 1971, the CBC boycotted Nixon’s State of the Union because he refused to meet with them and sent him a list of 60 policy recommendations, the link to which has been conspicuously removed from the CBC website. At least a year ago or two ago it was there. Perhaps Cleaver removed it because he didn’t want people asking why the CBC isn’t treating Obama with the same outrage.
After all, Obama refused to meet with the CBC until a full year in office even though 95% of blacks voted for him in 2008. That doesn’t seem to be the appropriate way to thank your most loyal voting bloc. Adding insult to injury, Obama spoke at last year’s CBC’s annual legislative conference and told blacks they were lazy and needed to look for jobs.
"Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. "Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin.”
Cleaver joked with the Root when asked what he would do if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2008 and the jobless numbers for blacks were this bad. “As much as I love Sen. Clinton I would have been all over her on 14 percent unemployment for African Americans. I would have said, "My sister, I love you, but this has got to go."
Apparently being America’s first black president has its benefits. It means the raging high unemployment and diminished wealth for blacks under Obama’s presidency ain't nothing but a thing to members of the CBC. The conscience of the Congress seems to have lost its way and sold his soul down the river in the name of giving deference to a brother named Barack Obama.
Well, the DNC just wrapped, folks, and it looks like the Prince of Darkness has finally found his political party: the God-booing Democrats!
Booing God? Who the heck boos God? I’ll tell you who: Satan, his principalities and powers, devil worshippers and DNC delegates, that’s who.
Look, I get Democrats raising hell over a picture of George W. Bush, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s hairdo, or a video of Rosie speed drinking gallon jugs of chocolate milk … but God? Really?
Hey, media: You can say what you will about Republicans and their foibles, but you’ll never have audio or video of them, en masse, telling God to blank off. Wow.
I believe that three-minute display of divine disdain might have Chick-fil-A’ed the Dems come this November. I know if I were Romney I would run commercial loops of that sound bite over and over and over and over again. Back and forth. Back and forth. God handed Mitt a nugget that the greatest writers in Hollywood couldn’t script. Flog it, Mitt. Flog it.
One of the many funny things about the DNC’s Cirque du Freak last week was when queried about why God was removed from their party’s platform and Jerusalem scrubbed as the capital of Israel, Dick Durbin and other dipsticks said it was no big whoop, that the Dems are down with Yahweh and that Republicans were grasping at straws.
This, of course, satiated the lamestream media and sounded totally peachy until the delegates voted on whether or not the big man upstairs was welcome back to the big scam downstairs, and God got a resounding “screw off” from Obama’s backers.
If you haven’t seen the video clip of over two-thirds of the Democratic delegates shouting down the God vote and Villaraigosa’s teleprompted skewing of the delegates’ overwhelming decision to dis God, you must watch it here after you finish my awesome column.
Obama thought he could bamboozle the U.S. and remedy the national outcry against his party’s platform by having a faux vote reinstating Jesus and Jerusalem to his group’s ticket. The only thing he did not figure on was his multitudinous freak patrol shouting that notion down.
Please facebook, email and tweet this column to your Christian and Jewish buddies who’re still gaga over Obama despite his haggard record and ask them what they think about their party’s open hostility toward God and Israel.
Check out my latest video, Obama: “If Your Life Sucks, It's a Conservative's Fault!”
If Obama were wise he would really ramp up his misinformation machine. He should start giving away free weed, beer, hookers, tanks of gas, kazoos, Vaseline, stretch pants, whirly hats, Flowbees and ShamWows to anyone who promises to vote for him because he just ticked off stacks of Catholics even further by dissing Cardinal Dolan for the DNC.
Say “buh-bye” to a big ol’ voting block, Mr. Anti-Catholic-In-Chief.
Just like I can’t imagine any evangelical who can read and who remotely takes their faith seriously ever voting for BHO, I can’t imagine a sober Catholic giving this anti-biblical, anti-Constitution president the time of day.
Obama’s admin rages against pretty much everything Christians hold sacred. Stevie Wonder can see that.
But some of you will say, “But Obama loves the poor!” Oh, that’s why he’s created so many more of them in the last three and a half years. Garsh, I wondered what he was doing.
Look, I’m not a Catholic, but I sure dig Dolan’s chutzpah. It’s about time you guys got a U.S.-based prophetic butt-kicker who’s not beholden to big government but rather to a bigger God.
I wish to God more prissy evangelical leaders would call Obama out like Dolan has done. What a bunch of nutless wonders evangelicalism is littered with. Can we recall petrified pastors like the car industry recalls crappy vehicles, such as the Chevy Volt?
I will give one protestant wild man mad props, however: I’m talking about Bishop E. W. Jackson who said, from a biblical standpoint, that the Democratic Party is virulently anti-Christian, and if you take God and His Word seriously you need to flee from said party like a bootlegger out of Alabama on a Saturday night (my paraphrase).
Yes, the former candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia points to what he calls the Democratic Party’s “cult-like devotion” to abortion; the rejection of the traditional biblical model of family; the hostility hurled at those who express a Christian viewpoint, such as Chick-fil-A president and Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy; the actions of organizations such as the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation in suing cities and towns for displaying crosses at memorials or mentioning the name of Jesus in prayer at official events. How does a serious Christian square that stuff with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Oh, I forgot … you can’t. You can, however, merge the aforementioned with John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Back to Dolan.
In all honesty, after Dolan’s bold outspokenness against Obama over a health care law requiring employers to provide abortion coverage and the subsequent lawsuit Dolan and others filed against the rule—claiming it forces church-related groups to act against their conscience—I get why BHO said “heck no” to Mr. D speaking at the DNC.
I would caution my fellow conservatives on the frustration they may be enticed to express at Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. It is unwarranted, and it is unwise.
The reason I state such is that it is my firm belief that the Roberts' decision on the Obamacare mandate will without question bring about ultimate doom to the government control of healthcare, and through the best means possible--not judicial activism--but through the democratic process.
In boxing terminology no one has pulled a "rope-a-dope" this effective since Muhammad Ali himself. In doing so, it is clear that John Roberts duped the liberal wing of the Supreme Court into agreeing with him on calling out President Obama as legislatively dishonest, while assisting the conservative wing of the court into dismantling punitive measures against the states, and greatly limiting the ability of the legislature to use the powers of the commerce clause of the constitution to quietly take over people's lives.
Yes, conservative friends there are many silver linings in Thursday's odd verdict but let me assert merely four here:
1. Obamacare has been outed--by the authoritative voice of the nation's highest court-as a fraud. Yes the administration pitched it as a "penalty," as something that would not carry with it the burdensome label and politically repulsive thought of a tax. But Chief Justice Roberts seduced the four Obama supporters on the bench into agreeing that President Obama had in fact lied to the nation all through his 2008 campaign. Promising tax-cuts for 95% of the nation (a promise wrapped in a lie all its own), he has instead raised taxes--primarily on middle class families to the tune of $1.7 trillion dollars for the next decade. (And THAT'S just the starting point!) A tax, and nothing but a tax, is the only way the mandate funding could be understood in order for President Obama's only domestic initiative to survive. So a tax it is...
2. The commerce clause has been severely restricted. Roberts sided with the conservative wing of the court in asserting rightly that the Congress can't wander into a grey area of regulation, by attempting to force behavior of the population through manipulation of the commerce clause. The court rightly examined and asserted that the legislature has no right to legislate what people choose not to do. Punishments can not be levied on inaction. And if they attempt to do so, they must come in the form of a tax that the nation has recourse to change and remove through the electoral process.
3. The true cost to America's middle class was unveiled. Hiking taxes by close to $5 billion, with an additional $5 billion in medicare cuts, didn't close the loophole, no matter how much President Obama attempted to argue that it would. In reality the middle class families of America--already under assault by a horrible economy with limited prospects of improvement--will be forced to fork over another $1.7 trillion in forward looking deficits. Yes the families who earn $60-$90,000 per year will be the ones who make too much to qualify for the low income freebies, and not be making enough to be able to afford plans that they can buy in to. It will be these families who will be punitively crunched with this penalizing tax called Obamacare, and the Roberts' decision has removed the veil to allow this to be seen.
4. Perhaps the most important thing of all, the Roberts' decision will likely hand Governor Mitt Romney a 40 state victory in the upcoming elections. The Tea Party has been reignited. Grassroots groups have reawakened. And the roar of 2010 will be a distant memory when the voters take Governor Romney's advice and change Obamacare by removing President Obama.
To be very candid, I was more worried about the political outcomes of the case, had the justices thrown out the law all together in essence neutralizing one of the most glaring differences between the two sets of solutions being offered in this election cycle.
Instead we've been given an HD-retina-screen level upgrade in seeing the differences starkly and in greater contrast.
Re-elect President Obama and it will be the full implementation of the biggest small-business-killer ever invented by the Congress--Obamacare. Choose another path and you will set a course for the complete repeal of Obamacare, and the beginning of a new day for small business owners across the nation.
The choice is simple.
And John Roberts was the secret weapon that made it all happen, by outthinking everybody, and staying true to the Constitution.
Is President Obama right about a looming student loan debt crisis?
It depends on how you define “crisis.” But there is a problem, and it is real.
What remains to be seen is whether or not the President – or anybody else, for that matter – is willing to face the real problem in higher education. Financing an education is not so much a problem, as is the stark reality that the cost of tuition consistently goes up, even when the price of other things declines.
It is a fact that over the last decade many “adjustable rate” student loans were issued, both by private lending institutions and government agencies. Just as they were intended to, the rates on those loans “adjust” upward. And on this point, the problem of student loan debt is similar to the mortgage crisis. Just as many Americans bought more home than they could afford, so also did many students “buy” more education than they could afford, or, at least, they bought their education under financial terms that eventually either have become or will become unmanageable.
But why is it that the price of college and university tuition generally only moves in one direction – upward? And why does the price of higher education rise, even when the prices of other goods and services in our economy decline? Most reports indicate that college tuition rates have continued to rise over the past four years. Yet during this same period, overall prices have mostly been flat or have dropped, even to the point where many economists have expressed fear about a looming deflationary cycle (the recent spike in global oil prices and the corresponding rise in other prices have been about the only exception to this rule).
The answer to this question is found in a very important fact. It is a consistent agenda item within institutions of higher learning to offer as many low cost, and even “free” tuition programs as possible. Whether you’re examining state run colleges and universities, or private institutions, look in to the details of school’s budgets and the agenda becomes clear. It is a point of pride if, year after year, when institutions can report that they issued more “scholarship” programs that are doled-out according to ‘financial need.”
A glaring admission of this came to light back in 2009, shortly after President Obama took office. In one of his first college commencement addresses that he would deliver as President, Mr. Obama traveled to Tempe, Arizona, home of Arizona State University. In a speech that discouraged what the President labeled the “selfishness” of business and for profit enterprise, Barack Obama admonished the students to instead deny themselves the pursuit of the “corner office” and pursue government employment, and charitable non-profit work.
These remarks from the President were not surprising, and were consistent with his disdain for private enterprise. What was a bit shocking, however, were the comments from the man to precede him at the podium, ASU President Dr. Michael Crowe.
Dr. Crowe began his speech of introduction with glowing remarks about President Obama. “No national leader before you,” Dr. Crowe said as he turned to look directly at the President, “has fully understood the role of education, knowledge and learning, in fulfilling the American ideal..”
This was a bit stunning, in and of itself. “No national leader” had understood education prior to Mr. Obama being elected? From there, however, Dr. Crowe tipped his hand on the financial agenda of ASU. “Mr. President, we join you today by committing to you and to the people of Arizona that we will continue building ASU as an egalitarian institution of advanced teaching and learning, and we commit to you also that no Arizona student will be left out of this institution and what we have to offer, because of his or her family’s income..”
There was the President of Arizona State University being quite clear about the school’s economic model. The school’s goal – at least one of the school’s goals – was to extend low-cost or now-cost tuition to as many “deserving” students as possible.
After President Obama left town, Dr. Crowe’s remarks stirred a bit of a backlash among ASU students, parents, and alumni. This was the ASU President who, in 2009, presided over no less than a 15% increase in tuition rates in less than seven years, yet there he was telling President Obama on a stage that he goal was to “give it away for free” to more lower income students.
This illustrates the not-so-little secret about the rising costs of higher education: colleges and universities are often set up to function like their own little economic re-distribution systems. And while the goal of getting lower income Americans enrolled in college is noble – education is a key to lifting people out of poverty – the cost of enrolling lower income students is often balanced on the backs of middle class students and parents. If a student isn’t “poor enough” to qualify for needs-based tuition assistance, then, too bad – the student will likely face ever-rising tuition rates.
This needs-based thinking has now begun to apply to non-citizens. In 2011, the bankrupt government of California passed a law to provide scholarships to illegal immigrant students, and just last week, in the midst of the current student loan debate, USA Today reported several colleges and universities are now contemplating illegal alien scholarships.
Will President Obama – or any other politician – dare to address this stark reality?
On April 30th in 1789, at Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office to become the first president of the United States. He took that oath amidst a widespread surge of popularity and consensual respect that has yet to be replicated in any subsequent presidential election in this country. For two terms, Washington was able to govern, and govern well, because even before he won the election as president of the United States, through his deeds, Washington had won the respect and trust of all of colonial America. If measured against that high standard, Barack Obama, whether he is elected in November 2012 or not, will be unable to govern effectively, if at all.
Whether the standard to measure Barack Obama is legislative, fiscal, foreign policy, managerial or personal, Obama ranks among the lowest of the low in presidential ability.
Legislatively, Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, is tied up in a Supreme Court challenge which has exposed the shameful short cuts, side dealings and horse-trading that Team Obama was forced to implement in order to have the legislation scrape past the Senate. Billions of dollars of “incentives” to Senators and congressmen can be done once or twice. But, if congress requires these kinds of tawdry incentives to advance Obama’s presidential agenda, it is hard to imagine Obama has any ability to implement future legislation.
Consider some of Obama’s other signature efforts--a JOBS bills that doesn’t create jobs, an energy policy that increases the price of gas at the pump and increases America’s dependence on foreign oil. An insistence of subsidies, for failed “green” endeavors, that waste billions of taxpayer dollars on ill-thought Solar and wind schemes that advance the agendas of Obama’s political allies.
Fiscally, Obama has been the most irresponsible president in the history of the United States (and that is saying something!). Obama’s spend, spend, spend agenda has kept the economy from growing, has created new generations of citizens dependent upon the government dole and has resulted in the slowest growth in GDP in three years. And for what? Obama has not been able to create the jobs he promised because Obama doesn’t understand that business, not government, creates jobs in a free economy.
Entitlement spending has ballooned to outrageous levels wherein over 50% of Americans do not work, nor do they look likely to do so in the future. Obama has put in place trillions of taxpayer dollars as spending intended to stimulate the economy. But the economy has not been “stimulated”, though the pockets of Obama’s political allies have been generously lined with taxpayer dollars.
The president has not even been able to produce a federal budget that can be debated seriously by congress. His last such pathetic attempt was unanimously voted down (0-414), showing that Obama has been abandoned by his own party. Could congress, in a bi-partisan effort, be sending the president an indisputable message about what they think of Obama’s stewardship of the economy?
What does it say that Obama can’t even get one vote on an issue as important as the federal budget? There seems to be universal, bi-partisan agreement that in matters financial, the president is irrelevant.
Obama’s international shenanigans, from his bowing and scraping his way across Asia during his first year in office, to his hugs and handshakes for charlatans and brutish dictators, has been a public embarrassment. Obama’s off-mike comments to Medvedev show the president to be an anxious schoolboy, lackey-like and eager to be all things to all people, desperate for praise and willing to sacrifice American values to achieve.
The story of George Washington and the cherry tree may be apocryphal; merely a tale emblematic of George Washington’s propensity for truthfulness, but Obama spawns no such legend. He has told too many falsehoods, taken too many short cuts, and appointed as his spokespersons and surrogates, too many who do the same, and hence, Obama has lost the trust of the American people. What Obama has lost is what Americans value most—integrity.
And then there is the personal. It is turning out that Obama is actually not very likeable. At every opportunity, Obama seems to jump into controversies that should be solved at a state or local level (Gates affair in Cambridge, MA or Trayvon Martin in FL), before he has all the facts. Obama is showing himself to be a race-baiter, citing directly, or through his surrogates, that any who disagree with his policies or opinions must somehow be racist. Or there’s the class-warfare mongering. Repeatedly, Americans hear Obama blaming “millionaires and billionaires”, claiming that they haven’t paid their “fair share”, though Obama is a multi-millionaire and he, too, takes advantage of every tax loophole.
Barack Obama has been so fixated on his re-election (another of his falsehoods since he has often stated he didn’t care if he was a one-term president) and consumed with building winning “issues-based” coalitions, that he has lost the trust and respect and confidence of most Americans. Even if Obama, by some sleight of hand, were to win in November, he has no mandate; he lost consumer confidence, and he can’t govern.
John Marshall once said that a statesmen is a “a person that loves the people enough to tell them the truth". Barack Obama is clearly no statesmen and has repeatedly refused to deal honestly with the nation’s problems as he ceaselessly maneuvers for short term political gain. Even if he wins the election, it’ll be the longest lame duck session in the nation’s history. Barack Obama cannot govern. The nation is wiser and demands a statesman.
Is the Republican National Committee just “stupid” as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) implied last week, or just hell bent on business as usual, ignoring the minority vote til’ the next century? Either way, the same people who insisted Mitt Romney be anointed the GOP 2012 presidential nominee are the same people now in charge of the party’s image makeover and recruiting voters of “color” to the party: Yes, middle aged and old white men. And all signs point to the fact that we’re heading for the same underperforming results unless we change directions fast.
